Ghost Watch

Hostage

‘We have to get them back!’ Leila demanded. ‘Twenny Fo, Ayesha, Peanut, the other pilot… You can’t leave them!’ ‘We have to get out of here now is what we have to do,’ I told her.

‘That’s bullshit, man,’ said Boink, his fat forefinger stabbing the front of my body armor. ‘Give me a gun and I’ll go down there and fuck their shit up.’

‘Ryder!’ I called over my shoulder.

‘Here,’ he said, right behind me.

I turned three-quarters and saw him rubbing a bloody wound on his head.

‘You okay?’ He’d received a rifle butt from the departing Africans that had knocked him out cold.

‘Yeah.’

‘Get the principals secured further up the hill, then sit down for a while,’ I told him.

‘What about Ayesha?’ Ryder asked, his voice cracking.

I faced him and said quietly, an inch from his face, ‘Duke, head ’em up the hill to that tree.’ I indicated the one I meant, a tree with a vast splay of roots, like a cage that seemed to drop from branches high above the forest floor.

‘People everywhere are gonna know what kind of man you are, Cooper,’ Leila hissed, her face disintegrating as she began to cry, the hopelessness of the situation getting its hooks into her. ‘Coward,’ she spat, and it was like the word itself landed in the mud at my feet.

Ryder hesitated and looked into my face before deciding further conversation probably wasn’t a good idea, and then herded Leila and Boink up the hill. Coward. I wasn’t going to let it get under my skin. Our survival chances were diminishing moment by moment. There was only unavoidable unpleasantness ahead.

‘LeDuc!’ The Frenchman materialized at my shoulder as I walked to the African whose kneecap had been shot off. ‘They speak French here, right?’

‘Oui,’ he said.

We walked several paces and I waited for the plea to rescue his co-pilot.

‘Do not worry about Fournier, he is a survivor,’ LeDuc said, surprising me.

‘I need you to translate,’ I told him.

Sergeant Cassidy was patting down one of the dead Africans. He was wearing the man’s green beret and held up my Ka-bar as we walked by.

‘Yours, I think,’ he said.

I took it and sheathed it.

‘And we’ve got our M4s back,’ he said as he turned the man’s head to one side. The metal haft of the anodized black throwing knife was sticking out of the corpse’s skull, covered in mud and streaked with blood and brains. Cassidy pulled his Ka-bar and gave the embedded blade a few taps left and right to loosen it before attempting to pull it out. He’d done this before, obviously. Jerking the blade free, he wiped it clean on his leg and then scraped the goop off his pants and flicked it onto the ground. He replaced the knife in a scabbard hidden in the top of his body armor, right where he’d submissively clasped his fingers before being asked to do so by our captors.

‘Insurance policy,’ he said, adjusting its position.

‘We move out in three minutes,’ I told him. ‘Pass it on.’

Rutherford and West were also checking the dead and wounded and stripping the corpses of anything useful.

LeDuc and I approached the African writhing slowly in the mud, making noises like a wounded animal, his bloody, mangled leg cramped rigid in front of him. The guy was small, in his late teens with a youthful beard, a front tooth missing and its partner brown with rot.

‘You told me there were six armies fighting in the Congo,’ I said to LeDuc. ‘Ask him which one’s his.’

‘I don’t need to ask him this. The blue patch on the shoulder of his uniform tells me that he is FARDC — Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo. These are DRC government troops.’

‘I thought you said the DRC army was on your side?’ I asked him.

‘Generally speaking, yes.’

‘When you told them that you were MONUC, what was their reaction, apart from encouraging you with a rifle butt to shut your mouth?’

‘They said they knew this.’

‘That you were allies?’

‘Oui.’

‘Funny way to treat a friend.’

‘The FARDC is not an army like we have in France. It is corrupt. There are many factions and agendas. You want me to ask him why they are not friendly toward us?’

‘First ask him what his unit strength is.’

LeDuc kneeled and spoke to the man in French. The soldier ignored the question. LeDuc persisted and still got no response. The man was either so deeply in pain that he’d lost touch with the real world, or he was using it as an excuse to play dumb. There was no time for games.

‘Sir, I think this is yours,’ said West behind me. He handed me my Sig. ‘A full mag, nothing up the spout,’ he informed me before walking back to see to the dead.

I dropped out the magazine and then pulled back the slide. As he said, the chamber was empty, the mag full. I reinserted the mag, racked a round into the spout and put the safety on.

The man on the ground cried out. He was shaking, his eyes locked on the Sig. And then he started talking like his life depended on it. Maybe that’s exactly what he thought, that I was going to bust a cap in his ass. I holstered the weapon.

LeDuc repeated the question. Now the guy wouldn’t shut up. He shouted, his voice competing with the noise of the thunder and torrential rain.

