“Like Muslim fundamentalists?”
“I don’t think he was an Arab jihadi. This is something else.”
“But what?”
Juan didn’t reply because he had no answer. His clothes were still drenched from his earlier swim, so he simply stepped off the back of the hydrofoil and into water that came up to his neck. He was almost to shore when he heard Sloane hit the water behind him. He waited for her at the surf line and together they approached the body. There was no sense checking out the boat since all that remained was melted fiberglass and scorched metal.
The damage done to the corpse by the impact and subsequent roll up the beach was horrifying. Like the vision of a demented artist, his neck and every limb were set at obtuse angles. Cabrillo checked there was no pulse before slipping the Glock into the waistband of his pants. There was nothing in the man’s rear pockets so Juan rolled the corpse, shaken by the boneless way the body moved. The man’s face was severely abraded.
Sloane gasped.
“Sorry,” Juan said. “You might want to stand back.”
“No, it’s not that. I know him. That’s the South African chopper pilot Tony and I hired. His name’s Pieter DeWitt. Damn, how could I be so stupid? He knew we were going to investigate Papa Heinrick’s snakes because I told him. He sent that boat to follow us yesterday and then came here to make sure no one ever questioned the old man again.”
The repercussions of her presence in Namibia hit Sloane fast and hard. She looked like she was about to be ill. “If I hadn’t come here looking for theRove Papa Heinrick would still be alive.” Her eyes were wet when she looked at Juan. “Luka, our guide, I bet they’ve already killed him, too. Oh God, what about Tony?”
Cabrillo knew intuitively that she didn’t want to be hugged nor did she want him to speak. They stood in the night as the ski boat burned and Sloane cried.
“They were totally innocent,” she sobbed, “and now they’re all dead and it’s my fault.”
How many times had Juan felt the same way, taking responsibility for the actions of others just because he was involved? Sloane was no more at fault for Papa Heinrick’s death than the wife who asked her husband to run an errand was responsible if he’s killed en route. But God how that guilt was there, corroding the soul as surely as acid eats away steel.
The tears flowed for five minutes, maybe longer. Juan stood at her side with his head bowed and only looked at her when she sniffled back the last of it.
“Thank you,” she muttered softly.
“For what?”
“Most men hate to see a woman crying and will do or say anything to make it stop.”
He gave her his warmest smile. “I hate it as much as the next guy, but I also knew if you didn’t do it now you’d just do it later and it would be a hell of a lot worse.”
“That’s why I thanked you. You understood.”
“I’ve been there a few times myself. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“But you do know you’re not responsible, right?”
“I know. They would be alive if I hadn’t come but I didn’t kill them.”
“That’s right. You’re just one link in the chain of events that led to their murders. You’re probably right about your guide, but don’t worry about Tony. No one onshore knows that the attack against you failed.
They already think you and Tony are dead. But to be on the safe side we’ll head for Walvis. ThePinguin didn’t look like she had the speed to reach her home port yet. If we hurry we can warn them off.”
Sloane wiped at her face with the sleeve of her Windbreaker. “Do you really think so?”
“Yeah, I do. Come on.”
Thirty seconds after clambering aboard the hydrofoil, Juan had them rocketing down the bay while Sloane changed into dry clothing from the craft’s stores. She took the wheel while Cabrillo changed and broke out some rations.
“Sorry, all I have are MREs,” he said, holding up two brown foil packets. “It’s either spaghetti with meatballs or chicken and biscuits.”
“I’ll take the spaghetti and give you the meatballs. I’m a vegetarian.”
“Really?”
“Why do you look so surprised?”
“I don’t know. I always picture vegetarians wearing Birkenstocks and living on organic farms.”
“Those are vegans. In my opinion they’re extremists.”
Her statement got Juan thinking about fanaticism and what drove people to it. Religion was the first thing that sprang to mind, but what else were people so passionate about they would mold their entire lives around it? The environmental and animal rights movements were the next groups he considered. Activists were willing to break into laboratories to release research animals or burn subdivisions at ski resorts to get their message across. Were some willing to kill for it, too?
He wondered if the polarity of opinion had been so sharpened in the past few years that societal norms of restraint and respect no longer applied. East, West. Muslim, Christian. Socialist, capitalist. Rich, poor.
It seemed every issue could drive a wedge deep enough to cause one side or the other to consider violence.
Of course, it was into this very divide that he sailed theOregon . With the world no longer cowering under the threat of nuclear annihilation from a war between the old Soviet Union and the United States, regional flare-ups had proliferated to the point that conventional means could no longer contain them.
Cabrillo had known this was coming and had formed the Corporation to combat these new threats. It was disheartening to think it, but he knew they would have more work than they could ever handle.
With no ransom demands from Geoffrey Merrick’s kidnappers it appeared more and more likely that his abduction was politically motivated; and given the nature of Merrick’s work, the politics most likely involved were the extreme environmental fringe.
Then he wondered if his kidnapping was somehow connected to whatever Sloane Macintyre had stumbled into. The odds were dead against it despite the coincidental fact that both were connected to Namibia. The Skeleton Coast was far from the world consciousness when it came to the environment.
Brazilian rain forests or polluted waterways, those were what people were familiar with, not a remote strip of desert in a country that many couldn’t find on a map.
Then he thought of another scenario. Diamond mining was one of Namibia’s biggest industries. And considering how tightly controlled the market was, according to Sloane, the likely possibility was that they had stumbled into an illegal mining operation. People were more than willing to risk their lives for the idea of immeasurable wealth. And people committed murders for a lot less. But did that explain Pieter DeWitt’s apparent suicide?
It would if he considered the consequences of being caught worse than a quick death.
“What would happen to a man like DeWitt if he was caught in some sort of illegal diamond mining activity?” Cabrillo asked Sloane.
“It varies from country to country. In Sierra Leone he’d be shot on sight. Here in Namibia it’s a twenty-thousand-dollar fine and five years in prison.” He looked at her askance for knowing the answer so readily. “I’m a security specialist, remember? I have to know the laws pertaining to the diamond trade in a dozen countries. Just like you have to know the Customs laws of the ports you visit.”
“Well, I’m still impressed,” Juan said, then went on, “Five years doesn’t sound too bad, certainly not enough of a sentence for someone to commit suicide rather than doing the time.”
“You don’t know African prisons.”