Ghost Watch Read online

  Cassidy and Rutherford had left the terminal and were jogging across the apron toward the aircraft. Perhaps I was being overly cautious with all this escorting, but I didn’t know this place and losing al-Eqbal was a good lesson, especially for al-Eqbal.

  I went back inside the aircraft. ‘Do you mind?’ I asked the attendant again, motioning at the handset.

  ‘Please,’ she replied.

  I told the passengers to make their way to the forward exit and stood back on the landing. They filed past as I did a head count. Almost all of the staging crew were male, and even the ones who weren’t, looked male. Black jeans and old t-shirts predominated, as did dreadlocks, tattoos, and piercings. The dancers among them were easy to pick out, being the ones wearing deodorant. I totaled twenty-three persons, the right number. Then I went through the cabin checking seats, galleys, and lavatories. All clear.

  Cassidy, Rutherford, and I escorted this second group into the terminal, getting them inside just as the clouds above us burst open with a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder. Blinding rain came down like buckets of six-inch nails. Inside the hut, the downpour was deafening. As the Boeing was towed to a far corner of the parking area, a tractor pulled up outside the front door with the luggage in a covered trailer.

  There was plenty of tension in the room. Twenny and his buddies occupied one side of the terminal, while Leila and her girls took the other. Were we about to have a dance-off?

  ‘If I could have everyone’s attention,’ I called out. The room settled down. ‘My name’s Vin Cooper. I’ll be managing the security arrangements. We don’t think there’ll be any need for special precautions, but the Pentagon does a lot of unnecessary things, right?’

  I grinned at a sea of blank faces that remained blank.

  ‘Yo, Mister Army. Head of security for Mister Fo is me,’ said Boink, folding his arms, head on a tilt. ‘I say who does what, dig?’

  I blinked a couple of times.

  ‘Don’t think for a moment I’m getting on no helicopter with that,’ Leila said.

  By ‘that’, she meant Twenny Fo, because she was pointing at him.

  Ayesha and Shaquand stood behind her defiantly, chins jutting.

  ‘Well, you know, the feeling is mutual, bitch,’ said Boink.

  ‘You wanna piece a this?’ said Shaquand, flicking Twenny and his cohorts the bird.

  ‘I wouldn’t touch you bitches with rubbers on my fingers, yo,’ said Snatch.

  I glanced at Travis, who again mouthed the word ‘interesting’.

  Weren’t Twenny Fo and Leila supposed to be slurping each other’s juices? The room was suddenly full of shouting. I found Cassidy in the crowd, and he shrugged at me. I whistled hard, the piercing note cutting through the squabbling like an oxy torch through ice.

  ‘Okay, then we’ll go with plan B,’ I said in the sullen silence and with a hand gesture drew an invisible line down the middle of the room. ‘We’ve got two choppers inbound. Everyone on this half goes in one, the rest of you go in the other. Twenny Fo and Leila – either myself or one of my team will be accompanying you at all times. Apologies if that inconveniences you at all, but we have our rules.’

  Boink shook his head and turned away, either not happy with the arrangements or displeased that I hadn’t consulted him. Twenny Fo sidled up to him and had a quiet word, a hand reaching up and resting on the big man’s shoulder.

  ‘Can we just go and get this shit over with?’ said Leila, addressing me, a hand on her hip.

  I went across to her. She avoided eye contact. ‘Ma’am, we’ll be lifting off as soon as we can,’ I said. ‘We haven’t had an opportunity for personal introductions – Vin Cooper.’ Still no eye contact from the woman. I held out my hand to shake and she left it in midair. I let my hand drop. ‘It’s a pleasure to be working with you.’

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ she said as she walked off.

  Twenny Fo sauntered over. ‘I was right ’bout choo, man. Choo one bad motherfucker,’ he grinned. ‘That’s why y’all here – keep that bitch an’ her bitches in line, you feel me?’

  I missed the Taliban. I could shoot them.

  Cyangugu

  Changed into full battle rattle, I rejoined Travis watching two United Nations SA 330 Pumas hovering a dozen feet off the ground on pillows of water thrown up by their main rotors’ downwash. They were maneuvering into the space vacated by the Boeing. The lieutenant colonel glanced at a sheaf of paperwork in his hand and said, ‘Our contact is a French Armée de l’Air capitaine by the name of André LeDuc.’

