Ghost Watch

Ambush

We came down off the observation ridge, retracing our steps in the pre-dawn light, the ones that brought us up behind the looted village. As we picked our way across the higher ground, the broken sounds of women wailing for their lost children and husbands drifted up through the dense growth like the tendrils of mist curling through the trees.

‘I have heard this many times,’ Francis whispered. ‘I do not need to go down there to know what has happened.’

No, I guess he didn’t.

Leila appeared particularly anxious and, for once, not about herself. I overheard Ayesha whisper to her, ‘I’m sure she’s fine.’ The ‘she’ referred to I presumed was the baby we’d rescued briefly from the brutality.

Above, the cloud cover thickened into a solid slab and the rain started to fall, not heavily, but constant, drenching and cold. I caught the sky in snatches through the canopy and saw that it was lightening to the color of wet concrete. There was not a lot of time to get into position. We came around behind the village, and started down the hill on its far side.

‘We stop,’ said Francis, around halfway down the slope. ‘This is good place. Your people will be safe here.’ He gestured at a stand of larger trees that would provide our principals with some cover should they need it.

‘What now?’ said Leila. ‘Is this where you’re going to desert us? Again.’

I signaled Cassidy and West and they handed out a couple of the spare Nazarians, giving one to her and the other to Ayesha. ‘Try not to shoot the good guys,’ I said to Leila as I double checked its safety and magazine and handed it back to her. ‘Do I need to worry?’

She gave me a look that suggested that maybe I did, and then sighted down the weapon.

‘Come back safe — both of you,’ said Ayesha, giving Rutherford and me a quick peck on the cheek.

‘See? Is that so hard?’ I asked Leila.

My face sang with a slap that rattled my eyeballs. Leila was breathing heavily, angrily. I grabbed two handfuls of her jacket, pulled her to me and kissed her. My tongue found hers, took it prisoner. Her breath shortened and she resisted, but the resistance faded and she kissed back. And then we released each other and it was over. Rutherford cleared his throat and Boink looked the other way.

She raised her hand to slap me again.

‘You want seconds?’

‘What gives you the right, Cooper?’

‘I usually get slapped after the kiss so I figured it’d already paid for it. Not as much of a gentleman as you thought, right?’

She fexed her hand, opening and closing it. She’d hurt herself, and my face didn’t feel that great, either.

‘Okay, I apologize,’ I said. ‘Now, can we be friends?’

‘No.’

West cleared his throat, stepped in and gave both women a quick weapons refresher, reacquainting them with the Nazarian’s safety, reminding them to leave the selector on three shot burst and demonstrating again how to aim. There’d been no target practice. For all I knew, both of them would have trouble hitting the sky.

‘You’re the man, Boink,’ I heard Rutherford say.

‘As it should be, yo,’ he said with a grin.

The big man was enjoying himself.

Cassidy and Ryder were looking their weapons over. I joined them. ‘Duke, I want you to stay here with the principals, set up a defensive position.’

Ryder hesitated before giving me a nod. The old Ryder would have been happy to stay back. The new model wanted to get involved. But someone had to stay behind and Ryder had no combat experience.

‘Sorry, Duke,’ I said.

‘Just call me into the play when you need some real muscle, okay?’

‘Will do. If this goes well, we’ll be back in an hour,’ I said with my back to the principals.

‘And if it goes badly?’ he asked.

‘Then I’ll give one to the Gipper for you.’

Leaving Cassidy and Ryder to secure the principals further up the hill, West, Rutherford and I pushed down through the vines and bamboo, following Francis, hoping to get a glimpse of the road. I was thinking about that kiss. Leila had kissed back and that had been a real surprise. Was there something going on that I wasn’t tuned into? Or was she just frightened? Maybe the kiss was a final plea not to go, or not to be left behind, which, I suddenly realized, was Leila’s one consistency where I was concerned — having me right where she wanted me, a moth under a pin. It was a distraction I could do without so I put the soap opera out of my mind.

Francis crouched down. The rest of us did likewise abreast of him. ‘This is good place for you,’ he whispered, gesturing left and right with his hand through the trees. ‘See here and here.’

