Counterpoint (30 page)

To maintain their cover, Max shared a
cabin with one of the men and Carla had a cabin all to herself,
being the only female on the team. They both tried to cultivate
friendships with the others and appeared to the team, to be
uninterested in each other.

It was now just one month after
arriving at the site, and the indications were the team had found
the edge of a vast mineral deposit. Four rigs were working
continuously and the data showed the field extended north towards
the low mountains.

It was evening, and before the rig
crews changed shifts, was a good time to take a break from typing
up reports and updating the field map.

Max followed Carla a few minutes later,
into the mess hall. Big Mel and four of his crew were there; they
had all been drinking quite heavily.

As Max walked in, Big
Mel had just got up and walked over to Carla. He had the
hot’s
for her and had
decided tonight was the night to satisfy his lust.

Carla had made a point of being
friendly to everyone when in a group, and never talked, or sat,
with anyone on their own, not even Max, except through necessity of
working in the same office.

Max guessed correctly what was about to
happen and knew no one would stand against Big Mel if they wanted
to keep their teeth in their heads.

Max intercepted Big Mel halfway across
the floor, blocking his path. Max smiled warmly, “Hi Mel, can I get
you a drink?”

“No,” he replied, “I’ve got better
things on my mind.”

His advance did not falter. It had not
crossed his mind that Max would stay in his path.

Max did not budge, but braced himself
by leaning forward against the rock solid muscular belly that
barged into him. At the same time, Max gripped Mel’s wrists firmly
at his sides, with his fingers just inside Mel’s pockets.

Mel, as a result, came to an abrupt
halt, unable to move his hands away from his sides. Max spoke
quietly in Mel’s left ear.

“I wouldn’t go there if I were you, her
herpes has a flared up again. You don’t want to spend the rest of
your life pulling the scabs off your dick like potato crisps, do
you?” Big Mel was shocked!

Max obviously was not letting him pass,
if a raging Panther did not frighten him then neither would Mel.
What if she did have something nasty? Mel did not want that
either.

He threw his head back and let out a
bellowing laugh. As Mel turned away, Max relaxed his grip, and the
two men walked back to the bar laughing. Carla had seen what had
happened and quickly slipped away, back to the safety of her
office. When Max returned, half an hour later, she asked what he
had said to Mel.

“I just told him, you had the clap, so
I doubt anyone will bother you again!”

“You sod!” She said and then grinned.
“I hope it won’t put you off,” she mocked. “When we make love again
up at the waterfall.”

“No way,” he replied, eyes twinkling.
As he walked past her, he surreptitiously dragged his hand up the
front of her thighs, pausing briefly to cup her squish mitten, and
then walked on unconcerned to a desk, to collect more forms to
fill-in.

That night Carla spoke to Sam, passing
on her official report in the usual way, using the hidden satellite
phone, away from the camp. The cabins had stainless steel mesh
reinforcement in the GRP shell that blocked radio communication, a
feature of the design, to protect occupants from harmful effects of
high power radio transmitters, common in such camps. Sam warned her
to be on the lookout for someone else who could be passing on
information in the same way. He had heard from a source in the
Congo Government that the team had found minerals.

Apart from the Ed Yates, no one else
should have contact with the outside world. Ed would have nothing
to gain as far as Sam could tell, by announcing the find this
early.

Carla signed off and thought about who
was likely to leak the find and how they could do it in secret. She
told Max about it on the next shift.

That night, Max slipped away as usual
into the darkness, especially aware that someone else might also be
out there making his secret call to the outside world.

The noise in the jungle at night is so
loud that you would have to be quite close to someone talking on a
phone, to hear them. If you got that close, they would probably
know you were there. Max knew it was a long shot, but moved to a
position where he could see most of the cabins. If the informer
were out in the jungle now, Max would see him returning. Having
just written up the latest survey results, now was a good time to
keep a look out.

