Ghost Watch

Flee

The RPG round skipped off the road into the forest, angled away slightly by a rut, and detonated against a tree close by. Shrapnel tore through our tarpaulin at about head height and I heard a couple of pieces ping against our metalwork. That was too close. Women screamed and one of them started picking feverishly at her leg. I crawled back to her on my hands and knees, across the human carpet, but she managed to get hold of whatever the problem was before I reached her, and flicked it off her skin. It looked to have been a twisted chunk of the warhead’s green casing, and it smoked as it arced through the air and got caught with a metallic clink between the tarpaulin and the side of the truck.

A second warhead flew overhead and exploded harmlessly out of sight deep in the forest far ahead. It was Marcus who’d warned us that this Lissouba asshole was a persistent fuck. The fact that he wasn’t letting us leave without a fight was going to make things difficult. The truck in pursuit showed itself two hundred meters behind us and it was slowly gaining ground. Soon enough the range would become point blank. I was out of grenades. The M4 slung over my good shoulder was all I had. Rutherford was armed, as were Ryder and Boink. We could maybe pick off the driver, but we couldn’t afford an exchange of small arms fire with the enemy, especially when they had RPGs.

‘We need that mortar,’ Rutherford yelled. Good thinking, only there was a slight problem — the barrel was pointed the wrong way and doing a U-turn wasn’t possible. The long tunnel had come to an end and our truck began laboring up a steep incline, which included some tight corners.

‘Find out where the turnoff to the river is,’ I shouted back. ‘Get what you can out of Francis and his wife about Bayutu and any other settlements nearby. Francis mentioned something about Médecins Sans Frontières. They’re operating in the area. And while you’re at it, see if someone else here can drive this rig.’

Rutherford signed WILCO as I reached across to get a hand on the tarpaulin framework.

‘And when we stop,’ I told him, looking back, ‘jump off. We’ve got a job to do.’

Using the framework to keep my balance, I walked down toward the front cabin along the top of the metal sides of the load tray, the only space not taken by Francis’s people. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Leila still with the baby in her arms and she was rocking it back and forth, totally engrossed, having finally met her match in the needy department. Peanut was teaching a girl of around six to play scissors paper rock, and losing, apparently unperturbed by our current situation — maybe he was completely unaware of it. Twenny was also engaged with Francis’s people, re-tying a bandage around a man’s head, assisted by Boink. I couldn’t see Ryder or Ayesha tucked away in the opposite corner behind the cabin, as the press of bodies obscured them. I suspected the crack Ryder had received on the head was worse than he let on, but there was not a lot anyone could do about it except provide some comfort, and Ayesha had put her hand up for that.

When I got to a point behind the cabin, I reached for my Ka-bar and made a long vertical slit in the tarpaulin. A moment later I was through it, out in the open air and being swatted by the trees and bushes trying to reclaim the road. We crested the hill and the Dong quickly picked up speed heading down the other side. I ducked under a loop of liana that would have taken my head off if I hadn’t seen it at the last second, pulled open the passenger door and leaped inside.

‘Fuck, boss!’ yelled West, taken by surprise, his M9 pointed at my ribs. ‘You scared the living crap out of me.’ He lowered it. ‘What’s up?’

‘Stopped by to borrow a cup of sugar, but I’ll settle for the mortar if you don’t have any.’

‘What’s happening back there?’

‘The folks on our tail are two hundred meters behind and closing. We need to give them something to think about. What have we got left?’

West tapped the container on the floorboards and said, ‘Two frag grenades, lots of smoke. Eleven mags for the M4s between us. And the two M49s.’

In other words, we were down to the dregs.

‘Let me off then give me another hundred meters of clearance and pull over. Show me how to fuse the 49s.’

West hesitated. ‘If you miss, you risk getting isolated and cut off. I’m the one who knows how to use it. You should stay on the truck.’

I didn’t see it the same way. I’d made the deal with Francis for his assistance, which included the burden of getting his people to safety. If any dick was going to get hung out in this shooting gallery, it was going to be mine. ‘We can draw straws to see who’ll be stupid next time,’ I told him.

West was set to continue the discussion, but the urgency he saw in my face changed his mind. So he hurriedly produced the remaining two rounds of HE from a pouch on the floorboards and fused one of them while I looked on.

