Mission Liberty by David DeBatto Page A

I can do.
    Best, Walter

Chapter Five
    DELUCA, VASQUEZ, AND ASABO, BEARING false papers identifying them as Don Brown, from the World Bank, Luis Avila, from the
     National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, and James Hawkins, with Conservation International, were flown to Ghana,
     where they caught a commercial flight to Port Ivory. Sykes and MacKenzie were to enter in a similar fashion via Lagos, transferring
     first at an offshore oil rig. Asabo spoke English without an accent and could therefore pass as an American, though he’d never
     actually taken his American citizenship, but was allowed to stay in the United States indefinitely with the immigration status
     of a political refugee.
    “Don’t forget,” DeLuca reminded Asabo, “from here on, you don’t speak Fasori, or anything local.”
    “Fa-shizzle,” Asabo said dryly.
    It was the first time DeLuca had seen Asabo smile. If the younger man felt any emotion, returning to his home country after
     so many years in exile, he didn’t show it. An official examined their passports, then stamped them without further ado. Asabo
     smiled to see crowds of children surrounding them as they passed through customs, kids trying to sell them clear plastic bags
     of potable water, bars of soap, loaves of bread, Pez dispensers, packs of chewing gum, brass napkin holders, polished gourds,
     anything they could get their hands on that they thought wealthy foreigners might want to buy. Other children simply held
     out their hands and begged, pleading with their eyes, some licking their lips or touching their lips with their fingers to
     indicate they were hungry. Soon Asabo stopped smiling.
    “Look at their teeth,” he said to DeLuca, who noted that most were missing teeth or were in need of orthodontia. “When I left,
     there were no candy bars in Liger, and none of the children had cavities. Now they all do, apparently.”
    Grown men held out thick stacks of Zudas, the local currency, offering to change their American dollars, though the exchange
     rate was fluctuating wildly on virtually an hourly basis, depending on how the war was going. DeLuca held on to his cash.
     Dispersed throughout the mob were soldiers carrying machine guns, unsmiling men in maroon berets and wraparound sunglasses,
     their pants tucked into matching maroon gaiters.
    “If we can get to the cab rank without getting shot,” DeLuca said sotto voce, “I think we’re in the clear.”
    He asked the cab driver, a man named Jumee, to take them, first, on a tour of the city. The driver complied as best he could,
     although the central part of the city along the coast, between the presidential palace and the Castle of St. James, was cordoned
     off by soldiers manning roadblocks, black smoke still rising above the skyline, an acrid stench of burning rubber leaking
     in through the taxi’s windows. When DeLuca asked the cab driver if he had any idea what the situation was at the soccer stadium,
     he just shrugged as if he didn’t and hadn’t heard anything. DeLuca noticed a spot on the dashboard where Jumee kept his small
     statuette of the Virgin Mary, which now rested on the seat beside him, out of view. The radio played nonstop music, innocuous
     Afro-pop and smooth-grooved crap by Sting and Phil Collins, without commentary or commercial interruptions. He saw men carting
     away rubble in wheelbarrows and hand-drawn carts from broken buildings, funeral processions of mourners clad in decorous local
     textiles, children wandering alone, little short-haired dogs with skin conditions, a church where a line of young men in white
     shirts and baggy dress pants but no shoes waited to enter, holding Bibles in their hands. He saw broken shop windows, dumped
     garbage, looted stores, empty boxes in the streets, broken televisions and DVD players smashed against the pavement, walls
     mottled with bullet pockings, bloodstains, raw sewage, people crouched around cook fires, and whenever they slowed,