‘They are company strength,’ LeDuc said. ‘He is not exactly sure how many, but more than one hundred and twenty men.’

‘Ask him who occupies the ridgeline. Who are they fighting up there and why?’

A handful of seconds later, LeDuc had the answers.

‘It is the CNDP. The numbers are similar, though the rebels have mortars, causing his unit much harm. He says they chased the CNDP out of a village a day’s march away. They were killing civilians. He says they are bad men.’

‘Do you believe him?’ I asked.

LeDuc gave me the Gallic shrug. ‘This man is a private soldier. What would he know?’

‘Ask him why they blew up your chopper.’

The Frenchman asked the question, and the African pleaded with LeDuc in a way that I knew meant he didn’t have an answer, despite his private fear that I was going to whack him if he didn’t.

‘He says he doesn’t know,’ LeDuc confirmed. ‘He thinks it was fred on for target practice.’

‘There’s lot of rainforest out there, but his patrol found us quickly. Ask him if they were looking for us.’

‘Oui, oui,’ the man said immediately, adding a barrage of French to go with it.

‘He says their orders were to find us and take us prisoner.’

‘How did they know there was anyone on board to take prisoner in the first place?’

LeDuc asked the question and the man on the ground shook his head and mumbled a reply.

‘He does not know,’ said the Frenchman. ‘They were just doing what they were ordered to do.’

Hmm… maybe it was just expected that an aircraft the size of the Puma would be carrying passengers, more than they found dead in the wreckage. I had one more question. ‘How long is FARDC going to occupy the valley?’

After a brief discussion the Frenchman said, ‘Once they have chased the enemy from the heights.’

I didn’t like their chances of that. Armed as they were with mortars, the folks occupying the high ground would take some dislodging.

I stood and LeDuc stood.

Two shots blasted away behind me, making me jump back and twist around and reach for my own pistol.

Boink lowered a Beretta.

‘Merde!’ LeDuc exclaimed.

‘You’re finished with him, yo?’ my principal said.

I looked back at the captured FARDC soldier. Smoke curled from two black entry holes in the man’s forehead, blood starting to well from both; one eye was open and sightless, the other half hidden by a heavy lid. I tried not to think that the kid had a mother — we’d gone way past that now.

Further up the hill, I saw Leila lower her iPhone from her face. Her other hand covered her mouth, horrified by what she’d just witnessed, her eyes locked on me like somehow it was my doing.

‘What the fuck?’ I shouted at Boink. ‘Give me the gun!’

He stood there, unmoving, the pistol pointed at the ground. He was considering holding onto it, or maybe even using it again…

‘We killed their people already,’ he said. ‘There won’t be no peace accord, yo.’

‘Give me the damn gun!’ I repeated, taking a step toward him, hand out.

He brought the pistol up. I didn’t know this guy, but I’d seen what he was capable of doing. Was it my turn next?

‘Careful,’ I told him.

‘Easy, soldier man,’ he said, reading the danger.

He flicked his hand and the weapon spun in midair and landed in his palm, handle out toward me. I snatched it away from him.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ I asked him, pointing at the dead man with the pistol.

‘Doin’ my job.’

‘Your job?’

‘His people took Twenny. I took him.’

‘Do that again and there’ll be consequences.’

He shrugged and turned away.

When their people came back and saw the man’s head resting on a pillow of his own gray matter, they’d know he’d been killed in cold blood. This would come back on us. I leant over the body, patted him down. Two magazines were stuffed into the webbing on his chest. I took them and checked his pockets. Empty. His green battle uniform was baggy, from the Vietnam War era and several sizes too big for him. And there was the unusual blue patch on his left shoulder that LeDuc said marked him as FARDC. I stood up.

Rutherford and Cassidy were checking the other downed Africans.

‘Any wounded?’ I called out.

Cassidy shook his head.

‘We’re gonna have to watch him,’ said West motioning at Boink’s back.

‘Yeah,’ said West. He stood and nodded at the rifle slung over my shoulder.

I looked at it properly for the first time, wiped the blood and saliva off the stock with my sleeve. The weapon was a Nazarian Type 97, the export version of the standard assault weapon issued to infantry units of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army: 5.56mm NATO rounds, M16 mag, single shot, three-shot burst, and full auto options at the flick of a lever on the receiver. A good and capable rifle. It might have been the export version, but I still wondered where someone would come across a weapon of this sort in the Congo.

‘Found this on the ground,’ said Cassidy, interrupting my thoughts.

Twenny Fo’s diamond ring was between his thumb and forefinger. ‘What you want to do with it?’

‘Hold onto it for the moment.’ I turned to Rutherford. ‘Souvenir a few of those uniforms with the blue shoulder patches. The berets too. They might come in handy.’

‘Got it, skipper,’ said Rutherford.

