‘So how’re we going to pull this off?’ I asked. ‘Any thoughts?’
‘Use the night,’ Cassidy said.
WEST AND I KEPT watch, hunkered down in a patch of the elephant grass bordering the grassy knoll. There was only one way up that we knew of, and that was via the steps cut into the limestone wall. First port of call for Lissouba’s scouts would be this relatively open ground, same as it was for Rutherford and me when we first arrived. Meanwhile, the rest of our band was heading to the thick rainforest bordering the plantation, where there was also plenty of bamboo for Cassidy’s purposes. Leila, I knew, would take one look at the berry-laden thorn bush coiled up there like razor wire that we wanted her and our other principals to hide in and refuse to take another step. But that was Rutherford’s problem, or Cassidy’s, or Ryder’s, or maybe even Twenny’s, if the guy were prepared to step up. I was happy to leave them to it. Hanging out in the long wet grass with insects, snakes and frogs, waiting for Lissouba and his killers, was a far more appealing option. It had been dusk for a while when West, whose angle on things encompassed a view of the limestone wall and was thus better than mine, raised a finger to inform me that the recon party had arrived. A dozen seconds later he displayed two fingers – two scouts. The first guy, skinny and crouched over almost double, came into my view; he was carrying an M16 but not a lot else. Traveling light. His slightly taller, but equally fyweight, buddy walked into my line of sight a few moments later. Though obviously on edge, given the way they gripped their guns – tightly, like they were handrails in a fast-moving train – both men moved well, their heads achieving an owl-like range of movement. They spent some minutes surveying the knoll, though they avoided coming into the elephant grass. Satisfied that the area was clear of threat, they found the trail into the rainforest and slunk into the darkness collected under the canopy. I shifted an arm, getting ready to stand, and West urgently held up a finger, followed thirty seconds later by a second. Two more men had arrived, uniformed twins of the first pair, and crouched in the middle of the knoll for several minutes before skulking off on the double along the path that led to the village of the damned.
We had no choice but to stay put and wait, just in case a third pair of scouts might pop up. This is, in fact, what happened, but with a variation. This time it was one guy on his own and he didn’t waste time checking out the knoll, probably fguring that the scouts preceding him had done it, but immediately made a beeline for the rainforest. Jesus, crafty bastards. The first pair of scouts was a decoy for the second pair, and all were decoys for Tailend Charlie here. This was a bad situation. The more recent arrivals meant that we would lose touch with the first pair of scouts, and the second pair would likewise get a good head start.
There was sudden movement beside me – West. He jumped up and threw his Ka-bar at Tailend. The blade shimmered through the twilight like a steel bird, impaled the guy’s left arm against his chest with a solid thud before he had time to react. West followed the knife, running at the man and hitting him with a flying tackle a split second later, taking him to ground. I ran at a crouch toward them from the elephant grass, grabbed the scout’s shirt collar and helped West drag him to the opposite side of the knoll and into the bush. West dropped the mag from the man’s rifle and stuffed it into his webbing.
‘And then there were four,’ he whispered, feeling for a pulse in the African’s neck and not finding one. He extracted his knife and wiped the blade on the man’s shirt. We wasted no time and ran to the section of rainforest that separated the knoll from the banana trees, where the other scouts had gone. We caught up with the second pair by the time they were a third of the way through the forest. The light was fading fast, like it does at the movies before the picture starts. The trees were alive with small monkeys, and the noise they made masked the fact that West and I were moving at a trot to get ahead of the second FARDC recon party.
We took a position either side of a bend in the path as it bisected a thicket of umbrella palms, and waited. The two Congolese crept by, so close I could see the sweat glistening on their skin and smell their body odor, a powerful unwashed smell that was sour and distinctly human, spiced with stale smoke from cheap tobacco. The men were moving slow, not talking, making a judgment call on each step, carefully placing their boots on the ground, expecting something was going to happen. They were right. One of the men was shaking, either from fever or nerves, I couldn’t tell. Maybe he was clairvoyant and could see his life coming to an end within the next few seconds.
