Page 26 of Soul on Fire
Ikolo laughed. “If it’s rebels you’re after, look no further than the forest! They are all in there. And they will come. Just wait a while, you will have your rebels.” The forest ringing the camp hung like a noose, ready to snap closed around them.
For a moment, he thought,maybe the Americans will help. Maybe they will stay and fight. Maybe, this time, they will save African lives.
Evacuate. Evacuate.
He traced the lines of Elliot’s face as he took in the camp. “How many are here?” Elliot asked softly, almost a whisper.
“We lost count at one hundred thousand. The UN’s best guess is between one hundred and one hundred twenty thousand.”
“Jesus,” Elliot muttered. Ikolo watched his throat move, watched the radio strapped around his neck rise and fall. He stared a little too long.
Elliot turned and looked deep into his eyes. “Did Antoinette talk to you at all, Doctor? You were her physician?”
He couldn’t breathe, for a moment, at Elliot’s intensity. “I am the physician in charge of all patients here. I had a full staff of nurses who assist me, but I am in charge, and I oversaw her treatment. Other than when she spoke to that photographer friend of yours, she never said a word. She was very, very sick. And very wounded.”
Elliot breathed in deep. Blinked, and then held Ikolo’s gaze. “You have a big job.”
“Tonight was the first time I’ve slept in four days.” Ikolo quirked a tiny grin. “Or at least, I tried to sleep. Shouts from the camp woke me. Something startled the refugees.”
“I’m sorry.” Elliot sounded like he meant it. “We’re usually more stealthy.” Elliot’s gaze swept the courtyard, the dark and empty hospital tents fluttering in the night’s breeze. Only the malnourishment tent and the inpatient care tent were still lit, their lanterns turned down low. “Where is everyone?”
“We are running minimal operations now. We are treating only the most seriously ill or injured, and the children.” He pointed to the malnourishment tent. “Over there, the little ones who were malnourished? They will have gained two pounds by morning.” He managed a small grin.
Elliot smiled back, broad and wide, like an African man smiled. There was nothing in the world like an African smile. It always made Ikolo weak in the knees, made him hunger in his soul. Even now, in the darkness and on the machete’s edge of terror, that smile yanked on his heart. Ikolo could see Elliot’s molars, see his beautiful white teeth bursting from his deep tawny skin. The smile changed Elliot, turned him from harsh angles and stern lines to something warmer, softer. Something that grabbed at Ikolo’s exhausted heart.
He smiled back. He couldn’t help it. It had been so long since a man had smiled at him, and since he’d wanted to smile back at a man.
And then, Elliot sobered. “Doctor, I’m sorry you had to reduce operations. These people need your help.” Like an anchor pulling his attention back, Elliot turned once more to the camps. Lines and lines of tents, of weary faces swimming in the last smudges of their campfire smoke, and of flames smoldering out, the lights between the plastic shelters fading as the night grew long.
“They need a great many things, not only a doctor.”
Again, their gazes met. And held. Ikolo’s breath caught. “Lieutenant—”
“Doctor, is there anything you can remember about Antoinette? Did she say where she came from? What village?”
Ikolo shook his head.
“Do you know what direction of the forest she came out of?”
“I’m very sorry. She was picked up by an aid convoy and brought to me. By the time I was treating her, she was barely speaking. I was able to take her history, and that was it. I was shocked she spoke to your associate, the photographer.”
“She had something she needed to tell the world.”
“And what better way than to tell amzungu.” Ikolo’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead. “Africans have been asking for help here for years, but it took her telling amzungusomething to get the Americans to send you and your special forces team to my hospital in the middle of the night. What is it that she told you?”
Elliot pulled a tablet from a Velcroed pouch on the massive black vest he wore and powered it on. The screen was dim as Elliot held it out for Ikolo. “We’re trying to find this man. Name’s Majambu. He’s the number two man in the ADF—”
“I know him.” Ikolo shook his head. “That is Elombe. He’s from Beni. I treated him yesterday for wounds he received fleeing the rebels—”
“Yousawthis man?” Elliot pressed close, suddenly right next to him, touching him, grabbing his shoulder. He pointed to the man in the center of the image, the tall, lean, quiet man who’d waited in Ikolo’s hospital courtyard all day, letting the women and the children be seen first while he held onto his bleeding arm with only a torn olive shirt over his wound. Compared to the other machete wounds Ikolo had seen, Elombe’s wasn’t nearly as terrible. He’d stitched the wound, taped it shut, and sent him on his way.
“Yes, I stitched his wounds—”
“What wounds? What happened to him?”
“He had a machete cut on his arm.” Ikolo frowned. “It was not deep. I told him he was lucky. I had never seen one so shallow.”
Elliot cursed and thanked God all in one breath, squeezing Ikolo’s shoulder. Then he froze. Fear flitted through his eyes, then vanished. “Was he sick? Was he infected?”
