THE MORNING OF JULY 15, 2003, WAS BRIGHT AND HOT BUT NOT INSUFFERABLE, BECAUSE a breeze was blowing in from the Atlantic. It was rainy season, so there were puddles of red water everywhere. Red runoff rainwater still coursed through the brooks and streams, which ran deep in the red earth, but the roads had dried somewhat overnight and were passable, to the extent any road in Liberia was ever passable in 2003.
The junction market next to the Bong County Road just east of Buchanan was already filling with people, even though it was early, just after 8:00. The market was a big open space in the red dirt where women came and built stalls out of wooden poles and sold anything they could carry—charcoal, pots, roasted corn, pineapples, dried fish, tiny bags of spices, palm oil, lapa cloth, and used motorbike parts—to one another. A shantytown had grown up around the market, in and around the walls of half-demolished concrete block houses, the remnants of a neighborhood that had been destroyed by shells and tanks the last time there had been chaos in the streets. Now the shantytown was jammed with refugees, with people who had come down from the countryside ahead of the fighting. The road and the marketplace filled with lorries, jitneys, and cars, with boys on motorcycles—sometimes three or four on a little 90cc Suzuki—and with people walking, the women balancing multicolored plastic tubs on their heads, the men carrying huge overstuffed cheap fabric suitcases, sometimes by a handle, sometimes on their backs.
A white Land Cruiser pulled into a shop next to the junction market. The Water for Power crew stopped there to buy water and rolls for lunch on the mornings they went north. The Land Cruiser had the silhouette of a machine gun stenciled on the driver’s door, the passenger’s door, and the back door. A black circle surrounded each machine gun and there was a black line drawn diagonally through the circle, and the words “this vehicle carries no weapons” was stenciled just beneath the silhouette of the gun—the same insignia that was on most of the NGO vehicles in Liberia whether they carried weapons or not.
Then three white Land Cruisers with the blue insignia of the local steel mill stenciled on their doors burst into the intersection from the Bong County Road, their horns blaring. They forced their way into the line of jitneys, goods lorries, cars, and motorbikes that were headed into the middle of the town, weaving in and out. A few minutes later two blue Liberian National police pickups, each carrying five or six armed men and a rear-mounted machine gun flew into the junction, also racing toward Buchanan.
“Hot time in the old town tonight,” said David Wenang, the driver, who was dark, short, thin, and quick.
“They’re going the wrong way,” said Carl Goldman. He was in his late twenties, a thin, tall, brown man with an American accent. He sat next to the driver and was trying to be the person in charge. “I thought the government guys are in Buchanan to protect the north. So why are the Land Cruisers headed south?”
“MODEL move quick-quick,” David said. “Good fighters. Trained in France. Armed by France and U.S. Maybe six days out. Maybe one. Maybe here tonight.”
“So, if the army and Taylor’s police are off the north road, that means the road should be clear and we should have an easy time. For once,” Carl said. “Let’s move.”
“Sooner we gone, the sooner we back,” David said. “The sooner we’re back, the better I like it. No clear in Buchanan when we get back. Too many people. Too many refugee.”
“We have a long day, David,” Carl said. “Better to have those boys in Buchanan than in the north.”
“Better for there to be no war again and no war in Buchanan. How many places today? Five? Six? Eight? If I was boss we sleep late and wait for the soldier-boys to come, shoot each other up, and go away,” David said.
“Six places,” said Carl. “Maybe seven. We make a chlorine run to Godeh, a drop and switch. Then we check wells on the way back. Just in and out. We quick-quick today.”
“Quick-quick,” David said. He put the truck into gear. They lurched forward through the red dust on the red road.
David drove even faster than usual on the red dirt. There were no other cars on the road. All the life had emptied out of the north, as if it were a sink from which someone had pulled the plug.
First there were a few people. Then there were no people.
They passed groups of three or four huts, each group arrayed around an outdoor kitchen shanty—an open cooking fire in the center of a roofed space lined with wooden benches. But there was no fire and no people in the huts. The huts were made of poles and plastered with red mud to make walls that were solid and plumb, with roofs made of palm thatch laid over a precise lattice of poles. The red walls of the houses were marked with repeating patterns in white paint—handprints, footprints, or silhouettes or stripes that looked, in its way, like wallpaper, or war paint.
People know war is coming again, Carl thought, and they have gone to find shelter in Buchanan, or gone deep into the bush to hide.
After a few miles, they began to see people again, but these people looked lost, like people standing outside as rainclouds thickened, not sure if it was time to head for cover. A few stood in one or two of the cooking shanties. Some squatted in front of the fires. Others lay on the benches. Still others walked between the houses, going somewhere and not going anywhere at all, all at the same time.
There were men with machetes walking on the side of the road. These men did not turn to look as the white Land Cruiser drove by and raised red dust.
But the land was otherwise empty. No animals, no goats or pigs, only a few scrawny African chickens. War was coming. Everyone was afraid of the war, and everyone was afraid of one another.
Carl saw Julia before he recognized her. Julia was standing on the roof of a Land Cruiser with her hands on her hips. The Land Cruiser was at the top of a rise to the left of the road.
David took his foot off the gas. The Land Cruiser lurched as it hit a rain-cut ditch and started to slow.
Torwon and Charles, Julia’s driver and guard, knelt next to truck, positioning a jack in front of a flat tire. Julia lifted the spare tire off the roof, and then lowered it over the side of the truck, her ponytail moving from side to side over her shoulders. Torwon stood and caught the tire.
Another woman sat on top of the embankment next to the road. She held a baby in a green lapa fabric sling. Two other women sat with her. They sweated in the hot late morning sun.
“Stop or go, boss?” David said.
“Stop,” Carl said.
