Ghost Watch

by David Rollins

  West sounded so convinced he almost convinced me. ‘So, feeling better now you’ve eaten the thing that ate you?’ I asked her.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Y’know, revenge is a dish best eaten grilled.’ I gestured at the steak on the leaf beside her.

  She threw her head back either to get the sun on her face or to strike a pose, I wasn’t sure which, but I took a good long look anyway. Her red lace underwear was flashionably cut and expensive. Not too brief, but brief enough. There was a diamond in her belly button, and a couple of bars of music with notes and lyrics tattooed down her left side. ‘Give it to me.’ That was the song’s title. I knew that one. It was her breakout hit. Her breasts pushed into the cups with a perfection that suggested a surgeon’s handiwork. A pair of knee-high leather boots completed the package.

  Ayesha arrived with a pile of clothes, all of which were wet. Leila gestured that she should just lay them on the rock beside her. Then, to me, she said, ‘We gonna be here long? Have I got time to dry these?’

  ‘They’ll dry quicker if you put them on,’ I said, barely able to believe what I was hearing myself say. I was sure no one else could believe it either. I could almost hear the booing from Rutherford and company.

  She pushed her arms in the shirtsleeves. ‘I . . . I owe you an apology, don’t I? I’ve been a bitch from the get go, haven’t I?’

  ‘Nooo . . .’

  ‘Yes, I have. I know I have. Look, I want to thank you for what you did back there in the camp, when those men came for us. They were going to . . . you know.’

  She examined her hands. They were badly cut all over from the elephant grass. One of them shook a little.

  ‘All part of the service,’ I said, repeating what I ’d told Boink, not knowing what else to say. ‘Ask Ryder to put something on those cuts.’

  She flicked her hair to one side. ‘I’ve been looking back on everything that’s happened since we came down here and I know that if it wasn’t for you, I’d be dead. Or worse.’

  I felt a blush coming on.

  ‘I also want to thank you for not taking me up on my . . . my offer the other night, when you brought Ayesha back.’ She rolled up the shirtsleeves. ‘On top of everything else, you’re also a gentleman.’

  She might have taken the compliment back if she knew that I could recall at will the picture of her on her knees in front of me, pulling down the zipper on her jacket, the thrust of her breasts visible. As memories went, it was a good one, worth fling away for later retrieval, along with the one of her all wet and leaning back on this rock in her lace bra and panties and boots, stretched out like a poster on a teenager’s bedroom wall.

  ‘I wasn’t always like this,’ she continued.

  I wondered what kind of ‘this’ she was referring to.

  ‘Life has become a little unreal for me over the last few years. People want a piece of me so bad they’ll do anything for me to get it. When you realize that you can manipulate people easily – that they want to be manipulated by you – it changes you. It changed me.’ She adjusted one of her bra straps. ‘I just wanted to say sorry for the way I been. I’m putting my faith in you, Cooper, to get us all out of here alive. I know you can do it.’

  The dependent, trusting female. Was I getting softened up for something? She leaned forward and I felt the warmth of her lips on my cheek. Then she bent down to take her boots off so that she could put on her pants and, inside her open shirt, she threw a few glimpses of dark nipple my way. Lo and behold they were large, hard and erect. And before I knew it, there was a rush of blood to my own personal snake in the grass.

  ‘You’re not going to ask me about Twenny Fo, Peanut and Fournier?’ I asked, fighting back Little Coop’s desire to dive in headfirst.

  She stood and put a hand on my shoulder to steady herself as she slipped a foot into the leg of her jeans.

  ‘I was talking to Duke. He said you lost someone close. That right?’

  Hmm . . . Duke and I really were gonna have to share a few words.

  ‘When he told me, I felt I understood you.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘You were lost long before we came down here in this place. That’s true, isn’t it?’

  And, just like that, the mood evaporated. I wanted to move, but I was trapped – hemmed in on one side by the forest, by the ravine on the other, and by her honey-colored, semi-undressed, lingeried-up body blocking the remaining escape road.

  ‘I’ll pay you one million dollars to lead us out of here right now,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ I asked her. I shouldn’t have been surprised. And at least we were back to more familiar ground, the one I’d already charted with her: the land of the selfish and self-obsessed star.

