Three Courageous Words

While Angela held the arm and spoke to the boy in a soft monotone voice, Buck placed the two flat sticks on either side of the boy’s arm and wrapped the roller gauze around and around until he was certain it would be sufficient to keep the arm immobile. When he finished, he cut the gauze and secured the end.

“Well done,” Angela said. “You look like you’ve done this before.”

He shrugged. “Like I said, I’m the team medic. We’ve had a few bumps, bruises and broken bones.”

Angela nodded. She would bet he’d seen a lot more than that, including gunshot and shrapnel wounds.

The boy woke before they finished and watched the proceedings with interest, no longer tense with pain.

Angela gave him a mild painkiller and one of the bottles of water she’d stashed in her bag. “He should sleep now.”

Buck touched her arm and motioned for her to move away from the boy and his mother. “We need to question him about Koku’s location before he goes to sleep.”

He leaned so close to her, she could feel the warmth of his body. A shiver of awareness slipped across her skin. She almost didn’t register what he said. “He’s been through a lot.”

“We can’t wait. We don’t know if Koku will come back through tonight or tomorrow looking for the van and the people who were in it.”

Still, Angela hated to disturb the boy. He’d been in so much pain.

“I know you want your patient to recover, but we also put the people of this village at risk just by being here,” Buck reasoned. “We need to leave as soon as possible. Preferably at night, to avoid being seen in that van.”

Angela knew he was right. The longer she held off questioning the child, the more likely he’d fall asleep before they could. “Fine. Question him. But how is a child going to be able to give you directions?”

“I don’t know, but I have to try.” He returned to the boy and squatted on the ground beside him. “Are you thirsty?”

Mustafa nodded.

In the glow of the flashlight, Buck held the bottle of water to the boy’s mouth. When he’d had enough, Buck capped it and set it beside the child. “Mustafa, your mother says you were in Koku’s camp?”

The boy’s eyes widened and his gaze darted around.

“It’s okay.” Buck rested a hand on the boy’s arm. “We won’t take you back there. But we want to know where to find Koku. Can you tell us how to get there?”

The boy’s eyes closed for a moment.

Angela thought he’d gone to sleep. Then he opened them and nodded. “I will show you.” He sat up with help from Buck, leaned over the side of the scarf he lay on and drew his finger in the dirt.

“It is a long way. Ten days’ walking.” He dragged his finger in a fairly straight line for a while, then he poked a dot next to the line. “There are one...two—” he poked another dot, then another “—three...four...five villages along the way. The first one is very small, even smaller than my village. The second one is small, too. The third is a town with a church at the center. The missionaries have gone, and the building has been damaged, but it still stands, and it gave me shelter for one night.”

Again, the boy’s eyes closed and he grew silent. Then he opened his eyes as if doing so took great effort. “The next two villages are very much the same as the first—small. The fourth one has an old abandoned truck beside the road—black, like fire burned it. I slept beneath it one day to hide from sight of Koku’s soldiers.”

Angela’s heart squeezed in her chest at the thought of the little boy hiding beneath the burned-out hull of a truck, fearing for his life. He shouldn’t have to be afraid. He should be in school learning to read and write. He should be playing with his friends, able to be a kid for a while longer. Her eyes burned with the hint of tears.

“The fifth town is much larger, like Bentiu, with buildings, houses, stores. There are many of Koku’s men in those streets. It was not safe. I did not enter. I hid in the bushes outside the town. When the sky became dark, I circled the town and continued to follow the road all the way back to my home.”

“After the big town, is that where we will find Koku’s camp?”

The boy shook his head. “There is a place where the one road becomes two.” Mustafa drew a fork in the road that formed a Y. “To get to Koku’s camp, you must take this road.” He pointed at the fork to the left. “I watched when we were taken. I knew that if I escaped, I would have to know the way to return to my home.” The boy lifted his chin. “Koku’s camp is another day’s walking from the fork in the road. Half of a day on the road, another half heading west into the setting sun on a smaller, rougher road, leading into the hills.”

His mother laid a hand on his shoulder. “My son is all I have. If we have to, we will leave our home and find another place to live.”

“You might need to,” Buck advised. “If Koku learns we were here, he might search the entire village and surrounding area.”

After treating so many patients and then having a helicopter land on the back side of the hill where the village was situated, it would be hard to keep the secret that an American doctor and six military men had been there.

For the villagers’ sake, Angela hoped Koku didn’t find out. But she wasn’t banking on it. Now that she had Mustafa on the road to recovery, she realized it was time to move on. And like Buck had said, moving at night made the most sense.

Buck. Calling him Buck made it seem like he was a different person from the one she’d known back in medical school. Perhaps it would help to keep her from falling for him all over again.

Angela gave Mustafa and his mother instructions on how to take care of the broken arm until it was fully healed in six to eight weeks.

Then Buck helped Mustafa into the ramshackle hut, tried to shore up the posts holding the roof up and stepped out.

Angela turned to the boy’s mother. “Fatima, will you be all right taking care of Mustafa?”

The woman nodded. “Now that Mustafa is home, we will make sure we he is not captured again.”

Angela glanced at the hut where the boy lay nestled in the darkness. She understood what would happen to the boy should he be recaptured. Most likely, he’d be shot or tortured to death as a message to others who might attempt escape.

Buck cupped her elbow, his touch sending a spark through her system. “We need to go before the light of dawn,” he said.

Having done all she could for the child, Angela nodded and followed Buck back toward the village.

When they reached the van, a ghostly figure in white robes hovered by the driver’s side. As they neared, the starlight revealed their visitor as Abu Hanafi.

His face was grave. “You said you would be gone by now.”

Angela stepped forward. “We are the last two to leave. We will be gone soon.”

When Buck tried to get around the elder to the driver’s door, the man stood in his way. “This van will be recognized if you try to take it now,” Abu Hanafi said.

“It’s the only transportation we have,” Buck said.

“You have helped my people. I would help you with an alternative to the van.”