‘Make sure the base plate has a secure bed,’ he said. ‘And keep the barrel as steady as you can. The further the distance to target, the more chance you have of missing it. This round has a lethal radius of around twenty-five meters. So, while close is easier to hit, too close and it’ll be raining Vin Cooper.’

An RPG round streaked through the bush and boomed against a tree trunk fifty meters ahead and well wide — another random shot. Smoking shards of hot metal clipped off several branches that crashed into the scrub below.

Cassidy brought the truck to a sliding halt and screams of fright could be heard behind us.

West looped the pack strap containing the spare round over my head and neck, and held the mortar barrel toward me.

‘Fuck them up the ass, Major,’ Cassidy said.

‘You Army guys…’ I said as I opened the door and dropped onto the ground through the leaves of something fleshy and wet. Spines jagged into my skin the length of my arm and broke off.

‘Son of a bitch,’ I cursed as the passenger door slammed shut. There were pinpricks of blood up and down my arm. West threw me a wave as the Dong accelerated down the hill, the African faces floating in the darkness under the tarpaulin. Rutherford was standing on the opposite side of the road. Scoping the area, I found what I was looking for almost instantly — a large tree with a broad root system close to the road, with plenty of leafy cover to keep us well hidden. The crest was maybe seventy-five meters back up the hill to my left. Our DF had already disappeared around a slight bend fifty meters to my right.

‘They’re close,’ said Rutherford, the enemy vehicle’s engine laboring noisily just behind the crest.

I ran five meters to the tree and jammed the mortar’s base plate against a smooth buttress of roots.

‘Hold the barrel up,’ I told the Scot.

‘Got it,’ he said.

I took the round from the pouch, checked that it was the correct one, and double-checked that it was fused for an impact strike. Satisfied, I cocked the trigger then loaded the round, fins first, down the business end of the barrel and let it drop, turning my face away at the last instant just in case the round decided to launch anyway. It didn’t.

‘Aim at the road around ten meters beneath the crest of the hill,’ I told Rutherford. ‘If we screw it up and they stay nice and still for us, we’ve got a second chance,’ I added, patting the backup round in the pouch as the truck lurched over the crest, blowing clouds of smoke. A man hung out the passenger door with an RPG. Several more soldiers rested their RPGs and assault rifles on the roof of the cab, the tarpaulin having been removed from the framework over the load area. They had a lot of firepower and were obviously keen to use it.

‘On a count of three,’ I said, grasping the mortar’s trigger close to the bottom end of the barrel. ‘Three, two, one…’

I squeezed the trigger and finched involuntarily as the barrel jumped with a loud bang. Shards of hot material blew back on us as the shell flew from the muzzle. I glanced up in time to see the round skip off the road just under the vehicle’s front axle. A massive boom followed and the back of the truck lifted high off the road as if held there by a giant hand. The radiator dug into the road and the vehicle teetered there almost vertical as it slid forward, carried by its own momentum, pushing a wave of mud. The men standing in the bed area were catapulted over the front cabin. They landed on the road and were almost instantly run over by the truck sliding along on its nose. And all of it was heading straight for Rutherford and me. We dived for cover as the Dong ploughed off the road and smashed against the tree shielding us with a sickening crunch of metal against unyielding hardwood. rifles, grenade launchers, ammunition and men were thrown high into the air and came down all around us, crashing through the bush. A man who landed quite close screamed as he came down. An emphatic meeting with the earth silenced him briefly before he started groaning.

I looked at Rutherford. Both of us had come through okay but the mortar barrel wasn’t so lucky, having been crushed beneath a couple of tons of wrecked Dong on the other side of the tree.

A few feet away from Rutherford, one of Lissouba’s men reached slowly, painfully, for the rifle beside him. Rutherford stood, kicked it beyond his reach, turned the man over and saw that the left side of his face was completely crushed inward from eyebrow to chin.

‘Persistent fucking sods,’ he observed, kneeling over the man.

I made my way to the road and waited for Rutherford. The forest was silent but for one horribly familiar sound.

‘Do you hear that?’ I asked him.

‘Hear what?’ He shook his head. ‘Wait…’ he said, changing his mind.

