‘There’s gotta to be a road out,’ said Rutherford.
I wasn’t so sure. The village appeared to be nestled within the crook of three imposing mountain-like hills behind it. Perhaps the only way in and out was by boat. Could be those survivors I wondered about had taken the village’s boats and headed downstream, which would explain why there weren’t any craft pulled up on the riverbank.
We cut through the banana plantation to where the rainforest began. After two hours of battling through a virtually impassable blockade of bamboo, liana, elephant grass and a variety of difficult prickly bush with red and orange berries on it that seemed to be everywhere and left us no room to swing a machete, we admitted defeat. We tried to cut a path through on the other side of the village, but we ended up in the same place — nowhere.
‘We’re just going to have to wait for a boat to come along,’ Rutherford said as the sun appeared overhead and the bush came alive with the sound of happy insects.
I sweated and sucked some water from the camelback as we walked up onto the grassy knoll. A vicious cramp clenched my stomach. A bout of diarrhea was coming down the pipe, thanks to all the river water I’d taken in. Rutherford brushed something off my back, an action I no longer gave any thought to. Looking down at the river, I stopped and dropped to a knee. Half a mile away, a boat, a type of ferry, was heading down the brown water, another small open boat in its wake. I took the scope and trained it on the vessels.
‘Fuck,’ I said under my voice. Armed soldiers were bursting from the ferry’s seams, like stuffng from an old cushion. The craft under tow behind it was a lighter. Crammed onto it were maybe fifteen men bristling with RPGs. I went down on my belly. I kept the scope on the boats and willed them past our landing point as they came nearer. I imagined that Cassidy would have posted a lookout, seen the convoy before it was upon them, and had everyone squirreled away out of sight. I could make out that there was a man on the forward deck of the ferry. Jesus Christ — it was Lissouba! This bastard put the asshole in persistent, that was for damn sure. He had binoculars, which he was training on the rainforest either side of the boat, looking left and right. The boat drew abreast of our landing point. I held my breath. Foliage overhanging the river obscured the boat from view. We waited for it to reappear in the gaps between the greenery, the tension growing with every second.
‘I’ve lost it,’ said Rutherford.
‘Wait,’ I whispered. ‘There…’
The boat’s dirty white bow appeared in one of the gaps and its exhaust pipe chugged a perfect smoke ring into the air, which rolled out over the water. The two boats slid past the landing without altering course or engine speed. They hadn’t seen us.
‘Shit,’ I said, turning onto my back, breathing again, closing my eyes, the powerful but rare sunshine like needles on my face. I suddenly felt exhausted. The thought of keeping my eyes closed and drifting off to sleep was incredibly seductive, but not possible. I got to my feet and gave Rutherford a hand up.
‘It’s Cooper, yo,’ I heard Boink say as Rutherford and I came down the back stairs. Twenny’s head of security was standing guard, a Nazar-ian looking like a half-size toy in his arms. Everyone stopped what they were doing and gathered round. There was no opportunity to give Cassidy, West and Ryder a separate briefing.
‘We can’t go that way,’ I said with a lift of my head, meaning the rock wall.
‘Why not?’ Leila asked immediately.
‘There’s a village up there, but they’ve had a few problems. An epidemic of some kind. Almost the whole place has been wiped out.’
‘We think it could be Ebola,’ said Rutherford, jumping right in.
‘What’s that?’ Twenny asked.
‘It’s like the worst fu you ever had,’ said Ryder.
‘Doesn’t sound too bad.’
‘It’s a fu that makes yo’ insides melt and run out your asshole, yo,’ said Boink. Twenny, surprised and disbelieving, looked at him. ‘Discovery Channel,’ the big man said with a shrug.
Cassidy took half a step back from Rutherford.
‘If could be any number of things,’ I said. ‘But it’s not worth taking the risk walking through it. If it is Ebola, I’d rather take my chances with the FARDC.’
‘You were up there. If it’s as contagious as you say, how do you know you ain’t caught it already?’ asked Twenny.
‘Because I didn’t get near enough anyone to catch it,’ I said, though I was wondering about those flies and their dirty feet. ‘But best not to swap bodily fluids with me for a while.’
‘So what do we do?’ asked Ayesha.
‘You saw the boats?’ West inquired.
‘It’s Lissouba,’ I said.
The SOCOM boys all nodded.
‘We can’t stay here,’ I continued. ‘If they come back to take a closer look, we can’t defend the riverbank and we’ll be trapped against the hill. We have to move up there.’ I gestured with my thumb over my shoulder. ‘Hold the high ground.’
‘But you just said we couldn’t,’ Leila pointed out.
‘I said we couldn’t get through the village. But it’s set back more than half a mile from the top of the hill. There’s plenty of room to retreat.’ I could tell from Cassidy and West’s body language that they agreed with me, if reluctantly.
‘And now for the good news: there’s food up there,’ Rutherford added.
‘What kind of food?’ asked Leila, unimpressed. ‘More worms and bananas?’
‘Sure, but if you’d rather, there’s also roast pork with crackling,’ I said. I explained about the pigs. The prospect of meat that didn’t slither or crawl was as good a bribe as any, and ten minutes later Rutherford was leading the way up through the lower bush to the steps cut into the limestone face.
The climb was no easier the second time around and soon my shirt and the V at the back of my pants were black with sweat, the increasing mid-afternoon cloud cover raising the humidity to the point where the air was thick enough to swim in. All of us except Cassidy and West collapsed when we arrived at the grassy knoll on top of the ledge, and so Rutherford called a rest.
‘This a good vantage point,’ said Cassidy, taking in the view. ‘We got the box seat up here.’
‘Shit,’ West muttered under his breath as both men sank into a crouch. ‘Look at this…’
There was a problem. I opened my eyes and rolled over. Oh, fuck… Lissouba and his men were coming back up the river. This time there was a third boat in tow, if our raft could be called a boat. The throb from the ferry’s engines died as its bow turned toward the riverbank and the craft disappeared under the canopy almost directly beneath us, the towed litter and our raft following.
‘Brilliant,’ said Rutherford, though I knew he meant ‘fucking shit fuck’.
Evade
‘We have to give ourselves up,’ Leila insisted. ‘We all know that. They’re going to follow us until we do, right? They’re not going to give up.’
‘And then what?’ Cassidy asked.
Twenny put his arm around Leila, the ex who was now his present. ‘We can’t. That ain’t no option, you feel me? They’re killers.’
‘They held you and you’re still alive.’
‘They killers — trus’ me.’
‘Well, they’ve got theirs and we got ours,’ she said, glaring at me accusingly. ‘He’s just killing us all slowly. Death by incompetence.’
Go right ahead, I wanted to say. Be my guest and head on back down.