Ghost Watch (21 page)

‘Enemy patrol nearby,’ I explained in a low whisper to cold, shivering bodies. ‘No noise, stay here.’ I gave Ryder my Nazarian and two extra magazines. LeDuc had his own service pistol. ‘They’re yours,’ I told them, tilting my head at the principals. Ryder seemed happy to be left behind. ‘If we’re not back in half an hour, head for the top of the ridge and hope the folks up there are friendlier than the ones down there.’

LeDuc nodded and whispered, ‘
Bonne chance.
’

‘You really think taking them on is a good idea, sir?’ asked Ryder, frowning.

‘If we get their weapons and ammo, yes,’ I said. ‘If they shoot us all dead, no.’

‘Okay,’ he muttered, shaking his head. My logic was messing with his mind. I happened to glance at Leila. Her arms were folded and she was glaring at me hard.

WE STAYED BEHIND THE enemy patrol, dropping down into the mist, which was becoming genuine fog as the air warmed slightly in the pre-dawn light and convection currents got into it, thickening the mixture. The waterlogged air deadened noise transmission. When we found suitable terrain, Cassidy, Rutherford and West hunkered down while I went forward, maintaining contact with the patrol’s last man. They kept on the move for another ten minutes, walking slowly across the hill, maintaining a generally easterly heading. And then they stopped, paused for a few minutes, relaxing, and passed around a pack of cigarettes. The sun was higher, and although the fog was reasonably heavy, color was now discernible and I could see the blue patches on the shoulders of their FARDC uniforms. I dropped behind an old fallen tree and put my chin in some sticky rotting goop. I could hear the patrol talking, laughing; sharing a quiet joke, perhaps. I wondered what Congolese soldiers found funny, what the joke – if that’s what it was – was all about.

The patrol then stopped following the script. Instead of simply retracing their footsteps and going back out the way they came in, they started walking up the hill diagonally, coming toward me. If they kept to their current course, they’d walk right into our bivouac. I heard them coming closer. They’d stopped chatting like friends off to see a game, and were again stalking quietly up the hill. I slipped back the machine gun’s bolt and took a couple of deep breaths to steady my nerves. Something moved in the leaf litter. I glanced across and froze. Less than a foot from my eyeball sat a black scorpion the size of a small Maine lobster. This close, the thing looked like a Suburban with a tail. Its copper- colored stinger, curved like a scimitar, was poised over the top of its back, quivering, tensing for the strike. I swallowed hard. That goop under my chin – maybe it was the damn thing’s breakfast. It wanted to fight me for it and was scuttling back and forth, dancing like a boxer, its claws raised and ready for a one-two combination. The sight of it took me back to the hill in Afghanistan, superior numbers of Taliban fighters swarming over our mauled, exhausted unit, hacking left and right with their swords, taking off heads. Scorpions, almost a plague in Afghanistan, populated my nightmares, marshaling them forward, leading them over the trenches. I’d just spent two hours of harried, grueling sleep with a few thousand of them. I fucking
hate
scorpions. Despite the cold, I was sweating, immobilized. And then it struck, whipping forward and stabbing my cheek with that stinger. I yelled and jumped up, the side of my face on fire.

The FARDC patrol stopped and stared up at me.

I looked down at them.

There was a moment of indecision, but then they visibly relaxed. One of them raised a hand. While I seemed to have come from nowhere, there were those distinctive blue patches on my shoulders. They waved at me and the patrol leader took a few steps in my direction. The mistaken identity was only going to last a few seconds. A couple of them hesitated. One raised his weapon. I swung the QCW forward and fired the first burst from the hip. The weapon made a sound like a fart in a cushion. The rounds caught the lead soldier in the shoulder and stitched him across his neck, which exploded like a can of Coke that had been punctured and shaken. He fell back against the second man as I dropped to my knee and used the sight. The distance between us was no more than sixty meters – fish in a barrel distance. I pumped rounds into the chests of the remaining men, who were fumbling with their weapons, firing wildly and mostly straight into the ground. It was over in seconds.

