Of Rhinos and Horns

1 Lazy Lady

Their escape from the pirates was the most dramatic event in Maurice’s and Ted’s lives. Matt’s handling of the battle was a lesson in preparation and in how to totally devastate your opponent. Only a few of the twenty some attack pirate boats disappeared in what seemed to be a crater created by the explosion of every boat.

Then the command ship attacked and once again it seemed that they were going to be captured by a ship armed with a deck cannon that put a shell on each side of the Lazy Lady.

Then Maurice watched as Matt pressed a button and the entire front end of the giant on coming ship blew up as if it had been hit by some unseen rocket.

She rejoiced when Matt asked Ted to hoist the main sail and the jib, and she felt the Lazy Lady come to life and seemingly leap forward in joy.

They sailed into Cape Town where Matt left them.

A short time after they docked Matt left them to return to the US.

She and Ted sailed the Lazy Lady out of Cape Town to continue on their around the world sailing tour. They sailed north along the coast of Africa. They stopped at almost every port for a day so that they could enjoy the various historic sites but mostly because it allowed them to enjoy the wide variety of dishes and did not have to cook or clean. This took them several months and then before entering the Med, they returned to the US to celebrate the births of grandchildren and spend a few days with the new children.

They were known to the family as the grandparents that sailed the world. Maurice accepted the title with pride and offered to pay the airfare for any family member that desired to join them on the Lazy Lady.

After being away for more than a month they returned to the Lazy Lady that they had come to considered home. Each time they returned they would talk about the time they were saved by Matt from being taken hostage by the Pirates of the coast of East Africa. They would laugh at the fact that they had never asked and now did not know his last name. They would have loved dearly to communicate with him and share the highlights of their journey.

They sailed into the Mediterranean and did a counter clockwise tour. They stopped in Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and when four months later they got to Alexandria, they once again flew back to the US to celebrate Thanksgiving.

After enjoying the family and all their grandchildren they decided to stay for Christmas. This allowed them to play Santa parents and spoil their brewed of grandchildren.

On their return they continued on and went to see Jerusalem where they spent more than a week visiting all the religious sites.

They then sailed to Beirut and from there sailed to Cyprus. They stopped briefly in Antalya, Turkey to rejuvenate and get the Lazy Lady refreshed.

Then it was on to Athens where they spent a week visiting all the historic sites that they had studied in high school and college.

Then up northward up eastern side of the Adriatic Sea with brief stops in several of sea ports. The longest stay was at the very northern part when they reached Venice. They toured Venice for a week and then sailed nonstop to Catania, Sicily before going on to Naples.

There they once again left the Lazy Lady while they flew home for several grandchildren’s graduations from high school and college. This was only a brief visit, and, on their return, they sailed to Fiumicino where they anchored for a week as they visited Rome. Their next stop was Livorno where they stopped so they could take a road trip to Florence.

The sailing continue for the rest of the year as the two visited Genoa, Nice, Marseille Barcelona and Valencia.

They left the Mediterranean and sailed north and stopped in Lisbon.

From there they sailed straight to Dublin where they stayed for more than a month to tour Ireland. It was during this period that they once again flew back to the states.

They continued their sailing for yet two more years and would spend time visiting many of the cities in the UK, spent a month in Amsterdam and then took a boat tour down the Rhine to Switzerland and back.

They chuckled when they lined the Lazy Lady with a row of potted flowers.

They waited until summer to sail into the Bering Sea and hit many of the ports like Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen.

Their last stop on the way back to the States was Edinburgh where they spent several weeks relaxing and touring the countryside.

Once they made New York they took another family break and flew back to LA to celebrate in Pasadena where the majority of the family now lived.

After a few weeks they flew back to the Lazy lady.

Once they returned to the Lazy Lady, it took them another five years to bring her through the Panama canal and up the coast of Baja California. They finally docked the Lazy Lady and arranged for her complete overhaul.

The Lazy Lady was taken out of the water and literally refurbished and restored to the point where she was once again like new. Her engine and the appliance were all replaced.

They then sailed on her for almost another ten years and then when they could no longer do so on their own. They arranged to once again refurbish the Lazy Lady.

It was during this last time of renewing the Lazy Lady that after checking with their sons, they decided that the person who had rescued them from the pirates off the coast of Africa should be the new owner of the yacht that he had saved from the pirates.

