Hunt the Leopard

by Don Mann

  “Yes. What’s your name?”

  “Chichima Okore.”

  He saw a dark spot on the burqa near her shoulder. It could be blood. “Are you injured? Are there any other girls still alive?”

  She stammered, “I was shot…” She pointed to her shoulder. “There are five other girls behind me. The others are dead…”

  “It’s over now, Chichima,” Crocker said gently. “Tell your friends to come out slowly with their hands over their heads.”

  They had left the deep foliage and were on a two-lane dirt road traveling over an undulating savanna. Cattle and ostriches grazed in the distance. The sun burned through the morning haze.

  As Crocker bandaged Chichima’s shoulder, a smaller girl beside them on the backseat hummed to herself, a sad melody that she repeated over the growl of the engine. Her voice reminded him of Emmylou Harris, who he’d heard perform at a roots festival in Charlottesville several years ago. The same haunting quality, and a far cry from the hard rock he’d listened to as a teenager or the fifties jazz he had loaded on his iPhone now.

  They were packed in truck one with Moxie at the wheel, Akil beside him, and Rufus and CT in back. The other four girls rode in truck two with Gator, Manny, and Major Martins’s body, which lay under a Kevlar blanket.

  Crocker regretted they didn’t have time to recover the ashes of the pilot, copilot, or Lieutenant Peppie from the incinerated helicopter. They had families and loved ones, too.

  The bullet that passed through Chichima’s shoulder had avoided major bones and arteries. He was applying a triangle bandage when Scott’s voice came over the radio from truck two.

  Crocker couldn’t hear him over the roar of the engine.

  Akil turned back to him. “Boss?”

  “Yeah…”

  “You finished with her? Because you’re needed in the other truck.”

  “Why?”

  “Gator isn’t doing well.”

  Crocker was the team corpsman or medic. They stopped and he changed places with Mancini in truck two. The mood in the second truck was grimmer. Gator lay slumped on the middle bench next to a Brit named Brian, who had received trauma medical training while in the Royal Marines, and was checking Gator’s blood pressure with a cuff.

  Crocker slid in the other side. “What is it?”

  “Low, mate…and falling…Ninety over sixty-five…He’s been slipping in and out of consciousness the last several minutes.”

  “Let me see…”

  The obvious injuries were his broken right arm and leg that were complex and would require surgery.

  Crocker asked, “What’d you give him for the pain?”

  “Extra strength ibuprofen. That’s all we’ve got…”

  Gator was having trouble breathing and his skin was clammy, so Crocker used four fingers on his right hand to check if his airway was clear. It was. Then he quickly searched for signs of trauma to his neck and chest. Negative.

  Felt his way down to Gator’s abdomen, which was severely swollen—a sign of internal bleeding, along with the lowered blood pressure and shortened breath.

  Crocker whispered his prognosis to Brian, who nodded back.

  All they could do for him now was feed him fluids, monitor his blood pressure, and hope the bleeding stopped on its own.

  “How far to the closest ER?” Crocker asked.

  “Rufus is checking now,” Scott, at the wheel, answered. Then a minute later: “Yola is about forty minutes away.”

  “That’s the closest hospital?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Any chance Yola can send a rescue helicopter now that we’re out of danger?”

  “I’ll check again.”

  One of the girls in the backseat saw them attending to Gator and started to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

  This moved Crocker, who continued monitoring Gator; cleaned his face and neck. Wiped away a tear from his cheek.

  Sometimes people did the most amazing things, even if they seemed little.

  The girl was nearly killed, is still in shock, and yet she prays for one of us?

  His mind was operating on two channels at once. “Any luck?” Crocker asked, leaning over the seat ahead.

  “Yola’s still not responding,” Akil answered.

  Crocker knew he’d be extremely pissed off if Gator succumbed to his injuries. In fact, the way he felt now, he wasn’t sure if he could handle it. The death of a teammate was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to endure—right up there with losing his elderly mother in a fire.

