Operation: Congo

- 3 -

Banks led the two younger privates back to the main tent.

“We’ll set up in here for the night,” he said. “Davies, get a brew on. Wilko, clear out the hardware and see if you can get anything off any of the hard drives. There might be something there that can help us make some sense of this mess.”

Banks stood in the tent doorway, lit up a smoke, and tried to formulate a theory based on what he saw around. It looked like a classic abduction scenario; the WHO team and the villagers surprised, maybe while sleeping, and spirited off who knew where, the only casualties being some poor bastards who had the misfortune to be awake at the wrong time. The only thing he couldn’t factor in was the bird-like foot that the sarge had dragged out of the pot. It was the wild card here but he had a feeling it had some bearing on what was happening. He just couldn’t see how it fit.

He was still musing on that when Wilkins called out from inside the tent in an atrocious American accent.

“Stop your grinnin’ and drop your linen. Got something.”

“Do me a favor, lad,” Banks said, “I get enough of that shite from Wiggo without you joining in. What have you got?”

“Emails mainly,” Wilkins said sheepishly. “Back and forth between somebody here and New York by the look of things. Some of them are badly fragmented and there’s several complaints about the patchy satellite service and such. But there’s quite a bit of material and I’ve managed to pull a stack of twenty or so emails from the last week. A lot of it is boring admin stuff, requests for supplies and the like. But you need to see this.”

The private had managed to load the data onto his phone. He passed it to Banks. It showed a single, densely formatted piece of text with no line breaks, but Banks had no trouble reading it.

Davies stood up from the camp stove with a mug of coffee for each of them.

“It says they were getting ready to be on their way home. Do you think we missed them, Cap?” the tall private said. “Could they have taken another route downriver and passed us by?”

“I don’t think they’d have left all this kit—and two unburied dead—behind them, lad,” Banks replied. “No. They were taken, I’m pretty sure of that. Whether they were taken alive or dead is what’s yet to be determined. Maybe the sarge will find us a clue either way.”

He got a partial answer when Hynd and Wiggins returned from their search of the banks.

“At least some of them walked out,” Hynd said as he poured a coffee for himself. “We found boot and trainer imprints on the bank a couple of hundred yards north of here. Signs that they went that way by boat too. I think we should head that way ourselves. That’s our best chance of seeking them out.”

Banks looked to the sky. The sun was already descending beyond the canopy.

“I’m not keen on taking a trip by canoe in unknown waters in the dark,” he said. “We’ll bed down here for the night and make a start upriver at first light.”

“There’s something else, Cap,” Hynd said. “We found other tracks too—and if you asked me to guess, I’d say they were made by something with the same footprint as yon thing we dragged out of the pot earlier.”

Banks told the returned sergeant and corporal about the email and the fact that the meat in the pot was supposed to have come from already dead beasts.

“So if the beasties were dead, what made the tracks then?” Wiggins asked.

“Fuck knows, Wiggo. An educated guess would be more beasties, but I know that’s not your strong point. But it doesn’t matter either way. Our top priority here is finding the WHO team. Let’s focus on that for the time being until we know more.”

By the time they’d cleared the tent of the mess of broken kit and computers and given a perfunctory burial to the two charred bodies, it was almost full dark. They retired to the main tent, pulled down the flaps leaving only one doorway open, and Davies started preparing a pot of field ration stew.

“I want a guard here all night,” Banks said when Hynd joined him in the doorway for a smoke. “Three-hour shifts. I’ll take the first one. Just because it’s quiet now, there’s no reason to get sloppy.”

“Wiggo and I found blood on the trail too, Cap,” Hynd said. “I don’t think the folks from here were taken willingly.”

“Aye, I’d kind of sussed that out already,” Banks replied dryly. “So here we are again, up shit creek.”

Hynd laughed and motioned towards the river and the canoes on the bank.

“At least we’ve got paddles this time.”

“Aye, but I’d like to have yon wee outboard our guide fucked off in. It was that strange foot that spooked him, wasn’t it?”

Hynd nodded.

“He buggered off sharpish as soon as he saw it, shouting what I’m guessing was some thing’s name.”

“There’s something right hinky here, Sarge,” Banks added. “I mean, something more than just Wiggo’s Marie Celeste bullshit.”

Hynd just nodded.

“Same as it ever was, Cap. Same as it ever was.”

After the smokes, Hynd went back to join the card game inside while Banks stood at the tent flap, watching full night descend on the camp. He’d been in jungles before, many of them over the years of his service, but he’d never been in one as deathly quiet as this. There was no bird noise, no splash of fish in the river. Even the buzz of the insects seemed soft and muted. Alongside that, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. His guts growled, a long-developed early warning system that he’d learned to trust over the years. He kept his rifle slung over his shoulder where it could be in his hands in seconds and smoked a succession of cigarettes. The red glow of burning ash was the only light in the black of the night.

Behind him, he heard the noises as the card game came to an end—Hynd, once again, had taken beer money from the younger men—and the team settled to get some rest.

Banks fell into that watchful yet almost asleep state that came naturally to him after the years he’d spent on other watches, other dark nights.

His watch passed uneventfully. At the end of his stint, Hynd arrived with another coffee and they had a smoke in the doorway. Just as Banks rubbed out the butt of the cigarette, something called out in the night, a high yelp, like an excited dog bark but from a more gravelly throat. It was not answered, and not repeated.

“Any ideas, Cap?” Hynd said.

“None that I want to share yet. Just keep your eyes open. I don’t think we’re alone out here.”

Five minutes later, Banks was asleep on the floor near the camp stove with only his pack for a pillow.

He woke to the smell of coffee, cigarette smoke, and the first dim light of dawn coming in through the entrance flap.

“Rise and shine, Cap,” Wiggins said. “Another glorious day in the corps.”

“If I had a cigar, I’d ram it up your arse,” Banks replied.

“If you had a cigar, I’d let you,” Wiggins replied and then had to dodge quickly aside to avoid a slap on the head from Hynd who had risen from the stove, the source of the coffee smells.

Banks rose, helped himself to a coffee, and with Hynd at his side went to the doorway where young Davies was on watch.

“Anything, lad?” he asked.

Davies shook his head.

“Nothing you can see, sir,” he replied. “I heard what sounded like barking in the distance but…”

“It wasn’t exactly like a dog, but something much bigger? Aye, we heard it too. If it’s in the distance, we can only hope it stays that way.”

He finished his coffee, took his time over a smoke, then ordered the team to get ready.

“It’s time to get this rescue mission underway.”

They moved out ten minutes later, heading for the canoes.