In the row behind them, Snatch was sitting forward in his seat, wringing his hands, body twitching as if he had Tourette’s. Any second now he was going to shout ‘fucknuts’ or something. Either that or he had a phobia about flying. If so, I could relate, having had one of those once.
I looked back through the front windshield over LeDuc’s shoulder. ‘Hey, ever crash in one of these things?’ I asked him.
‘French helicopters never go down,’ he replied.
‘Unlike French women, right?’
No response from LeDuc.
One thing I know how to do is get along with foreigners.
LeDuc guided the puma into a descending arc. Out the front window, steady rain was falling from a solid horizontal wall of black cloud cover. Camp Come Together was laid out ahead of us like any temporary base I’d ever seen on the front lines — everything prefab in neat rows set among heaps of boxes, drums, broken concrete, and rusting machine parts, all safely tucked behind a perimeter fence of coiled razor wire. This one, though, appeared to be sinking in a sea of orange mud.
The welcoming committee, standing next to the chopper pad, turned their backs on the Puma’s downwash as the aircraft bounced and then settled on the steel matting. Snatch lunged for the exit door, which earned him a palm in the face from the French loadmaster who commanded him to sit.
‘Yo, Snatch. Be cool, man,’ Boink called out, stepping into his hall monitor role.
As soon as the aircraft was shut down, the loadmaster slid the door open. The air rushed in. It smelled foreign, laced with hot aviation fuel, the tang of rainwater, sodden earth, wet cooking fires and trash. Beyond the pad, I could see men ambling around in jungle-pattern fatigues I didn’t recognize. Their pants were soaked black by the rain and streaked with orange mud.
A man with a large bald head, rusty-gray mustache and heavy black-rimmed glasses shouted through the open door. ‘I’m Colonel Firestone. Welcome to Camp Come Together, Cyangugu,’ he said. ‘Where’s Lieutenant Colonel Travis?’
Travis removed his headset, fired up a smile, ripped off a salute and led with a handshake as he made his way toward the door. ‘Colonel,’ he said, jumping down onto the matting. ‘Have we got a show for you, sir.’
‘Excellent, excellent. Good flight?’
‘First class all the way,’ Travis said, full of baloney.
I thanked LeDuc for the transport and then followed Travis, Cassidy instructing the principals to stay put.
Firestone was accompanied by his own entourage, a mix of civilians and US Army and local officers who’d come to ogle the celebrities.
I approached the colonel and said, ‘Special Agent Vin Cooper, sir — Security Team Leader.’
‘Ah, yes. Now, are you the same Vin Cooper we’ve been reading about in the news lately?’ Firestone asked, shaking my hand.
‘I think so, sir.’
‘You think so. You’re not sure? Is there another Vin Cooper up for the Air Force Cross? How many of you could there be?’
‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ I said, giving him the smile he was after. Full colonels are allowed to have a lame sense of humor — comes with the bird. I turned to Cassidy and signaled at him to disembark the principals from the Puma.
Twenny Fo hopped down from the chopper, followed by Boink, who made the maneuver look difficult. Peanut came next, staring open-mouthed at the new surroundings, as if he’d been catapulted into a fantasy. Snatch followed, looking pale, with Cassidy right behind him. Travis herded them away from the chopper toward Colonel Firestone.
The humidity had frosted up the colonel’s lenses like they were beer glasses. ‘Have to apologize for the weather,’ the colonel said to Travis. ‘Wet season came later than usual this year, and it’s still hanging around.’
‘Colonel, allow me to introduce Twenny Fo, our headliner,’ Travis said, bringing him forward, his arm around, but not quite touching, the star’s shoulders.
‘Mr Twenny Fo. Well, I’m a big fan,’ said Firestone.
Somehow I doubted it.
‘Dis be the land of my forebears, you feel me? Dis be my dream. You want any special songs, Gen’ral, just tell my people, yo.’
Colonel Firestone cleared whatever it was that had stuck in his throat and said, ‘Well thank you, thank you very much. That’s very gracious of you. You can call me Colonel.’
Standing behind Twenny were his bloods, definitely fish out of water, or, in Boink’s case, beached whale.
‘Twenny, why don’t you introduce your assistants?’ Travis said.
‘Yeah,’ said the star, ‘I was gonna. The big man here is Boink. He be my security man. Snatch — he take care of my bidness. An dis here is Peanut. I take care of Peanut, ’cause Peanut ain’t so good at takin’ care o’ hisself, you feel me?’
Boink and Snatch were standing side by side. Boink had his arms folded, detached and above it all. Peanut smiled and tore off a thumbnail.
‘Wonderful, wonderful. Well, I’m pleased to meet y’all, too,’ said Firestone, hurriedly shaking each of their hands. ‘Y’know, we’re doing some great work here to help freedom take root in Africa.’
The noise from the arrival of the second Puma, carrying Leila’s troop, obliterated all conversation. I turned to watch its arrival just as a burst of rain fell as hard as marbles from the low black sky.
‘Let’s get you folks out of the weather,’ Firestone shouted over the roar of the chopper’s turbine and rotor noise.
Firestone led the way, trotting over to a hangar at the edge of the helipad. I scoped it as a matter of course and saw that it was mostly empty. The only activity going on inside was the servicing of an old Mi-8 Soviet helicopter, one of its engines lying in pieces on the floor. A couple of mechanics were standing over the oily puzzle, scratching their heads as if they didn’t know where to start. No threat here, except perhaps to that aircraft’s next payload.
Colonel Firestone brought his VIPs over to meet my principal.
‘If you don’t mind, Mr Twenny, I have some introductions of my own,’ he said.
‘Meet your people be my pleasure,’ the rapper said, with a lopsided smile.
‘This is Colonel Olivier Biruta of the National Congress for the Defense of the People, and his second in command, Major Jean Claude Ntahobali. Colonel Biruta commands the CNDP brigade currently in training here.’
‘Please t’ meet choo, brother,’ Twenny Fo said, unsure about what he should do next — bow or shake hands. He settled on both. The rapper seemed genuinely overwhelmed by the occasion.
‘Yeah,’ said Boink, joining in, giving the colonel and his offsider some kind of homie salute, sliding his hand diagonally across his chest with thumb, forefinger, and pinky prominent. ‘Real pleased.’
Biruta smiled broadly, showing receding gums and very large teeth. He was tall and slim, with skin the color and luster of liquorice, his face almost perfectly divided in half by a scar that ran nearly as straight as a desert road from his forehead to his chin, leaving a grooved trench down the middle of his nose. Biruta’s XO, Commandant Ntahobali, was equally thin and black, though not as tall as his boss. A three-inch chunk of flesh was missing from the muscles of his right forearm, where a badly applied skin graft had created an ugly pink raised keloid scar. Both men had the detachment of soldiers who’d seen far too much.
Peanut, disengaged from proceedings, gazed in wonder at the dismantled Soviet aircraft.
Firestone stuck to his game plan. ‘I’d also like you to meet Beau Lockhart. Beau’s from Kornfak & Greene, the contractor that built this camp. He’s ex-Army Special Forces, so he knew from personal experience what we needed, didn’t you, Beau?’