Skeleton Coast Read online

  At sixty-four Max Hanley was the second oldest member of the crew, and was only just showing the signs of age. His hair had retreated to a ginger fringe around his skull and his belt line had thickened a bit. But he could more than handle himself in a fight and had been at Cabrillo’s side since the day Juan had started the Corporation, the company that owned and operated the tramp freighter. Theirs was an easy friendship of mutual respect borne of countless dangers faced and bested.

  Hanley hoisted an attaché case from the pitted deck. “You know what they say—‘diamonds are a mercenary’s best friend.’ ”

  “I’ve never heard them say that,” Linc said.

  “Well, they do.”

  The deal had been a month in the making, through countless cutouts and several clandestine meetings. It was pretty straightforward. In exchange for a quarter pound of rough diamonds, the Corporation was giving Samuel Makambo’s Congolese Army of Revolution five hundred AK-47 assault rifles, two hundred rocket-propelled grenades, fifty RPG launchers, and fifty thousand rounds of Warsaw Pact 7.62 mm ammunition. Makambo hadn’t asked where the crew of a tramp freighter got their hands on so much military hardware, and Cabrillo didn’t want to know how the rebel leader obtained so many diamonds. Though coming from this part of the world, he was sure they were blood diamonds, mined by slaves in order to finance the revolution.

  Able to recruit boys as young as thirteen for his army, Makambo needed weapons more than soldiers, so this shipment of arms would ensure that his attempt to overthrow the shaky government now stood a pretty good chance.

  A crewman lowered the gangplank down to the dock and Linc led Cabrillo and Hanley onto the quay. The lone rebel officer detached himself from his Praetorian guards and approached Franklin Lincoln. He snapped Linc a crisp military salute, which Linc returned with a casual touch to the bill of his fisherman’s cap.

  “Captain Lincoln, I am Colonel Raif Abala of the Congolese Army of Revolution.” Abala spoke English with a mixture of French and native accents. His voice was flat, without any trace of inflection or humanity. He didn’t remove his sunglasses and continued to tap the riding crop against the seam of his camouflage pants.

  “Colonel,” Linc said, holding up his arms while a pock-faced aide de camp frisked him for weapons.

  “Our supreme leader, General Samuel Makambo, sends his regards and regrets that he could not meet you in person.”

  Makambo had been waging his year-long insurrection from a secret base somewhere deep in the jungle. He hadn’t been seen since taking up arms, and had managed to foil all government attempts to infiltrate his headquarters, murdering ten handpicked soldiers who’d tried to join the CAR with orders to assassinate him. Like bin Laden or Abimael Guzman, the former leader of Peru’s Shining Path, Makambo’s air of invincibility only added to his appeal, even with the blood of thousands blamed on his coup attempt.

  “You have brought the weapons.” It was more statement than question.

  “And you will see them as soon as my associate here inspects the stones.” Lincoln made a casual wave toward Max.

  “As we agreed,” Abala said. “Come.”

  A table had been set up on the dock with a light powered by a portable generator. Abala threw a leg over one of the chairs and sat, setting his whip on the tabletop. In front of him was a brown burlap bag with the name of a feed company inked in French on its side. Max sat opposite the African rebel and busied himself with the contents of his case. He took out an electronic scale, some weights to calibrate it, and a bunch of plastic graduated cylinders with a clear liquid inside. He also had notebooks, pencils, and a small calculator. Guards stood behind Abala and more were behind Max Hanley. Another pair stood close enough to Cabrillo and Linc to cut them down at the slightest indication from the rebel colonel. The prospect of violence hung low over the group and the humid night air was charged with nervous tension.

  Abala rested one hand on the bag. He looked up at Linc. “Captain, I think now would be the time to show some good faith. I would like to see the container carrying my weapons.”

  “That wasn’t part of the deal,” Linc said, letting just a hint of concern into his voice. Abala’s aide snickered.

  “Like I said,” Abala continued, his tone full of menace, “it is a show of faith. A goodwill gesture on your part.” He took his hand off the bag and raised a finger. Twenty more soldiers emerged from the darkness. Abala waved them off again and just as quickly as they’d appeared they had vanished back into the gloom. “They could kill your crew and simply take the guns. That is a show of my goodwill.”