The sound was drifting in and out.

‘Jesus — more fucking trucks,’ Rutherford muttered.

They were a little way off, maybe just starting to climb the hill on the far side of the crest. I turned and ran down the road, the Brit beside me. Life was starting to get complicated. FARDC was chasing us, not Francis’s people. But they were going to become collateral damage in the crossfire. We were going to have to part company with them for their own safety.

‘We have to ditch the vehicle,’ I said as I ran. ‘They’re going to keep following it. Can Francis be moved?’

‘If we make him a stretcher.’

‘Where’s the turnoff to the river?’

‘Patrice said there was a fork in the road near the bottom of this hill.’

‘Who’s Patrice?’

‘Francis’s old lady.’

We ran through the bend and saw our truck stopped, West and Cassidy standing beside it, keeping watch.

‘Get our principals ready to leave,’ I told Rutherford. ‘We’re going our separate ways at that fork in the road.’

I ran to Cassidy and West, signaling frantically at them to get back in the truck, but they weren’t urgent enough about it so I ran past them to the driver’s side and jumped in behind the wheel. I had the thing in gear and rolling before Cassidy and West had both feet on the running board.

‘What’s going on?’ Cassidy demanded as he climbed in through the passenger door, West behind him.

‘There’s more company on the way — change of plan,’ I said.

The truck was heavy with all the people on board, the acceleration sluggish and the engine more reluctant than I remembered.

‘Watch for a fork in the road,’ I said.

We rounded a corner and the strip of mud beneath our wheels divided in two, just like Patrice said it would, the fork heading off to the right disappearing almost completely into thick bush. I stamped on the brakes and heard muffled screams coming from the cargo area behind us.

‘C’mon,’ I said to Cassidy and West, the brakes protesting with a loud moan. ‘We’re outta here.’

I grabbed the ammo container on the floorboards by its handle, hauled it out and jogged with it across my chest to the back of the truck. I arrived at the tailgate in time to hear Leila say, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ The infant in her lap began screaming. ‘Now see what you’ve done? I just got her off to sleep.’

We had no time for this. ‘You want the kid to live, right?’ I called out to her.

She stared at me, her eyes hot and defiant but her body language nervous.

‘Boink, pick her up and carry her,’ I told him.

The big man looked at me and then at Twenny.

‘Yo!’ I yelled at him. ‘Now!’

He took a step toward her

‘There’s no need for that,’ she said, handing the baby to its mother and getting to her feet.

The truck was full of uncertain people.

‘Rutherford, explain to Francis’s old lady that everyone has to get off the truck immediately. Tell them to stick to the forest and stay away from the road. See if you can find out where that Médecins Sans Fron-tières outfit is.’

‘Patrice told me that already: it’s an hour’s walk from here.’

‘And the river?’

‘About an hour and a half in the opposite direction. You still want that driver?’

‘No,’ I said.

I watched Ayesha help Ryder to his feet. He nearly passed out and slumped heavily against her before pulling himself up. Twenny came up to me as our Congolese passengers began to get the idea that this bus was going on without them.

‘I’ve heard both sides of the story, Cooper — Leila’s and Boink’s,’ he said. ‘I think I had things round the wrong way, you feel me? Anyway, Boink set me straight. Anythin’ choo need, choo lemme know…’

‘Then help me get everyone off this truck, and manage Leila,’ I told him. A little cooperation from the stars of the show would make a nice change.

Patrice and Rutherford began calling out in French. I caught the gist and started repeating it, saying, ‘Allez! Allez!’ and sweeping my arms toward the tailgate to emphasize the point.

The message sank in. People were starting to move. I went over to Rutherford and helped him lift Francis to the back of the truck.

‘Cassidy!’ I called out, seeing him standing watch with West. The sergeant trotted over.

‘Give Rutherford a hand getting Francis into the trees. Keep everyone off the road. Patrice — that’s Francis’s wife — she knows what’s going on. They’re going to need a field stretcher.’

‘Roger that. What are you gonna do?’

‘Ditch the truck. You take the right-hand trail — that’ll get you to the river. I’ll rendezvous with you there. Our African friends are headed elsewhere. We need to move it.’

