Congo Dawn Read online

  He’d still have been on firm ground if the Ares Solutions acquisition hadn’t cleaned out all his remaining cash flow. That his newest venture would not amply restore stripped accounts before the shareholders and corporate board, including its chairman, Howard Marshall, called for an overdue audit, was a gamble Trevor Mulroney had never dreamed he might lose. As a result, his corporation’s current bank assets were not the healthy fiction both tabloids and Buckingham Palace assumed, but a desperate juggling act of shifting assets and credit lines.

  A campaign setback that would not matter if today’s operation went as planned.

  “So what is it, Mulroney? Some problem with our new molybdenum concession? I’m assuming that’s why you’re in the Congo. I’ve been following the news on renewed insurgent unrest in the Ituri region. You led me to believe this was a zero-risk investment. That the LRA and other rebel groups had laid down arms and were eager to join in the political and economic process. Tell me you weren’t wrong. That you aren’t calling to inform me I’ve wasted a ten-million-dollar investment. Or is it Kinshasa putting on the screws again as to what constitutes ‘exclusive development rights’? That I can do something about.”

  Trevor Mulroney maintained the affable show of porcelain caps. “You of all people should know there’s no such thing as zero risk. The concession itself isn’t an issue. Kinshasa charged an arm and a leg for granting us a jump on the molybdenite strike. But implicit in the hefty commission they pocketed was the assurance that all rebel groups were cooperating in the cease-fire. That the UN peacekeeping contingent had things under control. And that regional government forces could guarantee our security.”

  A comprehending grunt came from the screen. “You’re talking about our good pal Jean Pierre Wamba.”

  In one of those regular ironies of Congolese politics, the current governor of Ituri province was the former warlord of the same rebel militia that had fought government forces in that region to a standstill, his present reign less a reward for coming to the peace table than acknowledgment that Kinshasa, two thousand kilometers to the west, had no real control in this part of the DRC.

  “That’s right. I’ll admit things haven’t gone too smoothly. I assume you’ve been following the renewed rebel unrest in the zone. Wamba’s pocketed his own hefty commission in exchange for providing troops to secure the mine and transport convoys under one of his field commanders, Samuel Makuga.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember Makuga from the peace negotiations. Wamba’s second-in-command, a capable fighter. Congolese father who’s actually some kind of cousin to Wamba. These tribal clans always stick together. Ugandan mother with connections in Kampala that proved useful to Wamba. Wamba always was Uganda’s candidate. They gave him sanctuary for years in return for access to minerals in his territories.”

  Again Mulroney raised no questions on how the man on the screen knew so much about his hirelings. “Makuga seems capable enough. But our operations here have been under attack since the beginning. At first it was simply annoyance. Cutting fences. Theft of company property. But the attacks have escalated in extent and sophistication over the months. Sabotaging a transport barge filled with ore. Land mines on the road. Assaults on supply convoys. I have, of course, approached MONUSCO command.”

  Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en République démocratique du Congo, an unwieldy moniker commonly reduced to MONUSCO, was the United Nations stabilization mission. “They just mutter that their rules of engagement permit only defensive resistance against attacks on civilian populations. So what are we if not civilian?”

  Howard Marshall made no effort to answer that particular question. “What I’d like to know is why I’m hearing these details for the first time. And why would the rebels be going after the molybdenite mine? It isn’t as though molybdenum were your typical conflict mineral rebel militias can easily exploit. Shutting down our operation there simply means no profits for anyone.”

  If Trevor Mulroney was no geologist, he’d profited enough from such minerals to know exactly what Marshall meant. The so-termed “conflict minerals”—diamonds, gold, and more recently, coltan, a black, tar-like mineral essential to the production of cell phones, computer chips, and other microelectronic technology—all had the advantage of being extractable from their surrounding terrain with minimal technology, their high value making them profitable for smuggling even in small quantities and on foot.

