Ghost Watch

Animals

I smashed into something hard, which gave way beneath me. Sudden cold made me want to gag for breath, and my nose and throat filled with water as the back of my neck ploughed into the rock bottom of the lake floor. I fought the panic brought on by cold and disorientation and stopped moving until natural buoyancy told me which way was up. Turning, my feet found the rocks and I pushed off, lungs burning as two torpedoes shot into the water beside me, dragging me down again.

Thrusting off the bottom a second time, I came to the surface choking and coughing, and Cassidy bobbed up beside me with Boink’s head cradled in the crook of his arm, rescue-style. I reached down to my ankle, untangled the rope. I coughed and snorted the cold water out of my nostrils. ‘You need help?’ I asked Cassidy as he struck out for the bank, shimmering a ghostly white in the moonlight.

‘I got this,’ he said. ‘Look for the others.’

I scoped the surface of the lake. Lucky random shots fired from the ridge speared into the water here and there, pulling up small gray geysers edged with phosphorescence. I hoped Uncle Sugar hadn’t sweetened the deal with Makenga by handing out night vision scopes to his people.

My feet felt the gently sloping bottom. Pebbles gave way to a soft ooze. I waded in as close to the water’s edge as I could, then pulled myself up onto the bank, the mud sucking and gurgling at my hands, knees and feet. On the shore, several meters beyond the mud, I could dimly make out tall elephant grass. All except Cassidy and Boink had dragged themselves out of the water and onto the bank and were lying there, exhausted. I let myself fall beside the backpacks, the rifles and submachine guns still lashed to them.

‘What have we got?’ I asked no one in particular.

‘So far, bruised ribs, one mild ankle sprain,’ said West close by, lying on his back. ‘Could’ve been worse. You?’

I was sore all over but then, who wasn’t? ‘Fine,’ I said.

‘The place went nuts when they found our handiwork in the HQ,’ said Rutherford behind me, also lying on his back. ‘A couple of guys stumbled onto us. One of them got away and we had to leave in a hurry.’

‘Marcel,’ said LeDuc, standing unsteadily, his feet sinking in the ooze. ‘He is gone.’

‘You jump with him?’ I asked.

‘Oui. He landed badly. Hit his head on a rock. He drowned.’

I felt a pang of guilt, but there was not much we could do about a dead guy and there were other priorities. I scoped the bank. Leila and Ayesha were flat on their backs, covered in mud, chests heaving with exhaustion and fright, but they seemed okay. Ryder was sitting between them, head between his knees.

‘Duke. All right?’ I asked him.

He managed a nod.

‘Who’s got the ankle sprain?’ I asked Rutherford.

‘Me. More of a rolled ankle. No big deal.’ There was a shrug in his tone.

The CNDP above us had given up firing blind into the blackness.

I heard splashing in the water. Cassidy was dragging Boink through the shallow water.

‘Need help here,’ the sergeant gasped.

Cassidy was a big man, but Boink was in a whole other league. West and I waded back in and hauled him up onto the bank while Rutherford and Duke went to Cassidy’s aid.

‘What happened up there?’ I asked.

‘I think that first ledge gave way under him,’ said West. ‘After that, I’m not sure, but dragging you along behind slowed him down. A tree growing out of the top of the cliff finally stopped him. You missed it and went over.’

‘How’s he doing?’ I could hear Boink’s teeth clacking together. He was shivering with cold.

‘He was conscious when the rest of us jumped,’ said Cassidy. ‘I think he went into the water in reasonable shape. Might have hit his head somewhere along the way.’

‘Thanks for cutting the rope,’ I said. ‘Perfect timing.’

‘Wasn’t cut, not by me anyway.’

I thought back to the moment. There’d been a lot of lead flying about. If a bullet had done the job, I’d been luckier than I thought.

‘Everyone make it?’ Cassidy asked.

‘We lost the prisoner,’ I told him.

‘Solves a problem then, doesn’t it?’

It did.

Boink, lying face up, looked like a beached Manitou in basketball gear. He groaned, his head moving from one side to the other. His eyes opened.

‘Yo,’ said Rutherford leaning over him. ‘Wasssuuup?’

