Ghost Watch

by David Rollins

  ‘JESUS, BOSS, YOU’RE A mess,’ said West, examining my face after he gave me a pat on the shoulder.

  ‘It’s my party lifestyle,’ I said. I ’d tried to clear my blocked nose earlier, snorting out a couple of plugs of coagulated blood. The pain I felt when I pinched it told me it was broken. It had happened when I’d tried to turn the steering wheel with my face after hitting the roadblock.

  The hike back to rejoin my merry band of travelers took two hours, a little longer than I expected. It was mid afternoon before I came across the road, followed it back to the fork, then doubled back to find everyone. Boink had the watch while West and Rutherford were building beds for everyone up off the ground, away from the ants and other biters.

  ‘How are our principals?’ I asked West when I found him binding saplings together with liana.

  ‘Subdued. I think they’re finally getting the message.’

  ‘Which message is that?’

  ‘ To shut the fuck up and let us do our job.’

  I doubted it. ‘Where are they?’

  By way of an answer, he pointed into the bush. Leila and Twenny were silhouetted sitting on a rotten log. They appeared to have reached some kind of amnesty, each sitting with an arm around the other. A couple of orange butterflies danced in the air above their heads. I could almost hear the violins. West having relieved him of the watch, Boink came and stood a few meters behind his employer and, bearlike, scratched his back against a tree.

  ‘How’s Ryder?’ I asked.

  ‘Milking it for all it’s worth . . . not that I blame him,’ said West. ‘Anyway, I think he’s on the mend.’

  He indicated Ryder’s whereabouts with a thumb over his shoulder. The captain was lying on one of the cots, Ayesha in attendance.

  ‘Francis, Patrice and the rest – they get off okay?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah. Patrice assured Rutherford that they knew where they were going. How about you? How’d you make out?’

  ‘I died,’ I said.

  ‘No, really, what happened?’

  I gave him a quick rundown.

  ‘By the way,’ he said when I’d finished, ‘there were two trucks in pursuit of you. And both of them had a lot of men on board.’

  I wondered how much time my little decoy run had bought us. Eventually those truckloads of armed men would backtrack and investigate this road. It started raining. ‘Must be three-fifteen,’ I said.

  West checked his wristwatch and nodded.

  ‘Where’s Cassidy?’

  ‘Setting up a perimeter defense. Ryder was sitting on two Claymores we forgot about, the last of the ones with the trip wires you guys found in the FARDC camp.’

  That was the best news I’d heard in a while.

  ‘What’s down at the river?’ I asked him, fanning uselessly at a cloud of mosquitoes attacking my face.

  ‘Mud, insects – not a lot else. Come take a look for yourself.’

  West sheathed his Ka-bar and we headed for the river, detouring via an ant mound. We exited the forest into a semi-cleared patch of wet earth that, here and there, had sections of steel matting laid over it. Strangely, the mud here wasn’t orange, but white. The river itself was fifty or sixty meters wide, a tea-brown slick dented with raindrops that slid by at a fast walking pace between banks of mostly unbroken forest. A fish broke the water, no doubt chased by something hungry. Half a dozen heavy hardwood posts were driven vertically into the water just off the riverbank I was standing on, which was low and marshy. I could easily imagine that at one time there’d been a reasonable amount of infrastructure here to offoad the sawn logs that would get floated down the river to the mill, wherever that was. But now almost nothing remained aside from those pilings, a little rusting steel scrap and few old oil drums half submerged in the mud. There was one small troubling detail – as Francis said, the Zaire flowed the wrong way for our purposes, heading west away from Lake Kivu and Cyangugu.

  ‘Seen anything useful – like a riverboat with slots and a bar?’ I asked.

  ‘What do you think?’

  I took a deep breath. When Lissouba’s men came down that road, we’d be trapped with our backs against the river. We could swim for it, but I didn’t like our chances against what the fuck else that might be lurking in that murky water chasing the fish.

  ‘They got crocs here?’ I asked.

  ‘Nope. Tigerfish.’

  ‘Great.’ I had no idea what they were, but they sounded unfriendly.