Although barely ten minutes had passed since Twenny Fo, Ayesha, Peanut and Fournier had been taken prisoner, I expected another, larger patrol would be along soon to finish the job, assuming the FARDC was organized.

West, Cassidy and I trotted up the hill toward Ryder, Leila and Boink.

‘I’m going to make sure you’re all kicked out of the Army,’ said Leila when we were close enough. ‘Your job was to protect us and you failed.’

I wasn’t in the Army but maybe now wasn’t the time to tell her.

‘You still alive, ain’t you?’ said Cassidy.

‘I’m going to sue you to the poor house,’ Leila said, her eyes boring into Cassidy and then me.

It wasn’t the right time to tell her I was already in it. ‘We didn’t cause that to happen,’ I told her, slipping into debrief mode. ‘The soldiers that took our people are government troops of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, supposedly friendly to MONUC. But for some reason they’ve decided to be unfriendly. What we do know is that we’ve come down in a war zone where there doesn’t seem to be a lot of rules. Bottom line, we’re no longer protecting you against possible attack. There’s nothing possible about it. So you can stop behaving like a child who isn’t getting her way and do what we tell you to do, when we tell you to do it. Because, otherwise, you’re not getting out of here alive.’

‘I ain’t listenin’ to this bullshit,’ said Leila, turning away and holding her hand palm out at me as if to defect my words.

I wondered what to do next — our options were limited and diplomacy wasn’t my strong suit. We needed our principals’ cooperation to have a chance of bringing them out in anything other than body bags.

I glanced at Cassidy. ‘You got that ring?’

He fished around in his webbing and put it in my hand.

‘Recognize this?’ I asked the diva. ‘We found it on the ground.’

‘It’s Deryck’s.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘That’s Twenny Fo’s name. I gave it him when we were…’ Her chin dented, and she looked skywards briefly in an effort to get control of herself.

I put the ring in the side pocket of her Army jacket. ‘You hold onto this for… Deryck. Give it back to him when you see him next. Now, let’s go.’

‘If we leave now, I’ll never see him, or Ayesha, or Peanut, ever again.’ Leila’s emerald eyes were glossy with tears. She sat down on the wet earth and wrapped her arms around her legs. ‘Say what you like, but I ain’t leavin’ here without them.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ I muttered, scraping the bottom of the options barrel. ‘LeDuc. Do we have sedatives in that medical kit that we can administer with a hypodermic?’

‘Oui.’

‘Then rack it up.’ I looked down at the woman. ‘Ma’am, we’re gonna have to carry you out.’

‘Not unless you gonna carry my ass too, yo,’ said Boink. He moved to stand beside the singer and crossed his massive arms in a further symbol of defance.

That was it. I had no more cards to play. The rulebook had nothing on this. I took a deep breath and let it out. ‘Okay, you win. We stay. But, just so you have all the facts, there are about a hundred and twenty soldiers down there, who seem intent on taking us captive for purposes unknown. Their people were killed on their first attempt at this, and you can be sure we won’t get a pat on the back for that. So, fortunately, with the additional weapons we’ve secured, we have enough guns to arm everyone. But our ammunition is limited. If the bad guys attack in strength we can probably hold out for ten minutes, maybe less, depending on how many of us get killed or wounded in the initial exchange, and how bad the wounds are. There’s going to be a lot of lead flying around, so perhaps ten minutes is optimistic. The electronic beacon we had is smashed, so our people in Cyangugu and LeDuc’s in Goma don’t know for sure where we’ve come down. What I’m saying is, there’ll be no last-minute rescue. Our bodies may never be found. Leila, if you happen to survive and they capture you, my suggestion is that you tell them you’re a rich and famous star who’ll pay millions for your release. Assuming they go for that, rather than using you for some other purpose — and I think you know which one I mean, which they may do anyway — when you finally get in front of those TV cameras, you can tell the world that your security team fought bravely and died so that you could keep making music videos.’

I was rambling because I was angry. In truth, I was on the verge of defaulting to my duty as the officer in charge and doing what was best for the men I was commanding, which, at the very least, was to vacate the area as soon as possible. If it meant leaving the civilians behind to accept whatever fate they were determined to meet, I didn’t see that I had much choice but to let them do exactly that.

Leila stood up. ‘I want you to know that this is not about making music, this is about not giving up on the people you love.’ She brushed the wet leaves off her butt and pulled the Army ball cap down low over her face. ‘Now, which way are we going?’

‘That way,’ I said, stunned by the sudden change of heart. Maybe my little speech had gotten through to her. I pointed in the opposite direction to the one we’d initially decided to take before we were surrounded. ‘Any movement?’ I asked West.

‘Nada,’ he replied.

‘Rutherford?’

‘Clear.’

‘Let’s do it,’ I said.

