Congo Dawn Read online

  No, that wasn’t fair. Colonel Duncan had genuinely loved his sweet, pretty wife, and her health had undoubtedly been a top priority. Their middle child was young enough not to protest becoming Robin while her younger brother went by the unabridged Christopher until he reached an age to shorten it to Chris outside the immediate family.

  “My Christopher Robin,” their mother termed the pair whimsically. And indeed the two had grown up more as twins than mere siblings. Especially since Robin had been the proverbial tomboy, leading the way into every outdoor sport, adventure, and mischief available to herself and Chris.

  Which might have been where the trouble started.

  Christina O’Boyle Duncan had not forgotten her aspirations of returning to Africa. Robin could admit her father had requested assignment to the US embassy’s Marine detail in Nairobi as much to make his wife happy as because it was an excellent career move. Those years the Duncans had spent in Africa, first in Kenya, then on assignment in Tanzania, followed by a tour of duty back on US soil, then a second tour at the Nairobi embassy, were as perfect a childhood as any little girl could want. Once her youngest was old enough to start classes at the international school, Christina had returned to work as an attaché in the embassy’s consular division. And if Colonel Duncan was by nature reserved and always busy, he still knew in those days how to smile.

  A change in the twin props’ rhythm brought Robin back to the present. The plane had now reached cruising altitude. From the sun’s position and a map included in her country overview, their flight path followed a slightly southwest trajectory to Bunia. Directly below, the winged shadow was now flitting across tall, rocky peaks of the Blue Mountains that divided the DRC from Uganda. Off to Robin’s left, a sparkle of water was Lake Albert, famed as the backdrop for Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn’s World War II standoff with the Germans in the film classic The African Queen. Through a porthole across the aisle, open savannah and rolling green hills stretched to a darker green stain on the far horizon.

  The perimeter of the Ituri Rainforest.

  From this height, it was all as beautiful and serene as the Paradise of legend, with no hint of the wars and blood that had stained its red soil. Undoubtedly Robin’s memories were also rose tinted by the halcyon veil of childhood. Certainly she’d had no knowledge of the darker issues facing Africa and its people. Her memories were rather of the throat-catching beauty of Kenya’s Rift Valley. The thunderous noise and rising mist of Victoria Falls. The white-capped majesty of Mount Kilimanjaro. Open-air markets and thatched huts and Masai herdsmen with their cattle. School days, sleepovers, and field trips with her friends at the international school.

  Perhaps all images one might expect from a privileged, sheltered expatriate child. But there were wonderful memories, too, of her mother’s many African friends and their children, from whom Robin had learned her first Swahili. While in Nairobi, Christina O’Boyle Duncan had insisted they attend services at the Kenyan church her father helped found, its toe-tapping music and warm exuberance a far cry from the Episcopalian liturgy that was the Duncan clan’s concession to religious observance.

  Yes, up to Friday, August 7, 1998, Robin’s memories offered no reason for bitterness. The three Duncan offspring had been at a school friend’s pool party when Robin felt the blast, enough to wonder if there’d been an earthquake before diving back into the water. Hours passed before adults interrupted with a terrible story of explosive-laden trucks detonating outside the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Among the American dead was embassy attaché Christina O’Boyle Duncan. Later investigations would tie the bombings to an Islamic fundamentalist group named al-Qaeda, placing its leader, Osama bin Laden, on the Most Wanted Terrorists list.

  For Robin it was the end of innocence. Of childhood. Of eyes that saw only beauty in her world. Of possessing a father who smiled or spoke as though to a daughter instead of a raw Marine recruit.

  With what seemed indecent haste, the three Duncan children were repatriated stateside to live with Colonel Duncan’s sister, un­married with no children of her own. Looking back with the eyes of an adult, Robin could admit it likely wasn’t easy for Colonel Duncan to pick up the parenting pieces with three grieving, sullen offspring on his rare visits stateside. She could understand her father’s preference for his pretty oldest daughter, so like his deceased wife. She could even understand, if not accept, his disapproval of Robin’s own rebellion against the proper conduct of any Duncan female.

