There were four additional weapons to pull through the mud in silence, making the outbound journey slower. We kept heading for the rear, toward the flatter ground behind the HQ, where there was less chance of crawling into someone. We encountered no pickets and quickly found ourselves in unoccupied rainforest. But as the adrenalin wore off, exhaustion set in.
I watched Ayesha walking ahead, silently pushing aside the foliage with the barrel of one of the captured M16s. She was a combat veteran now and, like me, she’d have the nightmares to prove it.
Enemies
Approaching Cassidy, Rutherford and Ryder in complete darkness and dressed in enemy uniforms was probably more dangerous than infiltrating the FARDC’s lines. Three of us had gone out two hours earlier, so it made sense that only three of us should come back; only, now there were four of us. LeDuc and I came forward with Ayesha — she didn’t want to be left on her own — with our hands raised high. I made the prearranged signaclass="underline" a short, low whistle.
A whistle came back.
I relaxed. We lowered our arms and walked toward our encampment, West not far behind.
‘Ayesha,’ Leila cried out when she saw her makeup artist’s silhouette in the dark. She ran down and threw her arms around her friend. Aye-sha wept and buried her face in Leila’s neck, and the two women stood there sobbing in each other’s arms, their shoulders quaking.
Eventually I heard Leila say, ‘You’re safe now, honey. Safe,’ as she stroked the back of Ayesha’s neck.
Boink and Ryder gathered around the two women.
‘Ayesha — you okay?’ I heard Ryder ask his old school chum. She nodded. The nightmare was hers and she didn’t want it shared around. I knew that feeling. If she kept it to herself, then maybe it never happened.
Cassidy and Rutherford pulled West and me aside, leaving LeDuc with the principals. ‘What about Twenny and Peanut?’ Cassidy wanted to know.
‘They were alive when we left them,’ I said. ‘And all of them still had their hands.’
‘What?’ said Rutherford.
‘Tell you in a minute,’ West replied, gesturing at the civilians. They were still within earshot and what we had to report was not for general consumption.
‘Hey, Cisco, where’d the ponchos come from?’ I asked. Several of them had been strung up to provide shelter from the rain.
‘They walked here. A FARDC patrol — three men. They’re over there, getting cold and wet,’ Cassidy said, nodding uphill, ‘though I don’t think any of them will mind. At first we thought you were another patrol out looking for their lost buddies.’
‘What changed your mind?’ I asked.
‘You weren’t singing and smoking like they were,’ said Rutherford.
‘They were carrying these.’ Cassidy showed me a submachine gun.
I pulled mine out from behind my back and said, ‘I think they grow on trees here.’
‘The QCW-05,’ Rutherford said. ‘Made in China.’
‘Ain’t everything?’ I replied.
The QCW was a handy weapon. I’d tested one on the firing range back at Andrews — a rate of fire up around four hundred rounds per minute, a fifty-round magazine, a reasonably accurate sight, and less weight than the M16. Best of all, it was silenced.
‘There was a Chinese guy back at the FARDC HQ,’ I said.
‘Chink weaponry, Chink advisor,’ said West. ‘Gotta be related.’
I took several more steps away from our civilians and West, and debriefed Cassidy and Rutherford on what we saw: numbers, layout, weaponry, conditions, pickets, naked babes on playing cards, and so forth. I also told them about the officer and what had happened to him.
‘As punishments go, makes latrine duty seem rather tame,’ Rutherford observed.
‘What about Ayesha?’ Cassidy asked. ‘How’d you pull that off?’
‘There was a window. We took it,’ I said.
‘And no window for the others?’
‘If there was, we’d have taken it,’ West said.
‘Ayesha was kept a little apart from the rest and the isolation worked for us. We could take out the men guarding her without alerting their buddies, but that wasn’t an option with Twenny and Peanut.’
‘How many were on her?’ asked Rutherford.
‘Three.’
‘Three guards for one prisoner?’
‘Maybe they thought she was dangerous,’ I said, not wanting to go into details. Ayesha had made West and me promise to keep the rape a secret and neither of us was prepared to break that trust. I changed the subject. ‘Fournier is MIA. No sign of him.’
‘You think he’s still alive?’
‘I wouldn’t put money on it. They rocketed the chopper. Maybe they’ve got a special dislike for the UN.’
‘Guard numbers overall?’
‘Twelve that we saw,’ I said.
‘Can they be rescued?’ Cassidy asked.
‘The guards seem happy where they are,’ I replied.
Rutherford grinned. ‘You lifted one of their prisoners. Surely alarm bells must be going off down there now?’
I glanced over at our principals, who were now having a group hug with Ryder and LeDuc.
‘We fxed it so they might not know what happened to Ayesha and the men guarding her,’ I said.
‘So there is a chance we could get the others?’ said Cassidy.
‘My honest opinion? No,’ I said. ‘It’s a suicide run. They aren’t good soldiers by our standards but they have modern weapons and plenty of them, and you can’t ignore the numbers. And leaving all that aside, lifting them from the HQ isn’t the problem, it’s getting away. How do we vacate the area? There’s no handy Chinook on a hilltop with Apache gunships flying air support. We don’t have the tools for the job.’
I put my hands on my hips and the cans in the satchel I was carrying clanked together. Food — I’d forgotten about it. I dropped the bag on the ground and tins spilled out of it, to which I added the ones stuffed down my shirt.
‘What’s on the menu?’ asked Rutherford
‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ I said.
‘Lucky dip. Every army’s favorite.’ He leaned down and picked up one of the cans, and then examined it in the darkness before giving it a shake. Liquid slopped around inside.
I hadn’t eaten in six hours. My endocrine glands had been keeping me going and, now that I thought about it, I was hungry enough to eat bark. Prior experience told me that the first twenty-four hours without sustenance were the worst. Get past them, and the next few days aren’t nearly so bad. Go without food for longer than four or five days and the body starts to go out on strike. Water was more critical, but there was plenty of that around. We just had to make sure that what we drank was clean. I glanced at our civilians, who were still huddled together. Maybe I could sell the rationing to Leila as a miracle military diet. All I had to do was figure out how to work astrology or Kabala into the program and she’d swallow it, no problem. Boink, I wasn’t so sure about.
‘We need to move further away from the FARDC’s lines,’ said Cas-sidy. ‘If they sent one patrol out here, they’re gonna send another, even if it’s just to go looking for their missing buddies.’
He was right about that. Cassidy, Rutherford and I rejoined the principals while West assumed the watch.
‘Thank you for giving Ayesha back to us,’ said Leila, her voice thick with emotion.
‘Yeah, thanks, Vin,’ said Ryder. ‘And Mike,’ he said a little louder. West gave him a quick wave without looking back over his shoulder.
‘We were lucky,’ I told them. ‘Right now, we have to move.’
‘But it’s night,’ said Leila.
‘The best time to do it. We’re too close to the enemy here.’
‘What ’bout Twenny and ’Nut?’ asked Boink, slapping the mosquitoes on his neck.