Ghost Watch (52 page)

‘You may laugh, boss, but those little critters are awesome,’ said West.

‘So you keep telling us.’

‘That’s ’cause they are – crunchy on the outside, kinda gooey when you bite into ’em, and the taste is nutty. They’re good clean food. Try one.’ West picked a medium-sized insect from the mound, the head already pinched off, and presented it to me in the palm of his hand.

‘Reminds me of that dumb-ass reality show, you feel me?’ said Twenny.

I took the insect, put it between my teeth without thinking too hard about it and bit down. Like West said, crunchy, gooey and nutty. ‘Not bad,’ I said when I’d finished. ‘But I like my nuts without legs.’ And, in truth, the goo wasn’t much of a hit, either. But if I had to eat them to stay alive . . .

The fruit disappeared quickly, so Cassidy went out to get another couple of watermelons and was back within five minutes with two more, bigger than the last. West, meanwhile, went to work on the raft, with Rutherford and Ayesha and Ryder resting nearby.

‘We need the perimeter secured. What’s your thinking?’ I asked Cas-sidy through a mouthful of melon, the sugar from the fruit running through my system like a mild electric current.

‘The forest’s pretty thick hereabouts. There are two ways in. One’s easy, one’s not so easy. West and I figure the folks we’re up against will take the path of least resistance. If they do, Mr Claymore will keep us informed. If it detonates, everyone should assemble at the raft on the double – I’ll give the word. We planted a few other surprises out there that’ll slow down any assault. I think you can afford to chill for a while, Major Cooper. You’ve earned it.’

I wasn’t sure I’d earned anything, but it was nice of him to say. I found a spare oil drum and sat down on it, but was sitting for less than thirty seconds before I heard my name called.

‘Vin.’

Enjoying the feeling of having a full belly, I blocked out the sound of my name and listened instead to the two-hundred-part acapella mosquito choir humming around my head.

‘Vin . . .’

It was Leila. I braced for the latest complaint/threat/abuse.

‘I warn you . . .’ she said.

Here it comes, I thought, tensing.

‘I’ve come armed with a pair of tweezers and I intend to use them.’

Tweezers? She’d brought her cosmetics bag. ‘Thanks, but I think I like my eyebrows the way they are.’

She took my hand in hers and I smelled perfume, moisturizer and branded insect repellent; the combination conjured up the cosmetics counter at Macy’s, Arlington, an altogether other world to the one we were in. I resisted the desire to rub mud over her – that smell was a potential beacon to any would-be attackers.

‘Eyebrows? You got points of dried blood up and down your arm, like you’ve landed in a cactus. I know what that’s like. Happened to me when I was a little girl. My mother threw me into one of those big ones you see out in the desert, on a trip to California. Stopped the car, dragged me out the door and just threw me.’

‘How many times did you ask, “Are we there yet?” ’

‘My momma didn’t need a reason to do bad things to me. Just the way she was.’

‘She still around?’

‘Can’t get rid of her, her hand out all the time. I give her money and she drinks it all up. Giving her money is like giving her a loaded gun. Sometimes when I remember all the things she did before I got big enough to stop her, I think that’s exactly what I should do – give her that loaded gun she wants so bad. She’s young – only fifteen years older than I am. And beautiful – or was.’

Leila’s fingertips were cool and gentle on my skin, seeing in the darkness, probing for the barbs that stuck out like pins hidden in a new shirt. I felt a little disoriented, but now that she mentioned it, my skin was throbbing at various spots all over: on my cheek, from tiny shards of glass; the small burns from the hot Claymore pellets; the torn flesh on the point of my shoulder; the nick on the back of my upper arm; and, of course, the spines along my arm that it collected when I exited the truck with the mortar. Actually, now that I stopped to think about it, I was sore all over. I closed my eyes.

‘They’re big suckers,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going to pull one out. This might hurt. If you need to cry, don’t you feel embarrassed.’

