Ghost Watch (24 page)

I blinked. Jesus . . . This was a possibility none of us had considered, but with Kornfak & Greene’s fingers in the pie around here, I could see how someone who spent their life dodging bullets at every turn might jump to that conclusion. Moreover, if this guy believed it was possible that American contract killers might go on a mission in the African rainforest with two women and a shoe-in for
The Biggest Loser
along for the ride, then he probably wouldn’t accept their presence as proof of our innocence. Nevertheless, I didn’t have much else to work with.

‘We are a joint US Army and United States Air Force personal security detail,’ I said, hardening my tone. ‘These are three of our principals.’ I motioned at Leila, Ayesha and Boink. ‘If you had a satellite phone, you could verify it.’

‘And here we are, back at the start without one,’ Colonel Makenga said with his hands apart. He gestured at the lieutenant holding one of our backpacks – it was Ryder’s. The lieutenant handed over the pack and the two men held a quick conference while they rifled through its contents.

Makenga produced one of the magazines – the empty one. ‘When you were intercepted on your way here trying to infiltrate our flanks, you were disarmed. One of your people carried a weapon with an empty magazine. If you are all together, why would one of you be carrying an unloaded weapon? Why would that be?’

He then pulled out Ryder’s nylon bracelets. ‘Wrist restraints were also found. Would you care to explain these inconsistencies to us?’

I couldn’t – not without ending Marcus’s life as surely as putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. This was a bad situation. I avoided specifics and reached for straws. ‘The American people are allies with the CNDP,’ I said. ‘I’m not a mercenary and nor are any of my men here. I told you that we departed the CNDP training camp at Cyangugu two days ago, after our principals put on a concert for your soldiers and the US advisors there. If you have any doubts, contact your own Colonel Biruta, who’s in camp there.’

A nerve in Makenga’s face twitched, indenting the skin and muscle of his cheek. ‘Perhaps there is enough in your assertion to prevent the immediate summary execution of you and your people.’ The colonel pushed out his lips and rolled his tongue across his front teeth. ‘You will remain here as our guests until your claims can be verified, or until we decide what to do with you.’

I could feel Cassidy and the others tensing for a fight. I said, ‘We have other principals who are being held, captured by the FARDC below. We need to do something about negotiating their release.’

A sly grin slid across his face. ‘We were of the belief that you Americans never negotiate with hostage takers.’

‘We don’t negotiate with terrorists – the rules get rubbery for straight criminals.’

‘I see. Interesting. Nevertheless . . .’ he said, opening out his hands again to show me that there was nothing, such as options, in them.

The daylight suddenly faded as if the sun had blown a fuse. I looked up. Gangrenous thunderheads were boiling into the sky overhead, their undersides gray-green and tending to black in places. The storms in this place lined up like barges in a busy canal.

‘Well,’ Makenga continued, ‘we would be delighted to extend our hospitality to you and your party.’

There was a spike in the noise level of the battle still going on down the hill, indicating a wind shift. A breeze arrived and freshened quickly into wind, heralding the arrival of the storm front.

The colonel raised his gold cock several inches, an apparent signal to those unhappy guards with their machine guns, who stepped in, surrounded us, and marshaled us out of the HQ and off toward a little hospitality, CNDP style. Somehow I didn’t see us getting any Napoleon brandy from these folks, either.

‘Gee, LeDuc,’ I heard Rutherford say, as we were led away at gunpoint, ‘lucky for us they’re not Mai-Mai or Ugandan renegades. Then we’d really be in the shitter.’

The armed escort herded us through the encampment until we arrived at one of two circular corrals made from saplings sunk in the ground and lashed together. One of the guards shouted at us.

‘They want us to empty our pockets,’ said LeDuc, translating.

We were surrounded and heavily outnumbered by people armed with frowns and submachine guns. Like the man once said, resistance was futile. I turned my pockets out on the ground. The rebel soldiers moved through our group, cleaning us out of anything useful. Cassidy, LeDuc, West, Rutherford and Marcel and I were individually searched. Ayesha was individually groped, which seemed to improve the disposition of the gropers. Then it was Leila’s turn.

