Fast Ice Read online

  * * *

  —

  Watching Paul from above, Gamay and Räikkönen could see a new problem developing. After a brief exchange among the men, one of them sprinted away, backtracking and vanishing down the next aisle.

  “They’re flanking him,” Gamay said.

  “Hang on,” Räikkönen warned. “I’m moving us into the action. We can swing around and intercept.”

  Räikkönen pushed the cherry picker’s joystick forward while Gamay pulled additional ice cores from the stack beside them, loading them into the basket of the picker.

  The cherry picker began to move, accelerating in a jerky motion. It quickly reached the end of the aisle, at which point Räikkönen pushed the stick to the side.

  Gamay was sure they’d go over. When Räikkönen leaned in the opposite direction, the vehicle somehow remained upright.

  “This thing is not very stable,” Gamay said.

  “Don’t worry,” Räikkönen said. “We do this every day. Too time-consuming to descend back down to the ground, reposition and then raise the platform back up.”

  Räikkönen released the stick and the cherry picker stopped.

  “Is he coming?” Räikkönen asked.

  They were parked at the endcap of the aisle. Gamay leaned out and peeked around the corner. The man who was attempting to outflank Paul was racing down the aisle toward them.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me when.”

  She waited. “Now.”

  Räikkönen pushed the joystick once more and the mobile platform surged into the adjacent aisle just as the fleet-footed pedestrian reached the corner.

  The impact sent him flying. To Gamay, at least, the man seemed to be airborne for several seconds before slamming into the ground and sliding into the next rack of ice cores.

  She hoped he was knocked out, but he rolled to the side, got his bearings and then looked directly up at them.

  “Trouble,” Gamay said.

  Räikkönen moved the joystick back. As the cherry picker reversed course, it bumped into the corner of the storage rack. The platform swayed precariously, stabilizing just as the gunman below found the trigger.

  The soft popping sound of a rifle was cut off by Räikkönen shouting in pain as a spread of shells punched holes in the floor of the platform. Gamay pulled back, lucky to avoid being hit, but Räikkönen crumpled to the floor, two shots having pierced the same leg.

  Gamay went for the ice cores, heaving the tubes over the side one after the other. She tossed them without looking, hoping to make up for it with sheer volume.

  When the shooting ceased for a moment, Gamay reached over and pushed the joystick that controlled the platform.

  The cherry picker surged across the aisle, heading in a diagonal path, until it slammed against the storage rack on the far side.

  More shots came their way.

  “We’ve got to get off this thing,” Gamay said, throwing the last of the frozen missiles toward the shooter. “We’re birds on a wire here.”

  “Up,” Räikkönen said. “Take us up.”

  Gamay pressed the button and the platform rose another six feet before stopping. It was now even with the top of the rack.

  Gamay gave Räikkönen a boost, pushing him up and out. He climbed onto the top of the storage rack and turned around to reach for her.

  As Gamay pulled herself up, another spread of bullets tore into the cherry picker. She leapt for safety, her foot shoving the picker over and toppling it like a tree.

  She crawled forward, glad to be off the unstable machine.

  “We’re safe up here,” Räikkönen said. “No bullet can go through thirty feet of ice. But what about your husband? He’ll be surrounded.”

  * * *

  —

  Paul wasn’t oblivious to the danger of being surrounded, but there was little he could do about it. He kept his eyes on the men down at the end of the aisle, trying to track their movements.

  He ducked for cover as one of them opened fire. His small pyramid of ice took a few hits and then began to crumble.

  Paul fired back and rolled to safety under the nearby stack of shelves. Pressing as far into the space as he could, he felt as if he were about to make his last stand. He gripped the weapon and peeked out into the aisle. To his surprise, the attackers were running away.

  Paul looked around, baffled. He heard no alarms. He saw no police or security teams coming to their rescue. Why their tormentors would suddenly depart in what seemed likely to be a moment of triumph made no sense to him.

  At least until a series of explosions erupted.

  A half-dozen grenades and incendiary charges went off in rapid succession. Flames shot through the stack of shelves that Gamay and Räikkönen had been searching only minutes before. Magnesium and thermite burning at temperatures of several thousand degrees.

  What wasn’t blasted to shreds in the initial series of explosions would melt in the ensuing fire. Worse yet, the detonations had bent the support columns and the heat was weakening and deforming them.

  The multistory rack of ice began to sag. It leaned in Paul’s direction. Dozens and then hundreds of the silver tubes slid free just as the entire unit toppled over.

  The rack fell like classic steel shelves in the stacks of a library, collapsing sideways, slamming against the next storage rack and then sliding halfway down. It wedged itself tight and held ten feet above Paul’s position on the ground.

  Paul crawled out from under the debris and stared in silence at the devastation. He scanned the aisle, peering through the smoke, looking for any sign of their attackers.

  The men were long gone, even the man who’d been knocked unconscious. In fact, the only thing that remained were the shattered remnants of a thousand tubes of ice spread across the floor.

  17

  TAMBO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

  Kurt and Joe were back on solid ground.

