Ghost Watch (45 page)

Rutherford and I had to finish up with the Chinaman, but not before I delivered a small parting gift from Ayesha. I balled a fist and drove it into the side of his face. His lips went in the opposite direction to the rotation of his head, kissing my thumb, and a tooth shot out of his mouth. The force of the blow spun him around unconscious and he fell face first into the side of his tent, collapsing it.

A rifle cracked and I felt the shock wave from a round rip past the tip of my nose, close enough to ruffe my nostril hairs. Our guests had tired of our company. By my calculations, we had maybe thirty seconds up our sleeves before Cassidy and West went to work again on our hosts with the mortar. I ran to the truck, Rutherford half a step behind.

Diesel smoke coming from the end of the Dong’s exhaust pipe told me the motor was still running. I went for the passenger door and opened it as Rutherford leaped onto the running board I was standing on, dived in and crawled over Francis to get behind the wheel. I threw myself in after him and we were moving before I could close the door.

I glanced back at Lissouba, who was being passed a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, which he wasted no time hoisting onto his shoulder.

‘Oh fuck,’ I said. The tube jumped as he fired the weapon, and the warhead streaked toward us, ahead of a vapor trail scribed on the dense morning air.

‘Oh fuck,’ I said again, or maybe I just thought it, as I closed my eyes and waited for the explosion that would rip us all apart and incinerate the pieces. But the detonation came a second later than anticipated; the warhead blasting unexpectedly against a tree twenty meters on the other side of the truck. Not that I was complaining, but how the hell had Lissouba missed from point-blank range?

There was no time to launch an investigation. I heard a vague whoosh ing sound and the air was suddenly full of fire and noise and the rattle of shrapnel on the truck’s metalwork, as the first of more mortar rounds fell from the sky and slammed into the HQ, turning the area around us into a boiling sea of bursting orange high-explosive blisters that raised storms of flying earth and pebbles. Lissouba and his men were blotted from view. Cassidy and West had the range and were firing off the remaining forty rounds they’d carried to the top of the ridge, and this time their rate of fire was nudging the M224’s limit – a round every couple of seconds. A ball of orange hell swallowed Fu Manchu’s tent less than forty meters away, and clots of mud rained down on the Dong’s hood and showered us through the windshield opening, along with a man’s bloody forearm, hand attached, that landed in my lap. I threw it out the hole it came through and noticed blood on my shoulder, the fabric around my upper arm shredded. I couldn’t feel anything. I gave the wound a closer look. The blood seeped rather than squirted. Not serious, but nothing to laugh about either.

Francis’s mouth was open and he looked to be screaming through the deafening roar and the falling earth and the clatter of whirling metal fragments, but I couldn’t hear him. Rutherford’s jaws were clenched, his teeth streaked with the orange mud. I watched him wrestle with the steering wheel, trying to carve a path like a slalom skier between the explosions that filled our world and blotted everything out with a storm of fire and shrapnel and mud.

He changed direction and drove a route that took us around the circumference of the encampment, away from the deadly blasts. Cassidy and West were concentrating on the camp’s HQ, hoping to cut off the serpent’s head. I knew that’s what they were doing, because that was the plan we’d laid down. And this part was pretty much running like clockwork except for one pretty important fact – the folks we were risking life and limb to rescue weren’t here. The only good news was that it appeared I didn’t have to eat less meat and more veggies. Leila, of course, would give me hell about the fact that Twenny and Peanut weren’t in the camp, that I ’d put her life at risk for nothing, and I felt sure there was a big I-told-you-so moment in my immediate future.

A different kind of fireball erupted on the far side of the clearing and boiled into the sky, snapping me back to the reality of the moment. A deep
boom
rolled through the hills. The Mi-8 had taken a direct hit.

The continuing destruction caused by falling mortars was now pretty much confined to the area framed by the glassless opening beside me in the door. I could still see men running around screaming and diving for holes in the mud. We bounced over mud and bulldozed our way through the brush with no opposition, heading back to the scene of our first encounter of the morning, where the Dong had been parked across the road.

