Ghost Watch

by David Rollins

  ‘Too fast! Stop!’ Francis yelled.

  I slammed on the anchors, pushing the pedal almost to the firewall, and the vehicle skidded and slid sideways, coming to a stop, palm leaves crowding in through the hole in the door by my shoulder. I finched as the vehicle Duke was driving bashed through the plant life beside us, several tons of Chinese steel hurtling past, its wheels locked up solid. It came to a stop a couple of meters in front on our right-side fender, festooned with broken fronds and branches.

  I breathed deep. Jesus, that was too close.

  Francis opened his door and jumped down.

  Cutting the motor, I opened the door. This wasn’t forest. The palms were adolescent and uniformly planted in lines. Francis appeared around the front of the truck, machete in hand.

  ‘What is this place?’ I asked him, climbing out of the cabin.

  ‘Plantation.’

  ‘Where’s the owner?’

  ‘Dead since many years, I think.’

  ‘Our tracks will be seen leaving the road,’ I said.

  ‘The rain will hide them.’

  I hoped he was right. Rutherford and Ryder joined us.

  ‘Sorry about that, sir,’ said Ryder.

  ‘Yeah, we lost you in the bush, skipper,’ Rutherford added. ‘And then that big-ass truck of yours was stopped right in front of us. Gave me a bloody heart attack, that did.’

  ‘I show you why it is good that you stop,’ said Francis, walking away.

  He cut a path through the dense but lightweight foliage, which suddenly gave way to a deep gorge and a fast-running watercourse at the bottom of it.

  Rutherford peered over the edge. ‘Shite!’

  Reload

  We double-timed it on foot through the old plantation and into the forest, heading for the lower ground of the valley and the irrigation channel, back to the scene of our earlier dirty work. Along the way, I caught glimpses of the road through the greenery. Two trucks coming from the direction of the mine drove past, and one came from the village. There didn’t seem to be much urgency.

  ‘Boss . . .’ West waved to us, crouched behind a shrub a dozen meters up the hill.

  I gave him a thumbs up and he led the way through a warren of bamboo stands to a hardwood tree high on the hill shrouded in liana. Leila, Ayesha and Boink appeared from around the tree and came to meet us.

  Ayesha went straight to Ryder and embraced him.

  ‘Any trouble?’ Boink asked.

  I shook my head. ‘No. How about you?’

  ‘We’re good, yo.’

  ‘Sir!’

  It was Cassidy.

  ‘Over here.’ He held up his hand.

  ‘Duke, Mike – take the watch,’ I told them. The last thing we needed now was to be taken by surprise.

  Cassidy was sitting on one of the larger trunk-sized containers. Rutherford produced the keys and handed them to me.

  ‘It’s like opening Christmas presents,’ he said as I crouched in front of the other especially large case.

  ‘Let’s hope it’s not socks,’ I said.

  I pulled up the padlock and examined it quickly. There were no numbers or markings on it that corresponded with any of the keys, so I just tried them one by one. The catch sprang open with key number three. I flipped back the lid and took a peek. Hmm . . . disappointing. No socks, but plenty of old forest-green uniforms and backpacks. I moved to one of the other cases and jiggled the keys in the lock.

  ‘Now you’re talking,’ said Rutherford when I pulled the lock and lifted the lid.

  Lying inside, barrel to stock between sheets of brown, grease paper, were M16A2s. The case smelled of clean oil and plastic, the way a new car smells under its hood. Rutherford and I pulled out a rifle each and checked them over.

  The numbers were filed off the receiver. Rutherford showed me his; same deal. So White, the American, the guy whose presence I couldn’t place here, was arms dealing and who knew what else. The numbers missing on these weapons meant that they were either stolen or purchased illegally. White was confident around things that killed people, and that suggested he’d seen combat. But with what service and which conflict? And of course there was Lockhart, formerly US Special Forces and now Kornfak & Greene in these parts, making him a local big wig. He was using that position and infuence to line his own pockets in all kinds of ways. Facilitating the arms dealing and playing both sides of the field were only two of them. I couldn’t immediately pull up all the statutes he was breaking from the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but they started with kidnap and extortion and moved on to slavery and murder. This guy was a peach.