David pulled the Land Cruiser to the right shoulder, but he did not turn off the engine. He opened his window. The hot moist air of the day embraced them. Carl got out.
“Ok?” Carl said.
“Damn road,” Julia said. “Lucky we didn’t crack an axle. Just a blinkin’ flat.”
“Need anything?” Carl said.
“Just decent roads. We’ve got it covered. We’ll be up and running in a few,” Julia said.
Charles, who was squatting on the ground next to the flat tire, grunted as he jerked a lug wrench. The truck groaned as the lug nut came loose.
Then there was a crack and the car settled, sinking to the side and back, like a boat that had taken on water listing to starboard just before it flipped over and sank.
“You were saying something about a cracked axle,” Carl said.
“Damned axle. Damned road. Damned country,” Julia said. She lowered herself off the roof of her Land Cruiser, knelt in the dirt next to Charles, put her hands on the wheel and tried to turn it. Then she wiped her brow with the back of her hand.
“The effing thing is cracked. We cracked one last week. Goddamned roads. I got a really sick kid here. I got to get to town.”
Julia paused.
“Hey Carl, can you run that woman there into Buchanan for me? The one with the kid. We need to get her moved.”
“I can’t carry passengers. You know the drill,” Carl said.
“I’m asking for a one-time exception. This kid is really sick. Like could die today sick. You’ll beat me by two hours if you go now. Maybe three. It takes them forever to get a rescue truck up here. They don’t know I have a sick kid, and they don’t know to hurry their asses. I don’t do passengers either. This one is different. This kid is really bad,” Julia said.
“I’m headed north to Godeh. Maybe I can swing back and lift her in when we’re headed home if your rescue truck hasn’t shown yet,” Carl said.
“I need you to run them to Buchanan now. This kiddo is going to die if she doesn’t get transfused.”
“Let’s go boss,” David said.
“The bush is full of dying kids. It’s also full of boy soldiers,” Carl said. “I’ve got to get this chlorine up to Godeh. They’ve got a bad well that’ll kill a hundred of your kids if we don’t get it treated. Let’s do this. We run to Godeh without side trips. If the roads are good, we’ll be back in an hour. We’ll carry the kid in then.”
“Carl, I have a kid dying from malaria,” Julia said.
“And I have a village that will crash and burn without chlorine,” Carl said. “Here’s my best and last offer. I put the lady and the baby in the back with us, blast the AC up to Godeh, and keep everybody comfortable. Then we’ll haul ass back to Buchanan as soon as we’re done up north. It ain’t perfect, but that’s the best I can do.”
“Nowhere near good enough. But it looks like the best I’m going to get out of you today. Just move ass. Super quick-quick. Please.”
“Anything for you, Dr. Richmond,” Carl said. “Almost.”
Julia went to the three women sitting on the embankment. The youngest of the three held a limp baby.
“Sister Martha, please go with them,” Julia said. “I’ll wait for the crew. There’s nothing more we can do for this kid until we get her to Buchanan. And Sister Martha pray or something, will you? We got this far. But now we are gonna need all the help we can get.”
Carl helped each of the women into the back of his Land Cruiser. The limp child lay on its mother’s lap. The two other women sat next to her on hard benches. Julia put one hand on Carl’s shoulder as he latched the door, and then touched his waist.
Carl turned and put the flat of his hand on the small of Julia’s back, “You drive a hard bargain. That’s what I like about you.”
“Just that?” Julia said.
“Nothing more for public consumption. Private is different,” Carl said.
“Later for that. Now move,” Julia said. “We don’t have much time.”
Carl got into the truck and David dropped it into gear. The Land Cruiser jerked forward.
They bounced and grunted and groaned down the hill, the Land Cruiser shuddering and thumping as it slid sideways and forward on the rutted red road.
At the bottom of the hill, the Land Cruiser fell into a deep washout and its undercarriage hit the road surface with a bang. Carl’s head slammed down and back, jamming the bones of his neck. He turned to see if his new passengers were okay and his eyes followed the light through the back window.
Out the rear window, Carl saw a pickup, which could have been blue, coming across the hill from the right speeding down the District #4 Health Center road, speeding toward Julia and her disabled vehicle. The pickup raised a cloud of dust.
In the sun, next to the Land Cruiser, Carl could still see Julia, the sunlight catching wisps of hair that had shaken loose from her ponytail.
It was better for Carl Goldman to be in Africa, better for him to fade into the background and let boundaries dissolve, better for him to become part of what is great and pulsing than to let the eyes of America cut Carl into a hundred thousand pieces. It was better to be in Africa than to be broken apart by false ideas about who he was and what he was. It was better to be here, despite the war, the danger, the poverty, and the madness, than to allow those eyes to reduce him to dust, to be just a shadow wearing clothing and not really a man. Africa was freedom, despite the war, the danger, the poverty, and the madness; the freedom to experience the world in all its complexity, the freedom to be whatever and whomever Carl wanted to be and to become whatever and whomever he wanted to become. Despite the madness and its chaos, Africa was life itself, while home sucks away your soul.
At home, they judge you and pigeonhole you the moment they see you, at the same time as they are studying your every move, recording everything you’ve ever bought or thought, so they can predict what you will want and maximize profit by selling you what they want you to buy. In Africa, Carl was part of a great complex human wave that pulled him under but that also lifted him. The wave spun him about but also carried him, part of a whole that was much greater than the sum of its parts.
In America, Carl Goldman was a black man and thus too often a mugger, a thief, a rapist, or a rapper or a pimp, though when they saw his name on paper they thought he was a Jew. In Africa he was just a man who was hard to place. In Liberia his cream-colored skin said he was not a countryman, but that he might be a Congoman or a South African, a Ghanaian or a Zimbabwean, or even perhaps an Arab. When they saw his name on paper in Africa before they saw his skin they thought he was a European, by which the Liberians meant anyone from Europe or America or Australia or Canada.
