Ghost Watch Page 10

  The retinue accompanying each star to Goma was now the problem. The person who seemed best able to handle Leila was Ayesha, which meant, as far as I was concerned, she got a golden ticket. Twenny Fo then insisted it was only fair that one of his entourage accompany him. He chose Boink, who, according to Leila, was really worth two people, given his size, which meant she could have Shaquand. The rapper then lobbied hard to bring Peanut; my take was that Fo wasn’t too keen on leaving Peanut with Snatch unsupervised. Maybe he was concerned that his hair would get all braided up. Whatever, I agreed to the settlement on the condition that everyone got along, because we were all flying together in the one chopper. I amused myself with the thought that I could always throw the troublemakers out if I had to.

  I watched the rainforest slide by under the Puma’s front windshield, the mid-morning sun beating down through the break in the clouds. Below, the thick triple canopy reminded me of a lawn with lumps in it. I glanced at Travis, and he gave me a nod. Arlen had implied that Travis was the keeper of all information on this trip; in other words, he knew everything I didn’t. Given that I knew dick, that made him a regular Einstein by comparison. I flicked a switch on the comm panel to have a private word with him.

  ‘So, be honest, Colonel. When did you know about this Goma gig?’ I asked him.

  ‘It wasn’t a firm arrangement. I was only told that it might happen.’

  ‘And why were you told to say nothing about it?’

  ‘Because it looked like Leila might say no to the whole trip if she got wind of it.’

  ‘Which reminds me, the base at Cyangugu – that’s supposed to be a secret, right? Why were she and Twenny Fo permitted into the inner circle?’

  ‘They were approached by the Pentagon. I think the concert at Goma is what this gig was all about from the beginning. Promises had been made.’

  ‘To the French?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, a peace offering.’

  ‘I didn’t know we were at war with them.’

  ‘We’re not – at least not at the moment. But we weren’t on good terms here in Africa a little while back. Our Army shot at theirs during the Rwandan civil war and the French shot back.’

  That was a new one on me. ‘What do you know about Cyangugu and the army we’re schooling there?’ I asked.

  ‘Not a lot. I’m PR, not foreign relations.’

  ‘You’ll know more than I do.’

  ‘They told you. They’re CNDP – National Congress for the Defense of the People.’

  ‘Yeah, but who are they?’

  ‘Ethnic Tutsi. Mostly drawn from tribesmen across the border in the Congo.’

  ‘We’re training Congolese soldiers in Rwanda who then go back across the border to fight in the DRC?’

  ‘Their enemy is the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, otherwise known as the FDLR, the ones who fed Rwanda after the civil war. They’re Hutus.’

  ‘Sounds messy.’

  ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

  ‘What about the civilians back there? Lockhart’s friends. The Swedish guy from the gold company and his simian buddy – White, I think his name was.’

  ‘Expat businessmen. Maybe they helped Lockhart get his job done down there.’

  ‘What can you tell me about Goma?’

  ‘The UN has twenty thousand peacekeepers in the DRC – it’s their biggest peacekeeping force anywhere in the world, but they’re largely ineffectual. The DRC’s as big as Western Europe, and the UN would need four times that number to do the job. Goma was besieged several years back by the CNDP and things got ugly. I’m told that there are several big refugee camps there.’

  ‘Besieged by the people we’re training?’

  ‘We weren’t training them back then.’

  A clusterfuck if ever there was one.

  ‘Sorry about the obfuscation,’ he added.

  ‘Was OSI in on it?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not as far as I know. AFRICOM likes to keep everyone bumping into each other. They don’t call this the “dark continent” for nothing.’

  At least Arlen was off the hook.

  ‘Well, if you don’t mind,’ he said, ‘I’m going to try to get some shut-eye. It has been a long night.’

  ‘Sleep tight,’ I told him. I reached up and switched the intercom back.

  Travis closed his eyes and rested his head against the quilted vinyl that lined the aircraft’s insides.

  ‘So, Capitaine. What’s your base like?’ I leaned forward and asked LeDuc, fighting a yawn. ‘The facilities and so forth.’

  ‘Goma – she is the Paris of small, muddy African bases,’ he said, turning to grin at me.

