‘Generally speaking, yes.’
‘When you told them that you were MONUC, what was their reaction, apart from encouraging you with a rifle butt to shut your mouth?’
‘They said they knew this.’
‘That you were allies?’
‘Oui.’
‘Funny way to treat a friend.’
‘The FARDC is not an army like we have in France. It is corrupt. There are many factions and agendas. You want me to ask him why they are not friendly toward us?’
‘First ask him what his unit strength is.’
LeDuc kneeled and spoke to the man in French. The soldier ignored the question. LeDuc persisted and still got no response. The man was either so deeply in pain that he’d lost touch with the real world, or he was using it as an excuse to play dumb. There was no time for games.
‘Sir, I think this is yours,’ said West behind me. He handed me my Sig. ‘A full mag, nothing up the spout,’ he informed me before walking back to see to the dead.
I dropped out the magazine and then pulled back the slide. As he said, the chamber was empty, the mag full. I reinserted the mag, racked a round into the spout and put the safety on.
The man on the ground cried out. He was shaking, his eyes locked on the Sig. And then he started talking like his life depended on it. Maybe that’s exactly what he thought, that I was going to bust a cap in his ass. I holstered the weapon.
LeDuc repeated the question. Now the guy wouldn’t shut up. He shouted, his voice competing with the noise of the thunder and torrential rain.
‘They are company strength,’ LeDuc said. ‘He is not exactly sure how many, but more than one hundred and twenty men.’
‘Ask him who occupies the ridgeline. Who are they fighting up there and why?’
A handful of seconds later, LeDuc had the answers.
‘It is the CNDP. The numbers are similar, though the rebels have mortars, causing his unit much harm. He says they chased the CNDP out of a village a day’s march away. They were killing civilians. He says they are bad men.’
‘Do you believe him?’ I asked.
LeDuc gave me the Gallic shrug. ‘This man is a private soldier. What would he know?’
‘Ask him why they blew up your chopper.’
The Frenchman asked the question, and the African pleaded with LeDuc in a way that I knew meant he didn’t have an answer, despite his private fear that I was going to whack him if he didn’t.
‘He says he doesn’t know,’ LeDuc confirmed. ‘He thinks it was fred on for target practice.’
‘There’s lot of rainforest out there, but his patrol found us quickly. Ask him if they were looking for us.’
‘Oui, oui,’ the man said immediately, adding a barrage of French to go with it.
‘He says their orders were to find us and take us prisoner.’
‘How did they know there was anyone on board to take prisoner in the first place?’
LeDuc asked the question and the man on the ground shook his head and mumbled a reply.
‘He does not know,’ said the Frenchman. ‘They were just doing what they were ordered to do.’
Hmm… maybe it was just expected that an aircraft the size of the Puma would be carrying passengers, more than they found dead in the wreckage. I had one more question. ‘How long is FARDC going to occupy the valley?’
After a brief discussion the Frenchman said, ‘Once they have chased the enemy from the heights.’
I didn’t like their chances of that. Armed as they were with mortars, the folks occupying the high ground would take some dislodging.
I stood and LeDuc stood.
Two shots blasted away behind me, making me jump back and twist around and reach for my own pistol.
Boink lowered a Beretta.
‘Merde!’ LeDuc exclaimed.
‘You’re finished with him, yo?’ my principal said.
I looked back at the captured FARDC soldier. Smoke curled from two black entry holes in the man’s forehead, blood starting to well from both; one eye was open and sightless, the other half hidden by a heavy lid. I tried not to think that the kid had a mother — we’d gone way past that now.
Further up the hill, I saw Leila lower her iPhone from her face. Her other hand covered her mouth, horrified by what she’d just witnessed, her eyes locked on me like somehow it was my doing.
‘What the fuck?’ I shouted at Boink. ‘Give me the gun!’
He stood there, unmoving, the pistol pointed at the ground. He was considering holding onto it, or maybe even using it again…
‘We killed their people already,’ he said. ‘There won’t be no peace accord, yo.’
‘Give me the damn gun!’ I repeated, taking a step toward him, hand out.
He brought the pistol up. I didn’t know this guy, but I’d seen what he was capable of doing. Was it my turn next?
‘Careful,’ I told him.
‘Easy, soldier man,’ he said, reading the danger.
He flicked his hand and the weapon spun in midair and landed in his palm, handle out toward me. I snatched it away from him.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ I asked him, pointing at the dead man with the pistol.
‘Doin’ my job.’
‘Your job?’
‘His people took Twenny. I took him.’
‘Do that again and there’ll be consequences.’
He shrugged and turned away.
When their people came back and saw the man’s head resting on a pillow of his own gray matter, they’d know he’d been killed in cold blood. This would come back on us. I leant over the body, patted him down. Two magazines were stuffed into the webbing on his chest. I took them and checked his pockets. Empty. His green battle uniform was baggy, from the Vietnam War era and several sizes too big for him. And there was the unusual blue patch on his left shoulder that LeDuc said marked him as FARDC. I stood up.
Rutherford and Cassidy were checking the other downed Africans.
‘Any wounded?’ I called out.
Cassidy shook his head.
‘We’re gonna have to watch him,’ said West motioning at Boink’s back.
‘Yeah,’ said West. He stood and nodded at the rifle slung over my shoulder.
I looked at it properly for the first time, wiped the blood and saliva off the stock with my sleeve. The weapon was a Nazarian Type 97, the export version of the standard assault weapon issued to infantry units of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army: 5.56mm NATO rounds, M16 mag, single shot, three-shot burst, and full auto options at the flick of a lever on the receiver. A good and capable rifle. It might have been the export version, but I still wondered where someone would come across a weapon of this sort in the Congo.
‘Found this on the ground,’ said Cassidy, interrupting my thoughts.
Twenny Fo’s diamond ring was between his thumb and forefinger. ‘What you want to do with it?’
‘Hold onto it for the moment.’ I turned to Rutherford. ‘Souvenir a few of those uniforms with the blue shoulder patches. The berets too. They might come in handy.’
‘Got it, skipper,’ said Rutherford.
Although barely ten minutes had passed since Twenny Fo, Ayesha, Peanut and Fournier had been taken prisoner, I expected another, larger patrol would be along soon to finish the job, assuming the FARDC was organized.
West, Cassidy and I trotted up the hill toward Ryder, Leila and Boink.
‘I’m going to make sure you’re all kicked out of the Army,’ said Leila when we were close enough. ‘Your job was to protect us and you failed.’
I wasn’t in the Army but maybe now wasn’t the time to tell her.
‘You still alive, ain’t you?’ said Cassidy.
‘I’m going to sue you to the poor house,’ Leila said, her eyes boring into Cassidy and then me.
It wasn’t the right time to tell her I was already in it. ‘We didn’t cause that to happen,’ I told her, slipping into debrief mode. ‘The soldiers that took our people are government troops of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, supposedly friendly to MONUC. But for some reason they’ve decided to be unfriendly. What we do know is that we’ve come down in a war zone where there doesn’t seem to be a lot of rules. Bottom line, we’re no longer protecting you against possible attack. There’s nothing possible about it. So you can stop behaving like a child who isn’t getting her way and do what we tell you to do, when we tell you to do it. Because, otherwise, you’re not getting out of here alive.’