Ghost Watch

by David Rollins

  ‘My people. My wife . . .’ he said, his eyes rolling around in his head. ‘You must get them. You must help, you must . . .’

  From the tone of his voice I figured he thought I was going to welsh on my part of the deal – just another broken promise from a white guy with a First World passport.

  Ryder climbed into the truck, straight into Ayesha’s arms.

  Leila hugged Twenny, but then she pushed him away and smacked him hard across the face, and then pulled him close and kissed him equally hard on the lips before slapping him again.

  Showbiz people.

  Just for an instant I forgot where we were, but a couple of helpful supersonic cracks close enough to pull the air out of my eardrums reminded me that folks were shooting at us.

  Ryder dragged Francis further into the back of the truck, and the African cried out in pain as the agent propped him up against a stack of shot-up sandbag uniforms.

  ‘Boink, Duke,’ I called out. ‘Lock and load! Get everyone organized.’ I turned to West. ‘I’m riding up front.’ We jumped down and ran to the front cabin. ‘Drive!’ I yelled at Cassidy as I wrestled open the door.

  ‘Where to?’ he replied.

  ‘The fuck outta here!’

  Cassidy jammed the stick into gear, gave it a boot full of gas, and West and I were thrown back in the seat. The sergeant raced quickly through the gears, careless of what was going on behind us in the load area. People were going to be tossed around back there.

  ‘Take it easy,’ I told him. ‘We’ve got a casualty.’

  ‘Who?’ he yelled over the engine roar.

  ‘Francis. What took you so long?’

  ‘Those booby traps at the base of the hill?’ said Cassidy. ‘Had to detour and dismantle them. Couldn’t leave ’em lying around.’

  He was right. That village was too close. I didn’t want innocent people being turned into human kebabs on my conscience.

  ‘What did you do back there?’ Cassidy asked. ‘A lot of dead and wounded.’

  ‘Shock and awe,’ I said, preferring to skip the details. We’d left a lot of widows and weeping mothers in our wake. And none of it would have happened if Lockhart hadn’t made a deal with LeDuc to make some extra cash out of our principals. I was going to make that Kornfak & Greene asshole pay. To my surprise, the asshole himself suddenly appeared behind a group of men armed with rifles and machetes surging up out of the mine ahead of us. Cassidy had three choices to avoid hitting the human roadblock: swerve into trees, drive off the road and take a lethal drop into the mine pit of around a hundred feet, or hope the men waving their blades around got the hell out of the way. He chose option three, and two men who moved too slow wore the radiator grille before sliding off and disappearing under the front axle and briefly making the road extra bumpy.

  As we drove by, Lockhart and I stared at each other for what seemed an age. He was either smiling or snarling, I couldn’t tell which. I thought of all the misery he’d brought to this place with his double-dealing, weapons trading, slavery, murder, extortion and hair gel. A lot of people were dead because of this guy. I pulled up my M4 with the intention of shooting him dead right there, but before I could act on the impulse the DoD contractor was gone, slipping behind us as we sped along the road. The fuckhead would have to wait. I just hoped I’d get to him before karma beat me to it because, no doubt, there was a steaming pile of it headed his way.

  The road curved around to the left and then forked.

  ‘Go right,’ I yelled, pointing.

  Cassidy braked hard to make the two hundred and seventy degree turn, wound the steering to the stops and then let it unwind as the Dong swung around.

  ‘Why?’ he yelled.

  Because I had a deal with Francis. We’d been lucky so far. Could we push that luck just a little further? We’d have been dead in the water without him. Say I welshed on the deal . . . Could I do that and ever get dreamless sleep again? ‘We have to make a pickup – civilians,’ I added before he could ask me what kind.

  Occupying the front seat between Cassidy and West was the mortar tube.

  ‘Whose handiwork is this?’ I asked, tapping it.

  Cassidy turned to me with that gummy, milk-tooth grin of his, taking ownership.

  I wasn’t that familiar with the 224. It had a trigger mechanism, which was unusual on a mortar barrel. With mortars it was conventionally the weight of the round dropping onto the firing pin that ignited the propellant and sent the package on its way.