Boink’s eyes moved between all of us, roving uncertainly.

They came into focus. ‘Fuck,’ he said. And then again, with meaning, ‘Fuck!’

Cassidy patted down Boink’s legs and arms. ‘No breaks,’ he reported.

‘What about his neck and spine?’ asked Rutherford.

‘Move your fingers,’ Cassidy told him.

Boink wiggled them.

‘Now your toes.’ Cassidy grabbed the end of his mud-encrusted Nikes. After a few uncertain seconds, he said, ‘Yep, got movement.’

‘Let’s get everyone to dry ground.’ I tapped Boink on the leg. ‘Can you get up?’

He gave it a go, groaning as he rolled onto his stomach before coming up on all fours. Cassidy and I took an arm each and helped him stand. Boink took a step and the mud sucked hard at his shoes, gurgling loudly. The guy faltered, and then regained his balance.

‘I’m over this shit, you know what I’m sayin’?’ he said, shaking his head.

Yeah, I knew. We wrestled him up the greasy bank and then onto the flatter ground up beyond the erosion. The elephant grass was thick and each blade of it had a sharp edge, but when flattened it provided a reasonably dry bed. We sat the big man down and went back for the others.

Five minutes later, everyone was higher and a little drier. Unless the troops up on the ridge cared to take the jump into the unknown like we did, which none of them seemed prepared to do, we were beyond their reach. Rutherford and West unpacked the gear, pulling out the packets of beef jerky. There wasn’t a lot to go around, but something was better than nothing.

‘We need sleep,’ said Cassidy. ‘I’ll take the first watch, and split the remaining time between West and Ryder. You get some sleep, Cooper. You look like shit.’

‘But at least you don’t smell like it anymore,’ said Rutherford.

‘Anyone got a watch?’ I asked.

West handed me my Seiko. ‘Found it in one of the rucksack pockets,’ he said.

It was just after eleven. ‘We’ll have to move before dawn. We don’t want anyone up there on the ridge getting lucky with a 97.’

Cassidy agreed, and then said quietly, ‘Done good, sir. We live to fight another day.’

Too tired to think of anything snappy, I just nodded and took one of the available ponchos. I lay down under it and sleep hit me like an angry circus animal.

In what seemed like a handful of seconds, I heard Rutherford’s singsong voice in my ear saying, ‘Wakey, wakey.’

Would he go away if I told him to? No. I opened an eyelid, seemingly the only muscle not bruised black and blue and cramped in place. I moved my tongue around my teeth, got a hint of my morning breath. The awful smell of the nose ooze from the hanging guy had taken up residence in my mouth. I needed a hot shower that lasted till the water ran out, two black coffees — extra strong — and maybe four toasted ham and cheese sandwiches. No, make that five. My bladder ached like it was full of cold acid. I opened the other eye and realized that I was spooning Boink, and that a body behind was spooning me, an arm over my waist, a hand on my chest. Leila’s. It was steamy under the poncho, and stank of river mud, wet body odor and stale farts.

I removed Leila’s hand and propped myself on one hand, disturbing the others still trying to sleep. Somehow I got to my feet and managed to step over bodies without leaving boot prints on anyone, and the dark masses wriggled together, closing the gap my departure had created.

I stopped to allow the contents of my bladder to kill a bush before following Rutherford over to where Cassidy, West and Ryder were quietly talking. It was four thirty-five.

‘Sleeping Beauty has riz,’ Rutherford said as I made my way over to them.

‘How’s your ankle?’ I asked him.

‘Better.’

‘Boss, found this in the mud,’ said West. ‘Yours, I think.’ He held the knife toward me, handle first. I told him thanks and sheathed it.

While I’d been catching somewhat less than forty winks, the crescent moon had climbed a little higher and was mooching around behind a thin screen of high cloud, providing enough light to see that all our weapons and other stores were laid out on a poncho over a flattened square of elephant grass. If all this stuff worked as the PLA intended, we really could give a platoon-sized force a good mauling. There was a change in the mood. Preparation was in the air. West was reassembling one of the QCWs after having cleaned and dried it, getting ready for something. I didn’t need an itinerary to know what, but I said, ‘We going somewhere?’