  ‘One million dollars,’ she repeated.

  I put my pinky against the corner of my lips. ‘That much?’

  ‘Then give me a figure. Those men back there, they were going to rape Ayesha and me.’

  The way she said it suggested that Ayesha hadn’t brought her employer in on her experiences at the FARDC HQ. ‘And what about your former boyfriend and his buddy? Is that all they’re worth to you? A measly million bucks?’

  She smiled. ‘I said give me a figure. I’m open to negotiation.’

  I just looked at her.

  A note of uncertainly crept in when I didn’t jump at the offer. ‘I’ve thought about this. We don’t know what’s happened to Deryck and Peanut, do we? They could be dead.’

  ‘They could be alive.’

  The note went up an octave and a hand went to the hip.

  ‘You’re going to put us all at risk, aren’t you?’

  Well, well, back to the Leila I knew. The only risk she was concerned about was the one to herself. I folded my arms.

  ‘You were right, Cooper. I can see that now. Like you said, we’re all gonna die if we stay here,’ she continued.

  I said nothing. She tried a different angle.

  ‘You’ve lost someone because you made bad decisions. Don’t make the same mistakes again and get us all killed. This place is . . .’ She looked around, hunting for the right word but couldn’t find it. She clenched her fists in frustration and made a sound through gritted teeth.

  ‘Get ready to leave,’ I said. In fact, I wanted to leave her behind, staked out on the forest floor for the ants. I pictured doing exactly that, and it helped.

  ‘What’s there to smile about?’ she asked.

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘And my offer?’

  The woman was a case. I turned my back on her, giving her my answer, and went to the ravine. I bent down, took off my gloves, and splashed water on my face. I could have used a long hot shower with a scrubbing brush. Standing up, I caught first Ryder’s eye and then Cas sidy’s. I signaled ‘on me’, and walked over to West, who was doing what he could to eradicate the signs of our presence. I put the conversation with Leila out of my mind, and decided not to say anything for the moment about the chat I’d had with LeDuc about Fournier. While I had a set of circumstances and a theory that seemed to fit, I had no hard evidence. Among our group there was a belief that bad luck had brought us all to our present circumstances. It would be counterproductive to exchange the fckle finger of fate for suspicion and the mistrust that would come with it.

  I made a beeline for Rutherford, who was parked on a boulder, sharpening one of our acquired machetes with a river stone.

  ‘So what are we doing?’ Cassidy asked as he approached with Ryder. ‘Cyangugu’s that way,’ he said with a nod up the hill, ‘and Goma’s in the opposite direction.’

  ‘And unfinished business lies somewhere in between,’ West said.

  ‘Damn straight,’ said Cassidy.

  ‘We’ve picked up a few more guns since we last put this on the table, but otherwise not a lot has changed,’ I said. ‘ To even out the odds, we’d need something that makes plenty of noise and causes a lot of fright.’

  ‘The mortar operated by the rebels
was a US infantry M224 lightweight company mortar system,’ said West. ‘And they were firing M49A4 high-explosive rounds – a good all-round anti-personnel, anti-material shell. You meaning something like that?’

  ‘That’d do it,’ I said, ‘but I think we’ve stirred the rebels up a little too much to get anywhere near their armory.’

  ‘Interesting bit of kit to have,’ Rutherford commented. ‘Wonder where they got it?’

  I’d wondered as much myself, and filed it away with the questions I had about those M16s with their ground-off numbers.

  ‘If you’re a buyer, you’ll find a seller,’ observed Rutherford.

  ‘FARDC had RPGs – not a bad alternative,’ said Ryder.

  They were, and it was a nice to see the guy paying attention to something other than Ayesha.

  ‘We penetrated their flanks once,’ said West. ‘Who’s to say we couldn’t do it again?’

  ‘Around a hundred and eighty guys with guns,’ I said. ‘We were lucky. And there’s still the problem of getting everyone out once we go loud. That’s where something that made big holes in the ground would come in handy.’

  Rutherford absently popped the mag in his M4 and checked it. ‘Sounds like one of your half plans is in the wind.’

