CHAPTER 21
Malfajiri
The day following the news broadcast started as expected, with crippling temperatures from sunrise, and all of the expats in a dead panic to get the hell out of Malfajiri.
By 8 a.m. the place was a furnace. The second-grade tarred roads in and around Pallarup had blistered, and the air, as always, was too hot to breathe. Morgan and Fredericks had been on the move since daybreak. By 10 a.m. they'd managed to get almost all of the employees out of Pallarup and back to the RV at the Francis Hotel in Cullentown. With one more group to go, Fredericks was there with the rest of the small Chiltonford team, coordinating arrivals from Pallarup and making arrangements with the US Navy to get the Alga Creek people onto the Navy choppers and out to the aircraft carrier.
Meanwhile, as if there wasn't enough to deal with already, during the dozens of sorties that Steve had fl.own in and out of Pallarup that morning, he'd seen a large group of armed men camped out in the plains to the southwest of the mining town. A company of rebel troops, he'd reported to Morgan, looking as though they were preparing to attack.
Morgan, Fredericks and Mason agreed that they were rapidly running out of the already borrowed time they were on.
Absent from the sweat-soaked handful of evacuees waiting their turn to escape from Pallarup, was just one far too obvious face. Turner. The others, all long-serving employees of Alga Creek Mining, had lost patience with the man long ago. It had taken Morgan only two days to share their aggravation. Enough was enough.
Not for the first time that morning, Morgan checked his watch. Christ! Where the hell was Turner? Shouting over the deafening howl of the Aerospatiale AS-332M Super Puma's engines, and watching over the last of the evacuees as they clambered aboard, Morgan told Steve to wait for him - signalling 'five minutes' with the splayed fingers of his left hand and clutching an AKM assault rifle in his right. He spun his gaze back across the open plains surrounding the mine site, searching for movement, across mile upon mile of dirt and acacia trees. Inthe distance, a company of rebel troops was moving in from the southwest. A cloud of red dust marked the line of their advance as the convoy snaked towards him. Morgan figured he had less than 20 minutes to get the final group out before the rebels were on top of them.
Running from beneath the downdraft of the rotor blades, he sprinted for the head office where they'd been watching the news and making preparations last night. Checking his watch again, then scanning back to the rebel trucks, Morgan ran. The swirl of wind whipped at the dirt and bush, spinning the tinder-dry tussock into balls of tumbleweed around his feet. When he finally crashed through the rear entrance door to the office building, a powerful gust of wind forced its way in behind him, covering Morgan in another coat of the blood-red dirt and dust. He coughed, dragged a filthy sleeve across his eyes, and opening them, saw what he came for.
Morgan was barely able to contain the urge to push in the pugnacious, fat face that confronted him. He had no patience for Turner and was in no mood for resistance. Turner had made it clear from the outset that Morgan's sudden appearance to evacuate the Alga Creek Mining people was unnecessary. According to Davenport, Turner had vehemently resisted the recommendation from the Foreign Office that an evacuation specialist be deployed. Turner had even complained that Morgan's appointment was an affront to his management of Alga Creek operations in Malfajiri. This, despite the fact that the Foreign Office had arranged Morgan's appointment, and quite apart from the fact that the elected government of Malfajiri was in a shambles, and the country had been on the brink of civil war for months. Why so much resistance, thought Morgan, what exactly did Turner have to hide?
It was clear to Morgan that with the assassination of Namakobo (though nobody seemed sure whether the President was alive or dead), Baptiste had made his move and the civil war was now off the leash. Alga Creek Mining's multi-billion dollar rutile operation, the lifeblood of the struggling nation's economy, had been closed down overnight, and Pallarup would soon be a ghost town. Despite his previous remonstrations and open resentment, Turner's backflip at the precise moment that the assassination had been reported was quite bizarre. He was now only too happy to offload all responsibility onto Morgan. And now, but for the last load of people clambering aboard the chopper, Pallarup was stripped bare. Only the empty shells of the buildings and storage areas remained, buckling under the searing oppression of the sun.
"You can't be bloody serious?" Morgan yelled.
"What do you mean? I'm ready, aren't I?" Turner, startled by Morgan's arrival, was grappling with a laptop case, clumsily attempting to zip it closed as he waddled towards the door, clutching it to his chest as an old woman clutches her handbag.