‘I remember this. We’ve been here before, right?’ Ryder asked, jumping in beside me.
I nodded, getting my bearings. The smell of burned kerosene was in the air.
‘Down there, I think.’ I lined up the sight on an area I thought might yield something, but saw nothing. I slid over the top of the log and cut my way down through elephant grass and scrub, the sweet smell of toasted aviation fuel growing stronger. A shard of Perspex from the aircraft’s windshield dangling in a bush caught my eye. We were close. I saw the wreckage a few steps later, part of a main rotor blade draped with liana, pointing skywards like a broken finger. I peered into the twisted metal, then looked up into the canopy. The hole our descent had ripped through the treetops was clearly visible, drops of rain wobbling through the opening on their way down.
The aircraft wreckage itself was covered in leaves, fronds and branches. Almost the only indication that something lay buried beneath was the fact that the dead vegetation was starting to wilt like a salad left too long in the bowl.
Ryder and I climbed down to the Puma and hauled away a few of the branches. An attempt had been made to hide the wreckage. The remains were charred and blackened. I started poking around among them.
‘What are you looking for?’ asked Ryder.
‘Not sure,’ I said.
I gestured for the case and he handed it over.
‘Find some high ground and keep watch,’ I told him.
He turned away while I rummaged around among the cosmetics, looking for anything suitable for the purpose I had in mind. There were lipsticks, lots of them — pinks, reds and bronzes. They would have to do. I took several, fully extended the sticks and then broke them off. I could already hear Leila squealing.
I stuffed the tubes into a thigh pocket, left the case on the ground, pulled away another couple of branches and hoisted myself up onto the blackened, twisted fuselage. The port-side external fuel sponson was broken, the back half of it hanging down. I ran a gloved finger across an interior wall and transferred the oily, sooty residue to one of the lipstick tubes. I then went to the front of the wreckage and climbed in through the cockpit. Rocket explosions and fires had left the twisted interior charred and the paintwork black and blistered. Entering the main cargo area, which had been fitted with seats, I could see at a glance that there wasn’t much left of the tanks. Internal explosions had ripped them up and there were gaping holes in the alloy floor. I crouched for a full minute in silence and took in the charred surroundings that included the remains of Travis and Shaquand. Sometimes a crime scene will speak to you. This one didn’t. Maybe the exercise was a waste of time and effort. But I was here now, and I’d never get this chance again. The jet-fuelled furnace that engulfed the wreckage probably also consumed any chemical evidence of sabotage. Was that why the remains of this aircraft had been rocketed — to destroy evidence? And, if so, on whose orders? I reached down deep into the jagged black holes in the floor, which still smelled of jet fuel, and scraped some of the carbon deposits off the sides of the tanks and tapped them into the remaining gold Chanel tubes. Job done, I climbed back into the flight deck and out through the front of the chopper and sucked in some clean forest air. The whole operation took less than five minutes. My gloves were filthy and badly worn. I wiped them on the wet vegetation.
A rifle shot cracked the silence. I ducked and spun around.
Two more shots. Dammit! Ryder’s M16.
A man screamed, a quick death scream, the type of scream that says a life has just been startled out of its body. My eyes went to the source of the noise. It was the two men we’d seen walking along the trail, reconnoitering. They’d wandered back across our path. However, one of them was now a lifeless body lying at the feet of the other. The man still standing had his hands in the air, and they were trembling like the leaves around him being slapped by the rain. He was starting to blubber. He was maybe sixteen, no older.
‘No more shooting,’ I calmly called out to Ryder, clamping down on the desire to yell it. ‘There are gonna be more of these guys nearby, for sure.’ And, as I said that, I knew there was only one possible outcome for this situation. ‘Jesus,’ I said to myself. And maybe the guy with his hands in the air came to the same conclusion, because he suddenly turned and ran.
‘Shit,’ I said, bolting after him.
He ran hard, thrashing through the bush. I followed, breathing hard, drawing the Ka-bar as I ran and hacking at the greenery, the machete left back at the crash site. Our presence in the area had to remain a secret. Nothing was more important. I thrashed at the leaves and the fronds, the palms and the lianas, leaped half-blind over logs, heading uphill, aware of the effort, the air starting to sear my lungs like flame. Fuck, he was getting away on those young legs. I heard a dull thud somewhere ahead and then — nothing. I came up on the guy a handful of seconds later. He was spreadeagled on the ground at the base of a tree trunk hidden by scrub, his eyes rolled back in his head and a concave depression in the skull over his left eye, a little moss and bark pressed into the grazed skin. Breathing hard, I put my fingers to his jugular and they confirmed that nothing warm was going to move through his veins ever again. I sucked in a few breaths and sheathed the Ka-bar. Hitting the tree at full throttle had done me a service; stopped me having to add another bad dream to my collection. I searched the kid’s pockets and found some kind of a charm made up of bones, a little snakeskin and animal teeth. If it were supposed to be a protective charm, I’d be making a complaint to the witch doctor who gave it to him. I wondered if it was connected to the altar we’d seen. There was nothing else in his pockets. I stood and listened to the forest for a full minute but the loudest noises were my own breathing, the pumping of my heart, the ever-present impact of raindrops on leaves and the high-strung whine of over-excited mosquitoes. I cut some fronds, lay them over the body, then retraced my steps back to the Puma.
I found Ryder down on his haunches, his rifle across his chest, nervously glancing left and right. My arrival startled him.
‘Where is he?’ he asked, standing up.
‘A tree jumped in front of him.’
‘What?’
‘Try not to shoot anything unless it shoots at you first.’
‘I had no choice,’ he said.
He was probably right about that.
‘They were coming toward us… I’ve never killed anyone before. He was a kid.’ Ryder’s voice was cracking, the center of his chin trembling. ‘No choice,’ he said.
‘You did your job, Duke,’ I told him. ‘If you hadn’t, maybe it’d be you covered in palm fronds waiting for the ants.’
I walked past him. There was nothing I could say that would make him feel better about taking someone’s life.
‘C’mon,’ I said. I was done with the Puma. I fastened the Velcro on my thigh pocket to make sure the lipsticks were secure and wrapped a hand around the rough wood grip of the machete propped against the twisted fuselage, and moved into the bush.