Jack Ryan 8 - Debt of Honor Read Online Free PDF Page B

probably. Corp wore his Sunday best, a khaki shirt outside the whipcord trousers, with something supposed to be rank insignia on the epaulets, and boots that had been polished sometime in the last week. The sun was just under the horizon now. Darkness would fall quickly, and the thin atmosphere of the high desert made for lots of visible stars even now.
    The General was a gracious man, at least by his own lights. He walked over briskly, extending his hand. As he took it,
    
     Clark
    
     wondered what had become of the owner of the Mercedes. Most likely murdered along with the other members of the government. They'd died partly of incompetence, but mostly of barbarism, probably at the hands of the man whose firm and friendly hand he was now shaking.
    “Have you completed your survey?” Corp asked, surprising
    
     Clark
    
     again with his grammar.
    “Yes, sir, we have. May I show you?”
    “Certainly.” Corp followed him to the back of the Rover. Chavez pulled out a survey map and some satellite photos obtained from commercial sources.
    “This may be the biggest deposit since the one in
    
    
     Colorado
    
    
    , and the purity is surprising. Right here.”
    
     Clark
    
     extended a steel pointer and tapped it on the map.
    “Thirty kilometers from where we are sitting…”
    Clark
    
     smiled. “You know, as long as I've been in this business, it still surprises me how this happens. A couple of billion years ago, a huge bubble of the stuff must have just perked up from the center of the earth.” His lecture was lyrical. He'd had lots of practice, and it helped that
    
     Clark
    
     read books on geology for recreation, borrowing the nicer phrases for his “pitch.”
    “Anyway,” Ding, said, taking his cue a few minutes later, “the overburden is no problem at all, and we have the location fixed perfectly.”
    “How can you do that?” Corp asked. His country's maps were products of another and far more casual age.
    “With this, sir.” Ding handed it over.
    “What is it?” the General asked.
    “A GPS locator,” Chavez explained. “It's how we find our way around, sir. You just push that button there, the rubber one.”
    Corp did just that, then held the large, thin green-plastic box up and watched the readout. First it gave him the exact time, then started to make its fix, showing that it had lock with one, then three, and finally four orbiting Global Positioning System satellites. “Such an amazing device,” he said, though that wasn't the half of it. By pushing the button he had also sent out a radio signal. It was so easy to forget that they were scarcely a hundred miles from the
    
     Indian Ocean
    
    , and that beyond the visible horizon might be a ship with a flat deck. A largely empty deck at the moment, because the helicopters that lived there had lifted off an hour earlier and were now sitting at a secure site thirty-five miles to the south.
    Corp took one more look at the GPS locator before handing it back. “What is the rattle?” he asked as Ding took it.
    “
    
     Battery
    
     pack is loose, sir,” Chavez explained with a smile. It was their only handgun, and not a large one. The General ignored the irrelevancy and turned back to
    
     Clark
    
    .
    “How much?” he asked simply.
    “Well, determining the exact size of the deposit will require—”
    “Money, Mr. Clark.”
    “Anaconda is prepared to offer you fifty million dollars, sir. We'll pay that in four payments of twelve and a half million dollars, plus ten percent of the gross profit from the mining operations. The advance fee and the continuing income will be paid in U.S. dollars.”
    “More than that. I know what molybdenum is worth.” He'd checked a copy of The Financial Times on the way in.
    “But it will take two years, closer to three, probably, to commence operations. Then we have to determine the best way to get the ore to the coast. Probably truck, maybe a rail line if the deposit is as big as I think it is. Our up-front costs to