  And where did Fu Manchu and the Chinese-made weapons fit into the picture?

  ‘Let’s get to the other cases,’ said Cassidy. ‘The suspense is killing me.’

  I set the rifle down, took hold of a handle on the end of the container while Rutherford took the other, and hoisted it off the stack. The first key I tried worked. I flipped back the lid.

  ‘Nice,’ said Cassidy over my shoulder. ‘I can have some fun with those.’

  Claymores. I picked out one of the devices. Unlike the mines we’d captured, these ones were equipped with clackers, electronic firing devices connected to the mine via a wire that allowed it to be fired remotely when the target was within range, rather than having to wait for a line to be tripped – although these could be rigged to fire that way, too. Handy. There were maybe thirty Claymores in the box. Rutherford and I set it beside the one containing the M16s.

  Fumbling with the keys, I opened the fourth case.

  ‘Now we’re cookin’ with gas,’ Rutherford said, his eyes lighting up. Inside the container were two M2A1 ammo cans containing sixteen hundred and eighty rounds of ball ammo for the M16s, plus magazines. According to the stencils on the wooden crates packed within, there were also smoke grenades and M67 HE frag hand grenades, as used by the US Army. ‘We’ve got enough ammo here to start a war.’

  ‘And hopefully finish it,’ I added.

  Cassidy nodded. ‘Amen.’

  There was another container with the same dimensions. Opening it revealed more ammo, smoke and frag grenades, just in case we were in danger of running low.

  We moved to the remaining cases, the ones Cassidy had been sitting on. I repeated the juggling act with the keys until the lock sprang open.

  ‘Oh shite,’ said Rutherford when I lifted the lid.

  Oh shite, all right. Packed into the top of the case were six ammo cans, each holding six 60mm M49A4 HE rounds. I lifted one up. Below was the base plate for an M224, which gave a massive clue to what was in the last unopened container.

  Sure enough, when I managed to find the right key, the box contained the tube and sight assembly as well as the bipod. We had us a brand-new, fully operational M224! This was the same light mortar system we’d seen Colonel Makenga’s forces using to chew up Lissouba’s men. Ol’ Colonel Cravat had obviously put in his order, and Charles White and Lockhart had obliged so that the two Africans could go for each other’s throats on a more even footing. Both men were currently in the FARDC’s HQ. I wondered how they were getting along. I also wondered how Colonel Biruta was enjoying being in the company of Makenga. Maybe the gold being pulled out of the ground smoothed over any past differences; at least until they could all get back to their people. Perhaps none of these men had any intention of going back at all and were taking their gold and heading for retirement in the south of France.

  ‘Man, we can get real fuckin’ loud with this stuff,’ said Cassidy gleefully.

  ‘On me,’ I signalled. Ryder and West both acknowledged and trotted up the hill.

  ‘Christ,’ said West, his eyes lighting up when he saw what we’d acquired.

  ‘If we get isolated and things go from bad to beam-me-up-Scottie,’ I said, ‘this is where the trucks are stowed.’ Using my Ka-bar, I drew a map in the leaf litter pinpointing the location of the vehicles in the abandoned plantation. ‘According to Francis, the road between the encampment an
d the mine ends at a place called Mukatano, twenty klicks away. That’s where you go.’

  Rutherford clapped his hands and rubbed them together like he was about to tuck into a Thanksgiving turkey. ‘So then, how’re we going to use our little windfall, lads?’

  I PLANTED AN EIGHTH Claymore in line with the others – back a meter from the edge of the road and well inside the foliage, which, along this section of the forest, had begun to grow up through the exposed mud. It was clear that the road here had been used very little, if at all, once the loggers left the area and so the plant life had been marshaling forces to reclaim it, inching forward with each new shoot. I looked up at the long straight incline that disappeared over a crest, the tunnel of overhanging leaves and fronds that lined the road here smeared with the orange mud thrown up in the trucks’ wakes as they motored back and forth along it. Fifty meters downhill in the other direction, the road curved away out of sight on its way to the village.

