The Consignment (30 page)

I strained but I still couldn’t see, then I scanned the slope immediately below us. We were thirty or forty yards from a drainage ditch that encircled the camp. I turned the glasses up the ridge again. Minutes later, the rebels fanned out as they neared the crest. From the corner of my eye, I saw Trevanian signaling me to give him the glasses. Then we heard firing, a burst from an AK47 up near the chopper. I swept the glasses over the scene. Dust kicked up beneath the chopper tail, and a moment later we heard the matching burst of gunfire.

“What’s up?” Trevanian whispered. “What the hell’s happening?”

“They’ve seen the pilot.”

“Give me the glasses.”

I hung on to them. I watched the rebels close on the chopper, they fired several more bursts before they were satisfied that the pilot was dead. Then I looked down to the camp. The three rebels had left the office block, they moved out past the truck and looked up the southern ridge. The guy at the fuel dump was looking up there too.

“Give me the bloody glasses,” Trevanian said.

I swung them up the ridge. The rebels were moving in cautiously on the chopper. One guy went forward and tried the rear door. A moment later, another guy went and tried the passenger door. I passed the glasses to Fiona and told her to give them to Trevanian. But then, as she moved, I reached out and touched her hand. The touch stopped her, she looked up at me, and our eyes held for a moment.

“Glasses,” hissed Trevanian.

And then the chopper blew.

CHAPTER 39

“What the fuck?” Trevanian crawled to the edge of the boulder and looked out.

Machine-gun fire started up near the chopper. I shot a glance around my end of the boulder. In the camp, the rebels rushed out to see what was happening, they moved toward the fuel dump, looking up the ridge. I squeezed Fiona’s arm, then scurried out from cover and went down the slope. Behind me, I heard Trevanian calling me back angrily, but I kept going. I was in the open for about fifteen seconds, it seemed like forever, then I dropped into the drainage ditch by the office block.

Machine-gun fire still hammered hard near the chopper. I put my head up from the ditch and saw the truck about twenty-five yards from me. The three rebels over by the fuel dump had stopped. When they turned and came back toward camp, I ducked down.

I slung my gun across my back and crawled along the sandy drainage ditch till I was within five yards of the office block. I heard the rebels walking up the steps at the front, and I slithered out of the ditch and crawled under the office block. Two rebels were inside. The third one was standing on the steps, I could see his boots and, ten yards beyond his boots, the canopied truck.

I dragged myself forward on my forearms, then one of the rebels stomped on the floor over my head, and I froze. One of the rebels inside shouted and came out. I watched his boots go down the steps and across to the truck, and he climbed in the back. There was more shouting, then he jumped down, dragging someone down after him. This other guy fell and hit the ground hard. A white guy. An older guy, I glimpsed his face, it was battered and bloody. The rebel dragged him onto his feet, then across to the steps and up into the office above me.

I looked up at the flexing floor over my right shoulder.

“Open!” shouted the rebel.

“Water.” It was the white guy. “Give me some goddamn water.” There was the sound of a strike, then a thump on the floor. The white guy had been hit and gone down. “Jesus. Jesus Christ, you dumb bastard.”

“Open!”

“There’s nothing in there, for chrissake. I don’t have the combination.”

A gun was cocked, the white guy shouted, “No!” and then the gun fired, bam, bam, bam, each shot drilling a hole through the floor two feet from my head, I went rigid. There was silence. The rebel went out to the truck again.

My chest was tight, sweat broke out on my back, and I squeezed myself up closer to the steps. I dragged my gun off my back and leveled it at a point just behind the truck. There was shouting in the truck, then a shot, then a body toppled from the back of the truck and hit the ground, lifeless. Another white guy. My heart turned to stone.

A white arm, dark hair like Brad’s, but the face was turned away from me. While I was focused on the body, the rebel jumped down from the truck and dragged another guy after him. I just saw the sneakers and jeans as this guy was dragged up the steps into the office.

“Holy shit.” He’d seen the body.

“Open!”

“Holy fucking shit.” Brad? I strained to hear through the floor. There was a strike, a cry of pain, then another shouted order to open the safe. “Don’t you hit me again, you fuckin’ prick.” Brad. It was Brad. I almost threw up.

The rebel hit him again, and he went down, moaning.

“Open!”

“Oh, Jesus. Oh, shit. Let me get up, for chrissake.”

I squirmed around to the side of the steps. One rebel remained standing there. I could take him out, but the pair inside would hear it and kill Brad.

There was movement in the office above me, then Brad’s voice again.

“Don’t crowd me.” They hit him. He cried out, then shouted, “You’re blocking the goddamn light! I can’t see the numbers. Look. The fuckin’ numbers. No light, I can’t see them!”

