Ghost Watch

Cyangugu

Changed into full battle rattle, I rejoined Travis watching two United Nations SA 330 Pumas hovering a dozen feet off the ground on pillows of water thrown up by their main rotors’ downwash. They were maneuvering into the space vacated by the Boeing. The lieutenant colonel glanced at a sheaf of paperwork in his hand and said, ‘Our contact is a French Armée de l’Air capitaine by the name of André LeDuc.’

Cassidy, West, Rutherford and Ryder joined us.

‘Bloody frogs,’ said Rutherford.

‘Cy, you’re with me in one chopper with Twenny and his people,’ I said. ‘Lex, Mike, Duke — you got the women in the other.’

The guy with the wands was back out there again, now in a bright yellow spray jacket. He brought the choppers in quite close to the terminal, then directed them to kick sideways so that their side doors were facing us. The blue Pumas settled on their wheels with a couple of light bounces and blasted the hut’s windows with a fine mist of water. ‘MONUC’ was painted on their sides in large white letters, which I knew from Arlen’s briefing notes was the acronym for Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo — a mouthful for the French-led United Nation’s effort in these parts. The side door of the nearest chopper slid open, and two men in dark gray flight suits made a dash for the door of the hut, which Travis opened for them.

‘Alors, il pleut à verse, non?’ the man who won the race said, running his hands through black unkempt hair.

‘What’d he say?’ I asked Travis.

‘He said it’s raining hard.’

‘Oui,’ the Frenchman agreed. He wiped his hand down the side of his flight suit and held it out to shake.

‘Capitaine André LeDuc,’ he said, the name confirmed by a patch on his suit. ‘And this is Lieutenant Henri Fournier, my co-pilot.’

We all shook.

Being somewhere between a midget and merely short, LeDuc was the right height for a pilot, and swarthy in that southern European way. He was either growing a beard or had forgotten to shave, I wasn’t sure which. His black hooded eyes were the same color as his hair, their whites red. He also smelled like the shower he just got jogging from his aircraft to the hut had been his first in a while. Fournier was similarly groomed, but taller and coffee-colored. If I had to guess, I’d say one of his parents was white.

‘Do you speak English?’ I asked them.

‘We have to. You fly, it is the law,’ said LeDuc. ‘Parlez-vous Français?’ he asked me in return.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Fucking Americans. You are as bad as the English.’

‘Worse,’ I said. ‘And proud of it.’

The capitaine laughed, as did his co-pilot.

LeDuc asked me. ‘You are security?’

‘No, I always dress like this,’ I said.

The smile stayed on his lips as he reviewed Travis’s paperwork. ‘So, ’ow many passenger do we ’ave?’

‘Thirty-five in total,’ said Travis, ‘as originally planned.’

LeDuc surveyed the crowd in the room. ‘Bon.’

‘Seventeen in one chopper, eighteen in the other,’ the colonel suggested.

‘They ’ave les bagages?’ LeDuc asked.

‘There.’ With a nod, Travis indicated the covered trailer on the apron.

‘Alors,’ he said. ‘ We will get it on the aircraft first, non?’

Fournier ran out into the rain to make it happen and whistled to his crew. A man appeared in the side door of the Puma. The lieutenant shouted instructions at him and he shouted at the wand guy. Chain of command in action.

The wand guy disappeared around the corner and an elderly black man arrived soon after, wearing a green reflective vest over a dark blue cardigan, dusty gray pants and an old peaked cap. He walked over, under the eaves of the hut, and then slowly pulled himself into the tractor’s driver’s seat. The vehicle belched smoke as he fired it up and drove the luggage out to the Pumas.

Soon after, with the loading complete, Rutherford, Ryder, and West accompanied Leila’s people to the furthest aircraft. Cassidy and I herded Twenny Fo’s entourage and the balance of the support crew into LeDuc’s machine.

We were airborne within twenty minutes, heading generally west. With some elevation I could see that Kigali, the Rwandan capital, was only a large village with few substantial buildings and almost no paved roads; at least, not where the airport was situated.

We flew low, not more than two thousand feet above the ground. The Rwandan countryside was a monotony of treetops, scrub, and rust-colored earth punctuated here and there with flimsy huts.

‘Flying time is under an hour,’ came LeDuc’s voice in my headset. ‘We cannot go as flies the crow today, and I cannot provide you with a precise flight time — there is much of the weather over the mountains to the east of your base.’

I made no comment and sucked some water from my camelback.

‘You have not been to Africa before?’ he asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Where do they keep all the lions and tigers?’

‘There are no tigers in Africa, except at the zoos. But there are plenty of lions. Your people will be entertaining at Cyangugu?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. The skinny guy back there in the white baseball cap can rhyme “motherfucker” with almost anything. And Leila, who’s traveling in your other chopper, has a pretty good routine, too.’ Here I was referring specifically to those things she could do with her ass.

‘Yes, those two are big news in France also. I mean, no concerts other than the one at Cyangugu? It is a long way to come for one performance.’

‘Yes, it is, unless the schedule has changed. Travis, has the schedule changed?’

‘No, no. Not as far as I know,’ he said.

I examined his face. All those ‘no’s suggested a yes but he gave nothing away, so I turned to see how my principal was getting on. The rapper was asleep. On the seat across the aisle, Cassidy’s head was at an angle and I couldn’t see his eyes behind his glasses. ‘How’s it going, Cy?’ I asked.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘How’s it going with you, sir?’

