St Kilda Consulting 02 - Innocent as Sin

might be the number one flyboy, but he knew who owned the plane.
    “Keep your engines running but hold this position,” the Siberian continued in Russian. He unsnapped the harness that was barely big enough to contain his massive chest. “Make the bastards come to us.”
    He stood up and leaned forward, watching the trucks and men nearly half a mile away.
    “You think it’s a trap?” the copilot asked him nervously.
    “Life is a trap.”
    With that he crouched down and looked through the windscreen with binoculars, studying the trucks. After some indecision, their drivers had started up and were heading for the aircraft, trailing streamers of dust. Most of the vehicles were grinding along the edge of the runway, but one of the drivers used the runway itself.
    It could be an innocent mistake.
    It could be intentional. Lethal.
    The Siberian yanked a hand radio from the hip pocket of hiswhite jungle suit. He keyed the microphone and snarled in English, “Tell that idiot to clear the runway, or we’ll take off right now.”
    “Oh, yaasss, b’wana,” a voice replied over the radio in singsong English.
    “No insolence, Da’ana, or I’ll cut your heart out and feed it to those pagans.”
    The radio popped softly as the man at the other end of the transmission keyed his microphone, acknowledging the command from his boss.
    “Stay in the cockpit,” the Siberian ordered the pilot in Russian. “Keep the brake set and power on the props.”
    “What if one of the rebels backs into them?” the pilot asked.
    “Haven’t you heard? Stupidity is a capital crime.”
    He turned and growled orders into the cargo area, using serviceable Bulgarian. The Bulgarian loadmaster began undogging the wide double doors just in back of the cockpit.
    The Siberian grabbed an Israeli-made submachine gun from beneath the jump seat and headed back into the cargo area. He stood in the open doorway while the first truck arrived and backed into position, its tailgate lined up level with the floor of the plane’s cargo area.
    Two lean, bare-chested black Africans in tattered camouflage shorts sat in the back of the truck. Beneath their thin butts were burlap bags crammed full of cargo. One of the guards held a Kalashnikov casually in one hand. The other had a Russian-made sniper’s rifle slung over his shoulder.
    The Siberian switched frequencies, lifted the hand radio to his mouth, and spoke to the rebel commander in French. “I take off in twenty minutes. If you want your merchandise, work fast.”
    A second truck pulled up beside the first. A gang of sweating black laborers jumped down and mounted the first vehicle.Quickly they boosted heavy burlap bags into the cargo bay and started to scramble aboard the aircraft.
    The Siberian made sure they all got a good look at his Uzi. The laborers held out empty hands to show they were unarmed, then began moving the bags forward, stacking them against the bulkhead. When the first truck was empty, the Siberian kicked the bags loaded aboard the plane, found them full and heavy, and stepped aside. The laborers removed five of the twenty heavy wooden crates stowed in the rear of the cargo area and loaded them in the truck.
    Within three minutes, the first truck had been unloaded, reloaded, and was pulling out.
    The Siberian watched while the first truck drove away and a second backed into position. The two armed guards in cammie shorts stayed in position beside the new load while the laborers repeated their tasks.
    Smoking a cigarette, watching the surrounding land, the Siberian prowled back and forth in the cargo bay. The sun was well up over the horizon. The heat of equatorial Africa rose from the ground like an invisible shroud. White Eastern Europeans and black Africans alike sweated and exchanged cargoes without a hitch. No one was new to this game.
    As the fourth truck unloaded, the Bulgarian stopped a laborer and used a sheath knife to rip a hole in the heavy burlap bag the man carried. He pried a black stone out of the slit and held it up for the Siberian to inspect.
    “What you think? Is it coltan?” the Siberian asked in Bulgarian, one of his six languages.
    The loadmaster shrugged. “You tell me.”
    “It’s coltan.” He stubbed out his cigarette on the cargo floor and went to the doorway. “They know better than to shit on the Siberian.”
    Or on his Russian backers.
    Not to mention Joao Fouquette, who controlled much of South America’s arms trade.
    Like the legal world,