There was very little light left. Walking in this terrain in the pitch dark was also a big risk. We could stumble into an ambush or walk off a cliff. Lex Rutherford took point, with Cassidy behind him and the rest of us lined up behind them. I brought up the rear. We learned that the hill the Puma came down on was actually part of a valley that curved horseshoe-like around to the northwest on one side and southwest on the other. The walk was taking us away from Lake Kivu and Cyangugu. We picked our way through the rainforest for half an hour, by which time the thunder and lightning were only sporadic, and the small arms fire was far enough away that it sounded like corn popping in a pot with the lid on. I called a halt between a couple of vast trees that gave us cover on two sides, then kicked off the discussion we had to have. Cassidy and Ryder took the watch this time, but the space between the trees was tight, so they weren’t left out of the conversation.

‘A hundred and twenty of them. Five of us,’ I said.

‘I ain’t running,’ Boink said.

‘Who said anything about running?’ I responded.

Leila, looking at me as if she were witnessing a spectacular sunrise, said ‘So you’re not running out on Deryck and Ayesha and Peanut and the pilot?’

‘Let’s be clear. A hundred and twenty-odd to five are big odds,’ I said.

‘That all? Those fuckers are in a shitload of trouble,’ said West over his shoulder.

I’d wondered which of the SOCOM boys would turn into John Wayne.

‘I ain’t never lost a principal before,’ said Cassidy. ‘Don’t want to start now.’

John Wayne had a brother.

Ryder chewed his bottom lip.

‘On the basis of the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ said Rutherford, ‘what about the other side — the opposition up the hill? Might they be inclined to lend us a little assistance?’

Cassidy’s eyes were black caves and his face had the luster of polished wet granite. ‘The hostages are alive… for now. But we wait, they die.’

‘LeDuc, what do you think?’ I asked.

‘Up there, on top of the hill, according to the FARDC soldier, they are Laurent Nkunda’s rebels — your allies, the CNDP. But these men are also often no better than murderers and rapists. Our source was just a private soldier. What would he know? It could be the FDLR up there — the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda. Or even the Lord’s Resistance Army, from Uganda, that kills in the name of Christ. They could also be Mai-Mai militia. Or they could be just another unit of FARDC settling an old score,’ he said, using two fingers across his blackened forehead like they were windshield wipers to flick away the water and sweat.

I had the picture of a lunatic walking up to half a dozen large bears and kicking all of them in the shins. ‘Back it up a second,’ I said. ‘Who’s this Nkunda guy? I thought our allies were part of some National Congress.’

‘Yes, the Congrès National Pour la Défénse du Peuple. Or as you English say, the National Congress for the Defense of the People. CNDP for us. NCDP pour vous — the soldiers you are training across the border in Rwanda. Laurent Nkunda was a general in FARDC, the army of the DRC, but he rebelled, took his best units, and continued to fight the remnants of his enemies, the Rwandan Hutus, who fed the 1994 Rwandan genocide and set up camp in the east of the DRC. That is what the CNDP claims, but the wider truth is that the CNDP is in the Congo to protect Rwanda’s interests here, which are also America’s interests. That is why the CNDP are your country’s allies — at least for the moment. Those were the soldiers you met at the base in Cyangugu, the ones commanded by Colonel Olivier Biruta and his second in command, Commandant Jean Claude Ntahobali.’

‘So where is this Nkunda?’ I asked.

‘Under arrest. Held in Rwanda on charges of murder and other crimes. But he will never come to trial.’

‘Because?’

‘Because he is an embarrassment to the DRC, Kigali and Washington.’

‘Okay, well… are any of these armies, rebels or otherwise, likely to help us?’ I asked, getting us back on track.

‘In the DRC, especially here in Nord-Kivu province where there is so much wealth, it is impossible to say.’

The complication of who was who in this fucked-up zoo was exasperating. ‘But, in your experience, is it worth taking the risk to find out?’

He shrugged; something, it seemed to me, this Frenchman did almost as often as breathing. ‘Perhaps oui, perhaps non. They might also kill you just for the fun of it.’

‘They’d be jumping the queue,’ I said.

‘What kind of wealth are we talking about?’ asked Rutherford.

‘There is Coltan.’

‘Doesn’t he fight Batman, or someone?’ I said.

‘Columbite-tantalite — “Coltan” for short. It is a rare mineral used to make electronic printed circuit boards. You cannot make a computer without it. This part of the Congo has the world’s largest deposits. Gold — there is very much of that here, also.’

‘So we’ve established that everyone is killing everyone in this little enchanted forest. And that it’s probably over Apple Macs and bullion. Back to our principals. What are we going to do about them? Any suggestions?’

‘We need to recon the enemy’s position,’ said Cassidy, checking his weapon. ‘What’s their morale like? Are they vulnerable to a night attack? How do they have our principals guarded?’

