Page 31 of Soul on Fire
Twelve tons of steel, ammunition, bombs, and men fell in a firestorm of debris. Elliot felt it in his body when the impact hit, the rumble so strong it shook his organs. He clung to the ground to stay still. “Jumper, Doc!” he radioed. “You guys okay?”
“We’re getting toasty down here,” Jumper said. “We’re on the wrong side of that crash.”
“Can you make your way back to the doc’s hospital?”
“We can figure it out.” They chirped off, and Elliot watched two dark figures scurry through the smoke of the downed gunship.
“Lieutenant!” Kline in his ear again. “Get out of there now! Make your way to the secondary L-Z for extraction!”
“Admiral—”
Ikolo broke from him as they neared his hospital, sprinting and leaping over a collapsed hospital tent. Two women were in the courtyard with bags over their shoulders. They had three wounded adults leaning on them for support, two men and an older lady.
“Doctor!” One of the nurses broke away from the small group and ran to Ikolo, falling to her knees as she neared him. He grabbed her, pulled her close, and held her as she sobbed. Elliot trotted behind. He looked away, took a knee, and kept watch.
“I thought you were dead,” she wailed. “I thought you were gone.”
“No, I’m not dead.” Ikolo held her face in his hands and brushed her tears away. “Why are you still here, Ndaya? You should have left already.”
“I was waiting to see if you would come back,” she sobbed. “We cannot take them all. Not by ourselves.”
Elliot’s eyes slid sideways.
Ikolo helped her to her feet and led her back to the other nurse and their patients. “You are all evacuating,” he said, squeezing each patient’s hand. “Head east to Goma. Keep the volcano on your left.”
“What about you, Doctor? You need to come with us! The children—”
“I will follow,” he said, kissing her on her forehead “Go, Ndaya. Gonow.”
Sobbing, she turned away from him and helped the patients move into the darkness at the back of the hospital. Elliot watched their group slip between the trees and vanish.
“Why didn’t you go with her?”
“Because,” Ikolo said, turning to Elliot, “I need your help.”
* * *
Cole and Hoodwatched through their NVG binoculars. Their target, Majambu, threw the woman he’d strangled to the dirt. They’d got eyes-on as she went limp, both of his hands wrapped around her throat.
“Jesus,” Cole muttered. “Sure we can’t take this guy out?”
“L-T’s orders,” Hood said. “But he doesn’t need both legs for an interrogation.”
Cole shifted and settled into his three-point stance. He inhaled and sighted Majambu in his scope. The bastard was rifling through the woman’s tent and stealing her food, shoving it all in a backpack he carried. Cole exhaled and watched Majambu drag her body to the back of the tent and tip a kerosene lantern on top of her. Inhaled again and let half out—
Majambu sprinted out of the tent and doglegged through an alley, then darted into the throngs of refugees fleeing the camp.
“Shit!” Cole and Hood jumped up, racing to follow. “L-T,” Cole radioed. “Majambu is running. He’s in with the refugees and they’re all making a break for it out of town.”
“We will never find him again if we lose this guy. Not in the Congo!”Elliot shouted.“Donotlose him!”
* * *
“I know the Congo,”Ikolo said, kneeling beside Elliot. Ikolo could hear the team’s radio transmissions, bursts of sound and fury, in the quiet of the hospital. “I grew up in Maniema. The province to the west.”
Elliot’s gaze darted to him and then back to keeping watch. They’d moved to the hospital’s perimeter, belly-down on the hill overlooking the camp. Spread before them, the apocalypse had opened up on the earth: the downed Kenyan helo blazed, a roaring inferno engulfing the valley. Two more helos circled, fanning the flames into the forest and the camp, into the UN base and the abandoned aid stations and hospitals. Bullets screamed back and forth between the Kenyan helos and the tree line. Mortars and RPGs arced back and forth, along with artillery rounds blasting from the UN base, half burned to the ground.
Elliot had never seen a battle from the side before.
