I turned back to watch the road unraveling behind us, just in time to see a rocket-propelled grenade streak toward us from the far end of the tunnel.
Flee
The RPG round skipped off the road into the forest, angled away slightly by a rut, and detonated against a tree close by. Shrapnel tore through our tarpaulin at about head height and I heard a couple of pieces ping against our metalwork. That was too close. Women screamed and one of them started picking feverishly at her leg. I crawled back to her on my hands and knees, across the human carpet, but she managed to get hold of whatever the problem was before I reached her, and flicked it off her skin. It looked to have been a twisted chunk of the warhead’s green casing, and it smoked as it arced through the air and got caught with a metallic clink between the tarpaulin and the side of the truck.
A second warhead flew overhead and exploded harmlessly out of sight deep in the forest far ahead. It was Marcus who’d warned us that this Lissouba asshole was a persistent fuck. The fact that he wasn’t letting us leave without a fight was going to make things difficult. The truck in pursuit showed itself two hundred meters behind us and it was slowly gaining ground. Soon enough the range would become point blank. I was out of grenades. The M4 slung over my good shoulder was all I had. Rutherford was armed, as were Ryder and Boink. We could maybe pick off the driver, but we couldn’t afford an exchange of small arms fire with the enemy, especially when they had RPGs.
‘We need that mortar,’ Rutherford yelled. Good thinking, only there was a slight problem – the barrel was pointed the wrong way and doing a U-turn wasn’t possible. The long tunnel had come to an end and our truck began laboring up a steep incline, which included some tight corners.
‘Find out where the turnoff to the river is,’ I shouted back. ‘Get what you can out of Francis and his wife about Bayutu and any other settlements nearby. Francis mentioned something about Médecins Sans Frontières. They’re operating in the area. And while you’re at it, see if someone else here can drive this rig.’
Rutherford signed WILCO as I reached across to get a hand on the tarpaulin framework.
‘And when we stop,’ I told him, looking back, ‘jump off. We’ve got a job to do.’
Using the framework to keep my balance, I walked down toward the front cabin along the top of the metal sides of the load tray, the only space not taken by Francis’s people. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Leila still with the baby in her arms and she was rocking it back and forth, totally engrossed, having finally met her match in the needy department. Peanut was teaching a girl of around six to play scissors paper rock, and losing, apparently unperturbed by our current situation – maybe he was completely unaware of it. Twenny was also engaged with Francis’s people, re-tying a bandage around a man’s head, assisted by Boink. I couldn’t see Ryder or Ayesha tucked away in the opposite corner behind the cabin, as the press of bodies obscured them. I suspected the crack Ryder had received on the head was worse than he let on, but there was not a lot anyone could do about it except provide some comfort, and Ayesha had put her hand up for that.
When I got to a point behind the cabin, I reached for my Ka-bar and made a long vertical slit in the tarpaulin. A moment later I was through it, out in the open air and being swatted by the trees and bushes trying to reclaim the road. We crested the hill and the Dong quickly picked up speed heading down the other side. I ducked under a loop of liana that would have taken my head off if I hadn’t seen it at the last second, pulled open the passenger door and leaped inside.
‘Fuck, boss!’ yelled West, taken by surprise, his M9 pointed at my ribs. ‘You scared the living crap out of me.’ He lowered it. ‘What’s up?’
‘Stopped by to borrow a cup of sugar, but I’ll settle for the mortar if you don’t have any.’
‘What’s happening back there?’
‘The folks on our tail are two hundred meters behind and closing. We need to give them something to think about. What have we got left?’
West tapped the container on the floorboards and said, ‘Two frag grenades, lots of smoke. Eleven mags for the M4s between us. And the two M49s.’
In other words, we were down to the dregs.
‘Let me off then give me another hundred meters of clearance and pull over. Show me how to fuse the 49s.’
West hesitated. ‘If you miss, you risk getting isolated and cut off. I’m the one who knows how to use it. You should stay on the truck.’
