African Dragon (6 page)

Back in China, government officials were already discussing the construction of a nuclear power plant in the new PRC. It would bring the poor nation out of the dark ages, and produce weapon’s grade plutonium in the process for China’s own agenda. Of course, a nation of mostly illiterate people would need lots of assistance from China, who was more than willing to help.

10.

It ended up being almost four hours back to Kalemie. By the time they arrived, the charm of sitting out on the open railcar had ended. Everyone was jet lagged, tired, hungry and pretty much fed up with traveling. Unfortunately, Kalemie wasn’t where they would be living. The fish farm was located further south, back towards the direction they had just come from, but there was no direct route from Lubumbashi.

The team unloaded the cargo boxes from the train and Mackey spoke with a young man at the station. The man disappeared, then returned with three other men. Mackey spoke his bad French with them for a bit, and then they hustled off to get the trucks. These men were truck drivers that the old Canadian company had employed for several years to transport the live fish from their village to Luano Airport at Lubumbashi. Today they would be transporting the team from Kalemie to a tiny little village called Buwali, about halfway between Kalemie and Lubunduye. The population of Buwali was less than four hundred people, almost all of whom were fishermen.

Buwali consisted of mud huts with thatched roofs, and some primitive corrals that kept the few cattle and goats from wandering off. Small children tended the livestock, while the older ones worked with their parents on the Lake. Lake Tanganyika is one of Africa’s largest and deepest lakes, and to stand on its shore, you would think you were at the ocean. Except, of course, one doesn’t usually find crocodiles sunning themselves at the ocean.

The inhabitants of Buwali had been very upset when they found out that the fishery was being sold. For them, it was their major source of revenue. Most of the fish caught by the villagers was by hook for eating, and stayed in the village. But the live fish that they caught by gill net and delivered to the fish farm were sold for
cash
. That cash was just about the only money the village ever saw. Any other fishing, farming, livestock trading, etc. was just bartered in the village for day to day survival. The live fish they sold to the Canadians was their only real “industry” that enabled them to earn cash for purchasing items from the nearby cities. When Mackey showed up the week prior and word spread that another white man was working the lake, the fishermen began showing up with nets-full of live fish.

Mackey tried his best to explain that the fish farm wouldn’t be open for another few weeks, but the men of the village knew the operation inside out, and without even asking or waiting for the farm to reopen, they happily began stocking the outside holding tanks with Frontosas, Benthochromis Tricotis, Leleupis, and other colorful Tanganyikan cichlids. The original Canadians had been from Quebec, and French was their first language. The Buwali people also spoke French, along with their own dialect, Swahili, and Kikongo. They had heard very little English, and used English words mixed with their creole style French for names of things that had no name in their own language. A Coca-Cola in Kikongo or Swahili was still a Coca-Cola.

Mackey’s French was decent, but he struggled with the local French, which almost sounded like Patois, the Creole French on some Caribbean islands. When Julia told Mackey she spoke fluent French, he wanted to kiss her—more so than he already did—but he had conceded that to Cascaes. Julia, who spoke fluent Spanish as well as the Guarani language of the Paraguayan tribes, was a natural at picking up the sing-song French of the locals.

The team had arrived at the fishing village appropriately packed like sardines in three trucks along with their equipment. The drive had taken over an hour, following a worn path through the grass—nothing you would call an actual road. Had there
been
a road, they could have made it in fifteen or twenty minutes. The trucks pulled up in front of the small compound that was their new fish farm. Locals were standing around cheering their arrival. The villagers had brought gifts of local fruit and dried salted fish, one of their staple foods.

The team climbed down off of the trucks, now completely exhausted and so jet lagged they were almost hallucinating, but smiled and tried to communicate “hellos” to their new neighbors. Julia was quick to jump in with her French, and as soon as the villagers realized she could speak fluently, they surrounded her and started speaking a hundred miles an hour to welcome them to Buwali. She thanked them for the food and warm welcome, and explained that they would need a few days to get organized. Of course, there were dozens of offers of help with everything from cleaning, to cooking, to bringing more fish. They took her by the hand and led her down to the holding tanks. The holding tanks were five hundred gallon plastic tubs with water being exchanged directly from the lake through an extensive plumbing system devised by the previous fish farmers. The villagers were proud to show her all of the fish they had caught.