No movement animated any of them, but I knew one was still alive. He was lying under the man who’d been shot first. I walked up to the fallen, trying not to think about what had just happened. I toed the body of the man playing possum, keeping the muzzle of the QCW on his face. His eyes were shut but his lips were trembling, tears running down his cheeks. He was maybe twenty years of age.

‘You!’ I gave his leg a prod. ‘Hey,’ I said again.

His eyes opened and he looked into the barrel of the QCW, smoke curling from it.

‘
Non, non . . . ne me tuer pas . . . ne me tuer pas . . . ne me tuer pas . . .
’ he said, his chest convulsing.

I wasn’t exactly sure what he was saying, but I figured he was begging for his life. The heat of battle was past and this guy hadn’t caught a scratch. I don’t do cold blood. I heard the noise of people running up behind me. My people.

‘Cooper!’ Cassidy called out in a harsh whisper.

I raised a hand to acknowledge them in the dissipating fog, just so that they could be sure it was me and didn’t start shooting. They got to me twenty seconds after that, breathing heavily, as I pulled the corpse off the lone survivor.

‘What happened?’ West asked, slightly annoyed, the plan to ambush the FARDC patrol in an orderly flashion fucked up.

‘
Ne me tuer pas . . . ne me tuer pas . . .
’ interrupted the Congolese soldier, who was blubbering and shaking violently.

‘Got a live one, eh?’ said Rutherford.

‘What’s he saying?’ West asked.

‘“Don’t kill me” I believe would be the direct translation.’

‘I didn’t know you spoke French,’ I said to Rutherford.

‘Schoolboy French,’ he said. ‘I can swear like a proper Frog.’

‘Keep him away from Boink. He can fill us in on his buddies down there in the valley. He might also know a thing or two about the force occupying the ridge.’

I grabbed the African’s weapon, another of those M16s with its numbers removed, then dragged the man by the back of the collar away from the carnage and turned him face down in the leaf litter.

‘Search him,’ I told Rutherford. ‘If he gives you trouble, inspect your side-arm. Seems to work.’

Rutherford patted the guy down, removing a flick knife and several full mags, Chinese-made and interchangeable with the Type 97.

West and Cassidy stripped the bodies of valuables – weapons, backpacks.

‘Nice little windfall,’ said Cassidy.

‘Lookee here,’ said West. He opened up one of the backpacks. There was a poncho, cigarette lighter, packets of South African beef jerky and more tins of food. We also had their QCWs and Nazarians, the M16, spare mags, two sets of high-powered Chinese-made binoculars, plus the extra-special prize – a serious-looking Chinese-made 7.62mm sniper rifle, with eight spare magazines.

The haul suggested that this patrol had a longer-term mission.

‘How’d you get the drop on them?’ West asked me.

‘Mistaken identity. The blue patches. My face still blacked out?’

‘Yeah. And now that you mention it, you look funny,’ Rutherford said.

And now that he mentioned it, one whole side of my face was itchy, pulsing, throbbing and hot. I touched my cheek. It was puffed up like a souffé, a teardrop of semi-crusted blood running from a puncture wound. I couldn’t see the humor in it.

‘I am not an animal,’ said Rutherford, enjoying himself.

‘You been bit by something,’ said West, stating the obvious.

I walked up to the fallen log, drawing my Ka-bar, and came back down with the struggling monster arachnid skewered on the end of it.

‘Shee-it, Cooper,’ said West, horrified by the size of the thing. Him and me both. My nightmares had themselves a new gatekeeper.

‘What about the bodies?’ said Cassidy, all business.

‘We could just leave ’em,’ Rutherford suggested. ‘They could’ve been slotted by anyone in this place.’

He was right. And it was time to vacate the vicinity. I shook the bug off my knife, toed some leaf litter over it, and dug the blade into the soil to remove a smear of yellow and green pus. I grabbed a handful of the prisoner’s shirt and hoisted him to his feet. Cassidy gave him a nudge to get him moving up the hill. The side of my bloated face wobbled like a plate of Jell-O with every step. I tried not to think about it. The fog was burning off fast now and there were wide patches of blue between the layers of cloud overhead. The day was trying to make up its mind about what kind of day it was going to be. Personally, I hoped it would come down in favor of putting on a little sunshine. The cold and wet were beginning to wear a little thin.