‘Roger that, boss,’ he said and went off to hustle while I kneeled beside Francis.

‘Mercy bowcoop, Francis,’ I said, his face sweating beads of pain.

‘You have the worst accent in the whole of the Congo,’ he croaked. ‘It is I who thanks you. My people owe you their lives.’

‘I was going to say the same thing to you. Good luck.’

‘And to you,’ he said, finding my hand and squeezing it weakly. ‘Get to the Zaire.’

I gave Cassidy and Rutherford a nod and they lifted him off the back of the truck as Patrice rushed in, threw her arms around me and squeezed until I coughed. The woman was a cage fighter in drag.

‘Merci, merci,’ she said and kissed me wetly on the cheek before hurrying off to tend to her husband while he was being carried behind the tree line.

The rainforest quickly swallowed everyone and I found myself alone on the road, the Dong idling noisily behind me and the sound of approaching vehicles getting louder by the second. I ran to the driver’s door, jumped in and selected first from the snarling gearbox. The vehicle charged forward, far more willing in the acceleration department without all the weight on board. The road was almost completely overgrown. I was considering slowing down but changed my mind about that when a bullet shattered the rear-view mirror on my door and slivers of glass speared into my neck and cheek. The Dong burst through a wreath of liana obscuring the view forward. I had no idea where the road was going, so I took a guess and kept the wheels pointing straight ahead. I could hear small arms fire being shot off behind me. I was thinking how not much of it was finding its target when a single round punched through the passenger seat beside me and buried itself in the dashboard.

I was driving way too fast for the conditions. An RPG round exploded somewhere unseen but close and I swerved and cut a path through the trees. The road found me before I located it, and the tires slithered around on the muddy strip, hunting for traction. And then, suddenly, there was a log lying diagonally across my path, big and immovable. Swinging the wheel violently, I still struck the massive obstacle a glancing blow that smashed my face down into the steering wheel. The log bounced the truck into the forest and it began to crash through the scrub again, but beyond my control this time, rumbling down a steep hill with increasing speed. And then the world tilted on its side as the earth fell away and the truck tipped and I hung onto the steering wheel with plants and liana and mud swelling into the cabin, coming through the windshield area and welling up through the passenger window below my feet.

And then everything stopped moving.

I wasn’t unconscious — just stunned. The crash and the resulting detour had happened so fast, I needed a moment to catch up with it. Jesus, my face hurt, my eyes watering with the pain.

Get out, Cooper, said the voice in my head but I couldn’t recall why. And then I remembered about the people with guns not far behind and that they would be coming for me. I found my M4, hitched it over my shoulders and pulled myself out onto the canted hood and slid into a thicket of elephant grass, bamboo and liana. The forest was so dense it was almost impossible to move through it. That was good. If it delayed me, it would have the same effect on the folks who would be coming to investigate the wreckage.

‘Jesus, boss, you’re a mess,’ said West, examining my face after he gave me a pat on the shoulder.

‘It’s my party lifestyle,’ I said. I ’d tried to clear my blocked nose earlier, snorting out a couple of plugs of coagulated blood. The pain I felt when I pinched it told me it was broken. It had happened when I’d tried to turn the steering wheel with my face after hitting the roadblock.

The hike back to rejoin my merry band of travelers took two hours, a little longer than I expected. It was mid afternoon before I came across the road, followed it back to the fork, then doubled back to find everyone. Boink had the watch while West and Rutherford were building beds for everyone up off the ground, away from the ants and other biters.

‘How are our principals?’ I asked West when I found him binding saplings together with liana.

‘Subdued. I think they’re finally getting the message.’

‘Which message is that?’

‘ To shut the fuck up and let us do our job.’

I doubted it. ‘Where are they?’

By way of an answer, he pointed into the bush. Leila and Twenny were silhouetted sitting on a rotten log. They appeared to have reached some kind of amnesty, each sitting with an arm around the other. A couple of orange butterflies danced in the air above their heads. I could almost hear the violins. West having relieved him of the watch, Boink came and stood a few meters behind his employer and, bearlike, scratched his back against a tree.

‘How’s Ryder?’ I asked.

‘Milking it for all it’s worth… not that I blame him,’ said West. ‘Anyway, I think he’s on the mend.’

