‘Qui est l’officier?’ said Rutherford, jumping down. ‘Qui est le boss?’ he asked, pointing to several of the dead in turn. ‘Lui? Lui? Lui?’
‘Lu… Lui,’ the Congolese stuttered, pointing to the nearest dead man, a cluster of nameless symbols on his epaulettes.
I went to the body and searched it, finding what I was looking for on a chain around his neck, along with a bag on a leather thong. I held up seven bloody bronze keys and rinsed them off in a puddle before tossing them up to Rutherford.
‘Nice one,’ he said. ‘What’s in the pouch?’
I’d noticed that most of the dead Africans had been wearing similar muslin or leather bags around their necks. The man who’d run into a tree back at the Puma also had one. I untied the leather fastener, opened the bag and found a collection of teeth, small bones, some seeds and feathers. ‘Magic,’ I said, returning it to the dead man’s pocket.
‘What about the kid?’ Rutherford inquired. ‘What are we gonna to do with him?’
‘Speak English?’ I asked the boy, standing up and walking over to him.
He looked up at me slack-jawed and shook his head.
Dumb question. I noticed a bag of spells around his neck also. I reached out to inspect it and the boy finched and tried to draw back, terrified.
‘Ask him why everyone’s wearing these things. You know enough French for that?’
‘Give it a go,’ Rutherford said. ‘Tu portez ce: pourquoi?’ he asked the kid.
There was a nervous reply.
‘He says spirits have been coming into camp and stealing people’s souls, leaving them dead.’
‘Vous êtes Américains, vous n’êtes pas fantômes,’ the boy said, his eyes on the flag on my shoulder.
My turn to translate. ‘You’re American, not spirits.’
‘See, you do speak Frog,’ said Rutherford.
Setting the boy free worried me but, as Rutherford and I saw it, there was no alternative. We couldn’t keep him prisoner, carting him around with us. Pointing my finger at him and then down the road at the village, I said, ‘Go.’
He didn’t move.
‘Allez! Va t’er!’ said Rutherford. ‘In other words, sunshine, fuck off. On yer bike.’
Realization dawned on the boy. He seemed unable to believe that he’d been spared and released. But then he got it, said ‘merci’ a couple of times and broke into a sprint, running toward the village and taking our element of surprise with him.
Rutherford shook his head as he watched the boy getting smaller in the distance. ‘I was stealing my first kiss at his age. You?’
‘Cadillacs.’
‘Tough neighborhood?’
I didn’t answer. A New Jersey shithole rusting into its own gutters had been the backdrop to my upbringing, but compared with this place it was a country club.
‘Back to work,’ I said. There were the bodies sprawled around us on the ground, getting washed by the rain, and we had to do something about them. The intention had been to load them into the truck, crash the vehicle into a ravine after pilfering those cases, set fire to the lot and make the whole thing look like an accident. Only, the kid was going to give his superiors a report on what had happened to the truck, making that plan worthless.
‘Hey,’ said Rutherford. ‘Look…’ He motioned off in the direction of the village.
The boy had stopped running a hundred meters down the road. He was looking back at us, and then he started running again, making for the forest, heading west, away from the FARDC’s encampment on the hill. The kid was either deserting or reclaiming his freedom, depending on how you looked at it.
‘Run, Forrest, run,’ I said, a stupid smile on my face.
Cassidy jogged out from the tree line.
‘Came down to check on progress,’ he said. ‘Looked to me like you needed a hand.’
Good call. We decided to stick with plan B in case the kid changed his mind. After three trips each, the bodies were all out of sight in the bushes. Next, we collected the weapons strewn about — all old AK-47s — removed the bolts, and tossed the lot into the channel.
‘We need to stow the cargo before the road turns into a highway,’ I said.
No sign of movement from the village and no warning whistle from West.
A few moments later, Francis appeared at the edge of the road. He checked left and right before stepping out onto the mud strip. Then Leila, Ayesha, Boink and Ryder materialized behind him and they all ran through the rain toward us.
‘Great,’ I said under my breath.‘What do you think you’re doing down here?’ I asked Leila when she was close enough to hear. I glanced at Ryder and he shook his head, frowning, not happy.
‘I’m not staying up there with the ants and the mosquitoes any longer than I have to,’ she informed me.
‘Don’t you ever do as you’re told?’ I asked her.
‘No.’
Exposing our principals to direct danger down on the road was not part of the program, but then, not much that had happened so far this morning had been on the list worked out in the pre-dawn darkness. There was no time to argue.
‘Follow me,’ I said, and then ran to the back of the truck carrying the cargo and jumped up into it. Rutherford was already inside, untying the straps that stopped the olive drab-painted Kevlar containers from sliding around.
‘We need to get these offoaded and taken up the hill,’ I said. ‘And it has to be done fast.’
‘What’s inside ’em?’ asked Boink.
‘Dunno,’ said Rutherford impatiently. ‘And right now, we don’t bloody well care. We just need to do what the man said and pull our fingers out.’
‘What language yo’ speaking?’ said Boink, grinning, taking no offense. ‘I ain’t never heard shit like that.’
‘The Queen’s English, mate.’
‘No queens I’ve met speak like that, yo.’
Rutherford and I lifted the first container off the smaller of the two stacks and threw it, skidding, across the cargo deck toward the tailgate. Boink hoisted it off single-handedly and set it down on the mud.
‘Next!’ he called out.
We worked quickly. Once all seven containers were offoaded onto the road, Rutherford and I leaped down, grabbed one of the largest and heaviest, each taking an end, and started hobbling with it toward the edge of the forest. Cassidy was ahead of us, a container on his shoulder, pushing up into the undergrowth.
‘Duke — head ’em up, move ’em out,’ I called behind me.
The containers were all soon secured behind the tree line and we were still more or less on schedule. I checked my Seiko. Only eleven minutes had passed since the first truck had pulled up behind the banana tree laid across the road.
‘The trucks — where can we hide them?’ I asked Francis.
‘I know good place,’ he replied.
‘Is it close?’
‘Oui. One-or-two-minute drive from here.’
‘Cooper, I saw what happened with that boy,’ Leila said, seeking some attention. ‘I think you did the right thing.’
‘You might change your mind if he comes back with his babysitters,’ I said.
Leila was standing above me on slightly higher ground, her weight on one leg, a 97 crossed under her breasts so that her cleavage was lifted up and out of her jacket. With her makeup oddly immaculate, she looked like some kind of hot action movie character. I shrugged off the thought and asked Francis, ‘Which way are we going?’
He pointed in the direction of the mine, away from the village.
Two trucks rather than one. I needed a driver and someone to ride shotgun on the following truck.
‘Francis, you and I have got the lead truck.’ I glanced at the faces around me. ‘Rutherford, Ryder. You’re in the second truck. We don’t stop for any reason. Understand?’