Ghost Watch

Enemies

Approaching Cassidy, Rutherford and Ryder in complete darkness and dressed in enemy uniforms was probably more dangerous than infiltrating the FARDC’s lines. Three of us had gone out two hours earlier, so it made sense that only three of us should come back; only, now there were four of us. LeDuc and I came forward with Ayesha — she didn’t want to be left on her own — with our hands raised high. I made the prearranged signal: a short, low whistle.

A whistle came back.

I relaxed. We lowered our arms and walked toward our encampment, West not far behind.

‘Ayesha,’ Leila cried out when she saw her makeup artist’s silhouette in the dark. She ran down and threw her arms around her friend. Aye-sha wept and buried her face in Leila’s neck, and the two women stood there sobbing in each other’s arms, their shoulders quaking.

Eventually I heard Leila say, ‘You’re safe now, honey. Safe,’ as she stroked the back of Ayesha’s neck.

Boink and Ryder gathered around the two women.

‘Ayesha — you okay?’ I heard Ryder ask his old school chum. She nodded. The nightmare was hers and she didn’t want it shared around. I knew that feeling. If she kept it to herself, then maybe it never happened.

Cassidy and Rutherford pulled West and me aside, leaving LeDuc with the principals. ‘What about Twenny and Peanut?’ Cassidy wanted to know.

‘They were alive when we left them,’ I said. ‘And all of them still had their hands.’

‘What?’ said Rutherford.

‘Tell you in a minute,’ West replied, gesturing at the civilians. They were still within earshot and what we had to report was not for general consumption.

‘Hey, Cisco, where’d the ponchos come from?’ I asked. Several of them had been strung up to provide shelter from the rain.

‘They walked here. A FARDC patrol — three men. They’re over there, getting cold and wet,’ Cassidy said, nodding uphill, ‘though I don’t think any of them will mind. At first we thought you were another patrol out looking for their lost buddies.’

‘What changed your mind?’ I asked.

‘You weren’t singing and smoking like they were,’ said Rutherford.

‘They were carrying these.’ Cassidy showed me a submachine gun.

I pulled mine out from behind my back and said, ‘I think they grow on trees here.’

‘The QCW-05,’ Rutherford said. ‘Made in China.’

‘Ain’t everything?’ I replied.

The QCW was a handy weapon. I’d tested one on the firing range back at Andrews — a rate of fire up around four hundred rounds per minute, a fifty-round magazine, a reasonably accurate sight, and less weight than the M16. Best of all, it was silenced.

‘There was a Chinese guy back at the FARDC HQ,’ I said.

‘Chink weaponry, Chink advisor,’ said West. ‘Gotta be related.’

I took several more steps away from our civilians and West, and debriefed Cassidy and Rutherford on what we saw: numbers, layout, weaponry, conditions, pickets, naked babes on playing cards, and so forth. I also told them about the officer and what had happened to him.

‘As punishments go, makes latrine duty seem rather tame,’ Rutherford observed.

‘What about Ayesha?’ Cassidy asked. ‘How’d you pull that off?’

‘There was a window. We took it,’ I said.

‘And no window for the others?’

‘If there was, we’d have taken it,’ West said.

‘Ayesha was kept a little apart from the rest and the isolation worked for us. We could take out the men guarding her without alerting their buddies, but that wasn’t an option with Twenny and Peanut.’

‘How many were on her?’ asked Rutherford.

‘Three.’

‘Three guards for one prisoner?’

‘Maybe they thought she was dangerous,’ I said, not wanting to go into details. Ayesha had made West and me promise to keep the rape a secret and neither of us was prepared to break that trust. I changed the subject. ‘Fournier is MIA. No sign of him.’

‘You think he’s still alive?’

‘I wouldn’t put money on it. They rocketed the chopper. Maybe they’ve got a special dislike for the UN.’

‘Guard numbers overall?’

‘Twelve that we saw,’ I said.

‘Can they be rescued?’ Cassidy asked.

‘The guards seem happy where they are,’ I replied.

Rutherford grinned. ‘You lifted one of their prisoners. Surely alarm bells must be going off down there now?’

