This is a chapter excerpt from A NOVEL LIFE: An autobiography of an adventurer and searcher for truth and meaning to life.

REVOLUTION




Two ten AM. I glanced grimly once more at the glowing face of my alarm clock for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last three hours. The distant pounding of the surf on the beach beside my compound gnawed ceaselessly at the ragged edges of my consciousness as I struggled yet again to summon sleep from beyond the chaos of my ruminations.

It had been nine days since my friend Martin had died after being shot by Liberian Army Soldiers. But the way each sweltering day now seemed to bleed into another, it was difficult to accept that only a few of them had passed since the tragedy. So much was happening every day it seemed as though a decade had passed. During the day, I rarely found the time to dwell upon it even though my little house on the beach was admittedly much quieter without Martin's presence. The fact was, I was far too busy coping with the growing threat of the approaching rebel force to contemplate anything else. But at night, when I attempted to supplant the immense problems with a few brief hours of restful slumber, stark visions of that final smile Martin had left with me, along with his small radio, haunted my mind. Inevitably, exhaustion overcame me, and I drifted into a restless semblance of sleep always waking a few hours later feeling totally drained.

But Martin wasn't the only ghost prowling the valleys of my consciousness. Lately my life had dissolved into some bizarre, nightmarish version of the Five o'clock International News roundup. Only this was no mere nightmare I would wake up from in the morning. Things just kept getting worse and worse. Last Sunday we were relaxing in the palava hut enjoying the peace and quiet of the warm sunny afternoon. Dave was entertaining us with another of his Marine Corps stories when the calm was shattered by a burst of automatic weapon fire from just beyond our north wall. Instinctively we dove beneath the cane chairs and lay there shaking with our arms over our heads, awaiting the spray of bullets that would turn us all into another news item.
No bullets flew our direction so we just huddled there listening to screams and threats interspersed by the unmistakable 'thud' of a heavy rifle butt impacting on human flesh. We couldn't understand the language, but it was pretty apparent someone was pleading for mercy in some local tribal lingo.
Three more shots rang out, and the screaming came to an abrupt and ominous halt. After about a minute of total silence, I jumped up and ran ten yards to the beach gate to have a look while Dave, Roger and Sharon took off at a dead run for the main house. Pretty stupid now that I think about it, but at the time it seemed important to know which way the shooters were headed.
Flies buzzed around me in the hundred-degree heat as I peered cautiously around the gate pillar. Normally this section of beach was overrun on Sunday afternoons with locals strolling hand in hand, chatting and laughing. There wasn't a soul in sight now. They'd evaporated like a flock of frightened sea gulls.

Abruptly, two Africans in green AFL fatigues emerged from the clutter of shacks about a hundred yards north. They each had a rifle in one hand and the thin wrists of a man's body in the other. This 'man' didn't look a day over sixteen. He was wearing a single, tattered gray tennis shoe, blue jogging trunks and a blood-spattered white T-shirt with 'New York City' printed on the front in big, green letters over a prominent red apple. They tugged him down to the water line and dropped him carelessly with a dull 'whump' like a sack of potatoes, then stood there talking casually. One glanced up and down the deserted beach while the other lit a cigarette, took a drag, and shared it with his partner. After about thirty seconds, they turned and sauntered up the beach to the north without looking back, laughing and poking each other in the ribs, leaving the waves slapping at the head and shoulders of the victim, rocking him gently back and forth. I crouched there, transfixed by that bloody spectacle, studying the body and oddly entranced by the way the blood dribbled slowly into the white sand from a gaping hole where his left ear had been a few moments before. Each gentle caress of the waves rinsed the growing pool of blood away, allowing a new one to form in its place. I was struck by how the clear, green water seemed to be struggling to somehow purify the beach of the corruption of death. As I studied the scene in a curious mixture of detachment and horror, my mind began slipping back to another beach and another place many years ago.
I was standing like that then too, frozen in my police uniform. Like a big statue among the river willows, insulated from the pain of the world by that blue uniform and badge. The roar of a river was in my ears and the pungent, sweet smell of death was heavy in the cool, crisp spring air.

Detached, I gazed down on another body. That one too lay face down in the shallows, rocking gently back and forth. She had been a young girl with long, silky black hair. She was my first murder victim. In my mind's eye I saw my hand reach down and grasp that tiny soft shoulder and turn her over in slow motion in the dark, icy water, liberating an overpowering stench of corrupted flesh. Two empty eye sockets glared back at me from a dark mass of slimy grey tissue. Those eyes had once gazed spellbound at the world around her. That gaping, lipless mouth had once giggled shyly at admiring young boys who drank unashamedly of her beauty. One of those same boys perhaps had slit her soft white throat and dropped her body carelessly into that river, there to cook and simmer and lie in wait for this dark destiny to bring us together. That same dark destiny drew me now to this blood-soaked African beach eight thousand miles from home.
Now, for the past several nights, I kept waking up with the sweats and fresh visions of bloody corpses in all stages of decay marching at me from every direction. Sometimes, I found myself thrashing about in bed, my mind teaming with vivid images of me drowning in a vast, slimy sea of warm blood.
The dreams seemed to have subsided for the present. Of course, I hadn't been able to sleep much at all during the last three nights either. Every time I dropped off, it seemed like I was jarred awake by the sound of automatic weapon fire in the streets around our compound.
Two loaded shotguns and a knapsack of tear gas canisters waited patiently beside my bed while four vigilant police officers prowled our lush compound gardens with Uzis searching for intruders. I was about as secure as I could expect for the time being but telling myself that didn't seem to help me get to sleep.
The days and nights slipped away in a blur of activity. Each day was filled with a growing series of surreal incidents. Like the day a column of armored personnel carriers and troops rolled by our office trailed by the President's black Mercedes limousine. His corpulent head and shoulders protruded obscenely from the sunroof while he waved his arms in defiance at the silent crowd, one more obvious but pathetically feeble attempt to project a show of strength and a resolve to challenge his opponents head-on.

Then there was the morning my driver passed by the John F. Kennedy Hospital on the way to my office. The name itself seemed outlandishly out of place, but the unreality of the situation was further tested when I glanced over the heads of a crowd gathered about the entrance gate just in time to catch a quick glimpse of six disembodied heads lined up on the steps in some sort of bizarre display of overt, perverted brutality. Doe's nightly death squads at work once again.
That image was still flickering through my mind when I sat numbly at my desk a few minutes later. The first of a long line of morning supplicants walked in to kick off the daily ritual of requests for time off, loans or favors of some kind. This guy looked different than most. His eyes were dry, but I could tell he'd been crying. He was grappling to project a brave exterior though. This was unusual, considering most came to me crying and begging and some occasionally falling to their knees and kissing my feet in a baffling display of servitude to convince me not to fire them for some infraction.
"Sir! Good morning, Sir!" he greeted, injecting as much vigor as he could muster.
"What can I do for you, my man?"
"Sir! Requesting the day off, Sir!"
I glanced at the man's file and noted he was scheduled for first shift at an Embassy residential compound for the next three days. "Reason?" I demanded. (The guards had a real knack for concocting all manner of imaginative excuses for circumventing the policy of two days notice for leave requests. These last minute absences really put a strain on our limited standby support staff.)
"Sir! My brother was killed last night, Sir! The hospital requests I report to identify his remains."