  ‘How does it compare with Cyangugu?’

  ‘There is no comparison. Your camp is uncivilized. Where is the fresh bread? Where are the croissants? In the bakery department, I tell you, Americans do not know merde from clay.’

  I twisted around and checked on the payload. Ayesha, Leila, and Shaquand were sitting shoulder to shoulder behind Travis. The singer and her girls were more sensibly dressed now, wearing US Army wet weather jackets and ball caps. Leila was asleep between Ayesha and Shaquand, her head resting against her make-up artist’s, wearing a Chanel eye mask and with yellow plugs in her ears. Across the aisle, Twenny Fo and Peanut were seated in one row with Boink behind them in a row to himself, lots of brand names and gold chains between them. Lined up across the back of the aircraft was the loadmaster whose name I couldn’t pronounce, Cassidy, Rutherford, West and Ryder. Including myself, our party numbered twelve. Almost everyone behind me was either asleep or dozing. The POS-to-principal ratio wasn’t ideal, but it was better than it might have been.

  I took a deep breath, put my head back and closed my eyes.

  ‘WHAT WAS THAT?’ SAID a voice in my headset. The statement woke me up. Almost immediately after I opened my eyes, I felt g-forces load up, pushing me down into the seat. The aircraft was in a tight turn. I opened my eyes and saw that LeDuc and Fournier were talking heatedly to each other. I checked my watch. The mood on the flight deck had done a one-eighty from relaxed and cheery sometime in the last ten minutes. I leaned into the space between the pilots and flicked the comms switch. ‘So how are we doing?’ I asked them.

  LeDuc ignored the question and snapped at the co-pilot. Then both of them began attacking a multitude of switches on the central and overhead consoles. And was that a warning bell I was hearing? I wasn’t sure about the specifics, but a warning bell accompanied by a sea of red lights was a problem in any language, especially when it happened in a chopper at seven thousand feet.

  The pilots worked fast, reading dials and throwing switches, trying to get on top of whatever the situation was. They got a massive hint when one of the engines suddenly flamed out.

  Shit! ‘Harnesses!’ I shouted behind me. ‘Check your harnesses!’

  Through the headset and over the engine and rotor noise, I heard screams and shouting.

  The aircraft lurched to one side; then the second engine coughed and backfired. The Puma was dropping into a spiral. LeDuc and Fournier were now shouting at each other – swearing or running checklists, I couldn’t tell. The chopper tipped down into a spiral dive. Then the second turbine stopped completely. Now it was the loadmaster’s turn to yell. My rough translation was that we were all going to die.

  ‘Mayday Mayday Mayday,’ yelled one of the pilots. ‘MONUC flight zero six, MONUC flight zero six for Goma . . .’

  Everyone in the chopper was screaming, but I switched off at that point and closed my eyes. Two chopper crashes I’d experienced in Afghanistan had prepared me for what would come next. At least I was strapped in this time. My head was pushed violently from side to side by the forces acting on the aircraft. The airflow shrieked. Correction – that was the girls.

  I was suddenly jammed down into my seat. That meant the pilots had lift from the airflow rushing through the spinning main rotor; they still had some control. That was good news. We were slowin
g, the nose coming up. We were going to be okay.

  And then we hit.

  My head slammed forward into my chest. The harness compressed my ribcage in an instant and air blasted from my lungs. Through it all I heard crumpling sounds like a car in a compactor. All went quiet as the chopper dipped forward and back, rocking. Then something snapped and the helo plunged forward, nose down. A weight came crashing through the centre of the cabin – a person. Whoever it was smashed through the Perspex windscreen and vanished into the blackness below. The air filled with the smell of garden clippings as all manner of metal debris from the back of the aircraft hurtled past me. And then something—

  I REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS FACING downhill. The air in the cabin was filled with the smell of shredded leaves and the sound of warning bells. A headache thumped behind my eyes. I could hear people groaning. And then our world lurched again and dropped several feet with a tortured, gouging, scraping whine of metal under intense strain.

  An object slapped me hard in the side of my face. I turned as far as the harness would allow and saw that the branch of a tree had speared through the observation window behind me.