I didn’t see it the same way. I’d made the deal with Francis for his assistance, which included the burden of getting his people to safety. If any dick was going to get hung out in this shooting gallery, it was going to be mine. ‘We can draw straws to see who’ll be stupid next time,’ I told him.
West was set to continue the discussion, but the urgency he saw in my face changed his mind. So he hurriedly produced the remaining two rounds of HE from a pouch on the floorboards and fused one of them while I looked on.
‘Make sure the base plate has a secure bed,’ he said. ‘And keep the barrel as steady as you can. The further the distance to target, the more chance you have of missing it. This round has a lethal radius of around twenty-five meters. So, while close is easier to hit, too close and it’ll be raining Vin Cooper.’
An RPG round streaked through the bush and boomed against a tree trunk fifty meters ahead and well wide – another random shot. Smoking shards of hot metal clipped off several branches that crashed into the scrub below.
Cassidy brought the truck to a sliding halt and screams of fright could be heard behind us.
West looped the pack strap containing the spare round over my head and neck, and held the mortar barrel toward me.
‘Fuck them up the ass, Major,’ Cassidy said.
‘You Army guys . . .’ I said as I opened the door and dropped onto the ground through the leaves of something fleshy and wet. Spines jagged into my skin the length of my arm and broke off.
‘Son of a bitch,’ I cursed as the passenger door slammed shut. There were pinpricks of blood up and down my arm. West threw me a wave as the Dong accelerated down the hill, the African faces floating in the darkness under the tarpaulin. Rutherford was standing on the opposite side of the road. Scoping the area, I found what I was looking for almost instantly – a large tree with a broad root system close to the road, with plenty of leafy cover to keep us well hidden. The crest was maybe seventy-five meters back up the hill to my left. Our DF had already disappeared around a slight bend fifty meters to my right.
‘They’re close,’ said Rutherford, the enemy vehicle’s engine laboring noisily just behind the crest.
I ran five meters to the tree and jammed the mortar’s base plate against a smooth buttress of roots.
‘Hold the barrel up,’ I told the Scot.
‘Got it,’ he said.
I took the round from the pouch, checked that it was the correct one, and double-checked that it was fused for an impact strike. Satisfied, I cocked the trigger then loaded the round, fins first, down the business end of the barrel and let it drop, turning my face away at the last instant just in case the round decided to launch anyway. It didn’t.
‘Aim at the road around ten meters beneath the crest of the hill,’ I told Rutherford. ‘If we screw it up and they stay nice and still for us, we’ve got a second chance,’ I added, patting the backup round in the pouch as the truck lurched over the crest, blowing clouds of smoke. A man hung out the passenger door with an RPG. Several more soldiers rested their RPGs and assault rifles on the roof of the cab, the tarpaulin having been removed from the framework over the load area. They had a lot of firepower and were obviously keen to use it.
‘On a count of three,’ I said, grasping the mortar’s trigger close to the bottom end of the barrel. ‘Three, two, one . . .’
I squeezed the trigger and finched involuntarily as the barrel jumped with a loud bang. Shards of hot material blew back on us as the shell flew from the muzzle. I glanced up in time to see the round skip off th
e road just under the vehicle’s front axle. A massive boom followed and the back of the truck lifted high off the road as if held there by a giant hand. The radiator dug into the road and the vehicle teetered there almost vertical as it slid forward, carried by its own momentum, pushing a wave of mud. The men standing in the bed area were catapulted over the front cabin. They landed on the road and were almost instantly run over by the truck sliding along on its nose. And all of it was heading straight for Rutherford and me. We dived for cover as the Dong ploughed off the road and smashed against the tree shielding us with a sickening crunch of metal against unyielding hardwood. rifles, grenade launchers, ammunition and men were thrown high into the air and came down all around us, crashing through the bush. A man who landed quite close screamed as he came down. An emphatic meeting with the earth silenced him briefly before he started groaning.
