Operation: Congo

- 2 -

Frank Hynd felt the old familiar tension rise up in him as he led the two privates towards the mud and straw huts. No matter how much action a man saw, no matter over how many years, he still felt the ball-tightening pressure, still had to fight to maintain focus and relaxation. The place felt dead and quiet but he’d seen men killed who’d taken situations exactly like this one for granted. And the two lads he had with him, although good men both, were still young in many ways. He owed it to them to give his full attention.

He approached the first hut with his weapon raised, motioning that the other two should stay behind him and cover him as he stepped to one side of the open doorway. He stood still listening. On hearing no sound from inside, he chanced a look.

It was a single, empty area was a hard mud floor with a center hearth, the ashes in which looked dark and cold. He stepped inside and found nothing except three discarded wooden bowls, the contents of which were a congealed, foul-smelling mess of meat and some kind of vegetable he couldn’t identify. He wasn’t about to try a mouthful.

The second hut proved to be as empty as the first, with more half-eaten bowls of food the only evidence someone had been there recently.

In the third hut, they found the source of the food, a large clay pot suspended over a hearth that was still warm to the touch. A noxious smell rose from the mouth of the pot.

Davies was the first to speak.

“Bloody hell, Sarge. What were they cooking up in here? Meth?”

Hynd found a wooden ladle hanging beside the pot and used it to stir the concoction inside. The smell immediately got worse.

“Give it a rest, Sarge,” Wilkins said. “That’s worse than one of Wiggo’s farts.”

“Just a second. There’s a chunk of something in here. I want to see what it is.”

Whatever it was, it was almost too large for the ladle and in the process of removing it from the pot, it slid out of the cup and landed with a thud on the floor. The three men gathered ’round.

“What the fuck is that, Sarge?” Davies asked.

“You’re the medic here,” Hynd answered. “You’ve got the biology experience. You tell me.”

Davies bent for a closer look but Hynd stayed where he was, looking down from above at what looked like the lower leg and foot of some bird—a very large bird.

“Ostrich?” Wilkins said.

“Here in the jungle? No, they’re plains beasties,” Davies replied. He poked at the foot with the barrel of his rifle. Some of the skin sloughed off, revealing partially cooked flesh below. The stench that rose from it was almost overwhelming and they all backed away towards the doorway in search of clear air.

“If not ostrich, what? An eagle?” Wilkins asked.

“It would have to be bloody enormous,” Hynd answered. He reckoned the foot to be more than eighteen inches from front to back, each talon being as thick as a man’s wrist. “Have you heard of eagles that size?”

He didn’t say it—the younger lads hadn’t been there—but he was thinking of the mess in Siberia, the genetic experiments, and the huge birds from out of the past capable of bringing down planes.

Have those fuckers multiplied? Are they spreading?

“Fetch it out into the light, lad,” Hynd said to Wilkins. “The cap will want a look at it.”

Wilkins looked green at the gills but he took a deep breath, ducked into the hut, and was out again before he had to open his mouth. He dumped the foot on the ground. At the same time, a wail rose from the dock. Their guide had caught sight of what they had at their feet.

“Mokele-Mbembe,” he shouted. “Mokele-Mbembe.”

He started to untie the boat. Hynd broke into a run towards the jetty but was too late to stop the man from getting the outboard going and taking the craft off and away back downriver from where they’d come. The man didn’t look back and was soon lost ’round the bend of the river, only the throaty rumble of the two-stroke engine remaining until it became too faint to hear.

“What the fuck got into him?” Wiggins said at Hynd’s side. The corporal and the captain had come to see what the fuss was about. Hynd brought them up to speed, leading them over to the partially cooked foot.

The captain looked at it and Hynd saw a worried look in his old friend’s eyes.

“You know what this is, Cap?” Hynd asked.

Banks shook his head.

“No. But the docs who were here thought that there might be a poison involved here, something the locals had been eating. I’ve heard stories before about bushmeat gone bad—it was one of the theories about how AIDS got started. Ebola too. So what I’m saying is, nobody eats anything that we didn’t bring in ourselves. And if anybody touched that thing, I suggest you boil some water and have a good scrub, right now.”

Banks took Hynd to one side away from the others and spoke, keeping his voice low.

“It looks like this isn’t just a simple in and out rescue,” he said. “There was a dozen WHO people here and what looks like a score of locals. There are only two bodies. What we need is a clue as to where they’ve gone—or been taken. Take Wiggo and scour the riverbank, north and south, see if you can find a trail to follow. I’ll go through the camp here again. There are a whole mess of busted computers in the big tent so Wilko might be able to get something from them. Meet back here in thirty, one way or the other. We’ll set up camp here for the night and I’ll decide our next move once you report back.”

Hynd nodded then called out.

“Wiggo, get your fat arse over here. We’re going for a walk.”

They went north first, boots sucking in clinging mud along a narrow riverbank.

The foliage hung low to the water, slapping wetly around their heads and shoulders as they pushed though it and every step was met with a rise of black flies, heavy clouds of them that got into Hynd’s mouth, nostrils, even ears. He got out a cigarette, passed one to Wiggins, and lit them both up. The smoke thinned the flies out a bit but not even the stench of Capstan Full Strength was strong enough to stop them being a hard-to-ignore nuisance.

“What are we looking for, Sarge?” Wiggins said without taking the cigarette from the corner of his mouth.

“Anything that’ll show us where everybody went,” Hynd replied.

“And what if they went by boat?”

“Use your head, lad. We’d have seen tracks on the riverbank back at the village. There were none there.”

“I hate these fucking Marie Celeste jobs. Risking our arses to save scientists without an ounce of common sense between them. It’s fucking Syria all over again.”

“Yon wee lassie you were keen on was worth it though, wasn’t she?”

Wiggins smiled at the memory.

“Aye. If we find another like her, I’ll no complain.”

“That’ll be a first.”

Hynd put a hand up to quiet Wiggins before the corporal could reply. When he’d parted the foliage in front of him, he saw a wider patch of flat, muddy bank straight ahead. Without consciously thinking about it, he swung the rifle from his shoulder into his hands and used the barrel to push the hanging greenery aside.

There was no one on sight, no movement save the soft lapping of the river on the mud. He took two steps forward then stopped. The mud here was covered in tracks; human for the most part, many footprints centered alongside several long grooves that led down from the top of the bank into the river. Both men got the import immediately.

“They took them out by boat after all,” Wiggins said.

“Looks that way, lad,” Hynd replied. “Four long canoes, heading north into the jungle by the looks of things.”

They followed the grooves in the mud back up the bank away from the river. At the top of a slope, they found a trail leading back south the way they had come. On the ground at their feet was a torn scrap of white material—a piece of a lab coat, the white liberally spattered with dried blood. There were also more footprints here; some of the tracks showed imprints of work boots or thick-soled trainers but the bulk of them were the result of bare feet. Everything seemed to back up their theory that this was the point of flight. Then Hynd’s eye caught something else, a larger print, almost obscured by the human prints that overlaid it.

It looked like the track of a massive bird and had been made by something the same shape and size as the remnant they’d taken out of the cooking pot back in the village.

“There’s something not right here, Sarge,” Wiggins said. “I can feel it in my water.”

“That’s just a dose of the clap. Eyes front, lad,” Hynd replied. “I’m guessing this track takes us back to the village. Let’s see if they left us any other breadcrumbs.”