  Molybdenum, by contrast, was a processed mineral requiring heavy machinery, electricity, lots of water, and a large workforce to separate it from its parent rock. A metallic, silver-white element, its usefulness came from its high melting point, almost twice the melting point of steel. Which made it in high demand for steel alloys but neither uncommon nor outrageously expensive.

  Not a line of questioning Trevor Mulroney wanted to pursue. Nor that the situation was somewhat worse than he’d just painted it.

  “Who knows why they’re doing it. Maybe the rebels have no interest in molybdenite at all, just in destabilizing the zone. What matters is that everything’s under control. Which is why I hadn’t bothered you or the board about it. In fact, I’m flying in as we speak with a team of our old Ares Solutions pals to handle restoration of security personally. Unfortunately, it looks like Wamba’s decided to throw his own monkey wrench into the gears. And that’s why I called you.”

  The Earth Resources CEO briefly summarized the morning’s events. “I need my cargo plane ASAP. Your government’s got more muscle here than mine. I was hoping you might call in some local markers to lean on Wamba. More than that, I’d appreciate it if you could unleash any eyes, ears, and noses you’ve got available locally to dig into what Wamba’s up to these days. Find out if he’s been playing footsie with any other multinationals. Maybe looking to sell us out on the molybdenum concession.”

  The request tacitly acknowledged Mulroney’s awareness that the other man still maintained active fingers on the pulse of his nation’s intelligence services. Fingers that could prove the salvation of Trevor Mulroney’s shaky fortunes—or his complete undoing.

  Agreement reached, the Earth Resources CEO disconnected his Bluetooth. Best-case scenario, Wamba was just flexing his sizable muscles and would listen to reason before it proved necessary to order that C-130 back to Nairobi.

  And worst-case scenario?

  Returning the satphone to a pocket of his Kevlar vest, Trevor Mulroney shifted his gaze to the winged shadow flitting over the jungle canopy below. He didn’t even want to think about the worst-case scenario. But it had to be considered. Someone somewhere had figured out the real reason Trevor Mulroney was back in Africa, personally commanding one last combat mission.

  Or thought they had.

  If he could not save, he could at least exact revenge.

  The watcher inched forward on a branch no thicker than his own torso. Which left the rainforest floor terrifyingly far below. Sunshine dappling through the thick green foliage indicated a clearing ahead. He slid farther until the branch, now swaying slightly under his weight, thinned to the circumference of his thigh. Here he could see into the clearing.

  Yes, they were coming—much later than expected, but heading directly toward him. The watcher inched no farther. The movement of a tree bough out of sync with its neighbors would draw even careless eyes.

  And his enemies were not careless. The perimeter guard they’d set to herd their charges was too tight for any to slip away. The advance sentries had learned to be cautious, scanning the ground for trip wires and booby traps, slipping warily forward, vigilant for ambush.

  But they did not look up.

  At least not far enough. Proof that for all their fighting skills, these invaders were not rainforest natives. Even if their eyes had pierced the foliage above them, they would not have spotted the long, black shape of a man stretched prone. Instead dried smears of gray-yellow mud and red-brown clay created an illusion of mottled shadows. Hues deliberately selected to disappea
r against the tree bark. Tufts of grasses, leaves, and moss fastened to appendages with vines broke up any human silhouette. Just so had the village men in his childhood hunted the giant forest hog and the more dangerous but beautifully skinned Ituri leopard.

  Below, the laborers had begun their work. Felling a giant hardwood in itself could take a day or more. But today’s objective, a fine mahogany, had been cut down yesterday, the reason he’d chosen this vantage point. Workers were now sawing branches to manageable portions while others loaded wood onto a pair of carts.

  The watcher allowed relief to whistle softly out between his teeth when he spotted among the work party the person he’d hoped to see. Would the laborer in turn recognize slashes into tree bark that had not been there when work broke off the night before? Slashes that might have been left randomly by saw and axe if one did not know the markings hunters of his village used to signal each other in the rainforest.

