Ghost Watch

by David Rollins

  Peanut, disengaged from proceedings, gazed in wonder at the dismantled Soviet aircraft.

  Firestone stuck to his game plan. ‘I’d also like you to meet Beau Lockhart. Beau’s from Kornfak & Greene, the contractor that built this camp. He’s ex-Army Special Forces, so he knew from personal experience what we needed, didn’t you, Beau?’

  Lockhart nodded and stepped forward into the space between the rapper and Colonel Firestone, and more handshaking ensued. He wore a diamond stud in his left ear and his nearly shoulder-length hair had been coiffed into glistening black ringlets. The guy was swimming in a pool of cologne. He didn’t seem the Special Forces type to me, retired or otherwise.

  ‘Can’t wait to hear the concert,’ he said.

  ‘Pleasure to entertain y’all,’ Twenny Fo replied.

  Pulling Travis aside, I said, ‘I need to speak with someone about security.’

  ‘Yes of course,’ he said. ‘They gave me his name already – Holt. I’ll see if I can track him down.’

  Just then, the people from the second French helicopter ran into the hangar, with a squad of enlisted soldiers holding ponchos over their heads. Biruta, Firestone, and the other officials seemed to forget about Twenny Fo completely and craned their necks to get a better view of the new arrivals.

  ‘Colonel,’ said Travis, smiling broadly, ‘come and meet America’s hottest female performer.’

  ‘Love to,’ the colonel replied, licking his lips.

  ‘Look at us,’ Leila said to Ayesha and Shaquand, as she brushed a few drops of water off her thigh with the flat of her hand. ‘I mean, just look at us!’

  She didn’t need to say it twice because that’s what every male in the hangar was doing. Biruta was acting as though he’d just been given a shot of morphine; he was staring at probably the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen in his life. Drooling was a real possibility.

  Ayesha held up a small mirror so that Leila could examine her makeup disaster zone.

  ‘Leila,’ said Travis, approaching her, ‘how was your flight?’

  ‘Appalling. The plane leaked.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ Realizing that it wasn’t a particularly good idea to continue down this path, Travis changed the subject. ‘The commander of the camp would like to meet you.’

  ‘Can’t it wait? Is there a dressing room I can use?’

  ‘I’m sure there is, but you look amazing. A couple of quick introductions, and then you can start rehearsing.’

  The star sighed heavily, then turned away from Travis and said, ‘Shaq, honey, see if you can’t find me a bottle of Evian?’

  Shaquand scoped the hangar, I guessed for a vending machine. I didn’t like her chances.

  Colonel Firestone was standing to one side, waiting patiently beside Biruta, Ntahobali, Lockhart, and their assistants.

  When Leila turned back, it was as if a new personality had invaded her being. A warm smile suffused her features, and she radiated light.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, holding out her hand, which Firestone eagerly took. ‘I can’t tell you how excited I am to have been given the honor to come here and do my patriotic duty.’

  I had to smile. Leila played the room like a hit single.

  Firestone more or less repeated the introductions I’d already heard, although with considerably more flawning.

  Travis extracted himself from the center of the male vortex swirling around her and brought me one of Firestone’s junior officers.

  ‘This is Alex,’ said the colonel. ‘Holt’ was stamped on his nametag. He was US Army and black, with the build of a quarterback and sharp, intelligent eyes.

  ‘Name’s Vin,’ I said, completing the introductions. ‘Tell me about the natives. Any chance that a suicide bomber might run into the accommodations and rearrange the furniture with C4?’

  He read my name, saw the OSI unit badges, and something clicked. ‘Oh, now I know who you are. You’re that Vin Cooper. Kabul, right? The whole skull thing. What you did was pretty awesome.’

  I didn’t know where to look.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’re among friends here – on both sides of the wire. And I’ve put a ten-man security detail at your disposal. Oversee them personally if you like, but if I were you, I’d relax and enjoy some down time.’

  ‘Can I please have everyone’s attention?’ said Travis, raising his voice over the crowd. ‘I need to see the stage managers, get you people orientated. Colonel Firestone has given us the mess hall, a place for you to rehearse. Leila, Twenny Fo – whenever you’re ready, I’ll take you over there.’

  ‘So what’s she really like?’ Holt asked, his eyes feasting on the celebrity.