‘Good,’ I said. Glad we’d settled that, although Cassidy’s manner, tone and body language hinted at his true feelings about Air Force guys — that we were a life form elevated only slightly above bugs.

I did my best to ignore Boink, who’d been giving me a disapproving glare from the moment we boarded, daring me to contest his authority as Twenny Fo’s chief protector. Beside him, Peanut was staring out the window, his knees knocking together while he pointed excitedly at something of interest below, his eyes wide with wonder.

In the row behind them, Snatch was sitting forward in his seat, wringing his hands, body twitching as if he had Tourette’s. Any second now he was going to shout ‘fucknuts’ or something. Either that or he had a phobia about flying. If so, I could relate, having had one of those once.

I looked back through the front windshield over LeDuc’s shoulder. ‘Hey, ever crash in one of these things?’ I asked him.

‘French helicopters never go down,’ he replied.

‘Unlike French women, right?’

No response from LeDuc.

One thing I know how to do is get along with foreigners.

LeDuc guided the puma into a descending arc. Out the front window, steady rain was falling from a solid horizontal wall of black cloud cover. Camp Come Together was laid out ahead of us like any temporary base I’d ever seen on the front lines — everything prefab in neat rows set among heaps of boxes, drums, broken concrete, and rusting machine parts, all safely tucked behind a perimeter fence of coiled razor wire. This one, though, appeared to be sinking in a sea of orange mud.

The welcoming committee, standing next to the chopper pad, turned their backs on the Puma’s downwash as the aircraft bounced and then settled on the steel matting. Snatch lunged for the exit door, which earned him a palm in the face from the French loadmaster who commanded him to sit.

‘Yo, Snatch. Be cool, man,’ Boink called out, stepping into his hall monitor role.

As soon as the aircraft was shut down, the loadmaster slid the door open. The air rushed in. It smelled foreign, laced with hot aviation fuel, the tang of rainwater, sodden earth, wet cooking fires and trash. Beyond the pad, I could see men ambling around in jungle-pattern fatigues I didn’t recognize. Their pants were soaked black by the rain and streaked with orange mud.

A man with a large bald head, rusty-gray mustache and heavy black-rimmed glasses shouted through the open door. ‘I’m Colonel Firestone. Welcome to Camp Come Together, Cyangugu,’ he said. ‘Where’s Lieutenant Colonel Travis?’

Travis removed his headset, fired up a smile, ripped off a salute and led with a handshake as he made his way toward the door. ‘Colonel,’ he said, jumping down onto the matting. ‘Have we got a show for you, sir.’

‘Excellent, excellent. Good flight?’

‘First class all the way,’ Travis said, full of baloney.

I thanked LeDuc for the transport and then followed Travis, Cassidy instructing the principals to stay put.

Firestone was accompanied by his own entourage, a mix of civilians and US Army and local officers who’d come to ogle the celebrities.

I approached the colonel and said, ‘Special Agent Vin Cooper, sir — Security Team Leader.’

‘Ah, yes. Now, are you the same Vin Cooper we’ve been reading about in the news lately?’ Firestone asked, shaking my hand.

‘I think so, sir.’

‘You think so. You’re not sure? Is there another Vin Cooper up for the Air Force Cross? How many of you could there be?’

‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ I said, giving him the smile he was after. Full colonels are allowed to have a lame sense of humor — comes with the bird. I turned to Cassidy and signaled at him to disembark the principals from the Puma.

Twenny Fo hopped down from the chopper, followed by Boink, who made the maneuver look difficult. Peanut came next, staring open-mouthed at the new surroundings, as if he’d been catapulted into a fantasy. Snatch followed, looking pale, with Cassidy right behind him. Travis herded them away from the chopper toward Colonel Firestone.

The humidity had frosted up the colonel’s lenses like they were beer glasses. ‘Have to apologize for the weather,’ the colonel said to Travis. ‘Wet season came later than usual this year, and it’s still hanging around.’

‘Colonel, allow me to introduce Twenny Fo, our headliner,’ Travis said, bringing him forward, his arm around, but not quite touching, the star’s shoulders.

‘Mr Twenny Fo. Well, I’m a big fan,’ said Firestone.

Somehow I doubted it.

‘Dis be the land of my forebears, you feel me? Dis be my dream. You want any special songs, Gen’ral, just tell my people, yo.’

Colonel Firestone cleared whatever it was that had stuck in his throat and said, ‘Well thank you, thank you very much. That’s very gracious of you. You can call me Colonel.’

Standing behind Twenny were his bloods, definitely fish out of water, or, in Boink’s case, beached whale.

‘Twenny, why don’t you introduce your assistants?’ Travis said.

‘Yeah,’ said the star, ‘I was gonna. The big man here is Boink. He be my security man. Snatch — he take care of my bidness. An dis here is Peanut. I take care of Peanut, ’cause Peanut ain’t so good at takin’ care o’ hisself, you feel me?’

Boink and Snatch were standing side by side. Boink had his arms folded, detached and above it all. Peanut smiled and tore off a thumbnail.

‘Wonderful, wonderful. Well, I’m pleased to meet y’all, too,’ said Firestone, hurriedly shaking each of their hands. ‘Y’know, we’re doing some great work here to help freedom take root in Africa.’

The noise from the arrival of the second Puma, carrying Leila’s troop, obliterated all conversation. I turned to watch its arrival just as a burst of rain fell as hard as marbles from the low black sky.