Carl Goldman was a thin man with cream-colored skin and dark wavy hair whose father was Jewish and whose mother came from Martinique, so what he looked like and what he was were not entirely the same. He was young, just twenty-seven, articulate, and well educated, despite what had happened long ago. He came to Africa to try his luck and to see if there might be freedom for him anywhere. He had a history that was complicated, but no one would know about that here. Wouldn’t know. Wouldn’t ask. Didn’t matter. Here he could just be who he was and make a life for himself without thinking, knowing, or remembering. In America there was only one person Carl could trust. In Africa it was every man for himself, and the person you are is the person who acts, so the issue of trust or love was just never on the table.
Like every other expat in Buchanan Town, Carl Goldman lived in a compound. The Water for Power compound had walls made of bamboo poles that supported woven bamboo mats, each eight feet tall and eight feet long and so densely woven you couldn’t see through them, so they looked like walls indeed. You couldn’t see through those walls, but you could hear everything that was happening around the compound. You could hear the women walking on the lane that ran behind the compound on their way to the village pump. You could hear the boys teasing one another as they walked or ran in the gravel on their way to school, and you could hear the crunch of the gravel if and when a car inched its way down the dirt lane, but you couldn’t see the women or the boys or the occasional dust-covered dented car—and the cars and the people walking couldn’t see you.
The compound wall was topped with coils of razor wire, which marked it as an expat place. A massive motor-driven sliding solid metal gate kept everyone inside apart from the world outside. You could hear the power come on, a hum and a crunch, and then a clang, as the gate opened or closed whenever anyone came in or went out.
Walls made of bamboo weren’t good for anything aside from shielding what was inside from local eyes. The walls wouldn’t stop a bullet and provided no protection whatsoever from a tank or half-track. So when anarchy roamed the streets, when ten- and twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys high on uppers, riding in used four-wheel-drive trucks and SUVs and firing AK-47s swarmed over Buchanan like a runaway hive of bees, the compound didn’t work as a place to hide. But they were between wars, or at least between battles, and for the moment Carl and his crew couldn’t be seen and no one passing by knew what was waiting inside the bamboo walls under the razor wire. There could have been firepower, machetes, and hundreds of men hiding behind the bamboo and wire. You couldn’t tell they were few, unarmed, and harmless.
Buchanan Town is the third largest city in Liberia, but there is nothing city-like about it. It is a just place with a port on the road from Monrovia to Maryland County; a place that is mainly Bassa-speaking, though there was plenty of Pele and Kru—a place of thirty thousand souls near the sea. The people of Buchanan Town live in small, one-story houses made of brick, with corrugated iron roofs, plastered with concrete that is painted in brilliant primary colors: white, red, blue, yellow, or green. The houses are all jumbled together. On the backstreets are solitary outdoor stalls that sell neighborhood essentials: phone cards, handmade brooms, gasoline and palm oil in jars by the liter, and spices wrapped in tiny plastic bags that hang from poles as if they were teardrops or dew.
Buchanan has a tiny port where Ghanaian fisherman landed their catch and a main street, Thomas Street, a dusty rutted road lined by shops that sell boldly-colored lapa cloth, pots and pans, machetes, palm nuts, big white canvas bags of charcoal, green, yellow, and red plastic bins and bowls of all sizes, and motorbikes. All the open spaces are filled with tiny market stalls where women in lapas sit on the ground selling pots and pans, handmade rusty metal charcoal stoves, corn roasted on a stick, pineapples and bananas, eggs, bush meat, dried fish, and spices. The air is filled with the smell of diesel fumes, charcoal smoke, and roasting corn.
Carl went into the bush every morning in a Land Cruiser, sometimes with a driver and sometimes with a team of four, to plan, build, and check on the village pumps that brought clean water to people who lived in the bush. Carl made the schedule. David, his driver, knew the roads and the villages, even the villages that were a three-hour walk into the bush from the nearest road. David also knew the rutted one-track roads that crossed streams on log bridges and ran twenty kilometers through nowhere, and he knew the villages that you could only get to on the river, on the slow diesel paddleboat upstream.
In the compound, Carl was in charge. He had a mission, vision, values, and goals. In the bush, Carl was a passenger, an observer, with no way to exist or survive on his own, but he was also closer to the earth than he had ever been before. In the compound, Carl was all command and control. In the bush, they were just one wrong turn, one clogged fuel pump, or one broken axle away from the munching insects, the calling birds, the dark, and the undefined danger that lurked after dark. You live by your wits in the bush. You live each moment, each turn, each rut, and each bottoming out of the truck.
The road flattened as they drove north, which meant better going. They were not allowed to carry passengers.
“No change in plan,” Carl said. “This is a dump and run. We got to be quick. In and out. Fifteen minutes. No more.”
Carl looked at his passengers. He could see the baby on its mother’s lap. The mother and the other women sat on one side of the Land Cruiser. Sister Martha nodded. The baby’s chest was still moving in and out, in and out.
It did not look like word of the coming war had reached Godeh. Women and girls stood or sat together at the village pump, holding multicolored plastic tubs and basins or carrying buckets and tubs on their heads. Insects swarmed around the pump and around the women in the sunlight, and young boys, wearing only short pants or no pants, ran about in the yard in front of the pump, flitting like flies around the women and girls.
The pump master was waiting for them. He had kept good records, in pencil, in a notebook that was dog-eared and floppy because the pages had gotten wet and had dried, but which Carl could read when he needed to. David went to check the pump. Then Carl and David unloaded the chlorine and the water purification kits into a locked cabinet that was in a small cement block building with a thatched roof.
