Ghost Watch

by David Rollins

  ‘US Forces don’t slip into costume when they’re out on patrol, goddamn it,’ he said.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Cooper, shit like this makes us look like cowboys – on top of the fact you lost the principal and Specialist Rogerson. Al-Eqbal might have been a jackass, but he was an elected jackass. Democracy’s fragile here. Losing him to the Taliban chalks up major points on their scoreboard. To the local populace we look weak as camel spit.’

  I could have added that al-Eqbal was an elected crook who got even more crooked when he believed he was beyond reach, largely because US Forces rode shotgun on his wagon. But the flames were doing fine by themselves; I didn’t need to throw gasoline on them.

  Mertins stood and walked to a vase of wildflowers on top of a cupboard. He topped up the vase with water from an old bottle. I wondered if he knew that the flowers were plastic. Maybe being kept down that stairwell in the evidence dungeon all those years had rewired his reality.

  ‘I’ve read your report,’ he said, taking his seat again. ‘I spoke with the people on your team. Fortunately for you, they supported your story. Meyers said the principal was jumping out of the moving vehicle.’

  ‘That’s how it was, sir.’

  I was going to mention those M16s, but decided to let it pass. I’d brought it up with intelligence, but the anonymous weapons didn’t seem to arouse anyone’s curiosity. Perhaps it would’ve been a different story if I’d managed to bring a couple home. There were plenty of US-made weapons AWOL in the ’Stan – apparently, too many to worry about the ones I’d turned up. Personally, I’d have been less interested in the guns if their numbers had been intact, but their removal suggested that they were significant. Otherwise, why go to all the trouble of grinding them off?

  ‘What happened out there was a total fuck up. You know it, I know it, but I suppose giving you a decoration diverts attention from that fact as far as the folks higher up the food chain are concerned. Command must be down on its hero quota this month.’

  Mertins leaned forward, lifted the newspaper for another look, and shook his head in disappointment. ‘Well, at least a silver lining arrived this morning.’

  ‘Sir?’ I said, a little confused.

  ‘A lite colonel from OSI HQ is here to see you. Seems you’re leaving us, Cooper, thank God. He’s waiting for you in the briefing room. Dismissed.’

  LIEUTENANT COLONEL ARLEN WAYNE reclined along a row of chairs with a Time splayed across his face. He was snoring. I picked up the magazine. Inside was an old Playboy, camouflaged to avoid the ban on porn. Arlen’s mouth was open, and Miss July had a wet patch on one of her jugs. He stretched his arms above his head and pointed his toes.

  With his eyes still closed, he said, ‘I hate damn C-17 red-eye flights. The loadmasters on those fuckers have no concept of service.’

  ‘Hey, Arlen,’ I said. ‘S’up?’

  He opened his eyes. ‘In a word, me. I’ve spent the past week at thirty thousand feet, flying between Washington, Stuttgart, and LA. And now Bagram. I’m a wreck.’

  He sat up, swung his legs off the chairs, and said, ‘How about you, Vin? Been pissing anyone off lately?’ He stood and we shook hands.

  ‘It’s what I do best.’

  ‘At least it’s the enemy for a change, according to what I’ve read. I wonder who leaked the AFC to the press? I can’t find anyone who’ll confirm it – but it sounds like you deserve it. So,’ he said, examining my eyes, his gaze shifting from one to the other, ‘you doing okay?’

  I knew Arlen. He was referring to how I was doing without Anna. ‘I’m fine,’ I said.

  ‘As in fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional?’

  ‘As in I’m fine until some bozo reminds me about it all over again.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, giving my shoulder a squeeze. ‘I’ll take off my clown nose.’ He turned away and stood at a desk with his old leather briefcase. ‘So why am I here?’ he said with a flourish.

  ‘Good question. You’re an oh-five. You could have dispatched underlings.’

  Arlen was several years older than me and a couple of inches shorter. He was a good agent in a stickler-for-protocol kind of way. So they made him a lieutenant colonel, and these days he was virtually running OSI HQ while our fearless leader was either sucking or blowing some overlord, depending on what was required. And yet, standing here, I noticed for the first time that the desk job seemed to be taking its pound of flesh. Those brown eyes of his weren’t as bright as they used to be, his dark hair lightening to gray at the temples, a small Japanese car tire-sized roll around his waist. The price of command.