  ‘Interesting.’

  Holt continued staring at her for another moment and then snapped out of it. ‘I’ll get the team to rendezvous with you over at the mess,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks.’ I scanned the area, checking on everyone’s whereabouts. All except one present and accounted for.

  ‘You see Peanut anywhere?’ I asked Rutherford.

  He gestured over his shoulder. The guy was covered in grease and kerosene, holding up parts of the Mi-8 as if he’d struck gold.

  THE CAMP HAD ALREADY set up its own sound system in the mess hall – a big prefab box built to feed two thousand men at a time, with movable seating and a cafeteria at one end – and now Twenny Fo’s recorded backing tracks were rattling the windows. The room was huge and plain, beige tiles on the floor and the walls unadorned but for awards extolling the military’s equivalent of employee-of-the-month – photos of smiling personnel who’d served the most meals or washed the most pots.

  Major Holt’s security detail arrived as Leila and Twenny Fo were rehearsing, ten armed men to guard the only two doors in and out. That was a lot of security. Nevertheless, one of us still had to chaperone the principals – rules.

  Cassidy, Rutherford, West, and Ryder stood just outside the mess. Over on the other side of the open quadrangle, we could see some US Army engineers putting the finishing touches on a stage constructed from scaffolding.

  ‘Duke, I nominate you to babysit our principals,’ I said. ‘You okay with that?’ I was doing him a favor. The guy hadn’t been able to take his eyes off Ayesha.

  ‘Sure can do,’ he said. ‘Where’re you fellas gonna be at?’

  ‘Taking in the sights.’

  ‘Okay – later,’ he said, almost skipping back inside.

  Cassidy, West, Rutherford and I went off to nose around. None of us was even aware that the US had a military base down here, and we wanted to see what mischief the Pentagon was up to.

  ‘So which ones are the advisors?’ West motioned toward half a dozen soldiers cutting across our path. Beyond them, three platoon-sized squares of men were out double-timing it between truck convoys crawling down a muddy access road.

  ‘Have you noticed that, aside from Firestone, all of our people here are black?’ observed Cassidy.

  ‘Hiding in plain sight,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know which ones are the Americans?’ asked Rutherford, the Brit.

  ‘Look for the roll,’ West said.

  ‘What roll?’ inquired Cassidy. Then he stopped, annoyed. ‘Do I have a roll, motherfucker?’

  ‘Yeah, you do,’ Rutherford insisted. ‘You know, the stylish, fluid movement that suggests a certain level of cool. The slight push off your left foot, followed by the telltale thrust of your right shoulder. I’m an Anglo. If I tried to do something like that, I’d look like I was having some kind of spasm.’

  A couple of guys strolled past with rhythm in their step.

  West nodded at them. ‘The roll. For damn sure, made in the USA.’

  Cassidy grunted. ‘How many advisors are we supposed to have here, anyway?’

  ‘I was told a thousand,’ I said.

  The base was big enough to house maybe five thousand men, though I couldn’t say for sure how many of them were actually on post. The place felt like a busy frontier fort gearing up fo
r a mid-level conflict just over the horizon.

  A truck stopped at one of the large pre-fab boxes with two forklifts parked outside suggesting that it might be Supply. The Kornfak & Greene guy, Beau Lockhart, hopped out of the truck’s passenger side and stood at the open door, discussing something with the driver.

  ‘Why don’t we ask The Man?’ I suggested, and then called out in Lockhart’s direction, ‘Hey, nice place you have here!’

  Lockhart turned. He was preoccupied with the driver; it took him a moment to place us. ‘Why thank you,’ he said. ‘And that’s a nice piece of ass you’ve brought with you.’ He leered at us. ‘She could Leila with me anytime, you know what I’m sayin’?’

  Lame joke. Maybe this guy was a colonel when he was in Special Forces.

  ‘The boys and I were just wondering what goes on here,’ I said, throwing out a line.

  ‘You mean, what we’re doing down here, ol’ Uncle Supply and Demand?’ he asked.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘The usual,’ he said. ‘We train our side to go out and teach the other side where and how to smarten up so that they can kill our side right back.’

  ‘And who is our side killing, generally speaking?’

  ‘Generally speaking, the enemy,’ he said with an easy smile.

  ‘And who’s that?’

