Tam scowled. “God put you in the middle of a civil war? Deliberately.”
“We could have stayed back in Belfast,” Carmen laughed. “But we volunteered for UNHCR work. And this is where we ended up.”
“Why?”
“Volunteer?”
Tam nodded.
Carmen snuggled up to Alejo and smiled contentedly. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my days waddling between shops, the pub, and my flat. Here, God willing, we can make a difference.”
Curro blushed proudly. “I told you they were brave.”
I raised a toast with my tea mug. “Fine line between that and crazy.”
Tam wasn’t in a laughing mood. His shoulders hunched, jaw tight, I could almost see the gears turning in his head. I steered the conversation toward safe ground. “You must need the patience of Job, playing school-nurse to twenty thousand plus refugees.”
“Well, we don’t have that.” Carmen said. “We do what we can, one at a time.”
“Short supply on all kinds of things down there,” Alejo added. “Except for stuff we don’t need.”
Tam wouldn’t go along. He looked up, eyes narrow. “If God wanted to ‘make a difference’,” he snapped, “why doesn’t He do something besides send an elderly couple and a bloated bureaucracy?”
The mood in the cave reversed gear.
“No offense,” he added as an afterthought.
Carmen sat up and looked straight into Tam’s face. “None taken,” she replied easily. “I think when God wants to love you, He sends people.”
“Most of the time anyway,” Alejo added carefully.
“Well, you’re shaking hands with the devil here,” Tam insisted. “This is as shi— messy as it gets. Civil war. Genocide. Crazy dictator on one hand, rabid fundys on the other.”
“Professor Hamid isn’t a rabid fundy.”
“No,” Tam admitted. “Not like what we heard anyway.
“Euro-Media paint him six shades of radical; OBL’s and Robert Mugabe’s love child. But he’s more like Mandella, except with a lot more guns,” Alejo noted.
Tam and I nodded. “Disappointingly sane for a fanatic,” I said in mock regret.
Alejo chuckled. “He is, isn’t he?”
“He’s still a Muslim though,” Tam countered. “Most of the SPLM regulars are fundys too. Might as well be Al-Shabaab, all the AKs and Korans waving around. Isn’t that a problem with you people?”
Carmen raised an eyebrow. “Us people?”
“Christians.”
Alejo leaned forward to address Tam. “Ever hear the saying ‘better a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian’?”
“That in the Bible?” I asked.
“Moby Dick,” Alejo said. Then when I didn’t recognize the title, he added, “Old book about a crazy one-legged sea captain chasing a white whale. Lots of words—no pictures. You wouldn’t like it.”
Everyone chuckled politely, but Carmen had that look; Tam had thrown down, and she wasn’t about to let it slide. “So we’re supposed to despise the man because he’s Muslim? The Crusades were over a thousand years ago.”
“He follows a false religion, right? Making suicide bombers, then taking them to hell?” Tam challenged.
“Why are you so angry?” she asked. “There are no enemies here.”
“I’m angry at the stupidity of what you said,” Tam yelled. “You’re not making sense.”
“Easy,” I interrupted. Curro stood up. Even the Triplets frowned.
Alejo waved them down. “No, let him finish.”
Carmen nodded for Tam to continue. “Say what’s on your mind.”
Tam balled his fists. “We were at Bowna when the government units tore through. It was like hell having a field trip. Mutilated bodies everywhere, rape, murder. Women, little kids… and it’s been going on for years.” He took a deep breath. “If your God is so powerful, so loving, why doesn’t He really do something? Why doesn’t He stop it?”
Carmen and Alejo looked at each other. “Fair question,” Alejo said.
“We’ve asked ourselves that for years,” Carmen added.
“Have a happy answer yet?” Tam demanded.
“You want fortune-cookie platitudes, you’ve asked the wrong people,” Carmen said slowly. “I think God weeps over the atrocities we commit on each other.”
“So we’re just caught in the suck, stuck with slaughter and tears? I’m not consoled,” Tam replied flatly.
