by Rob Aspinall
“None? Seriously?” I brought my foot up on the stool and hunched up around one knee as I browsed through YouTube, settling on “Cats v Cucumbers”. I’d seen it, what, a thousand times? But cats shitting it at the sight of an innocent cucumber laid on the floor behind them did it for me every time.
“God,” I sighed, clicking on the vid. “How do you not kill yourself, like every single day?”
“I battle through,” Philippe said, placing the clean pan on the drainer.
After finishing the washing up, he took a stool next to me while he supped a black coffee. I asked him what films he liked.
“Action.”
Ooh, what a shocker. I teed up a film called John Wick on illegal stream. Basically, Keanu Reeves plugging a load of bad guys, dressed in designer suits. I looked at the spare clothes Philippe had changed into. Ripped jeans and a faded grey sweatshirt. “Did you ever wear suits when you … you know … turned up for a gig?”
“Why would I?”
“Because it looks cool,” I said. “You get the swish of the jacket as you spin around with the gun.”
He screwed up his nose and sipped his coffee. “I do most of my shooting from a mile away …” He checked himself. “… Did.”
I could tell part of him was still struggling with the concept of retirement. I floated the idea of me getting some new clothes. After all, it was okay for Philippe. He had loads of spare stuff here. I had nothing but a stolen fourteen-year-old’s outfit.
“These are getting skank,” I said, tugging at my top. “And I’ll need clothes for Venezuela. Shorts. Bikini bottoms. Tops. Makeup and toiletries too.”
“Okay,” Philippe said, sliding off his stool and washing out his cup.
“I’ll need my credit card,” I said.
He put the cup upside down on the drainer and stared at me, drying his hands on a tea towel.
“Not going to happen,” he said.
“What?” I said. “How else am I supposed to—”
Philippe opened up his wallet and held out a platinum card. “You can use mine.”
“It’s okay. Just give me my card and I’ll use that.”
“Not a chance,” he said.
I took the card. “Talk about paranoid.”
“Buy yourself a suitcase too,” Philippe said. “A small one. And a business suit for the trip.”
Ha! He bought it. Now I could shop my little socks off on Philippe’s credit. No need to eat into my six thousand euros. I swiped open his iPad and went to work.
It was an exhausting four-hour session. Trying to find cute high-necked tops that wouldn’t make me sweat like a pig in the Venezuelan heat was a nightmare. But I eventually settled on a few choice outfits. I ordered my usual cosmetics and toiletries, plus a few other essentials like a Hello Kitty onesie, the latest iPhone and a top of the range iPad of my own. (Well, I was the one who went into that house and got the eyeball. Some of that stolen money was basically mine.)
I teed up all the items, but suddenly realised I didn’t have a clue where in hell’s arsehole we were. I found Philippe outside, around the back of the barn, washing a dark-green VW Golf in the fresh, late September sun. Now that it was light, I could see where he’d brought me. The middle of nowhere, that’s where. Cabbage fields for miles around, smattered with a few cattle here and there. Sheep. Cows. Horses. There was another barn behind the farmhouse – a working one, open at the front and made of corrugated iron, with a green tractor and trailer parked up. The farm carried a faint whiff of manure, mixed with a medley of fresh veg. I heard chickens bu-kwarking somewhere, from around the back of the farmhouse maybe.
“I need to know the address here,” I said.
Philippe dropped his sponge and made a wet handprint on his sweatshirt. He jabbed in the details on each page, shaking his head. “An iPhone? You’ve got a phone already.”
“It’s ancient,” I said. “At least two years old … Besides, it’s not like we can’t afford it.”
“We?” he asked, arching a caterpillar eyebrow.
“Mi case su case,” I said. “What’s yours is mine.”
“It’s what’s mine is yours,” he said.
I shrugged. “Potato, pot-arto.”
Philippe handed me back the iPad with the address typed in. I hit buy-buy-buy just as a car came into view. The road ended at the farm, so there was only one place it was heading.
“We’ve got company,” I said to Philippe.
He made soapy circles on the roof of the Golf and squinted into the sun at the red estate car.