Maurice had looked ahead and every year for the last five years she had held a family goodbye party. She had done much of the baking and preparation for the first party but for the other four years had the party catered. These parties let everyone involved deal with the fact that there was an end point to everyone’s journey.

Shortly after, both went into Hospice care where they shared the same apartment for what they knew would be their final journey together. They had settled all their accounts and knew that they had shared a wonderous life together.

Their two sons who were now nearing their own retirement and their children who were now all grown adults themselves and who had children all stopped by to say their goodbyes.

Their wealth was significant but not exceedingly huge, most of their estate was in the business that they had passed on to their sons. However, there was still a sizeable amount that was in trust with specific instructions of how that was to be handled.

The biggest challenge that they had worked through was how to pass the Lazy Lady on to the one person who they agreed should be the one to inherit it.

They only knew him as Matt, so they put an advertisement in the personal section of several newspapers in major cities across the US that simply gave their names and the fact that they had been saved from being captured by pirates by someone sent to save them. They wanted to reward that person and needed to get in contact with him to make sure he accepted the ownership of the Lazy Lady.

They kept that Ad active for more than three years and were giving up hope when they received the call that they had waited for what to them seemed to be an eternity. They learned the name of the person they would pass the Lazy Lady to. It was less than a year later that they both took that name with them to eternity when within a month of each other they passed away.

The person who had contacted them was Ian’s handler. He had met with Maurice’s and Ted’s lawyer and had made all the legal arrangements for the transfer. Not a month later he was online with Ian letting him know of their passing and the fact that they had left him the Lazy Lady as a measure of their gratitude.

The contact with Ian had more to do with a problem requiring his special touch than about the yacht. It had to do with a high stakes kidnapping that needed to be resolved. It needed the special touch of the Problem-Solver.

Ian knew immediately that he would put the Lazy Lady to work as part of the solution that he had in mind.

2 Rise to Power

General Ingraditi was frustrated by the situation of the current Army Command. He controlled much of the country, but his two longtime nemesis seemed to currently have the upper hand. For years he had been hounded by General Mumbada and his longtime friend General Wesbow who controlled about forty percent of the country. The two were inseparable and were able to fend off his many attempts to derail them and take complete control of the army.

He was upset with the support they were given by a group of wealthy businessmen that had great influence with the general assembly. It was a delicate situation that he knew he would win in the near future when it came to head that very likely might be a bloody confrontation.

He had the loyalty of the larger part of the army but that only meant that he could defend the territory he currently controlled and keep his adversaries at bay.

He knew that the richest part of Nairobi was in the hands of General Mumbada and the part of the army that had his loyalty. As long as that was the case, he would have to put up with General Mumbada.

As General Ingraditi lamented, needing to put up with his adversary, General Mumbada, followed by his longtime friend, Vice General Wesbow walked slowly down the line of soldiers they were inspecting.

The last two soldiers were dressed in very expensive black suites that had been awarded to them for their superior service to the army. The general lightly brushed the thousand-dollar suits and congratulated each of the soldiers for their superior service and shook their hands. He was sure that his reward-based recognition was loved by his army. He knew that they were loyal to him more than the parts of the army controlled by his superior.

He and General Wesbow were friends since their childhood when they were in grade school. At that time Kenya was still in the control of Great Briton and was known as British East Africa. The two of them were disturbed to see the British and European farmers prospering by growing coffee and tea on the rich Kenyan land while the general population was struggling to make ends meet. The two came to despise the inequity of the situation and throughout their younger years they and their friends played games where they rid the country of foreigners and became the leaders who took Kenya to higher power in the world.

He and Lionel Wesbow remained friends as they grew older. They had parents that pushed them to do well in school and later to get into the Army. The two went to and graduated from a school similar to the US army’s West Point Academy.

He had the framed degree stating that Maurice Mumbada had graduated first in the class of 1976 proudly displayed on the wall of his office. He knew that Lionel had a similar degree that stated he had graduated second that he had hung in his office.

It was a time where the country’s many clans and forty some differing languages kept the various clans apart from each other. In 1963 after facing internal rebellion, the British relinquished control and the following year Kenya became an independent nation.

Kiswahili became the common language. That was the language that the two had grown up with. They were fluent in English which put them in a great position as they made their way up the army ranks.

In the following years they focused on what it took to get ahead and made sure that both were at the right place at the right time. They were both rewarded with the promotions that they sought.

There was always the one person to whom they were both junior to and who seemed to be promoted just ahead of the two of them.

