Skeleton Coast

  The chute continued to slow, forcing him to lean back so far that his body was bent double and his butt was almost touching the ground. Just when it felt the wind would abandon him altogether and force him to slog the rest of the way up the hill a gust snatched the chute and lifted Cabrillo off his feet and over the dune’s summit.

  To his horror, he saw four trucks arranged at the base of the dune so that their headlights shone on a fifth that had its long hood opened. Men were clustered around the disabled vehicle with two of them standing on the bumper and leaning into the engine compartment. Several of them cradled assault rifles. Juan had wanted to approach the vehicles carefully and determine who they were and what they were doing this far out in the desert, before making contact.

  The gust that had mercifully carried him over the crest of the hill was going to drop him right in the middle of their laager. He hastily dumped the air from his chute and fell back to earth in the vain hope he could scramble back over the dune before he was spotted. He landed in the soft sand and immediately pitched forward, cartwheeling down the face of the hill in a tangle of nylon and riser lines.

  He hit the base of the dune with the parachute wrapped around his body as tightly as a mummy’s bindings, his mouth and nostrils full of sand. Cabrillo spat and blew to clear his airways but no matter how he struggled he couldn’t free either arm to cut away the nylon. He watched helplessly as four of the men ran from their camp, their AK-47s held low and at the ready.

  “Hiya, boys,” Juan called cheerfully when they were within earshot. “Any chance you could lend me a hand here?”

  AFTER being stripped of their weapons, radios, and gear, Eddie, Mike, and Ski were dumped into adjoining cells in the block the Zimbabwean soldiers were using to guard Moses Ndebele. Geoffrey Merrick had been taken by a group of civilians who matched what Eddie thought a bunch of environmentalist fanatics would look like. You couldn’t discern their gender by judging hair length alone. The stench of patchouli oil barely masked the odor of marijuana that permeated their clothes.

  Eddie massaged his jaw where Susan Donleavy had sucker punched him after her friends had woken her. A guard who’d seen the blow walked by his cage at that moment, saw what he was doing, and smirked.

  Eddie estimated there were about a hundred armed men in the prison, and now that the adrenaline had been flushed from his body and he’d had time to think through his situation he understood why there were so many. Moses Ndebele was seen by many as a potential savior of his country—the ruling regime would do anything to silence him. If they held him in a prison in Zimbabwe, it would become a rallying point for his followers. But out here nobody knew where to find him. They could hold him indefinitely.

  He wondered about Merrick and Ndebele being here at the same time and assumed there was a connection but couldn’t see what it was. Daniel Singer must have made some sort of deal with the government of Zimbabwe to use the old prison or vice versa.

  A couple of hours had passed since they’d been discovered. Because Linc hadn’t been brought to the cell block, that meant the former SEAL must have gotten away on one of the bikes. Eddie was relieved. The officer in charge of the garrison had announced that the Corporation team would be executed at dawn. There was no sense in Linc sacrificing himself needlessly if he had a chance to escape.

  But with the chairman stuck out in the desert, Lincoln on his own except for Tiny Gunderson and Doc Huxley, and the Oregon more than two hundred miles away, Eddie conceded the chance of rescue was slim. They would need a fleet of helicopters to pull off an aerial assault and the only vehicle currently aboard ship was Linc’s Harley, so crossing the desert was out.

  Eddie had gone into the CIA immediately after college and spent the majority of the next fifteen years flying into and out of China, cultivating a network of informants who in turn allowed the United States to maintain its uneasy relationship with the mainland. He’d been inserted via a submarine onto Hainan in the spring of 2001 when the Chinese were holding the crew of an EP-3 spy plane and passed on information that kept the crisis from becoming a war. He’d maneuvered around China’s secret police, one of the most efficient in the world, with near impunity because he was so good at what he did. The irony of being caught by a third-rate dictator’s Praetorian guards wasn’t lost on him.

