Errand of Mercy: How far do you run, and where do you hide?

by William Walker

  “And...” She leaned forward.

  “And the car that I was driving was hit by a tanker truck. Big explosion. Fire.”

  “Well,” she said, after a minute of silence. “I’m glad we got that cleared up.” She leaned back in her seat and regarded him with a curious expression.

  He turned away. Something in the room had to be more interesting. “How about some coffee?” he suggested.

  “How about another beer,” she countered. “And don’t try and change the subject.”

  “Was I doing that?”

  “Tell you what...” She stood up, smoothed her pants and cast a wide gaze over the restaurant. Her eyes clicked slowly left to right and settled on a spot located in a far corner. “I’m going to powder my nice, attractive nose, and when I return we’re going to continue our discussion about you.” She looked down at him. “I’ve told you about me, so it’s only fair.”

  He countered. “You didn’t tell me all that much about yourself, now that I think about it.”

  She gave him a wink. “You’ll have to live with that.”

  Most of it came out, he decided, because he’d always flown with men. There was a different chemistry when talking to a woman, especially one he didn’t know that well. The conversation took a different path. They tended to pry into your life.

  During his fourth year in the Air Force he was flying cargo planes around the world and gone most of the time. After a long and tiring flight from Panama he’d had one of those infrequent and delightful reconnections at home with his wife: easy afternoon lovemaking, a nice meal at a fancy restaurant and too much wine. He’d been set up, by himself. Returning home, a tanker trailer smashed into their car.

  The accident wasn’t his fault or the trucker’s according to the procedural reports. A fifteen year-old kid without a license was in the car ahead of the tractor-trailer. The kid cut across four lanes of traffic trying to make a right exit. The trucker was in the right-hand lane. Daniel should have seen it develop, but he’d been floating along in the cotton wool of pleasure and fatigue, and not paying all that much attention. The rig jackknifed and reversed, slammed sideways into his car. His wife was killed. To this day he suspected he’d actually fallen asleep at the wheel. He couldn’t remember much of what happened and learned the facts from the accident report. His scars were a lifelong reminder of that night.

  Lucy’s gaze remained on his face. She twisted a blond strand of hair now and then.

  “I was taken off flying status while I recuperated, spent my last two years in the Air Force attached to something called the Special Tactics Operations unit at a base in Florida.”

  “And I had to make that crack about my love life? Guess your perspective’s a little different. Sorry.” She flicked an eyelash with the tip of an index finger.

  “Forget it. If we lose our sense of humor we’re lost.”

  The band turned out a reggae version of Hot, Hot, Hot. The volume and energy level increased, making conversation difficult. Lucy tapped a palm against her knees. He drummed a hand on the tablecloth and prayed that the musicians wouldn’t start moving around the room.

  “And so what about this unit in Florida?” she picked up during the break.

  “It’s a secret,” he said. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  “Ha, ha,” she said flatly.

  “I was involved with special teams—covert insertions in various places, training in hand-to-hand combat. If you’re familiar with the Delta Force then my unit could have been their step-child.”

  “I thought you were a flier?”

  “I was, but they didn’t really need me anymore as a pilot—or as an engineer. That’s what my degree was in. But they took me on because I knew the guys, and I think they were trying to help me rehabilitate.”

  She pressed her lips onto the napkin and gave it the faint imprint of a kiss. “Evidently it took. You’ve got a hard face, Daniel.”

  “You’re looking at my burn scars.”

  “No. There’s something else.” She took a long drink from her water glass.

  “I’d be careful with that once we’re in Africa,” O’Brien said. He indicated the glass of water.

  “Yeah, I do know better. It’s just a habit. Anyway, so that’s your life story?”

  “Sort of. I’ve left out all the sex.”

  She grinned. “Are you sure you had any?”

  “I could say no, and that would make us even.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said with laugh. “That would just make us totally boring.”

  The waiters fussed around their table for a few minutes and they were left with coffee and a tray of cheese and desert pastries. Lucy skipped the cheese and worked on the pastries.