‘Let’s get you folks out of the weather,’ Firestone shouted over the roar of the chopper’s turbine and rotor noise.

Firestone led the way, trotting over to a hangar at the edge of the helipad. I scoped it as a matter of course and saw that it was mostly empty. The only activity going on inside was the servicing of an old Mi-8 Soviet helicopter, one of its engines lying in pieces on the floor. A couple of mechanics were standing over the oily puzzle, scratching their heads as if they didn’t know where to start. No threat here, except perhaps to that aircraft’s next payload.

Colonel Firestone brought his VIPs over to meet my principal.

‘If you don’t mind, Mr Twenny, I have some introductions of my own,’ he said.

‘Meet your people be my pleasure,’ the rapper said, with a lopsided smile.

‘This is Colonel Olivier Biruta of the National Congress for the Defense of the People, and his second in command, Major Jean Claude Ntahobali. Colonel Biruta commands the CNDP brigade currently in training here.’

‘Please t’ meet choo, brother,’ Twenny Fo said, unsure about what he should do next — bow or shake hands. He settled on both. The rapper seemed genuinely overwhelmed by the occasion.

‘Yeah,’ said Boink, joining in, giving the colonel and his offsider some kind of homie salute, sliding his hand diagonally across his chest with thumb, forefinger, and pinky prominent. ‘Real pleased.’

Biruta smiled broadly, showing receding gums and very large teeth. He was tall and slim, with skin the color and luster of liquorice, his face almost perfectly divided in half by a scar that ran nearly as straight as a desert road from his forehead to his chin, leaving a grooved trench down the middle of his nose. Biruta’s XO, Commandant Ntahobali, was equally thin and black, though not as tall as his boss. A three-inch chunk of flesh was missing from the muscles of his right forearm, where a badly applied skin graft had created an ugly pink raised keloid scar. Both men had the detachment of soldiers who’d seen far too much.

Peanut, disengaged from proceedings, gazed in wonder at the dismantled Soviet aircraft.

Firestone stuck to his game plan. ‘I’d also like you to meet Beau Lockhart. Beau’s from Kornfak & Greene, the contractor that built this camp. He’s ex-Army Special Forces, so he knew from personal experience what we needed, didn’t you, Beau?’

Lockhart nodded and stepped forward into the space between the rapper and Colonel Firestone, and more handshaking ensued. He wore a diamond stud in his left ear and his nearly shoulder-length hair had been coiffed into glistening black ringlets. The guy was swimming in a pool of cologne. He didn’t seem the Special Forces type to me, retired or otherwise.

‘Can’t wait to hear the concert,’ he said.

‘Pleasure to entertain y’all,’ Twenny Fo replied.

Pulling Travis aside, I said, ‘I need to speak with someone about security.’

‘Yes of course,’ he said. ‘They gave me his name already — Holt. I’ll see if I can track him down.’

Just then, the people from the second French helicopter ran into the hangar, with a squad of enlisted soldiers holding ponchos over their heads. Biruta, Firestone, and the other officials seemed to forget about Twenny Fo completely and craned their necks to get a better view of the new arrivals.

‘Colonel,’ said Travis, smiling broadly, ‘come and meet America’s hottest female performer.’

‘Love to,’ the colonel replied, licking his lips.

‘Look at us,’ Leila said to Ayesha and Shaquand, as she brushed a few drops of water off her thigh with the flat of her hand. ‘I mean, just look at us!’

She didn’t need to say it twice because that’s what every male in the hangar was doing. Biruta was acting as though he’d just been given a shot of morphine; he was staring at probably the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen in his life. Drooling was a real possibility.

Ayesha held up a small mirror so that Leila could examine her makeup disaster zone.

‘Leila,’ said Travis, approaching her, ‘how was your flight?’

‘Appalling. The plane leaked.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Realizing that it wasn’t a particularly good idea to continue down this path, Travis changed the subject. ‘The commander of the camp would like to meet you.’

‘Can’t it wait? Is there a dressing room I can use?’

‘I’m sure there is, but you look amazing. A couple of quick introductions, and then you can start rehearsing.’

The star sighed heavily, then turned away from Travis and said, ‘Shaq, honey, see if you can’t find me a bottle of Evian?’

Shaquand scoped the hangar, I guessed for a vending machine. I didn’t like her chances.

Colonel Firestone was standing to one side, waiting patiently beside Biruta, Ntahobali, Lockhart, and their assistants.

When Leila turned back, it was as if a new personality had invaded her being. A warm smile suffused her features, and she radiated light.

‘Gentlemen,’ she said, holding out her hand, which Firestone eagerly took. ‘I can’t tell you how excited I am to have been given the honor to come here and do my patriotic duty.’

I had to smile. Leila played the room like a hit single.

Firestone more or less repeated the introductions I’d already heard, although with considerably more flawning.

Travis extracted himself from the center of the male vortex swirling around her and brought me one of Firestone’s junior officers.

‘This is Alex,’ said the colonel. ‘Holt’ was stamped on his nametag. He was US Army and black, with the build of a quarterback and sharp, intelligent eyes.

‘Name’s Vin,’ I said, completing the introductions. ‘Tell me about the natives. Any chance that a suicide bomber might run into the accommodations and rearrange the furniture with C4?’

He read my name, saw the OSI unit badges, and something clicked. ‘Oh, now I know who you are. You’re that Vin Cooper. Kabul, right? The whole skull thing. What you did was pretty awesome.’

I didn’t know where to look.

