Deadly Diamonds (38 page)

It was all hands on deck on the morning of the third day. The sun was hardly up when Seamus and I hopped into Bantu's rented Jeep. We drove to the general's bar. His man was ready to climb aboard to show us where the rifles were to be delivered. He was about fourteen, trying to act thirty in the unaccustomed company of a couple of white copassengers. His bravado came off as surliness, but who cared. We needed directions, not conversation.

We drove out of the city and picked up a slightly paved road into the thick of the jungle. It was banana trees, dense vegetation, and animal sounds until we rounded a bend into a sizeable clearing. All of a sudden, we were reminded of what we'd taken on.

The road was clogged with two massive, armylike trucks with camouflage canvas covering the cargo section. A man jumped down from the cab of the lead truck and introduced himself simply as Jimbo. He and Bantu just smiled and nodded to each other as if all the preparations had been talked out before.

There was no time for sipping tea and idle chat. Jimbo got up into the cab of the second truck in line. I took a seat beside him. Bantu took the wheel of the lead truck and Seamus rode shotgun for him. Our surly navigator squeezed in beside Seamus.

The convoy rumbled on over the rutted jungle road, whacking branches when it got narrow and baking in the sun when the clearing for the road expanded.

We rolled on without stopping until the sun was just beginning to drop below the level of the treetops. The first inkling that it was zero hour came with a blast of the horn of the lead truck. Bantu pulled to a stop in front of a roughly constructed fence of barbed
wire. The horn brought two soldiers with rifles out of the woods. They trained the rifles in our direction until our guide in his RUF camouflage T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops hopped down and announced the arrival of weapons.

One of the guards pulled the poles holding the barbed wire across the road to let us pass. I noticed they replaced the fencing behind us.

We drove on until we approached a massive clearing. There was a shallow, muddy pond twice the size of the pond in Boston's Public Garden. At least three dozen black bodies were bent over double in the smelling, fetid water working with large sifters. Eight guards with AK-47s over their shoulders kept an eye on every movement of the slaves in the pit.

The real beehive of activity was around a wooden barnlike structure. Twenty or so RUF soldiers were milling around the large open entrance. The AK-47s over their shoulders were as much a part of their uniforms as the camouflage T-shirts and flip-flops.

As planned, Bantu stayed in the cab of the truck. It was possible one of the guards could recognize him from the days of his own captivity. Jimbo jumped down and approached the boy with the ranking insignia on his shirt who came forward.

Jimbo was his usual smiling, jovial self. The boy officer was, as expected, officious and demanding. I could hear him command that the boxes of rifles be unloaded to the ground and opened before there'd be any talk of diamonds in return.

Some of the slaves were dragged out of the pit to do the heavy lifting, two men to a case. When that wasn't fast enough for the men at the barn, some of them joined in the effort. The hum now was centered on the cases of new rifles and ammunition.

The boy soldiers became as impatient as spoiled kids attacking Christmas loot. They began prying open cases. When the first gleaming new rifles emerged, the impatience doubled, and the activity around the cases became all-absorbing.

I could see Bantu now venture down from the cab of the truck. He stayed as well out of view as he could while scanning the faces of
the slaves lifting cases and the ones in the pit. I could see frustration building as he looked from face to face without a shred of recognition.

It was just about then that I heard activity coming from the road we'd come in on. From the cab, I could see two RUF soldiers leading a straggling line of what looked like black bodies, at or beyond the point of exhaustion, laden with heavy sacks.

I jumped down and got close to Jimbo. “Who're they, Jimbo?”

He looked over at the new arrivals. “They mules. They slaves like these guys. They use'm to smuggle stones into Liberia. Carry weapons and drugs back. Looks of it, they probably walked all the way from the border.”

The buzz continued around the cases we brought being cracked open and rifles being pulled out and handed around. I used the diversion to slip over to the edge of the pit where Bantu was scanning pathetic faces. I tapped him on the shoulder and tilted my head toward the line of staggering walkers who were now approaching the barn.

He looked over at the line. I could see him straining to match what he remembered from the time he was nine years old against the gaunt faces of the slaves in line.

I watched his eyes. I had a flashback to all of the crap Mr. Devlin and I had gone through with the O'Byrnes, Salviti, Barone—and all the crap Bantu must have gone through to bring us to this moment of what looked like a crushing defeat. As I looked at the condition of the slaves, it would have been another miracle if his father had survived it. I was sharing his heartbreak when I went to put my hand on his shoulder.

I got just that far when I heard him whisper through unmoving lips. “My God! My God! I don't believe it. Michael, is it possible?”

I looked where he was staring. A man who looked a hundred years old was staggering under a sack that bent him nearly double. Bantu and I both had the overwhelming urge to run to him, free him of the load, and carry his worn body out of that hellhole.

Bantu wiped away tears and straightened up. I could hear him
mumble to himself. “Stick to the plan. Stick to the plan.” He made his way back to the cab of the first truck and climbed in.

The excitement of the newness of the rifles was beginning to wear off. All of the wooden cases had been pried open to reveal no loads of rocks. I figured Jimbo had found a successful black market source among the scurvy lot of humanity in Freetown that dealt in that product. He must have used the money now in Bantu's account to buy them.

Now the attention was on unloading and cracking open the cases of ammunition. There, too, there was no deception. The commander was no dummy. He ordered a few of his soldiers to pick out a rifle, load it, and fire it. I remembered Bantu's tale of the rescue of his brother and the missing firing mechanism. If he was pulling that trick now, I knew I'd never live to see 77 Franklin Street again.

