14

ANYWHERE BUT SOMALIA

——— ON THE VALUE OF A STORY ———

I was so ready to escape Somalia, even for a day, that I drove to the Bardera airfield with Bart Gellman and Dayna Smith from the Washington Post with a single goal: get on the first plane out, no matter the destination. Anywhere but Somalia. We spotted a British C-130 and walked out to talk to the crew, who were laughing and playing badminton around the transport plane. I wondered for a minute if they were mature enough to fly. Sure, they said, hop on board. We’re heading to Mombasa.

We landed in neighboring Kenya and took a taxi to a resort hotel. The place was deserted, either because of the season or the war next door in Somalia. We sipped cold Tusker beers on the beach and watched camels walking in the sand. I swam in the ocean, took a hot shower, and enjoyed a good meal. The next day I flew back to Somalia. I felt better after the short holiday, but I had made a decision.

I called the office and told them I was ready to come home. The story was over, I said, and I was just babysitting.

Not so fast, the desk responded. President Bush was going to visit the troops in Somalia, and I should stay to cover him. I protested that it was just going to be a photo op. The desk insisted. End of discussion.

I was stunned and then angry. I kicked myself for having saved all my vacation until the end of the year to spend time with the baby. We weren’t allowed to carry over vacation into the following year, so now I would lose the days I had stockpiled. No way I would give up my time. And I didn’t want extra pay instead of days off; I wanted the time back. Fighting the desk was futile. The only thing I could do was work hard and rub their noses in it. They wanted me to stay, so I would write the hell out of it.

On the first day of 1993, President Bush told the hundreds of troops gathered before him at the airport in Mogadishu: “You ought to be very, very proud of the way it’s begun.”

Then Bush, a combat veteran himself, switched gears. He knew what the troops wanted to know. “That’s great,” the president said about the humanitarian mission. “But how long?”

The soldiers, sailors, and airmen cheered. The Marines barked and whooped.

“I wish I knew the answer,” Bush said. Groans rose up from the baked, dusty crowd. “I do know it’s not an open-ended commitment,” Bush offered. More cheers, but not as loud.

The president boarded his plane to fly back to Washington, leaving the Marines to wonder how long they would be in Somalia.

Five minutes after the desk cleared my final story about the president’s visit, I was packed and ready to leave. Actually getting out of Somalia would take a lot longer.

During the final days in Africa, I moved slowly and deliberately. I didn’t volunteer for anything stupid. Getting hurt at that point would have been like finishing a marathon only to break an ankle in the parking lot. More to the point, I remembered that my predecessor Ernie Pyle was killed just before the end of World War II. Somehow it seemed worse to die in the final moments of a dangerous assignment.

I had done the calculation many times before: How much risk was a story worth? Every good editor—the ones who had been in the field—always told me the same thing: “No story is worth dying for.” Still, a good story was worth some risk. The question was, how much and for how long?

When I ran toward burning buildings in Chicago or drove down mined roads in Central America, I was too excited and maybe too young to be afraid. When I waded into street protests and riots, I was convinced my reporter’s notebook was a shield. In exposing corrupt foreign governments, I figured my blue American passport was a get-out-of-jail card. Now I knew I never had been as safe as I had once assumed.

Some of the novelty was gone, too. I had written thousands of stories from thirty countries, so many datelines that they blurred together. When I was on vacation with my parents in Chicago, I realized my family had little interest in things that obsessed me, such as Nicaragua’s foreign policy or whether the United States really was capable of fighting two wars simultaneously. My childhood friends, the ones who were not journalists, definitely did not believe any story was worth dying for.

Most importantly, I had a new family to love and protect. A few years earlier, I had nothing waiting for me at home except an empty apartment, and the story was everything. I used to be thrilled to parachute into a new place, the more risky the better because it meant a bigger story. Now the balance had shifted. I remembered the editor who had warned me long ago that every correspondent reached a moment when “your legs go.” Maybe that day had arrived for me.

The Marines in Somalia were not allowed the luxury of these philosophical debates about risk versus reward, or even less about work-life balance. They could not refuse to go outside the gates on a mission.

And the Marines were better off than the Somalis, many of whom were homeless refugees without food or medical care. All of them faced danger and uncertainty. This was the most extreme example of my being in a tough place but not of the place, and being safer than the people I covered. I felt bad leaving my Marines in Somalia, and awful for the Somalis whose suffering continued, but not so bad I was willing to stay another minute.

Lieutenant Colonel James called everybody in for a little ceremony and presented me with a Red Patch souvenir: a piece of cardboard, decorated with a strip of red tape, and signed with good wishes from the entire battalion. I was pleased and wrapped the gift carefully in a shirt to protect it in my bag. James shook my hand and put me in a Humvee for the airport.

My Marines were in charge of unloading all incoming aircraft, so they had easy access to the airport, but the flights themselves were controlled by air force personnel, referred to as “airedales,” but not to their faces.

The Marine gunnery sergeant who drove me to the airport had a lot of authority at Camp Bubba, but the air force had decreed that reporters could fly only on certain days on certain flights. I wasn’t sure how soon I could get on a plane. Perhaps the service rivalries I sometimes used to my advantage would now work against me.

I walked inside the terminal and talked my way into the control room. Sure enough, the air force guy in charge started listing all the reasons I could not possibly get on a flight that day, or even that week.

Lieutenant Colonel James showed up at the terminal a few hours later and asked why I was still in country. When I explained that the air force wouldn’t allow me on a plane, he let off a string of cusswords that made me feel better. Then he marched me in and ordered the air force guy to put me on the next departing Marine aircraft.