The guy on the steps turned and went inside, and I knew that was it, the only chance I was going to get. I crawled into the open, flicked the P23 from automatic to single fire, and moved.

Up the steps and across the empty porch, and when the first guy inside turned, I fired, and he smashed into the wall. I swung left, shot the second guy in the face, and the third guy raised his gun and got it tangled in the strap, and he looked at me with childlike surprise. I shot him in the chest but he stayed on his feet so I shot him again and he went down.

Brad stared at me, dazed. He was unshaven. His face was bruised and swollen, there was a deep gash over his right eye. “Dad?” Amazement. Shock.

I checked each body, made sure they were dead. Then I clasped Brad’s arm. He surveyed the carnage. He couldn’t speak.

“Any more of your guys in the truck?”

He shook his head.

I put my free arm around his shoulders, hugged him, then stepped back. “Let’s go.” I shook his arm and went to the door. When I turned back, he was looking at the bodies. “Brad!” His head came up. “If we don’t get out of here, we’ll be dead too.” Bewildered, he came over. “Can you hold a gun?” I said, and when he nodded, I picked up one of the rebel’s AK47s and gave it to him. “It’s loaded. Just point and shoot.” I looked out, and up the southern ridge. The rebels who’d survived the booby trap were coming down, they’d almost reached the fuel dump, and when they saw me, they fired. Bullets ripped into the office walls, I threw myself back inside, knocking Brad off his feet. I dragged him over behind the safe as gunfire sprayed the office block. We hunkered down. After half a minute, it stopped, and I eased my head around the safe and looked out.

There were three of them, they’d passed the fuel dump, now they were loping down the track toward us, guns at their hips. I pushed myself out into the shadows of the office, took aim at the middle one and fired. He dropped like he’d been poleaxed. The other two ran for cover, shooting wildly. I rolled back behind the safe. Brad was sitting with his back to the safe, the AK47 cradled in his lap.

“You okay?” I said, and he nodded. Then I noticed the blood on his shirt. I bent closer. Then I took the gun out of his hands. “You’ve been hit.”

He looked down and saw the blood. “Oh, Jesus.” His face twisted. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

I pushed down on his shoulder, lifting his shirt. “Sit still.” It was on his left side, between his hip and his ribs, I wiped the exit wound with my sleeve. A small hole, and clean. I found the entry just two inches away, and when I wiped it, the blood seeped back slowly. The arteries were intact, the bullet seemed to have cauterized the wound. “It doesn’t look too bad.”

“I can’t feel it. I can’t fuckin’ feel it.”

The only organ the bullet might have hit was his left kidney. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked to me like the bullet had missed. I told him that.

“You wouldn’t bullshit me, Dad.”

“I wouldn’t bullshit you. It’s gone straight through you. It’s a flesh wound, you’re okay.”

He blinked back tears. I tore a piece off my shirt and made him hold the material against the wounds. Then I went back to the door. The rebel I’d dropped on the track hadn’t moved. When the other two saw movement in the office, they fired, but they ceased fire the moment I pulled my head in. They were conserving their ammo.

I returned to Brad. He was breathing hard.

“I’m feelin’ it now,” he said between clenched teeth.

“You’ll be okay.”

“What are you doing here?”

“That can wait.”

Then from outside, up the hill, we heard Fiona shout, “Ned!”

I swore. If we could hear her, so could the two rebels.

Brad screwed up his face. “Mom?”

“Ned!” she shouted. “There’s one in the ditch behind you!”

“Mom’s here?” said Brad in disbelief, but I was already up and moving to the rear window. I looked out and saw the guy immediately. Distracted by Fiona’s shout, he was looking up the ridge in her direction. I climbed onto a chair, took careful aim, and fired. The window popped, cracks webbing out from the central bullet hole. I lowered my gun and saw the guy spread-eagled, facedown, on the far bank of the ditch. The rebels out front fired again, and I jumped down from the chair.

Crawling over to the door, I looked out. Two rebels had crossed to the northern side of the track, they were moving up the ridge toward Fiona and Trevanian.

“Trevanian!” I shouted, and instantly a hail of bullets came streaming in from the track out front. I rolled onto my back and lay still. When the gunfire stopped, I rolled across to Brad.

“What the hell’s happenin’?” he said. “Why’s Mom here?”

I got up and went to the rear window. No one out there, just the dead guy in the ditch. I returned to the door. They’d left one guy out front near the track to keep me and Brad pinned down. The other two were moving in on Fiona and Trevanian fast.

“Trevanian! They’re coming up at you from your right!”

Bullets hammered into the office walls from out front, and when they stopped, Trevanian shouted, “How many?”

“Two!”

I crawled across to Brad. I told him to stay behind the safe.

“Where are you goin’?”