‘That’s up to you,’ said Cassidy.

‘Do we believe they’re still alive?’ I asked, sinking onto my haunches. No one had spoken out for some time on the possible state of our captured principals’ health, but the subject on my mind was obviously also on theirs.

‘We have to find out one way or the other, right?’ said West.

Twenny and Peanut had endured two nights in hell. And perhaps Fournier, too, assuming he was still alive. On the other side of the coin, they could all be dead. Staying was a big risk, but now we had additional weapons and ammo, I felt a little more confident about getting some answers. ‘Yeah, we do,’ I said finally.

West handed me the sniper rifle. ‘This one’s headed for recycling,’ he said.

‘What happened?’

He broke it down quickly and handed me the barrel.

‘It’s bent. Hit a rock on the way down.’

I held it up to catch the meager moonlight and sighted down the rifing. Sure enough, there was the slightest of bends, which turned it into scrap metal.

I handed the barrel back and he swung it underarm toward the lake and waited till I heard the splash.

‘Vin,’ Ryder called out in a hoarse whisper. ‘Jesus, sir — guys… come here.’

I managed to haul myself up to the standing position, every muscle in my body threatening to desert. I could dimly make out Ryder’s outline. He was motioning us over with some urgency.

‘Look,’ he said, when I got close enough, pointing at something on the ground. It was Leila. Ayesha was kneeling beside her and holding her hand, which was shaking. And then something lying across one of her legs shifted, a completely unnatural movement. I thought perhaps it was a fold of the poncho. It moved again. Shit, this was hardcore. My mind had trouble coming to grips with the picture sent from my eyes. A big motherfucker of a snake had eaten Leila’s boot with her foot still inside it, and had thrown its coils up around her calf and thigh and was trying to squeeze the living shit out of it. One of the coils slid inside another, tightening, causing Leila to gasp.

‘What up, yo?’ asked Boink with a groan, waking, rolling onto his back beside Leila and slapping at something on his arm.

LeDuc was still asleep.

‘What are we gonna do?’ Ryder asked.

‘Get it off me,’ Leila shouted suddenly, providing a suggestion. ‘Get it off!’

LeDuc woke with a start.

Of all people, why Leila? Why couldn’t this have happened to — well, yeah, Ryder, for example?

‘An African Rock Python,’ said West, crouching beside me as I examined it, not overly concerned. ‘I remember these guys from jungle training school. Adults grow to thirty feet. This one’s a teenager, probably only around ten feet.’

‘Only,’ I said.

‘Just get it fucking off!’ said Leila, hysterical.

‘This is going to make a nice handbag,’ he told her as he pulled his Ka-bar and chopped the blade down on the snake’s spine just behind its head with precisely enough force to sever it. The coils loosened immediately. The sergeant ran his knife blade around the snake’s head in one fluid motion, then, using both hands, pulled its thick body back, and the star’s boot was disgorged from the reptile’s gullet with a sucking sound. Next, the sergeant slit its mouth at the hinges of its jaw and peeled the head away from her calf, her skin and muscle shielded from the needle-sharp teeth by the leather of her high-cut boot. West passed the bloody head to me. It was heavy, meaty, and bigger than my hand.

‘Might need some help here,’ he told me.

I tossed the head over my shoulder into the elephant grass as West uncoiled its body from around Leila’s leg, and heaved the coils into my arms. The thing weighed a ton and its skin was dry and gave off a musky, gamey smell.

When the last coil was pulled free of her leg, Leila scrambled backward on her hands and feet into the unflattened elephant grass. Something big slithered in the grass behind her, which caused her to cry out and clamber forward onto one of the ponchos. She stopped there on her hands and knees, breathing heavily, and whispered, ‘Holy Mother of God…’

‘You’re okay, honey,’ said Ayesha, kneeling in front of her and cradling her face between her hands. ‘Everything’s all right.’

‘Can you feel your leg, ma’am?’ West asked.

‘It… it was numb,’ Leila said. ‘N… now I got pins and needles.’

‘Good. No permanent damage.’ West turned to me and said, ‘Let’s straighten this sucker out.’

The python turned out to be around thirteen feet in length.