  Cassidy, West, Rutherford and Ryder joined us.

  ‘Bloody frogs,’ said Rutherford.

  ‘Cy, you’re with me in one chopper with Twenny and his people,’ I said. ‘Lex, Mike, Duke – you got the women in the other.’

  The guy with the wands was back out there again, now in a bright yellow spray jacket. He brought the choppers in quite close to the terminal, then directed them to kick sideways so that their side doors were facing us. The blue Pumas settled on their wheels with a couple of light bounces and blasted the hut’s windows with a fine mist of water. ‘MONUC’ was painted on their sides in large white letters, which I knew from Arlen’s briefing notes was the acronym for Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo – a mouthful for the French-led United Nation’s effort in these parts. The side door of the nearest chopper slid open, and two men in dark gray flight suits made a dash for the door of the hut, which Travis opened for them.

  ‘Alors, il pleut à verse, non?’ the man who won the race said, running his hands through black unkempt hair.

  ‘What’d he say?’ I asked Travis.

  ‘He said it’s raining hard.’

  ‘Oui,’ the Frenchman agreed. He wiped his hand down the side of his flight suit and held it out to shake.

  ‘Capitaine André LeDuc,’ he said, the name confirmed by a patch on his suit. ‘And this is Lieutenant Henri Fournier, my co-pilot.’

  We all shook.

  Being somewhere between a midget and merely short, LeDuc was the right height for a pilot, and swarthy in that southern European way. He was either growing a beard or had forgotten to shave, I wasn’t sure which. His black hooded eyes were the same color as his hair, their whites red. He also smelled like the shower he just got jogging from his aircraft to the hut had been his first in a while. Fournier was similarly groomed, but taller and coffee-colored. If I had to guess, I’d say one of his parents was white.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ I asked them.

  ‘We have to. You fly, it is the law,’ said LeDuc. ‘Parlez-vous Français?’ he asked me in return.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Fucking Americans. You are as bad as the English.’

  ‘Worse,’ I said. ‘And proud of it.’

  The capitaine laughed, as did his co-pilot.

  LeDuc asked me. ‘You are security?’

  ‘No, I always dress like this,’ I said.

  The smile stayed on his lips as he reviewed Travis’s paperwork. ‘So, ’ow many passenger do we ’ave?’

  ‘Thirty-five in total,’ said Travis, ‘as originally planned.’

  LeDuc surveyed the crowd in the room. ‘Bon.’

  ‘Seventeen in one chopper, eighteen in the other,’ the colonel suggested.

  ‘They ’ave les bagages?’ LeDuc asked.

  ‘There.’ With a nod, Travis indicated the covered trailer on the apron.

  ‘Alors,’ he said. ‘ We will get it on the aircraft first, non?’

  Fournier ran out into the rain to make it happen and whistled to his crew. A man appeared in the side door of the Puma. The lieutenant shouted instructions at him and he shouted at the wand guy. Chain of command in action.

  The wand guy disappeared around the corner and an elderly black man arrived soon after, wearing a green reflective vest over a dark blue cardigan, dusty gray pants and an old peaked cap. He walked over, under the eaves of the hut, and then slowly pu
lled himself into the tractor’s driver’s seat. The vehicle belched smoke as he fired it up and drove the luggage out to the Pumas.

  Soon after, with the loading complete, Rutherford, Ryder, and West accompanied Leila’s people to the furthest aircraft. Cassidy and I herded Twenny Fo’s entourage and the balance of the support crew into LeDuc’s machine.

  We were airborne within twenty minutes, heading generally west. With some elevation I could see that Kigali, the Rwandan capital, was only a large village with few substantial buildings and almost no paved roads; at least, not where the airport was situated.

  We flew low, not more than two thousand feet above the ground. The Rwandan countryside was a monotony of treetops, scrub, and rust-colored earth punctuated here and there with flimsy huts.

  ‘Flying time is under an hour,’ came LeDuc’s voice in my headset. ‘We cannot go as flies the crow today, and I cannot provide you with a precise flight time – there is much of the weather over the mountains to the east of your base.’

  I made no comment and sucked some water from my camelback.