“Stay here.” I put the AK47 in his lap, then I went to the rear window and smacked the gun butt into the aluminum frame. The glass showered down, and I tore the frame free, then slung the gun across my back and climbed out. I dropped to the ground and leaped into the ditch. The rebel out front let fly a few loose rounds beneath the office block, but in the ditch I was safe. I crawled fifteen yards, then quickly lifted my head. The rebel out front was waiting. He fired, the dirt near my face exploded, and I ducked, then reversed five yards up the ditch, and when I cautiously lifted my head this time, I was shielded by the steel corner support of the office block.

I looked up the ridge and my heart jumped into my throat. Two rebels were just yards beneath where Fiona and Trevanian were hidden. I swung my gun up, but before I could fire there were two pistol shots in quick succession, bap, bap. The two rebels on the hill went down and stayed down. A moment later, Trevanian and Fiona came shuffling around the boulder to where I could see them. Trevanian had the pistol ready.

“Any more?” he shouted down to me.

“One!” I called up. “Out by the track near the fuel dump!”

“Can’t you take him?” he hollered, and at that moment, the last rebel directed a burst at the ditch, and dirt and stones kicked up all around me. I dropped onto my butt, switched to automatic, then raised my gun up over my head, arms at full extension, and fired a burst toward the rebel. When I ceased fire, there was silence.

“Rourke?” called Trevanian.

“Still here.”

“Did you hit him?”

“I don’t know.” I lifted my head warily. Then I saw that the rebel had fallen out from behind the earth ramp where he’d been hidden. “Maybe,” I said.

Trevanian rose and looked over the boulder. “I think you did.”

I crouched and switched to single-fire. I wasn’t getting out of the ditch until I’d made sure. Suddenly I heard Fiona call, “Brad?”

I lifted my head. To my horror I saw Brad’s sneakers on the front steps of the office block. And then, out near the fuel dump, I saw the rebel rise onto his elbows, his gun at his shoulder, taking aim.

“Mom?”

“Get inside!” I shouted, and I stood, stepped around the side of the office block, and lifted my gun, but then there was a single shot, bap, and for a moment my whole world seemed to freeze. Then I looked to the steps. Brad stood there swaying, holding his side, then he grabbed the steel banister and eased himself down to sit on the porch. I turned to the rebel. He stayed up a second longer, then his arms crumpled, and his face dropped hard into the dirt. Finally I looked up the ridge. Trevanian was leaning against the boulder, both his arms resting on top of it, his pistol gripped firm in both hands. He was still sighting down the pistol at the rebel.

I put my gun to my shoulder, walked across the open ground to the rebel, keeping him in my sights. Then I bent down. The back of his head was pulped. I rolled him over. Trevanian’s shot had gone through the left eye. I studied the dead face awhile, then I stood and looked up to the ridge. About eighty yards. Fiona was stumbling down toward the office block, calling to Brad, who sat on the steps, dazed. Trevanian finished checking the two bodies up by the boulder, then he started down. It took him a minute, I watched him the whole way, he stopped on the other side of the body at my feet. He glanced down, then back up to me.

“Nice shot,” I said.

He jerked his head toward the truck. He said he wanted to get moving.

“My son’s wounded,” I told him. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“The army’ll be here any minute.”

“The army doesn’t want me or my family.”

His eyes narrowed. When I raised my gun, leveled it at his chest, he tossed his head toward Fiona and Brad. “You going to murder me right in front of them?”

“What chance did you give Dimitri?”

“Dimitri,” he said, and he looked down at the dead rebel between us. After everything else that had happened, I guess he hadn’t expected that. But he didn’t bother to deny it. “Dimitri brought it on himself. Ask your boss.”

“Rossiter knew less about it than I did.”

He looked up. “You came out here to get your son,” he said after a moment. “So now you’ve got him. He’s alive because of me.”

“It’s because of you he’s here.”

Trevanian screwed up his face, then held out his hand. “I need the keys,” he said. “For the truck.”

He had killed Dimitri, I was sure of that now. And he’d also imprisoned me in the
Sebastopol
’s hold, freighted me to the Congo, and broken the arms embargo, a list of offenses that, proven, could put him in jail for decades. Against that, he’d gotten me to Dujanka and saved Brad’s life, and I didn’t know how I was meant to weigh all that in the scales of justice, or whether I should even try.

Then over Trevanian’s shoulder I saw a dust cloud moving toward us. The army. I looked from the dust cloud back to him. He hadn’t heard the distant engines yet. I took the keys from my pocket. I considered them a second, then tossed them to him, and he caught them and smiled.

“You going to write me that retraction now, or you want to send it to me?”

“I think I’ll send it,” I said, then I nodded over his shoulder and he turned. The dust cloud was closing in fast. When he spun back to me, I had my finger on the trigger, I was sighting down the barrel at his heart. “You’ve still got a chance.”