He indicated Ryder’s whereabouts with a thumb over his shoulder. The captain was lying on one of the cots, Ayesha in attendance.

‘Francis, Patrice and the rest — they get off okay?’ I asked.

‘Yeah. Patrice assured Rutherford that they knew where they were going. How about you? How’d you make out?’

‘I died,’ I said.

‘No, really, what happened?’

I gave him a quick rundown.

‘By the way,’ he said when I’d finished, ‘there were two trucks in pursuit of you. And both of them had a lot of men on board.’

I wondered how much time my little decoy run had bought us. Eventually those truckloads of armed men would backtrack and investigate this road. It started raining. ‘Must be three-fifteen,’ I said.

West checked his wristwatch and nodded.

‘Where’s Cassidy?’

‘Setting up a perimeter defense. Ryder was sitting on two Claymores we forgot about, the last of the ones with the trip wires you guys found in the FARDC camp.’

That was the best news I’d heard in a while.

‘What’s down at the river?’ I asked him, fanning uselessly at a cloud of mosquitoes attacking my face.

‘Mud, insects — not a lot else. Come take a look for yourself.’

West sheathed his Ka-bar and we headed for the river, detouring via an ant mound. We exited the forest into a semi-cleared patch of wet earth that, here and there, had sections of steel matting laid over it. Strangely, the mud here wasn’t orange, but white. The river itself was fifty or sixty meters wide, a tea-brown slick dented with raindrops that slid by at a fast walking pace between banks of mostly unbroken forest. A fish broke the water, no doubt chased by something hungry. Half a dozen heavy hardwood posts were driven vertically into the water just off the riverbank I was standing on, which was low and marshy. I could easily imagine that at one time there’d been a reasonable amount of infrastructure here to offoad the sawn logs that would get floated down the river to the mill, wherever that was. But now almost nothing remained aside from those pilings, a little rusting steel scrap and few old oil drums half submerged in the mud. There was one small troubling detail — as Francis said, the Zaire flowed the wrong way for our purposes, heading west away from Lake Kivu and Cyangugu.

‘Seen anything useful — like a riverboat with slots and a bar?’ I asked.

‘What do you think?’

I took a deep breath. When Lissouba’s men came down that road, we’d be trapped with our backs against the river. We could swim for it, but I didn’t like our chances against what the fuck else that might be lurking in that murky water chasing the fish.

‘They got crocs here?’ I asked.

‘Nope. Tigerfish.’

‘Great.’ I had no idea what they were, but they sounded unfriendly.

I scoped the area a second time and the shred of an option formed.

‘You guys make pretty good cots.’

‘It ain’t hard.’

‘Can you make me a cot around a few of those oil drums?’

‘So you want a raft?’

‘It’d make me sleep a whole lot better.’

All the drums were recovered from the mud, lined up and inspected. I stomped on the side of one of them and put my boot clean through it. Similar tests on the remaining five showed only one to be sound, with just a little superfcial rust. A second drum was also free of holes and corrosion, but had no lid. We could use it as long as we kept its brim above the waterline.

There were ten of us — a combined weight of around two thousand pounds. Buoyancy was critical. Six types of sapling were tested. West placed them all in the water and a clear winner emerged, floating higher than the others. It completed one spin in the eddy by the bank before the Zaire carried it away.

‘Okay, that’s settled,’ he said. ‘These are the guys we want.’ He held a second length of the winning sapling, about two inches in diameter and trimmed to a length of about twelve feet.

‘We’ll need six bundles of these, about the same length as this,’ he said. ‘And each bundle should be about two foot in diameter. That’s around thirteen saplings per bundle times six bundles. So seventy-eight saplings in total. We’ll use vine to lash the bundles together, with a drum fore and aft. Keep it nice and simple.’

‘Paddles?’ Rutherford asked.

‘No paddles. We’ll use the main current, pole off the banks.’

‘How long will this raft take to build?’ asked Leila.

West smiled. ‘As long as it takes you to cut the wood, then a bit longer after that.’

I could tell the answer didn’t please her, but, as West said, she was apparently learning to shut the fuck up.

‘We’ll assemble it in the marsh so we can just float it out.’

‘How much liana will you need?’ Ryder asked.