  “So what do we do about tomorrow?” she asked, rattling a spoon around the rim of her empty saucer.

  He motioned for the check. “Unless we get another airplane we go back to the States, take a break, maybe look for a better contract. Or at least I’m leaving. Unless...”

  “Unless what? They pay us more? And you said a few minutes ago you were rich?”

  “I didn’t say I was rich. I said I didn’t need to work.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “If they replace that airplane with one in good condition, one that we have plenty of time to check out, I’d be willing to fly it.”

  “We’d have to check it very carefully.”

  “Run every system, poke around in every nook and cranny.”

  “It won’t make it completely safe,” she said, and reached for her purse.

  Daniel rose from the table. “I wouldn’t worry about it. I don’t think they’ll replace it.”

  “Great. Then I’ll have to cough up over three month’s house payment for a simulator check ride.” She dropped her spoon into the saucer with a sharp ping of china.

  O’Brien glanced at the table. Lucy was a noisy woman.

  3

  The upper limb of the sun had disappeared below the horizon. Blue, white and orange lights designating taxiways and runway hold points began to illuminate around the airfield.

  The call to the hotel in the late afternoon was unexpected. Lucy had been on the beach. No surprise there, but by the time they’d arrived at the hangar the half-light of dusk had fallen.

  A different airplane sat on the ramp. This aircraft was not new, but the maintenance records indicated it had just been through a major overhaul, and even allowing for a bit of fabrication in the logbook the ship seemed airworthy. They checked the systems and poked around wherever they could shine a flashlight.

  O’Brien hesitated before turning the rotary start switch on the overhead panel. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Lucy nodded. “Go ahead, Daniel. Start the engines. Otherwise…”

  “Yeah, I know. You’ll have to go to the simulator.”

  He thumbed the knob clockwise and heard the spinning whine as high pressure air surged into the starter on the number one engine. The turbine engaged. A typical hollow, grinding sound followed as he placed the fuel and ignition switch forward. “Looks like a normal start.”

  “I’m surprised we actually have doctors onboard,” she said, as they watched the engine gauges.

  “All two of them plus the boxes of medicines. We’re such humanitarians.”

  After a moment the left engine stabilized at an idle RPM. He opened the starter on the second engine while Lucy received the oceanic clearance over the radio. In a short while they’d be airborne, but the takeoff would be at night over an ocean. That made it interesting.

  A few minutes later they turned onto the runway and O’Brien advanced the power levers. The engine instruments stabilized and they began to move forward faster and faster in a roar of jet engines and a blur of runway lights. They lifted off as the final red lights whizzed past under the airplane. Climbing over the Atlantic Ocean, O’Brien began to relax. Altitude and airspeed were absolutely critical following a takeoff, and
he had both.

  Lucy said after a while, “So tell me about Liberia. You said you’ve been there.”

  Pinpoint flares of offshore oil rigs disappeared into the darkness beneath them as they as they gained altitude. They were beyond the continental shelf, and the only lights below them now were from an occasional container ship or oil tanker.

  “I’m listening, Daniel,” she prompted.

  He glanced over. The world outside the cockpit windows was a claustrophobic black, and the one candlepower glow thrown off by the instrument panel made facial nuances difficult to read. Her gaze seemed fixed outside the aircraft. The Milky Way appeared, a silver ribbon of blue-white diamonds on black velvet extending from one horizon to the other. “I was there a year ago,” he said. “The country’s off the planet. The edge of the civilized world.” The darkness in the night sky added a sense of surreal to the narrative, a ghost story told by the man with a hook.

  “Liberia has the distinction of receiving one of the largest United Nation’s aid packages of any developing country in the world,” he told her. “The capital, Monrovia, is a city with almost no governmental infrastructure. Poverty and disease are endemic and raw sewage flows into the streets. Few buildings have electricity, and outside the urban area conditions are close to thirteenth-century feudal Europe. Rape and pillaging is common, inter-tribal wars, you name it.”