  I heard a truck approaching from the blind, village end of the road, engine revving in a low gear. It was going slower than the others that had passed regularly through the day, which suggested it had a different purpose to the trucks rumbling back and forth between the encampment, village and mine. I retreated into the forest, got down on my belly and waited for it to pass. That took some time. It eventually drove by, doing around five miles per hour, creeping along, armed men hanging out the back and a couple of others riding the running boards. They were all peering into the forest, probably hunting for a missing truck or two; one of which was full to the brim with expensive items purchased to kill people and vital to the FARDC if it were to continue its important work here on that score.

  I pulled up the M4, just in case I was spotted, aware that there was a full mag in the slot and five others in my webbing along with four frag grenades. And, of course, in my hand was a clacker for the Claymore just set, with seven more within reach if I needed them. I could easily take care of this truck and the men it carried, but if it came to that and I was forced to go hard-core, things would get chaotic thereafter. A firefight right here and right now was not part of the plan, and the plan – what was left of it – called for stealth until we were ready to show our hand, which wouldn’t be for several hours yet. But the truck roared by like I wasn’t there and continued noisily up the incline. I crept forward to the road’s edge and watched it rumble out of sight over the crest two hundred meters further up the hill.

  Bushing the ants off my clothing as I stood, I wondered what theories about the disappearance of the two trucks were doing the rounds in the camp. Seemed that they’d quickly come to the conclusion something had gone wrong. The road to the mine was steep in several sections, with plenty of opportunities for a Dong to misjudge a hairpin corner and go crashing to the bottom of a ravine. The typical Hollywood depiction of an accident like that would have the truck bursting into flame, pinpointing its whereabouts. That was fction. The Dong sucked diesel, which didn’t catch fire easily, and the explosives on board were designed to withstand severe battle shocks without blowing up. So it was possible that an accident could happen, and the terrain made it possible that the location, cause and nature of the accident could remain a mystery. And maybe there was another theory doing the rounds – that the trucks had been taken by the spirits that cut people’s throats.

  ‘You done, sir?’ Ryder asked, walking into sight,

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, hands on hips, surveying my handiwork. I could only make out two of the devices and that was only because I knew exactly where to look. ‘Let’s head back.’

  Threading through the plantation, a familiar sound in the sky caused Ryder and me to stop and crouch. A helicopter, and it was getting closer. It wasn’t the ancient Soviet Mi-8, which made a sound like an old washing machine with rusted bearings trying to grind out a spin cycle. This was the executive chopper, the aircraft from Swedish American Gold. I could almost hear the rocks clinking into glasses holding a couple of fingers of something aged. The bird turned and hummed away out of sight, which wasn’t such bad news. Our hiding place was vulnerable from the air and if we could see the helo, the pilot could eyeball our trucks.

  The departure of the Sikorsky did raise the question of who was on board: White and that Swedish slime-ball, Sven? Did they leave Mak-enga and Biruta behind, or were they also passengers? What about Lockhart? Had he also departed the scene of the crime, along with that fuck LeDuc? The Sikorsky was a large chopper. It could take all those cocksuckers and still have room to include a rap singer and his buddy on the manifest. And if that were the case and our principals were no longer in-country, then the escapades we had planned for the evening were about as useful as a chain of bikini wax clinics in the state of Utah.

  ‘Shit,’ I muttered.

  ‘What?’ asked Ryder.

  ‘Ever been to Salt Lake City?’

  Using the backpacks, Leila, Ayesha, Boink, Francis, Ryder and I had returned to the trucks with most of the Claymores, the spare uniforms and a large helping of ammo and grenades. There was almost eighty pounds of M16 ammo alone. Strung between us, we’d also brought five of the seven Kevlar containers, most of which fitted one inside the other like a Russian babushka doll. We’d kept the QCWs, but left almost all of the Nazarians behind on the hill, minus their bolts, swapping the Chinese rifles for the new US-made M16s and burying the ordnance we couldn’t take. The loads we’d carried had been heavy, but featherweight compared to the one that Cassidy, West and Rutherford had had to lug between them back up onto the ridge overlooking the FARDC encampment.