“It’s Magda,” Philippe said, letting the sponge splosh into a tin bucket and walking down the driveway, waving.
Magda was in her early sixties, I reckon. A grandmotherly type with short grey hair and a face you could tell was young and innocent once. But life left a lot of creases.
Her style was country bumpkin; a green gilet and matching wellies, khaki pants you’d wear to go horse riding and a patterned blue scarf tied around her neck.
Philippe greeted her with continental air kisses and a hug. A hug? Philippe?
Magda held him by the arms like he was a grown-up son home for the weekend.
Philippe turned and pointed to me. I’d stayed put behind the Golf. I was always a bit shy. A bit wary around new people. My adventures with JPAC had only lumped more fear fuel on to the fire. The scar made it worse still. And my stolen top didn’t cover it up fully. Philippe beckoned me out from behind the Golf. I trudged around the car, following the dying rivers streaming out over the driveway.
“This is Jess,” Philippe said. “Jess, this is Magda.”
“Hello,” Magda said to me in an accent that sounded more eastern bloc than Deutsche.
“Hi,” I said, with a weak smile.
Magda looked inquiringly at Philippe.
“Oh, Jess is my niece,” he said. “You know, from England. One of Michel’s children.”
“Ah,” Magda said, grabbing me by the arms with her rough country-dweller hands. “At last, I get to meet one of your family. It would have been nice to meet your parents, Jess.”
“Last minute cancellation,” Philippe said. “Michel had to work, but Jess insisted on coming out. You love farms, don’t you, Jess?”
“Oh, yeah, I love mucking in,” I lied, drawing in the air. “Cow poo, chicken poo, all the poos. Love it.”
Magda noticed my scar, peeping out over the neckline of my top.
“Oh, I had an operation,” I said. “Dodgy ticker.”
“Ticker?” Magda asked, looking at Philippe.
“She means her heart,” he said, mentioning nothing of his own humdinger, hidden beneath his sweatshirt.
“You poor thing,” Magda said to me. “Look at you. There’s nothing of you. I bet you’re starving. Let’s get you inside. I’ll make you a nice hot meal.”
Sounded awesome. So long as it didn’t involve soggy cabbages. We helped Magda unload the groceries in brown paper bags, all fresh, all organic, all bought from a small village she told me was just a mile down the road. We bundled our way inside with the bags and she fired up the range cooker in the kitchen, while Philippe rinsed off the Golf.
It all felt incredibly safe and cosy, I thought. Too cosy. What was the catch?
14
Raining Bullets
We brought Mobutu out into the courtyard in his kimono, hands tied behind his back and a rifle to his head. An air raid siren horn was already blaring and Mobutu was hurling abuse at us in Congolese. Clarence rolled open the gate and we ran him through the perimeter. Suddenly, I stopped, yanking the general back by the elbow.
Clarence turned and threw out his arms. “What?”
I looked back towards the whorehouse. “I’m going to let the women go.”
“Negative,” Inge said.
“No time,” Clarence said. “We’re leaving.”
“It doesn’t matter what you do,” said Mobutu. “The soldiers in the compound are just my personal guard. The rest of my men
will be here any moment. And tomorrow, I’ll be wearing your skin for shoes.”
I punched Mobutu in the gut, shocking the words right out of him. I ran my rifle sight to the right. In the distance, a small military convoy kicked up a trail of dust. Heading our way.
“I’m tracking four vehicles,” said Inge.
“Better release the dogs,” I said.
I handed Mobutu to Clarence. “You go, I’ll catch up.”
I jogged back towards the whorehouse.
“Alpha’s gone off mission,” Clarence said.
“Got you covered Bravo,” Inge said. “Stay in the long grass to avoid intercept. Mobilising the dogs.”
Dogs? Dogs? You can’t send in dogs. It’s cruel. They’ll get shot and eaten. Come to think of it, what bloody dogs?
