Ghost Watch (37 page)

‘Piers Pietersen and Charles White,’ I whispered, the names of the two expats coming back to me.

‘What?’ said Francis.

I waved away the question, along with the mosquito cloud. Explanations would have to wait. Lockhart, Lissouba, Fu Manchu, Makenga, Biruta, LeDuc, and a bigwig from a gold company. Or, another way to look at it – a US DoD contractor in cahoots with the PLA and FARDC, meeting the local CNDP commanding officer and his boss for a powwow with SAG. It read like a headline for a
60 Minutes
exposé. And all within spitting distance of a gold mine producing nuggets of the stuff. That was no coincidence either. More than likely it was the catalyst. And the presence of Makenga, the enemy – he of the golden chicken – accounted for the unnatural calm that seemed to have descended on the FARDC encampment. Obviously, a convenient truce had been called between the two warring companies. The only man I couldn’t place in the get-together was Charles White, the African American accompanying Pietersen. I wondered how many of these people were involved in the scheme to abduct my principals.

The backslapping continued for a while as Francis and I watched on. Then half a dozen men from the camp came over and White accompanied them to the chopper. The fuselage of the aircraft obscured the proceedings for a few moments, but then I saw the men re-emerge, lugging heavy crates between them. They carried them to the back of the lead truck, placed them on the tailgate and went back to the chopper for more. Taking a flashlight, White led the group to the rear of the truck and opened one of the boxes with a jemmy that had been handed to him. He levered the lid off the crate, opened another box within it, took something out and held it up to show the party gathered nearby. He then strolled around the far side of the truck, the side nearest to Francis and me hiding in the scrub, placed the object on the ground and sauntered back to join the others. He held his right hand up high.

And, suddenly, a flash ripped through the darkness, accompanied by an ear-splitting explosion. Shrapnel raked the foliage inches above my head. Francis screamed, got up and ran.

I took off after him, expecting that, any second, gunfire would follow us. I tensed, waiting for the bark of M16s and the jacketed slugs that would drop us into the scrub, but they never came. I caught up with Francis eventually, after a sprint of two hundred meters through elephant grass that cut up my clothes, up toward the ridge that we’d used as an observation post earlier in the day. No one seemed to have followed us. I put that down to the explosion temporarily deafening White, Lockhart and the rest, and our moving shapes being black on black. Our enemies hadn’t even known we were there, or that they’d almost killed us.

‘Stop,’ I hissed at Francis, but he kept running, bolting up the hill. As I watched, a tree appeared to snatch him clean off his feet. He shot skywards upside down, a gurgling scream choking from him. And then a length of warm black steel materialized from out of the night and jerked my head to one side and I felt the edge of a knife press across my throat, breaking the skin.

‘Christ, Cooper,’ said a familiar voice in my ear as the warm black steel, which I realized was a forearm, released me. Cassidy. ‘How many fucking lives you got?’ he said. ‘Come three meters to the left and right about now you’d have a necklace of bamboo spears through your chest.’

My heart pounded like a tire with a bubble in the sidewall about to burst. I got down on a knee and sucked in some air to get the adrenalin under control.

‘And who’s that swinging by his ankles up there?’ Cassidy asked.

‘Name’s Francis,’ I puffed. ‘He’s friendly. Or was – wouldn’t count on it now.’

‘I’ll get him down.’

‘Good idea. What happened to the baby?’

‘Leila wanted to keep it.’

‘You talked her out of it, I hope.’

‘No.’

I climbed to my feet. ‘What? So we’ve still got it?’

‘No, I didn’t try and talk her out of anything. I just took it off her and put it on the edge of the forest and held my hand across her mouth until one of the women eventually came and took it away.’

‘So now you and Leila have a very special relationship too,’ I said.

‘Not as special as yours,’ he said, grinning. He found the liana taking Francis’s weight and sawed through it with his Ka-bar.

‘Where are the others?’

‘Further up the hill. That explosion have anything to do with you?’ ‘No.’ I gazed up at Francis, who was spinning slowly, hanging by an

ankle. ‘What’s with all the bushcraft?’