  He took a laptop from his briefcase, opened it, and tapped on a few keys. A copy of the New York Times materialized, which at least hinted at a context for his visit. ‘So anyway, along with me, the rest of the world has been reading about your exploits,’ he said. ‘Your buddy Sergeant Fallon has made you famous. Do you know about his blog?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said, as a picture of Fallon in his army combat uniform slam-dunking a basket appeared on screen. The blog was titled Fallon’s Folly – What the hell am I doing here?

  ‘Apparently he’s been blogging since he arrived in Afghanistan.’ Arlen’s fingertips rattled across the keyboard as he spoke. ‘It’s become a hit with some folks at the Pentagon who see it as a way of gauging the morale of our boots on the ground. Turns out some newshound named Rentworthy at the New York Times got wind of the blog’s popularity with the brass, checked it out, and became a daily viewer.’

  Up came Sergeant Fallon’s iPhone shot of me looking like something that had crawled out of the ground in a Hollywood horror movie.

  ‘The press saw your photo on the blog, read Fallon’s account, and made a few calls confirming the event. This photo has since been around the world several times. You’re right in the middle of your fifteen minutes, buddy. And that’s kinda why I’m here.’

  ‘You want my autograph?’

  ‘Funny.’ He opened another window on the browser, dropped his ‘favorites’ folder down and stabbed a key. ‘No, strange as it may seem, this is not all about you. Park your trailer for a moment while I bring up Part B – the website for a rap artist by the name of Twenny Fo. You know this guy?’

  ‘Not personally,’ I said. Twenny Fo was up there with Snoop Dogg and Fiddy. I didn’t like the guy’s music, but it was impossible to escape his publicity machine.

  ‘Well, you’re gonna,’ said Arlen. ‘He read the article in the paper and wants you on his PSO team.’

  ‘What PSO team?’

  ‘The one escorting him to Africa.’

  ‘Africa?’

  ‘Yeah, You know, lions, zebras, hyenas.’

  ‘And he asked for me?’

  ‘The guy thinks you have mojo.’

  I gave a snort. Twenny Fo lived his life in the gossip columns and, from what I recalled, it was a train wreck – a former gang member who promoted his tough guy roots by being pro-automatic weapons, pro-drugs, pro-misogyny and anti-everything that wasn’t antisocial. ‘Wasn’t he the guy who got arrested at an after-party for donging his girlfriend with a Grammy?’

  ‘You remember that, huh?’ said Arlen.

  ‘I never forget a great moment in assholery. Why’s he going to Africa? And why are we offering to chew his bullets?’

  ‘We’ve got a training base in Rwanda, at a place called Cyangugu – Camp Come Together.’

  ‘Camp Come Together. A worthy goal,’ I said. ‘I usually get there too early.’

  ‘Vin, the Pentagon wants to put on a show for our people there. Twenny Fo released a single called “Fighter”, a tribute to US Forces. It went to number one and a recruitment surge followed.’

  ‘So getting a bunch of tone-deaf morons to shoulder M16s wipes the slate clean.’

  ‘The job is to entertain our training forces – who, as it happens, are all African-American.’

  ‘Are you telling me that we’ve got a training outfit based on something other than aptit
ude? And that Twenny Fo got the gig because he passed the color test?’

  Arlen shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘I said, “As it happens” – pure coincidence. And Twenny Fo’s girlfriend is coming along, too.’

  ‘You mean, his bitch.’

  Arlen looked pained.

  ‘Hey, you let the anti-PC cat out of the bag, pal.’

  The look didn’t waver.

  ‘So who’s the lucky girl this week?’ I continued.

  ‘Leila.’

  ‘The Leila?’

  ‘The one and only.’

