Ghost Watch

by David Rollins

  ‘I’m sure, ma’am.’

  I gave the signal to rejoin and the balance of Team Ghost Watch accompanied our principals out of the shadows.

  ‘Oh my God . . .’ the woman said when she saw the parade.

  ‘You mind giving us a ride?’ I asked her.

  THE JET RANGER DEPARTED and a MONUC Puma, identical to the one LeDuc and Fournier piloted, arrived half an hour later, stuffed with the equipment and personnel required to set up a makeshift hospital, lab and decontamination facilities. People stared at us, even though the woman, whose name was Andrea, gave us what we needed to clean up a little. We rode the chopper to a place called Dutu, a small town on the shores of Lake Kivu. From there, we hired a boat and motored fifty miles south to Bukavu, on the DRC side of the border, directly opposite Cyangugu. I’d told Andrea to stay off the radio and keep our status of being among the living to herself for twelve hours at least. She didn’t ask me why, which was fortunate because I was sure she wouldn’t take the answer in her stride – that I didn’t want a certain Kornfak & Greene contractor knowing that I was on my way to kill him.

  We crossed the DRC/Rwandan border in a bus full of chickens, paying the guards with various trinkets, and did the last two miles on foot, arriving at Camp Fuck You, Cyangugu, eight days after our departure, at three-fifteen. I’m certain of the time because it started raining.

  Verdict

  It was six-fifteen am before I jogged past the main gate, having run five miles by then, my head no clearer than it was when I climbed out of bed, a headache throbbing in my left temple and keeping time with every footfall. I had a late night with Macri and Cheung to thank for that, though maybe it was the midnight visit from my old buddy Jack that did the real damage. Out beyond the gate, the daily demonstration in support of moi was ramping up. I went in for a closer look and caught sight of a few of the placards. ‘Free Cooper!’ said one. Another said, ‘America needs heroes!’ Yet another proclaimed, ‘#12? Cooper deserves better!’ That last one threw me – what was that all about? The rest, and there were quite a few, were variations on those themes, except for the ‘We love Leila!’ placards and one that said, ‘Twenny – feel me!’

  Today’s circus would be bigger and better than usual and, indeed, there were more than a dozen trailers out there, parked among network vans, all of which were present for the biggest show in town. This was the day when witnesses would be called, and that meant Twenny Fo and Leila, now officially his fancée, would be making an appearance. The networks were salivating.

  Outside the wire there was plenty of support. Inside, where it counted, it was a different story. All the legal maneuvering and wrangling was done and dusted and none of it favored me. Cheung and Macri had tried to convince the court that my assault on Lockhart was provoked, and that I therefore acted in self-defense. After hearing counter mumbo jumbo from the USAF prosecutors, Major Vaughan Latham and his hot captain assistant, Colonel Fink ruled that, as Lockhart was unaware that I was in the camp, it was ridiculous to claim provocation on his part and that therefore the charges stood. In short, only the circumstances around the assault were admissible. Every thing that transpired over the previous eight days, including my testimony that I’d observed Lockhart shoot French Armée de l’Air Lieutenant Henri Fournier dead in cold blood – among many other crimes including rape, kidnapping, extortion, and slavery – were deemed to be outside the court martial’s purview. My problem was that we had no evidence, hard or otherwise, produced in disclosure to support my counter claims.

  Though Ryder had been with me at the time of Fournier’s murder, he hadn’t actually seen Lockhart at all, let alone witness the shooting – the murderer having disappeared into one of the tents by the time I’d handed the scope over to the captain. At the village, when the baby had been thrown into the bushes and Lockhart had pulled up in a Dong, it was a similar story. I saw him, but no one else could corroborate. Same again at the mine, when we were escaping in the truck with Francis and his people and Lockhart had tried to stop us with some FARDC troops. I’d seen him, but it seemed that everyone else had had their heads up their asses at the time. Francis had noted Lockhart at the mine when the gold nugget had been found, but Francis was lost somewhere deep in the Congo rainforests, if, indeed, he were still alive. And even if he were breathing and could be contacted and his video testimony delivered to the court, Cheung believed that Fink and his co-judges would not have accepted Francis’s word over Lockhart’s.