‘Don’t worry, you’re among friends here — on both sides of the wire. And I’ve put a ten-man security detail at your disposal. Oversee them personally if you like, but if I were you, I’d relax and enjoy some down time.’

‘Can I please have everyone’s attention?’ said Travis, raising his voice over the crowd. ‘I need to see the stage managers, get you people orientated. Colonel Firestone has given us the mess hall, a place for you to rehearse. Leila, Twenny Fo — whenever you’re ready, I’ll take you over there.’

‘So what’s she really like?’ Holt asked, his eyes feasting on the celebrity.

‘Interesting.’

Holt continued staring at her for another moment and then snapped out of it. ‘I’ll get the team to rendezvous with you over at the mess,’ he said.

‘Thanks.’ I scanned the area, checking on everyone’s whereabouts. All except one present and accounted for.

‘You see Peanut anywhere?’ I asked Rutherford.

He gestured over his shoulder. The guy was covered in grease and kerosene, holding up parts of the Mi-8 as if he’d struck gold.

The camp had already set up its own sound system in the mess hall — a big prefab box built to feed two thousand men at a time, with movable seating and a cafeteria at one end — and now Twenny Fo’s recorded backing tracks were rattling the windows. The room was huge and plain, beige tiles on the floor and the walls unadorned but for awards extolling the military’s equivalent of employee-of-the-month — photos of smiling personnel who’d served the most meals or washed the most pots.

Major Holt’s security detail arrived as Leila and Twenny Fo were rehearsing, ten armed men to guard the only two doors in and out. That was a lot of security. Nevertheless, one of us still had to chaperone the principals — rules.

Cassidy, Rutherford, West, and Ryder stood just outside the mess. Over on the other side of the open quadrangle, we could see some US Army engineers putting the finishing touches on a stage constructed from scaffolding.

‘Duke, I nominate you to babysit our principals,’ I said. ‘You okay with that?’ I was doing him a favor. The guy hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Ayesha.

‘Sure can do,’ he said. ‘Where’re you fellas gonna be at?’

‘Taking in the sights.’

‘Okay — later,’ he said, almost skipping back inside.

Cassidy, West, Rutherford and I went off to nose around. None of us was even aware that the US had a military base down here, and we wanted to see what mischief the Pentagon was up to.

‘So which ones are the advisors?’ West motioned toward half a dozen soldiers cutting across our path. Beyond them, three platoon-sized squares of men were out double-timing it between truck convoys crawling down a muddy access road.

‘Have you noticed that, aside from Firestone, all of our people here are black?’ observed Cassidy.

‘Hiding in plain sight,’ I said.

‘How do you know which ones are the Americans?’ asked Rutherford, the Brit.

‘Look for the roll,’ West said.

‘What roll?’ inquired Cassidy. Then he stopped, annoyed. ‘Do I have a roll, motherfucker?’

‘Yeah, you do,’ Rutherford insisted. ‘You know, the stylish, fluid movement that suggests a certain level of cool. The slight push off your left foot, followed by the telltale thrust of your right shoulder. I’m an Anglo. If I tried to do something like that, I’d look like I was having some kind of spasm.’

A couple of guys strolled past with rhythm in their step.

West nodded at them. ‘The roll. For damn sure, made in the USA.’

Cassidy grunted. ‘How many advisors are we supposed to have here, anyway?’

‘I was told a thousand,’ I said.

The base was big enough to house maybe five thousand men, though I couldn’t say for sure how many of them were actually on post. The place felt like a busy frontier fort gearing up for a mid-level conflict just over the horizon.

A truck stopped at one of the large pre-fab boxes with two forklifts parked outside suggesting that it might be Supply. The Kornfak & Greene guy, Beau Lockhart, hopped out of the truck’s passenger side and stood at the open door, discussing something with the driver.

‘Why don’t we ask The Man?’ I suggested, and then called out in Lockhart’s direction, ‘Hey, nice place you have here!’

Lockhart turned. He was preoccupied with the driver; it took him a moment to place us. ‘Why thank you,’ he said. ‘And that’s a nice piece of ass you’ve brought with you.’ He leered at us. ‘She could Leila with me anytime, you know what I’m sayin’?’

Lame joke. Maybe this guy was a colonel when he was in Special Forces.

‘The boys and I were just wondering what goes on here,’ I said, throwing out a line.

‘You mean, what we’re doing down here, ol’ Uncle Supply and Demand?’ he asked.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘The usual,’ he said. ‘We train our side to go out and teach the other side where and how to smarten up so that they can kill our side right back.’

‘And who is our side killing, generally speaking?’

‘Generally speaking, the enemy,’ he said with an easy smile.

‘And who’s that?’

‘Nosy for a PSO, aren’t you?’

‘This is just my day job,’ I said.

His eyes flittered over the words ‘Special Agent’ above my nametag.

‘You’re a cop. So you’ll understand me when I say — move along, nothing to see here.’

And that often means there’s something you really should see and it’s mostly dead, but I didn’t press it.

Lockhart’s smile went someplace else. ‘Well, looking forward to tonight’s concert. If you’ll excuse me…’

Cassidy stood aside. Lockhart squeezed past him and trotted toward the supply building.

‘Make friends easily, skipper?’ Rutherford asked as we watched the man’s back.

Lockhart opened a door and disappeared behind it. My natural curiosity was getting the better of me, probably because Arlen had provided next-to-no detail on this place. But asking questions wasn’t my gig here, as Lockhart had pointed out.

