SYNOPSIS: DIAMOND RAIDERS
It’s 2008 and 20 years have passed since 5 year old Analise Van Rensberg watched her parents suffer at the hands of the Swakopmund Mining Corporation after the family stopped on a lonely Namibian road. Now she’s back, partly to seek revenge and partly to fund a better life, by taking from SMC what they prize most, their diamonds. She and her specialist team plan to attack SMC’s vulnerable off-shore dredger. This needs a lot of information and they send one of the team under cover into the complex to get the data they need. She nearly gets caught, but manages to get out without mis-hap. The piece-de-resistance is the special high speed boat, the SeaWitch which they pick up on return to Cape Town, reaching top speeds exceeding 120 knots. The team spends a little time in the area of the dredger and when the initial plan is thwarted by the arrival of a Namibian naval vessel, they make a high-speed test run to St Helena and on the way back they are nearly sunk by a storm and have to divert to Tristan Da Cunha. After eventually making it back safely to Condor Rock, the execute the carefully planned heist, boarding the dredger and disabling the crew. They remove around 10 million dollars worth of diamonds and escape in the SeaWitch, pursued by a gunbus helicopter, and then the SMC head of security Jock McKenzie in another helicopter, in a do or die attempt to stop them. A major setback occurs when they come to the realisation that St Helena doesn’t have an airport. In the mean time, not wanting to let go of precious diamonds and having failed to catch the SeaWitch, McKenzie recruits the world’s top crime busters, Commissioner Henri Petin-Leroux of Interpol, and Detective Chief Inspector Hugh Fraser of Scotland Yard’s Serious Crimes squad. Determined to get back the diamonds, McKenzie sends the two specialists after the gang. The pursuit is on and the gang has to back track to Namibia on the SS ST HELENA, a mailship, after creating a false trail by selling the SeaWitch to a Colombian drug baron. The whole escape nearly falls apart as Analise is almost arrested on boarding the mailship, but Kurt manages to twist it to their advantage and for three agonising days they are aboard the ship from which they have to get to Windhoek airport to fly out of the area. Corrupt border guards and customs officials nearly bring the escape to a sudden and final halt, only the quick thinking of Kurt saves them from a premature end to the caper. Hot on their tail, Petin-Leroux tries to ground the aircraft at Windhoek, but fails to convince the authorities. The team zig-zags through hair-raising moments, remaining only one step ahead of Petin-Leroux until they finally reach a secure island in the Maldives from which it is planned there will be a slow and periodical disposal of the diamonds. Petin-Leroux also arrives in the Maldives and sets himself up for a long and patient vigil. Not happy with negative results, Jock McKenzie, afraid for his own job at SMC, hires and despatches a specialist diamond cutter to the Maldives in an attempt to catch the gang, he books into a hotel and waits for someone to contact him about cutting diamonds…..
This is a 140,000 word thriller.