  He blinked away the image of the coroner’s wagon and her charred remains. Still suffered guilt over that.

  “Useless guilt, son,” his mother had told him in a dream.

  As they drove and he continued monitoring Gator’s blood pressure and temperature, Crocker started to blame himself for not being better prepared, for allowing the Nigerians to lead the mission…Then he stopped himself.

  What fucking good will that do now?

  Maybe what his mother had said about guilt being useless was right.

  Chichima sat by the open window and let the warm air caress her face. The Americans and Brits seemed friendly, and the movement felt liberating. But she wasn’t ready to declare victory yet.

  Like she had done every several minutes since they had left the bush, she looked back to see if trucks filled with Boko Haram were following them. Again the road behind was empty. They passed carts loaded with yams and people on bicycles. Signs of normal life.

  This new reality was hard to accept. It was almost shocking when the men in the truck smiled at her, helped clean her face and arms, and gave her a bar of chocolate and water. Seeing that her water bottle was empty, the bearded man in the seat in front of her took it, filled it from a bladder on his lap, and handed it back.

  He didn’t look that different from some of the lighter-skinned Boko Haram rebels. Only larger all over.

  Akil saw the suspicion in her eyes. “You don’t like me?”

  She smiled back at him, and as she did realized that she hadn’t smiled in months.

  “I’m very nice. I promise. You need anything, just ask.”

  She wasn’t used to kindness, either, and took a few seconds to answer, “I’m fine. Thank you for everything.”

  “My pleasure. We’ll get you back to your family soon.”

  It was hard to believe. She didn’t know how to prepare for that.

  So she looked out the side window where even the foliage seemed welcoming. They moved faster now, passing stalls and huts, and children in colorful shirts and sandals walking to school with their parents. Some things hadn’t changed.

  The sight of young schoolchildren holding hands and looking happy brought tears to her eyes. And it wasn’t just her friends who had died in the clearing she was crying for. She wept in part because she remembered that it hadn’t been so long since she’d been a carefree child herself. She felt like an old woman now, and wondered if she could ever go back to school to finish her studies, be accepted, and have a normal life.

  Then Chichima remembered she was only eighteen years old.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Peace is costly but it is worth the expense.”

  —African proverb

  Crocker heard a rustling sound, turned abruptly, saw muzzle flashes coming from the darkness ahead, and bolted awake. Sweat coating his neck and chest, he reached for his weapon, but couldn’t find one. He tried to shout a warning to his teammates hiding in the bush behind him, but no sound came out.

  Something hissed and he sat up in the dark. Seeing the silhouette of an unplugged medical monitor in the corner and a ribbon of light under a door, he realized he was in a hospital room. Shadows crisscrossed the linoleum floor, light peeked through the curtains.

  How did I get here? Where the hell am I?

  He wasn’t in Virginia, judging from the lizards crawling up the lavender walls, and the wood carving of a giraffe hanging near the window.

  W
herever he was, he needed to get up and locate his men. Lifted the sheet and saw he was wearing nothing under the light-blue hospital gown.

  Where the fuck are my clothes?

  As soon as he shifted his weight and tightness gripped his leg, he remembered. The long night and morning; the helicopter crash, fighting, and the schoolgirls; how, when they had arrived in Yola, he had insisted on assisting the surgery on Gator, which had offended the Nigerian doctors. All kinds of alarms went off in his head.

  Where is Gator now?

  He remembered how close Gator had come to dying. And how his pulse and blood pressure had slowly stabilized after an emergency blood transfusion. And the relief he had felt when that finally happened.

  Last thing he remembered was staggering down a long hallway to the front door, stopping to ask a nurse what day it was, and thinking that he needed to call his daughter because it was the day of her graduation.

  What’s today’s date? The fifteenth? The twenty-first?

  He didn’t know what happened after that, or how he ended up in the hospital bed. Now he had to find his clothes, and check on Gator, and make sure Manny and CT were okay, too.

