Ghost Watch (47 page)

‘I’ve seen that look before,’ said Rutherford. ‘What are you thinking?’

‘You sure you’re okay?’ I asked Ryder. One of his eyes was blood red.

‘Lemme at ’em,’ he said.

Duke Ryder – a real surprise package. ‘Follow me. Got a job for you.’

W
e rolled out five minutes behind schedule, maneuvering toward the road at a crawl. Boink stepped out from behind a bamboo stand and approached the passenger-side front door. I leaned out the opening in the door.

‘Anything?’ I asked him.

‘You’re good to go, man.’

‘See you in around half an hour,’ I said. At least, we would if we weren’t all full of holes. I gestured at Francis. He rolled us forward at a creep, then left the cover of the forest and turned onto the road, heading up the incline. Around a hundred and fifty meters downhill, the trucks blasted by the Claymores were still nosed into the greenery. A trail of black smoke rose from the vehicles and climbed toward the lowering cloud base. Someone would turn up to investigate that.

Francis accelerated up the hill, grinding through the gears, the wind roar as it blasted through the non-existent windshield building steadily. We drove through a swarm of unidentifed bugs that burst wetly against us like we were being spat on. The morning was steamy and my clothes were sticking to my skin, especially where the blood from my shoulder wound had dried. Clouds were building up for something extra-specially impressive. A heavy rumbling echo of thunder rolled down through overhanging trees, confirming that a big one was on the way.

I started listing the variables in our immediate future, but soon ran out of fingers and toes. There were way too many and most of them were armed to the teeth. If there was the glimmer of a bright side, it was that the enemy’s intelligence was even thinner than ours. Obviously, FARDC knew something was up, but didn’t know where, when, how or who. Rolling up to the mine, we’d appear innocent, just another truck like any of the others, at least until the absent windshield was noticed, along with the bodywork shot up like an Alabama road sign.

There was the stained FARDC beret on the seat. I passed it across to Francis. It was sticky with blood and smelled of iron. ‘Put it on,’ I told him.

He looked at the thing with distaste for a moment before placing it on his head. We were by now about a mile and a half from the mine. There were no signs of danger. The thunderstorm was moving in, lightning forking the clouds, flicking on and off like an old fuorescent light on its last legs. Thunder rumbled distantly. It was time for Rutherford and me to make ourselves scarce. I slid down off the seat and onto the floorboards, Rutherford doing likewise. Francis glanced at us briefly but said nothing. I watched Rutherford go through his umpteenth weapons check, which prompted me to do the same.

‘Checkpoint ahead,’ said Francis. ‘Many men. Two are coming forward. They are waving at me to stop.’

‘Do
not
stop,’ I told him. ‘How many men?’

‘Perhaps eight or ten.’

Shit – that was a lot of guns. And this was just a roadblock.

‘Can you drive through? Anything across the road? Like a truck?’

‘No – just armed men!’ he said through gritted teeth and took his foot off the gas.

‘Don’t slow down!’ Rutherford snapped at him, then reached over and pushed the gas pedal to the floor with the stock of his rifle. The Dong bucked forward and Francis panicked a little, swerving off the road briefly.

‘Take it easy,’ I told Francis. ‘And for Christ’s sake don’t use the horn – not yet!’

‘They are pointing their guns at me,’ said Francis.

‘Tell them something!’ I yelled at him. ‘Tell them the mine is being attacked.’

Just for Christ’s sake don’t tell them it’s being attacked by us, I thought.

Francis stuck his head out the window and shouted, ‘
Gare! Gare! Regardez en arriere! Ils arrivent! Les fantômes! Les fantômes!
’

I heard random terrified shouting coming from the men at the roadblock.

Rutherford’s face widened into a grin.

‘What’d he say?’ I asked.

‘“Look out, the ghosts are coming! They’re right behind us.” Sounds like they’re all shitting themselves out there.’ He pulled his rifle off the pedal.

