Ghost Watch (17 page)

Rutherford and Cassidy were checking the other downed Africans.

‘Any wounded?’ I called out.

Cassidy shook his head.

‘We’re gonna have to watch him,’ said West motioning at Boink’s back.

‘Yeah,’ said West. He stood and nodded at the rifle slung over my shoulder.

I looked at it properly for the first time, wiped the blood and saliva off the stock with my sleeve. The weapon was a Nazarian Type 97, the export version of the standard assault weapon issued to infantry units of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army: 5.56mm NATO rounds, M16 mag, single shot, three-shot burst, and full auto options at the flick of a lever on the receiver. A good and capable rifle. It might have been the export version, but I still wondered where someone would come across a weapon of this sort in the Congo.

‘Found this on the ground,’ said Cassidy, interrupting my thoughts.

Twenny Fo’s diamond ring was between his thumb and forefinger. ‘What you want to do with it?’

‘Hold onto it for the moment.’ I turned to Rutherford. ‘Souvenir a few of those uniforms with the blue shoulder patches. The berets too. They might come in handy.’

‘Got it, skipper,’ said Rutherford.

Although barely ten minutes had passed since Twenny Fo, Ayesha, Peanut and Fournier had been taken prisoner, I expected another, larger patrol would be along soon to finish the job, assuming the FARDC was organized.

West, Cassidy and I trotted up the hill toward Ryder, Leila and Boink.

‘I’m going to make sure you’re all kicked out of the Army,’ said Leila when we were close enough. ‘Your job was to protect us and you failed.’

I wasn’t
in
the Army but maybe now wasn’t the time to tell her.

‘You still alive, ain’t you?’ said Cassidy.

‘I’m going to sue you to the poor house,’ Leila said, her eyes boring into Cassidy and then me.

It wasn’t the right time to tell her I was already in it. ‘We didn’t cause that to happen,’ I told her, slipping into debrief mode. ‘The soldiers that took our people are government troops of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, supposedly friendly to MONUC. But for some reason they’ve decided to be
un
friendly. What we do know is that we’ve come down in a war zone where there doesn’t seem to be a lot of rules. Bottom line, we’re no longer protecting you against possible attack. There’s nothing
possible
about it. So you can stop behaving like a child who isn’t getting her way and do what we tell you to do, when we tell you to do it. Because, otherwise, you’re not getting out of here alive.’

‘I ain’t listenin’ to this bullshit,’ said Leila, turning away and holding her hand palm out at me as if to defect my words.

I wondered what to do next – our options were limited and diplomacy wasn’t my strong suit. We needed our principals’ cooperation to have a chance of bringing them out in anything other than body bags.

I glanced at Cassidy. ‘You got that ring?’

He fished around in his webbing and put it in my hand.

‘Recognize this?’ I asked the diva. ‘We found it on the ground.’

‘It’s Deryck’s.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘That’s Twenny Fo’s name. I gave it him when we were . . .’ Her chin dented, and she looked skywards briefly in an effort to get control of herself.

I put the ring in the side pocket of her Army jacket. ‘You hold onto this for . . . Deryck. Give it back to him when you see him next. Now, let’s go.’

‘If we leave now, I’ll never see him, or Ayesha, or Peanut, ever again.’ Leila’s emerald eyes were glossy with tears. She sat down on the wet earth and wrapped her arms around her legs. ‘Say what you like, but I ain’t leavin’ here without them.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ I muttered, scraping the bottom of the options barrel. ‘LeDuc. Do we have sedatives in that medical kit that we can administer with a hypodermic?’

‘
Oui
.’

‘Then rack it up.’ I looked down at the woman. ‘Ma’am, we’re gonna have to carry you out.’

‘Not unless you gonna carry my ass too, yo,’ said Boink. He moved to stand beside the singer and crossed his massive arms in a further symbol of defance.