  After catching up on sleep while the Providence sailed north, they’d boarded the ship’s Jayhawk once more, this time for a long flight back to Cape Town. From there, they’d taken a commercial jet to Johannesburg, arriving midafternoon to glorious sunshine and eighty-degree temperatures.

  “That’s more like it,” Joe said, stepping through the airport’s exit doors and out to the curb. “Who’s picking us up?”

  “A friend of Rudi’s,” Kurt said. “Her name’s Leandra Ndimi. She’s a NUMA liaison officer.”

  “Great,” Joe said. “Any word from Paul and Gamay?”

  Kurt was in the process of checking his phone. “They report Helsinki to be both freezing and dangerous. They were attacked inside the ice core facility. At least four men with guns. Authorities are checking surveillance footage, but the cameras inside the facility were turned off.”

  “Are they all right?” Joe asked.

  “No injuries to report. But the attackers used incendiary charges and grenades to destroy the cores they were looking for. Computer records had already been tampered with, but there’s some reason to believe that was Cora’s doing.”

  “So back to square one,” Joe said. “The last time I heard of anyone getting this aggressive over ice, it was the compressed carbon kind that gets divided up in Antwerp.”

  Kurt had to agree. He put the phone away. “Let’s hope we have more luck with Mr. Lloyd.”

  Joe pointed to an approaching car. “Looks like our ride is here.”

  A beige minivan was flashing its lights at them. It pulled to the curb and the front passenger’s window slid down, revealing the smiling face of a young woman in the driver’s seat. She had jade green eyes, a smooth brown complexion and her hair pulled back.

  “You two look like the wandering souls Rudi asked me to collect,” she said. “I must say, you’re not half as forlorn as he descr
ibed you.”

  Kurt laughed and shouldered his bag. He noticed Joe staring. “Rudi likes to keep expectations low,” he said.

  “That way, people aren’t disappointed,” Joe added.

  Leandra smiled warmly. “Not disappointed at all,” she said. “And for the record, I’ve been looking forward to meeting the men who helped unravel the mystery of the Waratah. You have no idea how much joy the discovery of that ship brought to people in this country.”

  The Waratah was an ocean liner that vanished off the South African coast in 1909. Kurt and Joe had helped unravel the century-old mystery behind its disappearance. And NUMA had recovered the ship and sailed it back to Cape Town.

  “We had nothing to do with it,” Kurt insisted, as he opened the passenger’s door. “And don’t let Joe tell you any different.”

  Kurt climbed into the seat while Joe tossed his gear in back and took a seat of his own.

  “While my friend is technically correct,” Joe said, “we did have our hands full with the madman whose ancestors hijacked the ship in the first place.”

  As Joe slid the door shut, she put the van in drive and pulled out, merging with traffic. “I’d love to hear all about it. But you two have dossiers to read and a party to attend.”

  “What party?” Joe asked.

  “Ryland Lloyd’s annual fund-raiser,” she said. “It benefits his favorite politicians and his game park. Which is to say, it benefits him in the form of connections and favors.”

  Kurt had been informed of the party, but initial information suggested it was a closed guest list. “Did Rudi get us invites? Or are we sneaking in with the catering crew?”

  “Three invitations,” Leandra said.

  “Three?”

  “Rudi suggested I keep an eye on you.”

  Kurt laughed. “Sounds about right. Do we have time to shave and shower?”

  “Afraid not,” she told them. “Ryland’s place is three hours from here. Out in the bush.”

  “This is my best T-shirt,” Joe said. “But it’s not going to get me into a luxury ball.”

  Leandra laughed. “Tuxedos are hanging in the back.”

  Kurt looked over his shoulder, spotting a trio of garment bags neatly clipped to a hook. “Let’s hope Rudi got our sizes right. Now, what about the files he sent you?”

  While navigating the traffic with one hand, Leandra reached down beside her with the other and retrieved a pair of manila envelopes from a pocket file on the back of the door. She handed them to Kurt, who kept one and passed the other on to Joe.

  The files contained new information on Ryland and Mata Petroleum. The long drive to Ryland’s estate gave them plenty of time to go through them and discuss the contents.

  “Have you read this?” Kurt asked Leandra.

  “Maybe,” she said with a smile.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think our friend Ryland is an odd duck. Brilliant and driven enough to build up a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate and foolish enough to be teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. It’s as if he became a bad businessman overnight.”

  Kurt read through the financial reports. Ryland was in negotiations with his creditors for extensions for various lines of credit. At the same time, he’d been buying up huge tracts of land for his mining ventures. “By the look of this, the oil company borrows the money and the mining concern spends it.”

  “They don’t spend it well,” Leandra said. “According to the geological reports, the land he’s bought is all but worthless.”

  Kurt leafed through the file, discovering the reports Leandra referenced. The sites Ryland had bought were massive and remote. They were so far off the beaten track that no boots on the ground surveys had ever been performed. The best analysis came from a U.S. government study that used the basic landform and similar geological structures to calculate a grade. It came back as universally poor.

  “Maybe he knows something the rest of us don’t,” Joe suggested.

  That was always possible. The best way to get rich in mining was to find land others didn’t value and literally strike gold—or platinum or rhodium or any number of rare earths or metals. But based on the meager output of his existing mines, Ryland didn’t seem to be a natural at it.