Out of boredom, his thoughts wandered.
Unlike other men of his age, he no longer suffered from aches and
pains from pulled muscles or arthritic joints, he was mentally
sharper than he had ever been and had energy to burn. When he went
for tests in Egypt, The Organisation monitored the stem cell
treatment he had for his eye repair. Unexpectedly cellular
regeneration was now occurring throughout his body.

The steep climb, up to the waterfall in
sweltering heat followed by a long session of passionate sex with
Carla, rounded off with a 15-minute swim against the strong current
in the icy water left him totally refreshed. His body-fat was
practically zero, his bald spot had started re-growing hair, downy
it might be, but it was undeniably there.

He returned his thoughts to catching
the informant.

Carla made a list of everyone who could
have access to the survey results, then threw it away. The list was
pointless, she thought, everyone knows the survey is producing
positive results, and even if they did not have the mapping
details, they would soon eliminate the early sample sites and
produce a workable map from the others.

No, they would have to catch the person
when they made the transmission. She thought further, even if we
know who is sending the info we still do not know who is receiving
it and what benefit it is to them anyway. When she later told Max,
he agreed and said “We might get lucky so just keep our eyes open,
hoping to catch them at it.”

The following night Max melted quietly
into the jungle and waited, watching the team coming and going.
Perhaps tonight he would catch the informer.

It was now 5am, it would be dawn soon,
unknown to him; Carla had also ventured out to join Max. She had
suddenly become restless, her sixth sense warning her of
trouble.

When she saw Max, she moved towards him
silently, to avoid warning anyone else, within earshot.

Immediately after the first shot was
fired, the noises of the jungle stopped. Less than a second later,
the echo of the first shot had not even died; gunfire and heavy
explosions shattered the night.

The flames shot up high above the trees
into the sky. The brilliant flashes, filtered through countless
leaves, lit up where they stood.

“Max!” Carla called out as she ran to
him. Max spun round shocked that anyone could creep up on him.

“What the hell’s happening?” He
gasped.

As they crouched low, the occasional
stray bullets ripped unseen through the undergrowth close to them.
They took shelter behind a large tree, clutching each other
close.

Minutes later the firing and explosions
stopped. Distant voices issued commands, but were too faint to
understand. Silence fell around them as the flickering glow of
intense fires diminished. More minutes past and the faint sound of
the survey vehicles coming back to camp from the foot of the
mountain, grew louder.

“Christ! Carla, the drill team are
driving into a trap, we must do something.”

Moments later the vehicles stopped at
the compound. Max and Carla rushed through the jungle to warn them,
but they knew they were too late. The men got out of their vehicles
and rushed to their fallen colleagues. The prone corpses littered
about the open ground, illuminated by the surrounding flames.

Drawn out into the open away from any
cover the vehicles might have provided, the team was grouped in the
firelight, a ten-second hail of bullets ripped through them. No one
survived.

Silence fell again the only sound was
the gentle roar of fires and crackle of burning buildings.

Five minutes had now past, it seemed
like an eternity. Then voices and commands disturbed the night and
booted feet were heard, running quietly over the soft earth, around
the outskirts of the camp. Carla and Max glimpsed the occasional
shadowy figure crouched low, flitting from cover to cover.

“I bet they do a body-count,” predicted
Carla. Max knew what that implied. This well-organised attack group
must be mercenaries coming to wipe out all, but the person who had
been leaking information. They would soon discover two bodies were
missing. They will probably know who the missing were, as well. A
team this well informed probably had photos of everyone working at
the camp.

“We had better hide somewhere until
this lot go,” added Carla. “Then we can report what happened
here.”

“There is a flaw or three in your
plan,” countered Max. “First, these killers have at least two days
to find us. It would take that time for help to get here, even if
they knew we needed it. It would take several missed reports before
a satellite phone was parachuted in to replace what they thought
was a faulty one, the likely reason for broken contact. Next, if we
did avoid capture, we would still have to sit it out until help
came. Then, who do we say did this?”

