‘I want in.’
‘We’ve got people on it.’
‘But they’re just people,’ I said.
He snorted. ‘You’ve reminded me. The Article 15 non-judicial punishment. The CO has come to a decision.’
‘And?’
‘He told me to tell you that for pistol whipping Lockhart with your government-issue Sig, you’re going to forfeit one week’s pay.’
I’d gotten off lightly.
‘He also told me to tell you that if you’d clubbed Lockhart with the butt of your M4, he’d have bought you a beer. ’
‘He said that?’
‘Word for word.’
Maybe the old man wasn’t such a bad guy after all.
‘Oh, by the way, apparently you missed out on the Air Force Cross — though you don’t know that. For what it’s worth, I think you deserved to get it and so does Central Command. It’s pissed at the Secretary of the Air Force for turning you down.’
There wasn’t much to regret here. I wasn’t even supposed to know that I could have won it.
‘So instead, you’re getting the Silver Star — next one down. CENT-COM was persistent and the SECAF caved, probably because of all the publicity.’
‘Okay.’ There wasn’t much else to say. The action in Afghanistan was a distant memory. I couldn’t remember most of the details, other than some of the people in my section lost their lives.
‘More importantly, I also heard that you’re now officially one of the world’s sexiest people,’ he said, grinning, the magazine open on the floor in the corner of the room. ‘Don’t they know they’re only encouraging you?’
And I was going to get to a bar while the magazine was still on the newsstands after all. ‘Call me Number Twelve from now on.’
‘Think I’ll stick with Vin.’
‘You wanna drink?’ I asked him as I moved to the kitchenette.
‘No, I’m still on the treadmill.’
‘Tell me about the ransom.’
‘What’s there to tell?’
‘I heard you received a demand three days after we went missing — for Twenny and Leila and no one else.’
‘You heard right. We think they were never going to let anyone get out alive — just take the money and run. At the time the ransom demand came through, Lockhart and Lissouba probably believed everyone not held hostage was already dead.’
‘What about Boink?’ I asked.
‘What about him?’
I took a mouthful of scotch.
‘Oh… right. Well, unfortunately, the only evidence we had for that incident was lost. Damn iPhone.’
I heard movement outside the front door, followed by a knock. ‘Yo, Cooper. You in there, dog?’
Speak of the devil. It was Boink. I opened the door. Leila and Ayesha swept in, followed by Twenny and Boink, who took his bowler hat off but still had to duck to enter.
‘Dere he is!’ said Twenny. We shook, a weird combination of moves that I followed as best I could.
‘Vin!’ said Leila, embracing me, her French perfume doing likewise. ‘We just wanted to come and congratulate you, you know.’
‘Yes, congratulations on the win!’ said Ayesha, pecking me on the cheek.
‘Hey, soldier man,’ said Boink. We bumped knuckles. ‘Congrats, yo.’
I introduced Arlen. When we were done, he excused himself and I saw him to the door. He took a brown envelope from his blouse inside pocket. ‘Have a look when you get a quiet moment.’
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Just have a look. I don’t want to spoil the news,’ he said.
I shrugged, folded the envelope, put it on the kitchenette bench.
My rich and infuential friends didn’t stay long but long enough to tell me that they’d spent a considerable amount of money trying to locate Francis. While not confirmed, they’d only just now received word that he’d been found alive and still had both legs.
‘So you’ve heard that Deryck and I are going to adopt a child from the Congo?’ Leila asked me. Deryck’s diamond flashed on her engagement finger.
‘It’s on the news,’ I said.
‘But what they don’t know yet is that Deryck and I… we’re having a baby.’
‘The ol’ flashioned way, you feel me?’ said Twenny, grinning.
‘We wanted you to be among the first to know,’ she said. ‘It’s a boy. We’re gonna name him after… can you guess?’
‘You’re not going to name him… Cooper,’ I said.
Leila cleared her throat and looked at Twenny, a little embarrassed. ‘Well, no, sorry. I… we… We’re going to name him… Zaire.’
‘After the river,’ I said. The river?
‘Duke and I are also having a baby,’ said Ayesha. ‘Did he tell you?’
‘No, he didn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s congratulations all round!’ The bump told me she had to be three months gone, which put her in the Congo at the time. In fact, Ryder had told me that Ayesha had fallen pregnant because of the rape, but they’d decided to keep it and bring it into the world together. ‘Ayesha wants to break the cycle of violence,’ he told me.
I went into the kitchenette and fxed drinks for those of us who weren’t pregnant. While doing this, I thanked Leila for saving my ass, and she apologized for being a complete psycho bitch. Actually, she didn’t. But, whatever, we buried the machete.
Twenny took me aside. ‘The stories in the media, ’bout you and Leila. They true?’
I raised an eyebrow at him.
‘Yeah, thought they was bullshit.’
He punched me in the arm.
‘How’s Peanut?’ I asked.
‘The same as he always was, but he does drawings. You should see them — frightening, man. He says they’re his dreams. I get them too. I spoke with a doctor. He says the dreams will fade.’
I wished him luck with that.
We rejoined the others. All four said that if there were ever anything they could do for me that I should call. I wondered how long they’d remember my name. We said goodbye, they left and I cleaned up a little. It was time for me to leave too, go back to my apartment in the ’burbs of DC. I threw my things in a bag and walked to the front door before turning for a last look around. Arlen’s envelope caught my eye — I’d forgotten to collect it. I picked it up off the bench and lifted the fap. There were a couple of sheets of official-looking paper inside, a report from Oak Ridge Police Forensics. Oak Ridge, Tennessee — that was where Anna had been shot, at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge depleted uranium storage facility. I skimmed the sheets, then went over them a second time, and had to take a seat on the edge of the bed when the impact of the news hit me.
After completing laser analyses on the trajectories of all the bullets fired in Anna’s last fateful moments, Oak Ridge forensics had found the missing slug. They discovered it buried in a tree trunk half a mile from the room in which she was killed. This was the bullet, the one foren-sics believed had blown a hole in Anna’s chest. The gun I fired was a Colt. 45. The newly recovered bullet was a 9mm round fired by a Glock. Forensics had matched it to the gun used by the nutbag who was wrestling Anna when she was fatally wounded.
Jesus… I lay back on the bed, closed my eyes and breathed.
Author’s note
While Ghost Watch is a work of fction, there’s plenty of fact woven into the narrative. The Democratic Republic of Congo is a mess and has been for a very long time. Since 1994, when the genocide going on in Rwanda officially ended there and moved across the border, it’s estimated more than four million people, mostly innocent citizens and bystanders, have been slaughtered in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
There’s a recently expanded UN force (MONUC) of twenty thousand operating in the North Kivu area of the DRC, where much of Ghost Watch takes place, but reports suggest that it is largely ineffective at curbing the violence between the warring Tutsi and Hutus and other factions and interests. And sometimes actually exacerbates it.