'Remains'. I sat there staring at my hands a moment. Visions of that line of heads on the steps of the hospital in the glare of the morning sun were all I could see. Something inside me knew one of those unfortunates was this man's brother.
"Permission granted," I replied quietly. "Take three days off if you need them." I marked his file and tossed it in the out box. "Good luck." I added lamely, "you have my condolences."
"Thank you, Sir," replied the man, with a choke. He then turned and walked out of the office.
The pace of the war continued to pick up day by day. By May sixth, we had evacuated all of the US Peace Corps volunteers and seventy-five percent of the US Embassy staff, including Dave's wife. She was so shook up after that armed robbery of their house she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She wasn't too thrilled about leaving Dave behind, but she was used to being married to a Marine and this wasn't much different.
Plans were being made for trimming our remaining force down to a skeleton crew of around thirty essential personnel if the rebels succeeded in taking Roberts Field International Airport thirty miles to the south. They had advanced to the town of Buchanan, about eighty miles away and were making slow but steady progress. The US Government had dispatched a three-ship task force of US Marines to stand by off shore for support and evacuation of those of us left behind after the last civilian plane left the country. The airlines were already talking about discontinuing flights because of fear of taking fire. Those fears were well founded. A friend of mine who happened to be a private bush pilot had recently taken several rounds in the wing during a flight and his plane had to be grounded. He was lucky to have been able to land at all.

I began to detect subtle changes in the attitude and appearance of Doe's Army, better known as the Armed Forces of Liberia or simply the 'AFL'. When the conflict first began, Doe made a great show of stationing troops throughout the city at high profile locations. They were all very sharply dressed and armed with brand-new, shiny weapons. They wore their authority like a great gold shield, swaggering and arrogantly stopping and questioning everyone they met in a grandiose display of power. Things had changed now. What we were seeing on the streets in dirty, tattered AFL uniforms were the faces of battle-weary, serious and often frightened men. Their weapons were a hodge-podge of every sort imaginable and were usually battle-worn and filthy. Both the weapons and the soldiers were often decorated with a variety of odd-looking articles such as small leather pouches strung around their necks or arms and swatches of hair and beads. We were also hearing frequent horror stories of civilians being tortured and mutilated to death in public with various body parts being carved from their living, quivering bodies, presumably for later consumption in some sort of primitive, cannibalistic quest for power. These things were all part of the normally covert Ju Ju beliefs that were surfacing as a result of their desperate attempts to combat the forces of the enemy. The fact that these methods were being employed so openly seemed to be an indication that things were going badly for the AFL.
One night I had just dropped into a light sleep about 1:00 AM when I was aroused by the sound of automatic weapon fire again. At first, I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to it. I drew the pillow over my head and tried to drown out the noise and fall back to sleep. But it continued for several minutes, so I rose and went to the window. I pulled the drapes back and peered through the bars in the direction of the firing. It sounded about three blocks away. The power was off as usual so there were no security lights operating, but a full moon offered a fairly-good, yet somewhat-ghostly, view of the yard up to where the palm trees bordered the road. I cranked open the window slightly and inhaled the moist, warm air scented with the heavy fragrance of the hyacinths growing thickly just off my balcony.

As the window opened, piercing screams of agony and faint pleas for mercy abruptly joined the chorus of weapon fire. A cold chill wove it's way up my spine to the base of my skull and spread across my shoulders as it dawned on me I was hearing the dying screams of women and children.
I remained glued to that window for nearly twenty minutes, paralyzed by what I was witnessing till that one final shot rang out, echoing hollowly off into the distance and stilling forever the voice of one solitary, sobbing woman. I don't know for certain how much longer I stood there, gazing out into the garden under the moonlight struggling to retain a fragile grip on sanity. My mind seemed to have gotten stuck in some sort of tragic crack in the historical record of brutality I was witnessing. My brain kept replaying the latest series of horrific incidents over and over for several minutes until scenes of my former police career began to slip in among the panorama, rescuing me with the familiar sensation of the relative comfort and security of my patrol car back in the States. For a time, it seemed nearly conceivable that I could transform that bloody Liberian landscape into the familiar rolling hills of Okanogan through sheer force of will. As difficult and stressful as those times had been toward the end, they still remained the roots of my identity and the foundation of the springboard I was using to leap out into my new life. The more chaotic and insane things seemed to get, the more I found myself drifting back to those, comfortable, old routines.
Finally, I shook myself and released the iron grip on the drapes that had numbed my hands. I absently wiped a solitary tear from one eye and turned and walked slowly back to bed.

The following morning, I learned that the shooting and mayhem had come from the United Nations headquarters just up the street from our own compound. Doe soldiers had wiped out several hundred Mano and Gio families who had taken up refuge there in the apparently mistaken belief they would be safe from the nightly death squad attacks taking place in residential areas throughout the city. The United Nations protested loudly over the incident, of course, but to no avail. Doe simply denied any knowledge or involvement with the matter. He launched into a tirade of lies and explosive rhetoric blaming the entire incident on rebels, apparently hoping to throw up his usual smoke screen to shield his activities from the international community. The fact was, however, organized rebel activity was still some distance from the city. And no one other than Khran soldiers would have any reason to kill Mano and Gios. His pathetic efforts proved to be an exercise in futility and resulted in further international isolation.
Our butler, Henry, was a member of the Mano tribe. He lived near our compound not too far from the UN Headquarters, and many of his friends and relatives had perished in the massacre that night. He came to us in tears the following morning, requesting the day off to gather up and bury his dead. Henry was one of the most honest, gentle, dependable Liberians I had come to know. He was twenty-eight years old, slight of build, and very soft spoken. He had a real knack for knowing exactly what you wanted just before you thought of it yourself and was always eager to please.
Henry supervised the two maids and four gardeners very efficiently. This was crucial because the more confused things got, the less attention we could give to such matters ourselves.
Henry had a wife and four young children, and he couldn't help smiling whenever anyone asked about them. However, as the noose of fighting and chaos tightened steadily around the emaciated neck of Monrovia, Henry became increasingly serious and morose. Eventually, the mere mention of his family summoned up a dark cloud of concern over his eyes.