‘Fifty meters ought to do it. Make sure it’s green and young.’

‘And when it’s built?’ Leila wanted to know. ‘Then what?’

‘We float down river to a settlement with boats for hire, or a road out,’ I said. ‘With a little luck, we’ll reach Cyangugu by early afternoon tomorrow.’ Invoking luck probably wasn’t smart, but I was all out of smarts. ‘Work in pairs,’ I continued. ‘Stay within sight of your partner and at least one other pair. Boink, you work with Rutherford.’

Rutherford walked over to Twenny’s security chief and presented him with a machete.

‘Everyone know what to do?’ I asked.

‘Leila and me, we’ll take Peanut wit us,’ said Twenny and gestured at his friend, who was nearby, throwing sticks into the river.

West took me aside. ‘That river’s not going our way. It’ll take us to Kinshasa.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘I suppose not. Where there’s a river, there are towns.’

‘That’s what I was thinking.’

‘Till we get the raw materials, I’m going to help Cassidy out with the defenses, and maybe rustle us up some food.’

‘Toasted ham and cheese on rye, thanks,’ I said.

‘See what we can do,’ he said, and trotted out of the cleared area and disappeared into the bush in the direction of the road.

Ayesha and Ryder walked past.

‘You feeling all right?’ I asked him.

‘Hooah,’ he said under his breath without lifting his head.

We were all running on empty.

The chosen sapling didn’t grow in stands, but it was here and there and all over. I worked on my own, scouting for the right materials, cutting the saplings and liana where and when the opportunity presented. Apart from the odd fright from spiders and small vipers, and an occasional deep cough from what Rutherford believed was a big cat somewhere in the forest, there were no incidents. All up, we managed to collect fifty-eight saplings before the light failed completely. Not ideal, but as there was no moonrise for quite a few hours, we had to go with what we had.

Cassidy and West appeared from the shadows just as the last of the saplings and liana lengths were delivered to the riverbank, Cassidy carrying in front of him what appeared to be two large basketballs.

‘Chow time,’ West called out. ‘We got avocado, palm oil fruit, watermelon, sugarcane, and grasshoppers for protein.’ He opened his pack, found a patch of ground where the steel matting was a little above the mud, and emptied the contents onto it. Cassidy also placed those basketballs of his on the matting, two almost perfectly round watermelons, and pulled his Ka-bar. He sliced one of them up and handed around the wedges. Peanut was first in line; he took a piece, buried his face in it and seemed pretty happy about what was in his mouth.

‘This stuff is all over,’ said West. ‘You want some more, we’ll go get it.’

Ayesha and Leila were next in line, followed by Twenny and Boink, the hired help bringing up the rear.

‘After you,’ Rutherford said to Ryder.

‘Just leave me some of them grasshoppers,’ I said.

‘You may laugh, boss, but those little critters are awesome,’ said West.

‘So you keep telling us.’

‘That’s ’cause they are — crunchy on the outside, kinda gooey when you bite into ’em, and the taste is nutty. They’re good clean food. Try one.’ West picked a medium-sized insect from the mound, the head already pinched off, and presented it to me in the palm of his hand.

‘Reminds me of that dumb-ass reality show, you feel me?’ said Twenny.

I took the insect, put it between my teeth without thinking too hard about it and bit down. Like West said, crunchy, gooey and nutty. ‘Not bad,’ I said when I’d finished. ‘But I like my nuts without legs.’ And, in truth, the goo wasn’t much of a hit, either. But if I had to eat them to stay alive…

The fruit disappeared quickly, so Cassidy went out to get another couple of watermelons and was back within five minutes with two more, bigger than the last. West, meanwhile, went to work on the raft, with Rutherford and Ayesha and Ryder resting nearby.

‘We need the perimeter secured. What’s your thinking?’ I asked Cas-sidy through a mouthful of melon, the sugar from the fruit running through my system like a mild electric current.

‘The forest’s pretty thick hereabouts. There are two ways in. One’s easy, one’s not so easy. West and I figure the folks we’re up against will take the path of least resistance. If they do, Mr Claymore will keep us informed. If it detonates, everyone should assemble at the raft on the double — I’ll give the word. We planted a few other surprises out there that’ll slow down any assault. I think you can afford to chill for a while, Major Cooper. You’ve earned it.’

