She gave me a look that suggested that maybe I did, and then sighted down the weapon.
‘Come back safe — both of you,’ said Ayesha, giving Rutherford and me a quick peck on the cheek.
‘See? Is that so hard?’ I asked Leila.
My face sang with a slap that rattled my eyeballs. Leila was breathing heavily, angrily. I grabbed two handfuls of her jacket, pulled her to me and kissed her. My tongue found hers, took it prisoner. Her breath shortened and she resisted, but the resistance faded and she kissed back. And then we released each other and it was over. Rutherford cleared his throat and Boink looked the other way.
She raised her hand to slap me again.
‘You want seconds?’
‘What gives you the right, Cooper?’
‘I usually get slapped after the kiss so I figured it’d already paid for it. Not as much of a gentleman as you thought, right?’
She fexed her hand, opening and closing it. She’d hurt herself, and my face didn’t feel that great, either.
‘Okay, I apologize,’ I said. ‘Now, can we be friends?’
‘No.’
West cleared his throat, stepped in and gave both women a quick weapons refresher, reacquainting them with the Nazarian’s safety, reminding them to leave the selector on three shot burst and demonstrating again how to aim. There’d been no target practice. For all I knew, both of them would have trouble hitting the sky.
‘You’re the man, Boink,’ I heard Rutherford say.
‘As it should be, yo,’ he said with a grin.
The big man was enjoying himself.
Cassidy and Ryder were looking their weapons over. I joined them. ‘Duke, I want you to stay here with the principals, set up a defensive position.’
Ryder hesitated before giving me a nod. The old Ryder would have been happy to stay back. The new model wanted to get involved. But someone had to stay behind and Ryder had no combat experience.
‘Sorry, Duke,’ I said.
‘Just call me into the play when you need some real muscle, okay?’
‘Will do. If this goes well, we’ll be back in an hour,’ I said with my back to the principals.
‘And if it goes badly?’ he asked.
‘Then I’ll give one to the Gipper for you.’
Leaving Cassidy and Ryder to secure the principals further up the hill, West, Rutherford and I pushed down through the vines and bamboo, following Francis, hoping to get a glimpse of the road. I was thinking about that kiss. Leila had kissed back and that had been a real surprise. Was there something going on that I wasn’t tuned into? Or was she just frightened? Maybe the kiss was a final plea not to go, or not to be left behind, which, I suddenly realized, was Leila’s one consistency where I was concerned — having me right where she wanted me, a moth under a pin. It was a distraction I could do without so I put the soap opera out of my mind.
Francis crouched down. The rest of us did likewise abreast of him. ‘This is good place for you,’ he whispered, gesturing left and right with his hand through the trees. ‘See here and here.’
We all took a good long look. He was right — this vantage point was perfect. He’d brought us to a place above the road that provided a clear view of the ribbon of mud as it swept out of the village and wound along the valley floor, flanked on one side by thick rainforest and on the other by a slow-moving water channel. The position also provided a good angle on the road from the direction that led eventually to the mine turnoff. At that moment, the road was clear in both directions but the dawn was behind us even if the sun had yet to crest the hills. That meant the traffic between the FARDC camp, the village and the mine would soon begin to shuttle back and forth. We didn’t have a lot of time.
‘I go back now,’ said Francis. ‘Good luck.’ He shook all our hands, his grip firm, his skin warm and dry like the python’s. He disappeared instantly into the foliage behind us, heading back up the hill to rejoin the others.
‘Down there,’ said Rutherford, motioning at a stand of banana trees a dozen feet below us. ‘One of those will do the trick.’
The sergeant slid down to it on his butt, took hold of his machete and started chopping away at one of the thicker trunks. I joined him, gave the tree a couple of chops from the low side to finish the job.
‘Mike,’ I called up. ‘Stay high. You’ve got overwatch. The road clear?’
‘Clear,’ said West as the light faded. ‘Rain’s coming in, though.’
Of course it was. ‘Whistle when you see traffic.’ The rainforest was coming alive with the shrieking calls from unseen birdlife, either welcoming the rain or complaining about it.
Rutherford and I dragged the fallen tree down through the scrub and onto the road, blocking most of it off. We then clambered back into the scrub, climbed up the hill twenty meters or so, and waited.
After half a dozen minutes, I heard a whistle climb over the top of the chorus coming from the treetops, silencing some of it. Company was coming.
I heard the truck’s engine before I saw it, and that’s because I was looking the wrong way.
‘Oh, fuck,’ said Rutherford, tapping me on the arm so that I checked over my shoulder. A Dongfeng was coming from the direction of the mine — the wrong direction. So my assumption that the first truck on the road would be the vehicle taking those Claymores to the mine was blown. How many more trucks were behind it?
The vehicle slowed as it approached the roadblock, then stopped. The front passenger door opened, and a man jumped down and called to his buddies to lend a hand. A couple of men hopped out of the back of the vehicle and wandered around to the front. All three carried rifles slung over their shoulders, which told me that they weren’t expecting any trouble. The two who came out of the back of the truck were having a friendly chat about something.
Pointing at the men in the cabin I said to Rutherford, ‘They go first. The other two are yours.’
‘You don’t want to let this one pass, wait for the target?’ Rutherford said.
The Africans were clearing the road. If our target truck came along within the next few minutes, we wouldn’t be able to bring it to a stop before assaulting it. ‘No. Two trucks are better than one anyway.’
Our original plan was a bust, but in my experience the operation that runs like clockwork is a myth. Special Ops are often just the best intentions stitched together with luck, and they come off when the fuck-ups favor you and not the enemy. We had no choice but to go with the flow. I moved down and across the hill, using the treeline for cover, until the angle brought the driver into view through the door window. He was listening to music, head bobbing from side to side, those familiar white buds in his ears. I swung the QCW submachine gun off my back, took the safety off, aimed through the open driver’s window and waited. Meanwhile, the three men had dragged the tree from the side of the road and were rolling it into the irrigation channel, sharing a laugh while they worked. I wondered what constituted a joke in these parts. One of the men, the front seat passenger, jogged back to the cabin and hopped up beside the driver. I waited till the other two walking down to the back of the truck came around the end of the vehicle, into Rutherford’s fire zone.
I squeezed the trigger and the QCW jumped twice in my hands, making a sound like padded hammers hitting brick. Two streams of three spent cartridges arced from the right-hand side of the receiver and dropped beside my boot as the interior of the Dong’s cabin became a collection of arms waving about in a red mist.
I got up and moved at a half crouch down the hill, the short stock of the submachine gun buried in my shoulder. I didn’t see or hear Rutherford’s shots, but there was no question in my mind that there would be two dead bodies lying in the mud behind the truck’s tailgate. I came out of the bush on the side of the road a split second before Rutherford. Nothing moved in or around the vehicle. The road was clear in both directions. I ran to the back, grabbed one of the dead by an arm and dragged the body into the anonymity of the forest, the heavy rain immediately going to work on the blood trail left behind, eradicating it. Beside me, Rutherford pulled the other corpse along by its shirt collar. We raced back. I opened the driver’s door and a man fell out backward onto the road with a wet thud, the dead air wheezing from his lungs. I heaved him across the road to the forest, while Rutherford sprang up into the cabin and hauled the deceased passenger out, throwing him over his shoulder and lugging him to the spot where his buddies were beginning their big sleep. The whole operation took less than three minutes, which was fortunate because we’d run out of time.