When it was announced that we had received instructions to relocate our office and living quarters across town at the Embassy compound itself, Henry sunk into a real depression. He was convinced his family's days were now numbered. He seemed to feel that he had very few options left without the perceived protection of his American employers. He discussed sending his family up country to escape the violence of Monrovia, but things were just as bad or worse in the bush, and everyone leaving the city was stopped and interrogated by soldiers who arrested any Manos or Gios they found. He finally decided to just attempt to keep a low profile and hope the rebels made it to Monrovia before Doe's soldiers managed to kill every Mano in the city.
After moving our office and personal belongings into Embassy quarters, we purchased a hundred pound bag of rice and arranged for Henry to move into Fairco, which was the name of our old compound. He agreed to try to make his way to our new quarters each morning as long as conditions allowed. Those 'conditions' deteriorated quite suddenly one night about two weeks after we had abandoned Fairco to the capable hands of Henry.
The three of us... Dave, Roger and I, were sitting in our living room apartment listening to cannon fire on the outskirts of town and small arms fire in the immediate vicinity. We were also monitoring our radio frequency through our ever-present portable radios, and Dave was responding periodically to clarify instructions or give guidance to guards scattered around the city. As usual, everyone was on pins and needles.
Suddenly a mortar shell hit across the street, shaking the building with the ensuing explosion and showering that side of the structure with debris. The lights flickered off, then back on and a barrage of M-16 fire erupted in the area. I jumped up and cut the lights and joined the other two at the windows. From what we could see, the entire north end of the city was taking incoming mortar rounds, presumably from across the river to our northeast.

There were bursts of white light, followed by the low, heavy 'thud' of ‘incoming’ from all directions. Fortunately, most seemed to be aimed at the army barracks about a half mile to our south, but whoever was firing off the rounds didn't seem to have had a lot of target practice.
Things were just dying down when the radio chatter picked up a bit. I caught the words, "Fairco under attack" and glanced at Roger. His pursed lips and expression of anger and despair mirrored my own emotions. We were totally helpless and at the mercy of the next wild incoming mortar round. There was absolutely no way we could back up our guards at Fairco.
Dave grabbed the portable off the coffee table and cranked up the volume. There was a near steady stream of traffic from guards all over town reporting threatening situations we could do nothing about. The Fairco guard broke in again to scream "They're breaking down the door! They're coming in!" That transmission was followed by about a minute of total radio silence. Everyone else had backed off their radios to listen to the Fairco traffic.
"They got Henry, God, no!"
That was the last transmission we ever got from Fairco. We could hear the weapon fire in the background as the caller made his final report before he was cut off in mid-transmission.
Roger and I sat there staring at the floor in the light of a single candle that someone had lit. Dave walked over and poured himself a rum on the rocks, gulped it down and filled the glass again.
"Dammit!" He exclaimed, gritting his teeth, "Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!"

Roger and I glanced grimly at each other. We both knew how really pissed-off Dave had to be. Henry had spent most of his time at Dave's house when he wasn't handling things for us. We'd both noticed Dave was having increasing difficulty controlling his temper lately. Dave was a Marine. He was under an awful lot of stress. He was used to picking up a gun and going out and killing people who shot at him or his men. This was different. This was the first war Dave had been in where he had to stand back and watch. Sure we were all packing pistols, but they were only to be used in a real pinch to protect our own lives, not to involve ourselves in this crazy civil war. Dave had over six hundred security officers working under him. HIS men, men he had hired trained and motivated. Men that he felt HE should be able to protect if they did their duty. But he couldn't. He couldn't support his own men. He could only stand back and watch, watch, and report like the rest of us and wait to be evacuated if things fell apart too much. That just didn't sit right in Dave's craw.
"I'm gonna KILL the bastards!"
Dave dashed over to his briefcase and jerked it open, pulling out his automatic and jacking a round in the chamber. "This is the night!" he announced, in a voice that sounded like a sixteen inch navel gun going off on D-Day.
"This is the night I take NO damn prisoners!"
Roger and I were both on our feet by this time. Roger looked at me, and I stared back. I could see it in his eyes. He was waiting for me to do something. I was number two in command. He was number four. If anyone was going to stop Dave from going out that door, it had to be me.
Frankly, I wasn't sure I could. But I had to try.
"That's right, Dave." I began, deciding to try to play along with him for a bit and show a little solidarity instead of butting heads right off the bat.
"They're a bunch of bastards, all right." I agreed, evenly, "what do you wanna to do about it, Dave?"

"Do about it? DO ABOUT IT? I'm going to KILL somebody, that’s what I'm going to do about it!!" Dave gulped down another swallow of rum, slammed the glass on the Ethan Allen table and glanced around the room for his fatigue jacket.
"Dave..." I began, in as firm a voice as I could muster, "I agree with the way you feel, but I don't think it's a real good idea to go out right now."
As though to emphasize my contention another mortar suddenly impacted just down the street, rattling the windows in their frames.
"And who the Hell asked YOU, Bubba? These are MY men, so this is MY war. You can stay the hell right here if you want! In fact, I think that would be a damn good idea."
"No, Dave... This ain't YOUR war. It's THEIR war. We're only here to watch. Remember?"
"The hell we are! Watch? You think we should just stand by and WATCH all our men get picked off one by one? Well, you can if you want, but I'm going to kill me some assholes!"
Dave started pacing back and forth in the living room while I made my way as inconspicuously as possible toward the front doors. The thud of incoming mortars was picking up the pace again, shaking a fine dust of plaster off the ceiling. I wasn't exactly sure what it was I intended to do if Dave decided to go through those doors. He was, after all, my superior on this mission. But I knew I owed it to him to do my best to dissuade him from doing something we would ALL regret. Perhaps that's what he really wanted. Perhaps he only needed to put on a show of anger and then be calmed down.

I was becoming acutely aware of the big difference between police training and military training. I'd noticed in the past that police recruits with prior military experience frequently had trouble adapting to civilian police work because they tended to use excessive force to control a situation. Civilian police are trained to use the LEAST amount of force necessary to control any situation. Soldiers are trained to use deadly force and not worry about getting sued. That's the difference between civilian security and war. In war, you shoot first and maybe ask questions later. Cops are trained to think first. That sometimes gets good cops killed, but it's what they're disciplined to do. It also happened to be one reason I decided to change careers.
Dave kept ranting and cursing and pacing back and forth, threatening to go out and kill assholes, and I kept agreeing in a calm even voice that every one of those assholes deserved to die. I also suggested that perhaps WE weren't the ones to do it.
"Oh Hell! To hell with it!" Dave stomped down the hall to his room and slammed the door, leaving Roger and me standing there visibly relieved but struggling with our own emotions. We were both probably about as upset about Henry's apparent demise as Dave. But we were even more concerned about the possibility of losing our 'fearless leader'. Neither of us had any doubt that Dave could very easily have disappeared into the night with a gun in his hand and his K-bar in his teeth. He may have even actually managed to kill a few of those assholes before they got him. But I wasn't really too cranked-up about the idea of having to step in and take over. This was a war, not a police action. It was Dave's turf, and I was pretty thankful to have him around.

