He wheezed out, “It’s eating us away.”
“Lionel, who is Hassan? Who won’t let you leave?”
“He heads the clan fighters who surrounded us. They’re afraid they’ll get sick if they come close. They were arguing whether to kill us or let us call for help. Hassan told me two doctors can come. But only two. My feet… my face, sir! Oh God!”
He sounded like he was strangling. He got out, “We’re just across the border from you. In Somalia, sir.”
“Somalia?” This was getting worse by the second. Sudan was bad but at least only two sides were fighting there — rebels and government. In Somalia there had to be at least ten factions, all shifting allegiances constantly. Clan against clan. Muslim fundamentalists against seculars. Bandits against everyone. Pirates on the coast. There was no official government anymore. All forms of higher order had collapsed. To enter Somalia was to cross the line into a patchwork of fiefs where order came from AK-47s, allegiances shifted on an hourly basis, and wandering bands of refugees were followed by lions or hyenas who ate stragglers at night. It was the worst place on Earth — medieval Europe, back in century twelve.
“What are you doing in Somalia, for God’s sake?”
He calmed a little. I’d diverted him from his symptoms. “First expedition allowed in, in a decade,” he said with what might have been pride under other circumstances. “For fifteen years scientists have been afraid to come here. The work is important. We’re dating sediments. We paid off the clan for safety…”
I thought, That didn’t work so well.
Lionel said, “Our work will help determine the age of human remains found in East Africa.”
“From wars, you mean?”
Lionel said, “No. Of the first humans. People who walked the earth a million years ago. If we can date the sediments, we can date the remains.”
“Lionel, tell me your symptoms.”
“Didn’t you get the photo I sent, sir?”
“Send again. Meanwhile, list symptoms.”
His voice was so broken up that I had to strain to hear. His gravelly babbling sounded as if his throat was closing up even as he spoke. “The tingling first. Redness.”
“What kind of redness?”
“My feet. They don’t work right anymore. My face. My fingers! Oh God!”
I was in the cockpit now and the three-man crew — private contractors from Dallas — stared at me, eyes wide.
“Lionel, do you have a fever?”
“I… I don’t think so.”
“No? No one? Everyone is sick but no fever?”
“Maybe a little. I’m not sure. My face, sir. In the mirror! I’m sending another photo now.”
I checked. Nothing came in. I switched to another subject. “Which clan area are you in?”
“Hawiye. Aidids,” he said, which started my pulse pounding. Somalia was bad enough, but Aidid was as bad as you could get. Lionel had named the faction that fought U.S. troops in 1993 in Mogadishu, killed twenty-nine, and turned “Operation Restore Hope” into “Operation Flee.” Our guys had been trying to arrest the clan leader of the Aidids. Instead, they left with their tails between their legs, and U.S. corpses being dragged through the streets.
Lionel and his grad students had been fools to go in there, and the State Department fools to let them go, but that was not the proper subject at the moment. “Tell me more about your face, Lionel.”
His cough degenerated into a high-pitched series of barks. Or was it laughter?
“Lionel?”
“Throat… closing. Numb. Fire. Burned. The salve doesn’t help. Those two nuts in tent four won’t stop chanting. End times, sir. Cathy Luo says it’s end times.”
“Lionel, concentrate. Are you saying you were burned by fire? Or your hand burns? Which one is it?”
A moan. I felt his despair in a wave washing out of the phone. “We’re gargoyles, man. Just damn gargoyles.”
“What?”
“Like on Notre Dame.”
“What are you talking about?”
“In the mirror, sir! I saw it. I did. I saw a gargoyle!”
“You think you saw a gargoyle?”
“My wife, Amy! My kids back in Albany!”
Hallucinations, I added to the list. Throat closed. Possible nerve damage in feet.
Lionel shouted, “I’ll kill those grad students in tent four! Shut the fuck up!”
I tried my soothing doctor’s voice and then my Marine colonel voice to keep him focused. He’d been a tough soldier, a brave nineteen-year-old. But he was a professor now, probably softer. He’d gone back to school and gotten a degree and pursued his old interest in rocks. I had a mental glimpse of Lionel — Iraq War One — advancing beside me down a long, concrete tunnel, chem suit on, goggled eyes huge. Alarms roared around us and visibility was almost zero from smoke. Suddenly small figures rushed us, and Lionel opened fire with no hesitation. Completely mastering his fear.
Now, more than two decades later, he must have held up the phone so I could hear the chanting outside. I heard, faintly, other voices. Male voices.
“Lionel! Come back!”
“Shit, shit, I’m not going to see Amy and the kids again, am I?”
I stared at the phone and suddenly another thought hit me. Is this really Lionel, out of the blue? Or is this a trick to lure us across the border? It wouldn’t be the first time that a foreign journalist or op got pulled in.
“Hey, Lionel! Remember that photo of your dad’s sheep farm you used to show around? Remember those German shepherd attack dogs your uncle raised?”
A pause. I heard his labored breathing, in and out. He said, “Shepherds? No, sir. It was cattle, not sheep. Rotties, not shepherds. It’s really me. Hassan will tell you our coordinates. He says only one small plane can come. No troops. No weapons. Bring medicines. You need to land exactly where he says. He’s listening in. Hassan?”
Through Lionel’s wheezing another voice broke in, deeper and unaccented. As generic as a California radio host. “Hassan Farrah Dir here, Dr. Rush. If you bring more than two, we will shoot. If we see a drone, we will burn these people. Treat them or evacuate them. My brother is sick, among your scientists, inside that camp! He is a cook for them. Help him.”
“You know I can’t evacuate more than a few survivors in a small plane.”
The voice remained steely. I tried to remember facts about the Hawiye clan. They were Sunni Muslims. They had fielded many Somali military and religious leaders. Hassan said, “We want your government to know we had nothing to do with this sickness. We don’t want it used as an excuse for attack. Americans get worked up. You need someone to blame. Your people and mine, there is bad history. What has happened here has nothing to do with us. See for yourself. Call me back when you know the plane you will come in, so we do not shoot at it. And, Doctor?”
“Yes?”
“Bring many protective clothings. Bring a short-range radio system. I wish to listen to everything you tell each other while you are here.”
He gave me coordinates. And hung up.
Is it a trap? Are these the people the admiral sent us to find?
Lionel’s photo came through ten minutes later. But it was gray and grainy. I couldn’t see a face, just a shape, which looked swollen. The photo was useless. I stared at the odd shape.
I punched in Eddie’s sat number. Below I saw no roads, just grassy savannah, meandering footpaths, a bombed-out village composed of a dozen mud-wattle huts. We skirted the edge of the Sud, the largest swamp in the world. Biggest crocodiles on Earth. Worst diseases. An immense landlocked maze of black water rivers, mud islands, brackish air, and festering diseases and everything, animal and vegetable, swollen with rain in January, when it should have been dry. Walk into the Sud and just about every life form within a hundred yards turns toward you, sniffing, watching, thinking: Get it!