  ‘Works well,’ West shouted. ‘You just set the trigger, which pulls the firing pin back, fuse the round to detonate on impact, drop it down the barrel and squeeze the trigger . . . The round has a pretty flat trajectory over a hundred meters but then it drops away quite fast. Targeting’s a bit random and you probably won’t hit the bullseye, but with this baby you don’t have to.’

  ‘How many rounds you bring with you?’

  ‘Got two left,’ he said, patting the rucksack on the seat beside him.

  ‘Up ahead,’ said Cassidy, ending the chitchat. He gestured at a roughly cleared area on the side of a gently sloping hill that was dotted with a hundred or so blue UN tents. ‘That where we’re going?’

  Through the rain I could see maybe forty people in the camp gathered in a circle, preoccupied by what was going on in the center. Many of the folks gathered around were dancing and cheering – celebrating. It seemed an odd thing to be doing, given the circumstances we’d just come from. A number of people saw us approaching and word of our arrival spread quickly through the group. The dancers on the periphery stopped performing a jig, and ran away from the party like they’d been caught doing something they oughtn’t.

  ‘Do they think we’re FARDC?’ Cassidy wondered aloud.

  Maybe. We were in a FARDC truck – stood to reason.

  The crowd melted away but for several individuals at the core. It was hard to see through the rain exactly what was going on. A man kicked something on the ground and slipped over with the follow-through. His buddies, who’d seen us by now, hurriedly picked him up and half dragged him away as they all ran off like muggers caught mid-assault, checking behind them to see if we were giving chase.

  ‘Where to now?’ Cassidy yelled through the wind and the rain, and I gestured straight ahead. We came to a stop another thirty meters further on. I opened the door, climbed down onto the mud and jogged over to the area where the crowd had gathered. There was something on the ground and it wasn’t a soccer ball. In fact, there were quite a few objects and a lot of blood. It looked like a big patch of roadkill.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ West muttered, standing beside me and looking down at the human remains scattered around. The crowd had literally torn some guards – three, from the leg count – limb from limb. The pieces, except for an arm here and a leg there, were still wearing most of their uniforms. A white-hot anger had been vented on these men. The people here had endured first-hand the cruelty of the FARDC and this was a little payback. Looking down at the mess on the ground, I felt nothing for the victims and realized that probably wasn’t a good sign. And right about then, I realized how much the Congo was getting under my skin.

  I turned and scanned the blue tents. Some people here and there were staring at us. They knew we were different from their captors, but past experience informed them that we were more than likely not going to be any better than the devil they knew, which, understandably, made them wary.

  ‘We can’t take all these people with us,’ said Cassidy, walking over to me. ‘There’s well over a hundred.’

  ‘We made a promise to Francis. We’re taking the people from his village.’

  ‘And how many is that?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said. ‘Give me a moment.’

  I ran to the truck, where Rutherford was leaning way out the back to see what was going on, holding onto the tarpaulin framework for support.

  ‘How’s Francis?’ I said as I approached.

  ‘Hanging in there.’

&nb
sp; ‘And everyone else?’

  The Brit jumped down to meet me and, from the way he glanced back over his shoulder, he was doing so to put a little discreet space between himself and our principals.

  ‘You’re going to have problems with Leila down the track,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

  ‘She’s telling Twenny that we could have gotten him out a week ago, but that you wouldn’t agree to it.’

  I took my own advice and breathed deep. Then I jogged the few steps to the rear of the truck and pulled myself up into the back of the vehicle. I was immediately struck by the stink of human sweat and a funk I’ve always associated with fear. Peanut rushed toward me and again threw his arms around my waist. I gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder and sat him back down next to Twenny, who refused eye contact and stared at the floor, his dirt-ingrained face lined with tear tracks.

  ‘You see what you’ve done to him?’ Leila hissed, her eyes narrow and ferce, back to her old self. She was seated beside Twenny, perched on top of a couple of sandbags, one arm over his shoulder. She glared up at me like any moment she was going to spit venom at my face.

  I looked at Ryder, who was sitting with Ayesha, his head back against the tarpaulin, legs drawn up and an M16 between them. The guy was clearly exhausted.

