Clive Cussler: Skeleton Coast

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.