  What Robin could not, would not, ever accept or forgive was Colonel Duncan’s treatment of the wonderful young man whom destiny had fated to be the last Christopher Robert Duncan.

  “Touchdown in ten minutes. Let’s lock and load, boys.”

  At Trevor Mulroney’s terse announcement over the intercom, Robin sat up with a jerk. She must have dozed off after all because the mountain peaks and blue glitter of Lake Albert had both dis­appeared beyond her window. Instead rolling, tree-cloaked hills were giving way to a flat, arid plain. As the twin prop dropped in altitude, Robin located on the horizon a haze of smog and dust.

  Bunia, regional capital of Ituri province.

  Somewhere behind Robin, the creak of a folding door panel was followed by a Serbian operative hurrying past her up the aisle. A reminder that the rear of this plane presumably held the first functioning restroom since their C-130 had touched down in Arua. Unbuckling her seat belt, Robin pushed to her feet. She was not alone. All along the cabin, sprawled bodies were now heaving to upright positions, adjusting wraparound sunglasses, stowing electronics and other belongings in knapsacks.

  Not quite all.

  “Dr. Michael Stewart, did I remember that right?” The accordion folds of a travel map blocked the view of a nearby row’s two occupants as Robin slid out into the aisle, but Pieter Krueger’s self-assured South African inflection was impossible to mistake. “I really appreciated the helping hand getting our team across the border back there. Didn’t you say something then about working for Doctors Without Borders? That you’re stationed at some medical compound in the rainforest near Bunia? It sounded like you know this part of the Congo well. I was hoping you might give me some input on this map before we land.”

  “My pleasure.” The quiet reply confirmed the long, brown fingers holding the porthole side of the map as belonging to Michael. “And I really appreciate this lift to Bunia.”

  “It’s this northeast quadrant that I’m interested in.” There was a rustle as the map was folded into a more manageable rectangle. “By the way, I couldn’t help noticing you’re acquainted with our new team translator. A small world. Or are you the reason our pretty little bokkie took a contract in such a nasty back alley of Africa?”

  Robin could have slapped that suggestive bark of laughter. But Michael responded dispassionately. “Actually, it was quite a surprise. I haven’t seen or heard from Robin Duncan in years. Not since we served together in Afghanistan when I was a Navy medic assigned to the Marines there.”

  Conversation broke off abruptly as brown and blue eyes with remarkably similar cool expressions flickered her way, and Robin suddenly realized she was only too obviously standing stationary in the aisle, eavesdropping. Her face warmed as she whirled around to push in on the restroom’s folding door.

  The plane restroom was not only functional but had running water to wipe away red dust from face and arms. Much refreshed, Robin eased open the folding door with a silence that acknowledged deliberate intent to eavesdrop.

  “Yes, I grew up in Taraja and know that area well,” Michael’s quiet tones were explaining civilly. “My grandparents actually founded the hospital and school there. Back then it was an easy day’s drive from Bunia with a pretty decent road.

  “Beyond Taraja is where you get into real deep rainforest. There is still the occasional scattered village, but no roads, just bike trails and footpaths. And even when I lived out there as a kid, the road from Bunia to Taraja was so deteriorated, we basically kept to m
ission planes for transporting personnel, supplies, and more urgent medical cases back and forth from Bunia. I assume you’re aware Taraja was razed to the ground like every other settlement in the area when the worst of the fighting swept through there a decade ago. My parents were among the casualties, and without medical staff, the place remained abandoned for years.”

  Taraja. The childhood home of which Michael had told Robin so many stories back when they’d been on speaking terms. Taraja was the Swahili word for hope. An appropriate enough name for Christian missionaries to choose for their home. Michael had never mentioned the compound’s destruction or his parents’ deaths. But then Robin had never told him the less happy portions of her own life history. Perhaps because Afghanistan contained too much misery of its own to introduce past griefs.