‘She’s lucky we caught this thing when we did, before it got her all coiled up with its full length,’ West said as he slit its underside. ‘Gotta do this fast to stop the meat going off. There’ll be worms and bacteria in its gut,’ he explained as he cut. ‘So, you know what snake tastes like?’

‘Like ham and cheese, I heard,’ I said.

‘Since when?’ Cassidy asked.

‘Don’t spoil it for me.’

After he’d pulled out the viscera, West skinned the reptile before trimming a dozen large steaks off its flanks and throwing the remains of the carcass in the lake.

‘We can’t eat this raw,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to make us a fire.’

‘Risky,’ I said. A fire would telegraph our whereabouts to anyone within a quarter-mile radius.

‘Not here.’ West reassured me. ‘Later.’

‘How we gonna do that? Rub sticks together?’ asked Boink, who’d been standing behind West and observing him as he worked.

‘The easy way.’ West pulled a disposable cigarette lighter out of his pocket, cupped it, rolled his thumb over the wheel and sparked up a small flame. ‘Found this in one of the African’s packs. We’re gonna need fire to boil water, fill up the camelbacks.’

‘Cooper!’

It was Rutherford.

‘Look what just washed up.’

I went down to the water’s edge in time to see the Englishman dragging a body up onto the mud. It was Marcel’s. Rutherford flipped the corpse onto its back. The eyelids were half closed. As LeDuc suggested, he might have drowned, though the more likely cause of death was the hole bashed in the top of his skull through which his brains were falling out.

Leila, Ayesha and Boink kept to themselves and said little as we moved away from the lake in the thin pre-dawn light, a surly lethargy in the way they dragged their feet, heads down.

The main source feeding into the lake appeared to be an angry tumble of water hugging the base of the cliff. Keeping to its flank, we picked our way over smooth black and gray granite rocks, the forest occasionally overhanging in places.

We pulled up after half an hour’s walk when a bend in the watercourse took us out of the shadows and into sunlight. Overwatch was delegated to Ryder and Rutherford, who went to find good vantage points. The principals sat on rocks on the edge of the forest and passed around the last of the jerky while West worked on a fire. We were going to be leaning heavily on the sergeant’s survival skills here. Like most everyone, I’d done a jungle course once upon a time, but it was basic and general in nature. Almost all of my combat and survival experience had been gained in higher latitudes. From what I remembered of the files on my team, it was the same for Rutherford. Cassidy was a counter-insurgency expert. And Ryder’s instincts were restricted to surviving concrete jungles.

Having a cigarette lighter was a piece of luck, as there weren’t any dry sticks around, let alone Boy Scouts to rub them together. West overcame the problem of wet fuel by locating a variety of palm that had a high concentration of oil in its pith that caught fire easily and burned with a strong flame. Over this, he placed kindling shaved from the frond stems of another variety of palm. More substantial dry fuel was sourced from inside rotted trees that had recently toppled. Within forty minutes we had a fire going, python steaks grilling, the sun on our backs, and Aye-sha and Leila taking their clothes off to bathe. The day was looking up.

While the steaks cooked, I pulled LeDuc aside and got a few things off my chest. ‘The guy we had a chat with back at the ambush after we came down.’

‘The boy your principal killed?’

‘That’s the one. He told us that his patrol was looking for us, right?’

‘Oui…’

‘How did they know there was an “us” to look for?’

LeDuc frowned and then an answer appeared to dawn on him.

‘You are police, yes?’

‘So?’

‘Maybe you are looking for something that isn’t there, yes?’

‘Captain, coincidences are like little green men from Planet Nine — I don’t believe in either. You said the DRC was the size of Western Europe, right? So, coming down where we did, right in the middle of a battle… I’m thinking the chances of that would be like hitting a hole-in-one, blindfolded.’

‘You are saying that you believe our flight was sabotaged?’ said LeDuc, horrified. ‘That we crashed here because of some plan?’

Putting it together like that without any window dressing did make the notion sound implausible but, yeah, that’s what I was saying. ‘Yeah, maybe.’

He gave me a blank stare.

I wanted to go back over things. ‘You said there was a problem with the fuel. You also said that you checked it before we took off.’