We all took a good long look. He was right — this vantage point was perfect. He’d brought us to a place above the road that provided a clear view of the ribbon of mud as it swept out of the village and wound along the valley floor, flanked on one side by thick rainforest and on the other by a slow-moving water channel. The position also provided a good angle on the road from the direction that led eventually to the mine turnoff. At that moment, the road was clear in both directions but the dawn was behind us even if the sun had yet to crest the hills. That meant the traffic between the FARDC camp, the village and the mine would soon begin to shuttle back and forth. We didn’t have a lot of time.

‘I go back now,’ said Francis. ‘Good luck.’ He shook all our hands, his grip firm, his skin warm and dry like the python’s. He disappeared instantly into the foliage behind us, heading back up the hill to rejoin the others.

‘Down there,’ said Rutherford, motioning at a stand of banana trees a dozen feet below us. ‘One of those will do the trick.’

The sergeant slid down to it on his butt, took hold of his machete and started chopping away at one of the thicker trunks. I joined him, gave the tree a couple of chops from the low side to finish the job.

‘Mike,’ I called up. ‘Stay high. You’ve got overwatch. The road clear?’

‘Clear,’ said West as the light faded. ‘Rain’s coming in, though.’

Of course it was. ‘Whistle when you see traffic.’ The rainforest was coming alive with the shrieking calls from unseen birdlife, either welcoming the rain or complaining about it.

Rutherford and I dragged the fallen tree down through the scrub and onto the road, blocking most of it off. We then clambered back into the scrub, climbed up the hill twenty meters or so, and waited.

After half a dozen minutes, I heard a whistle climb over the top of the chorus coming from the treetops, silencing some of it. Company was coming.

I heard the truck’s engine before I saw it, and that’s because I was looking the wrong way.

‘Oh, fuck,’ said Rutherford, tapping me on the arm so that I checked over my shoulder. A Dongfeng was coming from the direction of the mine — the wrong direction. So my assumption that the first truck on the road would be the vehicle taking those Claymores to the mine was blown. How many more trucks were behind it?

The vehicle slowed as it approached the roadblock, then stopped. The front passenger door opened, and a man jumped down and called to his buddies to lend a hand. A couple of men hopped out of the back of the vehicle and wandered around to the front. All three carried rifles slung over their shoulders, which told me that they weren’t expecting any trouble. The two who came out of the back of the truck were having a friendly chat about something.

Pointing at the men in the cabin I said to Rutherford, ‘They go first. The other two are yours.’

‘You don’t want to let this one pass, wait for the target?’ Rutherford said.

The Africans were clearing the road. If our target truck came along within the next few minutes, we wouldn’t be able to bring it to a stop before assaulting it. ‘No. Two trucks are better than one anyway.’

Our original plan was a bust, but in my experience the operation that runs like clockwork is a myth. Special Ops are often just the best intentions stitched together with luck, and they come off when the fuck-ups favor you and not the enemy. We had no choice but to go with the flow. I moved down and across the hill, using the treeline for cover, until the angle brought the driver into view through the door window. He was listening to music, head bobbing from side to side, those familiar white buds in his ears. I swung the QCW submachine gun off my back, took the safety off, aimed through the open driver’s window and waited. Meanwhile, the three men had dragged the tree from the side of the road and were rolling it into the irrigation channel, sharing a laugh while they worked. I wondered what constituted a joke in these parts. One of the men, the front seat passenger, jogged back to the cabin and hopped up beside the driver. I waited till the other two walking down to the back of the truck came around the end of the vehicle, into Rutherford’s fire zone.

I squeezed the trigger and the QCW jumped twice in my hands, making a sound like padded hammers hitting brick. Two streams of three spent cartridges arced from the right-hand side of the receiver and dropped beside my boot as the interior of the Dong’s cabin became a collection of arms waving about in a red mist.

I got up and moved at a half crouch down the hill, the short stock of the submachine gun buried in my shoulder. I didn’t see or hear Rutherford’s shots, but there was no question in my mind that there would be two dead bodies lying in the mud behind the truck’s tailgate. I came out of the bush on the side of the road a split second before Rutherford. Nothing moved in or around the vehicle. The road was clear in both directions. I ran to the back, grabbed one of the dead by an arm and dragged the body into the anonymity of the forest, the heavy rain immediately going to work on the blood trail left behind, eradicating it. Beside me, Rutherford pulled the other corpse along by its shirt collar. We raced back. I opened the driver’s door and a man fell out backward onto the road with a wet thud, the dead air wheezing from his lungs. I heaved him across the road to the forest, while Rutherford sprang up into the cabin and hauled the deceased passenger out, throwing him over his shoulder and lugging him to the spot where his buddies were beginning their big sleep. The whole operation took less than three minutes, which was fortunate because we’d run out of time.