  “Taraja actually reopened about six months ago, thanks to some new mining operation that cleared the road, making it possible to get out there and patch up the airstrip and clinic. But from what I’ve heard, that mining operation closed as quick as it opened. I’ve only been back in the Congo three months myself, and I’ve always traveled out to Taraja by plane. So I couldn’t really tell you whether or not you could move any sizable operational force over that road. What I can tell you is that it would take more time than you might care to invest.”

  “That’s all I needed to know.”

  “My pleasure. And again, thanks for the lift.”

  As a rustle indicated the map was being refolded, Robin quickly slipped out of the bathroom and into her own seat. There was no reason why her hands should be trembling as she made sure her own belongings were all safely tucked away in her knapsack. Straight ahead now on the plateau, a grid of red-dirt streets, corrugated metal roofs, thatched shacks, and occasional clusters of taller concrete and brick buildings was rapidly expanding. The twin prop dropped again, abruptly enough for Robin’s stomach to rise into her throat. But neither that discomfort nor their fast-approaching destination kept her mind from returning her thoughts again to the past. This time to a less distant past.

  A difficult birth and sickly infancy might explain why Christina O’Boyle Duncan’s only male contribution to the family tree was slight and small for his age, but not his preference for sketch pad and paintbrush over a football or gun. In their childhood, Robin had instinctively sought to deflect Colonel Duncan’s disapproval by pulling Christopher into her own athletic interests. But that couldn’t last forever. Her brother was simply too gifted an artist, his quiet, contemplative personality as stubborn in its own way as his father’s.

  Which didn’t keep Colonel Duncan from striving to change his son. When home on leave, he’d done his best to interest Christopher in his Duncan heritage, dragging him to firing ranges and exercise grounds. But by the time Robin’s younger brother reached adolescence, his father simply despised him.

  The irony was that Robin would have given all her possessions to step into her brother’s shoes. Fiercely proud of her family heritage, she wanted nothing more than to follow in the Marine footsteps of her father and grandfather and the long line of warrior Duncans before them. When Colonel Duncan dropped in long enough to enroll Christopher in the military academy where male Duncans had attended for generations, Robin had pleaded to join her brother.

  That was a mistake.

  While said academy had long since opened its doors to gender equality, Robin wasn’t ignorant of her father’s opinions on females in the military. Even worse, their invasion of that bastion of un­adulterated testosterone, the United States Marine Corps. A Duncan female so staining the family honor was a more offensive moral lapse than a son who preferred paintbrush to assault rifle. Why couldn’t Robin model herself on her older sister? Was her father to have only one child who wasn’t a complete disappointment?

  Since Robin knew too well whence she’d inherited her own stubborn­ness, she didn’t even try to change her father’s mind. Instead she charted her own course, joining the ROTC, then enlisting immediately upon graduation in the Marine Corps. Finishing top of her boot camp class, she’d been accepted to Officer Candidates School with a specialty in languages, adding Spanish, Arabic, and Pashto to her Swahili and the French she’d studied in school. When three years later she received her second lieutenant commission, Colonel Duncan hadn’t bothered coming to the ceremony, though Kelli and her aunt were there to applaud.

  But not Chris.

  As much as her father disapproved of Robin’s career choice, he’d raved furiously when Chris graduated with honors from the military academy only to announce he was enrolling in art school. Colonel Duncan had called Chris ugly names, accusing him of things that had no basis outside his own stereotypes and prejudices, then given him twenty-four hours to report to Marine boot camp. Instead Chris had moved out, bouncing back and forth for the next year between friends’ couches and dead-end jobs.

  Robin remembered vividly the day Chris called to let her know he’d just arrived at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island, South Carolina.

  “I’m not enlisting to please Dad. Or even to get him off my back. It’s just the only way I’ll ever get the funds for any serious art school. I’ll do one tour of duty, then use the benefits for a decent college art program, maybe even Paris. Besides, maybe there’s enough Duncan blood in me. I’d like to prove I’m capable of being a good Marine before choosing to be a good artist.”