I glanced over at our principals, who were now having a group hug with Ryder and LeDuc.

‘We fxed it so they might not know what happened to Ayesha and the men guarding her,’ I said.

‘So there is a chance we could get the others?’ said Cassidy.

‘My honest opinion? No,’ I said. ‘It’s a suicide run. They aren’t good soldiers by our standards but they have modern weapons and plenty of them, and you can’t ignore the numbers. And leaving all that aside, lifting them from the HQ isn’t the problem, it’s getting away. How do we vacate the area? There’s no handy Chinook on a hilltop with Apache gunships flying air support. We don’t have the tools for the job.’

I put my hands on my hips and the cans in the satchel I was carrying clanked together. Food — I’d forgotten about it. I dropped the bag on the ground and tins spilled out of it, to which I added the ones stuffed down my shirt.

‘What’s on the menu?’ asked Rutherford

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ I said.

‘Lucky dip. Every army’s favorite.’ He leaned down and picked up one of the cans, and then examined it in the darkness before giving it a shake. Liquid slopped around inside.

I hadn’t eaten in six hours. My endocrine glands had been keeping me going and, now that I thought about it, I was hungry enough to eat bark. Prior experience told me that the first twenty-four hours without sustenance were the worst. Get past them, and the next few days aren’t nearly so bad. Go without food for longer than four or five days and the body starts to go out on strike. Water was more critical, but there was plenty of that around. We just had to make sure that what we drank was clean. I glanced at our civilians, who were still huddled together. Maybe I could sell the rationing to Leila as a miracle military diet. All I had to do was figure out how to work astrology or Kabala into the program and she’d swallow it, no problem. Boink, I wasn’t so sure about.

‘We need to move further away from the FARDC’s lines,’ said Cas-sidy. ‘If they sent one patrol out here, they’re gonna send another, even if it’s just to go looking for their missing buddies.’

He was right about that. Cassidy, Rutherford and I rejoined the principals while West assumed the watch.

‘Thank you for giving Ayesha back to us,’ said Leila, her voice thick with emotion.

‘Yeah, thanks, Vin,’ said Ryder. ‘And Mike,’ he said a little louder. West gave him a quick wave without looking back over his shoulder.

‘We were lucky,’ I told them. ‘Right now, we have to move.’

‘But it’s night,’ said Leila.

‘The best time to do it. We’re too close to the enemy here.’

‘What ’bout Twenny and ’Nut?’ asked Boink, slapping the mosquitoes on his neck.

‘Strategic withdrawal,’ Rutherford said. ‘You know, we pull back, make a plan…’

The big man didn’t buy it. ‘You leavin’ him behind, yo,’ he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, angry, disappointed, and helpless.

‘No one’s getting left behind,’ I told him and waited for lightning to strike me dead because, as things stood, we really didn’t have very much choice but to leave Deryck and the others to whatever fate held in store for them.

‘Bull fucking shit, motherfuckers,’ said Boink, seething, seeing through the lie.

‘You can’t leave them behind,’ said Leila. ‘No sir, I won’t allow it.’

Ryder opened his mouth to speak but I cut him off with a look before he said something he’d regret.

‘We need to move because the danger is still too close.’ I didn’t wait for consensus. They got the drop on us once; next time we might not be so lucky. ‘Get your personal items and let’s go. Leave nothing behind.’

None of the principals moved.

‘Now,’ I said.

Still no movement.

‘Hello?’

Ayesha began to walk and resistance from the others crumbled. Our principals seemed to give a collective shrug and put one foot in front of the other. I wasn’t going to complain. We stopped by the nearest anthill. West kicked the top off the mound, and wiped his face and neck with the foul-smelling dirt while he explained why.

‘I’m not doing that!’ Leila exclaimed.

‘Malaria is not something you want, ma’am,’ said West. ‘It’s a bitch to get rid of. You get chills, fevers, enlarged spleen and liver. Get it bad enough and it’ll kill you. The mosquitoes carry it, along with Dengue Fever, Philariasis and River Blindness. The dirt mixed with dead ant will keep them at bay.’

‘No.’