The air force guy, a master sergeant, was outranked, and more importantly, he was outmanned. But he wasn’t going to give up without laying down a few obstacles. The reporter can go, the air force guy said, but he needs a Marine escort.

Lieutenant Colonel James looked around the room, found a fellow lieutenant colonel and “volunteered” him to be my escort. Fine. All set. But when the next aircraft was ready, there wasn’t an extra seat for me. My escort apologized and left me behind.

I watched the plane fly away, and sat back down on the cracked plastic chair in what used to be the airport lounge. The air force master sergeant came over, grinning. “Every time you try to make an end run like that, it just makes it more complicated,” he said.

“I apologize,” I said. “I’m just desperate to leave.” I was trying to be nice because I needed this guy on my side.

While this was happening, a Northwest Airlines 747 taxied by the window. It must have been a charter that had brought in fresh troops, the same way I had arrived. When that plane left Somalia, I wanted to be on it.

I went out to the flight line and yelled at Lance, one of my Marines, waving my arms to get his attention. He was only fifty feet away but couldn’t hear me over the engine noise. There was a red line painted on the ground that unauthorized people were not to cross, mostly for safety reasons. I put my toes on the line and shouted louder. Nothing.

I was afraid the plane would leave without me, so I ran back inside and told the air force master sergeant there was no reason I couldn’t jump on that 747. Another air force guy agreed, which just set off the first guy.

“I’m sick of the media going anywhere they want, running around stealing our MREs and walking into our tents whenever they want,” the master sergeant said. “If he goes across that red line, I’ll have him arrested.”

Back on the tarmac, a Humvee rolled up, and the Marine driving shouted, “Pete! Are you still here?”

“I need to ask about that jet,” I said, pointing to the Northwest plane.

“Hop in,” the Marine said.

“No, I already got yelled at. Go out there with Lance and see if you can ask the crew on the 747 if they will take me. Please. I don’t care where they’re going as long as it is out of this fucking place.”

“Roger that.”

The Marine drove over and huddled with Lance. Then they climbed the rolling stairway up to the jet. I watched a flight attendant come to the door and talk with the Marines. Then the Marines drove back to me, my toes still on the red line.

Lance said, “They’re only going to Cairo.” I looked back toward the control tower, and then out at the plane. Lance read my mind. “Just get down low in back and I’ll drive the long way around so they can’t see you from the tower.”

I got on the floor behind the front seats, and we drove out to the blind side of the jet. When we got there, I couldn’t see the control tower, so I figured they couldn’t see me. I crawled out of the Humvee and ran up the steps. The engines were off, and the door was open for ventilation. A flight attendant in a blue skirt and white blouse met me at the doorway. For having traveled a full day with a planeload of soldiers, she looked very put together.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I said. “Please take me, please. I’ll buy a first class ticket, whatever you need. I want to go home. Take me home.”

“Come with me,” she said.

We climbed the spiral staircase to the flight deck, and the captain came out to take a look at me. I explained that the air force guys were making it impossible for me to leave, but I couldn’t stay in this place for another day. “I’ll buy a ticket,” I said.

“Do you have a valid passport?”

I almost didn’t register the question because it was so easy to answer, and it sounded like he was going to take me. “Yes, sir.”

“Would you mind showing me?”

I handed him my passport.

“We’re only going as far as Cairo,” he said.

“Cairo is great,” I said. “I can get a commercial flight home from there.”

“What about that Marine who came up here asking about you?”

“Lance? I saw that guy get promoted. A field promotion,” I said.

“He must be doing a good job,” the captain said.

“They all are doing a good job,” I said.

The pilot looked at me again. Then he said, “Take any seat.”

The plane had been ridden hard from Fort Drum in New York. There were blankets and pillows on the floor, food left on trays and papers and magazines on the seats. Four hundred soldiers had been dropped off, and now it was just the flight attendants for the return flight.

I cleaned off an aisle seat and buckled my seat belt. I was afraid to sit near the window because the master sergeant might see me. He could drag me off the plane just to make himself feel better. I was tense waiting for the doors to close. I wanted to hear the engines start.

Instead, I heard heavy treads coming up the metal stairs. Shit. The captain walked to the open door and blocked it with his body. I couldn’t see anything except his back, but I could hear him clearly.

A voice from the stairs said, “Sir, you know you are not allowed to take passengers out of here.”

“Yes, I know,” the captain said.

It was quiet for a moment. Then I heard boots going back down the stairs. The door closed. The engines turned over and we taxied down the runway. I didn’t relax until I felt the landing gear go up inside the plane.

Once in the air, a flight attendant named Pamela told me there was a change in plans. This plane would stop in Cairo, but the Egyptians would not let civilians—me—transfer to another flight. Instead, a fresh crew would fly the plane empty to Philadelphia, and I could ride along.

That’s perfect, I said, even better. “I’ve got a new baby waiting for me at home,” I said.

“I’ll bet you are ready for a long hot shower and a good meal,” Pamela said, bringing me a cold beer and fluffing my pillow before settling into the seat next to me. She was smart and funny, and we talked while I ate. Neither of us mentioned that I also was going home to my wife. She looked and smelled so good that I was one smile away from proposing something incredibly stupid. Was I a complete idiot? I blamed it on Somalia.

When we landed in Philadelphia, Pamela and the other flight attendants formed a scrum to hide me from immigration and smuggled me through a back door into the terminal. I thanked them again and bought a ticket for the quick flight to Washington.