The door to the whorehouse was locked. I thumped it twice with my fist and stood to the side, pulling a knife from a strap around my ankle. A cluster of bullets ripped holes in the door. I stomped a boot on the wooden floorboards. The door burst open and a shirtless young soldier came out, his rifle aimed at the space in front of the door, as if he was expecting a dead body. I stuck my knife in the side of his neck. He dropped the rifle without a peep. I levered him around like a human shield. As another soldier took aim from the centre of the room, I fired a round, hitting him in the shoulder. Then the head. I pushed the first soldier off the blade of my knife and threw it into the stomach of the remaining visitor to the whorehouse. The guy dropped to his knees. I walked over, pulled the knife out and cut his throat. Shit, I mean, Philippe was merciless.
“Any more guards left?” I asked a woman on the bed next to me.
She shook her head, terrified. I hauled her up off the bed. “Come on. Everyone. We’re leaving.”
The women were hesitant. Like they wanted to be there. Then it dawned on them this was for real.
“Mobutu’s dead,” I said, leading the way. “And his guards. You’re free,” I said. “Go!”
It was a young girl who bolted first. Once she went, the whole house beat a path to the door. Some helping others too weak to run on their own. I led them out of the compound and sent them into the jungle. They caught on fast, heading down the hill low and quiet through the head-high grass. The cavalry had arrived. Jeeps zooming up the hill with an armoured car sporting an almighty big machine gun on the back, manned by a red beret.
“Target all wrapped up for shipping,” Inge said. “Time to go Alpha.”
I slapped a new cartridge in my rifle and flicked a switch. I could have ducked into the jungle with the women, but I didn’t. I guess I was the distraction. I opened fire. Semi-automatic bursts. One squeeze of the trigger. Multiple shots. I got the driver of the first jeep. He steered straight into a tree trunk as they came up the hill road. I pulled a lemon-sized grenade from my belt and tossed it down the hill. It bounced underneath the jeep. I turned away as the thing went up with a colossal bang, lighting up the night, a wave of heat against my back. The three remaining Mobutu-mobiles swerved around the red beret barbecue and opened fire. I sprinted in S patterns back through the gates into the compound. I made it to the foot of the watchtower where I’d left my zip cord dangling. As Mobutu’s troops pulled in to the compound, I clipped the zip cord winder back on to my belt and pushed a button on top. I flew like Superman up the wire. It was like one of those theme park rides I wasn’t allowed to go on. Where people sit at the bottom of a giant column before being blasted skyward. Even if Philippe’s belly didn’t go missing on the way up, mine certainly did. I hit the top, swinging myself over the edge of the watchtower, pursued by a chaser of bullets, sparking off the rim of the steel tub.
“We’re leaving,” Inge yelled in my ear, her glacier cool melting for the first time.
“What about my dogs?” I asked, peering out over the hill.
“Your dogs? I think you’ll find they’re my dogs,” Inge said.
They were still on about these dogs. What fricking dogs? Where?
I peered down the hill and saw the women running to safety, into the open arms of their families in the housing estate over the road. Suddenly, the watchtower rattled like a huge hand had reached out of the clouds and shook it. The gun on the back of that armoured car was firing right at it, tearing it to pieces. I hid behind the tree trunk that rose up through the base of the tower, a flurry of splinters around my ears. Worse still, the storm had arrived, right over the compound.
I pushed my night-vision goggles up on to my forehead. “Any time now would be good,” I said into the radio.
“Nine o’clock,” Inge said. I looked left. Here they were, whatever they were. Four-legged shapes coming up the hill road. They weren’t like any dogs I’d ever seen. More like robot drones. Squat-bodied. No heads. Just mechanical joints and weapons strapped to their backs.
Hang on, I’d seen similar on Giles’ conspiracy site. Another thing he was right about.
The watchtower jerked dangerously as the military gun cha-choomed away. I peered through the wire flooring. The dogs had arrived. The leader let off a blast of gunfire of its own without breaking stride, cutting a couple of soldiers in two. The other drone dog flanked the soldiers from the opposite side and cranked off a machine-gun round, mashing the windscreen of a jeep and pulverising the soldiers behind it.
I leaned over the edge of the watchtower as the dogs drew the fire away from me. The lead dog dispatched a small rocket from its side, white smoke streaming out of the back. It blew the remaining jeep up into the air and down again. Full metal toast.