And suddenly something moved in the bush close to where West was crouched and the men began firing into the shadows wrapped around the sergeant’s position. Their rifles spat death in the darkness, the Africans shouting over the rapid sound of their own gunfire cracking away on full auto. They sprayed away till their chambers came up empty. And then a pig broke cover and squealed in agony and fright as it ran down the path on its two front legs, its back bloody and broken, dragging its limp body behind. West leaped from a different set of shadows and jumped on the first shooter, taking him down like he was prey. My target stood his ground but shook like he’d spent the night in the freezer. I rushed him and kicked his legs out from under him so that he fell heavily onto his back, where he lay still with his eyes closed but mouth open.
‘Yours is still breathing,’ said West panting, standing over the African at his feet. The man’s neck had an odd kink in it.
I checked the pulse on my guy. He had one. I felt the back of his head. His hair was soaked with sweat and gritty with dirt and leaves, but there was no blood, no broken skin, no depression in the back of his skull. He’d hit his head on a gnarled tree root growing up through the compacted mud. ‘Out cold,’ I concluded. I checked him for ammo. Again, just the one mag. I knew what West would want me to do with him. ‘He’s going to be out for a while. We can do everything we need to do before he comes back.’
‘You the man, sir.’
I could tell he didn’t agree with the man’s decision.
We dragged both men off the path deep into the rainforest and covered them with palm leaves.
‘Look,’ said West, holding a bag made from recycled plastic sheeting tied around the African’s neck with a shoelace.
Mine had one too, though his was made of cotton cloth tied with sinew.
‘Superstitious bastards,’ West observed.
‘Yeah,’ I said, sucking in air, the adrenalin only just starting to ebb away.
‘Two to go.’
‘Where’d the pig come from?’ I asked.
‘Dunno. It was just there – turned up out of nowhere. I moved my foot and gave it a scare. Our shooters here were jumpy as hell.’
West was damn lucky and we both knew it. The broken back could just as easily have been his.
A familiar low whistle came from the direction of the path.
‘You expecting company?’ I asked West.
‘Nope.’
I looked hard but couldn’t see anyone. Then a familiar shape bobbed up and signaled, ‘on me.’ I couldn’t see a face in the dark but knew it was Cassidy. West and I, staying low and quiet, made our way over to him.
‘How many you accounted for?’ Cassidy asked, keeping his voice low.
‘Three,’ West replied.
‘I found two in the banana trees.’
‘Where are they now?’ I whispered.
‘Meeting their maker, whoever that is around here.’
‘Then that’s everyone accounted for,’ said West.
‘Five scouts?’
I nodded. ‘This Lissouba guy has been around. He staggered them. We didn’t expect to see you.’
‘The forest is the place to ambush the main force, where the trail splits. We hit them, fall back, hit them again. We can’t let them advance to the plantation. Once they reach those trees and the more open ground, with their numbers they’ll spread out and flank us. Boss, how much time we got, you reckon?’
‘It took us three hours to recon the area, travel time included,’ I said.
‘Then let’s give them the same amount of time,’ said Cassidy. ‘We can do a lot in three hours, especially with the stuff you told us about in the barn.’
‘Getting nervous doesn’t mean they’ll come out and fight,’ observed West. ‘Going on past experience, they seem to wait till dawn before they work up to it.’
‘I hope you’re wrong,’ said Cassidy, ‘’cause if you’re right, we might as well show those motherfuckers our jug’lars. We can only handle their numbers on our terms.’
That gave me a thought. ‘Come and get me two hours and forty-five minutes from now – I don’t want to be walking into any of your handiwork.’
‘Where you headed?’ West asked me.
‘Back to the knoll.’
‘Mind telling me what you’re going to do?’ Cassidy asked, checking his watch.
‘Poke Lissouba in the eye,’ I said. ‘See if I can’t provoke a reaction.’
EXACTLY TWO HOURS AND forty-four minutes later – three hours after the first of the scouts appeared – I was looking over the edge of the wall toward the riverbank below. All was quiet, except for my constant companions, the mosquitoes. There were fires down there. A temporary shift in the air brought the smells of cooking up to my swollen nose and saliva filled my mouth the way seawater foods a torpedo tube. I spat onto the ground. I had company with me on the ledge: namely, the last scout Lissouba had sent up, the man West had killed with a knife throw. I had him standing on the edge of the limestone wall, balanced on a single leg. Rigor mortis had set in. I had him on one leg because its partner was bent out at an odd angle and locked in place by the rigor.