  ‘You have not been to Africa before?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Where do they keep all the lions and tigers?’

  ‘There are no tigers in Africa, except at the zoos. But there are plenty of lions. Your people will be entertaining at Cyangugu?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah. The skinny guy back there in the white baseball cap can rhyme “motherfucker” with almost anything. And Leila, who’s traveling in your other chopper, has a pretty good routine, too.’ Here I was referring specifically to those things she could do with her ass.

  ‘Yes, those two are big news in France also. I mean, no concerts other than the one at Cyangugu? It is a long way to come for one performance.’

  ‘Yes, it is, unless the schedule has changed. Travis, has the schedule changed?’

  ‘No, no. Not as far as I know,’ he said.

  I examined his face. All those ‘no’s suggested a yes but he gave nothing away, so I turned to see how my principal was getting on. The rapper was asleep. On the seat across the aisle, Cassidy’s head was at an angle and I couldn’t see his eyes behind his glasses. ‘How’s it going, Cy?’ I asked.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘How’s it going with you, sir?’

  ‘Good,’ I said. Glad we’d settled that, although Cassidy’s manner, tone and body language hinted at his true feelings about Air Force guys – that we were a life form elevated only slightly above bugs.

  I did my best to ignore Boink, who’d been giving me a disapproving glare from the moment we boarded, daring me to contest his authority as Twenny Fo’s chief protector. Beside him, Peanut was staring out the window, his knees knocking together while he pointed excitedly at something of interest below, his eyes wide with wonder.

  In the row behind them, Snatch was sitting forward in his seat, wringing his hands, body twitching as if he had Tourette’s. Any second now he was going to shout ‘fucknuts’ or something. Either that or he had a phobia about flying. If so, I could relate, having had one of those once.

  I looked back through the front windshield over LeDuc’s shoulder. ‘Hey, ever crash in one of these things?’ I asked him.

  ‘French helicopters never go down,’ he replied.

  ‘Unlike French women, right?’

  No response from LeDuc.

  One thing I know how to do is get along with foreigners.

  LeDUC GUIDED THE PUMA into a descending arc. Out the front window, steady rain was falling from a solid horizontal wall of black cloud cover. Camp Come Together was laid out ahead of us like any temporary base I’d ever seen on the front lines – everything prefab in neat rows set among heaps of boxes, drums, broken concrete, and rusting machine parts, all safely tucked behind a perimeter fence of coiled razor wire. This one, though, appeared to be sinking in a sea of orange mud.

  The welcoming committee, standing next to the chopper pad, turned their backs on the Puma’s downwash as the aircraft bounced and then settled on the steel matting. Snatch lunged for the exit door, which earned him a palm in the face from the French loadmaster who commanded him to sit.

  ‘Yo, Snatch. Be cool, man,’ Boink called out, stepping into his hall monitor role.

  As soon as the aircraft was shut down, the loadmaster slid the door open. The air rushed in. It smelled foreign, laced with hot aviation fuel, the tang of rainwater, sodden earth, wet cooking fires and trash. Beyond the pad, I could see men ambling around in jungle-pattern fatigues I didn’t recognize. Their pants were soaked black by the rain and streaked with orange mud.

  A man with a large bald head, rusty-gray mustache and heavy black-rimmed glasses shouted through the open door. ‘I’m Colonel Firestone. Welcome to Camp Come Together, Cyangugu,’ he said. ‘Where’s Lieutenant Colonel Travis?’

  Travis removed his headset, fired up a smile, ripped off a salute and led with a handshake as he made his way toward the door. ‘Colonel,’ he said, jumping down onto the matting. ‘Have we got a show for you, sir.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent. Good flight?’

  ‘First class all the way,’ Travis said, full of baloney.

  I thanked LeDuc for the transport and then followed Travis, Cassidy instructing the principals to stay put.

  Firestone was accompanied by his own entourage, a mix of civilians and US Army and local officers who’d come to ogle the celebrities.

  I approached the colonel and said, ‘Special Agent Vin Cooper, sir – Security Team Leader.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Now, are you the same Vin Cooper we’ve been reading about in the news lately?’ Firestone asked, shaking my hand.

  ‘I think so, sir.’