‘Do you have a hanky, just in case?’

She extracted a spine and I felt a small stab of pain that almost immediately began to itch. Sweetness and light from Leila? The universe was tilting.

‘You like kids,’ I said. That much was obvious. She had instantly been smitten with the baby rescued from the bushes behind the village, and with the child she had nursed in the truck. Dangerous ground, perhaps, if she blamed me for having to give them back.

‘Yes, I love them. I’m going to have children one day. Lots of them. And I’m going to be the momma I wanted, not the one I had.’ She yanked out another quill, this time with feeling. ‘What are your parents like?’

‘They’re dead,’ I said, hoping to bring that line of questioning to a stop.

‘Then, what
were
they like?’ Leila persisted.

‘I didn’t get to know them; neither lived long enough.’

‘Who brought you up?’

‘An uncle – my father’s brother.’

‘What was
he
like?’

‘Okay, mostly.’

‘Getting anything out of you is like pulling teeth.’

‘Let’s see how you do with those spines first,’ I said.

‘Well . . . your uncle?’

I gave in. ‘He was a good parent, but three tours in ’nam had rewired his sense of normal and occasionally the craziness came to the surface.’ I remembered one night in particular. I woke up to find his face three inches from mine, his eyes wide and bloodshot, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose onto my pajamas, a knife half the length of a baseball bat in his hand and, according to him, the house full of Charlie. I was ten years old.

Leila’s fingers worked their way up my arm.

‘We’re gonna make it, aren’t we,’ she said after a pause.

There was no hint of a question in her tone. This was a done deal.

‘Yes,’ I said, mustering the necessary conviction, but the truth was that we were still some way from cracking open the champagne. With my white hat on, the raft was going to get us quickly downstream to safety. But with my black hat on, the raft was going to sink shortly after launch, just before we were sucked over a two hundred foot waterfall around the next bend in the river. I had to take some of the blame for this outbreak of certainty with my earlier pep talk about arriving back at Cyangugu in time for afternoon tea. I was as eager as anyone to get back to Rwanda, if only to wipe the smug superiority off Lockhart’s face when I snapped a pair of bracelets on his wrists.

‘. . . I hope you’re not jealous,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry?’ I replied. ‘I missed that. What were you were saying?’

‘I was saying that Deryck and I have reconciled. We’re going to give it another try. I hope you’re not jealous about that.’ She smiled, and there was mischief in it.

I smiled back. Leila couldn’t conceive of a dimension where every male of the species wasn’t wrapped around her pinkie. ‘I’ll just have to get over it,’ I said. ‘Another time, another place . . .’

‘And, anyway, you got your own issues with your dead girlfriend and I don’t want anyone else’s baggage right at the moment.’

Okay, by invoking Anna, Leila was pushing the delusion boundaries way out of shape. My arm felt hot with an itch that fared its entire length. I wanted to get up and leave, but there was nowhere to go.

‘I have some antiseptic cream,’ she continued. ‘Probably should have washed it first, but this will have to do.’

She reached into her cosmetics bag of tricks, pulled out a tube, squeezed some of what was in it on my arm and rubbed it in. It felt like it was going on someone else’s arm but I told her thanks.

‘Go see a doctor at Cyangugu tomorrow. There’ll be one there for sure.’

There was something totally unreal about this conversation.

Sensing this, she said, ‘Are you okay, Vin?’

Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional.
‘I’m fine.’

‘Good. I know we got off to a bad start, you and I. It has been a journey, hasn’t it?’

‘You still gonna to sue me?’

‘Yes of course, but it’s nothing personal. The military will pay.’

All of a sudden the feeling of having a full belly soured and the watermelon, palm oil fruit and grasshopper caught the freight train leaving my stomach and roared out of my mouth and onto the ground at her feet. Leila screamed, said fuck half a dozen times and danced on the spot briefly before running off into Twenny’s arms. I sat on the barrel, bile burning my throat, gave them both an apologetic shrug and felt a whole lot better. Twenny Fo left his girlfriend and came on over.

