Page 8 of Disciplining Dana

Now it was Kurt’s turn to smile. “Damn.”

“Yep. She did it again.”

She. Dana. The person he was talking about.

For the third time in seven years—if what their boss had just said was true—Dana had hit the mother lode. All her research, all her intuition, all her dogged exploration was about to lead McKerr-Dennison—the company both she and Kurt worked for—onto another major and incredibly lucrative mineral find, same as the previous two. And the cost? Four months in some of the most primitive conditions they’d ever lived in, working a hundred-and-fifty-year-old mine believed long tapped out, eight thousand feet up on the front range of the Sierra de Córdoba, all while dodging roving bands of Revolución Federal rebels looking for ignorant gringos to squeeze. And if that hadn’t been enough, when things had looked unpromising where she and Kurt had first searched, Dana had gone off alone into the oldest mine in the area, despite Kurt imploring her not to. And what had happened? A cave-in had trapped her for the better part of two days, in which she’d suffered two broken ribs and a fractured tibia.

But she’d found it. Proved them all wrong. Discovered what gave every indication of being the single largest niobium deposit outside of Columbia, South America.

“Yeah, she did it again,” Kurt repeated softly.

“I detect reservation in your tone.”

Kurt sighed. “Can you imagine why, Gary?”

Gary leaned his lanky frame back in his chair. “As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I do.”

Kurt had known the man for the ten years he’d worked for McKerr-Dennison, and five years before that when Kurt had been a snot-nosed, wet-behind-the-ears geologist fresh out of college. He’d spent those five years gaining experience while Gary had kept in touch, eventually recruiting him to come over to the company they now both worked for. He’d done essentially the same thing with Dana, and three years later, it’d been Gary who’d assigned the two of them together.

“Two days trapped underground…” Kurt said grimly.

“Two broken ribs, a busted-up leg…” Gary added.

“But she did it again,” Kurt finished with no small amount of irony in his tone.

They shared a knowing look between them.

“There’s no one in our business who’ll deny Dana Aziz is one of the finest exploration geologists out there. I’ll go so far as to say in the twenty years I’ve been doing this, she’s the best I’ve ever worked with, especially in the rare earth minerals field. However?—”

“However,” Kurt intoned.

“She’s rash,” Gary went on. “She takes risks. Risks that her peers and colleagues”—he looked at Kurt significantly—“have consistently deemed excessive. There’s no denying she gets results; God knows the board and shareholders see it. All that being said, though…”

Kurt tilted his head. “I get the feeling there’s something more here than just another dressing-down about controlling her behavior in the field.”

Gary chuckled. “You’ve been with her for seven years now, right? Was that request ever a fair one?”

“Fair? No,” Kurt answered with a grin. “Necessary? Yes. Achievable?”

“Never,” Gary finished the statement.

“It’s not for lack of trying.” Kurt held up a hand.

“Oh, I know. Believe me, I know.” Gary tapped the top of his desk. “I have a stack of complaints from the first two years I partnered you guys together about you ‘interfering’ with her methods. They tapered off after that, but Dana’s never been one for not being vocal.”

“Tell me about it.”

The room went quiet as Gary turned to gaze out of his office’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Kurt turned the same direction; from twelve stories up, the skyline was a jumble of concrete and steel shimmering in the hazy smog of the late August sun.

“Well… you’re right about what you said earlier.” Gary turned back to face Kurt. “We do have something we need to talk about.”

“And that would be?”

Gary folded his hands together. “As I said before, the shareholders have certainly reaped the benefits of Dana’s efforts, challenges notwithstanding. And until this last assignment, the board has had nothing but praise for her, too, if somewhat tempered by their unease with her methods. Unfortunately, we’ve reached a breaking point.”

“What does that mean?”

“We’ve always tried to minimize, at least on paper, the severity of the chances Dana takes. The risk management team has expressed a multitude of concerns over the years, but they’ve played ball with us, and we’ve succeeded in avoiding anything more serious than administrative reprimands. But after this South American incident, the underwriters have been digging into things, and the reports coming back have gone from warnings to threats.”

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