  Leila was the star of the moment. You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing her, the radio without hearing her, or go to a newsstand without her pouting back at you from half a dozen magazine covers. I gathered she was originally from Cuba and of mixed parentage – a black Cuban father and Argentine mother. Or maybe it was the other way round. She was the color of honey and very tall and, unless it was all done with retouching, had eyes that burned like fire opals under lights. I’d read somewhere that Twenny Fo and Leila had met in the singles bar for celebrities – rehab. I caught a few of her music videos from time to time, and they seemed to focus on the fact that her ass was double-jointed.

  I wanted to ask what she was doing with a deadhead like Twenny Fo, aside from the usual reason: that he had money. He also had a cabinet full of awards and one of them was bloodstained. Instead I asked, ‘So what’s the mission? And who’s heading it up?

  ‘The officer in charge will be a lieutenant colonel by the name of Blair Travis, from Africa Command out of Stuttgart, Germany. His background is Air Force public relations. He’s on the AFRICOM Major Command team. His role will purely be liaison – shake hands, smooth the way, remove the red M&Ms. Security issues will be deferred to you. Those issues will, of course, take priority over all others. As for the mission profile, it’s perfectly straightforward. You’ll meet everyone in Kigali, brief them on the security arrangements at the airport and—’

  ‘And what are the security arrangements?’ I asked, interrupting him.

  ‘I was getting to those. By security arrangements, I mean the way you like to do things. There’ll be helicopter transport at Kigali provided by the UN. It’ll take you to Cyangugu, which is on the Rwandan side of the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. Everything’s arranged. The entertainers will entertain, and then you’ll fly back home the following morning. Easy.’

  ‘Long way to go for a single concert.’

  Arlen shrugged. ‘Ours is not to reason why . . .’

  ‘Cyana-what-what? Never heard of it,’ I said.

  ‘Cyangugu. It’s an AFRICOM base. One of those nice Kornfak & Greene communities we love so much.’

  K&G was a preferred DoD contractor. They didn’t ask questions and charged extra for it. K&G mostly built stuff where a lot of killing took place, or very soon would. Mercenary ops with deniability were another specialty.

  ‘Who are we training there?’ I asked.

  ‘Remnants of the CNDP, otherwise known as the National Congress for the Defense of the People.’

  ‘With a name like that, I bet the only thing they defend is their own interests.’

  ‘They’re our allies.’

  ‘I rest my case.’

  ‘A lot of the fighters in the CNDP are renegades from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s armed forces – the DRC is Rwanda’s neighbor. We’re doing what we can to stop the violence and reintegrate members of the CNDP back into the Congo’s army.’

  ‘Who’s on the team?’ I asked. ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘Special Agent Ryder and—’

  ‘Lieutenant Duke Ryder?’

  ‘Captain. Just pinned on his bars.’

  ‘Captain Ryder, eh? Nice to see you’re putting our best people on this.’

  I knew Ryder and what I knew about him was that Mr and Mrs Glutt, his parents, named him Duane Junior, and that on his twenty-first birthday he went down to city hall and changed his name to Duke Ryder ‘ ’cause it sounded like a po-leece show’. His words. Next stop was a desk at the USAF recruitment center. I had nothing against Ryder personally but the word on the street wasn’t exactly glowing.

  Arlen sighed wearily. ‘Don’t give me any grief. Duke went to college with Leila’s makeup artist.’

  ‘And here I was thinking the guy was just ballast.’

  ‘You’re being difficult,’ Arlen yawned, reaching for another look at Miss July.

  ‘You’re making difficult easy.’

  ‘I promise you this’ll be a milk run.’

  I gave an internal shrug. I could think of worse things to do, and most of them were in Afghanistan, which I seemed to be leaving behind for a while at least.

  ‘Two experienced US Army PSOs from SOCOM will be joining you. They’ll be on the aircraft with the principals.’ Arlen leaned forward and flicked through some paperwork. ‘Their names are Cy Cassidy, a sergeant major, and Sergeant First Class Michael West. You’re also getting a Brit Special Air Service sergeant by the name of Lex Rutherford who has been working with SOCOM. Those names ring any bells?’

  I shook my head. I didn’t know them personally though I’d had some prior contact with the British Special Air Service and I’d worked with SOCOM – Special Operations Command – serving in Kosovo and Afghanistan with their people. Both were tough, well-trained outfits. I wondered how they’d feel about taking orders from an ‘Air Force puke’.