  Despite the odds, Eddie still had faith that Juan Cabrillo would find a way to save them. Though the two served in the CIA at the same time, they hadn’t met until after leaving government service. That didn’t mean Eddie hadn’t heard of Cabrillo. Juan had singlehandedly pulled off some of the most difficult assignments in the agency’s history. And because he was fluent in Spanish, Arabic, and Russian, his missions had been in some of the toughest countries on earth. He was a bit of a legend at Langley. His reputation, along with his white-blond hair, had earned him the nickname Mr. Phelps, the lead character from the old Mission: Impossible television show. Whether tracking drug smugglers from Colombia into Panama or infiltrating a terrorist group in Syria planning to blow up the Israeli Knesset with a hijacked airliner, Cabrillo had done it all.

  So if anyone was able to spring them from this hellhole with only a couple of hours to go before dawn and limited resources, Eddie was sure Juan was the man.

  A flashlight beam stabbed out of the darkness and blinded Cabrillo. Behind the glare he distinctly heard the sound of rifle bolts being cocked back. He held still. The next few seconds would determine if he lived or died. One of the men moved closer, covering Juan with a massive revolver, an old Webley if he wasn’t mistaken. The man was older than Juan, pushing fifty, with white shooting through the tight curls on his head and wrinkles lining his forehead.

  “Who are you?” he asked suspiciously.

  “My name is Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo.” Judging by the man’s age, the fact they were all armed, and that they were headed in the general direction of the Devil’s Oasis, Juan gambled his life by saying, “I want to help you rescue Moses Ndebele.”

  The man’s fist tightened around the antique pistol, his dark eyes unreadable in the shifting light.

  Juan plunged on, praying he was right about the identity of this group. “Three of my men are at the prison now, trying to rescue an American businessman, when they were captured by troops guarding Ndebele. One of my guys managed to escape and is waiting with an aircraft about forty miles from the prison. If I’m going to save my people I am willing to help you save your leader.”

  The gun remained rock steady. “How did you find us?”

  “My main parachute fouled and when I was drifting down on the reserve here I saw your headlights. I jury rigged a para-ski and have been following you.”

  “Your story is just strange enough to be true.” The man lowered his pistol and said something in a native dialect. Another of the Africans stepped forward and withdrew a knife from his pocket.

  “Just so you know, I have a Glock automatic in a holster and an MP-5 machine pistol strapped around my back.”

  The man with the knife glanced at the group leader. He nodded and the second African cut a slit into the nylon, allowing Juan to take his first deep breath since tumbling down the dune. He stood slowly, keeping his arm well away from the holstered Glock.

  “Thank you,” he said and extended his hand. “Please call me Juan.”

  “Mafana,” the headman said, and clasped Cabrillo’s thumb in a traditional greeting. “What do you know of our baba, our father, Moses Ndebele?”

  “I know that he is to be tried and executed very soon and if that happens any chance of you overthrowing your government is gone.”

  “He is the first leader to unite both major tribes in Zimbabwe, the Matabele and the Mashona,” Mafana said. “During our war of independence he held the rank of general before the age of thirty. But after the war the ruling elite saw his popularity as a threat to their power. He has been imprisoned and tortured often. They have had him in custody this time for two years and will kill him if we do not rescue him.”

&nbs
p; “How many men do you have?”

  “Thirty. All of us served with Moses.”

  Juan looked at the men’s faces. None of them were under forty, yet there was a lean hunger in their eyes, a measure of confidence of men who had tasted combat that made the years since irrelevant.

  “Can you fix your vehicle?” he asked, taking a step forward, but forgetting he was still attached to the main chute’s plastic back plate. He promptly fell on his face. A couple of the men chuckled.

  Chagrined, Cabrillo turned around so he was sitting and pulled up his pants leg. The chuckles died on their lips when they saw the gleaming artificial leg. He yanked it off, saying, “Just think of it as the biggest Swiss Army knife in the world.”

  The laughter returned. Mafana helped Juan to stand and gave him an arm to steady him as he hopped across the soft sand toward the temporary camp.