‘Oui. It was checked.’

‘By you personally?’

‘Non. By Henri.’

‘Fournier.’

‘Oui. It was also his job to monitor our fuel load during flight. He switched the fuel from the exterior sponsons so that our main tanks were full and he did this just before the engine failures. Henri also made the Mayday call.’

‘The Mayday call that you got no response from?’

‘Oui.’

The Frenchman’s face under the dirt and blackened kerosene was suddenly haggard.

‘Baise-moi…’ he said under his breath.

‘Meaning?’

‘Fuck me.’

‘You’re not my type.’

‘I do not want to incriminate anyone without evidence.’

‘And I want to know why we’re up to our necks in elephant grass rather than heading home with a bunch of crumby posters autographed by our celebrities.’

‘It is possible that Fournier did not make the transmission at all,’ said LeDuc.

Shit. My bad feeling was baking into a real who, what and how scenario. ‘I heard something while I was half snoozing, just before the chopper’s engines failed. It woke me up. Someone said, “What was that?” ’

‘I am sorry?’ said LeDuc, puzzled.

‘“What was that?” I heard someone say that just before your engines failed.’

‘Perhaps it was said just at that moment.’

‘I’m pretty sure I heard it a handful of seconds before everything went into the toilet bowl. I think the voice I heard was Colonel Travis’s.’

‘I do not know why this is important.’

‘And I’d like to know why he said it. If everything was okay, why say, “What was that?” What made him say it?’

LeDuc peeled off one of his shrugs.

This was leading nowhere, so I let it go. Maybe I just had my timings mixed up. What it looked like, though, was that Fournier wanted us on the ground, and that the spot he’d chosen was pre-planned. He’d caused the Puma to crash, switching to tanks with contaminated fuel that would bring us down. The FARDC patrol had specifically come looking for us. How did they know there was an ‘us’ to look for? Had some arrangement been made with the DRC force before we took off from Cyangugu to capture us? And if I needed a motive for all this, one was close by. I glanced around until I saw it — Leila. She and Ayesha were now down to bras and panties — Leila’s, red lace; Ayesha’s, pink cotton. Ayesha was washing their clothes in the ravine while Leila stretched out on a boulder, the droplets of water on her honey-colored skin sparkling in the morning light. Her head was back as she drank in the warmth of the sun. She looked a million bucks — or, rather, many millions of bucks — and perhaps Fournier wanted a few of them channeled into his bank account. Add Twenny Fo’s net worth to the picture and there was plenty of motive — kidnapping and ransom. Crash landing a chopper was a hell of a risky strategy. Perhaps the lieutenant put in some extra hours of practice on the simulator before this mission to get it right.

‘Where are the fuel tanks in a Puma?’ I asked.

‘Why do you wish to know?’ LeDuc asked.

‘In case it comes up in Trivial Pursuit. Humor me.’

‘There are four main tanks. They are under the cargo floor. The spon-sons are exterior, located on the sides of the fuselage.’

I sucked some water from my camelback tube.

‘What do you want to do?’ LeDuc inquired. ‘Will you tell the others about this?’

‘I think so.’

‘When?’

‘After I’ve had a toasted ham and cheese sandwich,’ I said.

Right on cue, West called out in a hoarse whisper, ‘Come and get it!’

There was enough python to feed twice our number. Leila ate without complaint, which threw me a little. Ayesha and Boink likewise tucked into it as if they hadn’t eaten anything substantial for a couple of days, which, of course, they hadn’t.

I took a seat on a rock beside Boink.

‘You okay?’ I asked him.

He glanced at me sideways. ‘You hep me down the cliff. Thanks, man.’

‘All part of the service.’

He stuffed half a pound of snake in his mouth.

‘Where’d you get a name like Boink?’ I asked him.

‘From my folks. They look at me when I come into the world and said, “Fuck”, but they couldn’t put that on the birth certifcate, yo.’

He looked at me angrily. But then he grinned. ‘Messin’ wit choo, man. Got the name ’cause I bin known to fuck people so bad they don’ get up, you know what I’m saying?’