  Of course, there was Twenny Fo’s belief that he smelled Lockhart in the FARDC camp. When they heard about it, Cheung and Macri laughed.

  So, basically, I was screwed.

  I ran back to my rooms, trying to work out what #12. Cooper deserves better! might mean. When I got there, a man was waiting in ambush for me by the front entranceway to my accommodation: fortyish, balding, tall in a faccid way that suggested no exercise and too much booze, and jowls that reminded me of a bloodhound’s. His name was Rentworthy, the New York Times reporter. I slowed to a walk to throw off his targeting. It didn’t work.

  ‘Vin. Can I call you that?’

  ‘What else you got in mind?’

  ‘You’re a hard man to catch.’

  I remembered Cheung’s advice: play nice with this guy. ‘You’ve written some interesting stories about what happened out there.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  ‘Mind telling me who your source was?’

  ‘Sorry, can’t reveal that.’

  ‘Then how about narrowing it down a little – one of my principals, or one of the PSOs?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  It only mattered because whoever the source was had selectively edited the facts to make me out to be some kind of hero, which I wasn’t. ‘No, I guess not.’

  ‘Our readers don’t want you to go to prison, Vin.’

  ‘I’m not so keen on it either.’

  ‘You mind if I ask you some questions?’

  ‘You’ve got me cornered. Shoot.’

  The guy took out a tape recorder and showed me the red light.

  ‘I got a bad memory,’ he said, a half smile compressing one of his jowls. ‘I want to know whether you had sex with Leila. There are allegations . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The first night you were down on the ground, when it was your watch. Leila didn’t pay you a visit? Make an offer that was too good to refuse? Was it true she wanted to cut and run, leave her fancé behind?’

  I remembered the night and I remembered Leila down on her knees in front of me and I remembered that nothing happened. Where was this coming from? ‘This doesn’t sound like a story the New York Times would be interested in,’ I said.

  ‘Till an earthquake bumps you off, you’re the big news at the moment, Vin; do you realize that? The media is chewing on the same information, presenting it different ways, digging up people who know you; people who know your principals. You could make a lot of money. Our readers just want the full story.’

  ‘And sex sells.’

  ‘Indeed it does.’

  ‘Can’t help you, I’m afraid. Nothing happened.’

  ‘Not according to People.’

  He handed me a rolled-up magazine. Leila was on the cover, dressed in an Army battle uniform, her shirt undone and her breasts looking like they were trying to punch their way out. She was in a jungle setting and a large snake was coiled around a nearby branch. Plenty of symbolism. The cover announced that it was the ‘Sexiest People On The Planet’ issue. Another headline read, ‘Sex on the run. What really happened in the Congo – an insider tells.’

  ‘This your source?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve been the go-to-guy on your story, but not on this chapter.’ He held up the magazine. ‘I wanted to see if someone else got the drop on me. And I figured only you’d know.’

  ‘Nothing happened.’

  ‘Shame. She’s hot.’

  And loopy.

  ‘There’s a story in the paper tomorrow
. It’s not mine either. Twenny Fo and Leila want to adopt two orphans from the DRC – girls; twins. They’re also hoping to build a school in some village you passed through. Maybe you know which one.’

  I thought of a baby girl caught upside down in the bushes, a driver ant biting her toe. I shrugged.

  Rentworthy clicked off his tape recorder, handed me his card. ‘I can write your story, Vin. It’s a good one. There’s a book in it somewhere and it’ll sell. Think about it. You’ll need the money when you get out.’

  ‘Nice to hear you’re thinking positive on my account. Okay, I’ll think about it,’ I told him, pocketing the card, but I already knew what my answer would be.

  ‘Oh, I see you made number twelve. Congrats. And today in court – break a leg, eh?’