That was it. I had no more cards to play. The rulebook had nothing on this. I took a deep breath and let it out. ‘Okay, you win. We stay. But, just so you have all the facts, there are about a hundred and twenty soldiers down there, who seem intent on taking us captive for purposes unknown. Their people were killed on their first attempt at this, and you can be sure we won’t get a pat on the back for that. So, fortunately, with the additional weapons we’ve secured, we have enough guns to arm everyone. But our ammunition is limited. If the bad guys attack in strength we can probably hold out for ten minutes, maybe less, depending on how many of us get killed or wounded in the initial exchange, and how bad the wounds are. There’s going to be a lot of lead flying around, so perhaps ten minutes is optimistic. The electronic beacon we had is smashed, so our people in Cyangugu and LeDuc’s in Goma don’t know for sure where we’ve come down. What I’m saying is, there’ll be no last-minute rescue. Our bodies may never be found. Leila, if you happen to survive and they capture you, my suggestion is that you tell them you’re a rich and famous star who’ll pay millions for your release. Assuming they go for that, rather than using you for some other purpose – and I think you know which one I mean, which they may do anyway – when you finally get in front of those TV cameras, you can tell the world that your security team fought bravely and died so that you could keep making music videos.’

I was rambling because I was angry. In truth, I was on the verge of defaulting to my duty as the officer in charge and doing what was best for the men I was commanding, which, at the very least, was to vacate the area as soon as possible. If it meant leaving the civilians behind to accept whatever fate they were determined to meet, I didn’t see that I had much choice but to let them do exactly that.

Leila stood up. ‘I want you to know that this is not about making music, this is about
not
giving up on the people you love.’ She brushed the wet leaves off her butt and pulled the Army ball cap down low over her face. ‘Now, which way are we going?’

‘That way,’ I said, stunned by the sudden change of heart. Maybe my little speech had gotten through to her. I pointed in the opposite direction to the one we’d initially decided to take before we were surrounded. ‘Any movement?’ I asked West.

‘
Nada,
’ he replied.

‘Rutherford?’

‘Clear.’

‘Let’s do it,’ I said.

There was very little light left. Walking in this terrain in the pitch dark was also a big risk. We could stumble into an ambush or walk off a cliff. Lex Rutherford took point, with Cassidy behind him and the rest of us lined up behind them. I brought up the rear. We learned that the hill the Puma came down on was actually part of a valley that curved horseshoe-like around to the northwest on one side and southwest on the other. The walk was taking us away from Lake Kivu and Cyangugu. We picked our way through the rainforest for half an hour, by which time the thunder and lightning were only sporadic, and the small arms fire was far enough away that it sounded like corn popping in a pot with the lid on. I called a halt between a couple of vast trees that gave us cover on two sides, then kicked off the discussion we had to have. Cassidy and Ryder took the watch this time, but the space between the trees was tight, so they weren’t left out of the conversation.

‘A hundred and twenty of them. Five of us,’ I said.

‘I ain’t running,’ Boink said.

‘Who said anything about running?’ I responded.

Leila, looking at me as if she were witnessing a spectacular sunrise, said ‘So you’re
not
running out on Deryck and Ayesha and Peanut and the pilot?’

‘Let’s be clear. A hundred and twenty-odd to five are big odds,’ I said.

‘That all? Those fuckers are in a shitload of trouble,’ said West over his shoulder.

I’d wondered which of the SOCOM boys would turn into John Wayne.

‘I ain’t never lost a principal before,’ said Cassidy. ‘Don’t want to start now.’

John Wayne had a brother.

Ryder chewed his bottom lip.

‘On the basis of the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ said Rutherford, ‘what about the other side – the opposition up the hill? Might they be inclined to lend us a little assistance?’

Cassidy’s eyes were black caves and his face had the luster of polished wet granite. ‘The hostages are alive . . . for now. But we wait, they die.’

‘LeDuc, what do you think?’ I asked.

‘Up there, on top of the hill, according to the FARDC soldier, they are Laurent Nkunda’s rebels – your allies, the CNDP. But these men are also often no better than murderers and rapists. Our source was just a private soldier. What would he know? It
could
be the FDLR up there – the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda. Or even the Lord’s Resistance Army, from Uganda, that kills in the name of Christ. They could also be Mai-Mai militia. Or they could be just another unit of FARDC settling an old score,’ he said, using two fingers across his blackened forehead like they were windshield wipers to flick away the water and sweat.