The men’s shouts faded behind us. No gunfire, suggesting that we’d managed to pierce the outer defenses without alerting the main body of troops within.

‘Francis – how much further to the mine?’ I asked him.

‘Not far. Soon.’

‘You can slow down now. Tell me what you see.’

The Dong freewheeled, slowing gradually. Francis gave the steering wheel more than half a turn. From memory, this almost-ninety-degree right-hander was the last corner before a hundred-meter straight section of road that ended in the parking lot.

‘I see many men,’ Francis said, his voice agitated.

‘How many?’ I asked.

‘Too many to count. More than sixty.’

Sixty!
‘Are they looking at us?’

‘
Non.
’

‘What are they doing?’

‘They are making walls with sandbags.’

Fortifcations.
‘Can you see our hostages?’

‘
Non
.’

‘Shit,’ said Rutherford, beating me to it.

‘Wait . . .
Oui
, I see them,’ he said a few seconds later. ‘They are chained to old machinery away from the huts. There are guards with them – ten or twelve.’

‘Are there any civilians in the area?’

‘
Non
.’

‘Can you see a black male with shiny hair that looks like it’s come straight from the seventies?’ I asked.

‘I do not understand.’

What I meant was, could he see Lockhart. ‘Can you see any foreigners?’

‘
Non
,’ he said.

‘Drive toward the main body of men,’ I said. ‘Head to a spot where you can’t see the hostages. Drive slow.’

Francis waved out the window a couple of times and said, ‘
Bonjour, bonjour.
’

‘That means “good
jour
”, right?’ I whispered to Rutherford.

The Brit grinned. It was a tight grin, and was mostly for my benefit. He had things on his mind, and so did I. I didn’t like what we were about to do but, as I saw it, we didn’t have a lot of choice. I heard a barrage of French directed at Francis from someone close by. Francis answered, then told us, ‘They want to know why we are so damaged. We have been told that we cannot go further.’

‘Just tell him you need to turn around,’ I said. ‘Make sure you smile when you tell him.’

Francis told him, and told him nice. He then pulled the wheel a couple of turns before straightening out.

‘Can you see our people?’

‘No, they are behind the two buildings.’

If he couldn’t see them, they weren’t going to get hurt. ‘Stop here,’ I said.

The brakes bit with a squeal and we stopped. Francis pulled the handbrake, the ratchet sounding like a burst of machine-gun fire.

Outside, I could hear men shouting at us. Wherever it was that we’d stopped, we weren’t supposed to. Any moment, people were going to get pushy.

‘Do it,’ said Rutherford.

‘On the count of three,’ I said, eyeballing Francis, who he gave me a nod. ‘Three, two, one . . .’

I reached up past him, found the horn on the steering wheel, pressed it, and the Dong’s pathetic horn blew its motor scooter
meeeep.
According to the plan, I had five seconds. I pulled Francis from behind the wheel and dragged him down into the footwell, over Rutherford. As I threw myself over both of them, the entire world suddenly came apart in a burst of heat, light and noise that lifted the truck off the ground and filled the cabin with a swirling metal storm of hot steel pellets. Needlepoints of pain fared across the exposed skin of my face, neck and free arm. Jesus, I was burning. I lifted my head and slapped my face and neck, and small, hot steel balls dropped into the footwell, rattling as they fell. I wiped my arm next and saw that it was now pocked with small burns no bigger than nail heads, and more steel pellets dropped and bounced around the truck’s metal flooring. The smell of burned truck and scorched human caused me to gag. I pushed myself up to the seating position, and pulled Francis and Rutherford up after me.

‘Come on,’ I said, half-dazed, to Rutherford, opened the door and kicked it wide. We had to hit the enemy while
they
were dazed, before they had a chance to regroup and realize that their attackers were just a few half-starved stragglers and not an invading company.

