The Consignment (28 page)

“Deserted,” I said, and I stopped just short of the chopper. The pilot didn’t move. His eyes stared up at the undercarriage. Then I noticed the dark stain on his shirt, and I went in closer, crouched and touched his face. It was cold. I tore open his shirt, and there was a bullet wound just beneath his sternum. I rolled him and checked the exit wound. It was enormous.

“Ned?” Fiona called.

“Stay down there!”

“Where’s the pilot?”

“He’s been shot.” I eased him onto his back again, then I inspected the chopper, looking for a spray of blood or a bullet hole, anything that might tell me where the shot had come from. There was nothing.

“Can I do something?” Fiona called up.

“No. Just stay down!”

“Is he all right?”

I ducked under the chopper tail and climbed in through the open rear door. Busting open a crate, I grabbed a P23, then fixed a magazine. I went forward, leaned into the cockpit, reaching for the binoculars, and the glass side screen suddenly imploded. Shattered glass showered me, I snatched up the binoculars, then scrambled back to the rear door.

“Ned!”

“Take cover!” I leaped out and ran, low and fast, down the slope. Fiona had taken cover behind a boulder, I dropped down beside her. “You see where the shot came from?”

She shook her head. “Where’s the pilot?”

I edged along the boulder, raised the binoculars, and looked along the ridge. The sniper had almost taken me. He had to be inside two hundred yards.

Trevanian scrambled up from below and dropped behind the protective cover of the boulder. He looked at me, breathing hard.

“The pilot’s dead,” I told him.

“Dead?” said Fiona.

“Fuck,” said Trevanian, glancing up to the chopper. “Either one of you fly?” When I shook my head, he swore.

I showed him where I thought the shot had come from. A pile of boulders a hundred and fifty yards away. He took the binoculars.

“How many’d you see?”

“Haven’t seen anyone.”

He inspected the boulders. “There’ll just be one,” he decided. “Two or more, and they’d be spraying us by now.” He handed the binoculars to Fiona, then indicated the P23. “Can you use that?”

I nodded.

“We could get back down to the camp this way,” Fiona suggested, pointing behind. She didn’t realize that turning tail was more dangerous than taking the sniper on.

I put a hand on her shoulder. “Stay here. Keep your head down.” Then Trevanian and I shuffled around one side of the boulder. I told him I thought I could get near enough along the top ridge for a shot. “If you stay low,” I said, “you’ll get him if he runs.”

“You know what you’re doing?”

“I used to.”

“Jesus,” he said.

I broke cover. I scrambled up the scree, dropping behind some rocks just in front of the chopper. When I looked back, Trevanian was moving along the ridge lower down. The sniper fired. Dirt kicked up in front of Trevanian, I got up and ran. I made twenty yards, then dropped again just as a shot went singing over my head. I lifted my chest, he fired again, and a spray of splintered rock peppered my cheek and I dropped down. Forty yards below me, Trevanian was still moving forward. Then he dived, the sniper fired, and I flicked to automatic and got up and ran, firing from the hip, raking the boulders where the sniper was hidden. When I’d burned through the clip, I dropped and got myself wedged down in a gully, and a second later the return fire rattled over me. The sniper wasn’t fooling with single shots now, dirt and rocks showered over me like torrential rain, when he finally eased off the trigger, the noise of gunfire still rung in my ears.

I put in a fresh clip. I crawled on my belly about twenty yards along the gully, every few seconds there was another burst from the sniper, but now he was just spraying and hoping, he’d lost me. I couldn’t see Trevanian. When I reached the end of the gully I stopped. There was silence.

I counted to three beneath my breath, then I snapped my head up, snatched a look, then withdrew. No gunfire. I was less than a hundred yards from the boulders, but it was all open ground, I’d gotten as far as I was going to get. I flicked the P23 to single-fire and waited. I seemed to wait a long time, but it was probably only a minute, then I heard Trevanian fire. The sniper fired back, Trevanian returned fire, and I put my head up and saw the sniper between the boulders. He thought the rocks had him shielded. He was wrong. I eased the rifle butt into my shoulder, took slow, careful aim, then squeezed the trigger.

It took him in the chest, beneath his arm. He rose, his arms swinging up, his gun flying free and cartwheeling through the air, then he dropped and lay still and I knew he was dead.

