The photo brought back memories of the action in Kabul, one of them being of Specialist Rogerson with no face at all, sitting in the Landcruiser with her perfectly manicured nails still resting on the rim of the steering wheel.
‘No. And I’m sure,’ I said, handing the photo back to Boink.
One of the security guys whistled softly. I glanced up and saw the reason why — Leila had just broken into a dance routine that I’d loosely describe as X-rated. I felt her eyes on me as I made for the exit.
‘Change your mind,’ Twenny Fo called after me, ‘the offer stands, yo…’
Cassidy, West, Rutherford, Ryder, and I watched the performance from the wings. The audience was on its feet the whole time. I estimated the assemblage at close to two thousand. The numbers were less than I’d thought they would be. Maybe part of the brigade was somewhere else. Half a company of Firestone’s men was handling crowd control. Better them than us. Things were getting ragged out there. Leila had been on stage for over an hour, and her set was coming to a climax along with, I suspected, half the men, including me.
The song was called ‘Peep Show’. Two of Leila’s dancers had lathered moisturizer all over her, and then all over each other, and now the three of them were moving in and out of each other’s legs and arms while Leila sang a rhythmic song, the beat pulsing, the lyrics on the verge of pornographic. A roar of testosterone rose from the men and rolled over the oiled-up performers. I saw Leila flip the bird at Twenny Fo waiting in the wings. She was stealing the show and letting him know it.
I turned back to scope the audience. A commotion was going on in the front row. The overhead lighting flashed on a blade of steel. Suddenly, two men vaulted onto the stage and raced for Leila and the dancers. Holt’s security men were too thinly spread out to be effective. Rutherford and I moved at the same time. I went low, taking out their legs. The SAS sergeant went high, and all four of us slid on a slick of moisturizer. The two men were Rwandan, dressed in battle uniforms. Using a thumb lock, I immobilized the guy who I thought had the knife and dragged him offstage. I patted him down, but the knife was gone. Maybe he dropped it before he jumped on stage. Maybe he left it in one of his countrymen. I frog-marched him out the back and handed him over to a couple of Rwandan MPs with a quick report. Rutherford released his captive back into the wilds of the mosh pit, and I resumed my place in the wings. The crowd was going nuts as ‘Peep Show’ came to its conclusion, Leila lying exhausted and prostrate on the floor, her heavy, sated breathing booming through the sound system.
Then Twenny Fo jumped into the picture, pulled Leila to her feet, and the two sang an upbeat number followed by a saccharine duet that made me want to reach for a bag. Leila waved to the audience and blew everyone kisses as she walked offstage, the crowd applauding, wolf-whistling, and calling out lewd propositions.
The rapper diverted their attention with a change of pace, a song recalling neighborhoods in the Bronx, wrapped in a beat that made as much sense to my ears as French. But the black audience responded, moving and swaying, hands in the air, lost in the music. Twenny Fo performed about fifteen or so songs and the crowd was functioning as one organism, the music its lifeblood, its oxygen. And then Fo was gone. Initially stunned, the crowd refused to believe that the concert was over and demanded more, chanting and stomping and clapping. Something was missing. He hadn’t performed his signature tune. The audience knew it and wouldn’t let him go.
I scanned the crowd for more threats but couldn’t see any. It was a sea of expectant, enthusiastic black faces out there. I continued scoping the area and saw that Colonel Firestone was enjoying the concert from the second-story balcony of the base HQ overlooking the stage. Five men were with him — Biruta, Ntahobali, Lockhart, and the two men I had seen getting out of the Mercedes. There was no room up there for the bodyguards.
‘You were slow getting to those guys,’ said a voice behind me as I caught the scent of mountain flowers on a warm spring day. It was Leila. She was toweling off her wet hair, having just come from taking a shower. Without makeup, her beauty was almost freakish, the type that could launch a thousand ships. Unfortunately, the personality that went along with it would happily see them all dashed onto the rocks, the passengers and crew drowned. But maybe I was doing her an injustice.
‘Do you like your job, soldier?’
What was I supposed to say?
‘Well?’ she asked.
‘I’m in the Air Force, ma’am, which makes me an airman,’ I said.
‘Well, whether you like it or not, airman, one word from me, and you won’t be doing it no longer.’
Her attack took me by surprise as much as the guy with the knife had. If I’d been expecting anything from her — and I wasn’t — maybe it was just a plain, ordinary thank you.
She turned and walked off, still toweling her hair. I signaled West to stay with her while I imagined how she’d react to being thrown over my knee. I glanced at my watch. In another thirteen hours or so, we’d be back at Kigali airport, and this detail would slip from the uncomfortable present into the happily forgotten past.
Then a familiar tune brought my attention back to the stage. It was
‘Fighter’, Twenny Fo’s mega hit. He had re-appeared and the audience began singing along with the familiar lyrics from the chorus: There ain’t got no force righter than a US Army fighter. I wondered what the Marines and the Navy had to say about that.
‘Hey,’ said Travis, appearing beside me. ‘Great concert.’
‘Great,’ I echoed.
‘Nice take down, by the way. And good of Leila to come over and thank you,’ he said.
‘That’s just what I was thinking,’ I said.
Smoke machines swamped the stage with a white mist. Twenny Fo was two-thirds of the way through his big number. The song was building, getting louder, harder. Then some familiar sounds made me finch involuntarily: small arms fire, helicopters, rocket-propelled grenades. Explosions boomed through the speakers, seemingly getting closer. Brutal searchlights kicked in with a blazing light that backlit the smoke and reminded me of blinding white phosphorus. Suddenly, a powerful downlight illuminated the scene from overhead and the crowd went berserk. I shook my head in disbelief because there I was — on stage. The figure took two steps forward as the smoke curled in and around it, and I saw my face, the one in the photo taken by Fallon: bleached white skin, black eye sockets and grinning jaws defined by vertical red lines. Finally, a real explosion boomed out like a powerful grenade detonating in an enclosed space. A ball of orange light and a giant white smoke ring rolled up into the overhead lighting and brightened the night sky.
‘Jesus,’ said Rutherford, joining Travis and me. ‘Is that fuckin’ Ryder?’
‘Uh-huh,’ I said. It was either Ryder or a dead man. Come to think of it, perhaps it was both.
The audience was whooping and hollering as the music died down. The figure remained on stage, looking even more ominous in the growing silence. Then the lights were turned off and the stage went dark. Only when the crowd went completely manic did a single spotlight snap on. Ryder was gone. In his place stood Twenny Fo, and waves of adulation poured forth.
Whatever I thought of Fo and Leila as people — and so far I didn’t think much of either — they burned hot in front of a crowd.
The rapper told them he thought they were one of the best crowds ever, if not the best. He said they were doing a great and worthy job of representing their country’s values. Then he gave them a last wave, punched the air, and ran off into the wings.