Needless to say, we were all undergoing considerable stress as the war migrated into Monrovia and cut us off from the rest of the world. We were now totally without any running water, electricity, or phone service in the entire city. The rebels had us entirely surrounded, and Robert's Field international airport was now under their control, as was our two-hundred acre Voice of America facility twenty miles to the southeast. Travel within the city was becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible. Any trips across town to visit various posts had to be conducted in a convoy of three to four big blue armor-plated embassy Chevy Suburbans with tinted windows and diplomatic plates. These trips were always made with a team of shooters, as they were called. They'd arrived mysteriously in the middle of the night some weeks back to assist us with their highly specialized expertise. These guys were United States diplomatic security officers, highly trained and motivated to respond appropriately in situations of this nature. They had been sent because the decision had been made by the U.S. President to dig in and protect the embassy instead of evacuating. There was simply too much intelligence-related infrastructure at the facility to leave behind. This Embassy was not what the State Department referred to as a 'throw away' mission. In other words, we were going to have to ride this one out.
Mamba Point was the area of town where most of the foreign embassies were located. It was called that because of the high number of highly poisonous black and green mamba snakes in the area. It was on a bluff overlooking the sea to the west and the rest of Monrovia to the south and east. Once we moved there my duties altered drastically. Weekend picnics on the beach and quiet time off became a distant memory. The hectic days melted into each other in one big blur of cannon fire, disaster and mounds of decomposing bodies. I spent most of my time dashing through the streets dodging bullets with Roger or with shooters from the embassy on a variety of tasks. Officially, I was still in charge of quality assurance for the security operation. But most of my work involved what we called reconnaissance. In other words, I was 'gathering intelligence' through status checks of the vicinity and the surrounding city. This information was relayed to Washington for evaluation by the State Department and other agencies to allow them to properly evaluate the situation and react accordingly.

On one particularly rough day, Roger and I were picking our way back to Mamba Point via the maze of alleyways connecting the major roads, when some AFL soldiers to our south began shelling the ten-story Dukor Palace hotel to our north. The rebels, barricaded in the seventh floor of the hotel, responded with mortar fire that fell way short of the AFL position. Unfortunately for us, that put it almost right in our laps. When the first round hit about fifty yards behind us, we took off like a couple of jackrabbits, leaping over chest-high piles of rubble and mounds of trash and rotting corpses. A second round impacted about sixty yards ahead before the dust from the first one had even settled. Roger was about fifteen feet ahead of me, and he took a dive into a three-foot deep storm drainage ditch running down the center of the alley. Without thinking, I dove in right behind him just as something big and hot whizzed past my head and bounced off the wall of the building to my left. I made a three point landing with my face in Roger's ass and sunk up to my elbows in green slime while my right knee struck something hard and went numb. I jerked my arms out of the slime with a sickening "slurp" and gagged to keep from vomiting on Roger as the smell of raw sewage hit me.
I was lucky. Roger must have drunk about a quart of that slime before I left my face-print on his ass.
"Crap!" exclaimed Roger, over the deafening roar of the shelling.
"Pretty damn close, Sherlock!" I responded, snickering and shaking slime in all directions, including Roger's.
"It's not a job... It's an ADVENTURE!" I announced.
Roger dodged a stream of slime and splashed some in my direction, and we both broke into hysterics. After a moment, the shelling halted long enough for us to crawl out and limp painfully across the street and through a hole in the rear wall of an embassy residential compound, leaving a trail of green slime behind us.

The pounding, double thud of renewed shelling, caused me to pause and glance back as we reached the security of a building on a rise overlooking the city. The entire block where we had been brief seconds before now appeared to be in flames. For a moment, I was overcome with astonishment at my situation and just stood there with my arm on Roger's shoulder shaking my head and rubbing my bleeding knee. Nothing in my police training had prepared me for anything like this. Only a full-blown war could have come close to doing that. I'd missed out on Viet Nam, but I sure seemed to be making up for lost time in a real hot hurry. One thing was for sure and for certain though, I hadn't had a whole lot of time to feel sorry for myself about my divorce lately. That had been one big reason I'd signed up for this duty. At times like this though, I couldn't help but wonder if I hadn't gotten a whole lot more than I'd bargained for.
Aside from the battles constantly raging around us, several things were happening all at once. For one thing, daily negotiations were going on between our Ambassador and President Doe in an effort to find a peaceful solution to the crisis. Doe, of course, refused to even consider the possibility that he might have to surrender or leave the country eventually. But as the weeks wore on, it became painfully apparent, even to his badly swollen ego, that things weren't likely to turn out in his favor. Our government had a standing invitation to evacuate him to a neutral country via our Marine task force. He'd already smuggled his wife and family out early in the conflict, but he refused to leave himself without his Khran soldiers. Or, more likely... they refused to allow him to leave without them.

About a week after my experience in the sewer with Roger, we were in our office conducting a debriefing session with a couple of our guards who'd been lucky enough to find their way to our office from across the city without being killed. Dave was asking most of the questions while Roger and I listened and took notes. Security officers were wandering in and out of the office dropping off paperwork and picking up assignments. I got up and walked over to the coffee pot beyond the entrance, keeping one ear tuned to the interview. I was just pouring myself a cup when this clown named Elroy Ceesay marches in lugging a large, dirty paper sack. I recognized him because I'd fired him the day before for sleeping on post. He stopped briefly by the door and glanced around, drew a bead on Dave and walked over to him real stone-faced.
Something went cold inside me when I saw Elroy's eyes. The fires of hate and revenge were glowing brightly there, fueled by shattered hopes and desperation. I'd seen that look many times and knew quite well it probably meant trouble.
I placed my coffee cup on the desk and stood there in the background watching carefully while Elroy butted right in and started yelling at Dave, something about severance pay. Dave and Roger stood up and confronted the guy, informing him firmly he didn't have any severance pay coming. I walked slowly up from behind and stopped about eight feet away. They continued arguing back and forth for about two minutes. Elroy appeared to calm down then, and Dave started walking him toward the door explaining how he sympathized with his situation and so forth. Suddenly, Elroy jerks away from Dave and pulls an open, one gallon can of gas out of that bag of his and flings it around in a wide arc, showering us and most of the five or six office staff with gasoline. Before anyone could react, he's clicking away with a lighter that, for the moment at least, seemed unwilling to cooperate. Dave and Roger dove for the door, leaving Elroy and his reluctant lighter sandwiched between me and the rest of the office staff. For a second, it seemed like my feet were glued to the floor. The rest of the staff must have been going through the same kind of shock. They were all on their feet with stunned expressions.
A vivid picture of me and the entire place engulfed in flames flashed into my mind. The next thing I knew, my feet were unstuck and my big white fist was homing in on Elroy's little black chin. At about the same time, I received a sudden flash of insight about how slick a marble floor becomes when covered with gasoline.