  ‘You think so. You’re not sure? Is there another Vin Cooper up for the Air Force Cross? How many of you could there be?’

  ‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ I said, giving him the smile he was after. Full colonels are allowed to have a lame sense of humor – comes with the bird. I turned to Cassidy and signaled at him to disembark the principals from the Puma.

  Twenny Fo hopped down from the chopper, followed by Boink, who made the maneuver look difficult. Peanut came next, staring open-mouthed at the new surroundings, as if he’d been catapulted into a fantasy. Snatch followed, looking pale, with Cassidy right behind him. Travis herded them away from the chopper toward Colonel Firestone.

  The humidity had frosted up the colonel’s lenses like they were beer glasses. ‘Have to apologize for the weather,’ the colonel said to Travis. ‘Wet season came later than usual this year, and it’s still hanging around.’

  ‘Colonel, allow me to introduce Twenny Fo, our headliner,’ Travis said, bringing him forward, his arm around, but not quite touching, the star’s shoulders.

  ‘Mr Twenny Fo. Well, I’m a big fan,’ said Firestone.

  Somehow I doubted it.

  ‘Dis be the land of my forebears, you feel me? Dis be my dream. You want any special songs, Gen’ral, just tell my people, yo.’

  Colonel Firestone cleared whatever it was that had stuck in his throat and said, ‘Well thank you, thank you very much. That’s very gracious of you. You can call me Colonel.’

  Standing behind Twenny were his bloods, definitely fish out of water, or, in Boink’s case, beached whale.

  ‘Twenny, why don’t you introduce your assistants?’ Travis said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the star, ‘I was gonna. The big man here is Boink. He be my security man. Snatch – he take care of my bidness. An dis here is Peanut. I take care of Peanut, ’cause Peanut ain’t so good at takin’ care o’ hisself, you feel me?’

  Boink and Snatch were standing side by side. Boink had his arms folded, detached and above it all. Peanut smiled and tore off a thumbnail.

  ‘Wonderful, wonderful. Well, I’m pleased to meet y’all, too,’ said Firestone, hurriedly shaking each of their hands. ‘Y’know, we’re doing some great work here to help freedom take root in Africa.’

  The noise from the arrival of the second Puma, carrying L
eila’s troop, obliterated all conversation. I turned to watch its arrival just as a burst of rain fell as hard as marbles from the low black sky.

  ‘Let’s get you folks out of the weather,’ Firestone shouted over the roar of the chopper’s turbine and rotor noise.

  Firestone led the way, trotting over to a hangar at the edge of the helipad. I scoped it as a matter of course and saw that it was mostly empty. The only activity going on inside was the servicing of an old Mi-8 Soviet helicopter, one of its engines lying in pieces on the floor. A couple of mechanics were standing over the oily puzzle, scratching their heads as if they didn’t know where to start. No threat here, except perhaps to that aircraft’s next payload.

  Colonel Firestone brought his VIPs over to meet my principal.

  ‘If you don’t mind, Mr Twenny, I have some introductions of my own,’ he said.

  ‘Meet your people be my pleasure,’ the rapper said, with a lopsided smile.

  ‘This is Colonel Olivier Biruta of the National Congress for the Defense of the People, and his second in command, Major Jean Claude Ntahobali. Colonel Biruta commands the CNDP brigade currently in training here.’

  ‘Please t’ meet choo, brother,’ Twenny Fo said, unsure about what he should do next – bow or shake hands. He settled on both. The rapper seemed genuinely overwhelmed by the occasion.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Boink, joining in, giving the colonel and his offsider some kind of homie salute, sliding his hand diagonally across his chest with thumb, forefinger, and pinky prominent. ‘Real pleased.’

  Biruta smiled broadly, showing receding gums and very large teeth. He was tall and slim, with skin the color and luster of liquorice, his face almost perfectly divided in half by a scar that ran nearly as straight as a desert road from his forehead to his chin, leaving a grooved trench down the middle of his nose. Biruta’s XO, Commandant Ntahobali, was equally thin and black, though not as tall as his boss. A three-inch chunk of flesh was missing from the muscles of his right forearm, where a badly applied skin graft had created an ugly pink raised keloid scar. Both men had the detachment of soldiers who’d seen far too much.