Over my panting breath, I heard West whistle again.

Rutherford glanced back over his shoulder toward the village as he changed mags.

Through the rain and the gloom I could see a truck coming down the road between the last of the huts. The odds were good that this was the vehicle we wanted. I climbed up into the truck’s cab. The interior was like a slaughterhouse, with blood spatter everywhere, especially across the windshield. Trying to wipe it off would just create a big smear and reduce visibility further.

‘I’ve got the cab. The passengers are yours again,’ I called out to Rutherford, slamming a fresh mag in place.

The Brit darted into the forest, gone in an instant.

I picked up a beret left behind by its previous owner and put it on to improve my profile and confuse the issue. Something warm and wet slid out of it, ran down the side of my face and plopped into my lap. I didn’t want to know what it was, instead keeping my eyes fxed on the approaching vehicle. Through the blood-speckled windscreen and the rain, I could see three men sitting abreast in the approaching cab. I had no idea how many were in back, under the tarpaulin cover stretched high over the load area. The Dongfeng came to a halt twenty meters away. The driver gave the horn some exercise, a lightweight toot better suited to a cheap Chinese motor scooter. I gave the driver a wave out the window and he waved back. The number of choices I had open to me had narrowed to one. The front passenger door opened and a man swung out of the cabin and impatiently motioned at me to get my vehicle off the road, out of the way.

I angled the barrel up and pulled the trigger and the windshield in front of me shattered into a screen reminiscent of crushed ice, before collapsing inwards. The next burst had the same effect on the windshield of the truck facing me. I sprayed the cabin as the glass exploded inwards, and made doubly sure with another burst that the occupants wouldn’t cause any trouble. And suddenly men were everywhere, jumping out the back of the truck like folks escaping a burning building, running in random directions, looking for safety but not knowing where to find it. I dropped out the QCW’s mag, jammed in a replacement, cocked the weapon and did what I had to do, hitting one guy on the run in the thorax. He fell down dead. Rutherford took down two men running around on the passenger side of the truck and they slammed into the road face first, the way the living never do. A man was creeping down the driver’s side of the vehicle, hidden from Rutherford’s view, his rifle up and looking for trouble. He found it. I took aim and fired and he slumped back on his ass in the mud like he’d decided to have a quick nap.

The remaining four soldiers running toward me figured pretty quickly that their present predicament had something to do with the truck stopped in front of theirs. They turned, the way schools of fish get the message all at once without any obvious communication, and started fleeing toward the village, shooting back over their shoulders. I raised my M4, aimed and fired. Their chances of making it to the village were zero.

Rutherford appeared from out of the bush, running onto the roadside as I changed mags and then jumped down out of the driver’s seat and onto the mud. I felt something slide off my thigh and land on the toe of my boot. I glanced down and saw an eyeball attached to a length of optic nerve. I flicked it off my toe into the bushes.

Among the bodies sprawled on the road and its verge, nothing moved.

‘We’ll put ’em all back inside the truck,’ I told him. ‘Take that guy’s hands. I’ve got his feet. Let’s do this quick.’

We picked up the nearest corpse and walked it to the rear of the truck. I set my end down on the ground and lifted up the fap of the tarpaulin, and a shower of bullets blasted past my head as the bark of full automatic fire spat from the shadows within. Rutherford and I dropped to the mud beneath the tailgate with the body as the rounds clanged off the Dong’s metalwork and my heart thundered in my chest. Shit! I swore at my own stupidity. I nearly walked straight into that. The stream of hot lead had been far too close.

On full automatic, the shooter’s magazine emptied itself within a few seconds. I was tempted to jump up and send a few rounds back, but there was going to be cargo in there that I didn’t want damaged. I heard the hollow clatter of a magazine being ejected, hitting the metal floor of the truck. My cue. I bobbed my head up, then ducked below the lip of the truck’s cargo tray. Stacked Kevlar cases, just as I’d hoped. There was also the movement of a soldier fumbling with his weapon, anxious to get it reloaded. I came up for a longer, more confident peek, submachine gun shouldered, and Rutherford was beside me, his QCW likewise trained on the moving shadow which was trying to hide in the twilight, tucked into a corner behind the cabin.