‘Didn’t want anyone sneaking in through our back door.’

He grunted as he took the weight on the vine and lowered Francis into a bush.

A LOW WHISTLE FLOATED through the scrub.

Cassidy returned it.

A shadow stepped out from behind a tree ten feet further up the hill.

‘Look what I found,’ Cassidy told it.

‘Hey, skipper, you’re back,’ said Rutherford’s familiar voice. ‘Duke was getting worried.’

‘Fuck off,’ said Ryder, suddenly appearing from his hiding place behind us, a 97 cradled in the crook of an arm. Ryder was grinning, his teeth glowing pale blue in the darkness as he walked toward us. This was a different Ryder to the one who’d joined the PSO team because he was hoping to rub pink bits with an old school flame. Crawling through the bush and the insects the other night had done him some good. Ryder 2.0 was an upgrade.

‘Who’s your friend?’ he asked with a nod at Francis.

While Francis shook their hands with enthusiasm, I explained that he’d volunteered to be our guide. ‘How’re the principals?’ I asked at the conclusion of the meet and greet.

‘Bedded down for the night,’ said Rutherford.

Ryder went to resume his watch.

‘Duke,’ I said, ‘there are some things going on that we all need to talk about. The path’s clear behind us.’

Rutherford led the way up the hill, stopping eventually at a stand of young saplings. There was a half moon blazing out from behind a roll of silvery cloud and, with little canopy to obscure the light, I could just make out Leila, Ayesha and Boink lying on woven liana hammocks strung between the young trees, which got our principals off the ground and out of reach of the ants. Boink was snoring loudly, Ayesha softly. Leila was dead to the world, the way I liked her best.

‘West?’ I asked.

‘Keeping an eye on things across the ditch,’ said Rutherford.

The Brit took us up to the rock face, our earlier observation post.

West lowered the sniper scope when he heard us coming up behind him.

‘Hey, boss. I couldn’t work out whether you were MIA or AWOL,’ he said with a smile when he saw me. ‘What happened?’

I provided a brief account of my last six hours – the trip to the mine, the folks being used as slaves, meeting Francis, seeing Lockhart.

Rutherford shook his head. ‘Shite. So this is all about
gold
?’

‘Gold doesn’t explain why our principals were kidnapped,’ said Cassidy.

No, it didn’t. ‘Which reminds me,’ I said. ‘Twenny and Peanut still in plain sight?’

‘Nope,’ said West. ‘Either they’ve been moved into one of the tents – out of sight of the guests who arrived in the chopper. Or they’ve been whacked and their bodies disposed of.’

A positive thinker. ‘What’s your money on?’ I asked him.

He shrugged.

‘Cassidy?’

‘They were there, and then they were gone,’ he said.

‘From what you’ve just told us, boss,’ said Duke, ‘I’d say everyone down there’s a little too preoccupied with mining interests to send Twenny and Peanut down the road after Fournier.’

‘Maybe,’ West conceded.

‘We have to work with the assumption that they’re still alive,’ said Cassidy.

There were murmurs of agreement.

‘Sir, what promises have been made to Francis about his wife in return for his guide duties?’ Cassidy asked.

‘Only that Bruce Willis and Tommy Franks will ride on in and rescue her.’

‘Yes, Bruce Willis,’ said Francis, doing a little jig on the spot.

‘I didn’t want to over-promise,’ I said.

‘Jesus,’ Cassidy muttered.

I asked West, ‘What can you see down there at the moment?’

He handed me the scope. ‘Take a look for yourself. There’s not enough light to get a good resolution, especially once they turned off all their flashlights. Were you down there on the ground when the chopper arrived?’

‘Yep.’ I rested the scope against the tree trunk and brought the executive helicopter into focus. The image was heavily ghosted and dark blue on black. I scanned the area. From the little I could make out, Lockhart and his entourage appeared to have vacated the clearing. ‘So you didn’t see who came in on it?’

‘No,’ said West.

