Deployed (22 page)

“Perhaps this is true.”

“Then I should hate you.”

“If you wish, you may.”

The boy was quiet again.

“Haroun does not remember me.” Daud spoke softly. “But not many months ago I was living in the city with my wife and child. We bothered no one. My son Ibrahim was about your age. I loved him very much, and I loved his mother as well.”

“Were you a soldier?”

Daud shook his head. “I was just a husband. A father. Haroun had no cause to know me. But Haroun and his warriors killed my family. After I buried them, I swore that I would fight the al-Shabaab until there were no more of them or until they killed me. This is what I do.”

“You are going to fight Haroun?”

Daud looked at the boy. “I am going to kill Haroun.”

“Then I will go with you, and I will kill Haroun as well.”

“This isn’t work for a child.”

“A child does not bury his mother. I am a man now. Give me a gun. Teach me how to use it. I will kill Haroun with you.”

Daud dropped to one knee and looked at the boy. “Do you have nowhere else to go? No other relatives?”

The boy shook his head. “I can stay here and die, or I can go with you.”

“If those are your only options, you may accompany me.”

The boy reached out a hand and touched the dead parts of Daud’s face. “I am Kufow.”

Daud stood and took the boy by the hand, leading him to one of the jeeps. A few minutes later, they were once more traveling through the night. Only a short time after that, the boy fell asleep in the seat between Daud and Afrah. Twisting slightly, Daud made the boy more comfortable and just listened to the soft sigh of his breathing. He ran his hand over the boy’s head and thought that it was time to find out more about Haroun and where the man was.

26

THE NEXT TWO WEEKS
passed in a blur for Bekah. From sunup to sundown, she was on patrol through the streets of Mogadishu. She even managed a few short hops outside the city on mercy missions to take food and medicines to internally displaced people living outside the metropolitan area. The Indigo Rifle Platoon was rebuilt, bringing in other Marines. When they weren’t on patrol, they were training, getting to know each other, learning that they could trust each other.

The patrols turned bloody on three different occasions as the al-Shabaab continued sniping attacks and suicide bombings. Marines—and civilians for that matter—remained spread out as they traveled through the city streets. No one wanted to be part of a group that was large enough to attract enemy attention. The snipers were the worst, able to drop four or five people before Marines, UN peacekeeping forces, or the Somali military could take them down.

More and more soldiers from different countries hit the ground in Mogadishu to provide aid and supplies. AMISOM, the regional peacekeeping mission led by the African Union under the auspices of the United Nations, had trouble keeping up with all the comings and goings. Managing the men and materials proved almost impossible, and it left holes in their security.

With all the influx of goods, the military had to tighten security as well. Even then, shipments and cargo went missing, later turning up on the black market.

In the evenings she met up with Matthew Cline for dinner or coffee, depending on how their schedules matched. He was kept busy caring for patients in the city and preparing treks outside the metro area that would provide care for displaced people afraid to enter Mogadishu again.

On Thursday of the third week, their paths crossed during the day when she and her team were assigned to guard Matthew’s clinic in the city’s interior. The clinic was housed in a bombed-out building that had been cleared but not restored. Plywood covered the windows, and even that had to be guarded because people would steal it to make personal shelters. Bits of cracked plaster stubbornly clung to the brick walls pocked with bullet scars.

After the ambush she’d been through, Bekah maintained a stark vigilance as she manned the post inside the clinic. She stood to one side clad in full battle gear, her rifle across her chest in ready position. Sick children and sick and anxious parents kept watch over her the whole time she was there. After hours of standing guard duty, she was beginning to think she was more of a negative influence than a positive one. But someone had to protect the people.

Matthew worked with an interpreter as he checked over the children who were brought to him. Only a few had any appreciable English, and hardly any Americans were proficient in the local languages. Matthew’s command of the Somali language had grown admirably in the past three weeks, but he still didn’t want to talk to parents without the interpreter.

He worked hard, and Bekah respected that. He arrived at the clinic at daybreak and didn’t leave until the sun was setting. Travel after dark was limited, and most people wanted to return to wherever they were living within the city by then. A large number of the people were homeless, either because their residences had been destroyed or because they’d come in from villages outside Mogadishu.

They lived in tent cities in alleys, courtyards, and wrecked buildings. Bekah had been through some of the areas and felt bad for the people, but they were living. That was what people learned to do when they had nothing. Bekah had seen that in Callum’s Creek.

“The kids like you.” Bekah walked beside Matthew as she escorted him to the break area. He didn’t take breaks often, usually only long enough to grab a sandwich and a bottle of water and go to the bathroom. He was gone on break usually ten minutes tops, then he was back in that receiving room facing a long line of ailing children. She didn’t know how he did it.

Matthew smiled, and some of the fatigue etched into his face briefly lifted. “I like the kids. It’s a simple relationship. They’re sick or hurt, and I fix them. And I thank God I’ve got the medicine and the staff to get that accomplished.”

“I’ve seen some of the other medical people working with them. Those kids don’t like everyone.”

The break area was a small room with a few groceries kept in ice chests. Two small, round tables in the center of the room were flanked by mismatched chairs. Another rectangular table occupied a spot against the wall. The ice chests containing the food sat atop it.

Matthew opened one of the chests and glanced at Bekah. “Sandwich?”

“I can make my own.”

“I’m sure you can, but I’m willing to do it for you.”

“Thank you.” Bekah kept the sandwich simple, ham and cheese and vegetables with mustard.

Matthew fixed both sandwiches, wrapped them in paper towels from a nearby roll, took two more towels to use as napkins, and grabbed two diet soft drinks. He turned toward the tables and smiled. “Looks like we have our choice of seating.”