A couple of Americans rolled past, wearing jeans and t-shirts and smoking cigars.

‘They don’t look like regular military,’ said West.

‘Contractors,’ said Cassidy.

‘Kornfak & Greene turf,’ I reminded them. ‘They’re mercenaries.’

‘Speaking of turf, they should rip all of it the fuck up.’ Rutherford pulled his Ka-bar, leaned on West, and prized away the orange mud accumulated on the soles of his boots. ‘This shite is like wet concrete.’

‘Smacks of deniability,’ said West, looking around. ‘If things go wrong — it weren’t us, no sir.’

Possibly, but there were enough people at the command level here parading around in US Army battle uniforms — Firestone, Holt, and the rest — to make plausible deniability difficult to pull off. The truth, whatever it was, would still escape. Truth had a habit of doing that.

We walked for another twenty minutes and saw nothing that we hadn’t seen at countless other camps and bases. It began raining again; not hard, just a steady, sapping drizzle. We made our way over to the stage, which had been built adjacent to the camp’s HQ, a two-story structure with a couple of flagpoles out front: a blue, yellow, and green-striped flag — I guessed the national flag of Rwanda — hanging limp on one of them, the Stars and Stripes on the other. A luxury Mercedes 4×4 followed by a Toyota Kluger pulled up outside the HQ. Fancy vehicles for a place like this, I thought. Two men got out of the Mercedes, one white, one black. Five large black men with nervous eyes exited the Toyota and formed a loose diamond around the two from the Mercedes — PSOs. Then Lockhart came out of the HQ, armed with a couple of umbrellas. This guy got around. The Mercedes combo took refuge beneath them and they all made a dash for the building.

‘Vin, wait up,’ a voice called behind me. It was Ryder. He was out of breath, something urgent on it.

‘What’s up?’ I asked him.

‘Twenny Fo wants a word.’

‘What about?’

‘No idea,’ he said.

‘He still rehearsing?’ I asked.

Ryder nodded.

‘I’ll catch up with you later,’ I said to Cassidy and the others.

Ryder and I walked back to the mess. ‘How’s it going?’ I asked him.

‘Gonna be a great show,’ he said.

‘How’re the principals getting along?’

‘Great.’

‘As long as they’re not breathing the same air,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’

So far, the only danger I could see on this detail was getting caught in the crossfire between those two.

When I walked into the mess, Leila had the floor. She was singing a song I was familiar with about a guy with a big gun — I figured not of the Smith & Wesson variety. It was slow and sexual, as though the tune itself were riding on its own lubricant. A bunch of US Army folks, including Firestone, Holt, and his security team, were somehow managing to watch without panting.

‘Over here,’ said Ryder.

I followed him to a far corner, where Twenny Fo, wearing white Nike sweatbands on his head and wrists, was trying on a US Army combat uniform, a tailor pinning it here and there in an attempt to wring what he could from the performer’s scrawny, free-range street physique.

‘Yo, Tee — that look the biz on you, man,’ Boink complimented him.

‘You be The Man’s secret jungle weapon,’ said Snatch, massaging his goatee and holding his tightly braided head at an angle. He saw me coming and said, ‘Heads up, Tee. Ghost Man in da house.’

Fo looked across and acknowledged me with a lift of his chin, then walked away from the tailor as if the guy didn’t exist.

‘Wanna ask you sommin’, man,’ he said, his brow furrowed as if he were weighing the answer to an important question.

‘Yes, sir,’ I replied.

‘You know my tunes?’

‘One or two.’

‘What about “Fighter”? Choo know that one, homes, right?’

‘I’m familiar with it, sir,’ I said.

‘Yo,’ he called to Boink. ‘You got it on you?’

‘Ai.’ The big man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a white rectangular piece of paper. He lumbered over to Fo, sweat rolling down his forehead, and handed it to the celebrity.

‘I want choo to picture this, you feel me?’ He put one hand in the air and then looked up at it as though a vista of the future were about to project from his fingertips. ‘This is what I thinkin’, man. At the end of the song, we gonna have a lot’a smoke, yo. It be pouring out, man, drifting across the stage while I do what I do. Then, we gonna turn on the back lights — big white searchlight motherfuckers. That’s when people gonna see the silhouette of a man standing on stage with his weapon in the crook of his arm like so,’ he said, striking the pose he was after, his arm the weapon. ‘This man be you. And then we’re gonna put a front light on you, you know, so everyone can see yo’ bad-ass motherfucker ghost face.’

He flipped over the rectangle of white paper that Boink had given him. It was Fallon’s cell phone photo, the one taken of me in Kabul. Christ, Arlen was right, the goddamn thing was following me around the world.

‘We gonna make you up,’ Fo said, ‘just like this.’

‘I spoke with Ayesha,’ said Ryder, chipping in behind me. ‘She says she can do a great job: white powder on your face, a little black around your eyes, crimson lipstick for the lines of blood across your mouth. Easy.’

‘No, thanks,’ I said, without hesitation.

‘Choo not sure, right? Well, think on this,’ Twenny Fo said, gesturing at Snatch. ‘Yo, give the man three.’

Snatch reached into his pants pocket, extracted a roll of cash, and began peeling off notes, his fingers translating ‘three’ into three thousand dollars. He held the moist wad toward me.

The photo brought back memories of the action in Kabul, one of them being of Specialist Rogerson with no face at all, sitting in the Landcruiser with her perfectly manicured nails still resting on the rim of the steering wheel.