  I said thanks and see you later and jogged up the stairs with the magazine. Number twelve? I had a shower and shave, dressed, ate breakfast and flicked through the magazine while I waited for Cheung and Macri, who were escorting me to court. I opened the mag at its halfway point, found the story pertaining to the coverline and read it. The inside source wasn’t named. The story insinuated that Leila and I were eating each other’s forbidden fruit in the Congo’s primordial Garden of Eden while everyone else slept. I could see a lawsuit heading People magazine’s way from Leila’s team. That aside, the story would be good for my bar cred, if I ever managed to get to a bar while this edition was still on the newsstands, which didn’t seem likely. I skimmed the rest of the rag and stopped at a page showing the photo Fallon had taken of me on his iPhone that day back in Afghanistan. My jaw went slack. The headline on the photo said, ‘#12. Special Agent Vin Cooper, OSI’.

  ‘Shit,’ I muttered. I flicked forward and back. There I was, number twelve in People magazine’s list of the World’s Sexiest People. Leila was number one and Twenny was number seven.

  A knock on the door. It was Cheung and Macri.

  ‘You’ve read it, I see,’ said Macri as he walked in, nodding at the magazine dangling from my hand.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Cheung added.

  ‘The poster was right – number twelve is an insult,’ I said.

  ‘What poster?’ asked Macri.

  I let the question hang, exchanging it for my blouse dangling from a hook on the back of the door. ‘What can I expect today?’

  ‘You’re gonna see your friend,’ Macri told me.

  ‘Lockhart?’ I asked, though I knew who he meant.

  ‘Word just came from Latham’s office. He’s going to testify in person,’ said Cheung.

  ‘He knows we’ve got nothing on him,’ I said. ‘That’s why he’s here. He knows we can’t touch him.’

  ‘He’s come to gloat,’ Macri concluded.

  I closed the door and we walked in silence down the stairs to the blue Ford Explorer parked out front.

  ‘This is how it will go today,’ said Cheung, opening the front passenger door for me. He drove and Marci took the back seat.

  ‘I know how it will go,’ I said before he could get started. ‘I’m in the same game, remember? Who’s our first witness?’

  ‘Duke Ryder.’

  ‘Why Ryder?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s an OSI agent and his eyewitness testimony differs from the prosecution’s eyewitness testimony in a key area. We can amplify the difference and perhaps throw some doubt on the flames.’

  ‘What key area?’

  ‘Leave it for the courtroom,’ said Macri.

  ‘What about Cassidy, Rutherford and West?’

  ‘They’ll also be called.’

  THE COURTROOM WAS INSIDE 1535 Command Drive, a red-brick rectangle façade with a rotunda built off the back, like the architect couldn’t quite make up his mind. The eighties were a confusing time. Milling in front of the building were at least a couple hundred folks hoping to get a seat in a courtroom that could seat less than a quarter that number. Several reporters were doing live feeds, the network trucks I’d seen out beyond the main gate now parked along Command Drive. There were no placards.

  ‘We’ll go round the back,’ said Cheung, taking a detour.

  The back turned out to be every bit as crowded as the front. Reporters swarmed over the Explorer once we’d stopped. A couple of security police managed to get themselves between the reporters shouting questions at me, and hustled Macri and me up the stairs and into the building, leaving Cheung to field the questions. He threw them a few bones and then came up the stairs that were blocked by more security forces. We made our way to the courtroom, which had yet to be opened to the public, and took our seats at the desk reserved for the defense, facing the members of the board.

  Major Latham and Captain Pencilskirt, whose name I’d since discovered was Polly Blinkenspiel, took their places at the desk opposite the military judge.

  Latham caught me looking in his direction or, rather, in Blinken-spiel’s, and gave me a shrug that said, ‘No hard feelings, hey.’

