The Dung Beetles of Liberia

by Daniel V. Jr. Meier

  “Lucky?” I said. “Lucky is not getting malaria at all.”

  “Hah! That’s near to impossible. Almost everyone here has malaria. It’s just a question of degree, especially Europeans. We’re sitting ducks. Now, lots of blacks are immune to many of the symptoms.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “The reason, I think, is the sickle cell. It is prevalent in blacks simply because the red blood cells have adapted as a defense against malaria. Instead of being round, they are sickle shaped—they sort of look like a question mark. And the little bastard parasites that cause malaria cannot attach themselves, in that there’s no place for them to lodge inside the red blood cell. So sickle cell can be a benefit if they live in Africa, but then, sickle cells don’t carry oxygen well either, so the carrier often lacks energy. But sickle cell anemia sure beats malaria.”

  “I should have paid more attention in biology class,” I said.

  “Just be glad you didn’t get the Asian kind. It goes to your brain. It’s called cerebral malaria. Makes you foam at the mouth and your eyes move around like a couple of billiard balls in a hoop and you say funny things.”

  “Like your crazy man in the cargo pod,” I said.

  “Aye, I guess you’re right.” He smiled, thinking about it. “Oh, by the way, in case you’re worried, your Kraut friend squared it with Andre. You’ve still got a job.” He hesitated. “Did they tell you about what happened to Varig?”

  He must have surmised by my expression that they had not.

  “Crashed on approach. Burned. Everybody on board killed except the two pilots. The cockpit section broke off on impact and the pilots scrambled out somehow. How about that for a switch?”

  “Any idea what happened?”

  “Nothing official, and there probably won’t be. The government sent a couple of soldiers to guard the wreckage so that the cops can’t steal any valuables lying around, but there will be no investigation. There ain’t no FAA here, matey. Tell you what I think.” Colin sat in the chair next to me and pulled it closer. “Don’t breathe a word of this, but some of us think it was shot down. Some of the people around the airport say they saw something that looked like a rocket going up just as the aircraft was on short final. It could have been a rocket or, more likely, one of those small, shoulder-fired missiles the Israelis have. We think it was the Israelis.

  “Anyway, things are happening. Beizell looks like he’s getting ready to run. Had a friend of mine who’s an official at the port authority tell me that Beizell has made arrangements to ship his car to Florida. He’s cashing in his chips, matey.”

  Stumpy owed me my salary, which he hadn’t paid in nearly a month, plus my percentage. It was a substantial sum, and I wasn’t going to let him get away with it. I thanked Colin for his help. I went to my room to get my pistol, summoned up strength from somewhere, and drove out to the airfield.

  Stumpy was in his office. He looked up when I came through the door.

  “You must be feeling better,” he said. “I may have a trip for you tomorrow, if you feel like taking it.”

  “I’ve heard that you’re leaving,” I said. He looked at me for a long moment but did not say anything. “I want my money, Stumpy.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.

  “I want my money,” I repeated.

  He shrugged. “All right, since you insist. You obviously don’t trust me. You don’t believe me. Come by tomorrow and I’ll have your money for you, but as of tomorrow, you don’t work here anymore.”

  “That’s fine with me,” I said.

  I knew that Colin lived on the airfield. I drove over to his place and was lucky to find him at home.

  “Colin,” I said, “could you let me stay with you tonight?”

  “Sure, mate.”

  “I want to keep an eye on Stumpy. He owes me a lot of money and I think he’s going to try to skip.”

  I didn’t know if he would try to leave before paying me, but I wasn’t going to risk it. He had an airplane, a Piper Tripacer. It was his personal airplane, and I figured he’d take that airplane along with everything he could stuff into it, fly to Sierra Leone, then get out of the country and the continent.

  Colin’s porch faced the runway. I waited there for darkness. As twilight approached, a huge number of birds started landing on the runway. I had never noticed this before.

  “Colin!” I yelled back into the house. “What are all of these birds doing on the runway?”