‘Tell me that wasn’t intentional?’

‘I got a few talents, but throwing up on cue ain’t one of them.’

‘I just thought I’d check. I know you and Leila haven’t hit it off.’

Interesting choice of words. ‘I think we hit it off just fine. And I think I still got the handprint on my face to prove it.’

‘With Leila, you gotta learn when to duck.’

‘Uh-huh,’ was all I said.

‘I haven’t got ’round to thanking you properly for what you done. You could have left me behind, man.’

‘A few things went our way.’ A beetle landed on my head. I swatted it away. ‘We need to have a talk about what you saw and heard in that camp.’

‘Leila told me you think an American we met at the concert in Rwanda planned all this with our pilot, the short French guy. The idea from the beginning was to drop us into the jungle and hold us to ransom, right?’

‘That’s what it looks like. The dickfuck’s name is Lockhart. He was in the camp where you were being held prisoner. I saw him murder Fournier, the French co-pilot, not five feet from where you were standing.’

‘I heard the gunshot, but that’s all. They put a hood over my head and beeswax went in my ears almost from the moment I was captured. I saw nothing, heard nothing, man.’

Wonderful.

‘. . . But I smelled him.’

‘You smelled him?’

‘I have my own cologne. It’s called “Guilty”. Maybe you heard of it?’

Now that I thought about it, I had seen the advertising poster: two women, naked and embracing, shadows hiding the interesting bits, Twenny lying in a nearby bed, a white satin sheet strategically placed.

‘How many people you think wear cologne in these parts? Anyway,’ he continued, ‘that’s what your man wears, you feel me? Splashes on a little Guilty after trimming his man hair. I know that smell anywhere. I couldn’t believe it – thought I was dreaming.’

I wasn’t sure that a court would send Lockhart away for life on a little olfactory evidence, but it was
something
.

‘Like I tol’ you already, anything I can do to help, just ask,’ he said, standing. ‘You got a friend for life, you feel me?’

I thought about asking him to tell his girlfriend not to sue the Air Force on my account, but my service could take care of itself.

I
t rained most of the night. Used to this by now, I scarcely noticed and shivered my way through it without too much swearing. I grabbed what sleep I could on one of West’s cots, out of reach of the driver ants, under the shelter of several broad umbrella palm fronds. I liked that arrangement better than sharing a poncho, which just caused me to sweat. I took the second-to-last watch, relieving Rutherford, who had nothing to report other than that there were plenty of frogs.

I checked on the raft’s progress at the start of my watch at three-thirty. The job was done and West was snoring under a poncho on the raft, which was long and narrow. Only one of the fifty-five-gallon drums had been used in its construction, up at what would have been the bow. The SS
Sapling
was ready to go, sitting in a pool of shallow brackish water among the reeds.

My watch was uneventful. When it was over, I passed it to Ryder, who said he was feeling human again, which probably had a lot to do with him feeling Ayesha. Boink had been given the night off. He’d done his fair share. Peanut snored the night away, oblivious to everything except the mosquitoes, which he slapped and waved at as much as anyone. Twenny and Leila shared a cot and covered themselves with a poncho. Twenny talked in his sleep, yelled occasionally, dreams beginning to stalk him too.

I went back to the cot and before I knew it, I was asleep, having a nightmare about eating a steak that tasted of grasshopper. But this was cut short by the distinctive and unpleasant crash of an exploding Claymore, which sounded like a thousand ball bearings hurled explosively against a glass floor. I sat up instantly.

In the moonlight, a shadow ran past that I recognized as Ryder. He stopped at Ayesha’s cot. ‘Get up!’ he shouted.

‘What’s goin’ on?’ Twenny asked no one in particular, bewildered, half asleep.

‘Get to the raft,’ I hissed. ‘Look after Peanut. Go now.’