‘No. And I’m sure,’ I said, handing the photo back to Boink.

One of the security guys whistled softly. I glanced up and saw the reason why — Leila had just broken into a dance routine that I’d loosely describe as X-rated. I felt her eyes on me as I made for the exit.

‘Change your mind,’ Twenny Fo called after me, ‘the offer stands, yo…’

Cassidy, West, Rutherford, Ryder, and I watched the performance from the wings. The audience was on its feet the whole time. I estimated the assemblage at close to two thousand. The numbers were less than I’d thought they would be. Maybe part of the brigade was somewhere else. Half a company of Firestone’s men was handling crowd control. Better them than us. Things were getting ragged out there. Leila had been on stage for over an hour, and her set was coming to a climax along with, I suspected, half the men, including me.

The song was called ‘Peep Show’. Two of Leila’s dancers had lathered moisturizer all over her, and then all over each other, and now the three of them were moving in and out of each other’s legs and arms while Leila sang a rhythmic song, the beat pulsing, the lyrics on the verge of pornographic. A roar of testosterone rose from the men and rolled over the oiled-up performers. I saw Leila flip the bird at Twenny Fo waiting in the wings. She was stealing the show and letting him know it.

I turned back to scope the audience. A commotion was going on in the front row. The overhead lighting flashed on a blade of steel. Suddenly, two men vaulted onto the stage and raced for Leila and the dancers. Holt’s security men were too thinly spread out to be effective. Rutherford and I moved at the same time. I went low, taking out their legs. The SAS sergeant went high, and all four of us slid on a slick of moisturizer. The two men were Rwandan, dressed in battle uniforms. Using a thumb lock, I immobilized the guy who I thought had the knife and dragged him offstage. I patted him down, but the knife was gone. Maybe he dropped it before he jumped on stage. Maybe he left it in one of his countrymen. I frog-marched him out the back and handed him over to a couple of Rwandan MPs with a quick report. Rutherford released his captive back into the wilds of the mosh pit, and I resumed my place in the wings. The crowd was going nuts as ‘Peep Show’ came to its conclusion, Leila lying exhausted and prostrate on the floor, her heavy, sated breathing booming through the sound system.

Then Twenny Fo jumped into the picture, pulled Leila to her feet, and the two sang an upbeat number followed by a saccharine duet that made me want to reach for a bag. Leila waved to the audience and blew everyone kisses as she walked offstage, the crowd applauding, wolf-whistling, and calling out lewd propositions.

The rapper diverted their attention with a change of pace, a song recalling neighborhoods in the Bronx, wrapped in a beat that made as much sense to my ears as French. But the black audience responded, moving and swaying, hands in the air, lost in the music. Twenny Fo performed about fifteen or so songs and the crowd was functioning as one organism, the music its lifeblood, its oxygen. And then Fo was gone. Initially stunned, the crowd refused to believe that the concert was over and demanded more, chanting and stomping and clapping. Something was missing. He hadn’t performed his signature tune. The audience knew it and wouldn’t let him go.

I scanned the crowd for more threats but couldn’t see any. It was a sea of expectant, enthusiastic black faces out there. I continued scoping the area and saw that Colonel Firestone was enjoying the concert from the second-story balcony of the base HQ overlooking the stage. Five men were with him — Biruta, Ntahobali, Lockhart, and the two men I had seen getting out of the Mercedes. There was no room up there for the bodyguards.

‘You were slow getting to those guys,’ said a voice behind me as I caught the scent of mountain flowers on a warm spring day. It was Leila. She was toweling off her wet hair, having just come from taking a shower. Without makeup, her beauty was almost freakish, the type that could launch a thousand ships. Unfortunately, the personality that went along with it would happily see them all dashed onto the rocks, the passengers and crew drowned. But maybe I was doing her an injustice.

‘Do you like your job, soldier?’

What was I supposed to say?

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘I’m in the Air Force, ma’am, which makes me an airman,’ I said.

‘Well, whether you like it or not, airman, one word from me, and you won’t be doing it no longer.’

Her attack took me by surprise as much as the guy with the knife had. If I’d been expecting anything from her — and I wasn’t — maybe it was just a plain, ordinary thank you.

She turned and walked off, still toweling her hair. I signaled West to stay with her while I imagined how she’d react to being thrown over my knee. I glanced at my watch. In another thirteen hours or so, we’d be back at Kigali airport, and this detail would slip from the uncomfortable present into the happily forgotten past.

Then a familiar tune brought my attention back to the stage. It was

‘Fighter’, Twenny Fo’s mega hit. He had re-appeared and the audience began singing along with the familiar lyrics from the chorus: There ain’t got no force righter than a US Army fighter. I wondered what the Marines and the Navy had to say about that.

‘Hey,’ said Travis, appearing beside me. ‘Great concert.’

‘Great,’ I echoed.

‘Nice take down, by the way. And good of Leila to come over and thank you,’ he said.

‘That’s just what I was thinking,’ I said.

Smoke machines swamped the stage with a white mist. Twenny Fo was two-thirds of the way through his big number. The song was building, getting louder, harder. Then some familiar sounds made me finch involuntarily: small arms fire, helicopters, rocket-propelled grenades. Explosions boomed through the speakers, seemingly getting closer. Brutal searchlights kicked in with a blazing light that backlit the smoke and reminded me of blinding white phosphorus. Suddenly, a powerful downlight illuminated the scene from overhead and the crowd went berserk. I shook my head in disbelief because there I was — on stage. The figure took two steps forward as the smoke curled in and around it, and I saw my face, the one in the photo taken by Fallon: bleached white skin, black eye sockets and grinning jaws defined by vertical red lines. Finally, a real explosion boomed out like a powerful grenade detonating in an enclosed space. A ball of orange light and a giant white smoke ring rolled up into the overhead lighting and brightened the night sky.

