“And you are going to follow up on this.”
“Cali, we just saw a village butchered and then some other mystery group come out of nowhere and annihilate the vanguard of a rebel army. How could I not follow up on it?”
They had reached the truck. It was almost dark. The jungle canopy was a silvery gray and the waters of the Chinko River ran black. They spied curious puffy white shapes milling around the battered cargo truck. Mercer held out a hand to take Cali’s wrist and lower her to the ground. A pair of figures stepped from the far side of the vehicle. Mercer cursed himself for not retrieving his Beretta. It was hard to make out details, but both people carried something long in their hands. Weapons?
One of the figures brushed aside one of the odd pale shapes and it protested with an angry bleat. They were sheep. As soon as Mercer realized it, the details came into focus. It was a man and a woman. They had just forded the river with the twenty-five or so sheep to flee Dayce’s army. The animals must represent the sum of their wealth. As Mercer and Cali watched, a pair of naked toddlers joined their parents. The mother lifted the youngest to a hip and allowed him to slide her breast from her blouse and begin to feed.
“What do you think?” Cali asked.
Mercer was pretty sure that all of the men with Dayce were dead, but he couldn’t take the chance a few were still out in the jungle. He couldn’t leave these people here, vulnerable. He stood, holding his arms wide in a friendly gesture as the family’s father saw him and lowered his staff as if to joust. It was all just too bizarre, but that was Africa. Mercer chuckled. “I think we’re making our escape from the CAR with a frightened family and a flock of wet sheep.”
It took Mercer and Cali three days to get from Rafai to the capital, Bangui, and from there a flight to Lagos and finally to New York’s Kennedy Airport. To Mercer it seemed the closer to home she got, the more withdrawn Cali Stowe became. He suspected it was a defense mechanism to distance herself from the horrors of the past days. She had compartmentalized the episode and was slowly building a wall around the memory, locking it deep in her soul so it would only return as nightmares, and given time even those would fade.
Mercer recognized the technique. He’d done it himself dozens of times. He’d seen savagery on a scale Cali couldn’t possibly conceive. Not the slow death by international apathy someone from the CDC would witness in refugee camps or in rural AIDS clinics, but wholesale violence for violence’s sake. He’d seen wars on four continents, regional dustups that barely made the evening news but left thousands dead; he’d rescued enslaved miners in Eritrea, and he’d held a woman he loved in his arms as she died.
Harry White had been in a particularly philosophical mood one night not long after Tisa Nguyen’s death and told Mercer that God didn’t place a burden on a person that He felt couldn’t be handled. Look at Job, Harry had said by way of example. The guy had it all when God took it away — family, money, friends, health, the whole magilla. But God also knew old Job could take it. You soldier on, Harry had continued; you take the shit life tosses at you and keep on going. There’s really only one alternative.
“Yeah, I could turn into a bitter drunk like you,” Mercer had replied, “hanging out in a bar twelve hours a day waiting for some dupe to pick up your tab.”
Harry had grinned at that, his lopsided grin that turned the eighty-year-old rogue into an eight-year-old scamp, if only for an instant. “That’s exactly the alternative I’m talking about.”
But in a way, Harry had a point, and his words had stuck. Mercer did soldier on. Maybe what he’d seen and done in his life clouded his once crystalline beliefs, forced him to search through the shades of gray, but the core was still there, the ability to find the good amid the rotten, and hold on to it while the rest eroded with time.
He sensed that Cali worked the same way. In a week or a month she’d look back and recall an episode from her trip, maybe their profanity-laden struggle to load twenty-seven damp sheep into the truck, and she would smile. That would also bring back the panic she’d felt in the village and the smile would fade, but so too would the intensity of that fear. In six months or a year she’d still smile at the sheep and maintain just a vague unease about the rest.
In order to do all that, she needed distance, distance from Africa and distance from Mercer. He understood, and as she waited with him at the US Airways counter, they exchanged phone numbers and made indeterminate plans to stay in touch. Both knew they wouldn’t; however, there was comfort in the ritual.
“Well, good luck with your search,” Cali said stiffly.
“And I’m sorry about yours.” She shot him a puzzled look. “Your cancer research. It had sounded promising.”
“Oh. I think I got carried away when I first read about that village and ignored the number one rule in medical research. There are no shortcuts.”
“Where will you go next?”
“That’s up to the CDC. Though I won’t be putting in for any new assignments for a while. I think I’ll stick to a desk until…” Her voice trailed off.
Mercer took both her hands, made sure she was looking into his eyes, then leaned in and kissed her gently on the corner of her mouth. It was perhaps a bit more intimate than he intended, but he had to feel the texture of her full lips, if even just a sliver. They were softer than he’d imagined. “Good luck, Cali Stowe.”
“Good luck, oh my God, I can’t remember your first name. I’ve just been calling you Mercer.”
“Don’t worry.” He smiled. “Everyone does.”
Their eyes remained locked, steady. He held on to her strong fingers a moment longer, and she let him. Both knew this was the last they’d see of each other. It was awkward, but charmingly so. Had they met at another time, in another place, they’d have been making plans for a date, not saying good-bye forever.
Just before he released her, Cali impulsively returned his kiss. Her lips didn’t linger and she turned, her red hair flaring, catching sunlight and reflecting back like spun copper. “Good-bye.”
She was swallowed immediately by the throng of commuters and tourists.
A few moments later an elderly woman in line behind Mercer tapped his elbow. Her hair was a white bush, her eyes blue and friendly. “It’s none of my business but I think you should go after her, young man.”
Mercer looked to where Cali had vanished. “I think you’re probably right, but such is life.”
“Yes, I suppose. Making mistakes is how we learn.”
Mercer smiled at her. “You think I’m making a mistake letting her go?”
“Only you can answer that.” She pointed. “There’s a spot open at the counter.”
Mercer grabbed the bag he’d bought in Lagos containing Chester Bowie’s canteen and the mashed bullet the old woman in the village had shown him. He took one step toward the counter, then turned suddenly. “Thank you, ma’am, you go ahead.”
He dashed out of line. He moved quickly through the terminal, hoping to spot the flash of Cali’s hair above the crowd. Already he was composing what he’d say to her. “This is stupid. I think we’re attracted to each other and I don’t think it’s right that circumstance should bring us together only to force us apart. I know you want to put everything behind you, I do too, but I also think one date wouldn’t kill us. I can be in Atlanta the day after tomorrow. I just have to file a report with my contact at the UN, Adam Burke.”
If she said no, she said no. It would only cost him an hour’s delay until the next flight to Reagan National, but if she said yes then maybe it would help heal a little of the loneliness that had dogged him for the past six months.
With Atlanta being their hub, he assumed she’d made reservations for a Delta flight. He’d stepped out of the airport and begun searching for a skycap to ask where their terminal was located, when he saw her across the traffic-choked street. He was about to call her name when she reached a black Town Car.