  I scoped the area a second time and the shred of an option formed.

  ‘You guys make pretty good cots.’

  ‘It ain’t hard.’

  ‘Can you make me a cot around a few of those oil drums?’

  ‘So you want a raft?’

  ‘It’d make me sleep a whole lot better.’

  ALL THE DRUMS WERE recovered from the mud, lined up and inspected. I stomped on the side of one of them and put my boot clean through it. Similar tests on the remaining five showed only one to be sound, with just a little superfcial rust. A second drum was also free of holes and corrosion, but had no lid. We could use it as long as we kept its brim above the waterline.

  There were ten of us – a combined weight of around two thousand pounds. Buoyancy was critical. Six types of sapling were tested. West placed them all in the water and a clear winner emerged, floating higher than the others. It completed one spin in the eddy by the bank before the Zaire carried it away.

  ‘Okay, that’s settled,’ he said. ‘These are the guys we want.’ He held a second length of the winning sapling, about two inches in diameter and trimmed to a length of about twelve feet.

  ‘We’ll need six bundles of these, about the same length as this,’ he said. ‘And each bundle should be about two foot in diameter. That’s around thirteen saplings per bundle times six bundles. So seventy-eight saplings in total. We’ll use vine to lash the bundles together, with a drum fore and aft. Keep it nice and simple.’

  ‘Paddles?’ Rutherford asked.

  ‘No paddles. We’ll use the main current, pole off the banks.’

  ‘How long will this raft take to build?’ asked Leila.

  West smiled. ‘As long as it takes you to cut the wood, then a bit longer after that.’

  I could tell the answer didn’t please her, but, as West said, she was apparently learning to shut the fuck up.

  ‘We’ll assemble it in the marsh so we can just float it out.’

  ‘How much liana will you need?’ Ryder asked.

  ‘Fifty meters ought to do it. Make sure it’s green and young.’

  ‘And when it’s built?’ Leila wanted to know. ‘Then what?’

  ‘We float down river to a settlement with boats for hire, or a road out,’ I said. ‘With a little luck, we’ll reach Cyangugu by early afternoon tomorrow.’ Invoking luck probably wasn’t smart, but I was all out of smarts. ‘Work in pairs,’ I continued. ‘Stay within sight of your partner and at least one other pair. Boink, you work with Rutherford.’

  Rutherford walked over to Twenny’s security chief and presented him with a machete.

  ‘Everyone know what to do?’ I asked.

  ‘Leila and me, we’ll take Peanut wit us,’ said Twenny and gestured at his friend, who was nearby, throwing sticks into the river.

  West took me aside. ‘That river’s not going our way. It’ll take us to Kinshasa.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I suppose not. Where there’s a river, there are towns.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking.’

  ‘Till we get the raw materials, I’m going to help Cassidy out with the defenses, and maybe rustle us up some food.’

  ‘Toasted ham and cheese on rye, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘See what we can do,’ he said, and trotted out of the cleared area and disappeared into the bush in the direction of the road.

  Ayesha and Ryder walked past.

  ‘You feeling all right?’ I asked him.

  ‘Hooah,’ he said under his breat
h without lifting his head.

  We were all running on empty.

  THE CHOSEN SAPLING DIDN’T grow in stands, but it was here and there and all over. I worked on my own, scouting for the right materials, cutting the saplings and liana where and when the opportunity presented. Apart from the odd fright from spiders and small vipers, and an occasional deep cough from what Rutherford believed was a big cat somewhere in the forest, there were no incidents. All up, we managed to collect fifty-eight saplings before the light failed completely. Not ideal, but as there was no moonrise for quite a few hours, we had to go with what we had.

  Cassidy and West appeared from the shadows just as the last of the saplings and liana lengths were delivered to the riverbank, Cassidy carrying in front of him what appeared to be two large basketballs.

  ‘Chow time,’ West called out. ‘We got avocado, palm oil fruit, watermelon, sugarcane, and grasshoppers for protein.’ He opened his pack, found a patch of ground where the steel matting was a little above the mud, and emptied the contents onto it. Cassidy also placed those basketballs of his on the matting, two almost perfectly round watermelons, and pulled his Ka-bar. He sliced one of them up and handed around the wedges. Peanut was first in line; he took a piece, buried his face in it and seemed pretty happy about what was in his mouth.