  Without a choice, Linc turned to face the ship. A crewman stood at the railing. Linc twirled his hand over his head. The deckhand waved, and a moment later a small diesel engine bellowed to life. The center of the three derricks on the big freighter’s bow section creaked to life, heavy cables sliding through rusty pullies as a great weight was lifted from a cargo hold. It was a standard forty-foot shipping container, as innocuous as any of the hundreds of thousands used every day in maritime commerce. The crane lifted it clear of the hatch and swung it to the railing, where it was lowered to the deck. Two more crewmen opened the doors and stepped inside the container. With a shout they called to the hoistman, and the container was lifted once again, rising up over the railing as the box was moved over the side of the ship. It was lowered to within eight feet of the dock but came no lower.

  The men in the box used flashlights to illuminate the container’s contents. Racks of AK-47s lined the walls, oily black in the dim light. The beams also revealed dark green crates. One was opened, and a crewman slung an empty RPG tube to his shoulder, showing off the weapon like a model at a trade show. A couple of the youngest rebel soldiers cheered. Even Raif Abala couldn’t keep his mouth from twitching upward at the corners.

  “That’s the extent of my good faith,” Lincoln said after the two crewmen had leapt to the ground and returned to the ship.

  Without a word Abala spilled the contents of the bag across the table. Cut and polished, diamonds are the greatest natural refractor in the world, able to split white light into a rainbow spectrum with such dazzle and flash that the stones have been coveted since time immemorial. But in their raw state there is little to distinguish the gems. The pile of stones showed no sparkle. They sat dully on the table, misshapen lumps of crystal, most fashioned like a pair of four-sided pyramids fused at the base, while others were just random pebbles with no discernible shape at all. They ranged in hue from pure white to the dingiest yellow; and while some appeared clear, many were cleaved and fractured. But Max and Juan noticed instantly that none was smaller than a carat. Their value in the diamond districts of New York, Tel Aviv, or Amsterdam was far beyond that of the contents of the container, but such was the nature of commerce. Abala could always get more diamonds. It was the weapons that were hard to procure.

  Max instinctively grabbed the largest stone, a crystal of at least ten carats. Cut and polished to a four- or five-carat stone, it would fetch about forty thousand dollars depending on its color grade and clarity. He studied it through a jeweler’s loupe, twisting it against the light, his mouth pursed in a sour expression. He set it aside without comment and peered at another stone, and then another. He tsked a couple of times as if disappointed by what he was seeing, then pulled a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket. When he had them perched on his nose, he shot Abala a disappointed look over them and opened one of his notebooks, scratching in a couple of lines with a mechanical pencil.

  “What are you writing?” Abala said, suddenly unsure of himself in Max’s learned presence.

  “That these stones make better gravel than gems.” Max said, making his voice shrill and adding an atrocious Dutch accent. Abala almost leapt to his feet at the insult, but Max waved him down. “But on preliminary review I judge them satisfactory for our transaction.”

  He pulled a flat piece of topaz from his pants pocket, its surfaces deeply scratched. “As you know,” he said in a
lecturing tone, “diamond is the hardest substance on earth. Ten on the Mohs’ scale, to be exact. Quartz, which is number seven, is often used to fool the uninitiated into thinking they are getting the deal of a lifetime.”

  From the same pocket he plucked an octagonal shaft of crystal. Bearing down with considerable force he raked the quartz across the flat chunk of topaz. The edge slid off without making a mark. “As you can see, topaz is harder than quartz and hence can’t be scratched. It is eight on the Mohs’ scale, in fact.” He then took one of the smaller diamonds and ran it across the topaz. With a spine-shivering squeal the edge of the gem dug a deep scratch into the blue semiprecious stone. “So what we have here is a stone harder than eight on the Mohs’ scale.”

  “Diamond,” Abala said smugly.

  Max sighed as if a recalcitrant student had made a gaff. He was enjoying playing at gemologist. “Or corundum, which is nine on the Mohs’ scale. The only way to be certain this is a diamond is to test its specific gravity.”

  Although Abala had dealt with diamonds many times before he knew little of their properties other than their value. Without realizing it, Hanley had piqued his interest and lowered his guard. “What is specific gravity?” he asked.

