Chapter Ten
Kelli
I didn’t like the feeling of being shut out by the guys. Ever since my arrival at the base, it felt like they were closing ranks trying to keep me from learning anything of value. In some cases, as on the night when Jake was shot, there was no good reason for this. There wasn’t some vital strategic interest that was forcing them to withhold information; they were doing it purely out of spite.
If it wasn’t for Sergeant Armstrong, the whole trip might have been wasted. He was the one who took me aside on the morning of the ambush and explained what had happened. Of course I knew about the militant raid on the boarding school, having already heard about it from Evan. The rest I could pretty much piece together myself: the SEALs had undertaken a moonlit excursion during which they presumably parachuted into enemy territory.
“It was a brave thing they did,” I said to Sergeant Armstrong. It was early morning, and the only thing keeping me on my feet was adrenaline and spite. “I don’t understand why they would be reluctant to talk about it.”
“I think I know why,” said Armstrong with a vexed smile. “They’re embarrassed by the fact that Jake was wounded in the line of fire. They think it could have easily been prevented, and they hold themselves partially responsible. But there’s more to it than that, I feel.”
“How do you figure?”
Armstrong sat down at his desk, removed a pipe from one of the top drawers, and lit it. He waved it in the air as he spoke without once putting it to his mouth. “Because I think from the moment you arrived on base, they had you pegged as the enemy. Some of the guys, they see the world in terms of ‘us’ vs. ‘them,’ and your fact-finding missions just reinforce their sense of being oppressed by the all-powerful media.”
“Right, so how do I combat that?” I hated the feeling of shunned and held in suspicion no matter what I did, simply because of who I was. It was like a permanent knot in the pit of my stomach.
Armstrong shrugged, as if it wasn’t his problem, which I suppose in a sense it wasn’t. “You’ve just gotta show them that you’re a person first, before anything else. You’ve got to get them thinking you’re one of them. Until then, I’m afraid they’re always going to be reluctant to open up to you.”
I kept coming back to this conversation again and again during the next two weeks as I quietly went about my job and the SEALs continued to keep me at arm’s length. I knew I shouldn’t take it personally, but it was hard to ignore the feeling that they were punishing me just for doing what I had come here to do.
I talked it over with Azzadine as we ate breakfast together in the lobby of the hotel on my last Thursday in Kinshasha. We were eating a traditional Congolese meal of goat stew and cassava leaves with smoked fish, eaten with a sweet and slightly tangy sauce whose name I did not know.
“I know at first you didn’t wish to come on this trip,” he said, reaching for his mug of tea. “But now that you’ve settled in, I would think you would not want to leave.”
“I’m actually looking forward to being home,” I said with a trace of bitterness in my voice. “At least back in the office, I’m only ignored by two or three people instead of the whole team.”
Azzedine peered at me quizzically for a moment, as though attempting to extract my innermost thoughts. “Do you feel that you’ve been mistreated?” he asked.
“I do.” I scooped another spoonful of rice from the side bowl onto my plate, smothering it in the tangy sauce. “I won’t be upset to see the back of the Congo. You and the sergeant have treated me well, and I’ll miss both of you. But I think the rest of them will be as relieved to see me go as I am to be gone.”
Azzedine steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them thoughtfully. “And what reason do they have to be upset with you?” he asked.
“No reason that I can think of. Because I’m a reporter and I insist on doing my job, they all hate me.” There was no use trying to keep the resentment out of my voice; it had crept in despite my best efforts.
“But if you’ve done your job,” said Azzedine slowly, “isn’t that something to be proud of?”
“I suppose it is.”
“Then you have nothing to be upset about. You are free.”
Azzedine seemed to think that settled the issue, though I didn’t think it was so simple. In my head, I had always known I shouldn’t be troubled by what others thought, but in my heart, I took their rejection as proof that I wasn’t doing my job right. In school, I had valued the good opinions of my teachers better than perfect scores on tests; being subjected to their disapproval, regardless of whether I had earned it, was worse for me than failing a class.
We arrived at the base that day at around mid-morning. The air was cool, and the summer sun shone in a golden haze through the tops of the trees. Though the rest of the SEALs had been awarded an off-day, Sergeant Armstrong’s platoon continued to toil away with extreme focus. Carson groaned in exasperation as he sat up for what must have been the hundredth time; it couldn’t have helped that most of his buddies were out playing basketball on the tarmac. I wondered what kind of intense determination it must take to keep doing that day after day and to force yourself to go on when your whole body was crying out for relief.
