Dirty Diamonds Of Boko Haram Part 1 by Eze Eke Read Free Book Online Page A

had nerves of steel, but he was helpless against the nightmares,
the headaches, the constant anger and shortness of temper. And it
was the last two that led to the incident which ended his career
completely.
    Alex remembered it all like it was only
yesterday but it all happened over six months ago.
    Feeling the mixed emotions return, Alex
inwardly cautioned himself yet again as he had done so many times
since, that he had to let go of the past and move on with his life
even as it was.
    It had turned out that all he needed, after
all, was just a prolonged period of rest and peace for both his
mind and body to pull itself together again. Six months of no war
had worked the miracle. His health was fine again and even the
nightmares had gone away.
    Yes, his health and his mind were completely
restored to normal and that was the good twist to things but the
bad part was that he was almost broke.
    As an Army officer, he had spent most of his
income in taking care of his poor family. His father had died less
than two years ago after a prolonged illness that had eaten up
money like dry ground soaked up water, nonetheless, his mother and
two siblings still had to be taken care of too. His younger brother
was now in the university with four more years to go while his
younger sister had recently gotten married and it had fallen to him
to set up her semi-educated husband as a taxi driver. They all
lived happily in the nice house he had built back east in hometown
of Imo state, and they still thought he was an Army officer, still
believe the money was there. Alex wasn’t about to enlighten them
out anytime soon, no, that bit of information alone would kill his
ailing mother who had been so proud of him from the very first day
he came home wearing a military uniform and people began to fear
him. He still sent them money regularly now as best as he could but
the burden was beginning to tell greatly, the income of an ordinary
warehouse foreman was by no means the same as that of an officer in
the military. He was, of course, planning to get another job but it
was so hard in this terrible economy even with his university
degree which was why he had accepted this job as foreman in the
first place.
    Alex though long and hard. At a point his
eyes went to the wall clock and he saw that it was past eleven
o’clock. He got to his feet, turned off all the lights and
appliances to save some money on electricity bills, them went into
his bedroom to sleep. Tomorrow would be a very busy day at the
warehouse and he would need to get there early, he was already
tired for today as it was.
     
     
     
    *******

CHAPTER THREE
    The huge warehouse and its large compound
were a hive of activities that Friday.
    Twenty-four workers labored in the
mid-afternoon heat, offloading goods from two giant shipping
containers on trailers, parked within the compound. There were two,
three men in each container, bringing the cartons of goods from
deep inside to the open rear end where other men took them, two big
cartons per person, carrying them on their hands and shoulders into
the huge warehouse where other men worked hard, piling them up
systematically to the high roof.
    A separate team of workers also labored,
carrying cartons of other goods from another section of the
warehouse out into the compound where more men worked, piled the
goods directly into big heavy duty trucks or arranging them in
groups for the customers buying in minor wholesale quantities.
    Alex was the Foreman in charge of the work
teams, an enforcer, the guy who kicked ass to make sure a good work
pace was maintained all around. He was also in charge of all
shipments to the warehouse. Once a container arrived from the Apapa
ports, the warehouse manager would sign off on it and it then
became his responsibility to offload and transfer the contents of
that container into the warehouse using his workforce. Containers
of goods from Asia, the UK, Europe and the United States arrived at
the warehouse at a