  I was coming to the conclusion that the ride hadn’t quite finished when something else broke with a loud crack, and the Puma plunged, smashing through more branches, which obliterated most of what was left of the windshield. The nose of the aircraft hit something solid and immovable at an angle and the instant deceleration snapped my head forward again, the harness winding me a second time. And then, rolling slowly, the aircraft tipped lazily onto its side and came to rest like a large dead animal.

  All motion ceased.

  After a brief silence, people started groaning again.

  I just sat, taking a moment to come to grips with what had happened. But then the smell of hot jet fuel permeated the shock and gave my brain a kick-start. Get out get out get out . . . I ripped off the headset and patted myself down, first mentally, then physically. All I found were bruises. Blood dripping on my shoulder caused me to look upward. I jumped up unsteadily. It was Travis, hanging out of the seat by his harness. A deep, ragged slice ran from his shoulder up the side of his head. Jesus . . . his skull was cracked open. I didn’t need to check his pulse, but I did anyway, confirming that I hadn’t needed to check his pulse.

  Shaquand, Leila, and Ayesha were behind him, hanging down, also suspended by their harnesses. Ayesha and Leila had their hands over their mouths, screaming as the numbing effects of the wild ride they’d just survived wore off. I counted twelve PAX. The right number. So who’d gone through the windshield? I did a recount. Shit, of all people, it was the loadmaster. Either his harness hadn’t been fastened properly, or it had failed. If anyone was a candidate for a broken harness, I figured it would have been Boink, but the big man was still buckled in, slowly shaking his head from side to side with his eyes closed, no doubt hoping this was all a bad dream.

  In the back of the cabin, Cassidy dropped out of his seat onto Rutherford below him.

  ‘Fuck,’ I heard Rutherford say.

  ‘Shaquand! Someone help her!’ Leila screamed.

  Ayesha was sobbing hysterically. Shaquand, seated beside Leila, wasn’t moving. I stepped over to her, careful not to fall. The tree branch that had gone through the side of the Puma had impaled the woman through the collarbone and continued through the skin of the aircraft. Her eyes were open and placid. I closed them.

  Blood had spattered over Leila’s jacket. I checked the singer; she was all in one piece. I hit the harness release and supported her weight, then helped her down and out of the seat and sat her on the floor.

  I checked Ayesha next. She was shaking but nothing was punctured or broken. I hit the release and lifted her down, her body racked with sobs.

  ‘You’re okay,’ I told her. ‘You hear me?’ I rubbed her arms up and down. Her eyes looked into mine, and the sobbing ebbed. ‘You need to focus so that we can get you and Leila out of here. She’s going to depend on you, okay?’

  Ayesha nodded.

  I crouched in front of Leila.

  ‘You all right?’ I asked.

  She gazed at me unresponsive, in shock.

  LeDuc and Fournier fell out of the cockpit behind me. I turned briefly and saw LeDuc’s face smeared with blood from injuries to his nose and mouth. The aircrew was damn lucky to be alive as the Puma’s nose was flatter than a wristwatch, squashed from its impact with the ground.

  ‘Get them out – hurry,’ LeDuc gasped, breathless, coming up on all fours.

  The smell of jet fuel was heavy in the air, overpowering. I scoped the situation. Getting out was easier said than done. At first glance, the Puma appeared to be a sealed coffn.

  ‘Le panneau,’ said LeDuc. ‘The hatch.’ He pointed at what was now the ceiling.

  I left Leila with Ayesha, climbed up the floor, now a wall, then reached across and threw back the hatch’s locking mechanism. Swinging out, I kicked the handle, hoping the door would slide open, but the rails it was mounted on were bent out of alignment. The hatch was jammed shut.

  ‘Cassidy,’ I called out. He stood, shaky on his feet.

  I made a gesture that could loosely be interpreted as get your shit together. He nodded, gave Rutherford a hand out of his seat, then checked West and Ryder before coming forward to see how Twenny Fo, Boink, and Peanut were doing.

  The rapper and Boink were moving their heads and arms slowly, their movements oddly disconnected from the situation, as if they were in zero gravity. Peanut appeared to be unconscious. West gave him a shake and he opened his eyes.