They turned and headed back south on the Bong County Road.
They were about a mile away from the District #4 Health Center turnoff when they saw smoke. A thin plume of black smoke no wider than a flag. Seconds later, they smelled the burning rubber and the fumes of spilled gasoline. The stink burned their eyes and into their nostrils, injecting itself under their cheekbones and into the back of their throats.
The Merlin Land Cruiser lay on fire on its left side enveloped in thick black smoke. The left wheel was in the red dirt, and the once white body of the truck was blackening, so you could only just make out the green Merlin insignia and the stenciled red silhouette of a machine gun with a blackening red circle over it.
Torwon lay on the grassy embankment where the two women had been sitting with the baby less than an hour before, his face and half his head blown off.
Charles lay in the red dust next to the wheel in a pool of blood larger than his body, a line of red and white flesh open from his thigh to his neck where a line of bullets had raked across him, his clothing and skin on fire, encased in flames from the truck.
No Julia.
“Stop or go, boss?” David said.
“Stop,” Carl said.
“No time to stop. Dr. Richmond in Buchanan or Dr. Richmond dead. Stop now and we all dead if they close,” David said.
“Go,” Carl said. “Go fast.”
Carl looked into the burning truck, and looked at the dry grasses on the side of the road. No more bodies.
“Go,” Carl said. “Pedal to the metal.”
Sister Martha started to speak, to beg them to stop and look for Julia. She stopped speaking when she saw what Carl and David saw.
No Julia. Julia was gone.
There was a checkpoint a mile down the road that hadn’t been there when they came north that morning. A checkpoint and three soldier-boys standing in the middle of the road.
The soldier-boys had dropped two trees, one from each side of the road. The trees lay most of the way across the road and about five yards apart. The only way you could pass was to swing to the left to get around the tree that lay over the right side of the road, and then swing to the right to get around the tree that lay over the left side of the road.
The soldier-boys stood in between the trees, three man-boys dressed in fatigues, wearing red berets, smoking cigarettes, and carrying AK-47s. An RPG leaned against each tree loaded and ready so the boys could lift the RPG onto a fallen trunk, take aim at anything they didn’t like, and fire; a nice clean shot at anything that came down the road.
A dented blue Ford Ranger, its rear window shot out, stood between the trees.
Carl knew the drill. Stop and search. Which meant anything and everything but not stop and search this far back in the bush.
Two hundred yards in front of the first dropped tree, David slowed to a crawl. Run up fast and you’re RPG bait. Run up too slow and they start shooting, just for sport. Stop and get out and everyone dies after they rape the women. Carl was grateful that David drove quickly enough so it looked like they had a purpose, but not so quickly that they looked like they were coming for a fight.
David rolled his window down.
The soldier-boys grinned. They were smoking cigarettes as if waiting for target practice to start.
David began speaking as soon as they were in earshot. He spoke in Kreyol, and he spoke so simply that even Carl understood him.
“Si babi,” David said as they rolled forward, his voice as loud as he could make it without shouting. Sick baby.
The truck rolled forward, faster than a quick walk, but not as quickly as a run.
“Docta he. Ta babi hospital. Baby dying. Ca stop,” David said. “There is a doctor in the car. We are taking a baby to the hospital. The baby is dying. I can’t stop.”
The soldier-boys could see Carl who they took for a doctor in front, and the woman with the baby in the back. The Land Cruiser moved too quickly for them to ask any questions, or even give any commands. The Land Cruiser swung left, past the first tree. By the time the first fighter, the one who had actually thought to raise his gun, had taken his cigarette out of his mouth, the Land Cruiser passed him, and Carl could not hear whatever it was the soldier said.
Then the Land Cruiser swung right past the second tree. They were looking at open road.
For an instant or more, perhaps as much as a full minute, the Land Cruiser stayed in range of the guns and the RPGs. In that moment no one in the Land Cruiser knew whether they were going to live or die. They did not look back and did not listen for the ta-dump-dump of machine-gun fire or the crack and whoosh of the RPG. They were trying with every ounce of strength in their bodies not to hear anything at all.
And then they were out of range, alive and driving on the open road.
The few villages they had passed earlier that morning were now deserted or burning. Lines of bullet holes pockmarked the red and yellow mud-walled huts. The bodies of people who didn’t get out of the way soon enough lay bleeding out by the cooking fires and the roadside.
“Taylor’s boys,” David said.
“The good guys,” Carl said.
They saw smoke rising over Buchanan before they heard and felt the boom and the shake of explosions. As they got closer, they heard the bursts and rattle of small-arms fire.
“Coast road junction coming up,” David said.
“Buckle your seatbelts people. It might get ugly for a while,” Carl said. “I hope like hell Julia got back before Taylor’s boys got to her. Sister Martha? You have any ideas?”
“She will be waiting at Buchanan Hospital for this child,” Sister Martha said.
“She better be. This is no time for a nature walk,” Carl said.
At the junction, there were three cars and two trucks on fire by the side of the road. There were more bodies in the market, and the torn blue and silver tarps that had covered the stalls flapped in the wind near the road where the market stalls used to be; where a truck or a half-track had driven through, crushing the stalls, the soldier-boys shooting everything that moved.
They heard sirens coming from Thomas Street. The sky was darkening with the late afternoon rain.
The earth rumbled again.
“Na thunder,” David said. “That’s not thunder.” He jerked the steering wheel. The Land Cruiser turned suddenly onto a narrow dirt road that ran toward the sea. They were off the main road, driving through backstreets and neighborhoods built around one-lane roads that few people knew. Safer here, Carl thought, in the communities. The pickups and SUVs will go to the port, to Thomas Street, and to rail line and smelter at Mittal, and then to the road coming in from the east and south. They won’t come here. Maybe we won’t get shot at. Now. Today. For a few minutes.