“He’s down!” I kept an eye on the body. I flicked to automatic, then got up. Trevanian climbed warily up the slope while I did a quick recce of the area. By the time I’d gotten to the boulders, Trevanian was crouched over the sniper’s dead body. He dug in the guy’s bloodied pocket, found some ID, and handed it up to me. The guy had been a Barchevsky Mining employee, a foreman at Dujanka.

“Rebel,” Trevanian declared. “Waiting for his friends.” He stood up, scuffing aside the limp arm with his boot. He considered the bloodied chest a moment, then cocked his head and raised his eyes to me. “Nice shot.”

I dropped the ID on the body, turned my back on Trevanian, and went to find Fiona.

CHAPTER 37

Only one vehicle remained in the camp, a truck that was parked in the maintenance shed. As we approached along the track, we saw that the hood was up and that a canvas sheet had been spread on the concrete floor beneath the engine. Fiona stopped at the open double-bay doors of the shed while I went in with Trevanian. He jumped onto the bumper and peered in at the engine, then he got down on the canvas sheet and hauled himself under the truck.

“No battery,” I remarked.

He said he’d seen one on the workbench, connected to a charger. He shuffled farther under the truck. I asked him if he knew what he was looking at.

“Ah-ha,” he said.

I looked in the cab. “The keys are in it.”

He dragged himself out, then stood up, wiping his hands together. He crossed to the workbench, which ran along the right wall, the length of the shed. The bench was littered with tools and old parts, he started sorting through them. I suggested we drop the battery in, turn the key, and see what happened.

“Fuck-all’s gonna happen.” He moved down the workbench, searching. “The starter motor’s missing.”

Fiona caught my eye, she tossed her head toward the mess, saying that she could go get us some food and something to drink. When I nodded, she went. Trevanian continued his search, and I went and joined him. In an open locker above the bench, there was a two-way radio. I switched it on, there was a quiet hiss of static, and I reached for the dial.

“Leave it,” Trevanian said, and I looked at him. “It’s probably tuned to the same frequency as that convoy. If they start talking to each other, I want to hear it.”

My hand fell. I considered what he’d said. “You worried they might come here?”

“I’m worried, period.” He reached the end of the workbench without finding the part he needed. He turned on the spot, looking around, then disappeared behind the truck. “Bingo,” he said.

When I joined him, he was sorting through dozens of red and white boxes, new parts, stacked against the corrugated iron wall. His fingers flicked over the labels, he nodded me to the far end of the pile. As we searched, I said, “I get the feeling you’ve done this kind of thing before.”

“Previous life.”

“Transport division?”

“Something like that.” Another minute and he found it, he tore the box open. “Okay. Now all we gotta do is fit the bloody thing.” He collected some wrenches from the bench, and took them with the new starter motor over to the truck. He asked me to find him a flashlight.

I scoured the bench. “How long ago did you leave the Army?”

“Ten years.”

“No regrets.”

“Not till lately.”

I asked him how many guys he had working for him.

“Seventy, seventy-five.” He cocked his head. “You’re not thinking about a career change?”

I found a flashlight and gave it to him. He lowered himself onto his back on the canvas, then hauled himself under the truck.

“What’s the pay?” I said.

“Seven thousand U.S. a month.”

“Not much for a man to get himself killed.”

“I’ve only lost two men.”

“This week.”

“Ever. And one of them’s that pilot up on the ridge.” I wasn’t sure that I believed him. And it wasn’t the time to mention Jay and Johnny, the dead AfricAid guys. I listened to him working a wrench for a while, then he said, “The secret is, keep out of the politics. Stick to the mining company contracts.”

“That’s not how it looked back in Kinshasa.” I crouched and peered under the engine. “Colonel.”

He grunted, straining at the wrench. Then he stretched out a hand to me, a small bolt rested in his palm. He said he needed three more, the same size, so I took the bolt and went to search the workbench. He spoke to me from under the truck.

“Since when can an arms salesman look down his nose at anyone?”

“Just a remark.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m not too keen on it myself. But I have to protect my contracts.”

“You’re fighting a war.”

He dragged himself out and sat up. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, a greasy streak appeared over his left eye. “I’m helping the legitimate goverment of the country suppress a rebellion. At least, I was until you showed up. And the reason I was doing it was to protect my contracts.”

“You telling me the government’s not paying you for your assistance?”