  “Just wait!” he called back.

  After several minutes, I noticed a few cars approaching the runway. They sped up, really fast, then bump, bump, bump, bump . . . The cars hit as many birds as they could then came to a screeching stop. The drivers hopped out with big burlap bags and started gathering up the dead and wounded birds. Some of the birds escaped the slaughter, their wings making a huge fan noise as they fluttered away in unison. After the harvest, the cars turned around and drove away. The whole spectacle was over in a few minutes.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  “For some bizarre reason, the birds pretty regularly come and stand on the runway in the evenings. The locals eat ’em. I guess clobbering ’em on the runway with a car is the easiest way to catch ’em.”

  I stayed on the porch and waited until it was completely dark, then I quietly made my way over to Stumpy’s airplane. I clamped a set of vice grips on the fuel line to squeeze it shut. I then camped out on Colin’s porch, fully expecting to be there all night. About one o’clock in the morning I heard the Tripacer start up, then rev up as though it was being taxied. Then it stopped and I could hear it cranking, wah wah wah . . . I grabbed my Llama 9mm pistol and quickly drove over to Stumpy’s operation. I could see his airplane on the ramp. He had the cowling up and was looking at the engine with a flashlight, obviously trying to see why it had stopped. I walked quietly up behind him.

  “Hi,” I said.

  He looked up, startled.

  “I heard the plane start up.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong.”

  I knew that Stumpy was a fairly good mechanic, and I knew he’d figure it out eventually.

  “Where are you going?” I asked. “You’re not supposed to be flying at this time in the morning. You know you cannot fly till zero eight hundred.”

  “I’m just running the engine. What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “You’re getting outta here, aren’t you?”

  He looked straight at me for a long moment. “Look,” he said, “you don’t understand. Some people are after me. I’ve got to go, now.”

  “Would you mean the Israelis?”

  “They’re misinformed,” he said.

  “Because you’ve been helping your Nazi friends escape?”

  “They’re not my friends. I was offered a lot of money. It was a chance to climb out of this dump, take my ball of shit, and go back home with something to show for it,” he said.

  “And where is that—Munich?”

  “No!” he said. “I’m an American. Couldn’t you tell? I grew up on a farm in Iowa. I know, I have a German name. That’s why they approached me. They thought I would somehow be sympathetic. But I told ’em that the German language hasn’t been spoken in my family in over a hundred years and that I don’t give a damn about their politics or the Israelis or any of that shit. They offered me a lot of money—that’s all it was to me—and right now, all I want is to get back to the States.”

  “You owe me some money.”

  “Well, I can’t pay you,” he said.

  “Then you’re not going to use this airplane,” I said. “I know what’s wrong with it.”

  I opened the door of his airplane. I could see that it was full of his stuff. Then he said, “It’s in the airplane. Let me look for it and I’ll get the money.”

  “No, no!” I said, “You tell me where it is and I’ll get it.”

  I pulled out my gun, but I did not point it at him. I knew
that he too had a gun, but I couldn’t see it. It was probably in the airplane.

  “I gotta tell you,” I said. “I’ve got a gun.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me,” he said.

  “You tell me where it is or I’ll put some holes in the tires, and put a hole in the fuel tank, and we’ll see how far you get.”

  “It’s in the back seat in a metal box. I’ll get it for you,” he said, making a move for the door of the airplane.

  “No!” I shouted. “If I have to use this on you, I will. Please believe me.”

  I told him to get face down on the ground, and I waited until I could see that he was. I reached into the rear of the Tripacer and very soon felt the metal box. I took it out and told him to get up and count out what he owed me. I kept my flashlight on him until he finished.

  “Here,” he said, handing me three thousand dollars in tens, twenties and fifties. “That’s all I owe you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the airplane. There’s a vice grip on the flexible fuel line. Release it and you’ve got your airplane back.”

  I know he wanted to kill me. I think he would have killed me if he could have, but I backed away from him into the darkness. The engine started and I waited until he took off and watched as his navigation lights moved to the northwest and out of sight. I never saw him again.