  Chris had proved it so well that Colonel Duncan consented to join his two daughters for his namesake’s boot camp graduation. By the time Chris shipped out to Afghanistan, Kelli had fulfilled her own family expectations by marrying a tall, good-looking Marine armed combat instructor. Robin’s own deployment to Afghanistan had come six months later, her language skills and officer’s commission co­inciding with a new program that embedded female Marines in combat units to help engage with Afghan women.

  A bonus was being reunited with her younger brother. Robin had no doubt her brother was on-site from the moment she walked into the Kandahar base and spotted delicate but powerful black-and-white ink drawings tacked up on the walls.

  Drawings that exquisitely captured not just a soldier’s daily life but the stark southern Afghanistan landscape, the worry and defiance on a village elder’s face, the grime and grin of a small boy toting an AK-47.

  If still slight of build and quiet of speech, Chris had earned his own respect and even popularity among his Marine peers. Both for the sharp perception so evident in his art and for being a soldier who could be counted on to do his job competently, unstintingly, and under fire. His superiors had even proposed publishing his portfolio of a Marine’s life in Afghanistan.

  Robin had been so proud of Chris—not just of his accomplishments, but of the intelligent, thoughtful human being he’d become. Would their father ever have come to see that a Duncan son could be both artist and man of honor?

  She would never find out because within the year both were gone.

  As was his closest friend, United States Navy Petty Officer First Class Michael Stewart.

  Just down the aisle, Pieter Krueger had gotten to his feet and was heading back to his own seat. Robin caught Michael’s gaze on her and quickly turned her head to the window. But it wasn’t the plateau rushing up toward the plane Robin saw there.

  By the time combat medic Michael Stewart had deployed to Afghanistan, he’d already tucked under his belt a bachelor of science­ and the classroom half of a general medical degree. If he spent little time in the horseplay and joviality of off-duty Marines, it was because he’d laid out a clear and pressing goal for himself. Attain a Navy scholarship to finish his medical training. Put in the necessary years to reimburse the Navy for its investment. Then return to Africa where he’d grown up as the son of medical missionaries.

  Robin hadn’t been in the same Marine platoon as her brother and Michael. But the three spent every available off-duty moment together, their similar expatriate African childhoods a common bond. Robin was not quite sure at first just what she foun
d so attractive in her brother’s friend. Maybe Michael’s easy acceptance of his friend’s sister that let Robin be for once nothing more or less than herself. The spell of his childhood stories and descriptions of an African rainforest that reminded Robin of happier times. His determination to serve not just his country but his fellow man.

  Or perhaps it was the simplicity of his faith that carried Robin back to her mother as nothing had in years. When on base, the three friends attended the same contemporary Christian Sunday service. On several occasions when the chaplain was absent, Michael had taken his place. For all his family background, Michael was no hammer-­over-the-head preacher, but calmly matter-of-fact as though a loving Creator God was such an incontestable no-brainer that despite all this planet’s stark contradictions of ugliness and darkness, the subject needed no debate.

  Perhaps because of a similar missionary heritage, Christina O’Boyle Duncan, too, had exuded just such warm, unquestioning faith, and sometimes when Michael’s quiet baritone expounded a Bible passage, Robin could close her eyes and almost feel the gentle brush of her mother’s hand over her hair and face instead of a scorching Kandahar breeze. That forgotten sense of security, love, and an almighty God still on his throne that had been life before August 7, 1998.

  Yes, Robin had found herself liking Petty Officer First Class Michael Stewart very much.

  Which only made Michael’s ultimate betrayal far worse. If not for Colonel Duncan, Robin’s brother would never have found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time on that sweltering Kandahar summer afternoon. But if not for Michael, he’d never have lost his life there.

  Robin wasn’t even supposed to be on that mission to a village rumored to be a Taliban arms depot. But the female engagement officer assigned to her brother’s unit had a bad case of Kandahar’s revenge, and Chris hadn’t hesitated to recommend his sister’s Pashto skills. Their Chinook transport helicopter had just disgorged the Marine unit when gunfire broke out. Robin’s brother went down in the first volley. A rocket-propelled grenade tore through the propellers before the chopper could retreat off the ground.