‘Jesus,’ said Rutherford, joining Travis and me. ‘Is that fuckin’ Ryder?’

‘Uh-huh,’ I said. It was either Ryder or a dead man. Come to think of it, perhaps it was both.

The audience was whooping and hollering as the music died down. The figure remained on stage, looking even more ominous in the growing silence. Then the lights were turned off and the stage went dark. Only when the crowd went completely manic did a single spotlight snap on. Ryder was gone. In his place stood Twenny Fo, and waves of adulation poured forth.

Whatever I thought of Fo and Leila as people — and so far I didn’t think much of either — they burned hot in front of a crowd.

The rapper told them he thought they were one of the best crowds ever, if not the best. He said they were doing a great and worthy job of representing their country’s values. Then he gave them a last wave, punched the air, and ran off into the wings.

The audience wouldn’t stop chanting until the stagehands appeared and started packing up the equipment. Only then did the crowd begin to disperse.

Rutherford and I met up with Cassidy and West backstage, where our principals were having their egos stroked by Colonel Firestone and Colonel Biruta.

‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ I said, stopping Ayesha as she wandered past. I looked into her almond eyes for the first time. She wore tinted contact lenses to make them a bright blue, a striking contrast to her coal-black skin and white close-cropped hair. ‘Have you seen Captain Ryder anywhere?’

‘Calling me “ma’am” makes me sound like my grandmother,’ she said with a smile. ‘You can call me Ayesha.’ She touched my body armor with her finger. ‘As for Duke, yes, he’ll be out in a minute. Hey, I saw what you did out there — quick off the mark.’

‘That’s ’cause I gave him a shove,’ Rutherford told her.

She smiled at us flirtatiously, then walked over to Leila. I noticed that Firestone had pulled Travis to one side, and the two were involved in a heated conversation. Firestone waved some papers at him.

‘Man, what a rush!’ said Ryder, who came up behind us.

His eyes were the size of dinner plates. One of them was still edged with black makeup and beneath his left ear was a patch of white he’d missed. I wanted to be mad at the guy, but he’d come here straight from a seat behind a battery-operated pencil sharpener at Andrews and probably didn’t know any better.

‘They pay you?’ I asked.

‘I did it for free. Why?’

‘I was going to ask for my cut.’

‘Can I have everyone’s attention, please?’ It was Travis, and he was standing on a box backstage. Everyone stopped what they were doing to listen. ‘I know it’s late and everyone wants to hit the hay, but Colonel Firestone has asked us all to assemble at the mess hall in ten minutes.’

‘You know what this is about?’ Rutherford asked me.

‘Nope,’ I said, but I had a suspicion that when I did find out, I wouldn’t like it.

‘So, if you could all make your way over there now…’ Travis said.

Cassidy, West, Rutherford, Ryder, and I formed the standard loose diamond around the principals and their companions and headed over to the mess.

‘You care to give us a preview?’ I asked Travis when we caught up with him.

‘There might be a change of plan,’ he said.

‘There might?’

‘Okay, there will.’

‘Surprise, surprise,’ I said. ‘Give it to me.’

‘Sorry, Vin, but you’ll have to hear it from the colonel — orders.’

Firestone was waiting with Biruta, Lockhart, and the two men from the Mercedes and their bodyguards. The tour arrived pretty much en masse, and then split into either Camp Leila or Camp Fo.

‘The civilians with Firestone and Lockhart,’ I said to Travis under my breath. ‘What’s their story?’

Before I could get an answer, Firestone held up his hands and said, ‘People… can I please have everyone’s attention?’ He waited until the room had quietened down. ‘A couple of items. First of all, congratulations to everyone for putting on such a wonderful show. It was a huge morale booster for the men, knowing that people of your caliber were prepared to come all the way to Africa just to entertain them. So, again, on behalf of the whole camp, thank you.’

A short round of self-congratulatory applause followed. I noticed that neither Twenny Fo nor Leila was clapping.

‘Second, we’ve had a request from the French. Now the French — the folks who brought you in on their choppers — provide the lion’s share of the UN peacekeeping force across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They’ve formally asked if you would be prepared, on your way home, to delay your trip by just one evening,’ and he held up an index finger to underscore the point, ‘to give a performance to their peacekeepers in Goma.’

Everyone looked at each other for a reaction.

‘This has been on the cards from the beginning, hasn’t it?’ I whispered to Travis.

‘Not as far as I knew,’ he replied.

I stared at him.

‘Okay, I apologize.’

‘Not accepted.’

All I could do was shake my head. Arlen had assured me that PSO security issues would transcend all others. In this instance, a higher-up who spent most of his time with his lips on the rim of a cocktail glass had made a promise or repaid a favor and, if Fo and Leila agreed to the diversion, there was nothing I could say to stop it.

‘The request has come through proper channels,’ Firestone continued. ‘And it’s been given the green light by Washington and your respective management, but the decision is up to y’all, of course. Unfortunately, though, we must have your answer within the hour so we can pave the way with the French MONUC forces.’