The air boomed and the earth rocked as they drove. “Heavy shit,” David said. “I don’t see planes.”
“Taylor has friends all over,” Carl said. “And enemies. You see planes and that means Nigeria or Europe or the U.S. is in. Or that Taylor’s buddies have arrived—the boy scouts from South Africa, Russia, Israel, or France, the arms dealers and the mercenaries, the guys who drop barrel bombs from unmarked planes.”
Carl looked back. Sister Martha nodded. The baby was still alive.
“David knows back roads through the communities,” Carl said. “We’ll get to the hospital quick-quick.”
“MODEL in Buchanan now,” David said.
“Live from Buchanan, it’s Saturday night,” Carl said. “Taylor must be pooping his pants. You get us in quick-quick?”
“Quick-quick,” said David. “We float like butterfly, sting like bee.”
The truck jerked and rocked as David steered around and through the potholes and the ruts. The ocean was on the other side of a single row of shanties and palm trees, each wave marking another moment that they weren’t at the hospital yet, another moment that the baby was alive but still not treated, and another moment that they were still alive.
“They coming for Taylor,” David said. “He bad before, but he strong and bad. Now he just bad. He kill anyone and everyone in his way, that Taylor.”
“He kill my ma. He kill my pa. I will vote for him,” Carl said. “That’s what they’re out there thinking, the guys with machetes and with guns. He’s killing them and they’re fighting for him. That’s what we have to deal with.”
A shell whistled overhead, fell into the sea, and exploded. The spray it sent up splashed onto the windshield.
People were gone from the neighborhood markets, the stalls, and the street. Carl didn’t see men or boys with guns. The men and boys would choose one side or the other, which meant choosing one big man or the other, because this wasn’t about ideas or freedom. This was about how big one big man could be, about who was strong and who was weak, about who would survive to hold ground for a little while and whose people would be slaughtered like sheep. The men and boys had already slipped away to the beach or into the bush where their guns and rusting hand grenades were hidden in boxes in the red dirt or in the sand, waiting to be dug up, wiped off, greased, and reloaded.
The hospital gate was jammed with bodies, with people standing, people being carried, people walking supported, and people with the hurt part wrapped in towels or bandages or just old shirts, holding the bad place that was oozing blood. Men and women squatted or lay on the grassy embankment across the road and milled about the courtyard, which was so thick with people that you couldn’t walk from place to place without colliding with some part of someone else.
A line of trucks stood outside the closed gate.
“There,” Carl said. He gestured to a bare spot of ground across the street; a place to stop the Land Cruiser. David pulled into the open place.
“Let’s get this kid in. Dr. Richmond?” Carl said.
“She could be anywhere,” Sister Martha said.
Carl opened the rear door. The baby was still breathing. “Come,” he said to the women in the lapas in the back.
Sister Martha came out of the Land Cruiser first. The woman in the yellow Port Angeles Dragons tee shirt came out next. She and Sister Martha lifted the mother out of the truck. The baby was in her arms, still breathing.
The baby’s eyes were open but dim.
“Come. Now,” Carl said. They walked through the door next to the gate. Just then the evening rain began.
Carl moved the mother and baby and the other two women to a broad porch next to the gate that served as the waiting area for the outpatient clinics, out of the rain.
There were bodies everywhere—the wounded and the dead. But no Julia.
The clouds moved on. The rain stopped, and the sun appeared as it was setting.
In the courtyard, two PAs flitted from one person to the next, shouting orders to nurses who weren’t listening. The PAs knelt next to people on the ground or listened to the chests of the few wounded people who were able to stand or felt bloody arms and legs or cut away clothing where there was a wound so they might know who could be saved and who was already lost. They placed intravenous lines, gave pain shots, started whatever blood they had, and lined up the wounded on the ramp that led to the main building in the order they needed to go into the Operating Room, moving those who had died to the side, near the guard station. They paid no attention to Carl.
Carl searched the crowd. Still no Julia.
A doctor in a dirty white coat stood next to a young man on a litter, holding forceps and a curved needle with no more than five inches of thread or suture. The doctor holding the forceps was short and balding, with tan skin, black hair, and a black beard. Rivulets of sweat ran down his face and into his eyes. He squinted as a way to push the sweat out of his field of vision, and then wiped his forehead with the back of the hand that held the needle.
“Zig, it’s me,” Carl said. “Julia sent this kid in. Malaria I think. Julia here? She broke down on the Bong County Road.”
“She hasn’t come in yet. Maybe soon. Hot time in the old town tonight,” Zig said.
“Can you look at this kiddo quick-quick? Do they teach surgeons about kids in Ethiopia?” Carl said.
“Tonight, I am kid expert. Until Julia comes. Let me look,” Zig said. He turned to the baby, his gloved hands held high so as not to touch anything that wasn’t sterile.
“Sister Martha, show me the conjunctiva,” Zig said.
Sister Martha used her thumb to pull the lower left eyelid down.
“It is malaria. I see the problem. Sister Martha, we need to put you to work,” Zig said. “Please take the child to Pediatrics. Draw a hemoglobin and a malaria smear and see that a line is placed. Then bring me the results as soon as they are ready. Ask the mother and her friend to give us some blood, yes? We have plenty of use for blood tonight. The baby will only need a little bit, perhaps a hundred ccs. Get them to give you a unit each. We can put the rest to good use. Where’s Julia when I need her, anyway?”
Before anyone could answer, a man with a white lab coat started talking to the mother of the baby in Bassa. A second man spoke, also in Bassa, his voice raised and hard. It was David. The man in the white coat backed away, and then turned to sit at a desk, still talking to the baby’s mother, almost under his breath.