That left three soldiers and an armoured car. I took aim and relieved two of the soldiers of their lives. It felt like a real cheap shot from way on high. And I tried to console myself with the idea they’d probably done a lot worse to the people in the surrounding villages and towns.
The dogs meanwhile, were taking on the armoured car. This time, the lead dog drew the fire, scampering around the car in a semi-circle that spun the gunner round with the canon. He made the fatal mistake of turning away from the second dog, which jumped up on to the back of the car and rattled him full of bullets point blank. The dog hopped off and backed away in the mud. The lead dog fired off another missile. It hit with a face-melting blast, engulfing the armoured car in flames. The dogs stood shoulder to shoulder and waited. I was about to zip back down to ground level, when the entire steel lookout post shook itself loose off the central pole. It hung halfway off, with me clinging on inside. That ruled out the zip wire. But there were still the rusty rungs. I squeezed through the gap in the wire floor and on to the first rung. The watchtower creaked and groaned. I went as fast as I could down the rungs.
Right on cue, the clouds decided they’d held on long enough and opened up. Thunder slammed hard and a fork of lightning struck the steel lookout post with me two-thirds of the way down, rain hammering on my head and face, meaning descending at speed became slippery work. One of my feet missed its mark and I dangled ten feet from the ground. I regained my footing, but the watchtower tore off its fixings and plummeted towards me. I jumped the last eight feet and rolled out of the way without a second to spare. The steel contraption fell to pieces on impact. The rain sheeted down, Niagara style. Visibility next to zero. As the thunder clapped and the vehicles burned, it was like the end of days. The dogs had already moved out of the rain, under the cover of the roof edge that sloped a good metre off the house, water spattering off.
“Looks like we’re done here,” I said.
“Good, but we’re three mikes out,” Inge said.
“Four,” said Clarence.
“You can’t leave the dogs behind,” said Inge.
“Copy that Ringleader. Leave it to me.”
I looked around. The jeeps were out of commission. The armoured car, a flaming wreck. And the other military vehicles from earlier that day, long gone. That left the Hummer. I tried the handle of the driver side door. It was unlocked. Not like anyone was gonna steal from GenMob.
Even the keys were inside, left on
the central console. Awe-fucking-some. I fired it up. The engine roared into life. So did a head-shitting gangsta rap track. I popped the boot, climbed out and whistled for the dogs. They came a-running, sliding to a stop in the fresh puddle mud. I wasn’t sure how they’d fit, but then one hopped in the boot and squatted down low. The other jumped on top. Up-close and personal, I could see the dogs had a set of three different cameras bunched together instead of a head, their weapons retracted back inside army green pods bolted to their sides. Their feet were not so much feet, but small circular hooves. I whomped the boot shut and slid into the passenger seat, dripping rainwater all over the plush interior. I jumped on the accelerator, dirty wet rubber soles squeaking on the pedals. I reversed around the flaming wrecks, all the way back into the courtyard. I wound down the window and hurled a grenade into the main house, then sped off through the perimeter fence and down the hill. I heard the grenade explode, saw the house on fire in the rear view. The rest of the compound sure to follow.
The road was a mud-slide all the way down the hill, but the Hummer handled everything mother nature could throw at it. I slid the Mobutu’s pride and joy sideways on to the main road, knocked off the gangsta rap and floored it through an ankle-deep river of blood-red rain.
15
Chicken Stew
The light faded fast in the country. The chill grabbed hold of you quicker too. But inside Philippe’s “safe house”, as he called it, the air was warm and rich with fresh baked bread and chicken gravy.
A new fire crackled in the stone hearth in the living area, while the three of us sat close together at the dining table, halfway through a meal.
“Here, more stew,” Magda said, ladling another helping of chicken, dumpling and veg gravy on to my plate before I could refuse. She sawed a couple of thick wedges off a tiger loaf baked for a giant and pushed them over on a side plate. “More bread,” she said.
The stew was nom. The bread double-nom. But I was already towing. Still, there was no arguing with the woman.