I’d seen the guy kill twice — with a pistol and with his bare hands, breaking a man’s neck, giving his head a twist like he was taking the lid off a jar of peanut butter. Yeah, I knew what he was saying. ‘Where’d you and Twenny meet?’

‘We wuz neighbors. His ol’ man worked corners selling drugs wit my ol’ man. But we didn’ like each other back then. Deryck, he wuz small and sick all the time with a real smart mout’, you know what I’m sayin’? So, his ol’ man pay me to protect him.’

‘You were his bodyguard when you were kids?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How’d he get to be…’ I wasn’t sure what Twenny was — icon, rock star, rapper, idealist, jerk. ‘How’d he get to be who he is?’

‘He won a competition at the mall when he wuz fifteen. A music exec was a judge. He gave Deryck a contract, and Deryck called hisself Twenny Fo, ’cause he love all the ghetto chic bullshit. Me, I stayed in the projects. Then, one day, Twenny, he got some death threats from a punk rival and a Hummer wit’ driver and half a dozen bitches turned up at my home. The driver, he tol’ me that the car and the girls were mine if I cared to sign on as Twenny’s head security man. I was nineteen, workin’ as some psycho drug boss’s lieutenant. Now I’m thirty. I own a block of apartments in Chicago, a cleaning bidness in San Francisco and a couple of bars in Miami.’ He turned to look at me again. ‘So, workin’ for Th’ Man like you do — what choo got?’

‘Job satisfaction,’ I said.

Boink shook his head with pity, put a snake rib in his mouth and sucked the meat off the bone.

‘There’s a story about Twenny braining his girlfriend with a Grammy,’ I said. ‘That true?’

The big man snorted. ‘The only thing I ever seen the boss hit is the bottle once or twice. That was some bitch who wanted her own music career. And Deryck’s manager and record company went along wit it ’cause they wanted him to be badass. The bitch got a record and Twenny got his reputation. Everyone got what they wanted.’

‘You didn’t approve.’

‘Don’t matter what I think. Is wad it is, yo. Suppose you wanna know ’bout the ’fair Leila said he had?’

I didn’t, but what the hell. ‘So what about it?’

‘Of course he did what she said he did, man. Choo seen that woman from Electric Girlfriend? Damn!’

I sure wasn’t in any position to throw stones.

‘It’s a law of nature.’

‘What is?’ I asked.

‘Like I say, behind every fine-looking woman is a man wanna get with some other piece o’ ass, you dig?’

‘I think it was Isaac Newton came up with that one.’

Boink grinned.

‘What about Peanut?’ I asked. ‘How does he fit into the picture?’

‘Peanut lived near Deryck in the projects, a couple doors down. Had no father, momma left him on his tenth birthday. Folks said she didn’t want no retard gettin’ in the way of things. He was living in the park, sleeping rough. Deryck took him in, like a brotha, you know what I’m sayin’? He takes care of him. Peanut, he’s autistic or somethin’. Goes to a special school ’n’ all.’

The more I knew about Twenny Fo, the more I felt I had him figured wrong.

‘Now, if y’all ’scuse me.’ Boink stood and went to the river to dispose of the bones while I stayed where I was, finished my ration and contemplated the halo Boink had just placed over Twenny Fo’s head. Just maybe the guy deserved better than he was going to get, strung up in a tree, waiting to die. And, of course, there was Peanut. He deserved the death coming his way even less.

Rutherford took breakfast to Cassidy and Ryder while West wrapped the leftovers in what looked like banana leaves and placed them in one of the packs. Job done, he walked over to the ravine to wash various items and came back a couple of minutes later.

‘’Scuse me, ma’am,’ he said, standing over Leila as she sat on a rock in her underwear. ‘Got something here for you, something to remember the Congo by when you get home.’ He rolled out a three-meter length of brown and green snakeskin on the rock beside her. ‘You’ll gonna get more than a handbag out of it. Maybe a skirt with matching shoes. I’ll keep it for you.’

The star wasn’t so sure, prodding the skin and wrinkling up her nose, but said thank you anyway. ‘You really think we’ll make it home?’

‘Yes, ma’am. No doubt in my mind.’ He rolled up the skin, tucked it under an arm and went off to douse the fire’s embers.