Bekah went to the nearest table, put her rifle on the floor, and placed her helmet in the chair next to her. She accepted the sandwich when Matthew offered it, then waited for him to settle in.

Cries of sick and wounded children carried into the break area. It was a constant undercurrent of noise. Bekah was certain it would join the other nightmares she already suffered every night.

Matthew gazed at her. “How are you doing?”

Bekah picked at her sandwich. “I’m okay.”

“You look tired.”

“Long days will do that to you.” She gave him a slight grin. “Having people shoot at you kind of adds to the stress level.”

Matthew laughed, but she knew he only did that out of reflex. There was nothing amusing about the situation they were in.

He sipped his drink. “Are you sleeping all right?”

“I am.”

“Because you don’t look like you’re getting enough sleep.”

“Have you seen a mirror lately?”

Matthew grinned, and she liked the easy way that expression appeared on his face. “Okay, I’ll back off. I was just concerned about you. So far, I haven’t lost a friend over here. You have.”

“I’m working through it.” Bekah took a bite of her sandwich. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Is this everything you thought it would be?”

Matthew sighed and slumped back in his chair. For a moment Bekah feared she’d gone too far.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

“Yes you did.” Matthew smiled at her wearily. “I think we both meant to pry. It’s what we do when we’re in a situation we don’t have control of and don’t completely understand. We check the people around us and see how they’re feeling about things. I’m sure you have someone like that at home.”

Bekah thought about that for a moment. “My granny. Every time I was going through something—when I was pregnant with Travis, when I was going through my divorce, when I was first activated to come overseas—she was the one I talked to.” She smiled at the memories and was surprised at how much comfort they brought her. “We usually have our best talks when we’re hanging laundry.”

“You hang laundry?”

“Yep. Clothesline. Clothespins. The works. Granny likes the way everything smells when it’s dried in the sun. For that matter, so do I.”

“What do you do in the winter?”

“We use the dryer. Oklahoma isn’t exactly the Old West. We do have modern conveniences. Like indoor plumbin’ and ’lectricity.”

Matthew looked chagrined. “I didn’t think—” He stopped himself. “Well, yes, I guess I did think maybe it was. Not all of it, but maybe where you were from.”

Bekah laughed at his discomfort, and it felt good to do so. “I’ve got some pictures on my camera to prove it. I’ll show them to you sometime.”

“I’d like that.”

Bekah was surprised how comfortable she felt around Matthew, especially since they came from two very different walks of life.

“In answer to your question, being here is a lot different than I thought it would be.” Matthew took a bite of his sandwich. “I just didn’t realize how . . .
overpowering
helping these people would be. Especially the kids. I love working with the kids. That’s the one thing I’ve always been certain of, the one thing I believe God gave me to do. And I believe God put me here to help.”

“You could have helped kids in Boston. You didn’t have to come all the way out here.”

Matthew shook his head. “It wouldn’t have been the same. It
wasn’t
the same. This . . . this is different. I feel like I was called to this place, at this time. Haven’t you ever felt like God put you somewhere?”

Bekah was quiet for a moment, then decided to be honest. “I don’t think God has much of an interest in my life.”

Matthew frowned. “How can you say something like that?”

“Because if there’s any place I should be, it’s back home with my son and my granny. Travis needs raising, and my granny needs help on that little bit of family land we’ve hung on to.” Bekah shook her head. “And when I get back, I’ve got to find another steady job. I lost the last one.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Bekah shrugged. “I can find another job.”

“That wasn’t what I was talking about. I was talking about the fact that you don’t feel God is working in your life. That’s got to be an awful lonely feeling.”

“If he’s been around, I haven’t seen any signposts. And I don’t know what he would expect me to do.”

“You’re raising your son and helping your grandmother.”

“When I’m there.” Bekah tried not to sound bitter, but she suspected she wasn’t quite pulling it off.

“Keep an open mind. You might be surprised at what you see one day.” Matthew nodded at the people standing in line to be examined. “These people come to me for medical aid, but I want to give them more than that. I talk to them about God as I work. A lot of these people’s souls are wounded worse than their bodies.”

Over the last couple days, Bekah had overheard Matthew talking about God’s love and salvation, praying with patients, and encouraging them, and many times she had felt better for it.

Matthew smiled. “Some of these people are Christians already. Others just need to be shown the way. God cares about them. They need to be told that until they can see it for themselves. Everyone needs that sometimes.”

Bekah nodded, but she didn’t think so. She was certain that if God had any interest in her life, she’d have known it before now.

The attack on the clinic came during shift change for the Marines, and it was perfectly camouflaged.

Bekah walked out of the building feeling guilty at leaving Matthew Cline behind, but she knew her team needed the precious little rest they were getting, and they had orders to stay together. It was after eighteen hundred hours, and the line to get medical attention wrapped around the building. Parents and children sat on the ground. Mothers held blankets over small children to protect them from the heat of the sun. They swatted at flies that tried to feast on the children’s open sores.

A man and a boy caught Bekah’s attention, and she didn’t know what it was at first. Something just wasn’t right. The fact that a mother wasn’t present wasn’t surprising. Many of the mothers were dead, victims of the violence and sickness that ravaged the city. Then she realized it was the way the man and boy were sitting in line together.

The man was in his early twenties, and the boy was eleven or twelve, though age was sometimes hard to determine in the young because malnutrition often kept them small. But the man had to be an older brother, perhaps an uncle.

Bekah couldn’t help wondering where the parents were, or where other siblings might be. But even that could be explained—all kinds of people came to the clinic.

These two sat side by side and stared at the building across the alley, like they were looking but seeing nothing. They weren’t talking. But many of the other people waiting outside weren’t talking either. Several of them slept or sat listlessly while trapped in fever or pain. Some parents held animated, sometimes irritated, conversations with their children. Or the children entertained each other or themselves.