I connected with Elroy's chin, but most of the momentum was absorbed by the Mohammed Ali shuffle I was doing in an effort to remain on my feet. Fortunately, there was just enough impact to knock little Elroy into the same predicament. His grim countenance dissolved into one of surprised amazement and he began flapping his arms like a cartoon character that discovers he just walked off a cliff. The lighter went flying, and we both collapsed in a heap as I threw my arms around his chest.
Next thing I knew, we were rolling on the floor like two very pissed-off wet cats mopping the floor with our clothes. Elroy was cursing, spitting and kicking, and I was crawling up his body using handfuls of greasy shirt to get close enough to land at least one solid punch before he produced another lighter from somewhere. Every time one of us attempted to stand, our feet would do that cute little dance and fly right out from under us. Finally, Dave and Roger appeared out of nowhere and jumped on top of little Elroy with yells of victory, squashing the air right out of him. That seemed to calm him down tremendously and freed me to slither over to the nearest desk where I regained my footing and what was left of my dignity. I'd just managed to stand, when some idiot called me a "hero", and slapped me on the back, nearly knocking me off my feet again.
I didn't feel like much of a hero. In fact, I was a little embarrassed I hadn't been able to flatten little Elroy's nose. But at least I'd managed to rain on his parade by canceling his retirement barbecue. We managed to convince a passing soldier to take custody of the little jerk.

The soldier wrapped Elroy up like a Christmas package in twenty feet of shredded sheets we'd prepared for first aid bandages and carted him off to the army barracks a few blocks away kicking and screaming that he was coming back to finish the job. We never heard from him again though. One good reason could be because the stockade took some very heavy shelling that night. We learned a few days later the prisoner quarters were totally destroyed. I can't say as I was too awful upset about it at the time.
The fighting continued to escalate as Doe's soldiers were driven back and forth from one end of the city to the other. Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Front of Liberia, otherwise known as the 'NPFL', were moving in from the south while the break-away faction, led by his former drunken, psychopathic associate, Prince Johnson, entered from the northeast. It was Johnson's group that had destroyed the hydroelectric dam supplying power to the city. He was using all means at his command to overwhelm the city and the presidential mansion before Charles Taylor so he could claim the presidency for himself.
Doe was now caught between the two competing rebel factions. Both wanted his head on a platter as he had already done to so many of their own people. It was becoming very apparent he had lost any semblance of control he might have deluded himself into believing he'd once had. Despite that fact, neither of the two factions seemed capable of wrapping up the conflict. Doe was holed up in his mansion, surrounded by his Sato death squad Khran soldiers who continued to successfully deter any attempts to breech the mansion grounds despite being vastly outnumbered.
Since moving to Mamba Point, I'd had precious little time to contemplate my love life. But the memory of my beautiful Mei Feng smoldered in the back of my mind like the dormant embers of a sleeping forest fire struggling to erupt again from the ashes after a heavy rain. I frequently encountered bouts of frustration and depression when I considered her situation, trapped across the battle lines on the south end of the city where her compound sat. I considered undertaking a rescue mission, but Dave wisely vetoed that, pointing out that any white face surfacing in that area would be taken hostage, or worse, by either side. So I hatched an alternate plan.

I had several security officers who still believed they had families alive on that side of town. Most had been bugging me for permission to make the journey to verify their families were alive. Three officers had violated our directive and hadn't been heard from since. It was generally presumed they'd been killed or taken prisoner. Regardless, I continued to be approached daily by individuals willing to take the risk.
So, on one abnormally quiet day, I decided to grant permission to one tough-looking guard. His name was Molley Scott. He stated he had a wife and three young children trapped in their compound in Sinkor, the area where our old office building was located. He requested permission to take three days to travel by foot, check on his family and return. The deep concern and desperation written all over his face told me he would be gone by nightfall whether I gave my approval or not. So I decided to take advantage of the situation to get him to agree to carry a letter to Mei Feng. The letter contained a plea for her to make her way to the American Embassy where I would put her up in my quarters till the worst of the fighting was over.
Molley received my letter and fifty Liberian dollars with a smile of relief. He shook my hand and promised to return in three days with Mei Feng. I believed him too. At least I believed he would try. Right now, my operation was the only source of food and income in the entire country. More importantly though, most rebels and soldiers were still granting safe passage to US Embassy guards out of fear of retribution or hope of some sort of future support once the conflict subsided..
I never saw Molley again.

Two weeks later, I was approached by another officer named James Collins with the same request. He'd heard about Molley and my previous letter and volunteered to take a second letter for me. This guy came right out and admitted he was going that night, with or without my letter. He only wanted a few dollars to give his family if he made it. James was an older man than Molley. I had a feeling he would make it if anyone could, so I prepared another letter and sent him on his way.
I never heard from James Collins again either.
However, about a week later, I received a radio call from our guards at the USAID compound in Sinkor. They advised me they had been given a letter by a civilian who said he'd found it on the street near the site of a recent shoot-out. The envelope was covered with blood, but they could read my name on the return address.
I suddenly developed a prominent lump in my throat as I stood there on the steps outside our office staring despondently out over the smoking city with that portable radio in my hand. I could almost make out the area of Mei Feng's compound from my position on Mamba point, so near and yet, as they say, so far.
I tried to convince myself I hadn't really been the cause of Jim & Molley's death. They would have gone and died with or without my letter. The fact was, both their families had probably already met the same tragic fate anyway. But I wasn't having much success alleviating my guilt. In addition to the feeling of total helplessness concerning Mei Feng, I now had to deal with the knowledge that I may have gotten two good officers killed trying to find her. How could I resolve that? I couldn't. The simple fact was, this was War. People got killed in War. I was getting to the point where a few more bodies one way or the other, didn't seem to make a whole lot of difference anymore. I didn't necessarily like the transformation taking place within me, but I didn't seem to have a whole lot of choice in the matter.

I finally managed to clear my throat and request that the officer try to find someone nearby to deliver the letter. I had drawn a small map on the back of the envelope to assist Jim. The officer at USAID studied that map and said he thought he knew where the compound was so he would try to see that it was delivered.
I didn't find out till months later that Mei Feng finally did receive that letter. She and her Chinese cousin had been holed up in their house for weeks, bribing soldiers and rebels to leave them alone. They were running out of food and getting desperate. Her cousin, Edward had left her alone to search for food two days before she received my letter but had failed to return. When she got the letter Mei Feng waited for nearly another week before making the attempt to reach me. By then her food and her bribe money had been exhausted, so she had nothing to lose. Unfortunately, she was captured by AFL forces and locked in a cell for several days with the woman Ambassador from Ivory Coast. She would ultimately be released unharmed and make her way to the Embassy, but not before I had left Liberia. We weren't destined to see each other again until several months later when I was reassigned to The Gambia.