Ayesha rubbed the dirt on her neck, face and hands. Boink did likewise.

‘There’s no paparazzi here,’ I reminded the celebrity.

‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ she said as she resigned herself to what she considered ignominy and smeared a handful of dirt on her cheeks.

‘Whatever gives you that idea, ma’am?’

‘You’re smiling.’

I looked away and took Cassidy forward to scout the path ahead. The volume of water coming down the hill was mind-boggling, the ground criss-crossed by rivulets gurgling, splashing and dribbling. We picked our way silently in the dark through the dense foliage, heading for the deep, rumbling sound of a massive volume of water tumbling and boiling in a confined space; a waterfall, perhaps. It turned out to be a ravine like the others we’d encountered. I reconnoitered upstream a hundred meters while Cassidy headed down and found us a fallen tree to use as a bridge. Fifty metres further on, another ravine. We crossed this one by wading through a waist-deep pool of icy water where the current wasn’t as strong. With luck, the ravines were natural barriers that discouraged patrols. Not far beyond this second ravine, we came across three trees in a clump, surrounding a small room-sized clearing. Thick liana vines hung down from branches hidden somewhere in the total blackness of the canopy. This was as good a place as any to hole up and get some rest. It was two thirty-five in the morning and we were all dead on our feet.

I split the watches between Cassidy, Rutherford and me — I took the first — and everyone else did their best to sleep until dawn, the women, wrapped in a poncho, spooning each other. LeDuc, Cassidy, West, Rutherford and Boink shared two more ponchos between them.

Shivering in the light drizzle, I sat with my feet and ass in a puddle with a Nazarian and M4 for company, and counted frogs jumping through the water that ran down the hill, some of them chased by large black snakes. To keep myself awake and the exhaustion at bay, I thought about the Chinese guy and what he might have been doing in the FARDC camp. I agreed with West that he probably had a connection to the weapons, but was that where it ended? I thought about Twenny Fo and the assurance I’d given Boink about us leaving no one behind and his reaction to it. I thought about Fournier and what might have happened to him; about Peanut; about the officer on his knees with his hands lying twitching in the mud in front of his eyes. I thought about the FARDC troops shooting RPGs into the Puma. I thought about the patrol ambushing us, and about the futter of Cas-sidy’s black throwing knife as it flew like an attack butterfy, burying itself in the back of the African soldier’s head. I thought it was luck of the most fucked-up kind that, given the size of the DRC, we should come down in the middle of a firefight. I mean, what were the odds? And something about all this congealed into a vague pattern that left me with a feeling of unease, which led to thoughts of Anna and the office at the Oak Ridge facility and the black hole in her chest; her heart pumping furiously while her life leaked onto the carpet through the ragged wound in her back.

Half an hour into my one-hour watch, footsteps on the leaf litter behind caused me to squeeze the Nazarian tighter, but it was Leila. I wondered what she wanted.

‘You should be asleep, ma’am,’ I told her as she walked in front of me.

‘I couldn’t. Too many ants. And I… I wanted to thank you for bringing Ayesha back for me.’

I hadn’t done it for her, but I let it slide. ‘There’s no need to thank me.’

‘Just doing your job, right?’

‘It’s going to be a long day tomorrow,’ I reminded her. ‘You need to get your rest.’

‘Do you find me attractive, Vin?’

I wasn’t sure which part of that surprised me the most, and then decided it was the fact that she knew my name. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean, ma’am,’ I said, stalling.

‘Call me Leila, okay?’

‘Sure.’ I said, nearly putting ‘ma’am’ after it.

‘Well? Do you?’

‘Do I what?’

‘Find me attractive?’

Hmm… one of the more unexpected questions I could have had to answer, given that it was three in the morning, we were in the middle of the rainforest, and she’d given me the impression that she thought my station in the universe was a rung above dirt. I thought about the answer. Yeah, she was beautiful, as well as sultry, and even sexy, in a put-you-over-my-knee kind of way, but attractive? No, she was way too selfish, too spoilt, too needy and too narcissistic for my tastes. I liked women who were happy to concentrate on me, not on themselves — even if they were faking it.