  ‘This stuff is all over,’ said West. ‘You want some more, we’ll go get it.’

  Ayesha and Leila were next in line, followed by Twenny and Boink, the hired help bringing up the rear.

  ‘After you,’ Rutherford said to Ryder.

  ‘Just leave me some of them grasshoppers,’ I said.

  ‘You may laugh, boss, but those little critters are awesome,’ said West.

  ‘So you keep telling us.’

  ‘That’s ’cause they are – crunchy on the outside, kinda gooey when you bite into ’em, and the taste is nutty. They’re good clean food. Try one.’ West picked a medium-sized insect from the mound, the head already pinched off, and presented it to me in the palm of his hand.

  ‘Reminds me of that dumb-ass reality show, you feel me?’ said Twenny.

  I took the insect, put it between my teeth without thinking too hard about it and bit down. Like West said, crunchy, gooey and nutty. ‘Not bad,’ I said when I’d finished. ‘But I like my nuts without legs.’ And, in truth, the goo wasn’t much of a hit, either. But if I had to eat them to stay alive . . .

  The fruit disappeared quickly, so Cassidy went out to get another couple of watermelons and was back within five minutes with two more, bigger than the last. West, meanwhile, went to work on the raft, with Rutherford and Ayesha and Ryder resting nearby.

  ‘We need the perimeter secured. What’s your thinking?’ I asked Cas-sidy through a mouthful of melon, the sugar from the fruit running through my system like a mild electric current.

  ‘The forest’s pretty thick hereabouts. There are two ways in. One’s easy, one’s not so easy. West and I figure the folks we’re up against will take the path of least resistance. If they do, Mr Claymore will keep us informed. If it detonates, everyone should assemble at the raft on the double – I’ll give the word. We planted a few other surprises out there that’ll slow down any assault. I think you can afford to chill for a while, Major Cooper. You’ve earned it.’

  I wasn’t sure I’d earned anything, but it was nice of him to say. I found a spare oil drum and sat down on it, but was sitting for less than thirty seconds before I heard my name called.

  ‘Vin.’

  Enjoying the feeling of having a full belly, I blocked out the sound of my name and listened instead to the two-hundred-part acapella mosquito choir humming around my head.

  ‘Vin . . .’

  It was Leila. I braced for the latest complaint/threat/abuse.

  ‘I warn you . . .’ she said.

  Here it comes, I thought, tensing.

  ‘I’ve come armed with a pair of tweezers and I intend to use them.’

  Tweezers? She’d brought her cosmetics bag. ‘Thanks, but I think I like my eyebrows the way they are.’

  She took my hand in hers and I smelled perfume, moisturizer and branded insect repellent; the combination conjured up the cosmetics counter at Macy’s, Arlington, an altogether other world to the one we were in. I resisted the desire to rub mud over her – that smell was a potential beacon to any would-be attackers.

  ‘Eyebrows? You got points of dried blood up and down your arm, like you’ve landed in a cactus. I know what that’s like. Happened to me when I was a little girl. My mother threw me into one of those big ones you see out in the desert, on a trip to California. Stopped the car, dragged me out the door and just threw me.’

  ‘How many times did you ask, “Are we there yet?” ’

  ‘My momma didn’t need a reason to do bad things to me. Just the way she was.’

  ‘She still around?’

  ‘Can’t get rid of her, her hand out all the time. I give her money and she drinks it all up. Giving her money is like giving her a loaded gun. Sometimes when I remember all the things she did before I got big enough to stop her, I think that’s exactly what I should do – give her that loaded gun she wants so bad. She’s young – only fifteen years older than I am. And beautiful – or was.’