  “The ratio of a stone’s weight verses the volume of water it displaces. For diamond it is exactly three point five two.” Max fiddled with his scale for a moment, calibrating it with a set of brass weights carried in a velvet-lined case. Once the scale had been zeroed he set the largest stone on the pan. “Point two two five grams. Eleven and a half carats.” He opened one of the plastic graduated cylinders and dropped the stone inside, noting how much water the gem displaced in his notebook. He then tapped the numbers into the calculator. When he saw the resulting number he glared at Raif Abala.

  Abala’s eyes went wide with indignant anger. His troopers tightened their cordon. A gun was pressed against Juan’s back.

  Unperturbed by the sudden show of aggression, Max let his expression go neutral and then allowed a smile to creep across his face. “Three point five two. This, gentlemen, is a real diamond.”

  Colonel Abala slowly lowered himself into his seat and fingers that had been ounces away from squeezing triggers were relaxed. Juan could have killed Hanley for playing his role a little too well.

  Max tested eight more random stones and each time the results were the same.

  “I have held up my end of the bargain,” Abala said. “A quarter pound of diamonds for the weapons.”

  While Hanley tested more stones, Linc led Abala to the open container, signaling to a crewman on the freighter to lower it to the quay. The wooden piers holding up the jetty creaked under the weight. Five rebel soldiers went with them. By the glare of a flashlight, Abala and his men grabbed ten AK-47s from different racks and about a hundred rounds of ammunition, using a machete to cut open the wax-coated paper blocks of bullets.

  Making sure he stood close by Abala in case the troops tried something, Linc watched as the men laboriously loaded the shiny brass cartridges into the AK’s distinctive banana magazines. Juan, who was wearing a lightweight flak jacket under his bulky sweatshirt, stuck to Max for the very same reason. Each assault rifle was fired ten times, two three-round bursts and four single shots aimed carefully at a target stapled to the side of the disused warehouse. The gunfire echoed across the broad reach of the river and sent dozens of birds winging into the night. A soldier ran to the warehouse to inspect the damage, shouting an encouragement. Abala grunted at Linc, “Good. Very good.”

  Back at the table Hanley carried on his inspection, setting the empty sack on the scale and noting its weight in his notebook. Then, under the watchful eye of one of Abala’s officers, he used a long-handled spoon to coax the rough stones back into the bag. Once he had them all, he weighed the bag again. On the calculator he subtracted the bag’s weight from the total. He looked over his shoulder at Cabrillo and whispered, “We are eight carats short.”

  Depending on the stones, those eight carats could translate into tens of thousands of dollars. Juan shrugged. “I’ll just be happy to get out of here alive. Let it go.” Cabrillo called over to Linc, who was going over one of the RPGs with Abala and a rebel who had the professional look of a sergeant, “Captain Lincoln, the port authorities won’t hold our berth in Boma. We should get going.”

  Linc turned to him. “Of course, Mr. Cabrillo. Thank you.” He looked back to Abala. “I wish I had more weapons to offer you, Colonel, but coming across this shipment was a surprise to me and my crew.”

  “If you, ah, ever get such a surprise again, you know how to contact us.”

  They had reached the table. Linc asked Max, “Everything all set?”

  “Yes, Captain, everything’s in order.”

  Abala’s smile took on an even oilier sheen. He’d intentionally shorted them on the deal, knowing that his overwhelming number of armed men would intimidate them into accepting fewer stones than agreed. The missing diamonds were in his uniform blouse pocket and would go a long way in fattening his Swiss bank account.

  “Let’s go then, gentlemen.” Linc took the bag of diamonds from Max and strode toward the gangplank, Cabrillo and Hanley hurrying to match his long strides. The moment before they reached the gangway Abala’s men swung into action. The two closest to the ramp stepped forward to block it while dozens of rebels rushed out of the jungle firing into the air and screaming like banshees. At least a dozen men swarmed the container, trying to unhook the cargo derrick.

  The effect would have been overwhelming had the Corporation team not expected a double-cross.