  “No wonder this contract pays so much. I should have known,” Lucy said. “So that explains the medical supplies and doctors onboard.”

  “Yeah, our only passengers. Something there to think about.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning what we talked about back in Fortaleza, the feeling we had before we took off. Someone is paying a lot of money to get this airplane and a doctor or two from Brazil to Liberia, and then on to Europe.”

  A disembodied voice came through the open cockpit doorway. “More coffee?”

  Lucy yelped.

  A spectral apparition with a hairy arm levitated a dented, stainless pot. “I just made it,” the figure informed them. His voice sounded like a gravel truck unloading.

  A large man edged further into the cockpit. He had introduced himself earlier as Gary Starr, a specialist in tropical medicine, but he looked more like a bouncer in a tough bar than a physician. If he was to be believed, he managed the American medical contingent outside the capital city of Monrovia. He was barrel-chested, stood taller than O’Brien and carried more weight. A black beard with specks of gray surrounded thick lips. His skin was pockmarked with acne, and O’Brien had noticed his eyes had the odd habit of sliding away from the person he was addressing.

  According to Starr, he’d been back and forth five or six times from Africa to the U.S. and South America to pick up supplies. The airplanes were always old and worn, but they were provided free of charge to various international medical organizations. “You’ve gotta be careful while you’re there,” he said. “Liberia is one of the world’s largest transshipment points for illegal drugs.”

  “Isn’t Liberia a little out of the way for that kind of thing?” Lucy asked.

  “That’s exactly why it works so well for the big cartels. No one pays them any attention. The UN has roughly 15,000 soldiers constantly trying to maintain order, and it doesn’t seem to make any difference. They funnel cocaine in from South America and heroin from Southeast Asia. And from Liberia everything flows into Europe.”

  “Great.”

  “The country is a hole in the earth. Most of sub-Saharan Africa’s that way.” He slurped from his cup, and after a long pause, “You guys will be riding in with us, if I didn’t mention it before. There’s no transportation service at the airport.”

  “There’s hardly an airport, as I recall,” O’Brien said.

  “I see you’ve been there,” he said. “We also arrange for fueling through our UN connections, and if you have to contact your charter company for any reason we have a nice communication setup at the medical compound. I’m told the phone lines at the hotels work only part of the time.”

  “Hopefully, we’ll only be in the country for one night. No offense.”

  “I understand,” the doctor said.

  O’Brien waved a hand. The question had to be asked. “Who exactly funds all of this, the charters, the medical supplies, and you guys? It seems like a big expense for a few doctors and some medicine.”

  Starr shifted his weight against the doorway bulkhead several times. “Our parent organization is Doctors Without Borders,” he said. “They support the medical compounds and arrange for volunteer staffing at facilities throughout most of Africa.”

  “I’m familiar with the name. They also provide these airplanes?”

  Starr drank off his coffee in a slow manner, as if formulating the most appropriate reply. “From what I gather, a foundation in Germany arranges for the transportation.”

  “Germany? That’s…I don’t know. It sounds kind of odd. What type of foundation? I would have expected the UN or something.”

  “I can’t say I know much about that end of the operation,” the doctor said. “Right now I’ve got my hands full managing the medical side of things. You wouldn’t believe the poverty and disease. Right now cholera is a big concern.”

  “Let’s turn around, Daniel,” Lucy put in. “Take me back to Wisconsin.”

  “The lady has a point,” Starr said. “Couldn’t you guys be working on safer and easier charters back in the states?”

  “We could,” O’Brien answered as he stared through the scratched windscreen. The constellation of Orion stood out directly ahead. If he could just stretch a little he could touch the star called Betelgeuse in Orion’s shoulder.

  “So why are you here?”

  “It pays double,” Lucy said. “I guess now we know the reason.”

  O’Brien didn’t respond. It was the very question he’d asked himself. For sure it wasn’t the money. He had plenty of that thanks to his parents. If they were still alive, or his wife, then perhaps someone could explain it to him. He touched the rose petal scar on his temple. After a long moment, he looked over his shoulder and realized the doctor had gone back into the cabin.