  Concerns rushed back. There were reports to file with headquarters and things to settle with the Nigerians. Major Wally Martins was dead!

  Oh, fuck…

  He’d Skype Jenny later.

  What would he say to Martins’s wife and children? Was it even proper protocol for him, as an American advisor, to reach out to them?

  Screw that…

  Then he flashed back to the concentration on the doctor’s face as he stitched the gash in his leg, and the doctor informing him that they had attended to the wound just in time, as it was starting to get infected.

  He’d forgotten about his leg, and remembered thinking they could have sawed it off as long as his men were okay. Now he took a mental roll call in his head.

  Akil, check…Manny, check…CT…Tiny?

  As he slipped back into unconsciousness, he pictured Jenny’s angelic face. She was a young woman now with a job and boyfriend. But she still had a special smile for Crocker.

  Wives and girlfriends came and went, but she was all he had.

  Dr. B, as he called himself, was a handsome man in his fifties with a smooth, high forehead, and remarkable amber-colored eyes. He looked like a movie star in his white medical coat, and sounded like one, too. A deep, resonant voice like a big cat.

  Crocker had come to his office to apologize for his behavior the night before, but Dr. B was having none of it. “I’m sorry, Mr. Crocker,” the doctor said, “but I can’t accept your apology.”

  A large wood carving of a gazelle stared at him from the corner. A ceiling fan stirred the humid air. Crocker took a beat to register what the doctor had just said.

  “I’m embarrassed, Doc. Was I as rude as they say I was?”

  Between sips of coffee, Dr. B explained. “This morning it was quite obvious that you were under considerable mental and physical stress. What was remarkable to us members of the medical staff was your very deep concern for your colleagues.”

  Crocker breathed a sigh of relief. “If I insisted on being there for my teammate’s surgery, I hope you understand.” He sipped from a cup of sweet coffee.

  Dr. B said, “You might think a liberal African nationalist like myself would be negatively predisposed to an agent of a colonialist power. But in my particular case you would be incorrect.”

  Crocker sat up, expecting to have to verbally defend himself.

  But no verbal attack came. Instead Dr. B showed him a photo of his Chicago-born wife and their two good-looking children, then explained that he had met his wife while attending St. George’s University medical school on the Caribbean island of Grenada. They were there in 1983 when hard-line communists took over the government and threatened to take the medical students—including the doctor, his future wife, and several dozen Americans—hostage.

  US President Ronald Reagan launched Operation Urgent Fury to rescue the students, prevent a communist Cuban-backed takeover of the government, and restore democracy.

  Crocker was in grade school then, but he knew that had been the first SEAL combat mission since Vietnam. Four members of SEAL Team Six had died during the initial assault on the island when they got tangled up in their parachutes and drowned.

  Dr. B remembered the relief he had felt when he saw the US soldiers.

  “They were so young,” he said. “And very brave.”

  “It’s a small world,” said Crocker, silently saluting the men who had perished.

  “This morning I finally got a chance to return a favor,” Dr. B responded. “One good deed deserves another, as you might say.”

  Now Dr. B reported on the condition of Crocker’s men. Mancini and CT were receiving fluids and would be released later in the day. Gator had already been medevaced to a US carrier off the African coast and would then be flown to Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

  This was the first Crocker had heard about this. “How bad is he?”

  “Don’t worry…Severe, but not critical.”

  “What are the chances he fully recovers?”

  “Ninety-eight percent,” the doctor responded, and then seemed to be checking something with himself. “Physically…that is.”

  That was good enough for now. “What about the other member of my team…Akil?” asked Crocker.

  “Akil?”

  “Big Egyptian-born guy. Considers himself a ladykiller.”

  “Oh, yes…He’s fine. Charming chap. Entertained the nurses with jokes and stories. Chose to sleep at the base.”

  “Good.” He was happy to receive any piece of favorable news. Hoped there was more.

  “The schoolgirls we recovered…you saw them, too, correct?” he asked, wanting to make sure he hadn’t imagined it.