I wasn’t sure I’d earned anything, but it was nice of him to say. I found a spare oil drum and sat down on it, but was sitting for less than thirty seconds before I heard my name called.

‘Vin.’

Enjoying the feeling of having a full belly, I blocked out the sound of my name and listened instead to the two-hundred-part acapella mosquito choir humming around my head.

‘Vin…’

It was Leila. I braced for the latest complaint/threat/abuse.

‘I warn you…’ she said.

Here it comes, I thought, tensing.

‘I’ve come armed with a pair of tweezers and I intend to use them.’

Tweezers? She’d brought her cosmetics bag. ‘Thanks, but I think I like my eyebrows the way they are.’

She took my hand in hers and I smelled perfume, moisturizer and branded insect repellent; the combination conjured up the cosmetics counter at Macy’s, Arlington, an altogether other world to the one we were in. I resisted the desire to rub mud over her — that smell was a potential beacon to any would-be attackers.

‘Eyebrows? You got points of dried blood up and down your arm, like you’ve landed in a cactus. I know what that’s like. Happened to me when I was a little girl. My mother threw me into one of those big ones you see out in the desert, on a trip to California. Stopped the car, dragged me out the door and just threw me.’

‘How many times did you ask, “Are we there yet?” ’

‘My momma didn’t need a reason to do bad things to me. Just the way she was.’

‘She still around?’

‘Can’t get rid of her, her hand out all the time. I give her money and she drinks it all up. Giving her money is like giving her a loaded gun. Sometimes when I remember all the things she did before I got big enough to stop her, I think that’s exactly what I should do — give her that loaded gun she wants so bad. She’s young — only fifteen years older than I am. And beautiful — or was.’

Leila’s fingertips were cool and gentle on my skin, seeing in the darkness, probing for the barbs that stuck out like pins hidden in a new shirt. I felt a little disoriented, but now that she mentioned it, my skin was throbbing at various spots all over: on my cheek, from tiny shards of glass; the small burns from the hot Claymore pellets; the torn flesh on the point of my shoulder; the nick on the back of my upper arm; and, of course, the spines along my arm that it collected when I exited the truck with the mortar. Actually, now that I stopped to think about it, I was sore all over. I closed my eyes.

‘They’re big suckers,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going to pull one out. This might hurt. If you need to cry, don’t you feel embarrassed.’

‘Do you have a hanky, just in case?’

She extracted a spine and I felt a small stab of pain that almost immediately began to itch. Sweetness and light from Leila? The universe was tilting.

‘You like kids,’ I said. That much was obvious. She had instantly been smitten with the baby rescued from the bushes behind the village, and with the child she had nursed in the truck. Dangerous ground, perhaps, if she blamed me for having to give them back.

‘Yes, I love them. I’m going to have children one day. Lots of them. And I’m going to be the momma I wanted, not the one I had.’ She yanked out another quill, this time with feeling. ‘What are your parents like?’

‘They’re dead,’ I said, hoping to bring that line of questioning to a stop.

‘Then, what were they like?’ Leila persisted.

‘I didn’t get to know them; neither lived long enough.’

‘Who brought you up?’

‘An uncle — my father’s brother.’

‘What was he like?’

‘Okay, mostly.’

‘Getting anything out of you is like pulling teeth.’

‘Let’s see how you do with those spines first,’ I said.

‘Well… your uncle?’

I gave in. ‘He was a good parent, but three tours in ’nam had rewired his sense of normal and occasionally the craziness came to the surface.’ I remembered one night in particular. I woke up to find his face three inches from mine, his eyes wide and bloodshot, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose onto my pajamas, a knife half the length of a baseball bat in his hand and, according to him, the house full of Charlie. I was ten years old.

Leila’s fingers worked their way up my arm.

‘We’re gonna make it, aren’t we,’ she said after a pause.

There was no hint of a question in her tone. This was a done deal.