I took another look over the edge. A shift in the air took away the cooking smells and replaced them with the aroma of Tailend beside me. I switched to breathing through my mouth. The guy stank. Not his fault – death doesn’t wash – and at least the smell made him easy to find in the almost complete darkness. Once I found him, I brushed the ants off him, dragged him from the elephant grass to this spot and hoisted him to his feet. Correction, foot. The corpse’s arms were locked straight out some distance from the side of his torso. Come to think of it, given his body position, there was a pretty fair swan dive coming up. With a bit of luck, the body would land on someone important, maybe even Lissouba himself, and then the heart would go out of the Africans and everyone would just go on home. Wishful thinking.
‘Sorry for what I’m about to do, pal,’ I whispered. ‘But thanks for helping us out.’
I gave the corpse a shove in the back and over the edge he went, disappearing quickly into the void below. A moment later I heard Cassidy’s familiar dry whistle. He came and stood beside me and looked down.
‘That your poke in the eye?’ he asked. ‘Doing something like that – I wouldn’t have thought a guy like you would have it in you.’
‘What’s a guy like me?’
‘The righteous kind.’
Technically speaking, what I’d just done – desecrating the dead – would have had consequences if witnessed by unsympathetic eyes. The book said it was okay to maim and kill, but once dead, we were expected to leave the corpse in peace and not disturb the flies. But the Congo was like an acid bath that burned through civility. The only rule that seemed to count here was kill or be killed, the original law of the jungle.
‘Don’t worry me none, Cooper.’ Cassidy sucked something from between his teeth. ‘When in Rome, right?’
‘They do this kind of thing there too?’
I heard him grunt.
‘Where are our principals?’ I asked.
‘Where you left them. Nice and cozy, surrounded by bamboo, thorn bush and elephant grass. Boink has overwatch and we’ve armed Twenny for backup to release our guys.’
That meant we had a strike force of five: Cassidy, Rutherford, West, Ryder and me. The thick night air suddenly came alive with shouts and cries carried up to us from the darkness below. Gunshots barked among them. The rainfall was heavy in these parts, but a body coming down through the trees was just a touch heavier than usual. The folks below were mad. We needed them mad enough to make a very bad mistake.
‘We ready?’ I asked Cassidy.
‘I’ll let you know in the morning, if we’re still alive.’
Not the confident reply I’d hoped for, but we had little choice other than to force a showdown. Lissouba’s men could bottle us up, wear us down and sooner or later overwhelm us. Right now, we were as strong as we were going to be. We held the high ground, and we’d also recon-noitered it reasonably thoroughly. We didn’t have numbers but, for a short period of time, we held all the other cards worth holding. The only exit strategy left to us was to maul Lissouba so bad that leaving us alone was his best option. I again mentally went through the odds as we jogged back to the rainforest. Five against fifty, give or take. Only a lunatic would bet on us.
WHEN THEY CAME WITHIN throwing distance, Lissouba’s men tossed grenades up and over the wall and onto the knoll, presumably to clear it. But there was nothing to clear, except maybe a path through the mosquitoes. The knoll was some way from our positions, lying in the mud, curled around tree roots in the rainforest, but we heard the explosions as dull thuds that punctured the night. And we waited.
Maybe it was the lack of resistance that emboldened them, but their first charge through the rainforest was all war cries and wild-ass shooting from the hip. A force of around twenty men swept along the trails, yelling and hooting across a front fifteen to twenty meters wide, straight through the area where Cassidy and West had hung clay pots in the trees over the trails. These pots had around three quarters of a pound of C4 and 350 steel balls distributed between them – about half the business end of our remaining Claymore – and were positioned to provide a short, violent interlocking field of fire. Detonators from the smoke grenades rigged to liana trip wires set them off. They exploded above the FARDC’s heads almost in unison and the hail of steel that beat down on them wounded more than half their number; a couple of them fatally, as far as I could see, from the way they fell.