  ‘Let’s move it,’ Cassidy suggested. ‘Our intel gets staler with every passing minute.’

  Frankly, after two days it was growing mushrooms, but it seemed like we were emotionally committed at least to reconnoitering the FARDC positions to see whether there was anything left to rescue. For all we knew, by now it might all chopped up into handy-to-dispose-of lengths.

  Retreat

  We followed the ravine, successive foods having washed away some of the undergrowth along its flank, making it easier going than cutting a path through the forest, which was mostly impenetrable. The space between the trees was occupied by a malicious variety of elephant grass battling with entanglements of vegetation hung with brightly colored banded snakes that screamed ‘hazardous’. Occasionally, the forest swallowed the ravine and we had no choice but to hack our way through the tangles of liana and elephant grass. Overhead, birds screeched at each other like inmates in an asylum and animals darted away, unseen, through the compacted undergrowth nearby. None of these were going to be fuffy white rabbits, so I was fine with the darting-away thing.

  And, just as I was thinking that, a nearby wall of bush trembled with something very big that departed in a hurry. We all froze.

  ‘LeDuc, didn’t you say we’d be lucky to see any wildlife?’ I asked him quietly.

  ‘Oui,’ he whispered, looking around. ‘Perhaps this valley is too remote for the bush meat hunters.’

  ‘What other predators live here besides lions?’

  ‘Every one you can think of, and many you cannot.’

  There were no stragglers in our line after that. We stayed close and watched each other’s backs, and brushed away the spiders and insects that dropped or alighted on us, before stingers, jaws or fangs could get to work.

  Up ahead, Ayesha screamed and broke into a kind of dance, jumping around, her hands whipping through her hair, jerking forward and backward. Leila began slapping at her, like they do at NASCAR races when someone in the pits gets engulfed in those invisible methanol flames. Rutherford called this ‘the spider dance’. We’d all done it; all of us except Cassidy, that is, who moved like a leopard through his surroundings – flowing from one space to another, disturbing nothing. Ryder caught up with Leila and Ayesha, to lend a hand. The guy was sure putting in some heavy spadework.

  I watched Boink’s meaty shoulders roll from side to side as he walked. The guy had lost a dozen pounds at least. A week in this place and he’d need a new wardrobe. I was about to point this out to him when something wet landed on my shoulder. The stuff reeked. More of it smacked against the side of my head and, suddenly, the trees above us came alive with yelling, shrieking and chattering, and black shapes charged out of the bushes at us, running and scampering down our line, feinting in and out, teeth bared.

  ‘Hey! Aggro little hairy guys,’ said Rutherford, amused, shouldering his weapon.

  ‘Ne tirez pas! Don’t shoot, don’t shoot. Les chimpanzés, chimpanzés.’ LeDuc rushed forward and pulled down on the gun’s barrel.

  ‘Who’s going to shoot?’ Rutherford protested, offended.

  I watched as one of the chimps crapped into his buddy’s hands and then threw it at Rutherford. The Brit ducked. I was too slow and the stuff slapped into my face.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said as I wiped away the warm, stinking mass.

  ‘Do not look at them in the eyes,’ LeDuc warned. ‘They will think you are challenging them.’

  ‘Poo at twenty paces?’ I asked.

  ‘Keep moving!’ Cassidy called out and we lifted the pace to clear the area.

  We stuck to the ravine for the best part of two hours, taking advantage of the clean water and the sunlight and the relatively easy going. Eventually the forest closed in overhead again. We were back to slashing into the bush for every yard of forward movement, dodging reptiles and arachnids, and the elephant grass with its razor’s edge, all of which seemed intent on attacking exposed skin. But with every step bringing us nearer to the territory occupied by FARDC, taking to the cover of the forest was going to be a healthier option than being out in the open and easy targets for snipers, pickets and patrols.

  A cluster of moss and liana-covered rocks pushed up through the leaf litter and away from the ants that seemed to cover every square inch of the forest floor no matter where we were; red fuckers with jaws like interlocking fish hooks that latched on and wouldn’t let go.

  ‘Can we rest for a while?’ I heard Leila ask Ryder.