‘Yes,’ I said, mustering the necessary conviction, but the truth was that we were still some way from cracking open the champagne. With my white hat on, the raft was going to get us quickly downstream to safety. But with my black hat on, the raft was going to sink shortly after launch, just before we were sucked over a two hundred foot waterfall around the next bend in the river. I had to take some of the blame for this outbreak of certainty with my earlier pep talk about arriving back at Cyangugu in time for afternoon tea. I was as eager as anyone to get back to Rwanda, if only to wipe the smug superiority off Lockhart’s face when I snapped a pair of bracelets on his wrists.

‘… I hope you’re not jealous,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry?’ I replied. ‘I missed that. What were you were saying?’

‘I was saying that Deryck and I have reconciled. We’re going to give it another try. I hope you’re not jealous about that.’ She smiled, and there was mischief in it.

I smiled back. Leila couldn’t conceive of a dimension where every male of the species wasn’t wrapped around her pinkie. ‘I’ll just have to get over it,’ I said. ‘Another time, another place…’

‘And, anyway, you got your own issues with your dead girlfriend and I don’t want anyone else’s baggage right at the moment.’

Okay, by invoking Anna, Leila was pushing the delusion boundaries way out of shape. My arm felt hot with an itch that fared its entire length. I wanted to get up and leave, but there was nowhere to go.

‘I have some antiseptic cream,’ she continued. ‘Probably should have washed it first, but this will have to do.’

She reached into her cosmetics bag of tricks, pulled out a tube, squeezed some of what was in it on my arm and rubbed it in. It felt like it was going on someone else’s arm but I told her thanks.

‘Go see a doctor at Cyangugu tomorrow. There’ll be one there for sure.’

There was something totally unreal about this conversation.

Sensing this, she said, ‘Are you okay, Vin?’

Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Good. I know we got off to a bad start, you and I. It has been a journey, hasn’t it?’

‘You still gonna to sue me?’

‘Yes of course, but it’s nothing personal. The military will pay.’

All of a sudden the feeling of having a full belly soured and the watermelon, palm oil fruit and grasshopper caught the freight train leaving my stomach and roared out of my mouth and onto the ground at her feet. Leila screamed, said fuck half a dozen times and danced on the spot briefly before running off into Twenny’s arms. I sat on the barrel, bile burning my throat, gave them both an apologetic shrug and felt a whole lot better. Twenny Fo left his girlfriend and came on over.

‘Tell me that wasn’t intentional?’

‘I got a few talents, but throwing up on cue ain’t one of them.’

‘I just thought I’d check. I know you and Leila haven’t hit it off.’

Interesting choice of words. ‘I think we hit it off just fine. And I think I still got the handprint on my face to prove it.’

‘With Leila, you gotta learn when to duck.’

‘Uh-huh,’ was all I said.

‘I haven’t got ’round to thanking you properly for what you done. You could have left me behind, man.’

‘A few things went our way.’ A beetle landed on my head. I swatted it away. ‘We need to have a talk about what you saw and heard in that camp.’

‘Leila told me you think an American we met at the concert in Rwanda planned all this with our pilot, the short French guy. The idea from the beginning was to drop us into the jungle and hold us to ransom, right?’

‘That’s what it looks like. The dickfuck’s name is Lockhart. He was in the camp where you were being held prisoner. I saw him murder Fournier, the French co-pilot, not five feet from where you were standing.’

‘I heard the gunshot, but that’s all. They put a hood over my head and beeswax went in my ears almost from the moment I was captured. I saw nothing, heard nothing, man.’

Wonderful.

‘… But I smelled him.’

‘You smelled him?’

‘I have my own cologne. It’s called “Guilty”. Maybe you heard of it?’

Now that I thought about it, I had seen the advertising poster: two women, naked and embracing, shadows hiding the interesting bits, Twenny lying in a nearby bed, a white satin sheet strategically placed.

‘How many people you think wear cologne in these parts? Anyway,’ he continued, ‘that’s what your man wears, you feel me? Splashes on a little Guilty after trimming his man hair. I know that smell anywhere. I couldn’t believe it — thought I was dreaming.’

I wasn’t sure that a court would send Lockhart away for life on a little olfactory evidence, but it was something.

‘Like I tol’ you already, anything I can do to help, just ask,’ he said, standing. ‘You got a friend for life, you feel me?’

I thought about asking him to tell his girlfriend not to sue the Air Force on my account, but my service could take care of itself.