  I felt the starch go out of my legs and knew that I would probably not be able to drive back to the beach house, so I drove over to Colin’s place, settled into the couch on his porch, and fell asleep.

  It took another week for me to recover enough to return to work. From then on, I made sure to take my pills daily and to always sleep under netting.

  CHAPTER 24

  LITTLE BILLY

  The wet season had started. Giant, gray storms rolled down to the coast from the hinterland, bringing heavy rains and winds during the afternoon. At night, they would join shoulder to shoulder off the coast and provide some spectacular lightning shows, accompanied by rolls of thunder until morning.

  The rain brought increased challenges aside from the normal flying hazards of severe winds, lightning, and turbulence. It generally turned the airstrips up country to muddy red quagmires. Some small airstrips became completely unusable. My workload fell considerably during this time, and when I did fly, the risks were much higher.

  The investigation of the Varig Airline accident by the Liberian government did not take long. No public accident report was published. I heard that the Brazilian government was not pleased, but little or nothing came of it. The pilots were sent back to Brazil as soon as they checked out of the hospital. Eventually the guard was removed from the wreckage site and the burned, mangled corpse of the aircraft was left for the locals to plunder. After the accident, Varig stopped all flights into Liberia, leaving the fleeing Germans to find other means of escape. I tried to contact Nouga and was told that she had returned to Israel, but that Major Ahud would call me as soon as possible. He never did.

  After that, I was finished with intrigue. I simply wanted to concentrate on work, do my flights, and avoid entanglements. I told Andre that I would take any flight, any time. This was probably a mistake, since there were no legal restrictions in Liberia as to the numbers of hours a commercial pilot could fly at one time. When the weather would occasionally clear, I would fly from dawn to dusk, arriving back at the beach house after dark and leaving before sunrise. When the rains came, I kept to myself and sketched, or painted cloudy, dark seascapes. This went on for several months until the end of the wet season.

  Once through the wet season, and Andre felt he had made enough money to call it a profit, he hired Kemo as an office boy. Kemo was a Mandingo. He was short for a Mandingo and a little pudgy, but like all Mandingos, very efficient. He was also very serious and though I tried to make him laugh several times, I never could. Maybe our cultures were just too far apart. Nevertheless, we got on very well together through simple, mutual respect.

  I wasn’t the only American working and living in Liberia in the 1960s, but unlike the Brits or Germans, we never banded together to form an expatriate group. You could, however, always spot an American on the street or in bars. One of my Brit friends said that it was the way we presented ourselves—the way we stood, the way we walked—something reminiscent of John Wayne. I guess we all felt a bit like cowboys.

  Little Billy was especially easy to spot as an American. He was from Oklahoma and over six feet tall. He always wore western boots, usually made from exotic leather such as alligator or ostrich hide, with two-inch heels, tight-fitting western jeans, a western shirt with designs on the pockets, and a large black Stetson hat. He held all of this together with a wide leather belt spotted with silver conchos and a decorated silver belt buckle shaped like a horseshoe.

  Andre had hired him at the end of the wet season anticipating an increase in business. It was said, by people who knew as much about him as I did (which was nothing), that he was on the run from the law. After working with him for about a month I could easily believe this, although he never verified it. And I reminded myself that working in Liberia was a bit like being in the French Foreign Legion—no questions about the past.

  What Little Billy displayed in sartorial splendor he highlighted in piloting skills. He could handle an airplane as though it were part of his body. It was as though he slipped his arms into the wings and his feet into the tail section and flew. He was also an excellent navigator and did not seem to know what fear was.

