Page 20 of Soul on Fire
Jumper screwed up his face, confused, but Ashley got it. She climbed out without a word, hauling herself to the roof with a boost from Jumper.
“Send the whites out, eh?” Hood, Hispanic and brown skinned, glanced at Elliot. Doc Smalls was Puerto Rican, and he wasn’t white either. Cole was, but he was crammed in the back and unavailable.
“You think they’ll pay attention to me here? This is a white evacuation.” Elliot shook his head.
“Better hope they let you through the border.”
It took a few minutes, but the Rwandan border guards spotted Ashley and Jumper waving their arms and shouting for attention. The officer in charge got on the bullhorn and ordered the people back, and then for Ashley and Jumper to drive to the crossing. Guards filed out, pushing the Congolese people away from the road and opening a path for them to drive through.
Jumper floored it, almost ramming his way over the border, skirting past a thousand Congolese people wailing and banging on the jeep’s windows.
Elliot wanted to puke. He looked away, stared at the gear shaft. Was this what white flight felt like?
“Stop!” The Rwandan border guards forced them to halt, and the commander came to inspect their jeep. He saw Ashley and the CIA officer next to her, white and smiling respectfully. “We’re Americans, sir,” she said. “Journalists. But our State Department told us to evacuate the region.”
Hood, Cole, and Doc Smalls were tucked under Ashley and the CIA’s jackets and backpacks in the foot well. The commander passed them by.
Jumper passed the backpack full of cash over when the commander stopped by the driver’s door. “Thank you, sir,” he said in his deep Nebraskan voice. In another life, Jumper would have been a starting quarterback.
“Who areyou?” the commander asked, pointing through the jeep at Elliot. “No Congolese across the border. Do you have family here? They will have to fill out the correct paperwork and pick you up at the border. You cannot cross without documentation.”
“I’m American,” Elliot spat. He whipped out his passport—fake—from his jacket and waved it at the commander. “Personnel evacuation. We’re all evacuating.”
The commander stepped back. He waved them forward as if they were wasting his time and he had more important things to do.
Jumper’s gaze slid across the jeep. Elliot shoved his fake passport in his jacket and didn’t return his look. “Get us to the airport.”
Gisenyi’s airport was stuffed to bursting with aid flights and evacuations, NGOs packing up shop and heading out. A few NGOs were trying to accept resupply flights while they stuck it out and ignored the evacuation. It was a mess, and they threaded their jeep in between the two runways, driving through mud and grass and winding in and out of crashed and burned-out planes as they searched for their ride.
“Beachside, Black Mamba, we’re at the airport. You got a ride for us?”
“Black Mamba, this is Dragon. We’re at the north edge of the airport. We’re getting funny looks, so you better hurry.”
Jumper floored it again, the jeep stuttering on the low fuel. Through the bush planes and the old Russian props, the UN helicopters and the Rwandan police chopper parked by the terminal building, they finally spotted their Seahawk. Someone had done a quick refit job on it, painting a red cross on the hull and detaching the weapons. There’d be another Seahawk on station, keeping watch with weapons hot if this one was unarmed.
The crew chief jumped out when they pulled up, wearing a full respirator and gloves taped to a Tyvek body suit. “Where’s the Ebola patient?” he shouted in Elliot’s ear over the roaring rotors.
“Got him wrapped up in back,” Elliot shouted back.
“We load him first, then separate him off from the rest.”
“Fine by me.”
Ashley helped the crew chief, accepting a mask and gloves for herself and then, keeping Peter wrapped in his plastic cocoon, carrying him to the chopper. He was laid on a tarp, the end rising up and fixing to the cabin’s ceiling and cutting off Peter from everyone else.
Ashley climbed into the back with Peter, lifting his head onto her thigh.
“Everyone else, gloves and mask!” The crew chief passed them out before they boarded and made them sit as far from Peter as possible in the cramped hold. Then he was on board, and he passed Elliot a headset. “Commander, we’re good to go,” the crew chief said over the intercom to the pilot.
“Roger that. RTB, eta two hours. Everyone settle in.”
Elliot’s head rolled with the rumble and tilt of the helo as they rose, pitched forward, and bugged out. He stared back at the Congo, the border, Goma, and the dark forest surrounding the city.
He closed his eyes against the shame that squeezed his stomach. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d felt this shame, the lash of it against his soul. Most recently when he’d squared himself up and had a long hard look at who he was, but that wasn’t the situation here. No, this shame was something else.
He opened his eyes.You will watch. You will keep your eyes open.
A million people, waiting for their end, faded out of sight.