  4

  “Uh, Daniel. Have you noticed our fuel?” Lucy brought O’Brien back to the present. The sun was well up in the sky and they could see the coast of Africa.

  “You mean the gauges are working again?” He checked the overhead panel and tapped the gauges. They blinked once and went out.

  “Well that’s just great,” Lucy said. “They were working until you touched them, and this airplane was supposed to be so much better?”

  Lucy pulled the aviation chart away from her front windscreen. “Thanks for the shade.”

  “Try and fold it back the way it was, Lu.”

  “The way it was? It was a mess when you gave it to me.”

  “Well, straighten out the mess.”

  “Daniel, it’s a ball of—”

  “Just fold the fucking chart, Lucy. Please!”

  “Okay, okay! What a grouch. And does your mother know you talk like that?”

  “My mother’s dead, and my father too. I thought I told you.”

  “No, you didn’t tell me. Jesus, Daniel. Don’t you have anybody?”

  He looked over. “I’ve got you.”

  “Hells bells. I’m sure that’s worth a cup of coffee somewhere in Wisconsin.”

  Their radio calls went unanswered. The sky was clear, the visibility unlimited, and they could see the runway from the distance of thirty miles. O’Brien descended to an altitude of one thousand feet and decided to fly over the airfield for a closer examination. The entire complex looked deserted. The white concrete runway lay carved into the green jungle vegetation like a scar. He maneuvered the airplane out over the surrounding terrain, rolled up into a tight bank, and came around for a closer view. The speed dropped and the plane descended further. At five hundred feet above the ground the damage from recent fighting was clear. Both the control tower and
the terminal building were destroyed. The only sign of activity was the presence of a few military vehicles scattered around the field. Soldiers with rifles waved as they flew low overhead.

  Lucy stared hard at him. “Daniel, the fuel gauge is working again. Like, we’re really and truly almost out of gas now.”

  “What exactly does the gauge show?”

  “A bunch of numbers,” she answered with sarcasm. “And none of them is greater than one. You want me to run the landing checklist?”

  “Good idea. Let’s get this airplane on the ground.”

  “You told me this wasn’t a pleasant place.” She glanced out of her side windscreen. “Now I believe you.”

  O’Brien settled the airplane on the approach pattern while Lucy read through the landing checklist moving switches and checking gauges. One mile from the end of the runway he nodded to Lucy, and fingers crossed, she lowered the landing gear. The wheels came down properly and locked into place.

  “We’ll never be able to raise the landing gear again until someone repairs that hydraulic system,” Lucy reminded him.

  “I know.”

  “Great. Now were going to be stuck here in Liberia.”

  They touched down carefully on a long strip of concrete, one of only two paved runways in all of Liberia. A jeep packed with armed soldiers caught up with them as the airplane slowed to taxi speed.

  Starr appeared in the cockpit doorway and pointed at the jeep. “They want you to follow them.”

  “Yeah, no shit,” O’Brien said.

  “Everything okay here?” Starr asked.

  “We’ve had all sorts of problems,” Lucy said. “I think our captain is a little grumpy.”

  “What kind of problems? Is the airplane in good shape?”

  “Afraid not,” O’Brien said. “We’re going to need some serious maintenance before we can continue to Europe. We can’t raise the landing gear, for one thing.”

  They followed the jeep past a group of rundown hangars and over a narrow taxiway choked with weeds. O’Brien stopped the aircraft in front of the partially demolished terminal building. He was not surprised when a group of armed men surrounded the airplane as they shut the engines down. Through the cockpit window he could pick out a sampling of the world’s small arms trade. Dirty AK-47s were held by teenagers in filthy uniforms. Several P-90 submachine guns were visible as well as some nice Heckler and Koch MP5s, presumably carried by the officers. It all had a perversely homey feel to him, and for a moment he flashed back to his Special Ops unit.