  I was in the Airport Bar when Kemo found me draining a beer at the long counter. I had gone there seeking relief from the ever-present heat. It was hot—hot as only an afternoon in the West African dry season can be. Overhead, waves of heat radiated down from the metal roof. Even the ubiquitous blow flies could do no more than crawl slowly over the empty beer bottles. From my stool, I could see, by squinting through the security bars at the window, the roof of the airfield control tower shimmering in the sun. I stared across the few hundred feet of baking laterite to our operations office and was obliged to squint. Turning my head inward, I was thankful for the dimly lit air of the bar. I called to Madeleine’s new bartender, a boy of thirteen sleeping with his head down on the bar, for another beer. He continued to sleep. Finally, after a number of unsuccessful attempts to rouse him by hurling bottle caps at him, I rose and got the cool bottle of beer from the water tub myself.

  Glancing out of the window again, I saw a form slowly emerge from the door of Monrovia Airlines’ office and proceed toward the bar. The dark figure moved slowly through the waves of heat. It looked like Kemo, trying his best to hurry without any exertion. With some curiosity, I eased back onto my stool and watched him approach. Only a dire circumstance could have caused Kemo to leave the relative comfort of the office and hike across the airfield to the bar. It was obvious that he was coming to summon me.

  Since Kemo was a Mandingo and a non-drinking Muslim, he would never do any business in Madeleine’s place. I drank my beer and waited. He finally dragged himself through the wide portal of the bar and approached me. Large beads of sweat rolled off his round face.

  “Monsieur Andre say you mus come jus now,” Kemo said and waited expectantly.

  I knew Andre well enough to know that he would never summon a pilot from the Airport Bar after a slow day unless something of importance had occurred. I drained the bottle.

  “Let’s go, Kemo, and tell me what the palaver is,” I said.

  We left the dank heat of the bar and walked, as fast as the heat would permit, across the dusty airfield. The sunlight was so intense that I had to squint even though I was wearing sunglasses. I could barely see Andre in front of the hangar. He was shouting and gesturing to the boys loading an airplane. He was more animated than usual. This was not good.

  Kemo, as if reading my thoughts, blurted, “De commissionaire in Guinea got Monsieur Beelly.”

  This was serious. I could not keep concern out of my voice. “How do you know, K
emo?”

  Before he could answer, Andre shouted to us from the hangar, “Come, vien ici, vite, vite!”

  He paused to shout at the loaders who were pushing one of the company’s battered Cessna 180 aircraft backward to the fuel pumps. He then ran over and tugged at my arm,

  “Come, vite!”

  I followed him into the hangar office.

  Andre was respected by our Mandingo customers because of his business skill. They called him “the dry man.” He got to the point quickly.

  “Billy has been caught by a Guinea district commissioner near Kankan.”

  Little Billy, arrested near Kankan! I tried hard to imagine Billy’s Oklahoma accent resonating from the walls of a mud jail in a remote West African village.

  Flying the bush in West Africa, we all took our chances. One of the requisites of our job was we had to be willing to try almost anything at least once. We said, usually after too much whiskey at the Airport Bar, that we did it for the adventure, but we all knew, deep down inside, that we did it more for the money. Only a fool would do otherwise.

  I had flown a few risky diamond pickups with McCoy, but Andre’s focus on the diamond trade was much more intense. Our hangar was, among other things, the western terminus of an enormous gemstone pipeline pouring millions of dollars in diamonds into the Republic. Liberia, being an independent republic for over a hundred years, had been bypassed by the international diamond cartels that set the prices of diamonds in the rest of the world. All prices in the Republic were set, therefore, by the local gem market. Liberia was a diamond smuggler’s paradise.

  A rough diamond might begin its journey a thousand miles to the east by residing in the bowels of a closely watched native miner who, under the guns of overseers, would swallow the muddy gems and pass them later in the night outside the mining area. From as far away as Chad or Upper Volta, a gem would travel first by overland trails then be sold surreptitiously to the Mandingos. From there, it would move by motorized transport or bush taxi to Bamako or Ouagadougou. It would change hands a few times before beginning the long journey west, possibly in a chartered taxi with a number of Mandingo merchants. They always traveled together for safety. As in the salt and gold caravans of ancient Songhi, it was a dangerous journey. Many Mandingos lost their diamonds and lives at the hands of thieves.