West sounded so convinced he almost convinced me. ‘So, feeling better now you’ve eaten the thing that ate you?’ I asked her.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Y’know, revenge is a dish best eaten grilled.’ I gestured at the steak on the leaf beside her.

She threw her head back either to get the sun on her face or to strike a pose, I wasn’t sure which, but I took a good long look anyway. Her red lace underwear was flashionably cut and expensive. Not too brief, but brief enough. There was a diamond in her belly button, and a couple of bars of music with notes and lyrics tattooed down her left side. ‘Give it to me.’ That was the song’s title. I knew that one. It was her breakout hit. Her breasts pushed into the cups with a perfection that suggested a surgeon’s handiwork. A pair of knee-high leather boots completed the package.

Ayesha arrived with a pile of clothes, all of which were wet. Leila gestured that she should just lay them on the rock beside her. Then, to me, she said, ‘We gonna be here long? Have I got time to dry these?’

‘They’ll dry quicker if you put them on,’ I said, barely able to believe what I was hearing myself say. I was sure no one else could believe it either. I could almost hear the booing from Rutherford and company.

She pushed her arms in the shirtsleeves. ‘I… I owe you an apology, don’t I? I’ve been a bitch from the get go, haven’t I?’

‘Nooo…’

‘Yes, I have. I know I have. Look, I want to thank you for what you did back there in the camp, when those men came for us. They were going to… you know.’

She examined her hands. They were badly cut all over from the elephant grass. One of them shook a little.

‘All part of the service,’ I said, repeating what I ’d told Boink, not knowing what else to say. ‘Ask Ryder to put something on those cuts.’

She flicked her hair to one side. ‘I’ve been looking back on everything that’s happened since we came down here and I know that if it wasn’t for you, I’d be dead. Or worse.’

I felt a blush coming on.

‘I also want to thank you for not taking me up on my… my offer the other night, when you brought Ayesha back.’ She rolled up the shirtsleeves. ‘On top of everything else, you’re also a gentleman.’

She might have taken the compliment back if she knew that I could recall at will the picture of her on her knees in front of me, pulling down the zipper on her jacket, the thrust of her breasts visible. As memories went, it was a good one, worth fling away for later retrieval, along with the one of her all wet and leaning back on this rock in her lace bra and panties and boots, stretched out like a poster on a teenager’s bedroom wall.

‘I wasn’t always like this,’ she continued.

I wondered what kind of ‘this’ she was referring to.

‘Life has become a little unreal for me over the last few years. People want a piece of me so bad they’ll do anything for me to get it. When you realize that you can manipulate people easily — that they want to be manipulated by you — it changes you. It changed me.’ She adjusted one of her bra straps. ‘I just wanted to say sorry for the way I been. I’m putting my faith in you, Cooper, to get us all out of here alive. I know you can do it.’

The dependent, trusting female. Was I getting softened up for something? She leaned forward and I felt the warmth of her lips on my cheek. Then she bent down to take her boots off so that she could put on her pants and, inside her open shirt, she threw a few glimpses of dark nipple my way. Lo and behold they were large, hard and erect. And before I knew it, there was a rush of blood to my own personal snake in the grass.

‘You’re not going to ask me about Twenny Fo, Peanut and Fournier?’ I asked, fighting back Little Coop’s desire to dive in headfirst.

She stood and put a hand on my shoulder to steady herself as she slipped a foot into the leg of her jeans.

‘I was talking to Duke. He said you lost someone close. That right?’

Hmm… Duke and I really were gonna have to share a few words.

‘When he told me, I felt I understood you.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘You were lost long before we came down here in this place. That’s true, isn’t it?’

And, just like that, the mood evaporated. I wanted to move, but I was trapped — hemmed in on one side by the forest, by the ravine on the other, and by her honey-colored, semi-undressed, lingeried-up body blocking the remaining escape road.

‘I’ll pay you one million dollars to lead us out of here right now,’ she said.

‘What?’ I asked her. I shouldn’t have been surprised. And at least we were back to more familiar ground, the one I’d already charted with her: the land of the selfish and self-obsessed star.

‘One million dollars,’ she repeated.

I put my pinky against the corner of my lips. ‘That much?’