"True," said Carla, regretting her
instinctive “save own skin first,” philosophy.

“What’s your plan then?” She
enquired.

“I don’t have one, well not yet
anyway,” he replied rather indignantly. She felt better, “saving
own skin,” was always a good plan.

“We had better move closer so we can
see what is going on,” said Max as he crept closer to the carnage.
Carla stuck close behind him moving as quiet as mist through the
tangled undergrowth. The men were now dragging the bodies to the
centre of the camp and after checking off who they were, piled the
corpses over charges of explosives.

“They plan to erase all traces of the
individuals here by blowing the remains to atoms,” whispered Carla
“I bet they will do the same with all the buildings as well.”

The man in charge, dressed in combat
gear and carrying a range of weaponry, nervously circulated the
area. He was a tall, well-built individual, close-cropped hair and
a long face. His heavy jaw accentuated the squareness of his
rectangular face.

Max estimated the man must be about 35
to 40, but knew he was hopeless at judging a man’s age. He was
worse still with women. Anyway, age is just a state of mind.

The man was obviously a hard case, Max
had seen the movies, and these types of men were practically
indestructible. Hit them in the face with a massive punch and they
would laugh and keep coming. Hit them over the head with a steel
bar and they turn nasty, and keep coming. Shoot the fuckers, and
they just get back up, and keep coming!

“Carla, I need your pop gun!”

“No, ” she said, “I might need it.”

“What! I need it. I’m going to take the
leader of these mercenaries, prisoner.”

“In your dreams,” she whispered back.
“He’s wearing body armour and bullet-proof jacket. Shoot him with
my gun and he will just grunt and keep coming.”

“Humm!
The keep coming thing,
I
was afraid you might say that, still I need to take him out so we
can find out who set this up.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake, get a grip on
reality,” she said as she punched him hard on the arm.

“Ouch! Don’t do that,” said Max
feigning injury and he got up slowly and moved towards one of the
team’s vehicles, its engine still ticking over.

The leader of the
mercenaries, for that is what they were, turned with his back to
the vehicle looking at the burning buildings. Max reached the
vehicle, a large pickup truck, and peered inside. As expected,
tools lay scattered over the bed. He reached in and carefully
extracted a large spanner. Just then the man stepped backwards,
close to the truck turning his head and body from side to side as
he scanned for movement in the darkness beyond the firelight. Then
he turned and faced the truck. He saw Max freeze, spanner in hand,
leaning over the side of the truck. In an instant, the man’s
machine gun swung up to blast Max to eternity. As his gun lifted,
he jerked back, first his left shoulder, then his right, the
machine-gun firing as it rose up. Then his left jerked again. He
fell flat on his back, stunned, and still firing wildly in the air.
The bullets, like angry bees, that zipped past Max’s ear were from
Carla’s
popgun
.
The ceramic masterpiece of high-tech armament was fitted with a
suppressor.

Max leapt around the truck to the
fallen man. In spite of the two large saucer sized black patches of
shredded jacket near his shoulders, he was still conscious. The man
discarded the machine gun, the magazine now empty and reached for
his pistol. Max leapt on the body smacking the flat face of the
spanner down hard on the man’s forehead. The skin split open,
bleeding profusely.

The blow was intended to render the
mercenary unconscious, not brain-damaged.

The man was seriously pissed off now,
and threw a badly coordinated punch that glanced off the rear part
of Max’s head. Nevertheless, Max’s world spun like a top and
blackness filled with red and white stars closed in on him.

The sound of someone running towards
him, and knowing the man under him was reaching for his handgun to
kill him, brought Max’s senses back under control. As Max’s vision
cleared, he realised he had grabbed the man’s gun hand, and was
forcing it away and to the ground with all his strength. Seconds
later someone, standing on the gun hand brought a heavy blunt
object down hard against the man’s temple. The man went limp.