She sighed impatiently. I was taking far too long to answer, obviously. ‘What I want to know is whether you want to fuck me?’

‘What?’ I said, the question making me gawp.

She kneeled in front of me, threw her hair back and slid down the zipper on her jacket.

‘Stop right there, ma’am,’ I told her. Going to sleep on guard duty was a punishable offense, and, though I wasn’t sure of the statute, getting laid while on it was probably in the same ballpark. And besides, being completely sober, I had enough control to realize that the offer was going to come with strings attached — make that steel cables. I knew enough about Leila by now to understand that she was used to having her way, even if she had to work a little to get it.

‘If you call me “ma’am” one more time, I’ll slap you,’ she warned me.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m a woman, you’re a man…’

‘You’re a woman who wants something and you think I’m the man who can make it happen. And none of it has anything to do with sex.’

‘Fuck…’ Leila sat on her haunches and pulled the zip back up to her neck.

‘So what’s going on?’ I asked her.

‘I don’t like you, Cooper.’

‘You don’t like me so much, you want to get jiggy with me.’

Silence.

‘What is this about, aside from me being irresistible?’ She glared at me. ‘Leila, I’m gonna have to ask you to go back with the others and—’

‘Not long ago, Deryck and I had something special,’ she blurted. ‘I was hoping that we’d find a way back to each other on this trip. That’s the real reason I went through with it — this concert. Losing him has taught me that. And now you’re gonna leave him to die.’

‘And you think a little hubba-hubba with me will get you what you want?’

Leila stared at me. Even though I couldn’t see her eyes in the darkness, I knew that they were projecting waves of anger. There was a time not too long ago when I would have given the consequences a careless shrug and put this woman on her back anyway, but that was before Oak Ridge. I considered the best way to handle this and decided that subtlety wasn’t my friend.

‘Do you want to die here, too?’ I asked her.

‘No.’

‘Leila, there’s a better-than-even chance that none of us will get out of here alive. We’re surrounded by hostiles in a foreign environment and we’re on the run. We have no radio, next to no food, zero intel and limited ammunition. The odds of a successful rescue are massively weighted against us. If we try to do what you want, go to the FARDC camp and demand the release of our principals, our survival chances will reduce to somewhere around zero. Said another way, and you’re forcing me to be blunt, your ex has ceased to be a priority. Like it or not, keeping you, Ayesha and Boink breathing is top of our hit parade right now.’

Leila stood up and looked down at me. ‘You ever been in love, Cooper?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Everything,’ she said.

‘Look, I can’t — won’t — risk everyone’s life because you believe your needs are more important.’

Leila turned and walked off, after she’d taken a few steps pausing to say, ‘One day, Cooper, you’re going regret that we ever met.’

I watched her walk up the hill and the old Cooper shook his head at the missed opportunity. If I’d let her have her way with me and then said no to the quid pro quo, would I have been any worse off than I was now?

The new post-Anna Cooper, however, knew what she meant about love giving everything meaning, and he congratulated me for realizing that actions had consequences and that, for once, the old Cooper had considered what they might be before letting his dick out to play.

Leila’s poster came to mind, the one showing the star all steamed up, her sexual appetite looking for a solid three-course meal. And the old Cooper wished the new Cooper would go get lost in the forest.

At three forty-five, I got another tap on the shoulder. It was Cassidy.

‘You’re early,’ I told him.

‘Couldn’t sleep. The ants in this place are gonna be a problem. Anything out there I should know about?’

What I want to know is whether you want to fuck me? ‘Yeah, I’ve seen a thousand sets of frogs legs hopping past. Should make LeDuc happy.’

I left the sergeant to the watch, walked over to the trees and found some steaming rancid warmth under the poncho with the men. Despite the ants, sleep took me away almost immediately. It started out peaceful enough, but then I found myself alone with my usual nightmares — on top of a cold brown mountain with the remains of my unit as sword-wielding half Taliban — half scorpion creatures arrived to cut up my men. And then I was falling backward from a great height as a human wave of fanatics charged while I froze in the snow beside a dead man whose machine gun fired bullets that had no effect on the advancing horde. After which, pink froth bubbled from the crimson hole in a ribcage while I reached in and tried to find the bullet. And then I was on a wind-blown hill, strangers blaming me for Anna’s death while scorpions poured out of the earth that had been freshly dug for a coffn.

