‘Is good to be here, you know,’ said the rapper. The two men shook hands.
‘Allow me to present my wife, Margaret.’
‘All right,’ said Twenny, leaning forward to take her hand.
The muscles of the first lady’s face were locked in a smile that mimicked a bout of tetanus. She probably didn’t speak English, not that it would’ve helped her much if she did, Twenny’s Baltimore patois being tricky to grasp even for English speakers.
‘These my associates, yo,’ Twenny continued economically. ‘Boink – head security.’
Mr IHOP gave them a nod.
‘This here’s Snatch, my bidness manager. An’ Peanut, who just is. Not his fault – you feel me?’
More nods.
Boink, Peanut, Snatch – Larry, Mo, Curly.
Travis appeared at my shoulder, tall and gangly, with sharp features and the type of pale freckly skin that sprouts melanomas at age forty.
‘Special Agent Cooper,’ he said. ‘It is Major Cooper, isn’t it?’ He leaned forward and read my name tape.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said, standing vaguely at attention.
‘Oh, don’t do that. Too much formality for a rock concert. I’m pleased you could join us. I thought our wires would get crossed and they’d send you to the wrong place or something.’
He obviously worked for the same outfit I did. ‘How was the flight over, sir?’
‘Call me Blair. The word “interesting” just about covers it. You’ll find out why soon enough. As I’m sure you’re aware, we’re running a little behind schedule. Apologies for that. A certain party arrived late and delayed our departure.’
I didn’t have to work hard to figure out who that party might have been.
‘The UN helicopters will be here in about twenty minutes. We need to clear the ramp so they can land, and you should introduce yourself to everyone. Is there a place we can do that?’
‘The hut,’ I said, motioning toward the terminal.
‘Excellent.’
‘How many personnel are still on the plane?’ I asked.
‘Twenty-two.’
Just then, Leila stomped over, storm clouds on her face as dark as the ones above us. Despite her mood, I decided that all those magazine covers hadn’t done her justice. Her olive skin was almost poreless; her eyes the color of emeralds under polished glass; the proportions of her lips and nose, flawless. The only problem I could see was that she knew it.
She ignored me and said to Travis, ‘I didn’t come here to get drenched and catch a cold. My people and I are going inside.’
‘This is Major Cooper,’ said Travis. ‘He’ll be—’
Leila walked off before he finished his sentence.
‘Interesting,’ I said.
Travis nodded. ‘You got it.’
A few heavy droplets of rain broke up the party. An umbrella appeared over the first lady’s head, and she made for the limo. With a final wave, the president followed in her footsteps, motioning at the nanny to saddle up his children. As soon as his car door shut, the honor guard beat a retreat for the truck, along with their submachine gun-carrying buddies. The man who delivered the red carpet rolled it back up and threw it in the trunk. Moments later, the convoy was heading to the far corner of the field.
I walked over to Cassidy and West and exchanged the usual pleasantries. We all shook hands.
‘Let’s get everyone in the terminal,’ I said. ‘Have you briefed them on how we do things?’
‘No, sir,’ said Cassidy. ‘We thought we’d leave that up to you. You know, save on the confusion.’
‘Okay. Once we get our dignitaries secured, we can come back for the personnel still on board.’
Cassidy and West nodded.
‘Send Duke to eyeball the terminal. There’s not much to it, and no one’s home. I’ve already had a look around.’ I glanced over their shoulders and saw that Leila and her troop were already halfway across the ramp. ‘I’d hurry if I were you.’
‘Roger that,’ said West, summing up the situation.
I went up the stairs into the 767 and was met by a dried-out, petite blonde flight attendant.
‘Mind if I use your PA system?’ I asked her.
‘Everything okay?’
‘Yep. Just keeping everyone informed.’
She pulled the handset off its cradle and showed me which button to press.
I thumbed it and said into the mouthpiece, ‘Thank you for your patience, folks. You’ll be disembarked from this aircraft in about five minutes and escorted by your security team to the terminal building. Please collect your belongings and be ready to move.’
I went back onto the stair’s landing. It had stopped spitting. The clouds were teasing us, though the far side of the airfield was covered in a heavy gray mist of rain. A small jolt moved the aircraft. I looked down and saw that a tug had attached itself to the nose wheel.
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.
C
hanged 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 pulled 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.