“God doesn’t owe you an explanation. Or an apology,” Carmen fired back. “Why is it you have faith to blame but not believe? You ignore God, shove Him as far away as possible, until tragedy strikes. Then He’s first against the wall. You’re like a kid who insists on having it their way, then blames the parent when it backfires. Sin is the soul’s choice of not-God. We have to own our decisions.”
Tam fired back. “You say God cares, but it sure as hell is like He’s never around when He’s needed.”
“Oh, He’s there.”
“If He is, He’s got His thumb up His ass.”
The Garcias were silent for a long time. Finally Alejo spoke. “Do you want to know why Carmen and I became Christians?”
“Is it going to be a long sermon?” Tam sneered.
“Shut up and listen,” Alejo said. “Remember the Third Sudan War in ’48? Dahab’s army was pushing from Khartoum and the Caliphate volunteers were pouring out of Nyala in the west? South Sudan cities fell like ten-pins. Not even a month into it, what was left of the South Sudanese Army had pulled back to Malakal. They were under siege and weren’t expected to last a fortnight. Well, a bunch of South Sudanese ex-pats, SudaPetro suits, hired Carmen and I to run the blockade. Support the homeland and all that.”
“And get the oil,” Tam added.
“That too,” he nodded. “Wouldn’t have had the coin otherwise. Carmen and I would bring a boat into Eritrea, then run small convoys along the border just inside Ethiopia. No more than three trucks at a time. Anything bigger would get shot up. Weapons only, nothing humanitarian. Dahab was playing nasty, dropping gas and napalm, trying to break the defenders, and the South Sudanese Army was so desperate to stay alive, we were pawning off thirty-year-old Pakistani surplus to them for stupid money. God forgive me, the ammo was so old, half of it was rotten with corrosion.”
“End of October, we were coming back from our third run—”
“Fourth,” Carmen corrected.
“Fourth run,” Alejo allowed. “It was nine, maybe ten at night. No moon. Thick dark, like tar. Not a star in the sky.” He shook his head at the memory. “Driving that road was like being in a coal mine shaft.”
“We’d just crossed into Ethiopia near Asosa on Highway Seven when we came across the children. Fifty of them, boys and girls in school uniforms, led by a priest and two nuns. Oldest couldn’t have been more than twelve.
“They’d been practicing a school play when the North Sudan forces attacked. Swept in out of nowhere, random full-auto. Everything’s a target.
“We had heard gunfire, but you don’t think about it, right? Not shooting at me, not my business. Hey, I had three empty trucks and a sack full of raw diamonds; my business was done.”
Something like pain flashed across Alejo’s face.
“At the first shots, the priest and the nuns had pulled them out a back door and started running.”
“It came out at the Hague trials that Dahab and the Supreme Council wanted South Sudan absorbed back into Sudan proper. Khartoum was a slum, the whole north overcrowded, starving, unemployed. They planned to take the oil fields, the pipeline, and repopulate with their excess. The NSA had wiped out these kids’ town and were coming to finish the job. I could see headlights barreling down the road straight at us.”
He looked over at us, dead serious. “I could have kept driving. After all, this is Africa; just another sad episode in a long sad story. But the priest stepped right in front of me. Made me stop. There were nine of us, three to a cab. Me, Carmen, and Flaco i
n the lead truck. We had guns, but nothing to fend off an army unit.”
“Part of me was thinking, ‘What are you doing? Get the hell out of here. That’s the NSA coming your way. Run him over and drive like hell.’”
“But?” I asked.
Alejo raised his hands helplessly. “I couldn’t. My mind was racing, but my body was frozen. My foot wouldn’t press the gas. Maybe it was the priest begging, the nuns pleading. Maybe it was the kids crying, all scared half to death. There was blood in the air, machine guns in the distance. To this day I can’t tell you for sure.
“Next thing I know, my other two trucks have stopped, Carmen’s out in the road, and one of my guys is translating for her. I’m sitting there, the engine running. Those army headlights were so close I heard diesel motors growling, but I was locked up.
“I had this crazy thought of blocking the road with one truck to slow them down, then maybe the other two could get away. We needed to be moving right then if we were going to stand a snowball’s chance in hell. My brain kept repeating ‘clutch, shift, gas, drive’.