Lying in the semi-conscious zone between sleep and wakefulness, I had the feeling that there were other twisted memories on the way, or that maybe I’d replay these ones and twist them still further, so I opened my eyes. It was five-forty and my muscles were cramped in the fetal position. Somewhere above the canopy, the sky was sliding to gray and mist was floating through the trees. The rain had stopped. I untangled myself from various arms and legs, brushed ants from my neck and forearms, and walked stiffy a dozen meters from our bivouac to take a leak. Rutherford was on duty. I walked across and down to him and said, ‘Morn—’

He cut me short and informed me with a couple of hand movements that a five-man enemy patrol had crossed the second ravine and was coming our way.

I stood absolutely still rather than taking cover, movement being what the human eye is most sensitive to. It was difficult to see the men and I eventually picked them up thirty meters below us and to our right.

As Rutherford indicated, it was a six-man patrol, and they looked to be on the job, moving slowly and carefully through the mist, no one talking or smoking. Our position was relatively well hidden among scrubby bush. In this low light we were black on black to them. Confirming this, one of their number looked our way but didn’t see us. The men kept walking, heading right to left across our front. I wondered what the purpose of the patrol might be. Were they out looking for us?

Three of them carried QCWs, three had assault rifles, and one of them had another type weapon slung over his shoulder, a telescopic sight slipped into its top rail: a sniper rifle. All six carried packs.

When we were well behind in their six o’clock, I went to wake the rest of our band while Rutherford kept watch. The SOCOM boys woke quietly when I squeezed their shoulders, their eyes opening wide — alert. Ryder needed heavy prodding. LeDuc was already awake. With a bunch of hand signals I gave them all the story. As I saw it, there was no doubt about our course of action. We couldn’t have an enemy patrol operating in our area. Also, the Africans had guns, which meant they had ammo and we needed that. The brief council having concluded, each of us took a civilian to wake, covering their mouths with our hands so that no one made any noise.

‘Enemy patrol nearby,’ I explained in a low whisper to cold, shivering bodies. ‘No noise, stay here.’ I gave Ryder my Nazarian and two extra magazines. LeDuc had his own service pistol. ‘They’re yours,’ I told them, tilting my head at the principals. Ryder seemed happy to be left behind. ‘If we’re not back in half an hour, head for the top of the ridge and hope the folks up there are friendlier than the ones down there.’

LeDuc nodded and whispered, ‘Bonne chance.’

‘You really think taking them on is a good idea, sir?’ asked Ryder, frowning.

‘If we get their weapons and ammo, yes,’ I said. ‘If they shoot us all dead, no.’

‘Okay,’ he muttered, shaking his head. My logic was messing with his mind. I happened to glance at Leila. Her arms were folded and she was glaring at me hard.

We stayed behind the enemy patrol, dropping down into the mist, which was becoming genuine fog as the air warmed slightly in the pre-dawn light and convection currents got into it, thickening the mixture. The waterlogged air deadened noise transmission. When we found suitable terrain, Cassidy, Rutherford and West hunkered down while I went forward, maintaining contact with the patrol’s last man. They kept on the move for another ten minutes, walking slowly across the hill, maintaining a generally easterly heading. And then they stopped, paused for a few minutes, relaxing, and passed around a pack of cigarettes. The sun was higher, and although the fog was reasonably heavy, color was now discernible and I could see the blue patches on the shoulders of their FARDC uniforms. I dropped behind an old fallen tree and put my chin in some sticky rotting goop. I could hear the patrol talking, laughing; sharing a quiet joke, perhaps. I wondered what Congolese soldiers found funny, what the joke — if that’s what it was — was all about.