‘Hey. What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she shouted at the man with his hand between her legs. She spun around and slapped him, and he slapped her right back hard so that she went down into the mud. Cassidy and I took a step forward and machine gun muzzles were jammed into our faces.

The rain began to fall. The corral stank of animal feces and urine. The soldiers disengaged, backing out through the door of our open prison, the door to which was then closed and bound shut. Cassidy and Ayesha helped Leila up and we all just stood and shivered for a time, with nowhere to go and battered by raindrops the size of hens’ eggs impregnated with ice chips. Thunder arrived simultaneously with the lightning as the storm front passed overhead.

‘That business about the US negotiating with criminals,’ said Cassidy, his teeth chattering. ‘It’ll never happen. We’re on our own.’

‘The colonel doesn’t know that.’

‘What are they going to do to us?’ Leila asked.

Ayesha could give her a couple of clues.

Marcel moaned and shook his head. He didn’t need to ask, either.

‘We shouldn’t have brought
him
,’ said Leila, pointing at Marcel. ‘That man has put all of us at risk. Those questions about the handcuffs and the empty magazine – the man with the cane knew what was up.’

I doubted it, but I let it go and no one else said anything. If Leila was determined to be a superbitch right to the end, who was I to stop her?

The star burst into tears and hugged Ayesha to her. I felt sorry for Ayesha.

Within half an hour, the thunder and lightning had ended, but the torrent was still coming down hard, falling, at times, more like an avalanche than like rain. The noise it made completely drowned out the sounds of battle drifting up from the valley below. West, Cassidy and I went on an inspection of our cage, a circular area maybe fifty feet across. We all very quickly came to the conclusion that we couldn’t go over, under or through it – not easily and not before we were spotted. The bars were green saplings over twelve feet in height, the ends of which were buried two to three feet in the mud, and the whole structure was lashed together with some kind of green vine. The rain only seemed to make it all bind together tighter. Sets of eyes peered at us through the gaps.

LeDuc came over. ‘These pens are common,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen bulls charge at walls such as these.’

‘They ever make it through?’ I asked, half an eye on Boink.

He shook his head. ‘
Non
.’

I pulled and pushed the wall here and there, testing its strength. Cas-sidy, West and Rutherford joined in. A pole suddenly speared through a gap between the saplings and slammed into the side of my head, knocking me down.

‘Hey!’ Rutherford yelled out, kicking the wall.

I was down on all fours, the ringing between my ears like that of a church belfry on Sunday morning. Hands under my arms lifted me onto my feet.

‘You okay, Cooper?’ Cassidy asked.

I opened and closed my jaw in an attempt to stop the clanging. ‘Now I know how a cue ball feels,’ I said.

‘They’re going to do us, skipper,’ said Rutherford. ‘No question.’

‘Yeah,’ agreed West.

There was a lump on my skull. Blood seeped from ruptured skin. I didn’t believe the bullshit about verifying our claims, either. Yeah, Makenga was going to have us whacked for sure. And if the asshole was anything like the psychos down in the valley, he wouldn’t be whacking us clean.

‘So what we gonna do about it?’ asked West.

‘They will come for the women first,’ said LeDuc.

I rubbed my face. We were completely on our own, locked in an empty enclosure with no hope of any outside assistance. The four men were looking at me, apparently waiting for me to reach behind and pull a rabbit out of my butt, given that I didn’t have a hat. ‘Well, I once saw this movie where some prisoners built an airplane and flew it out of the attic,’ I said. ‘ We could do something like that.’

They kept looking at me.

‘They’re gonna come for us,’ I said, repeating LeDuc’s take on the situation.

‘Yeah, that much we know,’ West said.

‘Then let’s work with that.’

