We came out of the rainforest on the crest of the ridgeline, and an unobstructed view across to the eastern horizon opened out. The trail took us close to the edge of empty space. I looked over a precipice and the rock face quickly fell away to a sheer cliff — a drop of close to a hundred and fifty feet. At the base of the cliff was a lake of milky blue water. I’d been wondering why the FARDC company hadn’t just retreated to another, more tactically favorable, position, which suggested that maybe it was the rebels who were pinned down up here on this hill, forced into a corner of sorts with the cliff at their backs and nowhere to retreat to. But even if that were the situation, it was a hell of a position to have to assault. A little down the hill, in the dappled light streaming through the treetops, I could see a mortar crew working up a sweat, the explosions hammering the FARDC positions in the valley below, the sound muffled by eight hundred meters or so of rainforest.
This HQ was roughly the same size as the FARDC’s one that West and I had scoped, though the rebel HQ was better appointed, with half a dozen US Army tents similar to the ones our forces used in Iraq and Afghanistan. Several uniformed men were standing behind a trestle table, in discussion over a map, surrounded by a cohort of men armed with newish MP-5 machine guns. West nudged my elbow and motioned off to the opposite side of the area, where four corpses with black, swollen tongues and broken necks were hanging motionless from the bough of a tree, entertaining a black swarm of flies. A bird perched on one of the heads, leaned over and nonchalantly pecked at an eye socket. A blue patch on the corpse’s shoulder told me that these were DRC men. I glanced at Marcel, who appeared to be shaking, on the edge either of falling to the ground in a blubbering heap or breaking into a run, neither of which would be healthy for him, or us, right at the moment.
Even though the men at the trestle tables were maybe only in their late twenties, or early thirties, they were obviously the commanders. The lieutenant escorting us waited till one of the men looked up and motioned him over, which happened eventually. The lieutenant marched to the desk and saluted a short, fat guy in his early thirties, who wore a thick leopard-skin headband, Ray-Ban ‘Aviator’ sunglasses and held a black walking stick with gold handle. A brief conversation ensued between them and then Tubby with the fancy headdress came over to us, accompanied by the lieutenant and three of the men with the Heckler & Koch rattles.
‘Good morning,’ he said in a deep French-accented voice. ‘We are Colonel Makenga.’
Given the use of the plural ‘we’ here, I wondered whether one of the folks accompanying him shared his name and rank. Or maybe English was not his first language and he’d simply gotten it wrong. Or — third option — the guy was an asshole, prone to using the royal ‘we’ on account of his ego was selling tickets on itself.
‘Which one of you is in command?’ he continued.
‘Me,’ I said. ‘Major Cooper, United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations.’
‘We are pleased to meet you, Major.’
Hmm… option three.
‘And what are you and your people doing in our quiet little corner of the world?’ He glanced at Leila and Ayesha and gave them the slightest of bows, creating another couple of chins that butted up against all the others and pushed out beads of greasy sweat along the crease lines.
The colonel’s lieutenant hadn’t had the opportunity to pass on our story in any detail, so I gave him the headlines about us being on our way to the MONUC compound at Goma, where two of our party were to give a concert for the UN contingent, before our French-made helicopter decided to fall out of the sky.
He stroked his chins while I talked, appearing to be in thinking mode.
‘We came down close to your enemy’s line,’ I continued, ‘and several of our party were captured and taken prisoner.’
‘Hmm, that is not good news,’ he said. ‘So… how can we possibly be of assistance?’
‘We need to contact our people at Cyangugu, let them know what’s happened. So, if you’ve got a satellite phone…’
He gave a big sigh and then shook his head like he was deeply sorry. ‘We agree that this could be a course of action; however, your country has seen fit not to provide us with such luxuries as satellite phones. Our communications here are extremely limited.’
‘Is there any way we can get word out?’
‘We could send a runner, perhaps, but not in our current predicament. We’re afraid you will have to stay with us.’
He admired the handle on his walking stick — a solid gold rooster. Chunky gold-link bracelets manacled his wrists, and a nugget of gold the size of a pork knuckle swung from his thick neck on a gold chain. Even aside from the fact that he wore more bling than a Reno pimp, there was something off-putting about this guy. Maybe it was the affected speech patterns together with the disconcerting fact that, snake-like, he didn’t appear to blink. Or perhaps it was the violence that seemed to sit, suppressed, just below the civility. I could imagine this guy petting a puppy one minute and then dashing its brains out with that cane of his the next. And, of course, the four hanging ornaments looking at their toes on the edge of the compound helped this allusion along nicely. The bird perched on one of those ornaments squawked and flew off.
‘Oh,’ Makenga said, raising a finger as if he’d just had an afterthought. ‘Your Chinese weapons. Our lieutenant informs us that you claim to have taken them from our enemies down in the valley.’
Claim? ‘That’s correct,’ I said.
‘Along with the weapons you were captured with, there was a sniper rifle and high-power binoculars.’
I saw that all our weapons, backpacks and camelbacks were collected on one of the trestle tables.
Captured? ‘Yeah,’ I said, wondering where this was going.
‘How do we know you weren’t sent to kill us?’
What?! Even though the use of the words ‘claim’ and ‘captured’ were ringing alarm bells, the question was so left of field that I found myself wondering whether this guy’s ham and cheese on rye was missing something important, like the ham and cheese. I noticed again that there were a lot of guys standing around with MP-5s. I also noticed that they were now glaring at us and, from the expressions on their faces, all of them appeared to have eaten something that hadn’t agreed with them.
‘Pardon me?’ I said, trying to think fast. I felt a little like I was back in LeDuc’s chopper when things were spinning out of control.
‘How can we be sure that you and your party are not mercenaries?’
I blinked. Jesus… This was a possibility none of us had considered, but with Kornfak & Greene’s fingers in the pie around here, I could see how someone who spent their life dodging bullets at every turn might jump to that conclusion. Moreover, if this guy believed it was possible that American contract killers might go on a mission in the African rainforest with two women and a shoe-in for The Biggest Loser along for the ride, then he probably wouldn’t accept their presence as proof of our innocence. Nevertheless, I didn’t have much else to work with.
‘We are a joint US Army and United States Air Force personal security detail,’ I said, hardening my tone. ‘These are three of our principals.’ I motioned at Leila, Ayesha and Boink. ‘If you had a satellite phone, you could verify it.’
‘And here we are, back at the start without one,’ Colonel Makenga said with his hands apart. He gestured at the lieutenant holding one of our backpacks — it was Ryder’s. The lieutenant handed over the pack and the two men held a quick conference while they rifled through its contents.