About this same time, however, I had my hands full again. This time it was with the growing population of restless refugees migrating from the rest of the city. Fighting had gotten so thick and fierce all around us, that Mamba point had become an island of relative calm in the eye of the storm. As such, it was attracting an ever-growing number of civilians, most of whom had taken up refuge in a six acre Embassy residential compound known as 'Graystone' about a block from the Embassy. It contained five or six large homes situated amidst a tropical landscape with idyllic cobblestone pathways meandering among the foliage. The area was protected by a high cement block wall topped with barbed wire and broken glass, with access controlled by our guards at two heavy entrance gates. Unfortunately, there happened to be a weak spot in the wall on the side facing a rather run-down section of the city. When fighting broke out in Monrovia, civilians began trickling in through that location by ones and twos and hiding in the brushy compound. The night the shelling hit the city center, the dam burst. People poured in from that low spot and overpowered our guards from within, throwing the gates open to admit friends and family. The area now resembled a bizarre Boy Scout Jamboree from hell with upwards of five thousand people huddled together around small open fires cooking meager quantities of rice and leaves. Mud, trash and human excrement now fouled the once carefully tended magnificent gardens that had been trampled underfoot into an unrecognizable mass of pulp and stripped of everything edible or burnable. I didn't lose any sleep over it though. That beautiful garden had always struck me as a grotesque aberration in gross contrast with the tragic reality of the surrounding poverty and misery.
My daily duties now included crowd control and surveillance within this compound. There was some discussion about whether or not the Embassy should just abandon the compound all together since the condition had become all but unmanageable anyway. The problem was, the people had come there seeking asylum at the American Embassy because it fell under the jurisdiction of the US Government. That turned the situation into a very sticky political game. If we kicked the people out, we would be accused of failing to render humanitarian aid to innocent women and children. If we allowed them to stay, we became responsible for the protection of every person inside, including any rebels or AFL who might choose to infiltrate without our knowledge. A few weeks prior to this, a church across town was attacked in the night by AFL soldiers and over three hundred women and children were slaughtered. The probability of a repeat of such an atrocity at Graystone seemed very high.

A further complication was the possibility that we would be accused by both sides of harboring the enemy. Such a thing would pull us right into the middle of the conflict, destroying the tenuous image of neutrality we had struggled so hard to maintain. Part of my task was to monitor the population closely in an attempt to make it clear to all sides we were not harboring any combatants. To assist me in this, I identified and enlisted the aid of a core group of a half dozen natural leaders within the new community. Several of them were former city police officers who had shed their uniforms and gone into hiding when the government collapsed into war and anarchy. I divided the compound into four sections and made one person responsible for maintaining order and reporting any incidents immediately to the gate guards who would, in turn inform us.
Lenny and Samuel were two of my appointed den mothers. Lenny, a Gio, was short and fat and about twenty-five. He had a large nose and red eyes that ran most of the time from some sort of allergy. He didn't talk a whole lot, but he'd mentioned once when we were alone that he'd been more or less adopted by Sam and what was left of Sam's family, after Sam hid him out when he was being hotly pursued by Sato storm troopers. He'd been hanging around Sam ever since, waiting I gathered, for some opportunity to repay Sam for his kindness.
Lenny frequently drilled me about America. He, like everyone else in Africa, was intensely interested in Americans and every aspect of American culture. His big dream was to go to America to attend school. The reality was, Lenny only wanted to escape the poverty and corruption of his own culture, but no one really wanted to admit that, of course. They all tried their best to retain some fragment of national pride.

Sam, a Mano, was a thirty year old, good-looking, thinly-built man with a serious face and eyes that tended to look right through you into the next world, as though he'd seen enough pain in this one to last him a long while. He'd been a cop for nine years before going underground. He often rambled on about dragging that uniform out again when all this 'foolishness', as he referred to the war, was finished. Sam mentioned, in passing once, that Lenny's family had been slaughtered the night he'd rescued him. Apparently, Lenny had walked in on the massacre as they were finishing off his mother.
The two of them usually met me at the side gate and accompanied me on my rounds, assisting me with unruly Liberians or running errands for me. I was with them on one of these visits one morning at around eleven AM when a firefight kicked up. We were standing on a bluff under an enormous tree gazing in the direction of the Dukor Palace Hotel when our tranquil morning was converted to instant bedlam by the impact of a mortar just over the wall. Immediately, rebels or AFL soldiers in the vicinity began firing in all directions. I fell to my knees behind a boulder just as bullets bit into the trunk of the tree and a second mortar exploded twenty yards downhill, showering us in a hail of dirt and rocks.
Something heavy hit me between the shoulder blades, knocking me all the way to the ground. I lay there for several seconds gasping for breath and shaking while the firing died down, listening to the moans of someone off in the distance. People were screaming and dashing, panic-stricken, in every direction and my portable radio was going crazy. I jerked it over to my ear and turned the volume all the way up so I could distinguish the conversation. All I got was senseless screaming, so I tuned it out and glanced behind me.
At some point, I had apparently grabbed the 9mm pistol from the back of my pants when the commotion started. I could see I wasn't likely to put it to use right away, so I rolled onto my side and shoved it into my belt.

That's when I saw Lenny. He was collapsed in a heap on his side facing away from me covered with dirt and small twigs. His right arm was all twisted backwards under him in a way that looked really unnatural, and he wasn't moving. It dawned on me then that it had to have been him who had knocked me to the ground to keep me from being struck by one of those bullets zipping through the air. A cold shiver of dread coursed through my body as I stared at his immobile back.
I raised my head a bit more and glanced around. The shooting had just about stopped. The smell of burning rubber permeated the air, and the sun was cascading through the branches of that great tree in brilliant columns of white fire, bouncing off the thick dust in sharp angles like the inside of a great crystal, throwing colorful rainbows in all directions. It was totally out of context with reality. It would have been beautiful, but for the jagged screams and cries of anguish ripping through the air and the profusion of ragged people staggering about on the shattered landscape in bewilderment.
Suddenly, my mind did another one of those flip-flops, and I found myself recalling being hunkered down behind the open door of my patrol car in Okanogan seven years ago with my pistol drawn and crammed through the jamb of the door. Off in the distance sat a tumble-down shack in a sagebrush field, surrounded by aspens, with all the windows blown out. Inside crouched a very pissed-off drunk Indian with a high powered 30-30 and a hostage, an eighteen year-old girlfriend who'd made the mistake of telling him she'd had enough of his violent temper and was leaving.
The sun was shining like that then too. Dazzling white pillars of light splitting into hundreds of rainbows as it bounced off the dust kicked up by a half dozen black and white patrol cars screeching to a halt in a semicircle in front of the cabin. The sounds of slamming car doors, shouted commands and shotguns chambering rounds filled the air as my back-up arrived. But I couldn't tear my eyes off that dirty little shack. He'd already shot my light bar and windshield full of holes. Tense with anticipation, I gripped the butt of my .357 in sweaty hands with my finger tight against the trigger and waited for his little brown face to pop into my field of fire.