The patrol then stopped following the script. Instead of simply retracing their footsteps and going back out the way they came in, they started walking up the hill diagonally, coming toward me. If they kept to their current course, they’d walk right into our bivouac. I heard them coming closer. They’d stopped chatting like friends off to see a game, and were again stalking quietly up the hill. I slipped back the machine gun’s bolt and took a couple of deep breaths to steady my nerves. Something moved in the leaf litter. I glanced across and froze. Less than a foot from my eyeball sat a black scorpion the size of a small Maine lobster. This close, the thing looked like a Suburban with a tail. Its copper- colored stinger, curved like a scimitar, was poised over the top of its back, quivering, tensing for the strike. I swallowed hard. That goop under my chin — maybe it was the damn thing’s breakfast. It wanted to fight me for it and was scuttling back and forth, dancing like a boxer, its claws raised and ready for a one-two combination. The sight of it took me back to the hill in Afghanistan, superior numbers of Taliban fighters swarming over our mauled, exhausted unit, hacking left and right with their swords, taking off heads. Scorpions, almost a plague in Afghanistan, populated my nightmares, marshaling them forward, leading them over the trenches. I’d just spent two hours of harried, grueling sleep with a few thousand of them. I fucking hate scorpions. Despite the cold, I was sweating, immobilized. And then it struck, whipping forward and stabbing my cheek with that stinger. I yelled and jumped up, the side of my face on fire.

The FARDC patrol stopped and stared up at me.

I looked down at them.

There was a moment of indecision, but then they visibly relaxed. One of them raised a hand. While I seemed to have come from nowhere, there were those distinctive blue patches on my shoulders. They waved at me and the patrol leader took a few steps in my direction. The mistaken identity was only going to last a few seconds. A couple of them hesitated. One raised his weapon. I swung the QCW forward and fired the first burst from the hip. The weapon made a sound like a fart in a cushion. The rounds caught the lead soldier in the shoulder and stitched him across his neck, which exploded like a can of Coke that had been punctured and shaken. He fell back against the second man as I dropped to my knee and used the sight. The distance between us was no more than sixty meters — fish in a barrel distance. I pumped rounds into the chests of the remaining men, who were fumbling with their weapons, firing wildly and mostly straight into the ground. It was over in seconds.

No movement animated any of them, but I knew one was still alive. He was lying under the man who’d been shot first. I walked up to the fallen, trying not to think about what had just happened. I toed the body of the man playing possum, keeping the muzzle of the QCW on his face. His eyes were shut but his lips were trembling, tears running down his cheeks. He was maybe twenty years of age.

‘You!’ I gave his leg a prod. ‘Hey,’ I said again.

His eyes opened and he looked into the barrel of the QCW, smoke curling from it.

‘Non, non… ne me tuer pas… ne me tuer pas… ne me tuer pas…’ he said, his chest convulsing.

I wasn’t exactly sure what he was saying, but I figured he was begging for his life. The heat of battle was past and this guy hadn’t caught a scratch. I don’t do cold blood. I heard the noise of people running up behind me. My people.

‘Cooper!’ Cassidy called out in a harsh whisper.

I raised a hand to acknowledge them in the dissipating fog, just so that they could be sure it was me and didn’t start shooting. They got to me twenty seconds after that, breathing heavily, as I pulled the corpse off the lone survivor.

‘What happened?’ West asked, slightly annoyed, the plan to ambush the FARDC patrol in an orderly flashion fucked up.

‘Ne me tuer pas… ne me tuer pas…’ interrupted the Congolese soldier, who was blubbering and shaking violently.

‘Got a live one, eh?’ said Rutherford.

‘What’s he saying?’ West asked.

‘“Don’t kill me” I believe would be the direct translation.’

‘I didn’t know you spoke French,’ I said to Rutherford.

‘Schoolboy French,’ he said. ‘I can swear like a proper Frog.’

‘Keep him away from Boink. He can fill us in on his buddies down there in the valley. He might also know a thing or two about the force occupying the ridge.’

I grabbed the African’s weapon, another of those M16s with its numbers removed, then dragged the man by the back of the collar away from the carnage and turned him face down in the leaf litter.

‘Search him,’ I told Rutherford. ‘If he gives you trouble, inspect your side-arm. Seems to work.’

Rutherford patted the guy down, removing a flick knife and several full mags, Chinese-made and interchangeable with the Type 97.