I looked at Rutherford. Both of us had come through okay but the mortar barrel wasn’t so lucky, having been crushed beneath a couple of tons of wrecked Dong on the other side of the tree.
A few feet away from Rutherford, one of Lissouba’s men reached slowly, painfully, for the rifle beside him. Rutherford stood, kicked it beyond his reach, turned the man over and saw that the left side of his face was completely crushed inward from eyebrow to chin.
‘Persistent fucking sods,’ he observed, kneeling over the man.
I made my way to the road and waited for Rutherford. The forest was silent but for one horribly familiar sound.
‘Do you hear that?’ I asked him.
‘Hear what?’ He shook his head. ‘Wait . . .’ he said, changing his mind.
The sound was drifting in and out.
‘Jesus – more fucking trucks,’ Rutherford muttered.
They were a little way off, maybe just starting to climb the hill on the far side of the crest. I turned and ran down the road, the Brit beside me. Life was starting to get complicated. FARDC was chasing us, not Francis’s people. But they were going to become collateral damage in the crossfire. We were going to have to part company with them for their own safety.
‘We have to ditch the vehicle,’ I said as I ran. ‘They’re going to keep following it. Can Francis be moved?’
‘If we make him a stretcher.’
‘Where’s the turnoff to the river?’
‘Patrice said there was a fork in the road near the bottom of this hill.’
‘Who’s Patrice?’
‘Francis’s old lady.’
We ran through the bend and saw our truck stopped, West and Cassidy standing beside it, keeping watch.
‘Get our principals ready to leave,’ I told Rutherford. ‘We’re going our separate ways at that fork in the road.’
I ran to Cassidy and West, signaling frantically at them to get back in the truck, but they weren’t urgent enough about it so I ran past them to the driver’s side and jumped in behind the wheel. I had the thing in gear and rolling before Cassidy and West had both feet on the running board.
‘What’s going on?’ Cassidy demanded as he climbed in through the passenger door, West behind him.
‘There’s more company on the way – change of plan,’ I said.
The truck was heavy with all the people on board, the acceleration sluggish and the engine more reluctant than I remembered.
‘Watch for a fork in the road,’ I said.
We rounded a corner and the strip of mud beneath our wheels divided in two, just like Patrice said it would, the fork heading off to the right disappearing almost completely into thick bush. I stamped on the brakes and heard muffled screams coming from the cargo area behind us.
‘C’mon,’ I said to Cassidy and West, the brakes protesting with a loud moan. ‘We’re outta here.’
I grabbed the ammo container on the floorboards by its handle, hauled it out and jogged with it across my chest to the back of the truck. I arrived at the tailgate in time to hear Leila say, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ The infant in her lap began screaming. ‘Now see what you’ve done? I just got her off to sleep.’
We had no time for this. ‘You want the kid to live, right?’ I called out to her.
She stared at me, her eyes hot and defiant but her body language nervous.
‘Boink, pick her up and carry her,’ I told him.
The big man looked at me and then at Twenny.
‘Yo!’ I yelled at him. ‘Now!’
He took a step toward her
‘There’s no need for that,’ she said, handing the baby to its mother and getting to her feet.
The truck was full of uncertain people.
‘Rutherford, explain to Francis’s old lady that everyone has to get off the truck immediately. Tell them to stick to the forest and stay away from the road. See if you can find out where that Médecins Sans Fron-tières outfit is.’
‘Patrice told me that already: it’s an hour’s walk from here.’
‘And the river?’
‘About an hour and a half in the opposite direction. You still want that driver?’
‘No,’ I said.
I watched Ayesha help Ryder to his feet. He nearly passed out and slumped heavily against her before pulling himself up. Twenny came up to me as our Congolese passengers began to get the idea that this bus was going on without them.
