Ghost Watch (38 page)

‘I’m sure if you asked Deryck, he’d want me to be safe.’

‘As far as I can see, you are,’ I said. ‘You’re not tied to a tree with a hood over your face, not knowing whether you’re going to live or die from one moment to the next.’

‘There mightn’t be a hood on my head, Cooper, but what’s the difference between Deryck’s situation and ours? We don’t know whether we’re going to survive either.’ She looked to Ayesha for backup. Her friend and makeup artist gave a reluctant nod. ‘Y’know, I don’t think this is about getting us out of here. It’s not about getting us to safety,’ Leila continued, stabbing a finger in my direction. ‘Maybe that’s where you started out, but it’s not what’s happening now. You think you’ve uncovered a crime. You’re a cop, so you want to arrest someone. This has become
a case
, hasn’t it? And you’re going to solve it or die trying. Which is fine by me – go ahead and die, if that’s what you’re determined to do. Just don’t take the rest of us with you.’

‘Shut the fuck up, woman,’ said Boink. ‘Pulling Twenny out and getting your sorry ass back over the border – they’re both the same deal. You still think we can just walk in an’ ask for him and Peanut back? Damn you, woman. If we want them back, we have to go an’
convince
the motherfuckers that
we
want ’em more than
they
want ’em.’

Maybe I’d underestimated Boink. The guy summed up like a math professor.

Leila dismissed him with a flick of her hand. ‘I don’t care what you think, Phillip, ’cause you never do any damned thinking for yo’se’f.’

Phillip?
I tried mentally to pin the name on Boink and had a lot of difficulty making it stick.

‘This guy, Cooper?’ she said, pointing at me. ‘He’s damaged goods. He killed his fancée and now he wants to die to make amends for it. He doesn’t care what happens to you, or me, or any of us.’ She turned to me again, her face . . . ugly. ‘That’s what this is all about, right? You’re in pain and you want out of your misery. You have a death wish.’

Maybe she was right. Maybe that’s exactly what I had. And maybe she was right about Death having a score to settle with me, just like the one she figured it had settled with Anna.

‘Well, Cooper?’ The singer’s arms were folded, her weight on one slender long leg, a study in self-righteous impatience.

‘Lockhart and his friends cooked up a scheme to capture you and your ex and extort money for your release,’ I said. ‘And that’s just part of what they’re into. Your ex is still down there – the man you said you still loved – and we’re hoping he’s still alive. Also down there are trucks and a road going
somewhere
. You get that? So, the plan is simple – we snatch Deryck and Peanut and take the trucks. And we make a lot of noise doing it. The alternative is a fifteen-mile hike through the forest to the nearest town. In this terrain, the way we move, I figure that will take us three more days – three more days without enough food, three more days of battling the elements, three more days of mosquitoes and snakes, three more days of you and me rubbing up against each other like nitro and glycerin. Walk if you like, but I ’d rather roll outta here.’

‘So, what? Now we just hang around and wait to see what you do?’

‘No. I’m hoping that you can make yourself useful and learn how to shoot one of these,’ I said, lifting my M4.

She clenched her fists in frustration. Hmm . . . Leila somewhere behind me with loaded assault rifle. What was wrong with that picture?

‘Sir . . .’ West called out again, impatient.

‘Can I go now,
ma’am
?’ I asked the star.

She ignored me and turned on Cassidy as she stormed off. ‘As for you, we could have rescued that baby girl and you know it.’

Boink sidled over like he had something illegal to sell. ‘Cooper,’ he said under his breath. ‘That name you heard from her. It stays right here in the jungle, yo.’

‘What name?’ I said as I retreated in West’s direction. The sergeant handed me the scope and I braced it against the tree. There was some movement on the hill. The camp was beginning to stir.

‘We’ve got maybe an hour and a half of useful darkness before dawn,’ I said to myself.

‘Boss, if you’re cooking up one of those half-plans of yours,’ said West, ‘right about now might be a good time to share.’

W
e 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.