  “To answer your question, yes it can be fixed. Dirt has entered the fuel pump and stopped it from working. We should be ready to go in another few minutes but we have lost a great deal of time.”

  Juan borrowed a hammer and chisel from a blanket strewn with tools laid out next to the disabled truck and got to work freeing his prosthesis from the plastic plate. “How are you going to free Ndebele?”

  “We are going to lay an ambush outside the prison and wait for them to transfer Moses away. They may use trucks, but we suspect it will be an aircraft. Rumor in our capital is that the trial is in two days.”

  Which would be too late to save my guys, Juan thought. He also thought Mafana’s ambush idea would guarantee a bullet to Ndebele’s head the moment they engaged the guards. He had to find a way to get Mafana to attack the Devil’s Oasis before dawn or Eddie, Mike, and Ski were dead men. “What if I had a plan to free Moses tonight and fly him to safety in South Africa?”

  The former guerrilla regarded Cabrillo sagely. “I would like to know more about this plan.”

  “So would I,” Juan muttered to himself, knowing he had just a few moments to come up with something. “First let me ask you: Do you have any rocket-propelled grenades?”

  “Old Russian RPG-7s left over from the war.”

  Juan groaned. Zimbabwe’s revolutionary war had ended twenty-five years ago.

  “Do not worry,” Mafana added quickly. “They’ve been tested.”

  “What about rope? How much rope do you have?”

  Mafana asked one of his men for the answer and translated for Juan. “A great deal, it seems. At least two thousand feet of nylon line.”

  “And one final question,” Juan said, looking back at where his cut-up parachute fluttered in the wind as inspiration hit him like a thunderbolt. “Any of you guys know how to sew?”

  21

  THE constant backdrop of insect noise almost made Daniel Singer miss the ring of his satellite phone. He groped blindly for the instrument amid the damp tangle of his sheets and mosquito netting. He’d slept with it close by, not trusting one of the mercenaries he’d hired not to steal it while he slept. Money could buy only so much loyalty.

  “Hello,” he said thickly.

  “Dan, it’s Nina. There’s been a problem. Someone tried to rescue Merrick.”

  Singer came fully awake. “What? Tell me what happened.”

  “There were four of them. Three of them were captured and a fourth escaped on a motorbike. Susan shot Merrick in the chest. That’s how we knew they were here. The guards watching over Moses Ndebele found parachutes on the roof.”

  “Wait, Susan shot Geoff?”

  “Yes, in the chest. She pretended to be a kidnap victim and when she had the opportunity she grabbed a gun and shot him. We’ve stopped the bleeding and dosed him with some heroin from Jan’s stash. And don’t worry, I confiscated the rest.”

  Drug abuse among his people was the last thing Singer worried about. “Who are they, the men who came for Merrick?”

  “They claim they were hired by the company to save him and Susan. They won’t tell us anything else. The captain of the guards wants to execute them at dawn, Danny.” There was horror in her voice when she delivered this last piece of information. “Everything feels so out of control. I don’t know what to do.”

  “First thing is to calm down, Nina.” Singer took a breath to steady his own nerves and think through how he wanted to handle the situation. Vapor rose from the mangrove swamp outside the open-sided shed where he slept. Nearby, one of the African mercenaries grunted in his sleep while in the distance flare stacks from the numerous oil facilities belched so much flame that it looked as though the whole world was burning. The sight of such environmental devastation sickened him.

  “What do you want me to do?” Nina asked.

  Singer studied the luminous dial of his watch until he could see it was four thirty in the morning. Before falling asleep he’d checked the latest meteorological reports. They showed that the storm building over the mid-Atlantic would likely become the tenth named storm of the year, and all indications pointed to it growing into a monstrous hurricane.

  Using the Devil’s Oasis to lock up his former partner, and messing with his mind a little bit, had only been phase one. They were just biding their time until a big storm came along and Singer implemented the second part of his operation. With Mother Nature being so cooperative, albeit with a little help from the heaters he’d placed off the coast of Namibia back in ’04, he could have Merrick flown here to Cabinda first thing in the morning.

