Ryder and I crawled through the mud beneath them, scarcely breathing, my Ka-bar in one hand, ready to fillet any light sleepers who chose the wrong moment to visit the john. We eventually found cover, crawling into another island of scrub forty meters away. Retracing our steps, there were no Claymores to worry about, as we’d disarmed and appropriated all the surprises on the way in.
It was a quarter past one in the morning before I felt confident enough to walk on my feet instead of my elbows. I stood and breathed the wet night air, my forearms swollen and throbbing with insect venom, a cloud of thirsty mosquitoes circling my head and humming for my blood. I went to the nearest anthill and reapplied the repellent.
By this time, I’d had plenty of time to think about Fournier and how he fitted into my theory. I realized that I’d been maneuvered to a particular point of view. I’d been told that it had been Fournier who’d switched the tanks; that it was Fournier who’d made the Mayday call. And Fournier had, for a time, disappeared, which cast these assurances in a certain light. But now I’d seen Fournier tied up and murdered by people I believed he might have been in league with, people who included a US military contractor. If Fournier wasn’t Lockhart’s inside man, it meant the real rat was still among us.
And his name was LeDuc.
Perhaps that had been part of the reason for the patrol sent out to check the Puma for survivors — to recover LeDuc. But there’d been a mix-up when we’d gotten the upper hand and the wrong Frenchman had been taken away.
LeDuc had accompanied West and me when we’d infiltrated the FARDC encampment and rescued Ayesha. There would have been moments when he could have escaped. Perhaps he hoped that we’d just conveniently get ourselves captured, allowing him to maintain his cover. When that didn’t happen, why hadn’t he just blown the whistle on us? Maybe he thought there’d be a lot of confusion and shooting, that it could potentially end up being bad for his health and therefore not worth the risk.
I thought back through all the conversations I’d had with LeDuc, sifting for clues about his true intentions, clues I’d overlooked. He’d been our translator on several occasions. Had he relayed information without putting a skew on things? Looking back on it, when Marcel was captured, there’d been recognition in his face when he laid eyes on LeDuc. Looks like you remind him of someone. That’s what I’d told him. Perhaps LeDuc hadn’t reminded Marcel of someone at all. Perhaps Marcel had actually seen LeDuc on a prior occasion. Perhaps at the FARDC camp, making a delivery of fresh-baked croissants. Marcel had jumped off the cliff behind the CNDP’s position with the French pilot, but hadn’t survived the fall. The African’s skull was bashed in. LeDuc had suggested that Marcel had hit his head on a rock and drowned. Maybe LeDuc had been holding said rock at the time. Maybe he was worried that Rutherford, who spoke a little French, might find out something awkward from the African.
‘Let me get this straight,’ Ryder said, breathing heavily as we double-timed it down the wide cleared path. ‘That was Lockhart you saw back there, the guy we met at Cyangugu — the DoD contractor?’
‘Yep.’
‘Jesus. You thought Fournier set us up, put us down in the jungle.’
‘Yep.’
‘But they killed him. They wouldn’t have done that if he was working for them.’
‘No, you wouldn’t think so.’
‘Then if Fournier didn’t put us down here, it had to have been LeDuc. And if LeDuc is involved, then he’s gonna be pretty nervous about what we might find out on this recon. Leaving him behind might have made him desperate.’
‘Yeah, that’s why we’re running,’ I puffed. Ryder had figured it out. Maybe there was more to the guy than I’d given him credit for.
The notch I’d made in the tree wasn’t easy to find in the dark. I remembered that the cleared pathway cut to the south a hundred meters beyond my marker. We found the kink and worked backward, finally locating the tree with a handhold of wood hacked out of it at head height.
‘Get the case,’ I told Ryder.
He hunted around and eventually found its hiding place. I checked the Seiko for the time and made the eighty-degree change in direction, slinking off across the open trampled path through the forest.
We were soon heading down the valley, retracing our steps, taking us back to the rocks where Cassidy, West, Rutherford, Leila, Ayesha, Boink, and the rat, LeDuc, were waiting for our return. The canopy here was unbroken, and the darkness was complete. We soon found it impossible to move around without bumping into things. We had no choice but to find a little ground that was uncluttered by bushes, elephant grass, saplings, trees and undergrowth, and that was also clear of ants, on which to get some sleep. We couldn’t find any.
Ryder and I slept back-to-back on a bed of tree roots and mud. We were both shivering with cold when I woke, my clothes and skin water-logged. It was maybe half an hour before dawn, the shapes of the world beneath the canopy barely discernible and still monochromatic. A large hairy caterpillar the size of my thumb hugged the stem of a plant inches from my face, probing carefully forward, trying to reach across the gap to my nose. I broke the stem and placed the bug on the ground beside me.
‘Rise and shine, Duke,’ I said, my throat thick with phlegm, giving him a nudge.
I felt his weight shift behind me.
‘Fuck,’ he said under his breath.
I stood up, using the M4 as a crutch, every joint in my body feeling cold and seized, and found a plant to water. Ryder did likewise. I was hungry, my stomach growling like there was a cat locked inside wanting out. I sucked the tube at my shoulder to settle it down a little.
I motioned at Ryder to follow. He nodded and dragged his feet behind me. I stopped and signaled him to look sharp. Most accidents happen close to home, and we were in the accident zone. No point tempting fate. It had been twelve hours since we’d patrolled through this patch of turf. Bad guys might have moved in behind us.
The forest dripped with water, only it wasn’t raining. The morning slowly crept up on us as we made our way down the hill, the greens gradually taking over the palate as the day came out of hiding, birds waking with the sunlight and giving the world a good shriek. Frogs hopped out of the way of our feet and occasionally animals shot like runaway bowling balls through the undergrowth. A gentle mist floated around us, wrapping round tree trunks like gossamer web, and the air was thick, clean and as sweet as snowmelt.
‘Take that step and you’re dead, Cooper,’ the tree beside me whispered.
Then the tree moved and I saw that it was Sergeant Cassidy, Ka-bar in hand, leaves and bits of shrub sprouting from webbing, his face streaked with camouflage paint. He came around beside me and scraped some leaf litter off the ground beneath my boot, revealing a hole. Pushing the butt of his M4 into the hole made a length of bamboo pole with bamboo spears embedded in the end rise out of the earth and swing in an arc toward me. Had I taken that step, I’d have collected a row of spikes from upper thigh to gut. Out here, that would have been a death sentence.
‘Had some time on your hands?’ I asked him.
He smiled. ‘You just missed walking into another fun activity back up the hill a ways.’
We stepped around the trap and Cassidy fell in beside us. I took the pack off my shoulders and showed him the Claymores that Ryder and I had collected.
‘Hoo-ah,’ he beamed. ‘Where’d you get them?’
‘We took a stroll back to the Puma,’ I said.
‘What for?’
‘I noticed Leila was all out of foundation,’ I told him and Ryder held up Leila’s makeup case.
‘I was gonna ask you about that.’
‘Next stop was the FARDC camp. They’ve moved.’