Thank God, the firing was a noisy, earsplitting success. The general now gave the command to have the slaves carry all of the cases into the barn. This was the moment I dreaded. It was time to collect the price from the commander. I didn't give a rat's ass if they paid ten cents for them. But the show had to go on, and it had to be convincing or we'd never pass through that gate again.

Jimbo did the bargaining. The commander produced a bag of rough stones, which I came to realize was the usual trading tender in those deals. Jimbo looked them over with what he pretended was a discerning eye. He expected to be cheated. The question was how much cheating he could accept and be believable.

I listened to the haggling for a full five minutes. I could hear Jimbo threaten to cut off any future supplies of these excellent, fresh-from-the-factory weapons. Eventually, and with great reluctance, the commander reached into his shirt and pulled out another small bag of stones. Jimbo was clever. He took the bag from the disgruntled commander, poured out half of the stones, and with his back to the other men, handed the bag with the rest back to the commander. He had made a friend, of sorts.

That was it. Deal concluded. Our little band, except for our soldier-guide, climbed back into the trucks. It must have broken Bantu's
heart, but he started the truck and drove slowly away from the pit. Jimbo drove the second, now empty, truck close behind.

With one eye on the road and one on the rearview mirror, we edged our way along the path. We watched as the soldiers, even those at the pit, now gave full vent to their impatience to each grab a piece of the gift Santa had brought. They ran to the barn and began pulling rifles out of the boxes and stuffing ammunition into their shirts.

I could see Bantu watching the line of slave mules come out of the barn and amble to the filthy pit to splash water on their faces. When they were all out, he stopped the truck and got out. He took a small black box with push buttons on it from under the front seat of the truck. I saw him hold it in his hand and stare back at the scene behind him.

I could hear Bantu's words clear as day. “God help us. God help us all.”

He held the box in one hand and pushed one of the buttons with one finger of the other. I thought the world was coming to an end. It started with a crack like not-too-distant thunder. Then another, louder. Then another, much louder. Then a rapid chain of explosions that sounded like all of the deafening thunderclaps of all eternity. Masses of fire burst through every opening in the blown roof and out the splintered sides of the building. Pieces of wood and metal were flying everywhere, carrying flames a hundred feet in the air.

At the first explosion, the boy soldiers dropped the loot they were carrying. By the second they were in full-panic flight into the jungle. They must have thought they were under attack by every United Nations force in Africa.

I looked back at the slaves in the pit and the mules beside it. They were dumbstruck and frozen where they were. But Bantu was not, and neither was Jimbo. They threw the trucks in reverse and backed to the area of the pit. We all were out of the trucks and diving into the furious business of helping the weakened bodies of the slaves—now former slaves—into the back of the trucks. Some we supported, some we outright carried. We started with the mules, because they
were closest. Bantu ran first with tears flowing to his father. His father didn't recognize him, but Bantu swept him up in his arms and carried him to the back of the truck. He gently placed him in the truck on a soft straw mat.

We ran back and forth dozens of times, until every one of those souls was out of that living hell and into one of the trucks. We were hitting high gear when we passed the gate guards running back to see if there was anything left of their camp.

When we reached the gate, it was full ramming speed. We shattered the wire fence, probably dragging some of it with us, but who cared?

We rode all night, heading west, picking up jungle roads that only Jimbo could have known. Our passengers needed food and water, but there was time for that when we reached safety.

I was riding with Bantu at that point. When we were nearing Freetown, I heard him use his cell phone to call his brother, Sinda. “Where do we take them, Sinda? What have you got for us?”

That was when I realized what part Sinda was playing in this epoch. I saw a grin spread from Bantu's ear to ear. He was practically yelling into the phone. “A village! You bought a village!”

Bantu turned to me with a face that could light up Africa. “My God! He bought a whole village!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I could see the glowing red ball of the sun rising on the rim of the eastern horizon when Jimbo drove the lead truck of our little convoy into the cleared outskirts of what looked like a village of huts. It was totally deserted, except for the waving and grinning figure of Sinda running to meet the first truck.

He waved Jimbo to pull directly into the large clearing in what looked like the center of the village, and Bantu followed. With the trucks stopped, we all got to work at a fever pitch to carry our depleted passengers out of the truck and into the protective shade of the huts. Sinda started to do the directing. With each weak body we lifted out of a truck, he'd point to a hut.

The first body Bantu carefully lifted out of the lead truck, he brought, running, to Sinda. Sinda looked down at the face of the man Bantu was holding. “My God, Bantu! It's him! I can't—”

Sinda reached out and took the nearly unconscious body into his arms. He carried his father to the nearest hut and laid him on a mat. Bantu took over the directing.

Sinda had apparently gathered some local help. I saw men and women of about our age come running from the river beside the village with fresh drinking water for each person once he was put in the hut that was to be his new home. Once the fear of dehydration was taken care of, the helpers began bathing the crusted, clinging slime from the bodies of those who had been in the pits.

When the relocation was complete, we all shifted our focus to distributing bowls of thick soup Sinda had brewed over a cooking fire in the area that would later be used for meals. For some, it was the first thing resembling a meal in their memory.

Jimbo, who was a man of many talents, put to use his early Mandingo training in curative leaves and poultices for those who had lesions and open sores.

The running never slackened through the day. We all ran from job to job at a furious pace. There was always something more we could do. But I was not too occupied to see Sinda and Bantu in the hut of their father. They bathed his stench-encrusted body and provided him the first of the clean clothes Sinda had purchased in Freetown and brought to the village for all the new arrivals.