While she spoke with the villagers and looked at all of the fish, Mackey gave Cascaes and the rest of the team a tour of the buildings. There were several huts that would serve as their new homes. The huts had thick mud walls and thatched roofs, with several windows that had no glass, but did have wooden shutters that could be opened and closed. The floor was dirt, but had woven mats that covered most of it. A large clay fireplace in one corner served as a cooking stove, and provided light and heat. The men looked at each other and laughed. It was going to take some getting used to.

Jon and his three men went down to the main building where the fish packing supplies and other holding tanks were located. They had been fully trained to run the operation as a legitimate business, and were happy to find the generators filled with gas and operational. The generators ran several overhead lights, as well as UV sterilizers to treat the water before packing the fish and shipping them off. All in all, it was a well-organized place, and it was obvious the people there before them had known what they were doing when they designed the place.

By the time the team finished unpacking their equipment, it was near six at night, local time, and all of them were famished. The villagers made a wood fire and speared some fish they had caught that morning and barbequed them over the fire. The villagers were nothing short of amazed at how much the group could eat. They laughed and kept cooking until finally the bottomless pits had been filled. After dinner, the villagers headed back to their own homes, promising to return early tomorrow. Julia was having a hard time curbing their enthusiasm, and like the rest of the group, she just wanted to lie down and sleep.

The team split into three groups and headed off to their huts to sleep. Mackey, Cascaes, Moose, Theresa, and Julia would be sharing a hut. No one ever mentioned it, but the group was well aware that Moose and Theresa and Cascaes and Julia had something going on. Mackey came right out and asked if he was allowed in the honeymoon hut. Everyone laughed it off, but the four lovebirds really did wish they had their own little place. With the exception of Lance Woods, who drew first watch, the entire group was sound asleep in ten minutes. Lance sat outside by the small fire and watched his first African sunset, smiling as he watched the red fireball drop behind the mountains in the distance.

11.

The haunting singing of a lone African voice carrying through the village woke up the group. They were still somewhat comatose from their long journey, and had crashed hard that night. When they each opened their eyes and looked around, they had to remember what planet they were on. The single bass voice was joined by another dozen or so voices all returning his song. One by one, the members of the group sat up and walked outside. There were a dozen fishing boats, large canoes really, out on the lake, and the fishermen were singing their song to the fish. While the team couldn’t understand the words and had no idea why the men were singing, the group stood outside and enjoyed the beautiful sounds of the rich African voices in the otherwise silent morning.

Unlike an American morning, there were no car noises, no televisions or radios making background noise, not even a plane overhead. The quiet took getting used to, but the voices carrying across the lake were beautiful and something the members of the team would never forget. Once outside in the sun, the team realized it was time to start their day.

There was an outside latrine, which the men allowed the ladies to use first. There was a fifty-gallon drum that had been cut in half and filled with Lake water, then heavily chlorinated which was the ‘sink’ that they used to wash up with. The Canadians had devised a shower, but no one had heated up the water yet, which was done via the generator that had yet to be turned on.

Breakfast consisted of MREs and strong coffee made with water that had been boiled and treated with tablets brought from home. The team sat together outside on benches that were left over from the previous owners. The table was made out of wood, and looked to be about a thousand years old. The ants and termites had taken turns on it between insecticide sprayings.

Cascaes called Jon to sit with him, and they discussed what needed to be done to look like a fish farm. After their meeting, Cascaes had Moose and Ripper help prepare the SCUBA gear, including starting the generator which ran the compressor to fill their SCUBA tanks. After they finished their breakfast, Jon took his crew down to the building now dubbed “fish central,” and began cleaning and filling holding tanks. They would follow the same process as the previous owners: the fish would be caught by net, brought to the farm and separated by species and variety, then held and fed for a few days to reduce stress. When enough fish of a particular variety was collected, they’d be put in large clear plastic bags with chemically treated water, and then the bag was filled with pure oxygen, sealed, boxed, secured, put in an outer box, and then put in the back of the trucks to be transported to Luano Airport in Lubumbashi. None of them would ever look at a fish in a pet store again quite the same way.