  Boink stood in Twenny’s corner. No eye contact from him, either.

  I didn’t respond to Leila. The fact that Twenny Fo was alive and no longer chained to a boiler with a hood over his head was all the defense I needed. Some people reacted irrationally to the stress of combat and maybe that was Leila’s excuse. Or maybe conflict was the way she exercised control. Or maybe she was just a bitch.

  Twenny and I needed to talk, but it would have to wait. I was hoping he’d be my star witness in the trial that’d put Lockhart in Leavenworth for the rest of his life.

  Francis groaned. I thrust Leila and her bullshit out of my mind for the time being. The African’s eyes were shut and his head, soaked with rain and sweat, lolled from side to side. He was fighting a losing battle against the pain. I felt his forehead, his temperature soaring.

  ‘Where’s the morphine?’ I asked Rutherford.

  He shook his head. ‘Got none.’

  ‘Antibiotics?’

  ‘The kit’s empty,’ he said. ‘Blame LeDuc.’

  In other words, the deadbeat had ransacked it before he split. I checked Francis’s wound. It had stopped bleeding but the skin surrounding the length of wood embedded in the muscle was already livid with infection. We had to get this guy to a hospital. And if we hurried, maybe all he’d lose was his leg. I’d been hoping that we could move him to the open end of the truck, stand him up and have him call his people over. But that wasn’t going to happen. And I realized I didn’t even know the name of his damn village.

  ‘Francis,’ I asked him. ‘Your village – what’s it called?’

  He rolled his eyes around and sweated at me.

  ‘Francis, can you hear me? What’s the name of your village?’

  There was a moment of lucidity and he mumbled something. I took fistfuls of his shirt and lifted him a little off the truck floor to bring him closer. The guy screamed and the wound in his leg leaked some blood. Not smart, Cooper. I lowered him gently back onto the floor and he started babbling.

  Rutherford came in closer. After a few seconds he said, ‘I think he’s saying he lives in a place called Bayutu.’

  ‘Try and confirm it.’

  ‘Bayutu? Habitez-vous là?’ Rutherford asked him and Francis gave a good impression of a nod.

  ‘See if you can get his full name,’ I said, checking the view outside beyond the truck. I was getting edgy. Even taking their losses into account, there had to be more than a hundred FARDC troops in the area and most of them would be looking to even the score.

  ‘Francis, quel est ton nom de famille?’ said Rutherford.

  ‘Nbekee . . . Nbekee . . .’

  ‘Francis Nbekee?’ Rutherford asked.

  ‘Oui, oui, oui, oui . . .’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, standing up. We had something we could work with.

  ‘Where you going now?’ Leila demanded to know.

  I ignored her and as I jumped down I heard her say, ‘Come back here!’

  ‘We still clear?’ I called out to West, leaving Leila and her inner cow behind.

  He motioned toward the camp. More people had wandered to the edge of the settlement closest to the truck. Several men waved machetes at us in warning.

  ‘Call it out,’ I said to Rutherford, who jogged up beside me.

  He made a funnel with his hands, yelled the name of Francis’s village across to the gathering and asked in French if anyone else lived there.

  Nothing. No reaction.

  ‘Tell them we’re here with Francis Nbekee.’

  Rutherford called this out to the crowd.

  A woman suddenly began howling above the sound of the rain and the noise of the growing, restless gathering. It was a large woman in colorfully printed cotton clothes and she was bustling her way to the front of the crowd. She belted out something in French at us.

  ‘Oui,’ Rutherford replied. To me, he said, ‘I think that’s his old lady.’

  ‘Tell her that her husband’s wounded and he’s in the truck. Tell her we’re American and that we’ll take home everyone who lives in Bayutu.’

  ‘That’s getting beyond my command of French, but I’ll give it a go.’ He took a moment to work it out in his head and then called, ‘Il est blessé! Il est dans camion! Nous sommes Écossais! Chacun qui habite à Bayutu; nous vous guiderons chez-vous!’

  ‘Écossais. Did you just tell her we’re Scottish?’

  Rutherford grinned.