‘Jesus,’ said Rutherford.

The shooter was a boy of around eleven or twelve years of age. I could see the large whites of his eyes darting between Rutherford and me.

‘Drop it!’ the sergeant yelled at him.

The kid stuttered something at us in a high-pitched, prepubescent voice, but held onto his rifle.

‘Drop. Your. Weapon,’ Rutherford repeated.

The kid got the message second time round and threw down his rifle, an old AK-47, which clattered against the containers.

I gestured at him to come forward.

He didn’t move.

‘Come!’ I said, adding a little authority to the command.

He inched forward, frightened and confused, his eyes darting between us. We were obviously out-of-towners, but from which town? I could see that there was a lot going through the kid’s mind, overloading it. When he was close enough for me to grab his shirt, I lifted him one handed out of the truck. He was a lightweight, all skin and bone, his nervous brown eyes the biggest part of him. His weapon was on the truck’s metal floor, within reach. Rutherford leaned in and retrieved it. We glanced at each other, both knowing the score. There was a lot at stake and the boy was a problem.

The SAS sergeant checked that a round wasn’t left in the AK’s chamber. ‘I’m not killing kids, skipper,’ he said, in the event that his actions with the rifle appeared ambiguous.

‘Then how do you feel about standing him in the naughty-boy corner for around twenty-four hours?’ I asked.

The boy watched me carefully with a mixture of curiosity and fear, eyes shifting to the weapon in Rutherford’s hands. ‘How old are you, kid — twelve?’ I asked him.

No answer.

‘The only things you should be shooting live on XBox,’ I said.

The urchin had no idea what I was saying.

I gave the road a visual check — clear as far as I could see. Nothing from West to indicate otherwise.

Rutherford leaped up into the cargo space and inspected the goods. I heard something rattle.

‘Seven cases, a dirty great padlock on every one,’ he called out.

‘Officer?’ I asked the boy. ‘Officer. Which one? Him?’ I pointed to one of the men lying on the road. The kid looked at me like I was from outer space.

‘Qui est l’officier?’ said Rutherford, jumping down. ‘Qui est le boss?’ he asked, pointing to several of the dead in turn. ‘Lui? Lui? Lui?’

‘Lu… Lui,’ the Congolese stuttered, pointing to the nearest dead man, a cluster of nameless symbols on his epaulettes.

I went to the body and searched it, finding what I was looking for on a chain around his neck, along with a bag on a leather thong. I held up seven bloody bronze keys and rinsed them off in a puddle before tossing them up to Rutherford.

‘Nice one,’ he said. ‘What’s in the pouch?’

I’d noticed that most of the dead Africans had been wearing similar muslin or leather bags around their necks. The man who’d run into a tree back at the Puma also had one. I untied the leather fastener, opened the bag and found a collection of teeth, small bones, some seeds and feathers. ‘Magic,’ I said, returning it to the dead man’s pocket.

‘What about the kid?’ Rutherford inquired. ‘What are we gonna to do with him?’

‘Speak English?’ I asked the boy, standing up and walking over to him.

He looked up at me slack-jawed and shook his head.

Dumb question. I noticed a bag of spells around his neck also. I reached out to inspect it and the boy finched and tried to draw back, terrified.

‘Ask him why everyone’s wearing these things. You know enough French for that?’

‘Give it a go,’ Rutherford said. ‘Tu portez ce: pourquoi?’ he asked the kid.

There was a nervous reply.

‘He says spirits have been coming into camp and stealing people’s souls, leaving them dead.’

‘Vous êtes Américains, vous n’êtes pas fantômes,’ the boy said, his eyes on the flag on my shoulder.

My turn to translate. ‘You’re American, not spirits.’

‘See, you do speak Frog,’ said Rutherford.

Setting the boy free worried me but, as Rutherford and I saw it, there was no alternative. We couldn’t keep him prisoner, carting him around with us. Pointing my finger at him and then down the road at the village, I said, ‘Go.’

He didn’t move.

‘Allez! Va t’er!’ said Rutherford. ‘In other words, sunshine, fuck off. On yer bike.’

Realization dawned on the boy. He seemed unable to believe that he’d been spared and released. But then he got it, said ‘merci’ a couple of times and broke into a sprint, running toward the village and taking our element of surprise with him.