  ‘Nosy for a PSO, aren’t you?’

  ‘This is just my day job,’ I said.

  His eyes flittered over the words ‘Special Agent’ above my nametag.

  ‘You’re a cop. So you’ll understand me when I say – move along, nothing to see here.’

  And that often means there’s something you really should see and it’s mostly dead, but I didn’t press it.

  Lockhart’s smile went someplace else. ‘Well, looking forward to tonight’s concert. If you’ll excuse me . . .’

  Cassidy stood aside. Lockhart squeezed past him and trotted toward the supply building.

  ‘Make friends easily, skipper?’ Rutherford asked as we watched the man’s back.

  Lockhart opened a door and disappeared behind it. My natural curiosity was getting the better of me, probably because Arlen had provided next-to-no detail on this place. But asking questions wasn’t my gig here, as Lockhart had pointed out.

  A couple of Americans rolled past, wearing jeans and t-shirts and smoking cigars.

  ‘They don’t look like regular military,’ said West.

  ‘Contractors,’ said Cassidy.

  ‘Kornfak & Greene turf,’ I reminded them. ‘They’re mercenaries.’

  ‘Speaking of turf, they should rip all of it the fuck up.’ Rutherford pulled his Ka-bar, leaned on West, and prized away the orange mud accumulated on the soles of his boots. ‘This shite is like wet concrete.’

  ‘Smacks of deniability,’ said West, looking around. ‘If things go wrong – it weren’t us, no sir.’

  Possibly, but there were enough people at the command level here parading around in US Army battle uniforms – Firestone, Holt, and the rest – to make plausible deniability difficult to pull off. The truth, whatever it was, would still escape. Truth had a habit of doing that.

  We walked for another twenty minutes and saw nothing that we hadn’t seen at countless other camps and bases. It began raining again; not hard, just a steady, sapping drizzle. We made our way over to the stage, which had been built adjacent to the camp’s HQ, a two-story structure with a couple of flagpoles out front: a blue, yellow, and green-striped flag – I guessed the national flag of Rwanda – hanging limp on one of them, the Stars and Stripes on the other. A luxury Mercedes 4×4 followed by a Toyota Kluger pulled up outside the HQ. Fancy vehicles for a place like this, I thought. Two men got out of the Mercedes, one white, one black. Five large black men with nervous eyes exited the Toyota and formed a loose diamond around the two from the Mercedes – PSOs. Then Lockhart came out of the HQ, armed with a couple of umbrellas. This guy got around. The Mercedes combo took refuge beneath them and they all made a dash for the building.

  ‘Vin, wait up,’ a voice called behind me. It was Ryder. He was out of breath, something urgent on it.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked him.

  ‘Twenny Fo wants a word.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘No idea,’ he said.

  ‘He still rehearsing?’ I asked.

  Ryder nodded.

  ‘I’ll catch up with you later,’ I said to Cassidy and the others.

  Ryder and I walked back to the mess. ‘How’s it going?’ I asked him.

  ‘Gonna be a great show,’ he said.

  ‘How’re the principals getting along?’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘As long as they’re not breathing the same air,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  So far, the only danger I could see on this detail was getting caught in the crossfire between those two.

  When I walked into the mess, Leila had the floor. She was singing a song I was familiar with about a guy with a big gun – I figured not of the Smith & Wesson variety. It was slow and sexual, as though the tune itself were riding on its own lubricant. A bunch of US Army folks, including Firestone, Holt, and his security team, were somehow managing to watch without panting.

  ‘Over here,’ said Ryder.

  I followed him to a far corner, where Twenny Fo, wearing white Nike sweatbands on his head and wrists, was trying on a US Army combat uniform, a tailor pinning it here and there in an attempt to wring what he could from the performer’s scrawny, free-range street physique.

  ‘Yo, Tee – that look the biz on you, man,’ Boink complimented him.

  ‘You be The Man’s secret jungle weapon,’ said Snatch, massaging his goatee and holding his tightly braided head at an angle. He saw me coming and said, ‘Heads up, Tee. Ghost Man in da house.’

  Fo looked across and acknowledged me with a lift of his chin, then walked away from the tailor as if the guy didn’t exist.

  ‘Wanna ask you sommin’, man,’ he said, his brow furrowed as if he were weighing the answer to an important question.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied.