  The woman burst through the crowd and started running across the open ground toward us. Several of the men tried to stop her, but she palmed them off into the mud with the ease of a linebacker. The woman met us, blubbering a bunch of stuff that I had no chance of understanding, though the gist of it was probably that some days it just didn’t pay to get out of bed. We hustled the woman to the truck, while behind us, no doubt fearing a trick, several of the men with machetes waved them and advanced threateningly.

  ‘Boink,’ I called out into the truck. ‘Need some help here . . .’

  The big man came out of the gloom, took the African woman’s hands and hauled her up into the truck without too much effort. She saw her husband an instant later, shrieked, then ran to him crying and babbling, kneeling beside him and smothering his face with kisses. I waited for her to hit him around the head a couple of times but it never happened. Leila’s behavior was altering my reality.

  I heard a couple shots fired. Rutherford and I both went to investigate.

  ‘Company’s on the way,’ Cassidy called out, the stock of his M4 pressed against his cheek. I peered in the direction he was aiming, the general area of the mine, and saw a man in baggy green camos scuttling behind a mound of scrub-covered earth. I hurried back into the truck. Reinforcements would be on the scene in no time.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Leila wanted to know.

  I ignored her, which I was starting to enjoy doing.

  ‘Tell Francis’s wife to call her people over,’ I said to Rutherford.

  He passed this on to the woman and the brief conversation was punctuated by gunfire, which seemed to work as effectively as anything the Scot said. She motioned at Rutherford and me impatiently to help her get to her feet, which we did, and then brought her to the back of the truck. She started frantically waving at the Africans, most of whom were now hiding from the gunfire behind their plastic shelters, and called out to them in a shrill voice. The call was answered by cheering and waving, and around thirty people, mostly women and children, broke cover and began running for the truck, their meager possessions and crying infants under their arms. Jesus, we were going to get swamped. The horde ran through and around West and Cas-sidy, who were standing a little away from the truck, keepi
ng their eyes on the scrubby patch of forest that separated the camp from the mine.

  ‘Jesus, Cooper – that’s too damn many,’ Cassidy yelled at me.

  Who were we going to turn away?

  The truck rocked and swayed as the human wave engulfed it. People threw themselves inside and then helped others aboard.

  ‘Let’s go!’ I yelled at Cassidy and West, as I jumped into the rear of the truck. ‘Move it!’

  The two soldiers backed away from their positions, then lowered their rifles and ran for the front cabin.

  At least forty people were squashed into the back of the truck, compressed like a month of fruit in the bottom of a school kid’s bag. There was almost no room to breathe and so much chatter that I couldn’t even hear Leila complaining. I felt the Dong’s engine rumble into life through the soles of my feet and everyone screamed as we lurched forward in first gear, and screamed again – though not so loudly – when second gear was selected. We went round a gentle bend in the road and the truck leaned at a frightening angle, lifting the outside rear wheels.

  ‘Sit, sit, everyone sit,’ I yelled, miming with my arms and hands as I spoke.

  No one sat.

  ‘Rutherford. Get ’em all the fuck down on the floor before we tip over.’

  He shouted instructions and people began to sit. The lack of space meant that they mostly did so on top of each other. The truck went round another corner a little less precariously and the camp disappeared behind a screen of forest.

  ‘Where are we taking them?’ Rutherford asked. ‘We don’t know where this Bayutu place is.’

  ‘See if you can’t get some idea from Francis’s wife. And maybe get her name while you’re at it.’ I wondered whether Bayutu was the best place to go. There was always Mukatano. At least we knew where that was – at the end of the road.

  The forest appeared to close in tightly around the truck, cutting the road’s width in half. That figured. Beyond the mine, the road got almost no use at all. It was also getting bumpier, with deeper ruts, which pulled the truck left and right viciously as the tires tracked through them. I sensed Cassidy backing off the gas and felt the downshift, the conditions forcing him to take it slower. I scanned the human cargo crammed into this confined space. Mothers nursed young children, old men sat impassively when they weren’t attending to the women and kids, and none of the eyes that met mine gave away anything. All except Leila’s, who looked up at me crying with joy, a baby in her arms.