He studied me, then he held out his hand. His eyes never wavered. He told me to shut my mouth and give him the bolts.

“Is it fixed?” Fiona asked me when I walked into the kitchen at the end of the mess. She was standing at the sink, rinsing out some plastic containers. The kitchen was large, industrial, the ovens and benches were made of stainless steel. I went to one of the refrigerators and took out a bottle of water.

“No,” I said. I told her Trevanian thought he might have it done in half an hour. I uncapped the bottle and drank. I was hot. Just walking over from the maintenance shed had brought on a huge sweat.

Fiona dried off the containers and waved a hand over a plateful of sandwiches. She told me to take what I wanted, for me and Trevanian both, she said she was going to pack the rest to take. I grabbed a sandwich, tomato, then I pulled up a stool and sat down and ate. Fiona went along to the pantry and fetched some tins of sardines, then she came back and picked up a knife and started spreading butter on slices of bread. Over our heads, the iron roof made cracking sounds as it warped beneath the sun. I finished my sandwich and started on another. I drank some more water from the bottle.

“Which one of you shot that man up there?” Her back turned to me, she gestured with her knife up the ridge.

“Does that matter?”

She lifted a shoulder and returned to scooping sardines onto the bread. The silence between us now was heavy.

“I shot him,” I said.

She nodded to herself and went on working. “That wasn’t so hard now, was it?”

My sandwich was halfway to my mouth. I put it down. “What do you want from me? Do you want me to know that you think I screwed up? Okay. I know it. And I know that beating my breast over it’s not going to turn back the clock, so whatever you’ve got to say, just say it, Fiona.” She kept her back turned to me. She started slicing. “Just say it,” I said.

“What?”

“Whatever you want to say.”

“Would you like that?”

“Oh, for chrissake, just get it off your chest.”

She didn’t respond, but she was wound up so tight, she had to put down the knife. She braced her hands on the bench.

“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t expect it to go on for two years, nobody did. I always thought the end was just around the corner.” I waited. When she didn’t respond this time, I gave up. “At least I wasn’t having an affair,” I muttered, taking a bite from my sandwich. “Give me some credit.”

I chewed intently, feeling rotten. My wife couldn’t say one civil word to me. My son was lost. Then Fiona’s head drooped. After a second, her shoulders started to shake.

“Fiona?”

She was crying. I put down my sandwich and went across and rested my hands on her shoulders. She shrugged my hands off, turned away and dropped onto a stool. She put her elbows on the bench and buried her face in her hands.

“We’ll find Brad,” I said. “I promise you.”

Her head shook. She looked up at me, wretched, and when I stepped toward her, she held out a hand, fending me off.

“We’ll find him.”

“I slept with Barchevsky,” she said.

We stared at each other. I was transfixed to the spot. At last she got up and pushed past me to the sink, she turned on the tap and splashed water onto her face. Then she wiped her face and tried to stop crying, and I watched her, unable to speak. It was not real. There were no words to cover it. Barchevsky, a guy I’d seen only twice. Alive, at the airport in New York. Dead, in his office. Barchevsky.

Finally I said, “I don’t believe that.” She turned, her face bunched. I shook my head. “You wouldn’t have.”

“I did.” Her voice was so choked, it was barely a whisper. It was true. I knew it was true.

“No,” I said.

“When you disappeared.” She swallowed down the lump in her throat. “I knew you’d gone with that woman.”

“I hadn’t. Not like that.”

“I knew you were lying to me. I knew it, Ned. Where else could you be?”

“I never touched her.”

“What good’s that now?” Her shoulders sagged. She dropped her forehead onto the heel of one hand. “If I’d known that, do you think I’d be here?”

It took me a second. “You came up from Johannesburg to see Barchevsky?”

She nodded.

“Not Brad?”

“I didn’t know all this was going to happen.” She looked up at me, tearful but defiant now. “I didn’t know you’d finally get around to being honest with me.”

I couldn’t move. Or speak. I stood there in front of her, completely stricken.

Then Trevanian put his head in at the rear door, shouting, “Rourke!” I turned to him, dazed. His glance flitted between us. “You’d both better come. It’s about your son.” Fiona rose, her face turning white. Trevanian turned back toward the maintenance shed, he called over his shoulder, “Hurry, and you might hear him. He’s on the radio.”