  Arlen must have seen something of this in my face. ‘Don’t worry, Duke will keep ’em in line.’

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ I said drily. ‘Who else is in the party besides the principals?’

  ‘Well, Leila apparently doesn’t travel without her makeup artist.’

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘She’s also bringing her stylist and fitness trainer. Twenny Fo has his three “bloods” – his words. Apparently they can handle themselves.’

  ‘Let’s hope in private.’

  ‘Both stars want to bring their personal assistants, and Twenny Fo has hired a film crew to capture the event for his fans. There are also four dancers and half a dozen sound and light technicians, who stage the show.’

  ‘Who’s bringing the kitchen sink?’

  ‘Yeah. We’ve asked both stars to keep it to the bare essentials. The principal doesn’t know it yet, but the movie has bitten the dust; the people at AFRICOM don’t want cameras rolling down there. And, as we speak, the PAs are having their visas denied by the Rwandan government. We’ve also had them cut back on the number of dancers and technicians.’

  ‘That’s still a lot of folks to protect for four PSOs and one Duke Ryder.’

  ‘More resources will be made available to you at Cyangugu.’

  ‘What’s the security situation like in Rwanda? Weren’t they all killing each other not so long ago?’

  ‘That was back in the mid-nineties, when the Hutu majority decided the world would be a better place without the Tutsis, their traditional enemy. The Tutsis convinced the Hutus otherwise and today Rwanda is in reasonable shape. There are echoes of this conflict across the border in the DRC – the Congo’s the problem child these days. Too much wealth there for its own good.’

  I yawned.

  ‘I’m not feeling the love, Vin. You’ve got to admit this beats the crap out of getting shot up by the Taliban.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll admit it, but it sounds thrown together.’

  ‘The concerts have been in development for a while. The call to have you lead the PSO team is the only thrown-together detail. You can thank your snap-happy pal Fallon for that.’

  ‘So I’m meeting everyone in Kigali,’ I said, going with the flow.

  ‘Kigali airport.’

  ‘And when does this happen?’

  ‘You’re taking the C-17 I came in on. Go get your toothbrush. It’s leaving in about . . .’ Arlen checked his wristwatch and gave himself a surprise. ‘Shit! You need to hurry – forty-five minutes from now. A car is waiting for you outside.�
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  ‘That’s mighty considerate of you, Arlen. But I’m still not solid on what I’m supposed to be doing.’

  ‘Just make sure no one gets killed. Lieutenant Colonel Travis will do the rest. Like I said – milk run.’

  Kigali

  Thirty-two hours later – after transiting through Incirlik, Turkey, and overnighting at Ramstein, Germany – another C-17 deposited me at Kigali airport. Packed into the long sausage-shaped bag at my feet were the bare essentials: body armor and Ka-bar knife, a metal case containing an M4 carbine and a Sig Sauer side-arm, a couple of changes of combat uniform, clean underwear, socks, disposable razor, and toothbrush.

  The airport consisted of a single runway, a couple of crumbling taxiways, and one terminal that looked like some kind of traditional African grass hut built in concrete and steel. I stood on the square of paved ramp, sweat blooming on my scalp from the high temperature and choking humidity, my airman battle uniform sticking to all the wrong places. The clouds suspended above the airfield were spectacular – a thousand puffy white sails set on top of each other against a royal blue sky. Looked like rain and plenty of it.

  I went into the terminal and found an old lady holding the insects at bay with a flyswatter. She stamped my passport, glanced at my papers and the firearms authorizations on my orders. Then I wandered around the deserted building, looking for a soda, but there were no vending machines and the one shop was closed. I had no local currency anyway. The arrivals board was equally busy here in Sleepy Hollow, so I went back outside.

  Of Kigali itself, there wasn’t much to see, at least from where I was standing. Low hills flanked the airfield, and the closest one behind the terminal was dotted with small, nondescript shanty-style homes, nothing over two storys and only a few of those. On the opposite side of the apron I could see a faded old Soviet Mi-24 Hind gunship that was missing two of its five main rotor blades. Thinking about it, the presence of the relic was the only indication that this was an airport.