The sergeant was on the money. Once we had a better feel for the situation, we could take action or not.

‘Agreed,’ I said. ‘Volunteers?’

‘I’m in,’ said Ryder.

‘I’m coming,’ said Boink.

‘Moi aussi,’ said LeDuc, raising his hand.

Cassidy, West and Rutherford all nodded.

‘Duke, I need you to stay and guard Leila.’

‘I want to be there for Ayesha, Vin,’ said Ryder, his chin jutting forward.

‘I need you here, Duke,’ I repeated, making it an order. The truth of it was that I didn’t want Ryder anywhere near a mission like the one on the table. Wanting to go, no matter how desperate the desire, didn’t cut it. The guy didn’t have the required combat skills, simple as that. His lack of experience could get himself and the people with him killed. Still, Ryder was far from happy about this.

‘You’re not coming either, big guy,’ I told Boink.

‘You gonna stop me?’ he said, taking a step toward me.

I stood my ground. ‘If I have to.’

He stood his.

I tried a different approach, risky though it was, and handed him the Type 97 I was holding. ‘Look, Boink, I need you here with Ryder. So, I’m going to give you one of these. I’m assuming you know your way around a carbine.’ This was tricky but there simply weren’t enough PSOs. If we could trust Boink, arming him would be an asset. Given what I knew he was capable of, though, it was a big if. He pointed the weapon in my general direction; not the reaction I’d been hoping for. I didn’t move, held my breath.

‘Bin around guns all my life, yo,’ he said, his finger slipping inside the trigger guard. There was nothing in his face that I could read. Not so smart after all, Cooper, I told myself. No one moved. This could go badly for me. I wondered if my body armor would stop a round fired from a rifle at point blank range. I tensed. But then Boink raised the weapon to give it a closer inspection and the world started breathing again, or perhaps it was just me.

‘So who’s got recent jungle experience?’ I asked, moving on. ‘Anyone?’

West gave me a nod. ‘Sir, post before last I was instructing at the Jungle Warfare School at Fort Sherman down in Panama,’ he said, keeping one eye on Boink as he moved the selector on his M4 to safety. A tragedy had been averted. ‘That count?’

‘It’ll have to do,’ I said, giving him a grin.

‘What experience you got, Major?’ Cassidy asked.

He had the right to ask. ‘STO stuff — jumping out of planes with your people, mostly.’

‘Where?’

‘Kosovo, Afghanistan.’

Cassidy lost interest, turning away. In effect, I ’d just told him that I’d spent time behind enemy lines, causing havoc, so apparently I’d passed the test; at least till the next test came along. I turned to LeDuc. ‘André, I’m going to need you to come along, in case we need a translator.’

‘D’accord,’ he said, glancing around uncertainly, his earlier bravado fading.

Maybe he was aware that if we needed to call on his language skills, it would be because things had fallen into the meat grinder. I sincerely hoped I would be bringing the Frenchman along unnecessarily.

Ryder, not a happy camper, picked up a stick at his feet and threw it down. I took him aside. ‘Duke, you’ll be the officer in charge if I don’t make it back. If that happens, rely on Cassidy to get everyone out. We clear?’

The reply wasn’t exactly snappy.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said eventually.

We rejoined the others.

‘So, Cassidy and I are also staying back,’ said Rutherford.

‘Looks like,’ I told him.

They knew the score. The rulebook required a solid protection detail for Leila and Boink. We had no choice but to split our strength down the middle.

‘But you’ll need more than just the two of you, won’t you?’ Leila told me. ‘You said there was a hundred and twenty of them.’ Her face somehow managed to convey confusion, concern, and surprise and stay unlined. Finally, it dawned on her. ‘You’re not going back to rescue them, are you?’

‘We have to go look at the enemy’s positions. Only then will we know what we can and can’t do.’ I turned to West. ‘The company’s HQ — that’s where they’ll be held.’

‘Yep,’ said West, agreeing.

‘I think you’re making excuses,’ Leila said, standing up like she was going someplace. ‘Why don’t you just go and demand our peoples’ release?’

Yeah, just like demanding a better suite at the Ritz. I didn’t want to talk about it any longer. ‘Lex, you got those FARDC uniforms handy?’

Rutherford gestured at LeDuc, who reached for his backpack and pulled them out.

‘They’re big sizes,’ I said, hoping they’d fit over our gear.

I tried on a shirt but the fit was tight — too tight with body armor on — so I took the armor off. That sky blue patch on the shoulder interested me the most. If we were spotted, that identifying flash of color might confuse the issue of our identity long enough for us to fool the enemy for an important couple of seconds.

We had no food; nothing to carry except for our weapons and ammo. I chose an M4 over the Nazarian Type 97 because I knew it like an old buddy.