Sergeant Armstrong led me to the medical ward, where I found Jake sitting up in bed looking surprisingly cheerful. He grinned at me boyishly as I came in.
Feeling encouraged by this reception, I pulled up a swivel chair and sat down beside him. “You feeling any better?” I asked.
Outside the window the basketball game was getting heated. For a moment, his gaze shifted to the window, and when he turned back to me he looked surprised, as though he hadn’t seen me come into the room. “I’m feeling loads better, actually,” he replied. “Dr. Owen said I should be able to leave within the next week.”
“It must be a relief to have had a few weeks off.”
I regretted saying it almost instantly; it couldn’t have been much of a relief to be fired upon in the dead of night and to have doctors picking metal out of your body, but Jake only smiled. “I feel lucky in some ways. While the rest of the team is out there languishing in the intense heat, I’ve been reading Our Mutual Friend. It’s the one Dickens novel I’ve never finished.”
“Can’t say I’ve ever read it, though that is really impressive.” Remembering what I had come in here to ask him, I said quietly, “Listen, I know there’s been some discussion that one of the other guys might be to blame for your injury.”
Jake’s smile froze instantly; the effect was more unsettling than if he had been glowering the entire time. “Who said that?” he demanded.
“Just something I heard through—”
But Jake cut me off. “Nothing and nobody is responsible for what happened to me except the bastard who fired the gun. Chuck and Zack, they saved my life. So you can go back to your website and let them know we’re the good guys.”
He gave a small snort of contempt, and I could see there was nothing more to be gained from the conversation. I thanked him for taking the time to talk to me. But when he didn’t respond, I turned and left.
Before I left for the hotel that night, I stopped by Sergeant Armstrong’s office to ask him a favor.
I found him seated at his desk rubbing his eyes wearily, a pile of papers in front of him. He had lit at least three cigarettes, then snuffed them out into an adjoining ash-tray, apparently without even having placed them to his lips. A tall bottle of sherry stood at the corner of the desk, unopened.
“Hey, Kelli,” he said absently as I came in. “What do you need?”
“There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” I said, pulling up the only other chair in the room and sitting down across from him. “In the three weeks I’ve been here, the only guys who have treated me with any decency have been you and Zack.”
Armstrong looked up at me, his brows knitted with concern. “Do you need me to talk to them?” he asked. “Have they been bothering you?”
“No, it’s nothing like that,” I replied. “I’ve felt really safe here apart from that one incident. But everyone seems reluctant to talk to me, and I can’t fault them for that. That’s why I was wondering if I could take Zack out for the day tomorrow—with your permission, of course. I still don’t think I have enough material to write a full report, and he could help me. You and him are the only guys who have been willing to give me the time of day.”
Armstrong frowned pensively, as if weighing the repercussions of losing one of his men for the whole day. “How much time do you need?”
“I was thinking we could meet over breakfast at my hotel. It might be good to get away from the base camp for a while. I think he would be able to relax and maybe open up more.”
It wasn’t the greatest sales pitch, and I fully expected him to say no, or to promise me he would “think about it” until I was already safely gone. So I was surprised when he rose from the desk and said, “Yeah, take all the time you need.”
“Great!” I exclaimed, sounding maybe a little too excited. “Do you want me to tell him?”
He shook his head. “Nah, I’ll let him know. I need to talk to him before he goes, anyway.”
I turned to leave the office, feeling elated, but as I reached the door he called my name. “Hey, Pope.”
I froze in the doorway, fearing he had already changed his mind. “What’s up?”
Armstrong smiled. “Don’t let the other guys get you down too much. I know you’re doing good work, and you know you’re doing good work. That’s all that really matters.”
Radiant with encouragement, I returned to the hotel at twilight. For the rest of the night, I checked my phone every few minutes, fully expecting Armstrong to email and tell me Zack had cancelled, that he wasn’t interested in talking to me. In a way that would have been a relief—Zack had left a deeper impression on me than any of the other guys in the platoon, largely because he had been the only one who treated me like a human being, and for the first time in my career, I found myself dreading an interview because I was too shy.