‘Then give me a figure. Those men back there, they were going to rape Ayesha and me.’

The way she said it suggested that Ayesha hadn’t brought her employer in on her experiences at the FARDC HQ. ‘And what about your former boyfriend and his buddy? Is that all they’re worth to you? A measly million bucks?’

She smiled. ‘I said give me a figure. I’m open to negotiation.’

I just looked at her.

A note of uncertainly crept in when I didn’t jump at the offer. ‘I’ve thought about this. We don’t know what’s happened to Deryck and Peanut, do we? They could be dead.’

‘They could be alive.’

The note went up an octave and a hand went to the hip.

‘You’re going to put us all at risk, aren’t you?’

Well, well, back to the Leila I knew. The only risk she was concerned about was the one to herself. I folded my arms.

‘You were right, Cooper. I can see that now. Like you said, we’re all gonna die if we stay here,’ she continued.

I said nothing. She tried a different angle.

‘You’ve lost someone because you made bad decisions. Don’t make the same mistakes again and get us all killed. This place is…’ She looked around, hunting for the right word but couldn’t find it. She clenched her fists in frustration and made a sound through gritted teeth.

‘Get ready to leave,’ I said. In fact, I wanted to leave her behind, staked out on the forest floor for the ants. I pictured doing exactly that, and it helped.

‘What’s there to smile about?’ she asked.

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘And my offer?’

The woman was a case. I turned my back on her, giving her my answer, and went to the ravine. I bent down, took off my gloves, and splashed water on my face. I could have used a long hot shower with a scrubbing brush. Standing up, I caught first Ryder’s eye and then Cas sidy’s. I signaled ‘on me’, and walked over to West, who was doing what he could to eradicate the signs of our presence. I put the conversation with Leila out of my mind, and decided not to say anything for the moment about the chat I’d had with LeDuc about Fournier. While I had a set of circumstances and a theory that seemed to fit, I had no hard evidence. Among our group there was a belief that bad luck had brought us all to our present circumstances. It would be counterproductive to exchange the fckle finger of fate for suspicion and the mistrust that would come with it.

I made a beeline for Rutherford, who was parked on a boulder, sharpening one of our acquired machetes with a river stone.

‘So what are we doing?’ Cassidy asked as he approached with Ryder. ‘Cyangugu’s that way,’ he said with a nod up the hill, ‘and Goma’s in the opposite direction.’

‘And unfinished business lies somewhere in between,’ West said.

‘Damn straight,’ said Cassidy.

‘We’ve picked up a few more guns since we last put this on the table, but otherwise not a lot has changed,’ I said. ‘ To even out the odds, we’d need something that makes plenty of noise and causes a lot of fright.’

‘The mortar operated by the rebels was a US infantry M224 lightweight company mortar system,’ said West. ‘And they were firing M49A4 high-explosive rounds — a good all-round anti-personnel, anti-material shell. You meaning something like that?’

‘That’d do it,’ I said, ‘but I think we’ve stirred the rebels up a little too much to get anywhere near their armory.’

‘Interesting bit of kit to have,’ Rutherford commented. ‘Wonder where they got it?’

I’d wondered as much myself, and filed it away with the questions I had about those M16s with their ground-off numbers.

‘If you’re a buyer, you’ll find a seller,’ observed Rutherford.

‘FARDC had RPGs — not a bad alternative,’ said Ryder.

They were, and it was a nice to see the guy paying attention to something other than Ayesha.

‘We penetrated their flanks once,’ said West. ‘Who’s to say we couldn’t do it again?’

‘Around a hundred and eighty guys with guns,’ I said. ‘We were lucky. And there’s still the problem of getting everyone out once we go loud. That’s where something that made big holes in the ground would come in handy.’

Rutherford absently popped the mag in his M4 and checked it. ‘Sounds like one of your half plans is in the wind.’

‘Let’s move it,’ Cassidy suggested. ‘Our intel gets staler with every passing minute.’

Frankly, after two days it was growing mushrooms, but it seemed like we were emotionally committed at least to reconnoitering the FARDC positions to see whether there was anything left to rescue. For all we knew, by now it might all chopped up into handy-to-dispose-of lengths.