Silence arrived with the same suddenness as the explosions. It lengthened from a couple of seconds to a dozen of them. The last echoes of the exploding HE returned from the surrounding hills. The attack was over. Right about now, Cassidy and West would be spiking the mortar so that it couldn’t be used again.

Lissouba and his men had known that an attack was coming, even if they weren’t fully prepared for it. Why else have that welcoming committee waiting at the boom gate? And why move their hostages to another venue otherwise? One thing was certain, though: Lockhart would be waiting for Act II at the mine.

‘Can you hear that?’ Rutherford asked.

Now that he mentioned it, I could hear something. I could hear women screaming. And one of them, I was sure, was Leila.

R
utherford pulled up at the bottom of the hill, before the road swept past the village, the forest pressing in on the truck. Rutherford, Francis and I got out as a soft rain began to fall, the sky clouded over and leaden. Leila was making enough noise for two, giving her lungs a serious workout. Something was obviously troubling her. I examined the canvas tarpaulin as I jogged down the side of the truck, and saw more rents, tears, bullet and shrapnel holes. We’d attracted our fair share of attention – more than I realized.

‘Everything okay?’ I asked as I came around the back. Leila, her arms outstretched, was pushing Boink away, Ayesha leaned over Ryder, who was motionless on the floor.

‘I killed him,’ Leila screamed. ‘Get away from me. I killed him!’ If there were neighbors, they’d have been out on the street.

Ryder groaned and moved a leg.

‘Killed who?’ I asked.

Leila shrieked when she saw that Ryder was still with us and fell to her knees beside him.

‘Can someone tell me what the problem is?’ I asked, hoisting myself up into the load area. ‘Boink . . .?’

‘When the mortars fall,’ he began, ‘Leila started to panic, man. I kept telling her to stay down, but she was fighting me. When the explosions stopped and you got out of the truck, she wanted to go with you and Rutherford. I tol’ her she couldn’t and we struggled around some. But then she said she was okay and I let her go. Soon as I did, she jumped to her feet and Ryder tried to stop her. That’s when it came through. I don’t know what it was, but something going fast came in one side and went out the other. It nearly took Duke’s head off, man. He lost his balance and fell, hit the side of the case and knocked hisse’f out cold. I pulled Leila down and kept her quiet for a time but she bit me. We was out of the danger zone, so I let her go, and she started screaming and carrying on like you just saw. You want my opinion, I think she lost it. It’s rubber room time for her, yo.’

He took his hat off, smoothed the rim between thumb and forefinger, then resettled it on his head, over the bandage that was now dirt and blood-stained.

I glanced at Leila, who was hovering over Ryder. She appeared a little disconnected from reality, but that did seem to be her natural state.

‘How’s Duke?’ I asked Ayesha.

‘He’ll be all right, but he’s got a bump.’

Yes, he did, and I didn’t need to go in for a close-up to see it. It was like the side of his head was pregnant. This was his second concussion. He’d have to be watched.

‘I’m fine,’ Ryder told me, voice cracking, moving his head from side to side.

Ayesha gave him some water.

‘Make sure he doesn’t fall asleep,’ I told her, though with all the noise Leila was making, I didn’t think there was much chance of that.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ Leila cried, fussing over him.

So now I had an account for the RPG Lissouba had fired. I thought he’d hit us and he had, but the round had passed clean through the truck’s load area without detonating. Looking up, I saw that there were matching tears on both sides of the tarpaulin at around head height. RPG grenades traveled fast, a little under three hundred meters a second, and pushed a lot of air around because of it. That grenade, big enough and powerful enough to stop a Bradley, would have come through this enclosed space like a bullet train.

Leila was blubbering. I crouched beside her in the puddle of water that had drained out of our sandbags. She was scared and in a mild state of shock. Although I wanted to tell her that she should have listened to me and stayed with the other truck, this wasn’t the time, though at least I now had an I-told-you-so moment to counter the one she had on me. Boink looked down at her, shaking his head, unimpressed by the star’s latest performance. ‘How are the defenses holding up?’ I asked him.

‘We’re all still here, yo,’ he said.