  “He’s certainly swinging for the fences,” Kurt said. “He’s bought land in Uganda, Kenya and the Congo. Not to mention New Guinea, Ecuador and a swath the size of Oklahoma in northern Brazil.”

  Joe had found more. “He also bought a bunch of islands in the Indian Ocean and several others scattered throughout the Pacific. Most of them appear to be uninhabited. One is a former guano island that played out thirty years ago.”

  “Guano island?” Leandra asked.

  “Bird poop,” Joe said. “Perfect fertilizer. Built up into mountains on certain islands that have millions of birds and limited rain. As disgusting as it sounds, the stuff is more valuable than gold per ton of earth moved.”

  “Not once it’s all gone,” Kurt said. “And thirty years isn’t enough time for it to build back up. You need centuries to make it worth it.”

  Leandra shrugged. “Like I said, suddenly he’s a bad businessman.”

  Kurt studied a raft of satellite photos depicting the newly acquired holdings. The land appeared untouched, aside from small developments here and there. There was no evidence of mining, just trees and green fields and mile upon mile of untouched terrain. The islands were in a similar state. Breakwaters had been built on a few of them, metal roofs of storage facilities sprouted here and there, but there was little sign of industrial activity.

  The closer he looked, the less it made sense. Realizing he couldn’t tell anything from the small details, Kurt pulled back and tried to envision the bigger picture.

  The newly acquired holdings weren’t concentrated in any one country or region and it didn’t seem as if there was anything political in play. As far as Kurt could tell, Ryland had bought in democracies and dictatorships, in stable countries and unstable ones. Nor was he focused on one kind of terrain or geology. He’d bought up mountainous areas and open valleys. He’d bought a hundred thousand acres of rain forest and twice as much desert.

  About the only pattern Kurt could discern was geographical. All Ryland’s new holdings lay within several degrees of the equator. All had single-degree latitudes. Nothing too far north, nothing too far south.

  The islands were more widely spaced and each sat in hot, humid areas like the Indian Ocean and the tropical zone of the South Pacific.

  “Most rich guys are happy to own one island,” Joe said. “This guy has twenty and counting.”

  The choice of islands was odd as well, mostly low-lying atolls, including one island that had recently become uninhabited after a storm hit during high tide. Realizing the island was unsafe, its five hundred inhabitants were relocated to Australia. Ryland had purchased it a year later, lock, stock and rusting barrel.

  Kurt pointed it out to Joe, who was just as baffled. “Makes no sense,” he said. “A few more years of rising seas and that island will be gone.”

  Kurt nodded. There had to be a reason for Ryland’s actions, but at the moment he couldn’t see it.

  By now, they’d left the suburbs around Johannesburg and traveled out through the farmland beyond. A hundred miles later, they crossed into Limpopo Province, the northernmost part of South Africa, where they stopped briefly to change into their evening wear.

  The countryside resembled a postcard from a bygone era, with grassy meadows divided by meandering streams. Exotic trees and animals spotted the rolling hillsides. Water buffalo could be seen roaming in one valley while several dozen crocodiles lay on the banks of a stream.

  Returning to the car, they drove the rest of the way, turning onto a red dirt track as the sun began to set behind them.

  “This is Ryland’s property,” Leand
ra said.

  The new road ran beside a twelve-foot wrought iron fence with angled barbs at the top. Five miles later, they turned once more, passing between two huge stone lions and traveling down a thousand-yard driveway toward a sprawling villa constructed to resemble a nineteenth-century hunting lodge.

  The exterior was rustic, with a thatched roof supported by beams of yellow pine. The lobby was spacious and open, its charm enhanced by period furniture and waiters wearing pith helmets and Victorian-style uniforms. Up above, ceiling fans turned slowly, their blades made of decorative local woods carved into the shape of acacia leaves and palm fronds.

  “Nice place,” Kurt said.

  “Is this a home or a hotel?” Joe asked.

  “A little bit of both,” Leandra told him. “Ryland spends a fair amount of time here, but guests are welcome to rent it for lodging or events.”

  “Sounds like you looked into it,” Kurt joked.

  “I did,” Leandra replied. “If I ever get married, this would be a great place for the reception. A little out of my price range, unfortunately.”

  “Depends who you marry,” Kurt said.

  Leandra smiled. “I go for poor and self-reliant, I’m afraid.”

  Kurt glanced back at Joe. “You may have a chance after all.”

  Joe got momentarily flustered. “He doesn’t know what he’s . . . I mean, I’d be flattered, but I haven’t said . . .” He paused to collect himself, then looked out the window. “Thank God, the valet is here.”

  One of the runners dressed in safari gear had reached them and was opening Leandra’s door. He looked at their invitations and pointed them toward the main entrance, where a short line of people waited to go through a security checkpoint.

  All the guests were dressed to the nines and the three of them were no exception. Kurt and Joe wore tuxedos with French-cuffed shirts, crisp bow ties and polished Italian shoes. Leandra wore a black dress with embroidered details on the body and sheer sleeves. Stiletto heels completed her look.