I grabbed my kit and got out of the cart after Sabeena.
I yelled over the racket, “I don’t work for you, either, Doctor!”
Colin was exasperated, but he was clearly trying to control his temper. He stepped in front of me, blocking my way.
“Brigid,” he said at full volume, a foot from my face, “the intelligence on this so-called military action is sketchy. We don’t know what we’re going to find. The four of us,” he said, sweeping his hand to take in the three other male doctors, “will assess the damage and transport survivors back to hospital. The best thing you can do is be ready for us, get it?”
I shouted back, “Colin, we’re coming! We’ll make ourselves useful, I promise.”
“Why are you so stubborn?”
I glared at him. “Are you stubborn?”
The helicopter landed. It was a large Mi-8, a Russian-made aircraft, common in South Sudan. This one had the blue UN logo on its tail section. The rotors sent up a blinding dust storm.
Sabeena and I ran toward the chopper, her incongruous pink Skechers slapping the dirt.
I wondered what her intuition was telling her now.
Chapter 21
SABEENA AND I sat next to each other in the cargo bay of the huge helicopter. We took turns peering through a scratched Plexiglas window as the helicopter flew over the battlefield, the engine and the rotors providing the sound track to the hellish sight below.
I saw hundreds of bodies. Some were in heaps, and others lay like far-flung sticks as far as I could see.
As the helicopter descended, I identified the uniforms of the dead. Many wore the camouflage and red scarves of the Gray Army, but the BLM, in gray-and-green fatigues, outnumbered the Grays two to one.
I didn’t know many of the BLM soldiers personally, but I felt that I knew them all. Most were Americans my age, from small-town USA and from cities like Boston. They had come here to help these savagely victimized and disadvantaged people whose roots they shared.
Because of their selflessness, these brave kids had died not only terribly but anonymously. Not even their bodies would go home. There were no refrigerated trucks in South Sudan. The BLM dead might be photographed for later identification, or not. But for certain, the corpses of both armies would be bulldozed into mass graves.
Our helicopter touched down, rocking on its struts. The engine whined, and the pilot shut it down. Colin helped me out of the cargo bay, and for a moment, he held me above him and looked into my eyes.
I wanted to say something meaningful, but I was still annoyed with him. I couldn’t find the right words—and then, the moment was gone. My feet pounded the ground as I ran across the flat and stinking field, sending up flights of vultures as my colleagues and I looked among the bloated bodies for signs of life.
The immense number of bodies finally stopped me cold.
I stood on the flat, brown field that stretched from nowhere to nowhere else and took in a panoramic view. My first estimate had been wrong. There weren’t hundreds of corpses. There were thousands. The BLM soldiers had been shot, and many had also been hacked with machetes and decapitated.
A hot wind blew the stench of decomposition across the field. Tears sheeted down my face. No healing would be done today.
And then I heard Sabeena shout, “Over here!”
She was hunched over a body that seemed to be twitching. I ran with my kit in hand, sliding the last few yards on my knees to where the wounded soldier lay. His breathing was ragged, and I counted six bullet holes punched into his bloody uniform. Somehow, he still held on to his life.
“We need a stretcher!” Sabeena shouted out through cupped hands. “Stay here,” she said to me, and then she ran toward our chopper.
I lifted the young man’s head into my lap and gave him a sip of water from my canteen. He coughed and asked for more.
I gave him another sip, and I pinched his thigh.
“Did you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“Can you move your feet?”
His expression told me he thought that he had moved them, but I was sure he was paralyzed from the waist down.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Nick,” he said. “Givens. My parents live in Biloxi.” He gasped. He grabbed at the chain around his neck, pulled it over his head, and pushed it and his dog tags into my hands.
“Givens. Melba and Roy. They work. At the high school.”
I said, “Nick, you have to keep your ID with you,” but he shook his head and looked at me with huge, pleading eyes. He knew that he had very little time left.
I said, “I’ll find them.”
I was holding the young man’s hand when automatic gunfire sounded behind me.