Rutherford shook his head as he watched the boy getting smaller in the distance. ‘I was stealing my first kiss at his age. You?’

‘Cadillacs.’

‘Tough neighborhood?’

I didn’t answer. A New Jersey shithole rusting into its own gutters had been the backdrop to my upbringing, but compared with this place it was a country club.

‘Back to work,’ I said. There were the bodies sprawled around us on the ground, getting washed by the rain, and we had to do something about them. The intention had been to load them into the truck, crash the vehicle into a ravine after pilfering those cases, set fire to the lot and make the whole thing look like an accident. Only, the kid was going to give his superiors a report on what had happened to the truck, making that plan worthless.

‘Hey,’ said Rutherford. ‘Look…’ He motioned off in the direction of the village.

The boy had stopped running a hundred meters down the road. He was looking back at us, and then he started running again, making for the forest, heading west, away from the FARDC’s encampment on the hill. The kid was either deserting or reclaiming his freedom, depending on how you looked at it.

‘Run, Forrest, run,’ I said, a stupid smile on my face.

Cassidy jogged out from the tree line.

‘Came down to check on progress,’ he said. ‘Looked to me like you needed a hand.’

Good call. We decided to stick with plan B in case the kid changed his mind. After three trips each, the bodies were all out of sight in the bushes. Next, we collected the weapons strewn about — all old AK-47s — removed the bolts, and tossed the lot into the channel.

‘We need to stow the cargo before the road turns into a highway,’ I said.

No sign of movement from the village and no warning whistle from West.

A few moments later, Francis appeared at the edge of the road. He checked left and right before stepping out onto the mud strip. Then Leila, Ayesha, Boink and Ryder materialized behind him and they all ran through the rain toward us.

‘Great,’ I said under my breath.‘What do you think you’re doing down here?’ I asked Leila when she was close enough to hear. I glanced at Ryder and he shook his head, frowning, not happy.

‘I’m not staying up there with the ants and the mosquitoes any longer than I have to,’ she informed me.

‘Don’t you ever do as you’re told?’ I asked her.

‘No.’

Exposing our principals to direct danger down on the road was not part of the program, but then, not much that had happened so far this morning had been on the list worked out in the pre-dawn darkness. There was no time to argue.

‘Follow me,’ I said, and then ran to the back of the truck carrying the cargo and jumped up into it. Rutherford was already inside, untying the straps that stopped the olive drab-painted Kevlar containers from sliding around.

‘We need to get these offoaded and taken up the hill,’ I said. ‘And it has to be done fast.’

‘What’s inside ’em?’ asked Boink.

‘Dunno,’ said Rutherford impatiently. ‘And right now, we don’t bloody well care. We just need to do what the man said and pull our fingers out.’

‘What language yo’ speaking?’ said Boink, grinning, taking no offense. ‘I ain’t never heard shit like that.’

‘The Queen’s English, mate.’

‘No queens I’ve met speak like that, yo.’

Rutherford and I lifted the first container off the smaller of the two stacks and threw it, skidding, across the cargo deck toward the tailgate. Boink hoisted it off single-handedly and set it down on the mud.

‘Next!’ he called out.

We worked quickly. Once all seven containers were offoaded onto the road, Rutherford and I leaped down, grabbed one of the largest and heaviest, each taking an end, and started hobbling with it toward the edge of the forest. Cassidy was ahead of us, a container on his shoulder, pushing up into the undergrowth.

‘Duke — head ’em up, move ’em out,’ I called behind me.

The containers were all soon secured behind the tree line and we were still more or less on schedule. I checked my Seiko. Only eleven minutes had passed since the first truck had pulled up behind the banana tree laid across the road.

‘The trucks — where can we hide them?’ I asked Francis.

‘I know good place,’ he replied.

‘Is it close?’

‘Oui. One-or-two-minute drive from here.’

‘Cooper, I saw what happened with that boy,’ Leila said, seeking some attention. ‘I think you did the right thing.’

‘You might change your mind if he comes back with his babysitters,’ I said.

Leila was standing above me on slightly higher ground, her weight on one leg, a 97 crossed under her breasts so that her cleavage was lifted up and out of her jacket. With her makeup oddly immaculate, she looked like some kind of hot action movie character. I shrugged off the thought and asked Francis, ‘Which way are we going?’