Fifteen minutes later we were back at our base camp. Boink was keeping watch. He stood up when we came closer, uncertainty in his face. Four went out, five were coming back. How was that happening?

‘What’s for breakfast?’ I asked the big man as I walked past.

‘Radishes,’ he said, looking at me strangely, not quite connecting the face with the voice.

I returned the strange look with interest – radishes?

LeDuc and Ryder came down to meet us. Leila and Ayesha stayed beside the ponchos now strung between the trees.

LeDuc checked the man up and down.

Rutherford said, ‘Feel free to start the interrogation – name, rank, et cetera?’

The African smiled at LeDuc, much of his fear appearing to dissipate.

‘Looks like you remind him of someone,’ I said. Maybe the fact that the Frenchman was MONUC put him at ease.

LeDuc snapped at the African and the man’s smile faltered. A rapid-fire exchange then ensued between them. When they’d finished, LeDuc said, ‘His name is Marcel Nbendo and he is twenty-one years old. He comes from a village twenty miles from here, and was recruited forcibly. His chief was paid money to vote for the local government man, plus an extra bounty for contributions made to the army. Marcel was one of those contributions. That was three years ago. He says he wants to desert, but has nowhere to go if he does because he can’t go back to his village. The chief wouldn’t allow it – too risky.’

‘Where was his patrol going and what was its mission?’ I asked.

LeDuc asked the man and then said, ‘Their orders were to kill the commander of the force holding the heights. His name is Colonel Makenga. Marcel did not want to do this mission, believing his patrol would not come back.’

‘Got that right,’ Rutherford observed with a grin as he walked within earshot.

‘Ask him if our principals are still alive down there,’ I said to LeDuc.

The pilot translated, and then said, ‘He and the others in his unit were briefed at the HQ. He saw two prisoners held out in the open.’

‘Both black men?’ I asked.

A moment later, LeDuc said, ‘
Oui.
’

‘Still no Fournier,’ West commented.

‘He says that when their patrol was briefed, he saw them tied up and under guard.’

‘Are patrols out looking for us?’

LeDuc and the prisoner had a brief exchange. ‘He says no.’

‘How would he know?’ I thought about the question and qualifed it with another. ‘Did breaking Ayesha out set off the alarm bells?’

The French pilot considered the questions before putting them to the African.

The man gave a stuttering reply, his eyes wide with fear.

‘He says that the commander of the FARDC force is a proud man. He would tear the hillside down in order to kill us if he knew we had dishonored him by stealing into the encampment, murdering his people and taking back a hostage.’

West yawned. ‘Bring it on,’ he said.

‘What are they going to do with the prisoners?’ I asked.

After another exchange, LeDuc said, ‘He does not know. Marcel is, how you say, “a grunt”. ’

The sun burst through the trees, fooding our campsite with warmth. Almost instantly, wisps of steam began to rise from the shoulders of our rain-and-sweat-soaked shirts and body armor.

‘If this colonel knew his captives were wealthy, would he be interested in ransoming them?’ I asked.

LeDuc and the African batted this around.

‘Marcel says his colonel is already a rich man, but that riches make a man greedy for more.’

‘We’ve captured a bloody philosopher,’ observed Rutherford. ‘What about numbers? How many have they really got down there?’

‘Around a hundred and eighty,’ said LeDuc after a quick consultation.

‘One-eighty – shit,’ said Rutherford. ‘More than we thought.’

‘Morale?’ I asked.

‘
Comme si comme ça,
’ the African volunteered, without the need for translation.

On the right ride of my face, my lips were swelling, and I noticed that it was getting more difficult to talk and swallow without dribbling.

‘Ask him if he knows anything about the big scorpions around here – how poisonous they are?’ I said, just as preoccupied with my own situation.