Rutherford signaled that he had visual contact. Weapon up, I went over to where he was kneeling, behind a stack of rusted oil drums and pipes.
Holes punched the drums beside me — gunfire. Christ, that window was less than I’d thought, down to a minute. A round smacked into the ceramic plate in the back of my body armor and the force of the hit pushed me face first into the drums.
I groaned as Rutherford turned and fired. A number of men were sniping at us from behind another pile of rusting pipes and old gas cylinders fifty meters away and they were getting bolder by the second. Rutherford ran twenty meters to his left into open space to get a better angle on the Congolese pinning us down. I watched him fire three bursts on the run, taking down two men. The rest of them stood up and sprinted in the opposite direction.
The sergeant returned as I struggled to my feet.
‘Twenny and Peanut,’ he said, breathing hard. ‘Over there, eighty meters.’ He gave me the direction with his hand.
I had to take his word for it — I couldn’t see past the metal scrap. Rounds were pinging off the junk all around us, their passage marked by small puffs of rust. A round nicked my left upper arm — it felt like I’d been whacked there with a tire iron. Rutherford and I were pretty much outflanked. Time to move. We both changed mags as a rain squall marched in a straight line across the open mine, nice and orderly. A burst of thunder arrived simultaneously with a blinding flash of lightning.
I slapped Rutherford on the shoulder, got up and started walking at a fast crouch, hunched over, the metal butt of the M4 reassuringly hard against my cheek. I came around the trash heap looking for targets, and saw Twenny and Peanut. They were hooded and chained to what looked like an old boiler, their chains hooked through a bend in a pipe. At least a dozen men were arrayed around them. Four guards were in the firing position, standing side on, feet apart, lining us up. Two others thought better of it and, as Rutherford and I approached, got up and ran into the forest. Rutherford fired and one of the shooters took a bullet in the cheek. His buddies started firing on full auto and I heard the rounds pass overhead. I dropped a second guy, who spun like a revolving door before landing face down in a puddle, his arm at a crazy angle. And, like that, the resistance melted. The remainder of the guards dropped their weapons and fed helter- skelter. Maybe they thought Bruce Willis was in the house. Yippee ki-yay, motherfuckers…
Rutherford and I kept moving in the crouch position toward our captured principals, sweeping left and right, looking for threats but not finding any — not in front of us, anyway.
‘Twenny! Peanut!’ I called out.
I got no reaction from either of them. I grabbed Twenny by the shoulder.
‘What’s going on?’ he yelled, spinning right and then left, unaware of my presence until there was physical contact.
I pulled the black hood off his head. He squinted and blinked at the light like some kind of night creature, even though the heavy cloud cover and the rain made it seem like early evening.
‘Who is it?’ he said. ‘Get away from me… Who is it?’
He clearly didn’t recognize me.
‘It’s Cooper and Rutherford. We’re getting you out of here.’
‘Cooper’s a cracker. You’re black. Who the fuck are you?’
‘It’s Cooper, your bodyguard. You wanna hear a bad joke?’
‘Oh, shit. It is Cooper. Oh, man. Oh, shit. It’s you. Oh my god. Fuck. Fuck! How’s Peanut? Oh, Jesus, Cooper. It is you, right?’
I steadied his face and looked into his eyes. The guy was on the edge. ‘Yes, it’s Cooper,’ I said. ‘We’re getting you out.’
‘That’s not the joke, right?’ he asked me, suddenly worried.
‘No, no…’ I cupped the back of his neck in my hand and squeezed it.
Rutherford was taking care of Peanut and dealing with their chains. It turned out that they weren’t locked — merely looped through the pipe and secured by a simple U-bolt.
The FARDC hadn’t taken particularly good care of their hostages. It looked like both men had been forced to defecate where they stood. It didn’t appear that they’d had much in the way of nourishment, either, and the cuts and bruises on their faces suggested a little recreational beating.
The chains removed, Twenny started cleaning his ears, reaming them with his index finger.
‘Fucking candle wax,’ he said. ‘I wanna shoot these fuckers.’
With the hood over his head and his ears plugged, Twenny Fo had been in a kind of solitary confinement for a week and the guy was understandably pissed. But there was no time to talk about it. We had to get out of here. Our spectacular entrance had caught the enemy with his pants down, but they weren’t going to stay around his ankles much longer.
I felt arms around me, hugging me. It was Peanut.
‘Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you,’ he said over and over.
‘Cooper…’
Rutherford’s voice. There was urgency in it.
I turned around. Oh, shit… Around forty armed Congolese men and boys were arrayed in a loose semicircle fifty meters behind us. In the centre of the formation was Ryder and Francis, and both had pistols jammed against their heads.
One of the Africans stepped forward and called out, ‘Your weapons. Throw them down or we will kill your people.’
Would giving up our weapons save Francis and Ryder? I doubted it. There’d be no prisoners taken here today.
‘I will not ask again,’ he said, flicking the rain off his forehead with a finger.
‘Where’s Lockhart?’ I called out.
‘You have no bargaining power.’
‘I can take his head off from this distance,’ Rutherford said out of the corner of his mouth, sighting down the barrel.
And afterwards? We’d been dealt our hand and the guy across the table — which, in this instance, was fifty meters of mud and weed — thought we had a pair of twos.
‘My friend here says he can shoot you in the head from this distance,’ I said loud enough to be heard by everyone. ‘He’s good. He can do it. You don’t want to die. Release those two men and send them over. Then we’ll leave and you can go back to your gold.’
The African grinned. His teeth reminded me of piano keys — white and black where a couple were missing. ‘I do not need one lucky shot,’ he called back. ‘Drop your weapons now or you will die in a storm of lead. Your bodies will not be recognized by your mothers.’
I was trying to come up with something to say that would make the guy eat his words when I heard a boom of thunder. Deep in a place where I was in tune to these things, I wondered why it wasn’t accompanied by lightning. And, suddenly, the wood huts barely ten meters from where the FARDC men were holding Ryder and Francis blew apart in a huge explosion, and splinters the size of spears fired in all directions as if a giant porcupine had stepped on a land mine. I had just enough time to turn away and drop to the ground as these spears came down with the rain all around us. When I looked back, at least a dozen Congolese had fallen where they stood. Others were staggering away, leaning on each other. One man limped off with a piece of wood the size of a fence paling sticking up out of his back like some kind of weather vane.
I wondered what in Christ’s name had just happened. That was one hell of a powerful, timely lightning strike. Without lightning. ‘Stay with them,’ I shouted at Rutherford, and got up and ran to the spot where I’d seen Ryder and Francis. I found Ryder immediately. He was laid out flat on his back. His eyes were open and he was dazed but otherwise unhurt.