“Tribal shit,” David said. “He telling her how much cost. He telling her baby will die anyway, so the baby is better off dying in the bush. Damned PA. He know better than that. He want bed for someone he knows, someone who can pay, so he get his fucking cut. I tell her it free, but he got her jambled. It long night. We move, boss.”
“What happened to Julia?” Zig said.
“They took out her jeep. Her guard and her driver are dead. She was gone when we got back. What the fuck am I going to do, Zig?” There was a close by machine-gun burst, and then the flash, shake, and shrapnel splash of an explosion. “We gotta go,” Carl said.
“I’ll let the ministry know,” Zig said.
“You got your hands full,” Carl said. “I’ll make the call. The ministry, the embassy, and Merlin. And then the State Department and the president. I’m calling in the cavalry, brother, quick-quick. I just hope the goddamn cavalry is home to take my call.”
“Just keep your head down and your pants dry,” Zig said. “Julia’s no idiot. If anyone can survive out there, she can. Fingers crossed. Everything crossed, okay? And just fucking pray that some of these poor bastards survive the night.”
David drove slowly toward the Water for Power compound. The gunfire was behind them now. The streets were empty. The little backstreet stalls that sold gasoline for motor bikes, biscuits, little bags of spices, and phone cards were deserted and looked like skeletons on each street corner—four upright poles with shaggy thatched roofs standing in the dark.
The night supervisor threw the switch that opened the gate and waved them in, but he didn’t call to them the way the day team always did, and he didn’t come to help them unload. The two men who worked days were gone, the two mechanics were gone, and the kitchen staff was gone. The night supervisor and Grace, their Rwandan water engineer, were the only people left in the compound.
So even the Water for Power crew is in it now, Carl thought. Soon, all the men and all the boys in Buchanan would be gone, pulled back into this new war by someone who knew someone else; pulled back in by their brothers and cousins or what they knew about rank, team, and brotherhood. Most would be part of a ragtag band that would have been called a raiding party once; but now the bands and gangs and raiding parties had automatic weapons, hand grenades, and RPGs—and anything that could happen was going to happen as the known world collapsed into a world of blood, death, and dying.
The power shut down. The lights flickered and then the generator started up, a mechanical distant thrumming that kept Carl from hearing the other sounds of night. As the generators clicked on in the nearby compounds there was a weird symphony of sounds and smells—the drone of engines, the smell of diesel fuel, the sound of artillery, explosions, and small-arms fire, the smell of gunpowder, the sound of sirens, of people calling out, and the smell of charcoal fires, all mixed together.
Seven p.m. Three in the afternoon at home. Eight p.m. in London. They usually had enough gas to power the generator for about thirty-six hours, Carl thought. Carl’s cell phone still worked, and he plugged it in quick-quick to recharge it while there was still power. They had one satellite phone stashed away in the main house for emergencies.
“Turn off the lights,” Carl said. He walked back and forth in the office. There was a single desk lamp lit, a pinpoint of light in a large dark room. All the computers were turned off, their screens blank spaces where there should have been color and movement—mirrors in an empty room.
“She could be anywhere,” Grace said.
“She hiding in village or in some health center,” David said.
“She’s not hiding anywhere. You saw that truck. Whoever shot up that truck has her,” Carl said.
“Taylor. Probably Taylor,” David said. “His men. Not MODEL. MODEL not north yet.”
“I suppose that makes it easy,” Carl said. “So all I have to do is to find out who has her and ask them to give her back? Anybody have Charles Taylor’s personal cell? Mosquito’s home phone number? General Butt-Naked’s e-mail address? Look, my first responsibility for the moment is to the two of you.”
“We good,” David said.
“You’re not good. You’re in the middle of another goddamn civil war. David, you’ve been through fourteen years of this, so maybe you know how to play it. I don’t. Grace, we have to find a safe place for you. I need to hit the phones.”
“I’ll call Boston,” Grace said.
“Good. David, what’s safer for Grace? Being in the community or being here?”
“Being home in Rwanda. Or Accra. Or Lagos. Or Abuja. Not here. Not compound. They come to the compound. Not tonight. But soon. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe Thursday. Maybe Friday. But they come,” David said.
“What’s safe for you?”
“Na safe,” David said. “I am Monrovia, but I’m not going to Monrovia now. I have woman here. I go to her community.”
“Let’s get you moving and Grace moving. Then I’ve got to find Julia, and I’ll go out with her,” Carl said.
“You not find Julia on your own,” David said.
“I’m not going until I find her,” Carl said. “I’m just not.”
There was an explosion nearby, perhaps near the hospital, perhaps on Thomas Street, but close enough for the ground to rock and for pencils, pens, and coffee cups to fly off the desks, for the maps to slide off the wall, even for tall cabinets to fall over. Grace, who was on the phone to Boston, lost her call. When she called again the call did not go through. Then Carl tried his cell and that call did not go through.
“I’m going to the house to get the satellite phone,” Carl said.
“Walk next to building,” David said. “Don’t take torch. Use torch only when you get to house. Don’t turn on light.”
When Carl returned with the satellite phone, David was gone.
There was no one at the ministry, and no one answered the phone at Merlin, but it was nearly 10:00 p.m. in London by the time Carl found a number to try.
Then Carl tried the good old U.S. of A. Vain hope but nothing to lose. It took an hour, but Carl got a duty officer in the State Department on the phone.
The USS Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group was off Monrovia, he was told, six to eight hours away. The duty officer listened to Carl’s story. Then he took Julia’s full name and occupation and asked lots of questions. Carl didn’t know Julia’s U.S. address or her passport number. The best he could do was to give rough directions to the place Julia’s truck was hit. It sounded like the duty officer had a map up on his computer, because he was asking questions as though he knew Grand Bassa County.