  “Me, personally, no, I didn’t treat them. But the staff did…” He consulted some papers in a folder on his desk. “One rather minor bullet wound sewn up, some symptoms of malnutrition, one case of dysentery, other minor female problems. Physically, they should recover quickly. Psychologically is another matter.”

  Festus Ratty Kumar and his men had returned to their hideout in the Sambisa to heal and rest. He was already out and about in the mid-afternoon, visiting with surviving fighters and handing out thick stacks of hundred-naira bills featuring a portrait of Chief Obafemi Awolowo on the front and the slogan, “One Nigeria, One Promise.” Due to rampant inflation, one hundred naira was roughly equivalent to twenty-eight cents US.

  Festus laughed as he gifted the money. Not only had it been stolen from a bank in Mayo Bani, but also Chief Awolowo was credited with helping secure Nigeria’s independence from Great Britain in 1960. However, to Festus’s mind, Nigeria wasn’t really a country, and many of its people still weren’t free.

  Chief Obafemi Awolowo had admitted this himself, stating, “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression.”

  Idiot and double-talker, Festus thought.

  If he had been chastened by the beating last night, it didn’t show.

  As energetic as ever, he addressed his men standing in line for a breakfast of akara (deep-fried black-eyed peas with spices), green tea, and bread. “We lose one battle, we win three others.”

  They all responded, “Jes, aur leped. Jes!”

  Festus Ratty was seated on the stump of a tree sipping water with lemon juice and making plans, when his chief aide, Modu, walked over to him carrying a satellite phone. On the other end was Victor Balt, the Russian-born, Emirates-based arms dealer who had provided the weapons that had been destroyed last night near the Cameroon border.

  Balt wasn’t someone Festus Ratty took lightly. Not only was the arms dealer an important supplier of weapons, he also had many very powerful and dangerous friends throughout West Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

  Now Balt demanded the $150,000 he was owed for the ammo and weapons that had been lost and destroyed. Ratty had already pa
id him $150,000 up front. In addition to the second payment, the Russian also wanted another $120,000 in recompense for the four trucks he had borrowed from the Ambazonians.

  “To hell with the Ambazonians,” Festus Ratty replied. “They betrayed me.”

  “No, they didn’t betray you,” Balt explained. “They were attacked by the same forces that attacked you.”

  Ratty had never met Victor Balt face-to-face, and didn’t know where he was calling from. But he knew his reputation as someone not to be double-crossed. Now Ratty explained again that he had planned to pay him with twelve beautiful young Nigerian girls who they had previously negotiated as worth at least $15,000 each.

  “Yes, I remember,” Balt said in heavily accented English, “but where are the girls now?”

  “Gone,” Festus Ratty exclaimed, “due to unforeseen circumstances. But don’t worry. I can get more anytime I want.”

  “I admire your confidence,” remarked Balt. “But you still owe me $270,000.”

  “Not a problem. I also want a new shipment of rockets, guns, and ammunition. Same as before. Same price.”

  “That can be arranged,” Balt responded. “When?”

  “As soon as possible. Tell me where you want to meet.”

  Balt suggested that this time the arms be dropped from a C-130 to a secure location in the Sambisa Forest. Festus Ratty had a perfect spot. He suggested the drop occur at dawn before any Nigerian Air Force drones were deployed.

  “I can arrange that.”

  “The Nigerian Air Force never send the drones out before ten o’clock,” said Festus. “The men who fly them like to sleep late.”

  Balt laughed. They negotiated a deal whereby Kumar would send his couriers to the Cameroon town of Kontcha with $350,000 in stolen US dollars and gold to be stored in Balt’s safe-deposit box in the Afriland First Bank. This would serve as compensation for the lost trucks, the final payment for the arms that had been shipped and destroyed, and an advance on the future shipment. Following the drop in the forest, Ratty also promised to send an additional ten girls to another location inside Cameroon.