  I gave a soft whistle before approaching the trucks to avoid being shot at, not that I thought there was a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d get hit, given who was on guard duty.

  ‘Halt, who goes there?’ hissed Leila.

  ‘Duck Dodgers,’ I replied, ‘and his faithful sidekick, Porky Pig.’

  ‘Thanks a bunch,’ said Ryder.

  ‘Is that you, Cooper?’ she called out.

  I could see Leila before she could see me, because she wasn’t looking in my direction.

  ‘Over here,’ I said, shaking a branch to give her fair warning. She jumped, nervous as a chihuahua. Francis and Boink stopped what they were doing, our return being a good excuse to take a break. They’d been using the utility trenching tools hooked onto the Dong’s chassis to fill the spare uniforms with mud, turning them into sandbags. The ammo cans, which were sitting up on the back of the truck’s load trays, had also been filled with mud.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I asked them as Ryder and I walked into view.

  ‘We’re done,’ said Boink. ‘Got me some motherfucker blisters, yo.’

  He showed me his hands, the skin rubbed off the inside of his thumbs and his palms weeping blood.

  Francis leaned on his shovel and smiled briefly. It wasn’t raining yet but both men’s clothes were soaked. The air steamed with the imminent afternoon downpour, the clouds in the sky piling up on top of each other like armfuls of cotton balls.

  ‘Good,’ I said, slapping the large can they’d been filling. The hollow-ness was gone, replaced by a gratifying bullet-stopping heaviness.

  ‘We’re calling it the Alamo, yo,’ said Boink, nodding with satisfaction.

  ‘We lost at the Alamo,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Whatever. We might just pull this shit off.’

  We had a few surprises up our sleeves but we were still just five PSOs and a few civilians against a vastly superior force of combat-hardened killers. I wasn’t prepared to high-five anyone. The Alamo . . .

  ‘How we doing with those magazines?’ I asked. ‘Where’s Ayesha?’

  She heard me and leaned out the back of the second truck. ‘Nearly done, five more to go. And I’ve got blisters, too,’ and she held up a fore-finger to show me whereabouts.

  I climbed up to inspect her handiwork. There were fifty mags contained in the metal case, each holding thirty rounds. That meant a total of fifteen hundred bullets to be individually loaded int
o the spring-tensioned housings. It was tedious, repetitive work. Added to this store were another thirty magazines collected from our various interactions with the local population during our time on the ground, plus the mags we came in with. That gave a total of two thousand four hundred rounds that Ayesha had pushed into the magazines. The mags – eighty of them, if my calculations were accurate – were neatly stacked in five piles of sixteen, one stack each for Cassidy, Rutherford, West, Ryder and myself. The number seemed like overkill, but things were going to get ragged with the FARDC and we’d probably need every one of those mags and more.

  ‘How many rounds we got in reserve?’ I asked her.

  ‘Twelve to fifteen hundred,’ she replied.

  Not much left to fight off a counterattack.

  ‘I need to eat something,’ said Leila, interrupting my thoughts. ‘And I don’t care what it is.’

  The innuendo was too easy to hit out of the park so I left it alone. I swung the pack off my back. ‘There are Mopane trees over there and the worms on it look mouthwatering.’

  She chewed the inside of her bottom lip at me, a hand on her hip.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ I said in mock surrender, and pulled bananas out of my pack. ‘If you’re still hungry, Duke will show you where there are more.’

  Francis said, ‘There are fish in the water also. I can show you how to catch them.’

  ‘I’ll come back with my rod next time,’ I told him.

  I ate a couple of bananas for a quick energy burst. Before moving ahead with the next phase of the plan, we had to consolidate our position. A far-off peel of thunder sounded like a heavy load dropped down a distant elevator shaft and a fat droplet of water landed on my forehead. I checked my watch, though I don’t know why I bothered. The rain was right on time: three-fifteen.

  ‘Let’s get these containers into position,’ I said to Boink and then called Ryder over to lend a hand.

  The three of us wrestled them into place inside the Dong so that they formed a box, stacked the uniforms filled with mud around and on top of them and then, with rope and liana, lashed it all to the floor.