African Dragon Read Free Page B

white—she would definitely stand out in a room of African nationals. Her blondish-red hair was past the collar of her suit, and she had green eyes that smiled when she smiled. The men sat up straight when she entered.
    “Good morning, everyone,” she said, sounding wide-awake and confident. Evidently, she hadn’t been out getting hammered the night before. “Looks like this will be a series of ‘firsts’ for all of us. I have never worked with a team larger than three agents at once on a job, and you have never been fish farmers in Africa.”
    The group smiled, already liking her demeanor.
    “And which one of you is Jonathon Cohen?” she asked.
    Jon smiled and waved.
    “Mr. Davis tells me that you are familiar with fish to some extent and you are a navy diver. You will be picking three of your SEAL buddies that you want to do some diving with in Africa, and taking a crash course in African cichlids, the live fish exporting business, fish farming, fish diseases, and water conditions, etc.
    While the other members of the team work on other parts of the assignment, your job will be to have a small core of people that actually know the business. There are not a lot of folks in the area working the lake anymore because of the security issues in the DRC. Most of the fish are collected on the Tanzanian side of the lake these days.
    That means that a group this large is going to be very visible on the west side of Lake Tanganyika. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You will have lots of local fishermen swarming to you, offering to sell you fish. As you get to know some of the locals and they start to trust you, you may have opportunities to pick up local assets, and at the very least catch the local rumors. But—these fishermen have worked the lake for decades with foreigners in the tropical fish trade. If Jon and a few others can’t convince them you know what you are doing, they’ll see it right away. You’ll be happy to know that we have an expert on all of this coming to see you this afternoon. He will do a presentation to the entire group so you all have some exposure to the information, and then Jon and his group will spend a few days learning greater details of the fish farming industry out there. Any questions so far?”
    Everyone sat quietly, a few of the SEALs wondering if Jon was going to pick them to learn “Fish 101.” Pete McCoy figured he was a “given,” having been Jon’s dive buddy for most of the last three years.
    Deirdre continued with her briefing. “Okay, so Jon and company will get the detailed crash course on the fish industry and the rest of you will start learning local geography. Bringing in gear won’t be much of a problem. The last guy there had used fish finders, laptops, and sonar, so you won’t look funny bringing in equipment, although what the box looks like and what it does may be slightly different. Weapons will be slightly trickier. Even though Luano Airport in Lubumbashi is pretty lax about security, you still can’t walk into their country with rifles and machine guns. Our shop on three (the ‘gadget room’ on the third floor) is working on that for you. They are making SCUBA equipment crates that can hold your disassembled weapons. There won’t be much equipment on site that any of you would want to dive with anyway, so bringing your own SCUBA gear won’t raise suspicion.”
    Deirdre turned on a laptop that projected a map of the Democratic Republic of Congo on the wall. “You might want to take notes,” she smiled. “Most places in Africa have two or three names, depending on who is running the government that day. The DRC was formerly Zaire. City names have mostly been renamed since the formation of the new DRC government.”
    Jon Cohen, because of his background with African cichlids was confused, and raised his hand. “I thought the Democratic Republic of Congo used to be called the Belgian Congo?”
    Deirdre smiled. “I told you this would get confusing.