  Cassidy heard it too and called a halt. Both women collapsed against a boulder. Boink leaned against the face of the rock, sucking in oxygen, his sweaty face lined with exertion.

  ‘How much further, yo?’ he puffed.

  Further till what? If he meant Cyangugu, he was looking at days. If he meant till we made contact with his buddies, Twenny and Peanut, his guess was as good as mine. So I told him what I thought he might want to hear. ‘Not far now, big guy.’

  ‘Good, ’cause I wanna shoot some motherfucker dead,’ he muttered.

  ‘Map,’ I said to Cassidy.

  The sergeant extracted it from his webbing and flattened it against the rock.

  ‘We’re somewhere around here,’ he said, using his Ka-bar as a pointer.

  The ridges and the lake at the bottom of the cliff tallied. It looked about right. We’d come further than I’d though.

  West passed around some barbecued snake and everyone took the opportunity to rehydrate.

  ‘What now?’ Ryder asked, wiping snake grease off his mouth with his shoulder.

  ‘You and I are gonna scout forward,’ I said.

  ‘Oh . . . all right,’ he said with no enthusiasm for the idea.

  ‘And you might like to muddy yourself up a little,’ I suggested. Apart from a light growth on his cheeks, he looked like he was ready for Sunday school, his face and arms all scrubbed nice and pink. His 97 was propped against a rock beside LeDuc. I picked it up and handed it to him. ‘Get a couple of spare mags, a machete, and make sure of your water supply.’

  ‘What, now?’ he asked.

  ‘Got something else to do?’

  No response.

  ‘Leila, Ayesha,’ I called up. They’d climbed the rocks and their heads appeared over the top ledge. ‘Where’s Boink . . .?’

  ‘Yo,’ said Twenny’s buddy, walking around from behind the wall, cupping some water from a bottle and splashing it on the back of his neck.

  I made a general announcement. ‘Duke and I are going on ahead. We need to know how far the FARDC lines extend.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Boink.

  ‘So that we don’t just walk into them,’ said Cassidy.

  ‘Can I ask a question?’ said Leila.

  Asking for anything was a pleasant change
where she was concerned.

  ‘What’s on your mind?’

  ‘I can’t hear any shooting. How do you know we’re close to the enemy?’

  ‘This hill we’re on plateaus not far from here, ma’am,’ said Cassidy. ‘According to the map, the valley the FARDC occupied is down the other side, and around a mile and a half to the east. We’ve got a lot of rock between us and any gunshots. But you’re right, we should be able to hear something. Maybe when we get onto the ridge.’

  ‘And what if something happens to you?’ Leila asked me.

  I figured that she included Ryder in that.

  ‘We’ll be back.’

  ‘But what if, yo?’ Boink said.

  ‘You’ll head due east to Lake Kivu.’

  Neither he nor Ayesha seemed overly happy about this, but for different reasons. I was starting to think that maybe Leila looked on me as some kind of lucky charm – her own personal rabbit’s foot. And Boink wasn’t going anywhere without his boss, whether I was dead or alive. The big man cocked his head on an angle, a crevasse between his eyebrows – not happy.

  To avoid a raft of unnecessary questions, I didn’t tell them that I intended to go back to the FARDC encampment to check on whether Twenny Fo and Peanut were still alive. ‘If we don’t make it back,’ I said, ‘the best hope Twenny, Peanut and Fournier have got rests on you getting word back to Colonel Firestone as quickly as possible.’

  The silence was thick. No one liked the idea that more of us might get left behind. I had expected an argument from Leila because one seemed to follow every decision, but everyone knew the score – even her, for once.

  ‘Be careful, Vince,’ Leila said.

  Her concern for my health took me by surprise. Her getting my name wrong didn’t. I checked over the M4 and wriggled the additional mags jammed into my webbing to make sure that they were secure.

  ‘Take this,’ said Rutherford, putting the telescopic sight from the sniper rifle into my pack. ‘Might come in handy.’

  ‘You’d better have this, too,’ said Cassidy, handing me the map.

  ‘No, keep it. I know where I’m going. If we don’t make it back, you’ll need it.’