While the four of them did actual work on the fish farm, Mackey and Cascaes set up shop in their small mud house. They had batteries for all of their computer and communication equipment that were rechargeable via the gas generators at fish central. Neither their compound nor the village of Buwali had any electricity.

Mackey, Cascaes, Julia, and Smitty (Joe Smith, who had been CIA for almost ten years) set up satellite phones and laptops and created a miniature secure office that could communicate with Dex Murphy and Darren Davis back in Langley via burst transmissions or secure encrypted phone. They could pull up satellite photos, maps and the most recent intelligence available through CIA right there in their mud hut. From outside the building, no one could see anything—there were no visible dishes or antennas.

The rest of the team used their first morning at their new home to clean and organize. They scrubbed, sprayed and swept everything as best they could, then unpacked their gear while inside one of the small houses. They uncrated the weapons and ammo, assembled and loaded their weapons, and then repacked them in locked boxes that would be easier to get to than the double walled crates. Each of the mud huts would have a store of weapons and ammo. While inside the compound, no one carried a weapon. They were wearing shorts and were supposed to be civilians—with the locals dropping in all the time, they couldn’t risk raising suspicion. Night time was a different story. After dark, when everyone went to bed down for the night, everyone had a weapon within arm’s reach.

Mackey sent Dex Murphy an encrypted email, since it was five hours earlier in Langley, advising him that they were fully operational and preparing to start gathering information. The first orders of business would be to start building relationships with the local fishermen, and then a visit to nearby Buwali to meet the neighbors. As soon as it was practical, they would start snooping around to find the PAC and any leads on Nigel.

By noon, local time, they were all ready to eat again. Julia, having heard comments and rumbling stomachs, walked out to the shoreline of the lake and started screaming in French to the fishermen. They waved back and started heading in towards her. Cascaes followed her down and asked her what she was doing.

“We have a choice. Plastic meat-product in a sealed foil packet that requires hot water and Alka-seltzer,
or
, fresh fish right out of the lake. What sounds better to you?”

Cascaes laughed. “You
know
, the way to a man’s heart is through…”

She interrupted him. “That’s not how I got to
yours
,” she said and then quickly smacked his butt.

He turned red and looked around, praying no one saw that, and luckily they were alone.

“I can have you charged with striking an officer,” he said quietly, with a big grin.

“What if I let you spank me back?” she said in her sexiest voice. They started moving closer, dying to kiss each other, when the fishermen began calling out to them. Julia laughed.

“Just in time,” she said, and then began yelling back in French. They stood together, wanting to hold hands or something, but behaved, and waited for the boats to arrive with fresh caught fish. It was a nice moment, standing by the lake with a cool breeze blowing away the heat of the day, watching the boats come in silently. The men rowed to shore, holding up dozens of fish that were strung together. They were the blackest men either of them had ever seen, from years of working outside in the African sun. The men smiled, their missing teeth showing in the sun.

When the boats were close enough to the gravel shore, the men hopped out of their boats and pulled them in, walking to Chris and Julia with their fish in one hand, and the rope to hold the boat in the other. They were all speaking to Julia, each of them telling her how good his fish were. They chatted for a while, the fishermen’s good nature showing through their big smiles. They were obviously thrilled to have customers for their fish, and their smiles were contagious.

The three of them each gave Cascaes huge strings of fish, between twenty and thirty on each, with each fish being almost a foot and a half long. Julia spoke to them for a while and then they waved and hopped back in their boats to continue fishing out in the Lake.

“Don’t we have to pay for them?” asked Cascaes.

“Yes, but we have a ‘house account’ evidently. They said they’d be by every day and then come to see us one day for what sounded like a picnic.”

“A picnic?”

“I’m not really sure. It wasn’t exactly French, but it sounds like they are planning a party or something. Whatever it is going to cost, trust me, we can swing it. I think these people make fifty dollars a year.”

Chris and Julia walked back to the compound with the fish, stopping once for a quick check to make sure no one was around, and then sneaking a long kiss. Julia whispered, “Can’t you find a secret mission for Moose, Theresa, and Mac tonight that would get them the hell out of the house for a couple of hours?”

Chris laughed. “Yeah, well, actually, I think Mac is going out tonight. Unfortunately, I’ll be going with him.