  Leila’s fingertips were cool and gentle on my skin, seeing in the darkness, probing for the barbs that stuck out like pins hidden in a new shirt. I felt a little disoriented, but now that she mentioned it, my skin was throbbing at various spots all over: on my cheek, from tiny shards of glass; the small burns from the hot Claymore pellets; the torn flesh on the point of my shoulder; the nick on the back of my upper arm; and, of course, the spines along my arm that it collected when I exited the truck with the mortar. Actually, now that I stopped to think about it, I was sore all over. I closed my eyes.

  ‘They’re big suckers,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going to pull one out. This might hurt. If you need to cry, don’t you feel embarrassed.’

  ‘Do you have a hanky, just in case?’

  She extracted a spine and I felt a small stab of pain that almost immediately began to itch. Sweetness and light from Leila? The universe was tilting.

  ‘You like kids,’ I said. That much was obvious. She had instantly been smitten with the baby rescued from the bushes behind the village, and with the child she had nursed in the truck. Dangerous ground, perhaps, if she blamed me for having to give them back.

  ‘Yes, I love them. I’m going to have children one day. Lots of them. And I’m going to be the momma I wanted, not the one I had.’ She yanked out another quill, this time with feeling. ‘What are your parents like?’

  ‘They’re dead,’ I said, hoping to bring that line of questioning to a stop.

  ‘Then, what were they like?’ Leila persisted.

  ‘I didn’t get to know them; neither lived long enough.’

  ‘Who brought you up?’

  ‘An uncle – my father’s brother.’

  ‘What was he like?’

  ‘Okay, mostly.’

  ‘Getting anything out of you is like pulling teeth.’

  ‘Let’s see how you do with those spines first,’ I said.

  ‘Well . . . your uncle?’

  I gave in. ‘He was a good parent, but three tours in ’nam had rewired his sense of normal and occasionally the craziness came to the surface.’ I remembered one night in particular. I woke up to find his face three inches from mine, his eyes wide and bloodshot, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose onto my pajamas, a knife half the length of a baseball bat in his hand and, according to him, the house full of Charlie. I was ten years old.

  Leila’s fingers worked their way up my arm.

  ‘We’re gonna make it, aren’t we,’ she said after a pause.

  There was no hint of a question in her tone. This was a done deal.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, mustering the necessary conviction, but the truth was that we were still some way from cracking open the champagne. With my white hat on, the raft was going to get u
s quickly downstream to safety. But with my black hat on, the raft was going to sink shortly after launch, just before we were sucked over a two hundred foot waterfall around the next bend in the river. I had to take some of the blame for this outbreak of certainty with my earlier pep talk about arriving back at Cyangugu in time for afternoon tea. I was as eager as anyone to get back to Rwanda, if only to wipe the smug superiority off Lockhart’s face when I snapped a pair of bracelets on his wrists.

  ‘. . . I hope you’re not jealous,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ I replied. ‘I missed that. What were you were saying?’

  ‘I was saying that Deryck and I have reconciled. We’re going to give it another try. I hope you’re not jealous about that.’ She smiled, and there was mischief in it.

  I smiled back. Leila couldn’t conceive of a dimension where every male of the species wasn’t wrapped around her pinkie. ‘I’ll just have to get over it,’ I said. ‘Another time, another place . . .’

  ‘And, anyway, you got your own issues with your dead girlfriend and I don’t want anyone else’s baggage right at the moment.’

  Okay, by invoking Anna, Leila was pushing the delusion boundaries way out of shape. My arm felt hot with an itch that fared its entire length. I wanted to get up and leave, but there was nowhere to go.

  ‘I have some antiseptic cream,’ she continued. ‘Probably should have washed it first, but this will have to do.’

  She reached into her cosmetics bag of tricks, pulled out a tube, squeezed some of what was in it on my arm and rubbed it in. It felt like it was going on someone else’s arm but I told her thanks.

  ‘Go see a doctor at Cyangugu tomorrow. There’ll be one there for sure.’

  There was something totally unreal about this conversation.

  Sensing this, she said, ‘Are you okay, Vin?’

  Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Good. I know we got off to a bad start, you and I. It has been a journey, hasn’t it?’

  ‘You still gonna to sue me?’

  ‘Yes of course, but it’s nothing personal. The military will pay.’