‘Strategic withdrawal,’ Rutherford said. ‘You know, we pull back, make a plan…’
The big man didn’t buy it. ‘You leavin’ him behind, yo,’ he said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, angry, disappointed, and helpless.
‘No one’s getting left behind,’ I told him and waited for lightning to strike me dead because, as things stood, we really didn’t have very much choice but to leave Deryck and the others to whatever fate held in store for them.
‘Bull fucking shit, motherfuckers,’ said Boink, seething, seeing through the lie.
‘You can’t leave them behind,’ said Leila. ‘No sir, I won’t allow it.’
Ryder opened his mouth to speak but I cut him off with a look before he said something he’d regret.
‘We need to move because the danger is still too close.’ I didn’t wait for consensus. They got the drop on us once; next time we might not be so lucky. ‘Get your personal items and let’s go. Leave nothing behind.’
None of the principals moved.
‘Now,’ I said.
Still no movement.
‘Hello?’
Ayesha began to walk and resistance from the others crumbled. Our principals seemed to give a collective shrug and put one foot in front of the other. I wasn’t going to complain. We stopped by the nearest anthill. West kicked the top off the mound, and wiped his face and neck with the foul-smelling dirt while he explained why.
‘I’m not doing that!’ Leila exclaimed.
‘Malaria is not something you want, ma’am,’ said West. ‘It’s a bitch to get rid of. You get chills, fevers, enlarged spleen and liver. Get it bad enough and it’ll kill you. The mosquitoes carry it, along with Dengue Fever, Philariasis and River Blindness. The dirt mixed with dead ant will keep them at bay.’
‘No.’
Ayesha rubbed the dirt on her neck, face and hands. Boink did likewise.
‘There’s no paparazzi here,’ I reminded the celebrity.
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ she said as she resigned herself to what she considered ignominy and smeared a handful of dirt on her cheeks.
‘Whatever gives you that idea, ma’am?’
‘You’re smiling.’
I looked away and took Cassidy forward to scout the path ahead. The volume of water coming down the hill was mind-boggling, the ground criss-crossed by rivulets gurgling, splashing and dribbling. We picked our way silently in the dark through the dense foliage, heading for the deep, rumbling sound of a massive volume of water tumbling and boiling in a confined space; a waterfall, perhaps. It turned out to be a ravine like the others we’d encountered. I reconnoitered upstream a hundred meters while Cassidy headed down and found us a fallen tree to use as a bridge. Fifty metres further on, another ravine. We crossed this one by wading through a waist-deep pool of icy water where the current wasn’t as strong. With luck, the ravines were natural barriers that discouraged patrols. Not far beyond this second ravine, we came across three trees in a clump, surrounding a small room-sized clearing. Thick liana vines hung down from branches hidden somewhere in the total blackness of the canopy. This was as good a place as any to hole up and get some rest. It was two thirty-five in the morning and we were all dead on our feet.
I split the watches between Cassidy, Rutherford and me — I took the first — and everyone else did their best to sleep until dawn, the women, wrapped in a poncho, spooning each other. LeDuc, Cassidy, West, Rutherford and Boink shared two more ponchos between them.
Shivering in the light drizzle, I sat with my feet and ass in a puddle with a Nazarian and M4 for company, and counted frogs jumping through the water that ran down the hill, some of them chased by large black snakes. To keep myself awake and the exhaustion at bay, I thought about the Chinese guy and what he might have been doing in the FARDC camp. I agreed with West that he probably had a connection to the weapons, but was that where it ended? I thought about Twenny Fo and the assurance I’d given Boink about us leaving no one behind and his reaction to it. I thought about Fournier and what might have happened to him; about Peanut; about the officer on his knees with his hands lying twitching in the mud in front of his eyes. I thought about the FARDC troops shooting RPGs into the Puma. I thought about the patrol ambushing us, and about the futter of Cas-sidy’s black throwing knife as it flew like an attack butterfy, burying itself in the back of the African soldier’s head. I thought it was luck of the most fucked-up kind that, given the size of the DRC, we should come down in the middle of a firefight. I mean, what were the odds? And something about all this congealed into a vague pattern that left me with a feeling of unease, which led to thoughts of Anna and the office at the Oak Ridge facility and the black hole in her chest; her heart pumping furiously while her life leaked onto the carpet through the ragged wound in her back.
Half an hour into my one-hour watch, footsteps on the leaf litter behind caused me to squeeze the Nazarian tighter, but it was Leila. I wondered what she wanted.
‘You should be asleep, ma’am,’ I told her as she walked in front of me.
‘I couldn’t. Too many ants. And I… I wanted to thank you for bringing Ayesha back for me.’
I hadn’t done it for her, but I let it slide. ‘There’s no need to thank me.’
‘Just doing your job, right?’
‘It’s going to be a long day tomorrow,’ I reminded her. ‘You need to get your rest.’
‘Do you find me attractive, Vin?’
I wasn’t sure which part of that surprised me the most, and then decided it was the fact that she knew my name. ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean, ma’am,’ I said, stalling.
‘Call me Leila, okay?’
‘Sure.’ I said, nearly putting ‘ma’am’ after it.
‘Well? Do you?’
‘Do I what?’
‘Find me attractive?’
Hmm… one of the more unexpected questions I could have had to answer, given that it was three in the morning, we were in the middle of the rainforest, and she’d given me the impression that she thought my station in the universe was a rung above dirt. I thought about the answer. Yeah, she was beautiful, as well as sultry, and even sexy, in a put-you-over-my-knee kind of way, but attractive? No, she was way too selfish, too spoilt, too needy and too narcissistic for my tastes. I liked women who were happy to concentrate on me, not on themselves — even if they were faking it.
She sighed impatiently. I was taking far too long to answer, obviously. ‘What I want to know is whether you want to fuck me?’
‘What?’ I said, the question making me gawp.
She kneeled in front of me, threw her hair back and slid down the zipper on her jacket.
‘Stop right there, ma’am,’ I told her. Going to sleep on guard duty was a punishable offense, and, though I wasn’t sure of the statute, getting laid while on it was probably in the same ballpark. And besides, being completely sober, I had enough control to realize that the offer was going to come with strings attached — make that steel cables. I knew enough about Leila by now to understand that she was used to having her way, even if she had to work a little to get it.
‘If you call me “ma’am” one more time, I’ll slap you,’ she warned me.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m a woman, you’re a man…’
‘You’re a woman who wants something and you think I’m the man who can make it happen. And none of it has anything to do with sex.’
‘Fuck…’ Leila sat on her haunches and pulled the zip back up to her neck.
‘So what’s going on?’ I asked her.
‘I don’t like you, Cooper.’
‘You don’t like me so much, you want to get jiggy with me.’
Silence.
‘What is this about, aside from me being irresistible?’ She glared at me. ‘Leila, I’m gonna have to ask you to go back with the others and—’