“Before or after the road that runs east toward the LAC plantation? Before or after the turnoff into the bush that runs west? Before or after the village on the west side of the road … just south of that one-track road that goes west? Who had they seen on the road after passing the burning truck? What were the soldier-boys at the roadblock wearing?” Could Carl tell him anything about how they were armed? There was good intel about troop movements and factions on the ground in the zone around Buchanan, the duty officer said, where the situation was not as complex as the situation in Monrovia. They were evacuating Americans all over Liberia. Buchanan was a pretty easy in and out. But finding one person in the bush was hard, a needle in a haystack, no guarantees. They were landing in the morning. They’d send a squad. Carl needed to come out with the evac team so the guys on the ground could have accurate and up-to-the-minute information. They’d do their best.
Help was on its way. The duty officer wanted Carl to lay low, stay inside, keep the lights off and the vehicles hidden, and don’t do anything, anything at all, to attract attention to himself or the compound. The best chance of getting Julia back was to work together, one team, no sudden moves and no surprises.
And hope that these woven bamboo walls topped by razor wire made anyone with a gun careful about coming after what was inside, Carl thought. At least till morning. At least until the cavalry arrives.
The gunfire quieted as the night wore on. Grace slept in a chair, her head on a desk, resting on her forearm. Carl did not sleep.
Julia was out there somewhere.
Carl’s brain kept flipping back between two pictures. That image of Julia through the rear window of his truck, standing there on the hilltop next to her wounded vehicle. Then the smoke from the hilltop and her vehicle on its side and on fire, the bodies of two men on the ground.
They’d find her. They had to find her.
The marines came the following morning. A squadron of helicopters circled low over Buchanan and landed at the beach near Mittal and the UNMIL barracks where the Nibatt troops were bivouacked. After the helicopters, amphibious troop carriers landed on the beach, and the marines secured a perimeter. The moment the Americans showed up with an aircraft carrier and a destroyer offshore, Taylor’s boys and MODEL both backed away, knowing they were outgunned. The big helicopters came next, disgorging vehicles onto the sand. A convoy formed and drove through the town. They went compound by compound, evacuating the expats, running them down to the beach, and then helicoptering them out to the ships that waited offshore.
When Carl saw daylight, he went to the house to pack a few things. Then he sent Grace to pack. They heard a nearby generator sputter and go dead. The sun became strong. They sat next to an open door and listened. No crunch of gravel under feet or tires and no talking as people walked from place to place. There was some small-arms fire in the distance and the sound of heavy trucks but no more explosions or artillery fire. The ocean breeze carried the smell of diesel fumes, burned rubber, and gunpowder. No charcoal now. People in the communities had faded into the countryside.
They heard a heavy truck outside the gate, and a man’s voice on a bullhorn. “Carl Goldman. Carl Goldman. Water for Power compound. Water for Power compound. We are the United States Marines.”
Carl opened the gate. There was a hum and a crunch and then a clang. Three Humvees and a half-track drove into the compound and turned around. A U.S. Marine sergeant lowered himself from the lead Humvee, stood, and saluted.
“Sergeant James McConnell, U.S. Marines 26th Expeditionary Force, sir. You rang?”
“We might need a lift,” Carl said. “I think we have a flat.”
“Oh, I think you have more than just a flat tire, sir. But let’s give you a ride into town. You ready to go?”
“I’m waiting for news about an American doctor who is still up country,” Carl said.
“I’m not the BBC,” the marine said. “My orders are to find you and bring you in. We can check on other operations when we get you someplace safe and sound.”
“Are you the only game in town?” Carl said.
“Four squads on the ground, sir, fanned out, covering the backfield.”
“Give me ten, then. I need to shut down the generator and secure the premises. I have one more person with me,” Carl said.
“You have five not ten, sir. This is an in and out. I have orders for one, not two, American citizens only,” the marine said.
“Who else is here?” Carl said.
“I have USAID, AFSC, and Merlin in the half-track,” the marine said.
“Brits, then.”
“Our allies, sir. Courtesy to our NATO friends. Orders. All according to plan,” the marine said.
“And the hospital?”
“Another unit, sir. We have four units on the ground in Buchanan, out rounding up the strays. We don’t have much time. This is an in and out.”
“Let’s save one another time and hassle, sergeant. My colleague is from Rwanda. Which was once a German Colony. Then it was Belgian. So sometime in her life, maybe even today, my colleague might have had a Belgian Passport. Belgium is where NATO lives. I ain’t going unless she goes. So let’s call her Belgian, thank NATO for bestowing peace and blessings on all of us, put her in the half-track with me, and apologize if we have to but not get hung up on asking permission. I don’t know who in this little village is going to survive the night,” Carl said.
“I’m on a tight schedule, sir,” the marine said. “Sounds like you got a plan. If you asked me, sir, I’d say your colleague is from the Bronx.”
The helicopters came and went on the beach. Carl and Grace were dropped off at a roped off staging area, and then were moved from place to place as the wind from the helicopters flattened the flesh on their faces. One moment they were on the beach near the Nibatt compound, where there were guard towers at the perimeter, the ocean wind fresh, and the flags snapping, watching the Humvees and the helicopters come and go. The next minute they were in a helicopter, its throbbing engine and spinning blades surrounding them as it held them in midair, an intense, nauseating sensation, suspended a thousand feet in the air over the sea and moving at a hundred miles an hour. And then they were on the Iwo Jima, in waters just offshore, with two other U.S. Navy ships steaming close by.
No Julia.