"He's not breathing, Mike. I think... I think he's dead."
Those words snapped me instantly back to the present. Shaking my head to reorient myself, I tore my gaze off Lenny's back and rose to my knees, running my hands roughly through my hair to clear it of a sprinkle of dirt and twigs. Sam was knelt over Lenny cradling his head in his hands. His face was even more somber than usual. He looked like he was on the verge of tears. He released a stifled sob but couldn't quite seem to find any tears, like the well had gone dry.
I knelt down next to Sam and carefully placed two fingers on Lenny's carotid artery. There was no sign of a pulse. Instinctively, I brushed the dirt off his face and grasped him by the shoulders and started to roll him over on his back to begin CPR.
Sam gasped, drawing my attention to the gaping cavity behind Lenny's right ear. Blood and dirt had congealed around the wound. Only a small quantity had seeped onto the ground beneath his head. There didn't seem to be any further drainage, most likely because his heart had stopped pumping blood through his body. It appeared quite obvious that Lenny had died instantly, probably right after he had pushed me to the ground. It was unlikely he even knew what happened after that.
With a long sigh, I slowly released Lenny into the arms of Sam who began gently brushing the dust from his brown face. "Oh Lenny, Oh Lenny..." he was saying, over and over, "Not you too, Lenny."
Sam's voice had a strange, detached, emotionless quality to it that I hadn't run across before coming to Africa. I might have thought he was merely going through the motions of mourning, play-acting, instead of expressing genuine feelings. But I had come to recognize this as a sign of hopelessness now, a sort of acceptance of the inevitability of death… rehearsing, waiting for your own turn.

I left Lenny in the care of Sam after making arrangements for disposal of the body and walked back to the embassy. Several hundred people were wandering aimlessly up and down the sloping street in front of the two heavy entrance gates. Most stopped and stared at the gates with longing in their eyes for a moment, then moved on. Some walked over to talk to the guards about the possibility of gaining entrance for one reason or another. But most were turned away. The fact was, the American Embassy, which stood like a great white medieval fortress on the point of the bluff overlooking the ocean, represented the last outpost of refuge for these people. The more the rest of the city slipped into anarchy and war, the greater temptation there was to find a way to breech those walls. We'd taken steps to make sure that temptation was held in check by constructing machine gun emplacements with sandbags and cement blocks on the roofs of each of the gatehouses. Shooters from the State Department took turns manning those emplacements. Eventually, if things got bad enough, they would be replaced by US Marines.
I shouldered my way through the commotion to the turnstile gate where two of my guards parted the crowd to let me pass, making me feel a bit like Moses walking between the waters of the Red Sea. I happened to notice one very pregnant young Liberian lady clinging to the bars as I passed. She appeared to have been there for many hours. Her face was drawn and haggard with deep worry lines about her eyes, inconsistent with her youth. There seemed to be no vision of the future left in those sad eyes. Her thin hand fell lightly on my shoulder as I passed. "Please, Sir," she implored in a weak voice, "Please... let me in, for the baby."

I was through the gate before I could respond to her plea. It was hard, but I continued walking without looking back. It would do no good. I had no power to save any of these people. I only had the power to walk away. Of course, I didn't like it. It kept me awake at nights. The sad fact was there was really very little I, or any of us, could do to help these people. This was their war, their tragedy. I was only a witness to their suffering not their savior.
The familiar sounds of automatic rifle fire suddenly shattered the relative calm. I paused and glanced back at the gate. People were dashing in all directions and shouting. Apparently, the rounds were landing very close. I felt something strike my lower left leg and glanced down to see a copper jacketed tracer round with a bright red tip rolling across the pavement. Astounded, I reached down and picked it up. I dropped it immediately and stuck my fingers in my mouth. It was very hot. I inspected my leg but could observe no injury. Apparently, this was what we had come to call an 'airball'. That's a round that has been fired into the air and falls to the ground with most of its energy expended. I reached down again and snatched up the round, deftly dropping it in my pocket before it could burn my fingers a second time. Then I turned and dashed into the regional security office on the second floor of the building behind me.
The Regional Security Officer, or simply 'RSO', was named Bob Tipton. He was a very competent guy who'd worked for the US Drug Enforcement Agency before coming to work for the US Department of Diplomatic Security. His office was our alternate command center in the embassy compound. I entered the office just as the shooting picked up again. Bob dashed past me with a quick greeting, saying he would be right back. I walked over to the window behind his desk and stood there gazing out over the front gate where hundreds of people were still milling about.

Weapon fire seemed to be coming from several directions, but I couldn't make out any combatants. A sharp ping to my right, followed immediately by a thud to my rear caused me to fall to the floor instinctively. When I glanced up, I noticed a small, round hole in the pane of glass about eighteen inches to the left of where my head had been a moment before. I threw another glance behind me and noticed a fresh chip in the concrete about 3 inches in diameter in the wall across from the window.
I huddled there on the floor beneath that window listening to the pandemonium outside, contemplating the significance that eighteen inches can have on one's life. In typical analytical fashion, I also considered once more the forces that had conspired to draw me to this situation. After some moments of searching for a logical explanation to it all, I finally concluded I was here as a result of my own efforts and had no one to blame but myself for anything that might happen. The only question that remained seemed to be why was my life being spared when the lives of so many all around me were being snuffed out? That was one question I would probably spend a lot of time trying to answer.
A few minutes later, the shooting stopped, and Bob and Dave wandered into the office. They got quite a laugh out of the close call I'd had while they were out. Personally, I couldn't quite see the humor in it, but it was possible my perspective may have been a little tainted. At some point, one of them mentioned something about a pregnant lady having been killed during the shooting. My ears perked up and I questioned them about it. It turned out to have been the same lady I'd passed while entering the embassy when the fighting started. Apparently, she'd remained at that gate, pleading to be allowed in, and had taken a round in the back for her efforts.

I walked out that gate a short time later and paused to contemplate the spatter of fresh blood on the wall of the Security office. Again, it seemed it should have hit me harder. I seemed to feel worse about my lack of emotion than I did about the incident itself. I wasn't quite sure why I seemed to be losing my human compassion. Perhaps it was some unconscious method of preserving one's sanity in the midst of such chaos. Or rather, perhaps it had something to do with the realization that the woman and her baby were really much better off dead than having to face the alternate fate of slow starvation or torture at the hands of the enemy.
It had now been nearly three full months since the rebels had isolated Monrovia from the rest of the world. Each day seemed to bring us one step closer to the brink of destruction. I'd still heard nothing from Mei Feng. I tried not to think about it, but I had to presume the worst. I made no further efforts to send letters to her and received no further offers from my officers to carry such letters. Things had gotten to the point where no one was any longer considering the possibility of venturing into the city at all. Even my own reconnaissance missions were being cut back to extend no further than the Mamba point area and the immediate vicinity. It was now quite common to see the AFL and the NPFL on the same day in the front of the Embassy, not usually at the same time of course. That only happened once or twice. When it did things instantly erupted into a fierce fire fight, with one side or the other retreating after twenty or thirty minutes. It seemed that our embassy had become situated directly on the battle line.
On August fifth, 1990, I was awakened at 7:30 AM by Dave. It was a Sunday morning. Not that it made any difference, Sundays had been no different than any other day for months. He hammered on my door in typical Marine fashion and yelled for me to "turn to" in the living room. When I staggered in, Roger was already sitting on the couch speaking in low tones to Dave. Roger had his pants on but no shoes or shirt. It was obvious from the silence that something heavy was up.
"OK," I inquired, "What's the story?"
"Just got a call from the RSO," replied Dave, in his typical clipped, serious tone. "He says he received a copy of a hit list that's apparently being distributed among Doe's soldiers."

