well. These orphaned boys have nowhere else to go. At least if they serve in his army, they get fed.” It was a sad and all-too-familiar story in this part of the world. But giving children guns and calling them soldiers was evil, and Marco knew it.
Benji knew it, too. Parking the vehicle, he muttered, “Think what you want, Chief, but he’s the devil.”
The encampment was a primitive mountain fortress surrounding grass-roofed huts. Even so, with the weapons Marco supplied them, these rebels held their own against the Hutu militiamen—and sometimes even the government. Wearing green camo and military boots polished to a mirror shine, the general approached Marco sporting a brass-tipped baton. A pack of dogs barked at his heels and all his boy soldiers saluted as he passed. His ebony face warmed with a smile of greeting. “Ahh, the Great Northern Warlord has arrived!”
Marco’s old friend seemed leaner, gaunter, with a hint more mania in his eyes, but the two men embraced like comrades. They’d been together in Rwanda and seen the horrors of genocide. Now it was an obsession for both of them.
“What did you bring for me this time?” the general asked.
“Ammunition.” Marco motioned toward the crates of bullets being unloaded. “We’ll parachute the weapons in, but…your soldiers are too damned young.”
The general waved away Marco’s concern with his baton. “I know it displeases you, my friend, but what can be done? We’ll talk business later. First we drink!”
In the general’s hut, they sat on patio chairs. Marco almost took a cigarette until he remembered his close encounter with an angel of death. She’d challenged him to quit and he’d said he would. For some reason—maybe because of what he was sure his blood had done to her—it was an unspoken promise he felt compelled to keep. “I’ll take a beer instead.”
“I stole this from Hutu militiamen,” the general bragged, handing Marco a bottle. “It is good, no?”
Marco took several gulps before asking, “What happened to the militiamen?”
“You don’t want to know what happened to them.” There was an awkward silence. Then the general leaned forward. “Benji, your boss is from this place of mists and rainbows…this Niagara Falls, where everything is soft and covered with dew. He sometimes forgets what life is like in Congo. He forgets what it is to fight for survival in Africa, what it is to make war. But we know, don’t we?” Benji looked as if he might crawl out of his skin. “He is scared of me.” The general chuckled, poking Benji with the end of his baton. “Boo!”
Marco flexed his bandaged hand. “Leave him alone.”
The general smiled enigmatically and blew a ring of smoke. “Have you never told your boy here how we met?”
Marco wasn’t much for show-and-tell when it came to his employees, but the general was intent on telling tales. He pulled an old photograph from his pocket, where it must have been positioned for just this occasion. “Ahh, Benji! You see that soldier in the picture, so proud under his blue beret? That was your boss, upright as a Mountie. In those days, Marco even kept a letter from his betrothed for luck.”
Benji stared, amazed, though whether it was at the idea Marco had once been a UN peacekeeper or that he’d once been engaged, Marco couldn’t tell. “And do you see that skinny black man standing next to him in the picture?” the general asked. “That is me. I was a teacher then, and twenty little Tutsi children came to my school to learn. The Hutus swore they would kill us all. But Marco promised he would keep my students safe.”
Marco stood abruptly, nearly tipping his chair in the process. Several beer bottles clinked together and fell at his feet. “That’s enough reminiscing. I need to find a bed.”
Marco hadn’t had to feign exhaustion; he hadn’t slept since the night the woman attacked him in Naples. And now he couldn’t stop thinking of her. That night, he’d just learned about his father’s prognosis; the knife-wielding vixen had taken advantage of a weak moment, his yearning for an easy connection. He remembered the feel of her under his hands, the way she gave back as good as she got. She’d been perfect, crafted for sex. It made him break into a sweat just to remember.
But it hadn’t just been that. There’d been something about the way she looked at him—the way she looked into him, as if she could see into every little hidden crevice. It’d made him feel as if one person in the world might finally understand him.
And then she’d tried to kill him.
That night, Marco dreamed of Rwanda again. The Hutus were coming with their machetes, but United Nations forces had been ordered out of the area. The evacuation convoy raced down the dirt road, away from the grenades, which sent plumes of soil into the air. Marco had the wheel when they saw a group of militiamen herding villagers into a ditch.
Stand down, soldier!
He was supposed to keep driving, but Marco jerked the truck to the side of the road, tires shrieking to a stop. He was out of the vehicle, weapon drawn, in one smooth motion. Behind him, another truck stopped and his commanding officer jumped out. Marco had halted the whole convoy. “Get back on the goddamned road!” his commander bellowed.
“They’re killing the whole village right in front of us,” Marco argued. The murderers hadn’t even hesitated at the sight of the UN convoy. Instead, the militiamen opened fire on the civilians with the few guns they had and hacked and dismembered the rest with machetes. From the ditch came the horrific screams and the stench of death.
Marco lifted his service pistol and aimed it at the militiaman giving the orders. He thought his commander might do the same. The villagers were unarmed. They called out for help, reaching for mercy. Blood was in the air like a fine mist of a waterfall, and for a moment, Marco couldn’t hear anything but the roar.
Stand down, soldier!
Marco pulled the trigger. Damn the rules, Marco shot first, and a burly Hutu militiaman returned fire. Marco was hit in the left shoulder, but it didn’t knock him down, so he lifted his pistol and aimed again.
Stand down, soldier!
His red-faced commanding officer was shouting. “We’re observers!”
Observers. They’d been ordered to observe while the world did nothing. On the news somewhere, politicians dithered over the definition of genocide and the world was busy with other matters. Citizens didn’t want to hear it. So, standing there bleeding while his fellow soldiers tried to haul him back into the truck, Marco observed as the killers finished their grisly business. He watched until the last little hand of a village child twitched in its death throes. Then he watched as the militiaman who shot him turned and smiled.
Stand down, soldier!
Later, Marco returned to bury what remained of the bodies. In the empty eyes of a dead woman, he saw his fiancée, her lips twisted in a rictus. In the bloodied face of an old man, Marco saw his father. He saw among the dead even his own face. He was one of them. He was the brother, the lover and the son of the dead.
But he had not been their savior.
Marco woke in a cold sweat, his stomach churning and the taste of vomit in his throat. These were his sins, his crimes, and how he’d come to be the way he was. He wondered what sin the shape-shifting woman had committed to give her