West and Cassidy stripped the bodies of valuables — weapons, backpacks.

‘Nice little windfall,’ said Cassidy.

‘Lookee here,’ said West. He opened up one of the backpacks. There was a poncho, cigarette lighter, packets of South African beef jerky and more tins of food. We also had their QCWs and Nazarians, the M16, spare mags, two sets of high-powered Chinese-made binoculars, plus the extra-special prize — a serious-looking Chinese-made 7.62mm sniper rifle, with eight spare magazines.

The haul suggested that this patrol had a longer-term mission.

‘How’d you get the drop on them?’ West asked me.

‘Mistaken identity. The blue patches. My face still blacked out?’

‘Yeah. And now that you mention it, you look funny,’ Rutherford said.

And now that he mentioned it, one whole side of my face was itchy, pulsing, throbbing and hot. I touched my cheek. It was puffed up like a souffé, a teardrop of semi-crusted blood running from a puncture wound. I couldn’t see the humor in it.

‘I am not an animal,’ said Rutherford, enjoying himself.

‘You been bit by something,’ said West, stating the obvious.

I walked up to the fallen log, drawing my Ka-bar, and came back down with the struggling monster arachnid skewered on the end of it.

‘Shee-it, Cooper,’ said West, horrified by the size of the thing. Him and me both. My nightmares had themselves a new gatekeeper.

‘What about the bodies?’ said Cassidy, all business.

‘We could just leave ’em,’ Rutherford suggested. ‘They could’ve been slotted by anyone in this place.’

He was right. And it was time to vacate the vicinity. I shook the bug off my knife, toed some leaf litter over it, and dug the blade into the soil to remove a smear of yellow and green pus. I grabbed a handful of the prisoner’s shirt and hoisted him to his feet. Cassidy gave him a nudge to get him moving up the hill. The side of my bloated face wobbled like a plate of Jell-O with every step. I tried not to think about it. The fog was burning off fast now and there were wide patches of blue between the layers of cloud overhead. The day was trying to make up its mind about what kind of day it was going to be. Personally, I hoped it would come down in favor of putting on a little sunshine. The cold and wet were beginning to wear a little thin.

Fifteen minutes later we were back at our base camp. Boink was keeping watch. He stood up when we came closer, uncertainty in his face. Four went out, five were coming back. How was that happening?

‘What’s for breakfast?’ I asked the big man as I walked past.

‘Radishes,’ he said, looking at me strangely, not quite connecting the face with the voice.

I returned the strange look with interest — radishes?

LeDuc and Ryder came down to meet us. Leila and Ayesha stayed beside the ponchos now strung between the trees.

LeDuc checked the man up and down.

Rutherford said, ‘Feel free to start the interrogation — name, rank, et cetera?’

The African smiled at LeDuc, much of his fear appearing to dissipate.

‘Looks like you remind him of someone,’ I said. Maybe the fact that the Frenchman was MONUC put him at ease.

LeDuc snapped at the African and the man’s smile faltered. A rapid-fire exchange then ensued between them. When they’d finished, LeDuc said, ‘His name is Marcel Nbendo and he is twenty-one years old. He comes from a village twenty miles from here, and was recruited forcibly. His chief was paid money to vote for the local government man, plus an extra bounty for contributions made to the army. Marcel was one of those contributions. That was three years ago. He says he wants to desert, but has nowhere to go if he does because he can’t go back to his village. The chief wouldn’t allow it — too risky.’

‘Where was his patrol going and what was its mission?’ I asked.

LeDuc asked the man and then said, ‘Their orders were to kill the commander of the force holding the heights. His name is Colonel Makenga. Marcel did not want to do this mission, believing his patrol would not come back.’

‘Got that right,’ Rutherford observed with a grin as he walked within earshot.

‘Ask him if our principals are still alive down there,’ I said to LeDuc.

The pilot translated, and then said, ‘He and the others in his unit were briefed at the HQ. He saw two prisoners held out in the open.’

‘Both black men?’ I asked.

A moment later, LeDuc said, ‘Oui.’

‘Still no Fournier,’ West commented.