“But no. Those North Sudanese Army vehicles are tearing through the night, and I’m watching my wife herd those kids into the back of our trucks. Seemed like slow motion. I was actually curling up in the seat, thinking, ‘We’re already dead. They’re going to open up with 30mm and cut us to shreds.’”
“I hadn’t prayed in years, but I was praying then because I was positive I was going to see God any second.”
“The priest saw the headlights too. He didn’t run. He didn’t flinch. Instead, he turned toward them, fell on his knees in the middle of the road, threw his arms up, and started to pray.”
Alejo shook his head, wiping away a tear. “I don’t know Dinka, but I understood what he was saying; he was pleading for our lives. Like a miracle, our trucks had come at just the right moment at just the right place. The children were loaded in. Rescue was so close. It couldn’t be snatched away now. I never heard a more real prayer in my life. I was shocked.”
Alejo fell silent, staring into the embers of the cooking fire.
“Then it happened,” he said softly.
“What happened?”Tam asked.
“Angels came.”
Tam raised his eyebrows. I sat back.
“I know it sounds crazy but that’s what they must have been. There’s no other word for it.”
“You mean fat toddlers with harps?” Tam scoffed.
“I mean pillars of light. Three of them, standing in the road. Bright as noon, but light like I’ve never seen before. There was a figure, a man, inside each pillar. The middle one raised a hand toward the oncoming vehicles, and they slammed to a stop. No words, but it was a command. Absolutely non-negotiable.”
“I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing. The priest was crying, I was crying. It was unreal, but there it was: three angels standing there in front of two BMP-3s and a BTR94. All the NSA soldiers were cowering on the road, covering their faces.”
Alejo looked over at Tam and me. “We’ve been at the sharp end enough times, you know that. I tell you, I might have been rabbity before, but I’ve never been so scared in my life.”
“The priest climbed to his feet and got into the truck beside me. When he slammed the door, it was like I woke up. The angels were still there, all that light, but I could move. That sound had unstuck me. I gunned the engine, jammed it into gear, and we took off down the road.”
“I almost crashed a dozen times, watching my side-view mirrors instead of the road. I was afraid they’d come after us.”
“Who, the North Sudanese Army?”
Alejo cleared his throat and laughed. “No, the angels. I drove that old Isuzu four-ton as fast as I could. We made it back to Eritrea by morning, our boat by noon. Carmen had seen everything too.”
He paused and looked at his wife. “That was what started us thinking about God.”
“I bet,” I said. “I sure as hell would.”
“You really just said that?” Poet9 asked.
“Yep. Sorry.”
Tam was quiet for several moments, poking at the fire with a long branch. “You think the people in that town didn’t pray? People in Bowna?” He pushed on each word as if he were loading bullets into a magazine. “You’re saying God answers some priest’s prayer but not theirs. That angels go ‘duck, duck, goose—these kids live but those get hacked to death by machetes.’”
“I think God sees life and death differently than we do,” Alejo replied. “And ‘No’ is an answer.”
“I’ve heard that one before,” Curro noted.
Tam chaffed at the idea. “So taking the long view means He doesn’t have to intervene because all this miserable shit comes out in the wash.”
Carmen spoke up, her tone gentle but firm. “Yes, God takes the long view, and no, He intervenes constantly. Sometimes supernaturally, most of the time in small things that go unnoticed. And ironically, He uses people most of all, despite our selfishness. Despite our evil.”
“What kind of love is that?” Tam snipped.
“The only real kind there is, I think; the kind that lets us choose.”
“If He wants people to believe in Him so bad, you’d think He’d show off more often,” Tam threw back bluntly.
“Seems to me He shows off every sunset, every sunrise, every night, every newborn baby,” Alejo countered.
Tam scoffed. “Now you sound like a fortune cookie.”
“That one happens to be true,” Carmen said. “Tam… free will is an enormous gift and a solemn obligation. And faith, like love, is a choice. Nobody can make it for you.”