  Wielding an axe to chop away leaves and twigs, the laborer worked his way gradually up the huge trunk toward the fallen tree’s verdant crown. Two final slashes forming a rough V where a massive upper branch forked might also have been happenstance. Certainly a nearby guard displayed no interest when the laborer disappeared into the tangled vegetation. It was not long before the laborer emerged. A few intermittent axe strikes while hacking at twigs demolished that subtle downward arrow.

  So he’d understood the message. Had he found the package?

  The watcher settled again to wait. The laborer was now drifting over toward a cart. Abandoning his axe, he helped wrestle a stubborn log onto the load, then took his place with a dozen others pushing at poles that thrust out from either side. Was that a glimpse of palm-leaf wrapping thrust among the raw wood as the heavy cart began trundling across the clearing?

  In any case, success or failure was now out of the watcher’s hands. The cart reached an open gate. Sentries keeping watch along a perimeter fence did not pause in their bored pacing to glance toward the toiling laborers pushing their load of wood.

  Then the cart was inside the gate. He’d done it. He’d penetrated his enemy’s defenses.

  But just as an inaudible sigh of satisfaction left his lungs, he saw one of the laborers lose his footing. The stumble threw off the plodding gait of his neighbors. Feet entangled, two went down, then another. The cart wobbled, then tipped, spilling the load of wood. The watcher tensed as guards rushed forward.

  They did not approach the load, their distant shouts and gestures of their automatic weapons clearly ordering the laborers to repair their carelessness. One by one, the sawed chunks were wrestled back onto the cart. Whether his own contribution to that cargo remained undiscovered, the watcher could not tell, nor could he even distinguish from this distance the laborer who’d recovered the small package. But there was no swarm of unusual activity from the guards to indicate anything amiss.

  Then once again the cart trundled forward. The guards returned to their sentry posts. The watcher let himself relax fractionally.

  Now all he could do was once again wait.

  Dare he pray?

  Robin had tried to follow her companions’ example and catch up on some of the last twenty-four hours’ missed slumber. But her racing mind would not shut down. Directly across the aisle, Carl Jensen already had his laptop powered up again, the screen showing some sort of schematic drawing, his fingers racing across the keyboard. Grabbing her knapsack, Robin dug out the iPad that had only recently replaced a laptop for her international travels, its military-grade protective sheath purportedly adequate against disasters ranging from dust and raging floodwaters to a four-story drop, while its smaller bulk was infinitely more convenient for tucking into hand luggage.

  This trip had been so sudden, there hadn’t been time for Robin’s usual thorough research of her destination. But she’d utilized airport Internet during an Amsterdam layover to download an array of web files. For her own reasons, Robin kept a Google alert set for Africa’s regional news. But of the continent’s fifty-plus sovereign nations, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was not among those she’d visited before, nor had she paid much attention till now to its backstory.

  Robin returned to the detailed history she’d started reading on an earlier flight. The DRC’s time line differed little from much of sub-Saharan Africa. Warring tribes. The arrival of white colonialists. Armed insurgency. Independence. Black dictators replacing white colonial masters. Back to armed insurgency and warring tribes. An occasional glimmer of budding democracy and cessation of hostilities.

  If the DRC offered any difference, it was only a matter of extremes—and the bizarre historical footnote of its original colonial master, King Leopold of Belgium, who’d claimed the Congo back in the 1880s not in the name of his country, but as his own personal bank account, the largest chunk of personally owned planetary real estate in human history. His business model of forced labor and community quotas was implemented by a mercenary army, the infamous Force Publique, whose disciplinary measures included the chicotte, a metal-studded whip, along with hostage taking, chopping off hands, and execution for obdurate workers.

