Vince Deaver and his men had been willing to massacre an entire village of women and children for them.

No wonder they called them blood diamonds.

It was a miracle that no blood oozed from the stones. But no—they were as neutral as they were inert—just rocks, for fuck’s sake. Just rocks.

Jack looked down at the mound people were willing to kill and to die for and made a small noise of disgust before putting them back in the bag. Twenty million dollars of pain and suffering and misery. Murder, rape, dismemberment—that’s what the diamonds represented.

He’d taken them simply because there was no one left in the village alive to give them to, and he’d have died himself rather than let Deaver have them.

Jack put the bag behind the money, the Glock and the ammo, then carefully screwed the grate back onto its plate, thinking how crazy people were to be willing to kill and die for a bag full of rocks.

He rose and made his way swiftly down two flights of stairs toward something warm and living and beautiful. Something definitely worth killing or dying for.

Encampment of the United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone near Obuja, Sierra Leone

Christmas Eve

4:58 P.M.

His name was Axel and he was Vince Deaver’s new best friend.

Axel was Finnish, loved computers, American jazz, missed his fiancée Maja back in Helsinki and hated Africa and everything connected to it. Best of all, he was blond, five-ten, weighed about 170 pounds, just like me, Deaver thought in satisfaction.

Axel always stopped by to see him in the small detention center of the UNOMSIL when he got off guard duty at 1700 hours. At 1703, Deaver could count on good old Axel stopping by, regular as clockwork.

The detention center itself was a joke. Deaver could have escaped at any time over the past three days. His grandmother could have escaped using her dentures and a hairpin. The UN peacekeeping force was not in the prisoner business, and it showed.

Deaver needed more than a way to break out of the detention center—he needed to get out of the encampment and out of Sierra Leone if he wanted his diamonds back. Good old Axel was his ticket out.

It was dark inside the detention center. Electricity was intermittent, the air-conditioning worked sporadically, so the shutters and the door were kept closed against the blistering heat of the tropical sun, intense even in December.

Deaver made sure the lights were turned off during the day, even when the shutters kept the room in semidarkness. Axel had to be used to a darkened room.

Deaver checked his watch. The luminescent dial showed 1700 hours, on the dot.

Axel would be punctual. Deaver had studied him the way an entomologist studied bugs. He knew how Axel reacted to stimuli, and he had his plan worked out down to the finest detail. The Army had trained him well.

17:01.

Deaver jumped up and down to make sure nothing rattled or clinked and patted himself down. There would be a moment when he would have to move fast and silently. More than one soldier had died because a knife clinked against a belt buckle and gave away a position.

He checked his pockets, his boots and flexed his arms. He’d been cooped up for three days now and his muscles were stiff. He was used to hard workouts, and confinement didn’t suit him.

Neither did the thought of being extradited back home for a trial for mass murder.

When Deaver finally caught up with Jack Prescott, he was not only going to get his diamonds back but he’d make the fucker very very sorry he’d interfered, before blasting his fucking head off. Deaver had spent a couple of pleasant hours last night imagining Jack tied to a chair while he used his knife.

Deaver was very good with his knife.

17:02.

He checked his plan again, ran through it for the thousandth time. About 90 percent of good soldiering was planning and preparation. The plan was good, and he was prepared.

He turned his back to the door.

17:03.

The door opened wide, and Axel walked in, good Finnish soldier from his head to his toes. His fatigues were clean and freshly pressed. The baby blue UN helmet that was such an attraction, practically a beacon, to snipers the world over firmly on his head, boots spit-shined.

“Hello, Mr. Deaver,” Axel said. His English was excellent. “How are you today?”

The light from the open door filled the room. Since his back was to the door, Deaver’s eyes were able to accommodate quickly to the light pouring into the room from behind his back. Going from darkness to tropical light could blind a man for minutes.

“Hi, Axel. Close that door, will you?”

“Certainly.” Deaver heard the snick of the door closing and turned around. By now, Axel had become used to what he considered Deaver’s fetish for darkness.

Floor-to-ceiling bars divided the shack in half. Deaver considered his cell a personal affront. The bars were loosely planted in the wooden planks and fixed by screws to the stucco ceiling. The lock was a joke—it would fall apart if you blew on it too hard. How the fuck did they think a cell like that could hold a man like him?

The problem wasn’t getting out, the problem was what to do afterwards. They were about twenty miles from the Sele River. Even if he could make it through the jungle to the river, he’d need to steal a boat and motor his way down to Freetown. It would take three days, at least. Everyone knew there was only one place to escape to, and that was Freetown.

By the time he made it to the capital, Freetown and, worse, Lungi Airport would be crawling with UN troops with his photograph in their hands, itching to capture the American renegade.

So he needed to make sure no one would be looking for him. He needed a body that looked like Vincent Deaver they could bury.

Axel was sympathetic to him, he’d made that clear. Axel loved America and his tidy Finnish soul had been horrified at what he’d seen in his two-year tour of duty in central Africa. “Hell on earth,” he called it.

Axel had made it plain more than once that he thought it a ridiculous waste of time and effort to keep Deaver in detention.

He was right, of course. This part of the world had been on a rampage for fifteen years, tribe against tribe, with brutally ferocious massacres on a daily basis. On the Revolutionary Army scale, what Deaver’d done was the equivalent of a slap in the face.

So Axel was definitely on his side. Deaver had even thought about bribing him for travel documents. Might have worked, but he needed something else from Axel, besides documents.

His body.

Pity, because he liked the guy. But what can you do?

“Merry Christmas, Axel.” Axel’s head swiveled to follow the source of his voice. Deaver sat on his cot, legs spread, forearms on knees, hands clasped. Utterly, totally nonthreatening.

Axel’s eyes would slowly be adjusting to the dark shed after the bright tropical light outside.

Deaver’s body was a still statue slowly taking shape, like a film in the developing pan.

“Merry Christmas, Vince. I came to say good-bye.” Axel walked toward Deaver and wrapped his hands around the bars.

Deaver let his gusty sigh fill the room. He lifted his head. Axel would be able to make out his movements by now. “Man, oh man, I’m going to miss you. Miss our talks. I’m just happy you’ll be out of this shithole and with Maja.”

“Oh, yeah.” Predictably, Axel’s face creased in a smile at the mention of his girlfriend. Axel was slated to leave this afternoon for a two-month rotation back to Finland. He hadn’t even tried to hide how glad he’d be to get out of Africa and back to his computer, snow and Maja, probably in that order.

Axel pulled up a stool and pulled out a little magnetized travel chess set. They had spent the past three days playing through the bars. Deaver had been letting him win two games out of three.