‘There’s a lot of lead being passed around. Could even be company strength down there — a hundred or so men,’ said Cassidy, assessing. ‘Assault rifles, light machine guns. RPGs we know about, grenades we don’t, but only because, so far, no one’s tossed one. At least, not at us.’
Men surged through the trees, firing wildly into the aircraft wreckage.
‘Who else flies Pumas in this part of the world?’ I asked LeDuc.
‘Only MONUC — the UN force.’
‘Looks like you’ve really built some bridges in these parts,’ I said.
More mortar rounds began dropping into the trees downrange, beyond the Puma’s remains.
‘And where’s that coming from?’ West wondered aloud.
‘The ridgeline, I ’d say,’ Cassidy reasoned. Several rounds hit the trees and airburst over their position. A whirling thrash of metal fragments stripped off the leaves and caused men to go down screaming.
‘Let’s go,’ I said.
‘Where to?’ Cassidy gave me a look that said he needed an answer before he’d do anything.
‘We can’t go down the hill and heading up’s probably not an option till we know who’s there. So do we slide left or right? We’ve got three right-handed shooters and one lefty — you. I say we head right so that the majority of us can shoot downhill across our bodies, if we have to, without having to turn before firing. We traverse till we make the ridge-line on our flank and rely on LeDuc’s ELB to get us a dust off.’
‘What if the threat comes from the high side?’ Cassidy said.
‘You’re the lefty,’ I said, keeping things light. ‘I’m counting on you.’ I nodded at his M4. ‘You can use that thing, right?’
‘Done much field work in your time, Major?’ he retaliated.
‘Some,’ I said.
‘The mission’s changed. No one’s gonna think any less of you if you hand off responsibility in this situation.’
‘You mean hand it off to you?’ I asked him.
He shrugged.
So here it comes, the macho SOCOM bullshit. And where was Ryder to keep him in line like Arlen had said he would?
‘We’ve got a couple of principals to deliver in one piece,’ I said. ‘I can’t see what’s changed.’
He shrugged again. ‘Okay, sir, your way. Just trying to help out.’
‘You think there’s a problem with the plan?’
‘I got no mind to change it.’
The small arms fire had tapered off somewhat, as had the mortar shelling. The thunderstorm, however, had only been warming up. There was lightning every second or less, and the rain had gone from heavy to blinding. I signaled Ryder to gather the principals and bring them down to us.
Thirty seconds later, we were huddled in a circle behind the log, Rutherford and West keeping watch.
‘Anyone got a cell phone?’ I asked. Mine was now a liquid somewhere inside the Puma.
Leila pulled out a personalized rose-gold iPhone from her jacket pocket. Ayesha, Boink, Ryder, Cassidy and Rutherford also produced cells.
‘Anyone raising a signal?’ I asked.
Six heads shook.
I moved on. ‘Who has serious injuries that need further attention?’
No one piped up. I saw that the gash on Ayesha’s arm now wore a bandage, as did a cut on Boink’s hairline. Both cuts seeped blood.
‘Your arm. You doin’ okay?’ I asked Fournier.
He nodded.
Ayesha’s chin quivered and Leila’s makeup needed emergency treatment. Boink seemed a little more present than he had been, but Peanut was still off on some other planet beyond our solar system. I envied him.
I came straight to the point. ‘We’re vacating this area immediately, walking in that direction,’ I said, indicating with a hand signal, ‘keeping the low side of the hill on our left. We appear to have landed in the middle of a disagreement. We have no intelligence on the forces below us or further up the hill. We have no radio either, so we can’t identify ourselves as friends or neutrals to the folks doing the shooting. But we have a map, and we know our position. Now all we have to do is get to a clearing where the electronic homing beacon can tell the MONUC rescue choppers where to find us. And I’m confident that by this time tomorrow we’ll be turning our noses up at snails in the French compound. Everyone clear?’
Leila and Ayesha looked at me, their eyes wide with terror. Twenny Fo had his arm around Peanut. Boink stared at me, frowning. I noticed for the first time that he’d somehow managed to hang onto that bowler hat of his, pulling it down so that it covered his bandage. Barely perceptible nods from all but Peanut made me think that maybe the principals had actually taken in what I’d said. I demonstrated a few simple hand signals and got everyone up on their feet. And that’s when I froze. Nervous young soldiers with full automatic weapons had surrounded us. The raging storm and small arms fire had concealed the sound of their encirclement, and their line of approach had been outside Rutherford and West’s line of sight. Leila and Ayesha started screaming. The Africans closed in, yelling. One of them slapped Leila backhand across the face, which stopped her screaming and also silenced Ayesha. I counted ten men.
LeDuc began plying them with French. I heard the word ‘MONUC’ mentioned several times, along with the word ‘allies’. He was telling them that we were supposed to be pals.
One of the Africans responded by giving him a friendly jab in the ribs with the stock of his AK-47, which doubled the Frenchman over in pain. Fournier went to help his capitaine and took a rifle butt to the head, which put him on his knees.
Cassidy took his hands off his M4 and raised them behind his head.
It wasn’t one of the signals I’d demonstrated to our civilians, but they got the message anyway and followed suit.
A soldier a little older in years than his comrades barked an order and our weapons were stripped from us. One of the others went around and checked that our fingers were interlocked behind our necks.
The soldier giving orders walked over to Cassidy, flicked with a broken fingernail at the Stars and Stripes patch on his shoulder, and said, ‘American.’ He said it with interest, as if Cassidy was from an intriguing species that would look good stuffed and mounted over a fireplace.
‘You speak English?’ I asked him.
‘Tais-toi!’ the African shouted.
‘That’s a no then,’ I said.
‘He wants you to shut up,’ LeDuc whispered.
The officer — at least, I assumed that’s what he was — hit LeDuc in the side of the head, knocking him down. The ELB fell out of his hand. The officer bent over and picked it up. He examined it, then threw it back on the ground and stomped on it a couple of times till the plastic casing disintegrated, revealing a smashed circuit board.
One of the soldiers pushed me in the back to get my feet going, then shoved me a second time. They were marching us down the hill in a loose column. At the head of the column I saw West lower one of his hands, testing the rules. A soldier kicked him hard in the leg. The African then aimed his weapon at West’s head, which had the effect of making the sergeant duck into a half crouch as if he were expecting a bullet.
The Africans laughed at him.
Yeah, hilarious.
A bolt of lightning lit up the area for the briefest instant, freezing the moment like a snapshot. Thunder rolled right on top of it, another bursting artillery round. The rain pelted the ground and broke into a mist that rose as if the earth itself were exhaling.
Sporadic fire was still coming from the area below the wreckage. I doubted the ELB would have been able to get its signal through the electrical storm anyway, which meant the MONUC air traffic controllers at Goma International Airport only had an approximation of our last position, the one the pilots would have given in the Mayday call, assuming we were high enough for them to have had it received.