The expats came out, one helicopter load at a time—people Carl knew from The Club and people he had never seen before. Katy, James, Suzanne, Jack, Tzippy, even Ahmed. One or two at a time, mixed in with people Carl didn’t know. Some white South Africans, a mixed group of Americans and Europeans, a couple of Asian men—maybe Chinese. Not just American citizens. Not even close. Carl checked out each group as they trotted in from the helicopter deck, each person carrying one or two pieces of luggage—a suitcase, a backpack, and maybe a duffle.
The sailors let the expats mill about the mess where they had set up coffee and donuts, this being just like American soil. The ship swayed in the waves, back and forth, and the expats stumbled as they walked or stood still with their coffees, their feet wide apart for balance. Some went outside to smoke. There was a weather deck just off the mess set up for the convenience of the visitors.
Carl went back to the helicopter deck. The big cargo helicopter with front and back rotors lifted off from the beach, flew slowly toward them, and landed on the flight deck. No civilians came out. Nothing. No one Carl recognized.
There were two shorthaired marines in pressed uniforms, a man and a woman, sitting behind a table in the mess, processing the incoming expats, filling out forms and checking passports.
“How many more to come in?” Carl said.
“The mission is complete, sir,” the woman said. “We’ve successfully evacuated the American citizens on the ground in Grand Bassa County.”
“Where’s Dr. Richmond? Not all American citizens. You’re missing somebody really important,” Carl said.
“Sir?”
“Julia Richmond. Dr. Julia Richmond,” Carl said. “I was the guy who called the State Department last night and told them that Dr. Richmond had been abducted. Dr. Richmond isn’t here. Is there another part of the operation? Could you have moved her out some other way?”
“This is the operation for Grand Bassa County, sir,” the female marine said. She stood, and the second marine stood as well and came closer to Carl.
“Who is this Dr. Richmond?” the second marine said.
“Dr. Richmond is a pediatrician working for a British organization called Merlin, who was posted to the Liberian hospital in Buchanan. She’s an American citizen. She was abducted yesterday, at about 1300 hours. Her driver and her guard were killed. She’s out in Grand Bassa County somewhere. Taylor or one of his goddamn militias has her. You need to go and find her. Like yesterday.”
The male marine looked at his desk and began to shuffle through a file folder.
“I don’t have any information about Dr. Richmond, sir,” the male marine said.
“Look, the duty officer at the State Department last night said we have really good intel about who is on the ground and where they are,” Carl said. “You know where she is. You have to know. You have to send out a squad and find her. She’s an American. She’s a goddamn American citizen.”
“I just don’t have any information about a Dr. Richmond, sir.”
“You are going to leave an American civilian on the ground in the middle of this mess?” Carl said.
“I don’t have any information about Dr. Richmond, sir,” the man said. “All Americans were moved to the beach and transported here. All present and accounted for.”
“The mission is complete, sir,” the woman said. “We have successfully evacuated the American citizens on the ground in Grand Bassa County, Liberia.”
“You haven’t evacuated every American citizen. Go back in and get Dr. Richmond,” Carl said, his voice loud and his back stiffening. “You have a commanding officer?” Carl said.
Carl’s voice carried across the room. People stared. Some began to drift in from the table of coffee and donuts.
“Come with me,” the man said.
“I have a satellite phone,” Carl said.
“I have a commanding officer,” the man said. “I also have a brig, sir. The operation is complete. I’m sorry. We’re not going back in.”
“You damn well better go back in. You have an American citizen that you have left stranded in the bush. I’m going to need both your commanding officer and your brig if you don’t go back,” Carl said. “Because I’m one step away from getting in that damn helicopter and going back myself. And I don’t have a clue about how to fly the thing.”
“Exactly why we have a brig. And a master-at-arms,” the man said. “Understand your concern, sir, and happy to accommodate you in the brig if you can’t take no for an answer.”
“I can’t take no for an answer,” Carl said. “I can’t believe somebody forgot to tell somebody else. You left her file on a desk somewhere. She’s out there. You can’t sail and leave her.”
“The mission is complete, sir,” the man said again. “We’ve successfully evacuated the American citizens on the ground in Grand Bassa County, Liberia.”
“You have an American citizen on the ground in Liberia in the middle of a goddamned civil war,” Carl said. His voice got louder, and more people began to move toward them.
“At the end of a civil war, sir,” the man said. “Our information is that this war is over.”
“You have an U.S. citizen missing,” Carl said. “Her driver and her bodyguard were both killed and were left lying in the dirt. Her truck was set on fire. She could be anywhere, and she is in grave danger. And you are telling me the operation is complete?”
Now there was a crowd of people around them. Four men in uniform began to move through the crowd.
“Mission accomplished, sir,” the woman said.
“We’ve heard that one before. I’m going to start dialing this satellite telephone. I’m going to call every senator and congressman in the Washington until you get on the phone and get someone back in there to get Dr. Richmond …”
A man in his late forties with graying hair and wearing a different uniform now stood in front of Carl, and four other men in uniform stood next to him.
“I understand you concern, sir,” said the older man. “Feel free to make all the telephone calls you wish. But why don’t you come with us now? We’re going to take you to a place that is a little more private.” Four sets of hands wrapped themselves around Carl’s arms.
The brig of the USS Iwo Jima is a little room with barred windows in the door. They usually make you take off your shoes and belt. Carl was a civilian, so he got to keep his satellite phone. He worked the phone until the battery ran out.
In Monrovia, after the shelling started, people thought the Americans would come and save them all. Liberians stacked Liberian bodies in front of the American embassy, hoping that they would stimulate some thought, or guilt, or action. The helicopters came in and pulled the expats out. Just the expats. Americans saved Americans and Europeans. Liberians were left to save themselves.