He pointed in the direction of the mine, away from the village.

Two trucks rather than one. I needed a driver and someone to ride shotgun on the following truck.

‘Francis, you and I have got the lead truck.’ I glanced at the faces around me. ‘Rutherford, Ryder. You’re in the second truck. We don’t stop for any reason. Understand?’

Both nodded.

Francis scratched his top lip with the back of a long, curved thumbnail.

‘Cy — collect Mike and get everyone further up the hill with the gear, all right? As high as you can go.’

Cassidy nodded and lifted a container onto his shoulder.

‘Leila. For your own safety do as you’re told — for once,’ I said. She lifted her chin and looked away. ‘I mean it.’

Ryder, Rutherford, Francis, and I ran down through the forest, stopping to check that the road was still clear. It was. The engines of both vehicles continued to run, clouds of oily diesel smoke coughing from their exhaust pipes. Francis and I went for the first Dong — the one that had come up behind us, the one facing the wrong way.

The bench seat was covered in glass crystals clotted with blood and brain matter. I brushed them into the floorboards before climbing in. Francis removed a mound of bloody, glass-studded goop from the dashboard in front of him and nervously glanced sideways at me.

‘I’m much nicer to my friends,’ I reassured him.

A diagram of the gearbox was helpfully etched in the gearstick knob beside my hand. Depressing the clutch, I selected reverse and found the handbrake. With some gas, the Dong leaped off the mark, going backward. I spun the steering wheel and brought the ass end of the truck around. Now heading in the right direction, I selected second gear, stomped on the gas pedal, and we accelerated away, the wind and rain blast coming through the space formerly occupied by the windshield competing with the roar of the engine.

‘How far?’ I yelled

‘Drive for one minute,’ Francis shouted back.

I kept my foot on the gas, changing down for the corners but keeping our speed up in case we met another truck mid-corner. If that happened, I intended to run it off the road if I could, or crash into it if I couldn’t. The sun was yet to rise over the hills and the road remained clear of traffic. Maybe folks were doing us a favor and having a sleep in. We took the corners on the limit, the trucks sliding around on the mud. The road started to climb, slowing us, the forest encroaching on all sides. A minute had passed. Where was that hiding place?

‘We are here,’ Francis yelled, squinting, wiping the rainwater off his face.

‘And where’s that?’ I yelled back. At this point, the forest was overhanging the road. I couldn’t see anywhere to go except straight ahead.

‘Turn here.’ He pointed at the greenery trying to push its way through my window.

‘Here?’

‘Oui. Turn! Turn now!’

I pulled the wheel hard over and finched, but the wall of foliage wasn’t as solid as it appeared to be and we barreled through elephant grass and immature palms. There were no seatbelts in this crate and I braced for the inevitable meeting with a tree that would pitch me through the open window.

‘Too fast! Stop!’ Francis yelled.

I slammed on the anchors, pushing the pedal almost to the firewall, and the vehicle skidded and slid sideways, coming to a stop, palm leaves crowding in through the hole in the door by my shoulder. I finched as the vehicle Duke was driving bashed through the plant life beside us, several tons of Chinese steel hurtling past, its wheels locked up solid. It came to a stop a couple of meters in front on our right-side fender, festooned with broken fronds and branches.

I breathed deep. Jesus, that was too close.

Francis opened his door and jumped down.

Cutting the motor, I opened the door. This wasn’t forest. The palms were adolescent and uniformly planted in lines. Francis appeared around the front of the truck, machete in hand.

‘What is this place?’ I asked him, climbing out of the cabin.

‘Plantation.’

‘Where’s the owner?’

‘Dead since many years, I think.’

‘Our tracks will be seen leaving the road,’ I said.

‘The rain will hide them.’

I hoped he was right. Rutherford and Ryder joined us.

‘Sorry about that, sir,’ said Ryder.

‘Yeah, we lost you in the bush, skipper,’ Rutherford added. ‘And then that big-ass truck of yours was stopped right in front of us. Gave me a bloody heart attack, that did.’

‘I show you why it is good that you stop,’ said Francis, walking away.

He cut a path through the dense but lightweight foliage, which suddenly gave way to a deep gorge and a fast-running watercourse at the bottom of it.

Rutherford peered over the edge. ‘Shite!’