I had the picture of a lunatic walking up to half a dozen large bears and kicking all of them in the shins. ‘Back it up a second,’ I said. ‘Who’s this Nkunda guy? I thought our allies were part of some National Congress.’

‘Yes, the
Congrès National Pour la Défénse du Peuple
. Or as you English say, the National Congress for the Defense of the People. CNDP for us. NCDP
pour vous
– the soldiers you are training across the border in Rwanda. Laurent Nkunda was a general in FARDC, the army of the DRC, but he rebelled, took his best units, and continued to fight the remnants of his enemies, the Rwandan Hutus, who fed the 1994 Rwandan genocide and set up camp in the east of the DRC. That is what the CNDP claims, but the wider truth is that the CNDP is in the Congo to protect Rwanda’s interests here, which are also America’s interests. That is why the CNDP are your country’s allies – at least for the moment. Those were the soldiers you met at the base in Cyangugu, the ones commanded by Colonel Olivier Biruta and his second in command, Commandant Jean Claude Ntahobali.’

‘So where is this Nkunda?’ I asked.

‘Under arrest. Held in Rwanda on charges of murder and other crimes. But he will never come to trial.’

‘Because?’

‘Because he is an embarrassment to the DRC, Kigali and Washington.’

‘Okay, well . . . are any of these armies, rebels or otherwise, likely to help us?’ I asked, getting us back on track.

‘In the DRC, especially here in Nord-Kivu province where there is so much wealth, it is impossible to say.’

The complication of who was who in this fucked-up zoo was exasperating. ‘But, in your experience, is it worth taking the risk to find out?’

He shrugged; something, it seemed to me, this Frenchman did almost as often as breathing. ‘Perhaps
oui
, perhaps
non
. They might also kill you just for the fun of it.’

‘They’d be jumping the queue,’ I said.

‘What kind of wealth are we talking about?’ asked Rutherford.

‘There is Coltan.’

‘Doesn’t he fight Batman, or someone?’ I said.

‘Columbite-tantalite – “Coltan” for short. It is a rare mineral used to make electronic printed circuit boards. You cannot make a computer without it. This part of the Congo has the world’s largest deposits. Gold – there is very much of that here, also.’

‘So we’ve established that everyone is killing everyone in this little enchanted forest. And that it’s probably over Apple Macs and bullion. Back to our principals. What are we going to do about them? Any suggestions?’

‘We need to recon the enemy’s position,’ said Cassidy, checking his weapon. ‘What’s their morale like? Are they vulnerable to a night attack? How do they have our principals guarded?’

The sergeant was on the money. Once we had a better feel for the situation, we could take action or not.

‘Agreed,’ I said. ‘Volunteers?’

‘I’m in,’ said Ryder.

‘I’m coming,’ said Boink.

‘
Moi aussi,
’ said LeDuc, raising his hand.

Cassidy, West and Rutherford all nodded.

‘Duke, I need you to stay and guard Leila.’

‘I want to be there for Ayesha, Vin,’ said Ryder, his chin jutting forward.

‘I need you here, Duke,’ I repeated, making it an order. The truth of it was that I didn’t want Ryder anywhere near a mission like the one on the table. Wanting to go, no matter how desperate the desire, didn’t cut it. The guy didn’t have the required combat skills, simple as that. His lack of experience could get himself and the people with him killed. Still, Ryder was far from happy about this.

‘You’re not coming either, big guy,’ I told Boink.

‘You gonna stop me?’ he said, taking a step toward me.

I stood my ground. ‘If I have to.’

He stood his.

I tried a different approach, risky though it was, and handed him the Type 97 I was holding. ‘Look, Boink, I need you here with Ryder. So, I’m going to give you one of these. I’m assuming you know your way around a carbine.’ This was tricky but there simply weren’t enough PSOs. If we could trust Boink, arming him would be an asset. Given what I knew he was capable of, though, it was a big if. He pointed the weapon in my general direction; not the reaction I’d been hoping for. I didn’t move, held my breath.