Ghost Watch

The situation has been made worse in recent years with the realization by First World nations the United States, China and Russia that there’s significant and diverse mineral wealth in the area, and each promotes its interests by supporting a local army (there are at least six fighting in the DRC) with money, logistical support, training and arms.

You wouldn’t want to live there.

I’ve been aware of the misery going on in the Congo since 1987, when a buddy of mine decided that he was going to Zaire (as the DRC was then called) to check out the gorillas made famous by the late Dian Fossey.

Vaguely interested in perhaps making this trek myself, I started to poke around through various news sources. They painted a pretty horrendous picture. My pal changed his mind and went to South America instead. I went to Amsterdam.

All these years later, I can’t say definitively why I decided to send Cooper to Africa. It might have been the rumour I’d heard that the US had a secret training base in Rwanda, on the border with the DRC. But the discovery of a new US military command being formed to oversee America’s national interests on the African continent (AFRICOM) sealed it.

I have to say that I found researching the recent history of the DRC, and the eyewitness reports of massacres happening there, harrowing to say the least.

Ghost Watch contains some pretty grizzly scenes based on that research, but they don’t compare to the gruesome reality. Frankly, had I not pulled my punches a little, I fear I might have taken this story somewhere else.

A couple of months into the writing of Ghost Watch, Laurant Nkunda, the former DRC general who went on to form and lead the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), a Tutsi militia supported by Rwanda, was arrested in Rwanda. Nkunda’s arrest came at the insistence of his former employer, the government of the DRC. The charges against him relate to various human rights violations and war crimes including rape, murder, the use of child soldiers and so on. He’s being held under house arrest somewhere in Rwanda.

As one of my characters says in the story’s narrative, I don’t think he will ever come to trial, or be handed over to the DRC. I’ll be surprised if this monster doesn’t simply disappear. If ever there was a war criminal that deserved justice, it’s Laurant Nkunda.

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank Lieutenant Colonel Mike ‘Panda’ Pandolfo (USAF, ret.) for his tireless support, wealth of knowledge and unerring eye while I was writing Ghost Watch. Panda has helped me considerably for the past couple of years. In fact, he has almost moved from ‘tech support’ to ‘co-collaborator’, and now I’ve said that, the guy will probably ask me for a raise. Panda recently retired from the Air Force. After so many years in uniform, that’s a big life change. I’d to take this opportunity to thank him publicly for the lifetime of service he has selfessly given (the guy flew in the Vietnam War, for chrissakes!).

Thanks also to Special Agent Elizabeth Richards, AFOSI, for assistance with OSI procedures, documentation and photo reference.

Thanks to Michael Jordan, USMC, ret., for technical support on weapons, ammunition, legal issues, and editorial assistance.

Thanks to Patrick Le Barbenchon from Eurocopter, and also Robert Holtsbaum and Loic Porcheron at Australian Aerospace, for help and technical support on the Puma SA360.

Thanks to Patricia Rollins for French lessons and editorial assistance.

Thanks to my attorney, Eric Feig, for keeping the dogs at bay.

Thanks to Emma Rafferty and Sarina Rowell, my editors at Pan Macmillan.

And thanks to Rod Morrison, my publisher at Pan Mac. It’d be amateur hour at snake gully without you all.