Men lay dying and wounded all around the truck. I took a few uneasy steps, my balance affected by the shock wave of the multiple explosions, willing myself not to stumble. It wasn’t easy. I steadied myself against the side of the truck and saw that our khaki-green tarpaulin had been reduced to remnants while the metal frame that held it in place was twisted like liquorice. The rest of the Dong hadn’t come off much better, now just scrap metal on torn tires.

‘Ryder!’ I shouted.

Nothing.

‘Ryder!’

A hand came up and waved above the mud-filled steel cans. Ryder’s head followed it.

‘You all right?’ I called out.

He nodded and pointed to his ears and gave a thumbs up sign. We’d used plugs of mud to save his eardrums. He threw across to me the two sets of body armor Rutherford and I had given him for added protection. I put mine on and passed the other set to Rutherford. The defenses had worked. And so had the Claymores we’d placed around the edge of the Dong’s load tray, three on each side and two at the back – eight in all. The firing clackers had been taped together in a row and set up inside one of the smaller containers so that all Ryder had to do to fire off all eight in unison was close the lid on the box. The signal to fire was a long blast on the horn.

Rutherford jogged twenty meters to take up a firing position around the front of the two huts, both of which had been severely damaged by the multiple Claymore blast. I looked around, but tried to be selective about what I saw. The scene in the immediate area of the truck was just plain frightful; bodies everywhere – more than ten – many limbless and headless. Some sick puppy had put a lot of careful thought into the Claymore’s physics. The sudden shocking assault had driven the FARDC soldiers to dive for cover and wait to see where all this was going. Their reluctance to engage wouldn’t last long. I figured we had a two-minute window, maybe less. Once the enemy figured we’d blown our load, the tables would turn.

Rutherford signaled that he had visual contact. Weapon up, I went over to where he was kneeling, behind a stack of rusted oil drums and pipes.

Holes punched the drums beside me – gunfire. Christ, that window was less than I’d thought, down to a minute. A round smacked into the ceramic plate in the back of my body armor and the force of the hit pushed me face first into the drums.

I groaned as Rutherford turned and fired. A number of men were sniping at us from behind another pile of rusting pipes and old gas cylinders fifty meters away and they were getting bolder by the second. Rutherford ran twenty meters to his left into open space to get a better angle on the Congolese pinning us down. I watched him fire three bursts on the run, taking down two men. The rest of them stood up and sprinted in the opposite direction.

The sergeant returned as I struggled to my feet.

‘Twenny and Peanut,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘Over there, eighty meters.’ He gave me the direction with his hand.

I had to take his word for it – I couldn’t see past the metal scrap. Rounds were pinging off the junk all around us, their passage marked by small puffs of rust. A round nicked my left upper arm – it felt like I’d been whacked there with a tire iron. Rutherford and I were pretty much outflanked. Time to move. We both changed mags as a rain squall marched in a straight line across the open mine, nice and orderly. A burst of thunder arrived simultaneously with a blinding flash of lightning.

I slapped Rutherford on the shoulder, got up and started walking at a fast crouch, hunched over, the metal butt of the M4 reassuringly hard against my cheek. I came around the trash heap looking for targets, and saw Twenny and Peanut. They were hooded and chained to what looked like an old boiler, their chains hooked through a bend in a pipe. At least a dozen men were arrayed around them. Four guards were in the firing position, standing side on, feet apart, lining us up. Two others thought better of it and, as Rutherford and I approached, got up and ran into the forest. Rutherford fired and one of the shooters took a bullet in the cheek. His buddies started firing on full auto and I heard the rounds pass overhead. I dropped a second guy, who spun like a revolving door before landing face down in a puddle, his arm at a crazy angle. And, like that, the resistance melted. The remainder of the guards dropped their weapons and fed helter- skelter. Maybe they thought Bruce Willis was in the house.
Yippee ki-yay, motherfuckers . . .

Rutherford and I kept moving in the crouch position toward our captured principals, sweeping left and right, looking for threats but not finding any – not in front of us, anyway.