‘C’mon, Leila,’ I told her. ‘Let’s get you back behind these barricades.’

‘You’re wounded,’ she said. ‘Looks like something chewed on your shoulder.’

Yeah – a cheese grater maybe. The wound looked worse than it was.

‘I want to ride up the front with you and Lex and the African.’

Here we go again . . . ‘No,’ I said. ‘There’s no protection there. The safest place to be is right here.’

I knew this wasn’t going to fly. Leila was going to bitch and moan until she got her way. This time, though, I was prepared to hog-tie her for her own good, if I had to.

‘Okay, if you say so,’ she murmured.

What?
I didn’t think Leila had compliance in her. Maybe she finally realized, after her scene nearly resulted in Ryder having an RPG round parked in his earhole, that her bullshit had consequences. ‘That’s the spirit.’ I said, patting her shoulder while I threw Boink a shrug of ‘go figure.’ ‘Now I want you to do what Boink tells you.’

She nodded.

‘Can you move?’ I asked Ryder.

‘Think so,’ he replied, and Ayesha helped him up to a seating position.

I stood. ‘How about shoot? Can you do that too?’

‘Can’t guarantee I’ll hit anything.’

Then you’re in good company, I was tempted to say.

‘Skipper,’ said Rutherford, some urgency in his voice. ‘You might want to move it along here.’

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Francis pointing back up the road to where Dongs were cresting the rise and bearing down on us at an alarming rate.

‘Get back behind those barricades,’ I said. Ryder was struggling to move and Leila just sat beside him, staring up the road at the oncoming trucks, a deer in the headlights. Rutherford and Francis had already disappeared. I shouted through the tarpaulin. ‘Rutherford, get it going! I’m staying here. Stick with the plan.’

‘Got it!’ I heard him yell as I dragged Ryder back and pulled him over the sandbags.

‘Sorry, Vin,’ he said. I propped him up and put an M16 in his hands.

‘Just squeeze off a few rounds every now and then,’ I told him.

Leila, Boink and Ayesha joined us behind cover just as our truck sprang forward, causing everyone to lose their balance and fall over each other. The first enemy shots drilled into the sandbags as we untangled ourselves.

I swung the M4 off my wounded shoulder and winced at the movement. Nothing was broken, just a little ragged skin. I took aim at the truck jumping around in my sights and got off a few rounds, probably none of which found their mark.

The Dong in pursuit was gaining on us, but the rate at which it closed the distance slowed as Rutherford wrung what he could out of our engine and gearbox. The road was narrow. A man kept popping his head out the passenger window when the overhanging foliage allowed it, firing off a mag at us on full auto. Tracer indicated the volley flying high and wide. The road curved onto the valley floor near the village, onto land cleared of forest for agricultural purposes, and the one truck behind us became three, all bristling with soldiers hanging off them, bright points of light twinkling from their weapons as they fired into us. The air inside the truck began to fill with flying lead and tracer and particles of mud and water vapor, the incoming fury chewing up our sandbags.

I heard Leila and Ayesha screaming and tried to ignore it. I unhooked a couple of frag grenades from my webbing, removed the safety clips, pulled one pin and then the other, keeping a tight grip on the spoons. The first truck was maybe fifty meters behind us. I threw one grenade and the second a moment later – not hard, just with enough force that they cleared the back of our truck.

‘Frag out!’ I yelled, and counted five. The vehicles immediately behind rolled in front of the grenades at the instant they exploded, kicking up a pall of mud and water that was sucked into the Dong’s radiator grille. The front vehicle peeled off the road almost instantly, both front tires shredded, soldiers jumping from it as it began to roll onto its side. It toppled over completely and slid for a distance down a slight incline before coming to a steaming halt. The truck behind it kept more of a distance and men with machine guns hung out the front passenger door, lined us up and began emptying their hoppers into us. Our own back tires were shot out pretty much right away and Rutherford struggled to keep the Dong running true, the vehicle swaying precariously from side to side. But this was a double axle truck, which meant we had another set of wheels protected from the sharp shooters by the ragged remains of the rear-most set.