‘I have no combat experience,’ LeDuc informed me, checking his pistol. I handed him one of the spare Nazarians and a couple of spare mags.

‘Just do what I’m gonna do — follow Mike’s lead.’ I turned to Cas-sidy. ‘Cy, give us four hours to recon the Congolese positions. If we don’t make it back within twelve hours, head due east. According to the map there’s a road around the shores of Lake Kivu. Once you hit it, take a ride south to Cyangugu.’

‘Good luck,’ he said.

We’d need it.

I glanced back over my shoulder at Leila as we left the trees. She was sitting with her back to me, her head in her hands.

West led the way, followed by LeDuc, followed by me. We walked toward the sound of corn popping. Along the way, West blackened his face and arms with charcoal from a tree long ago struck by lightning. Neither LeDuc nor I needed it; our faces and arms were still black from the burned jet fuel. We pulled the green berets down low over our foreheads so that they threw shadows over our eyes.

The blackness under the canopy was soon complete and the going was slow because of it. But at least the rain had mostly been reduced to occasional showers mixed with fat droplets running off the overhead leaves and branches. West stopped us every few minutes to listen. Aside from the sound of distant gunfire, which quickly died away with the last vestiges of light, running water and a howling frenzy of a million mosquitoes were the sounds that accompanied our careful footsteps.

‘Malaria. It’s a problem here,’ West whispered as he came past.

He was searching the floor of the rainforest like he’d lost his keys.

‘What are you doing?’ LeDuc asked.

‘Looking for an ant’s nest,’ he said. ‘Like this one.’ A mound of smooth gray dirt rose out of the leaf litter to about knee height.

‘Pourquoi?’

West kicked the top off it with the heel of his boot, grabbed a handful of the dirt mixed with crushed ant and wiped it over the exposed skin on his arms.

‘Formic acid,’ he said. ‘Nature’s insect repellent. These driver ants are full of it. It’ll stop the mosquitoes cold.’ He took a couple more hand-fuls of dirt, squeezed it in his hands to kill the ants and then rubbed it over his face and the back of his neck.

LeDuc and I followed his lead.

We walked stealthily for a little more than an hour, taking a course that would bring us lower down into the valley, away from the forward picket lines that were no doubt occupied by jumpy soldiers with itchy trigger fingers.

West stopped abruptly beneath a spread of palm fronds and signaled that a target lay dead ahead, ten meters away. I couldn’t see a damn thing. And then the shadow he was pointing at turned and moved slowly away from us. The barrel of a rifle caught some starlight coming through a rent in the canopy. We needed to find out how far apart the pickets were before trying to penetrate the FARDC positions.

We slid to the right, moving the way chameleons do, keeping our boots in midair before placing them carefully on the ground. Finding another picket fifty meters along, we retraced our steps twenty meters or so, then pushed forward between them. The sound of men’s voices soon reached us, a low hum with occasional shouts. Somewhere close by was a company of riflemen doing what men do after battle — eat, talk, dress wounds, die, clean weapons, shit, gamble, urinate, complain, doze, argue.

A sudden, violent thrash in the bushes ahead, lasting no more than a few seconds, cause LeDuc and I to drop to a crouch. I waited till I saw West’s hand signal before moving forward. I took half a dozen steps and saw a FARDC soldier flat on his back, staring up with pinpricks of light in his open eyes. There was not a mark on him that I could see. I cut a couple of palm fronds and laid them over him.

‘Walked into him,’ West whispered in my ear. ‘Had no choice.’ He put a finger to his lips and pointed.

Ahead, through a screen of palms, was a clearing of maybe five meters in diameter. In the center of the clearing, a solider was kneeling on the ground with a small flashlight producing a flickering yellow beam. The man had his pants down and was beating the meat over a deck of cards that I guessed featured naked women. Job done, he picked up one of the cards, wiped it with a wet leaf and put it in his top pocket. We left him to it and worked our way around the edge of the clearing. I spotted a satchel hanging from a tangle of vines and a rifle leaning up against a tree beside it. I stopped West and LeDuc and signaled my intentions. The guy who carried his girlfriend in his pocket was too busy getting his pants back on to notice me. I reached in and took the satchel. The rifle looked familiar. It was an M16. I took it, too, and retreated into the shadows. Checking the satchel, I saw I’d hit the jackpot. Inside were tins of food and a couple of spare mags for the rifle. I gave the weapon the once-over. It was brand-new and its serial numbers had been ground off the receiver, just like those M16s I’d found in Kabul. The same question struck me: why would the numbers be removed if they weren’t somehow significant? A tap on the shoulder refocused my attention. West wanted to keep moving.