I kept talking while I scanned the HQ. ‘It’s a Swedish American Gold aircraft. The passenger list included Colonel Biruta, the CNDP commanding officer from Cyangugu; Colonel Makenga, the CNDP asshole who tried to do us up on the ridge. Piers Pietersen was on it – he’s possibly the pilot – and so was Charles White. We met those last two back at Cyangugu after the concert.’

‘I remember them,’ said Ryder. ‘The autograph hunters, right?’

‘That’s them,’ said Rutherford, West nodding.

‘Pietersen and White brought in a cargo of weapons,’ I continued. ‘Claymores, we know about. White set one off.’

‘We heard,’ said West.

‘They put them all in that truck.’ Thinking on the run, I added, ‘Maybe they’re going to pull the C4 out of ’em and use it to open up the mine.’ The realization gave me an idea.

‘Was that the explosion I heard? A Claymore?’ West asked.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘White giving a demonstration. Lockhart, the PLA guy and the FARDC commanding officer were the official welcoming party, by the way. And LeDuc was with them.’

‘I’m going to adopt the local custom and throw a big handful of shit at LeDuc when I see him next,’ said Rutherford.

‘So FARDC and CNDP are now hopping into bed together only a couple of days after they were trying to kill each other?’ Ryder asked. ‘Is that likely?’

‘Maybe – if there’s a fortune in gold greasing the wheels,’ Cassidy suggested.

‘That’s what they might have been fighting about – control of the mine,’ I said. ‘Could be that both parties decided the fight was a stalemate and a better course of action was to split the spoils instead and live to fight another day.’

‘Rich and alive beats dead poor and proud any day,’ observed Rutherford.

‘I want to bring in Lockhart,’ said Ryder.

I admired his ambition.

‘You and whose army?’ the Brit asked.

‘We’re still no closer to releasing our principals,’ Cassidy reminded us.

‘I think we’re plenty closer,’ I said.

West scratched his chin. ‘How?’

‘It’s sitting in the back of that truck.’

IT WAS STILL DARK when Ayesha woke and wandered up to the rock face. ‘Vin! My God, you’re safe!’ she said, surprised to see me back in the fold. ‘We were so worried about you, weren’t we?’

‘I had kittens,’ said Rutherford, grinning.

‘Where’d you end up?’ Ayesha continued.

I gave her a brief rundown.

‘Oh, man, those poor people down there,’ said Ayesha. ‘I had no idea. This country – it’s like totally—’

‘Fucked in the head,’ West said.

‘So who’s this?’ Ayesha asked, nodding warily at Francis.

I went through a round of introductions.

‘Yo, Cooper! That you?’ Boink asked as he pulled himself up the last step onto the shelf. ‘What up, dog?’

Twenny’s head security guy walked over and held out his fist so that we could bump knuckles, the male air kiss.

‘I never seen nothin’ like what happen’ down in that village, yo. When you stowed away on that truck after what we seen?’ he shook his head. ‘That was brave, fucked-up shit. I thought you was a goner.’

‘Who’s a goner?’ It was Leila. She reached behind her head, wrangling her hair into a ponytail as she came up the step. ‘Cooper . . . When did you get back?’ She caught sight of Francis and said, ‘What’s going on?’

‘Got movement down there,’ said West, interrupting, holding up the scope for me to come take a look.

‘Excuse me,’ I said to Leila.

‘No, you’re not excused,’ she replied.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Cooper, you’re not going nowhere till I know what’s going on. We went with you yesterday. I hoped it might keep your eyes on the prize – getting us back to Cyangugu. But instead, off you went. You put us all at risk
again.
And we’re still no closer to getting out of here.’

‘I thought we were in agreement about rescuing Twenny,’ I said, keeping the annoyance out of my face and tone.

‘Which agreement was that?’ she said.

‘I’ve made it plain to you that it’s our responsibility to protect
all
our principals, not just your Hollywood ass.’

A hand went to her hip. She didn’t like that, a suggestion that the universe might not revolve around her ass.