  ‘You know my tunes?’

  ‘One or two.’

  ‘What about “Fighter”? Choo know that one, homes, right?’

  ‘I’m familiar with it, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Yo,’ he called to Boink. ‘You got it on you?’

  ‘Ai.’ The big man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a white rectangular piece of paper. He lumbered over to Fo, sweat rolling down his forehead, and handed it to the celebrity.

  ‘I want choo to picture this, you feel me?’ He put one hand in the air and then looked up at it as though a vista of the future were about to project from his fingertips. ‘This is what I thinkin’, man. At the end of the song, we gonna have a lot’a smoke, yo. It be pouring out, man, drifting across the stage while I do what I do. Then, we gonna turn on the back lights – big white searchlight motherfuckers. That’s when people gonna see the silhouette of a man standing on stage with his weapon in the crook of his arm like so,’ he said, striking the pose he was after, his arm the weapon. ‘This man be you. And then we’re gonna put a front light on you, you know, so everyone can see yo’ bad-ass motherfucker ghost face.’

  He flipped over the rectangle of white paper that Boink had given him. It was Fallon’s cell phone photo, the one taken of me in Kabul. Christ, Arlen was right, the goddamn thing was following me around the world.

  ‘We gonna make you up,’ Fo said, ‘just like this.’

  ‘I spoke with Ayesha,’ said Ryder, chipping in behind me. ‘She says she can do a great job: white powder on your face, a little black around your eyes, crimson lipstick for the lines of blood across your mouth. Easy.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said, without hesitation.

  ‘Choo not sure, right? Well, think on this,’ Twenny Fo said, gesturing at Snatch. ‘Yo, give the man three.’

  Snatch reached into his pants pocket, extracted a roll of cash, and began peeling
off notes, his fingers translating ‘three’ into three thousand dollars. He held the moist wad toward me.

  The photo brought back memories of the action in Kabul, one of them being of Specialist Rogerson with no face at all, sitting in the Landcruiser with her perfectly manicured nails still resting on the rim of the steering wheel.

  ‘No. And I’m sure,’ I said, handing the photo back to Boink.

  One of the security guys whistled softly. I glanced up and saw the reason why – Leila had just broken into a dance routine that I’d loosely describe as X-rated. I felt her eyes on me as I made for the exit.

  ‘Change your mind,’ Twenny Fo called after me, ‘the offer stands, yo . . .’

  CASSIDY, WEST, RUTHERFORD, RYDER, and I watched the performance from the wings. The audience was on its feet the whole time. I estimated the assemblage at close to two thousand. The numbers were less than I’d thought they would be. Maybe part of the brigade was somewhere else. Half a company of Firestone’s men was handling crowd control. Better them than us. Things were getting ragged out there. Leila had been on stage for over an hour, and her set was coming to a climax along with, I suspected, half the men, including me.

  The song was called ‘Peep Show’. Two of Leila’s dancers had lathered moisturizer all over her, and then all over each other, and now the three of them were moving in and out of each other’s legs and arms while Leila sang a rhythmic song, the beat pulsing, the lyrics on the verge of pornographic. A roar of testosterone rose from the men and rolled over the oiled-up performers. I saw Leila flip the bird at Twenny Fo waiting in the wings. She was stealing the show and letting him know it.

  I turned back to scope the audience. A commotion was going on in the front row. The overhead lighting flashed on a blade of steel. Suddenly, two men vaulted onto the stage and raced for Leila and the dancers. Holt’s security men were too thinly spread out to be effective. Rutherford and I moved at the same time. I went low, taking out their legs. The SAS sergeant went high, and all four of us slid on a slick of moisturizer. The two men were Rwandan, dressed in battle uniforms. Using a thumb lock, I immobilized the guy who I thought had the knife and dragged him offstage. I patted him down, but the knife was gone. Maybe he dropped it before he jumped on stage. Maybe he left it in one of his countrymen. I frog-marched him out the back and handed him over to a couple of Rwandan MPs with a quick report. Rutherford released his captive back into the wilds of the mosh pit, and I resumed my place in the wings. The crowd was going nuts as ‘Peep Show’ came to its conclusion, Leila lying exhausted and prostrate on the floor, her heavy, sated breathing booming through the sound system.