  A second before Abala shouted his order to attack, Cabrillo and Linc had started running. They were on the two rebels at the base of the gangplank before either had time to bring their weapons to bear. Linc bodily tossed one young soldier into the space between the freighter and the quay as Juan jammed his fingers into the other’s throat just hard enough to make him retch. As the rebel coughed, Juan ripped the AK-47 out of his hands and sank the butt into the soldier’s stomach. He fell into a fetal ball.

  Cabrillo swung around and laid down a wall of cover fire as Max and Linc mounted the gangway. Juan stepped onto the sloping ramp and pressed a button under the railing. The five feet of the gangway’s leading edge snapped sharply upward. With its solid sides, and now with the tip elevated ninety degrees, the three men were shielded by the withering return fire from Abala’s men. Bullets whizzed over their heads, smacking into the side of the freighter and ricocheting off the metal skin of the gangway as the trio huddled safely in their armored cocoon.

  “Like we wouldn’t see this coming,” Max said casually over the riotous din.

  An operator inside the ship worked the controls of the gangplank and it lifted off the dock, allowing the men to dash into the ship’s superstructure. All pretenses aside, Juan took immediate control. He slapped the button on a wall-mounted intercom. “Sit rep, Mr. Murphy.”

  Deep inside the freighter, Mark Murphy, chief weapons operator, was watching a monitor showing video from a camera mounted on one of the ship’s five cranes.

  “With the gangway up, only a couple of guys are still firing. I think Abala is trying to organize an assault. He’s rallied about a hundred of them and is giving them their orders.”

  “What about the container?”

  “The men almost have the lines off it. Hold it. Yeah, they got it. We’re free of it.”

  “Tell Mr. Stone to prepare to get us out of here.”

  “Ah, Chairman?” Murphy said hesitantly. “We’re still tied to the dock bollards.”

  Cabrillo fingered a trickle of blood from where a fleck of paint kicked free by a bullet had nicked his ear. “Tear ’em out. I’m on my way.”

  While their ship looked right at home up against the disintegrating dock, she hid a secret of which only a few outside the crew was aware. Her rust-streaked hull with its mismatched paint, dilapidated derricks, stained deck, and generally grimy appearance was nothing but stage dressing
to disguise the vessel’s true capabilities. She was a privately funded spy ship owned by the Corporation and headed by Juan Cabrillo. The Oregon was his brainchild and his one true love.

  Under her scabrous hide she bristled with some of the most advanced weapon systems on the planet—cruise missiles and torpedoes bought from a crooked Russian admiral, 30 mm Gatling guns, and a 120 mm cannon that employed the same targeting technology as an M1A2 Abrams tank, as well as servo-controlled .30-caliber machine guns to fend off boarders. All the weapons were mounted behind deck plates along the hull or disguised as junk littering her deck. The remotely operated .30 calibers were hidden in rusted barrels placed strategically along the ship’s rail. On command the lids lifted off and the weapons emerged, aided by low-light and infrared cameras.

  Several decks below the ship’s bridge, where Cabrillo and Lincoln had stood when the Oregon docked, was the operations center, the brain of the vessel. From there, her crew of retired U.S. military and CIA operatives ran the entire ship, from her engines and dynamic positioning system to all her weapons. They also possessed a suite of radar and sonar gear that was among the best a considerable amount of money could buy.

  It was from the op center that the Oregon’s preeminent helmsman, Eric Stone, had actually docked the vessel, using athwartship bow and stern thrusters and input from the global positioning system, all linked to a supercomputer that gauged wind speed, currents, and a dozen other factors. It was this computer that employed the exact amount of reverse thrust required to keep the Oregon in position against the flow of the Congo River.

  Cabrillo and Max stepped into a utility closet that reeked of turpentine while Linc headed off to meet with Eddie Seng and the rest of the shore operations specialists in case they were needed to keep the rebels from gaining the deck. Juan spun the handles for the slop sink like the dials of a safe and the closet’s back wall opened to reveal a hallway beyond.

  Unlike the cheap linoleum and peeling paint of the bridge and other sections of the superstructure, this secret interior passage was well lit, with rich mahogany paneling and plush carpets. An original Winslow painting of a whaling ship hung from a wall and a glass-encased sixteenth-century suit of armor complete with sword and mace stood at the end of the hallway.