WAITING FOR THE NIGHT, we sat in the mud on the high side of the enclosure and glommed together to conserve warmth. No one talked. Someone grabbed my hand and held on tight. It was Ayesha. I could only imagine what was going through her mind. No one said a word, not even Leila. When the darkness was complete, I put our one and only chance into action and slid away from the group, working through the mud on my belly to the far side of the enclosure. LeDuc believed word would get around about Ayesha and Leila. I was hoping order might be a little on the lax side among the CNDP rank and file and that some of the boys might drop in for a little Intercourse & Inebriation.

OUR WRISTWATCHES HAD BEEN confscated, but it would have been after 22:00 when the door to our pen was forced ajar. I could make out four – or maybe five – shapes coming through the gap, creeping quietly. Moments later, I heard a woman’s muffled scream. Dropping to the ground and keeping low, I moved in the night shadow that lived at the base of our prison wall, making my way around the circumference of the enclosure. Cassidy, West, Rutherford, LeDuc and Ryder were making things difficult for the Africans, but not too difficult. The soldiers had to think that we were soft targets.

Going down on my belly for the last twenty meters, I snaked through the mud, coming up behind the intruders. From the sound of the gruff commands and muffled shouts, the Africans – five of them – were fast realizing that they’d bitten off more than they could chew. One of them had had enough. He backed away from the entangled shadows on the ground and I heard him hoarsely whisper in French. He leveled his rifle, serious about taking what they wanted. Two of his buddies went forward and dragged a struggling body away from the others.

‘No! No! Help me!’ I recognized the voice – Leila’s.

Then a second body got hauled out by her foot: Ayesha.

I was getting closer, close enough to smell the intruders – a pungent, stale, unwashed animal funk mixed with cheap, coarse tobacco. The intruders hadn’t seen me, or conducted a head count to see if someone were missing. They didn’t know it but, rather than being their friend, the night worked against them. I came up behind the man holding the rifle. He sensed rather than heard my presence, but not before I kicked him between the legs hard enough to put his nuts over a goal post. He began to sink to his knees but I broke his neck with an elbow strike before he reached them. Attacked by a shadow, the Africans were momentarily disoriented and stood rooted to the spot while they processed what they thought they’d just seen happen to their buddy. A few seconds of uncertainty was all we needed. I took out a second African, sweeping his legs out from under him so that he landed on his back, the air rushing out of his lungs. I snapped his head to one side and the vertebrae in his neck cracked like dry walnuts. A furry of intense violence broke out. Cassidy leaped up and strangled the man standing over him. West and Ryder tackled their man, Ryder pounding in his skull with a rock the size of his fist. Rutherford got Mr Lucky Last, sending him off to the land of nod with a sweet right cross to a glass jaw. I kept watch for more intruders, while the Brit sat on the man’s back and pushed his face in the mud, holding it there until he drowned, gurgling and shaking to the end.

T
hey died peacefully, if not in peace, alerting no one. Dragging the bodies to one side, we stripped them of their weapons, collecting knives, three H&K MP-5s and two M16s with spare mags for both.

‘Question is, were they Makenga’s messengers?’ I wondered aloud as we cleaned up. ‘Or were they out on their own initiative?’

Hard answers would’ve been handy. If the guards we just killed were on orders from Makenga, it meant we probably had more time to play with. If, however, they were just out for a little opportunistic gang rape, then the real hit squad could turn up at any minute. Assuming it was the latter, we couldn’t hang around.

‘Now what?’ Rutherford whispered as he checked a captured MP-5, making sure it would work as H&K intended, and that its magazine was full.

‘I’ve got half of an idea,’ I said, following the SAS sergeant’s lead, giving my weapon the once-over.

‘You beat me,’ said West.

‘Ditto,’ said Rutherford.

We hurried back to the civilians.

Leila was hyperventilating, Ayesha beside her. I could hear their teeth chattering.

‘Man, that was some evil shit, yo!’ said Boink in an excited whisper. ‘You fucked those motherfuckers in the
ass
.’