‘He says that when their patrol was briefed, he saw them tied up and under guard.’

‘Are patrols out looking for us?’

LeDuc and the prisoner had a brief exchange. ‘He says no.’

‘How would he know?’ I thought about the question and qualifed it with another. ‘Did breaking Ayesha out set off the alarm bells?’

The French pilot considered the questions before putting them to the African.

The man gave a stuttering reply, his eyes wide with fear.

‘He says that the commander of the FARDC force is a proud man. He would tear the hillside down in order to kill us if he knew we had dishonored him by stealing into the encampment, murdering his people and taking back a hostage.’

West yawned. ‘Bring it on,’ he said.

‘What are they going to do with the prisoners?’ I asked.

After another exchange, LeDuc said, ‘He does not know. Marcel is, how you say, “a grunt”. ’

The sun burst through the trees, fooding our campsite with warmth. Almost instantly, wisps of steam began to rise from the shoulders of our rain-and-sweat-soaked shirts and body armor.

‘If this colonel knew his captives were wealthy, would he be interested in ransoming them?’ I asked.

LeDuc and the African batted this around.

‘Marcel says his colonel is already a rich man, but that riches make a man greedy for more.’

‘We’ve captured a bloody philosopher,’ observed Rutherford. ‘What about numbers? How many have they really got down there?’

‘Around a hundred and eighty,’ said LeDuc after a quick consultation.

‘One-eighty — shit,’ said Rutherford. ‘More than we thought.’

‘Morale?’ I asked.

‘Comme si comme ça,’ the African volunteered, without the need for translation.

On the right ride of my face, my lips were swelling, and I noticed that it was getting more difficult to talk and swallow without dribbling.

‘Ask him if he knows anything about the big scorpions around here — how poisonous they are?’ I said, just as preoccupied with my own situation.

‘Can you say that without spitting, skipper?’ Rutherford asked, wiping his forehead, grinning.

‘Is that what happened to you? Le scorpion?’ LeDuc inquired, looking at my face like it was something in a specimen bottle.

‘Ask the damn question,’ I said, losing patience.

LeDuc got back to me. ‘Marcel wants to know — how big or small was the animal that stung you?’

I held my hands apart; no need to exaggerate.

The African seemed impressed and said something to LeDuc.

‘No, these ones are not so poisonous,’ the Frenchman translated. ‘There are smaller ones.’ He held his thumb and forefinger an inch and a half apart. ‘These ones are much worse. Some of the men keep the big ones as pets. They have fights, make bets — like cockfights.’

‘I think you lost your bout, Cooper,’ said Rutherford, enjoying himself.

My cheek was sagging so much under the weight of whatever was making it so puffed up that I felt like I needed to support it with my hand.

‘There’s an Asian guy down there in the FARDC HQ,’ I said, wanting to sit down. ‘Ask him if he knows who the man is and what he’s doing there.’

‘I don’t need to ask this to know the answer,’ said LeDuc. ‘The Chinese are helping the DRC. They get weapons, money and loans from China, because from the West — America — all they get is a lecture from the International Monetary Fund.’

‘Jesus…’ I said, patience gone.

The Frenchman gave me one of his shrugs and then had a brief conversation with the African.

‘Oui,’ LeDuc said when they were finished. ‘The man is Chinese — PLA. He is giving instruction.’

‘Instruction?’ I said.

‘Training,’ said LeDuc, correcting himself.

‘He’s PLA?’

‘Oui. Central Africa has become, how you say, a two horses race between your country and the Chinese.’

‘We need to secure Marcel here, somehow,’ I said.

A pair of black fexcuffs bobbed in front of my eyes, Ryder’s fingers holding them. ‘I packed a few pairs,’ he said. ‘Thought they might come in handy.’

This being Ryder’s first positive contribution to the mission — at least as far as I could see — I felt I should say something team-building to the guy, but what I in fact wanted more than that was just to sit. My face throbbed, I was producing more saliva than I could swallow and I could feel my heart galloping in my chest like one of LeDuc’s plural horses. And then, before I knew what I was doing, I was down on one knee, throwing up and seeing double, which is pretty much all I remember about that.