  ‘C’mon,’ I yelled at my team. ‘Move it!’

  The only exit possible was through the cockpit’s smashed front windshield.

  ‘There!’ I pointed forward.

  Rutherford scrambled past me, climbed into the cockpit over the center floor console and kicked out the remaining Perspex.

  ‘Duke, you get the principals clear once they’re outside,’ I said, sending him through.

  There was a lot of hot metal in those turbines. We didn’t have a lot of time before this crate blew.

  Cassidy lifted Leila in his arms and passed her through the limited space into Rutherford’s waiting hands. Next was Ayesha. Twenny Fo pushed Peanut ahead and then jumped out after him. Boink climbed through the space on his hands and knees, but his gut became wedged between the pilot and co-pilot’s chairs. Cassidy and I put a shoulder to each butt cheek and shunted him free.

  ‘LeDuc, got a medical kit on board?’ I asked the Frenchman.

  ‘Down the back. I get it. You go. It is my ship. Henri and I are last off.’

  Fournier agreed, grim-faced.

  This was one argument I was happy to lose. I tapped Cassidy on the shoulder.

  ‘Go!’

  The big sergeant didn’t need to be told twice. I had a last look at Shaquand and Travis. There was nothing we could do for them. I snatched off the colonel’s dog tags and leaped after Cassidy. Stumbling over the windshield frame, I came down heavily onto the ground, which was covered by torn tree branches and shredded leaf litter. Lying beside me was the loadmaster who’d shot out of the Puma to his death. I got to my feet and looked down at him. The man’s body was crumpled, his legs and arms splayed out at impossible angles. His eyes were open, and he’d bitten off the end of his tongue. I pulled his tags and stuffed them into my pocket.

  Whump. Heat warmed the side of my face. A fire had burst into life on the far side of the chopper. Flames illuminated the metal around the main rotor housing. Hot kerosene fumes fooded my nostrils. The flames built quickly, searching for more fuel. Pretty soon they were going to find it.

  ‘LeDuc,’ I yelled into the chopper. ‘Get out!’

  I saw two desperate shadows tangling together as they scrambled into the cockpit. LeDuc shouted something at Fournier.

  A small explosion shuddered the Puma’s airframe and a cover blew off part of the fuselage. It spun through the air and smacked with a crumpling sound into a tree. A hand r
eached out of the cockpit. I grabbed hold of it and pulled, and Fournier tumbled clear, rolling some way down the hill.

  The flames were rising ten feet into the air on the far side of the fuselage. The heat was now searing my skin. The tanks were going to blow any second.

  ‘LeDuc!’ I screamed into the chopper.

  A white plastic case with a red cross on it flew through the opening, followed by a man. LeDuc. I grabbed him, took hold of his clothing and heaved him down the hill after Fournier. I took a running leap away from the wreckage at the instant the ground beneath my feet shifted. An explosion rent the air and a shockwave followed that lifted and hurled me down the hill into a screen of dense wet bush. Burning fuel fell around us along with chunks of metal. I covered my head beneath my arm and lay where I landed, waiting for the shower of metal and faming jet fuel to bury me. Then my nose picked up something other than kerosene burning. I lifted my head. It was LeDuc. He was only a handful of feet away and his legs were on fire.

  LeDuc jack-knifed when he realized that he’d become a Roman candle. He rolled and slapped at the flames while I jumped up and doused them with handfuls of wet leaf litter and earth.

  When the flames were extinguished, we both lay there in the bush, exhausted, the fire-retardant flight suit protecting the French pilot’s legs steaming and smoking along with my Nomex gloves. We caught our breath watching the chopper burn twenty meters up the hill, the heat from the inferno only just bearable.

  I got to my feet eventually and held out a smoking hand to LeDuc.

  ‘Merci, mon ami,’ he said, hoisting himself up.

  I handed him the tags taken from the dead loadmaster. LeDuc accepted them, unzipped a small backpack hanging off one shoulder and dropped them into it.

  ‘Claude was a good man,’ the Frenchman said. ‘Married to a local woman in Goma. One child.’