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 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.
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.