  “I’m going to send the plane to get you tomorrow morning,” he said.

  “Um,” Nina started then fell silent.

  “What is it?”

  “Dan, they are going to execute the three commandos at dawn. We’ve all talked about it and none of us want to be anywhere near here when it happens. The mood is really ugly. The guard commander still thinks there’s a group on their way here to rescue Ndebele and none of the women, myself included, feel comfortable around these men, if you know what I mean.”

  Singer thought for a moment. “Okay, there’s a place about forty miles east of you. The pilot who first took me to the Devil’s Oasis told me about it. I can’t remember its name but you’ll see it on a map. It’s a ghost town now but there’s an airstrip. I’ll call the pilot in Kinshasa and have him take off at first light. Take one of the trucks and wait for him there. He should arrive sometime before noon.”

  “Thanks, Danny. That’ll be perfect.”

  Singer cut the connection. He knew better than to try to fall back asleep. Years of careful planning were coming together. How much easier it would have been if he hadn’t given so much of his fortune away after forcing Merrick to buy him out. He could have simply paid for what he needed outright and negated the necessity of so many difficult steps.

  But as he stood leaning against a pole watching the oil field’s hellish glow he knew that the difficulty of this operation also made its success that much sweeter. There was no substitute for hard work. And maybe that was why he had given away most of his billions. They had come too easily. He and Merrick were barely into their twenties when they patented their coal scrubbers. Sure, there had been a lot of long hours to perfect the system, but nothing like the lifetime needed to understand and appreciate that much wealth and success.

  Because he had had to work so hard to put this operation together he could savor it that much more. The sacrifices, hardship, and privation made his ultimate victory more precious than all the money he’d accumulated in his previous life. And that it was all for the good of mankind made it even better.

  He wondered, and not for the first time, how many lives he would save once the world woke up to the reality of global warming. The number ran into the tens of millions, but sometimes he thought that maybe he was really saving all of humanity and that in the future historians would look back and define this year and this storm as the one that made people see the light and stop the wanton destruction of the planet.

  He wondered what someone would call such a person. The only word that came to mi
nd was messiah. While he didn’t care for the religious overtones, believing all religions to be myths, he admitted it was the best fit.

  “Messiah,” he whispered aloud. “They’ll never know I saved them but I am their messiah.”

  THE convoy, minus one of the vehicles, stopped five miles from the Devil’s Oasis to make final preparations for the attack. They’d circled around the prison so the prevailing winds were at their backs. Cabrillo had spent most of the journey in the lead truck with Mafana honing the plan and coordinating it with Max Hanley and Franklin Lincoln. The batteries on his sat phone were just about dead by the time they all felt they had every angle covered.

  Mafana seemed relieved that Juan was with them. He admitted that during the war he was merely a sergeant and lacked Cabrillo’s mind for tactics. The plan Juan had devised was far more intricate than Mafana’s direct approach, but also had a far greater chance of success.

  Stepping out of the truck, Cabrillo knuckled his lower spine, trying to work out kinks that would challenge a professional masseuse. His eyes were red-rimmed from the dust, and no matter how much water he drank he could feel the grit on his teeth. He promised himself the longest shower of his life when this night was over. The thought of warm water brought on a fresh wave of fatigue. If not for the caffeine pills he’d added to his medical kit some months earlier he would have dropped to the ground and curled up like a dog.

  He sucked in a bunch of quick deep breaths and shook out his arms in an effort to get his blood flowing again and decided on a quick shower and the longest nap of his life instead. While a couple of Mafana’s men unfolded his parachute and laid it on the desert floor, Cabrillo went through his equipment and discarded anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary, including his Glock and holster, a throwing knife, and his canteen and medical kit, plus half his ammunition for the H&K machine pistol. By doing this he was able to carry two additional rockets for the RPG-7 he was borrowing from Mafana.