  He was just doing his job. If it wasn’t him it’d be some other trial counsel and it was unlikely his or her assistant would be nearly as hot as Latham’s. While I was considering all this, allowing my thoughts to wander to the aforementioned assistant, the doors at the back of the room opened and people poured in. I saw a few familiar faces – Arlen’s, for example. We acknowledged each other and he gave me an it’s-gonna-be-okay nod, the kind of nod I imagine they give you when you go into surgery with a minor leg wound and come out an amputee. A familiar face was beside him – Summer from Summer Love, the vegetarian restaurant on the ground floor of my apartment. She wore a yellow hat and a long lemon dress pulled in tight under her smallish breasts, accentuating them. She looked good. I was surprised to see her, vegetarian food not being high on my favourites list. She waved and I gave her what I hoped was a smile. There were a few other people I knew, agents I’d worked with and so forth. Lockhart was somewhere close by. I was sure I could smell him.

  The bailiff, in this instance an Air Force lieutenant colonel, closed the doors and walked to the front of the room, and everyone settled down, the talk dying to a low murmur and then ceasing altogether. ‘All rise,’ he said and everyone stood.

  The side door opened and Colonel Fink came in, still short and bath plug-like, and climbed up on his stage to take his seat in front of the Air Force seal hanging on the paneled wall behind him. One colonel, one lite colonel and seven majors – more males than females – came in. They all took the seats behind the mahogany desk panels, each wearing a stern Mount Rushmore-like face.

  Fink cleared his throat, shuffed a stack of loose papers in front of him and held a black fountain pen poised above them. Without looking up, he read through the usual script, outlining the defendant’s rights to counsel, followed by a series of oaths that counsels had to take, followed by the charges I was facing, followed by my plea – which was not guilty – followed by instructions to the court outlining, for example, what reasonable doubt meant. Then followed challenges – whether either my counsels or the trial counsel believed there might be any bias or competing interests amongst the members of the court that could leave justice short changed. The script Fink went through was forty pages or more in length. There were no challenges, the right people said ‘yes, sir,’ and ‘no, sir,’ when they were supposed to, including me. Eventually, Colonel Fink gave the stack of papers in front of him a big tick, shuffed them into order, then called on Latham to outline the United States’ case against me.

  ‘Yes, your Honor,’ said Latham. He got up, buttoned his coat, and walked to the dais in the center of the room with his cheat notes. He then read through the charges, repeating much of what Fink had already said, the court reporter putting it all down again. There was fdgeting from the bleachers. This was a long way from a Grisham novel.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Fink when Latham had concluded, adding another famboyant tick. I wondered if maybe the guy was going to introduce himself to the audience and take a bow. The courts martial I’d attended in the past hadn’t been in the least
theatrical. Fink was enjoying himself.

  ‘I note that several members of the media have taken up the commander’s offer to attend this trial and are in the room today, this case having attracted more than its fair share of public attention,’ he said. ‘But I would remind you that you are here at the pleasure of the United States Air Force. This is a military court martial, and you are on a military base and you must conduct yourselves accordingly or your privileges here will be withdrawn.’ Fink took his stare around the courtroom. ‘While we’re on the subject, if I see tomorrow the scenes I witnessed out front of this building this morning, I will end public access to these proceedings and you will have to satisfy the cravings of your listeners, readers, watchers and bloggers with an Air Force-approved press release the morning after the previous day’s hearings. Do I make myself clear?’

  I heard a pin drop.

  ‘Then, without further ado, gentlemen,’ he continued, turning his gaze on Latham. ‘If you please, Counselor . . .’

  Latham stood, buttoned his coat, went to the dias and recalled the scene at Camp Come Together, Cyangugu. As far as I could tell, he had it pretty much squared away with the facts. From the way it was recounted, I’d have found me guilty.

  Then it was Cheung’s turn. He expanded on my not-guilty plea, told the court that I was innocent of the main assault charge, that I was just going my duty, and that there were witness who would back me up.

  Not even I was convinced.

  Fink then invited Latham to call his first witness. A procession of US personnel who had been present at Cyangugu took the stand and recounted the events of the afternoon that had led to me sitting in this courtroom. The two MPs who had pulled me off Lockhart began the parade, starting with the big redheaded Army sergeant with the badly busted-up nose. They all told identical stories, well drilled. Cheung had no questions for any of them and neither did the court board members, who were within their right to ask them if testimony had been unclear.