The two now in controlled of most of the western part of the country and wide strip that extended down to the Indian Ocean.

General Ingraditi, who they supposedly reported to controlled the eastern and northern part of Kenya.

Their reporting relationship with Ingraditi was frosty but they made sure that it would not reach the point of direct confrontation.

The area they controlled included Nairobi that was several million people strong and the entire area they controlled included sixty percent of the population.

They recognized that their main strength was the support of a group of wealthy businessmen that were prospering by having them look the other way to their across the border self-serving business dealings.

General Ingraditi controlled more territory and had to interface with four boundary countries whereas he only dealt with the politics of dealing with two border countries.

They felt certain that they had enough power that they could take control of the entire country, but it would put them at risk of a battle between the men loyal to them and those loyal to General Ingraditi. It would entail an internal battle that would not be good for them or the country. It was clear to them that it might increase their ability to add to the billions to what they already had in their Swiss bank accounts.

They decided they were in a strong position and should continue to wait to make their upward move when the opportunity presented itself.

General Ingraditi gave them the idea of how to increase the cash flow to their bank accounts. He periodically kidnapped some important business man and then demanded a ransom. When the ransom was paid the business man was released. The timing of the kidnappings varied but they were far enough apart that the public attention span waned, and another kidnapping did not alarm the population.

They liked that idea, but they planned to do the same on a grander scale. The opportunity to do so presented itself a few weeks after they had agreed to the ransom idea.

The Society of Geographic Exploration contacted General Mumbada and asked for his support for a four-member film crew that they wanted to send into the country to document the condition of the black rhino population. They were seeking his support so that the team would be able to safely travel around the various parks to photograph the rhinos in their natural habitat.

He and General Wesbow immediately set into motion a plan to kidnap the team and then demand five million dollars for the release of each film crew member.

A few months later when the film team arrived, they were met by a specially assigned army squad that was assigned to take them to a holding location until the ransom was paid. The kidnapping was a nonevent. A black van met the team as they exited the airport with all their equipment.

The driver and his companion helped load all the equipment and suitcases into the van and then drove to a destination outside of Nairobi where the team was to be held.

Soon after, General Mumbada learned that there was a nasty interaction with the female team leader when she insisted, they be taken to their hotel. He was told that she had a bruise that covered her right cheek where she had been backhanded. He asked for the soldiers name who had hit the leader and he also sent word that the film crew was to be treated well. He had them separated and locked in two separate rooms of the barracks where they were being held.

He and Lionel discussed how they would handle the four when the ransom was paid.

He publicly announced the film crew’s abduction and said that the army was in pursuit of the kidnappers who were demanding a ransom of five million dollars per person for their safe release. He assured the news channels that the team would be found and rescued by his men.

General Ingraditi learned of the kidnapping as he listened to a news report. He was shocked by the amount of ransom that was being demanded. He was also sure that his two nemesis and strong competitors for control of the army were the ones behind the kidnapping.

He sent them a cryptic message stating, “it is not me so it must be something the two of you have cooked up. I am staying clear of it.”

He was not staying clear. He set forth a plan that brought his army units closer to Nairobi in preparation of arresting both General Mumbada and General Wesbow. It seemed that the two were getting greedy and that they would no doubt think about gaining more power as well as more money.

General Mumbada and Wesbow were glad to get the message and figured that they had clear sailing and would soon be able to send a significant amount of money to their Swiss bank accounts.

They were disappointed when they news from The Society of Geographic Exploration saying that the US would not allow the organization to meet the ransom demands. This worried them but they figured it was just the first step in the ransom demand dance. They agreed that they should reiterate the ransom demand that threatened harm to the film crew if the demand was not met.

A few days later they received a reply to the ransom demand that asked how the payment should be delivered. The message was signed, Matthew Parker ransom settlement specialist.

They figured that the company had hired an outsider to deliver the ransom money.

They had never heard of a “ransom settlement specialist” but they were pleased that the ransom was to be paid. They hoped that this specialist would arrive at the airport with the ransom money where their men would quickly put this would be specialist out of business when they took control of the ransom money.

They organized a team to seize the ransom money. They had come to the conclusion that eliminating the film crew would make it easier for them to close out the kidnapping situation.

It was clear to them that their kidnapping case had grown roots and would yield the millions that they had hoped. They congratulated each other on having come up with such a lucrative idea.

They decided that a celebration outing was appropriate and visited the most expensive restaurant in Nairobi and celebrated their success.