Soon the murmur of many voices and the smell of jet fuel caused us to get down on our bellies and inch forward. Through the dense foliage at the edge of a larger clearing, we saw more than thirty men bivouacked under ponchos, screens of umbrella palms, cardboard packaging, blankets — whatever could be used to provide shelter. Tents were non-existent. Here and there, soldiers were cooking their dinners on small portable stoves, the type that utilized bricks of compressed kerosene, which accounted for that smell of jet fuel. A group of half a dozen kids wearing grossly oversized uniforms huddled together under a couple of ponchos with their rifles. Back in my world, kids just a few years younger than these hugged their teddy bears and watched Barney reruns.

West took us on a detour around the clearing. The HQ, our target, would be further in the rear. We found it eventually, ringed by trees with massive trunks and spreading root systems. The roar of fast-moving water told us that a ravine was close. The HQ itself was a collection of four large five-man tents and several smaller ones. Gas lanterns smoldered blue-green within the larger tents. The silhouettes of men moving around inside them played on the tent walls. A number of trestle tables had been set up. Several fires burned and smoked beneath small shelters thatched with wet umbrella palm fronds. More than a dozen soldiers armed with submachine guns patrolled the perimeter. I was worried that the tins in the satchel would clank together, so I left it, along with the M16, behind a tree and shaved a little bark off the trunk so that I could identify the hiding place on our way out. Slithering on our bellies, we kept to the shadows and worked our way around the edge of the clearing to reconnoiter it.

Then West motioned that he saw something up ahead. I came forward. It was Twenny Fo, his head beneath a black hood and his hands tied behind his back with a rope that looped over a tree branch above him. The rope was tight so that his arms were raised. He was leaning forward, balancing on his toes to take the pressure off his shoulders. I could see that if he lost his balance and fell, his weight would rip his clavicles clean out of their sockets. Peanut had been strung up to another tree; same deal. I could hear him sobbing beneath his hood. Fournier and Ayesha were nowhere to be seen. Around them, half a dozen armed men stood smoking and spitting on the ground.

Just then, a short Asian guy, an athletic type with pale skin and dressed in civilian clothes, strolled out of one of the bigger tents. He walked to a slit trench, scratched his ass, urinated, then went back undercover.

‘What’s a Chinese guy doing here?’ I whispered.

‘An advisor,’ LeDuc replied under his breath.

Suddenly, a movement in my peripheral vision distracted me. It was a man on his knees, in a begging position. I was as certain as I could be that it was the same DRC officer who’d captured us earlier. Standing over him were two soldiers, both young and gangly, wearing uniforms that were a size or two too small, as if they’d taken delivery of someone else’s laundry. One of them secured the officer’s forearms on top of a tree stump. The officer was wailing and speaking rapidly in a language I didn’t understand and that wasn’t French. Then the other man swung down several times with a machete, and the officer’s arms came up, without hands on the end of them, blood spurting from the stumps.

The officer screamed long and hard and the hair on my head stood on end.

‘Jesus…?’ West whispered.

The Asian guy came out of his tent again briefly to investigate the noise and then went back inside, uninterested.

The officer howled as he bent double, curled over his spurting stumps. The guard and his pal who had done the machete work reappeared with a metal poker, its end steaming. They pulled the officer back on his haunches and smoke rose as each wound was cauterized while the victim shrieked.

I tapped West on the shoulder, and we wriggled backward. The tents, including the one occupied by the Asian guy, obscured a third of the clearing. Though we’d seen enough in one sense, our reconnoiter wasn’t complete. I led the way on my stomach and forearms around the clearing’s circumference, moving slowly, trying to get the picture of the officer having his hands chopped off out of my mind.

The position of the underbush on the other side of the clearing allowed us to crawl to within ten meters of Twenny Fo and Peanut, close enough, perhaps, to let them know that help was near, though of course it wasn’t. Giving our position away to the armed guards wouldn’t help our principals or us, or the folks depending on us to return. Twenny stumbled a little, and his arms pulled upward behind his back against their natural range of motion. He cried out in pain as he regained his footing. A couple of the guards wandered over to check on him, but then lost interest when they saw that the prisoner’s bonds were working as intended. Dickfucks. They had to know Twenny was an American, but did they know what he was worth? Maybe they did. Maybe, as I’d suggested to Leila, the possibility of a ransom with a big payday was keeping Twenny Fo and Peanut in possession of all their appendages, at least until… until what, exactly? Did this theory also account for Fournier and Ayesha’s absence? Had they killed them because they couldn’t cough up bags of loot?

I heard a roar above the sound of the ravine. Rain. It moved across the HQ like an attacking formation.

West motioned with a tilt of his head to take a look at the Asian’s tent.

