Devil's Gate (NUMA Files 9)

Pitt smiled. “This is why you make the big bucks, Kurt.”

“I get big bucks?” Kurt said, laughing. “I’d hate to see what you’re paying everybody else.”

“It’s a scandal,” Pitt said. “But it’s a heck of a lot more than the admiral paid me when I started.”

Kurt laughed at the thought. Pitt had told him once that his first month’s pay for NUMA wouldn’t cover a broken arm, even though he’d risked his life half a dozen times in that month. Then again, neither of them did it for the money.

Kurt continued. “Kristi Nordegrun, the woman who survived, said she didn’t know what happened, but the lights flickered and blew out, her head seemed to ring, and she lost her balance and consciousness. She believes it was at least eight hours before she woke up again. She still seems disoriented, she can’t walk without holding on to something.”

“What does that tell us?” Pitt asked.

“I don’t know,” Kurt said. “Maybe some kind of nerve agent or anesthetic gas was used. But it’s just one more thing that screams ‘more than pirates’ to me.”

Pitt took this in. “What do you want to do?”

“Go down there and poke around,” Kurt said, “see what they’re trying to hide from us.”

Pitt glanced over at a map on his wall. An old-fashioned pushpin marked the Argo’s location. “Unless I have you in the wrong spot, there’s three miles of water between you and the seafloor. You got any ROVs on board?”

“No,” Kurt said. “Nothing that can go that deep. But Joe’s got the Barracuda on Santa Maria. He could modify it, and we could be back here in a few days, a week at most.”

Pitt nodded as if he were considering the thought, but Kurt sensed it was more in admiration of his gung ho attitude than in granting permission for the excursion.

“You earned some R and R,” Pitt said. “Go on to the Azores. Contact me once you get there. In the meantime I’ll think about it.”

Kurt knew the tone in Pitt’s voice. He wasn’t a man to close off any possibilities, but he’d probably come up with his own idea long before Kurt called in.

“Will do,” Kurt said.

The screen went blank, Pitt’s face replaced by a NUMA logo.

In his heart, Kurt knew there was more to this incident than the obvious, but how much more was the question.

It could have been the “pirates” simply trying to cover their tracks. Maybe they’d taken cash or other valuables. Maybe they’d killed a few of the crew in the takeover and then decided to hide the incident by shooting the rest and scuttling the ship. But even that scenario left questions.

Why set the ship on fire? The smoke could and did give them away. It would have been easier to flood her and sink her without the explosions.

And what about the pirates themselves? Recent history had pirates all around the world, mostly locals from poor countries who saw the world’s wealth passing them by in great ships and decided to grab a share for themselves. But the few men Kurt had seen on the Kinjara Maru did not look like your typical pirates. More like mercenaries.

He looked over at the folding knife now lying on the table beside him, a unique-looking and lethal piece. He remembered it sticking in the chair. It seemed like a taunt, a calling card and a slap in the face all at the same time.

Kurt thought about the arrogance of the man’s words, and the voice itself. It hadn’t been the voice of some poverty-stricken West African pirate. And stranger still, Kurt had the oddest feeling that he’d heard that voice somewhere before.

8

THE CONTINENT OF AFRICA sits at the oceanic crossroads. But despite this position, it has always been more of a roadblock to trade than a thoroughfare. Its sheer size and inhospitable habitats — from desert sands in the Sahara to the dark impenetrable jungles across its vast central region — made it impossible to cross profitably.

In the past, ships that wished to swap oceans were forced to sail on a ten-thousand-mile journey that took them around South Africa, into some of the most treacherous waters in the world and past a point wistfully named the Cape of Good Hope, though its original name was the more accurate Cabo de Tormentas: Cape of Storms.

The completion of the Suez Canal made the journey unnecessary, but did little to bring Africa into the modern world. Quite the contrary. Now ships had only to cut the corner, slip through the Suez, and they were soon on their way to the Middle East and its oil fields, Asia and its factories, Australia and its mines.

As world commerce boomed, Africa rotted like vegetables left unclaimed on the dock beneath the withering sun.

Inland could be found genocide, starvation, and disease, while along the African coasts lie some of the most lawless places in the world. Somalia is for all intents and purposes a land of anarchy; the Sudan is little better. Less well known but almost as forlorn are the West African countries of the Ivory Coast, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

Liberia’s troubles were well chronicled, as leader after leader fell amid scandal and corruption, and the country lurched toward anarchy and mayhem. The Ivory Coast was much the same.

And for much of its history, Sierra Leone had fared even worse. Not too long ago, the country had been considered a more dangerous place than Afghanistan and had a lower standard of living than Haiti and Ethiopia. In fact, Sierra Leone had once been so weak that a small group of South African mercenaries had all but taken it over.