Short Story--Galeta continued

Galeta con’t        

      It at first amused Marcus. He accidentally crossed Ian and his merry band’s path. They interviewed a woman other inhabitants of the sparsely populated savannah, all farmers, came to for mediation in disputes or for advice on cassava and other crops. At odds with Ian a few times in the last several years, it never before cost him more than minor annoyance.

     Now his driver, Strafe, bumped along poorly maintained tracks—one could hardly call them roads—on flat dusty grasslands. Little rain fell in the present dry hot season, but the air sweltered with tropical moisture. Marcus brooded over this extension of his trip.

     “Ian ordered people to watch the airstrip in Bambari,” Strafe had said.

     They originally planned to depart from the grass-covered local airport, fly to Cameroon, and leave Africa via Marcus’s ship moored at the port of Douala.

     “Order the plane to meet us at Bonny,” Marcus said. A small coastal airstrip in the more populous Nigeria, it offered less chance of encountering detection.

     “Shame about the commodities,” Strafe said, grunting at the vehicle’s quick drop into and stuttering climb out of a larger hole in the ruts.

     Marcus merely snorted. Forced to leave the few orphans procured behind, it presented no especial hardship. Not particularly attractive, their value resided in cheap labor. Even the most slovenly sex shops needed toilets cleaned and the occasional laundry done.

     “We acquired this benighted country’s one worthwhile asset,” Marcus said, stroking the spine of his briefcase where a velvet pouch nestled safely in a hidden pocket.

     Individual prospectors handled most of the mining here. It required little effort to dispatch a courier and appropriate the diamonds he carried. Marcus’s intel hadn’t unearthed the man’s connection to the wise woman. Normally, it wouldn’t concern him.

Wednesday—end of the story.