Ayesha was being led away from it by two guards. She was naked, cowed and terrified, some kind of fruit jammed in her mouth, her hands tied behind her back. The guards took her to a trestle table barely discernible in the night shadows and tied her to it face down, securing her wrists to the table legs. One of the men, joking with his buddy, undid his fly buttons, pulled out his dick and jerked it around a few times until he was happy with its condition, then rammed his way into her from behind while she struggled, twisting away from him, grunting in terror. His pants fell around his ankles, and the man pulled back to speak with his pals. He wasn’t happy about something. That something was resolved for me when I saw them each take one of Ayesha’s legs, force them wide apart and bind them to the legs of the table.

I backed away, my face hot, muscles twitching with anger.

‘Stay here,’ I whispered to LeDuc, then signaled West to follow.

I was back on my stomach, pushing through the mud, keeping to the shadows, slithering fast through the bushes. On this side of the HQ, the rain together with the water rushing through the nearby ravine was making a hell of a racket. I lost visual contact with the compound for a brief period while I skirted around some bushes armored with thorns. When I regained it, the tactical situation was in danger of becoming Defcon Fucked Up. Number one rapist had blown his load, number two was undoing his fly, and now a third guard had joined them. West and I were outnumbered, and it was only a matter of time — moments, perhaps — before more of these fuckwits got the scent and wandered over for their turns.

The front of the trestle table was hard up against a massive tree trunk. I came up behind the tree, with West at my shoulder. I could hear Ayesha whimpering, making the sounds of the utterly terrified and powerless. I turned to West and signaled what I wanted him to do. He shook his head vehemently. I repeated the signal and mouthed that it was a direct fucking order. I unsheathed my Ka-bar and waited while he pulled his. I gave him no choice. The plan was only going to work if we did it quickly, and together. I got down low and had one last look at the angles, because the first few steps coming around the tree would be blind. Then I moved around behind the trunk to the opposite side and, using my fingers, gave West a count of three.

Three.

Two.

One.

Walking around the tree, nice and casual, I resisted the desire to run past the front edge of the table, keeping my mind on the job by counting steps. The asshole bending over Ayesha glanced up helpfully, presenting his throat. I slid the Ka-bar across it, making sure the steel found his jugular before I finished the slice and he had the pleasure of watching his own blood mingle with the sweat and rain on Ayesha’s ass before slumping over her, dead. I took another step past him, angling the knife so that it would slip unhindered between the fourth and fifth rib of the number two party guy. I buried the blade almost to its hilt, venting the fucker’s heart, his mouth open in a big silent ‘O’ of surprise. He was a corpse before the surprise left his lips. I lay him down in the mud for the first few moments of his eternal rest, stood on his chest, and pulled the knife free. West took out number three guy, giving him a smile from ear-to-ear with his Ka-bar that made him gurgle softly. Apart from that, there was no sound. We gave them no warning and made no mistakes. Neat and professional. None of the other guards even looked our way. I gathered the dead soldier’s weapons, a submachine gun and two M16s, and patted down the bodies for extra mags.

The deceased were tall but not heavily muscled. I pulled the body off Ayesha, laid him beside his limp buddy, then grabbed both their lapels and dragged them behind the tree. Twenty meters beyond it was a screen of bush, then a drop into the ravine. I reconnoitered it quickly. Satisfied that the area was clear, I dragged the bodies behind the bushes and rolled them into the roaring darkness but didn’t hear a discernible splash over the sound of the churning waters. I prayed that they were gone, washed downstream by the torrent, and not jagged on a rock or hung up on driftwood where they would be easily found come morning. West dragged the other corpse to the edge.

‘Strip him first,’ I said, before going back to Ayesha.

I cleared her mouth, cut her bonds and stuffed them in a pocket, and then helped her off the table. She whimpered and cringed away from me.

‘It’s Cooper,’ I whispered.

But Ayesha was still afraid, unable to see past the DRC uniform. I grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a quick shake.

‘Ayesha, it’s me, Cooper.’

She swallowed and blinked and grabbed my forearms, her nails digging into my skin.

‘Cooper,’ she whispered, as if pulling herself out of a nightmare.

West put the dead man’s shirt over her shoulders and handed her a pair of pants. I scouted the ground quickly for signs of a struggle. There was plenty of blood, but the rain would take care of that. Leaving no indication of what had happened here would be a big help. West put a finger to his lips so that Ayesha knew the drill. We still had to get around the other guards and make our way out. We led her behind the back of the tree and crawled into the bush on our bellies. We picked up LeDuc where we’d left him, then found the tree I’d put in charge of the satchel and the M16.

There were four additional weapons to pull through the mud in silence, making the outbound journey slower. We kept heading for the rear, toward the flatter ground behind the HQ, where there was less chance of crawling into someone. We encountered no pickets and quickly found ourselves in unoccupied rainforest. But as the adrenalin wore off, exhaustion set in.

I watched Ayesha walking ahead, silently pushing aside the foliage with the barrel of one of the captured M16s. She was a combat veteran now and, like me, she’d have the nightmares to prove it.