  Africa’s “heart of darkness” was how classic novelist Joseph Conrad had dubbed the Congo in his fictionalized memoir chronicling Leopold’s reign of horror. Whether the title referenced the black savages he’d met in its jungles or the white savages raping its resources was never quite clear. But the country’s course hadn’t truly changed even with later independence, which brought only three decades of rule under dictator Joseph-Desiré Mobutu, who matched Leopold’s excess and avarice. And the rebel militias who finally overthrew Mobutu in 1996 seemed to have lifted their playbook directly from Leopold’s Force Publique, raping, pillaging, cutting off hands, using hostage slave labor to mine conflict minerals. Even in the present day, the Congo seemed a microcosm of just what a dark, cruel place humanity had managed to make of the beautiful planet they’d been handed, each excessive atrocity giving emphasis to just how evil evil could be.

  Even its victims seemed more passive and long-suffering in their patient endurance. Why did they not just curl up and refuse to survive such adverse conditions? Or rebel as one voice and raised clenched fist against such injustices as were daily visited upon them? Instead the Congolese population continued limping through one day after another with astonishing resilience until a bullet or machete or one of war’s other killers, hunger or sickness, finally offered respite.

  Not that Robin had any particular interest in finding answers to such questions. She was no humanitarian like Michael, but a hired professional here to earn the fair market price she’d contracted for her services. One month, they’d told her. Thirty days. Thirty thousand dollars. A thousand dollars a day might seem a lot to those who’d never worked in a conflict zone. Broken down to 24-7 constant duty, it didn’t add up to such an excessive hourly rate. But it was enough to make a difference between life and death.

  If only a month didn’t prove too long.

  This family will not lose another Chris R. Duncan. I won’t let it happen.

  The words on Robin’s iPad screen suddenly blurred. Slipping it back into her knapsack, she closed her eyes. But Robin could no longer shut out the unwelcome flood of memories that had been battering against her carefully erected emotional defenses since she’d glimpsed on Trevor Mulroney’s clipboard that red-gold crew cut and masculine version of her own features under a Marine dress uniform cap.

  If Michael Stewart’s heritage could claim three generations of medical mission service in the Congo, just so Robin’s own family tree was synonymous with the United States Marine Corps. At least in the Duncan telling of history. While the halls of Montezuma might be hazy of proof, there’d definitely been a Christopher Robert Duncan on the shores of Tripoli. Certainly one had fought in the American Civil War. On the side of the Union, of course, since no Duncan ever fought a losing battle.

  In each generation, there’d been a firstborn son to carry forward the name of Christophe
r Robert Duncan, all of them bred for command. Though Robin’s own father had never advanced beyond a colonel’s rank. And his eldest child was the only firstborn female documented in family annals.

  Therefore, of course, not eligible for the name every Duncan firstborn had inherited for generations.

  To give Colonel Duncan credit, he’d shown no ill will to Robin’s older sister for her missing Y chromosome. Kelli was all a proper Duncan daughter should be—pretty, beguiling, the Duncan red-gold hair and pale features on her imbued somehow with a femininity Robin lacked. Her interests were what Duncan males expected of their female family members: domestic affairs, parties, makeup, hair, clothes, and finding a good-looking, well-situated husband.

  Preferably a Marine.

  To give her father credit again, something Robin was loath to do, Colonel Christopher Robert Duncan hadn’t been so harsh while his wife was still alive. Christina O’Boyle had grown up in Kenya, only child of American missionaries who’d taught at the Christian university in Nairobi. She was back in the US for college when her parents lost their lives in a plane crash. Robin could forgive much when she remembered how her mother’s face had softened every time she told the story of the handsome Marine captain who’d invited her to dance at the Marine Corps Birthday Ball. How he’d proposed on their third date. Robin could understand why. Her mother was as pretty, charming, and feminine as her firstborn daughter.

  Christina’s second pregnancy three years later had been difficult. Enough that the Navy obstetrician who oversaw her delivery warned the couple they were unlikely to conceive another child. Which was why Christina had insisted on giving a version of the Duncan family name to their second daughter: Christina Robin Duncan.

  But the obstetrician proved mistaken. The delivery of a son just eleven months later almost cost Christina O’Boyle Duncan her life. This time the Navy doctors insisted on making sure there’d be no further baby Duncans. Her husband made no objection now that he had his own Christopher Robert Duncan.