Alejo grinned. “Sermon’s almost over, I promise.” He pulled on his moustache, framing his thoughts, then spoke slowly. “I think when terrible things happen like Sudan, like Bowna, like this whole war, everybody is outraged. They shake their fist at the sky and demand God do something. Smite them with lightning bolts, send earthquakes, a plague. ‘Judge those evil doers, Lord! Destroy them!’ they shout. But I ask you, once the Almighty starts, where does He stop? Sin is in all of us. Can we say, ‘Judge them, not me’? No, a Holy God does the whole job. And that’s what scared me.”
He looked at each of us in turn; Tam, me, Poet9, Curro, even Abdi and the Triplets. “After that night, all those sermons I’d heard and ignored for years made sense; I’d face God when I died and have to answer for my sins, but there was Jesus taking my judgment on the cross. The cross and the empty tomb is an offer of pardon. Anyone can have it, but you have to accept it personally. That’s why Jesus is so important.”
“So you believe in Zombie Jesus?” Tam mocked.
“No. It’s God the Risen Savior Jesus,” Alejo said.
It was quiet in the cave for long time.
I broke the tension. “So are you saying angels are coming to save Somaliland?”
Alejo burst out laughing. “Maybe, but more likely God is going to use regular things. Foolish, weak things.”
I waited for a ‘for instance’, then asked. “Like?”
“People,” Alejo said. “People like me and Carmen. People like you.”
“So we have to do it?” I asked.
Tam tossed a handful of sand on the cooking fire, scorn curling his lips. “Might as well be on our own.”
“All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,” Alejo quoted.
Poet9 looked up. “Jesus said that?”
“No, dead English guy. Edmund Burke.”
“Figures,” Poet9 grumped.
“Angels would be a lot easier,” Tam noted.
“Amen,” the Triplets said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE – Keys to the Kingdom
Somaliland, fifteen kilometers northwest of the Dhubbato IDP Camp
The Triplets were in disguise. If you could call it that.
Tam and I would be uneasy about assaulting a maniacal dictator’s fortified residence any day. Now our three, six-foot-four, two-hundred-forty-pound, albino, combat clones wer
e wanted by the rebel army—our ‘allies’—for murder and mutilation. And that certainly didn’t make the situation any easier. But we wouldn’t stand a chance in hell of surviving without them. They had to come with us to Hargeisa.
Oddly enough, things worked out. Thanks to the U.N.
Pakistani Blue Hats had protected the Dhubbato refugee camp for over a decade. Venal, sluggish, bloated bureaucracy though it was, the U.N.’s Peacekeepers had fended off the local criminal vermin, and despite waves of ethnic cleansing, prevented General Dhul-Fiqaar and his fellow Gadabuursi from consummating their home-brewed “Final Solution” on the Isaaq huddled behind the fences.
Suddenly on the eve of the SPLM offensive, UNHCR Regional HQ had deemed the sight of armed Peacekeepers ‘potentially provocative in light of unfolding local developments’, and ordered the entire security force on a field trip to Ethiopia. With one email, twenty-thousand plus refugees were completely undefended smack dab in the middle of a genocidal civil war.
“They shoot horses, don’t they?” Tam asked after Alejo described the last twenty-four hours.
He wouldn’t explain, but somehow, the old Spaniard had finagled the keys to the abandoned U.N. armor from the absconded Peacekeeper commander. It was one of his traits I admired; even when it looked hopeless, Alejo never acted helpless.
The vehicles’ only fuel was what remained in their tanks, and without ammo, their weapons were all show and no go. Alejo was hoping word of the Pakistani exodus hadn’t spread too far. He figured the sight of chalk-white armor would make raiders look elsewhere for easy loot. Ultimately, with all the shooting going on, he was trusting the combatants would have more immediate concerns than rape and pillage.
Poet9 stepped forward, took one look at the radio frequency keys, and grinned. “Armory and fuel depot have the same locks?” he asked.
Alejo nodded.
The Mexican hacker waggled his fingers. “Give me five minutes and I’ll give you the keys to the kingdom.”
Sure enough, a peek and a tweak was all it took for him to modify a couple of the fobs into master keys that opened every radio frequency lock in the Peacekeeper compound.
“And people say Brussels isn’t good for anything,” he teased as he handed them back to Alejo.
Shift Tense: Eshu International Book 2 Page 23