The stagehands and dancers were mostly shrugging or nodding as they discussed it, their body language saying, ‘What the hell… Why not?’ I glanced at Leila. Her arms were folded, and there was a frown on her face. Seemed, for once, we were on the same page.

‘Well, I’ll leave y’all to talk it over,’ Firestone said. ‘And once again, thank you so much for the fantastic show.’

‘What do you think?’ Travis asked me.

‘You know what I think.’ Then I turned to Cassidy, West, Rutherford, and Ryder and said, ‘Feel free to agree or disagree, but I say no.’

No one said yes.

‘What’s the problem?’ asked Travis.

‘There are only five PSOs providing protection for thirty people,’ I answered.

‘That’s a big consideration, obviously.’

‘Though not big enough, obviously. Leaving the numbers aside, we have no appreciation of what the situation is like in the DRC.’

‘True,’ he said.

But I knew he didn’t care what I had to say. The only people he wanted to hear from were Leila and Twenny Fo. I was sure about Leila’s position. Twenny Fo was the variable. My take on him was that he actually wanted to be here for reasons I didn’t fully understand. Question was, did he want to be here longer?

The rapper turned and faced Leila, and once again their courtiers and hangers-on lined up against each other for a showdown.

‘I have scripts to read, an album to cut. I’m leaving,’ said Leila, loud enough to be heard throughout the room.

Twenny Fo walked over to her. ‘C’mon, Leila. One day extra,’ he said, ‘That’s all they askin’.’

‘No,’ she said, her weight on one leg, arms folded tightly across her chest.

‘When we was together, we promised ourselves we would give some-thin’ back to our fighting boys,’ Twenny pleaded. ‘Come to Africa, make a contribution, and see where we come from. We were gonna tour, remember? And then our managements got involved, and it got whittled back and whittled back again, and then it was down to one concert. Now we got t’ opportunity to do one more. It’s jus’ one more. The people here are makin’ a sacrifice. What sacrifice we makin’?’

I was starting to wonder about Twenny Fo. Just maybe all the bad boy crap was record company marketing and there was more to Fo than he was prepared to admit in public. And then there was Peanut — the guy standing behind Twenny, chewing on a Mars Bar, barely engaged with the situation. The kid was plainly a float short of a raft, yet the rapper had taken him in and was looking after him.

Leila eyed her ex-boyfriend. ‘Maybe if you hadn’t got with that bitch from Electric Skank, or whatever they called, we’d have had us a different story here,’ she said.

Shaquand said, ‘Uh-huh.’

Ayesha said, ‘You know it.’

‘I didn’t get with no one,’ Twenny said, palms face up. ‘You’re talkin’ about photos in a motherfuckin’ magazine. They made somethin’ innocent into somethin’ else, you feel me? You know what they like.’

‘I think you’re lyin’ to me like you always do.’

The rapper shook his head. ‘C’mon, Leila. We’re in Africa, baby. You ever gonna come back here?’

‘I don’ know why I came here in the first place.’

‘We wuz asked. And we wanted to do some good. Just one more day.’

Leila shifted her weight to the other leg and placed a hand on her hip. ‘No.’

‘C’mon…’

‘No.’

‘Leila…’

The singer sighed heavily and looked up at the ceiling.

‘It’s only one more night,’ he reminded her.

Something about her stance suggested that she might be wavering. ‘One show. That’s it. But you owe me.’

‘All right!’ Twenny exclaimed and stepped forward to embrace her. Leila held up a hand to palm him off.

‘Don’t think this changes anything ’tween us,’ she warned him. ‘And you can be sure I will collect.’

I pictured a couple of pounds of flesh.

‘Sure, okay. But dis is right.’ Twenny stepped back and went into a huddle with Boink and Snatch.

I could smell something coming, the scent building in strength the way a siren increases in volume the closer it gets.

‘Excuse me, Colonel,’ said Lockhart to Travis. ‘There are some people I’d like you to meet. This is Piers Pietersen from Swedish American Gold. And this is Charles White.’

Pietersen was the tall guy with blond hair and blue eyes. White was black with a stocky Neanderthal physique and a heavy jaw that reminded me of Magilla Gorilla. Who were these guys? And who were their goons, a small posse of heavy-set knuckle-draggers of mixed genealogy who looked vaguely African but were probably from someplace else?

‘Gentlemen,’ Lockhart said, introducing the players and ignoring the hired help. ‘This is Lieutenant Colonel Travis. The colonel was responsible for organizing the show you saw this evening.’

Handshakes ensued.

Then Lockhart noticed me standing next to Travis. ‘Oh, and this is…’ his eyes dropped to the name tape on my pocket, ‘… Cooper, rank unknown.’ I saw his eyes snag briefly on my OSI patches before turning away. I didn’t rate a handshake. He turned to Travis. ‘If possible, Mr Pietersen and Mr White would like a word with Leila.’

‘Leila would be delighted,’ Travis said.

I wasn’t so sure. Delight was not something I’d seen her do. But the special agent side of me was intrigued. Why was a guy from Swedish American Gold hanging around a US Army training base? Who was Mr White? And why were they buddies with Mr Kornfak & Greene? I followed them over to where Leila was standing, and Travis handled the introductions. The meeting was short. Leila claimed fatigue and a headache, delight eluding her, and Travis had a second concert to organize before he hit the sack. Tomorrow was going to be a big, bad day in a country I knew nothing about, except for the one comment Arlen had made about the Democratic Republic of Congo across the border being the problem child these days.