"Hit list? What do you mean... hit list?" For a moment, I couldn't quite connect with what he was talking about.
"You know," injected Roger, "Wanted... dead or alive, preferably dead."
"Yeah," nodded Dave, "That's right. The price is ten thousand, and our names are on the list. Apparently, Doe's convinced some of us have been rendering aid to the rebels."
Stunned, I just sat there for several seconds expecting them to burst into laughter.
"You're serious, aren't you?" I said, finally.
"This is no joke," affirmed Dave, "Doe may have gone off the deep end here, but the Ambassador is taking this very seriously. He's requested that the task force land three hundred Marines immediately to secure the Embassy and deal with this latest development."
We all sat there for a moment letting it all sink in. Suddenly the absurdity of the situation hit me. We all knew things were getting worse every day. In fact, a white aid worker had been taken captive a few days ago while delivering rice to civilians across town. His vehicle had been confiscated by Prince Johnson, and he'd been forced to hike back to the embassy alone after his driver had been gunned down while the two of them were handcuffed together. The guy was extremely lucky to be alive. Such incidents were a growing concern among the expatriate community, but this? This seemed absolutely crazy!
"Right!" I exclaimed "Right... a reward for our heads? Sure, you bet!" I was still having difficulty believing all this.
"Are those Liberian dollars, or US dollars?
"US... I think," replied Roger, tossing a questioning glance at Dave.

"Right," affirmed Dave, "US dollars, all right. Hell, what difference does it make? Either way, that's a lot of dough over here for most of these fools. That much cash would support a family of five for twenty years! Not sure where the hell Doe thinks he's gonna find ten thousand US dollars right now, but that's what the circular says."
"Maybe he plans on writing a check," responded Roger.
Dave and Roger glanced at each other again and chuckled lightly. There was really nothing funny about the situation, but with all the stress we had all been under lately, this just seemed to be the last straw. We all sat there and giggled senselessly for about thirty seconds or so, more or less laughing to keep from crying, as they say.
"OK," began Dave," here's the plan. The Ambassador wants us to trim down our management team by half. That will reduce our exposure significantly in the event anyone takes this hit list seriously. Besides, things have deteriorated to the point where we can't do a whole lot more than sit in the Embassy anyhow. So... I've gotta decide who goes, and who stays. I've already decided I can manage without Paul, so that leaves me a choice between the two of you."
Roger and I looked at each other. Paul was the Operations Chief in charge of scheduling and so forth. Schedules had become a thing of the past. The officers simply stayed on their post until captured or killed, so it did seem obvious Paul's function wasn't really needed for the time being.
"I'll stay with you," we both said in unison.
Dave smiled broadly. "I expected that from you two," he replied, "but I don't need both of you. My decision has to be based on practicality here. And I have to decide right away. The Ambassador has requested helicopters to evacuate you along with some other personnel within the hour. I would appreciate a volunteer here.

Roger and I looked at each other once more. I wasn't really sure how he felt about leaving now. I knew he'd been under just as much tension as myself lately. But he didn't have three young terrified daughters in the states losing sleep over the very real possibility they would never see their father again. I had to consider their feelings too.
Before I could say anything, Dave began again.
"Well, let's see, I definitely need someone to operate the computer for payroll this month." He peered meaningfully at Roger, who had been reluctantly running payroll since our secretary had been evacuated to Sierra Leone. My skills in that area were quite limited, to say the least.
Roger nodded, without saying anything or showing an ounce of emotion.
"I guess that lets you out, " stated Dave, looking me in the eyes.
"I guess so," I replied, experiencing an odd mixture of tremendous relief and disappointment at having been inadvertently saved, or at least replaced, because of a computer. "But I'm willing to stay anyhow, if you think you can use me at all."
"I appreciate that," acknowledged Dave, "but with the Marines landing in an hour, I expect I will be able to manage without you."
"Yeah," I chuckled, "I suppose so."
Dave snickered too, and slapped me on the shoulder.
"OK," he ordered, "that's settled. Pack a bag. And make it snappy. You've got less than an hour now."

The next few minutes were a blur of activity. Dave had informed me I would be flown to the aircraft carrier waiting off shore where I would spend the night before being shuttled to Sierra Leone to catch a plane for Europe and the States the next morning. He had made it real clear I would have to travel light. I stuffed what few precious belongings I could into a flight bag while Roger and Dave traded me their US dollars for my now useless Liberian currency so I would have some spending money. Before I was finished discussing plans for shipping my remaining items to the States, the throbbing 'whump whump whump' of Marine helicopters began closing in from the distance. I could feel my adrenalin rising with their approach. Now that I was going home, the thought of staying a single minute longer in this hell-hole was almost unbearable.
I hefted my bag over my shoulder and glanced one more time around the apartment. All those long hours huddled together in the dark, peering out the windows at that bleeding city, flashed before my eyes. They now seemed more like previews from some hard-core adventure movie than real portions of my own life.
"It was fun while it lasted", I murmured to myself in tragic irony, "but nothing lasts forever..."
"You say something?" inquired Roger from the doorway.
"Nah, just saying so long to some more memories," I replied.
I walked through the door behind Roger, and we headed up the street. Dave had dashed to the chancery to pick up some paperwork for me to carry to the States. As we made our way to the south gate of the embassy compound, three helicopters began circling above in the clear morning air, kicking up little dust devils of trash and dirt all around us. Liberians in every conceivable physical condition, some barely able to walk, emerged from the surrounding buildings and stood gaping up at the monstrous gun ships that totally dwarfed any form of military hardware their obscure little country had ever seen. A few of them gazed at me running past with my bag on my shoulder with enormous envy and awe in their eyes.
Dave had mentioned that Prince Johnson had vowed to shoot down any US Marine helicopters coming within range of the city. As I gazed up at those enormous machines, I found such puny threats almost inconceivable. In those brief moments, surely everyone in that blasted-out city must have realized how insignificant their petty conflict was in relation to the rest of the world.
At that moment, in that dirty little speck of land in remote Africa, I was more proud to be an American than I'd ever been in my entire life.
The United States Marines were coming... and they were coming for me.