‘I’ve heard both sides of the story, Cooper – Leila’s and Boink’s,’ he said. ‘I think I had things round the wrong way, you feel me? Anyway, Boink set me straight. Anythin’ choo need, choo lemme know . . .’
‘Then help me get everyone off this truck, and manage Leila,’ I told him. A little cooperation from the stars of the show would make a nice change.
Patrice and Rutherford began calling out in French. I caught the gist and started repeating it, saying, ‘Allez! Allez!’ and sweeping my arms toward the tailgate to emphasize the point.
The message sank in. People were starting to move. I went over to Rutherford and helped him lift Francis to the back of the truck.
‘Cassidy!’ I called out, seeing him standing watch with West. The sergeant trotted over.
‘Give Rutherford a hand getting Francis into the trees. Keep everyone off the road. Patrice – that’s Francis’s wife – she knows what’s going on. They’re going to need a field stretcher.’
‘Roger that. What are you gonna do?’
‘Ditch the truck. You take the right-hand trail – that’ll get you to the river. I’ll rendezvous with you there. Our African friends are headed elsewhere. We need to move it.’
‘Roger that, boss,’ he said and went off to hustle while I kneeled beside Francis.
‘Mercy bowcoop, Francis,’ I said, his face sweating beads of pain.
‘You have the worst accent in the whole of the Congo,’ he croaked. ‘It is I who thanks you. My people owe you their lives.’
‘I was going to say the same thing to you. Good luck.’
‘And to you,’ he said, finding my hand and squeezing it weakly. ‘Get to the Zaire.’
I gave Cassidy and Rutherford a nod and they lifted him off the back of the truck as Patrice rushed in, threw her arms around me and squeezed until I coughed. The woman was a cage fighter in drag.
‘Merci, merci,’ she said and kissed me wetly on the cheek before hurrying off to tend to her husband while he was being carried behind the tree line.
The rainforest quickly swallowed everyone and I found myself alone on the road, the Dong idling noisily behind me and the sound of approaching vehicles getting louder by the second. I ran to the driver’s door, jumped in and selected first from the snarling gearbox. The vehicle charged forward, far more willing in the acceleration department without all the weight on board. The road was almost completely overgrown. I was considering slowing down but changed my mind about that when a bullet shattered the rear-view mirror on my door and slivers of glass speared into my neck and cheek. The Dong burst through a wreath of liana obscuring the view forward. I had no idea where the road was going, so I took a guess and kept the wheels poi
nting straight ahead. I could hear small arms fire being shot off behind me. I was thinking how not much of it was finding its target when a single round punched through the passenger seat beside me and buried itself in the dashboard.
I was driving way too fast for the conditions. An RPG round exploded somewhere unseen but close and I swerved and cut a path through the trees. The road found me before I located it, and the tires slithered around on the muddy strip, hunting for traction. And then, suddenly, there was a log lying diagonally across my path, big and immovable. Swinging the wheel violently, I still struck the massive obstacle a glancing blow that smashed my face down into the steering wheel. The log bounced the truck into the forest and it began to crash through the scrub again, but beyond my control this time, rumbling down a steep hill with increasing speed. And then the world tilted on its side as the earth fell away and the truck tipped and I hung onto the steering wheel with plants and liana and mud swelling into the cabin, coming through the windshield area and welling up through the passenger window below my feet.
And then everything stopped moving.
I wasn’t unconscious – just stunned. The crash and the resulting detour had happened so fast, I needed a moment to catch up with it. Jesus, my face hurt, my eyes watering with the pain.
Get out, Cooper, said the voice in my head but I couldn’t recall why. And then I remembered about the people with guns not far behind and that they would be coming for me. I found my M4, hitched it over my shoulders and pulled myself out onto the canted hood and slid into a thicket of elephant grass, bamboo and liana. The forest was so dense it was almost impossible to move through it. That was good. If it delayed me, it would have the same effect on the folks who would be coming to investigate the wreckage.
Ghost Watch Page 37
