chapter 1

Introduces the conflict and the main character.

The Devil You Know

I’ve been awakened by voices for the past month. They frightened me the first time, but I have patiently grown accustomed to the aimless sound of random night whispers. The first time the words were not discernible, it was a conversations of murmurs that hid from me in the darkness of my room. I tried to write the voices off as the sounds of neighbors arguing with themselves on a personal path to insanity, but eventually I came to the realization that the whispers were mine. Every day I retrace my steps that led from a cheating wife to the lady with the German accent and realize that I am to blame for my present condition. Like a child playing with an adult toy, I was in love.  

I remember the look on the nurse’s face when she informed me. She was an old German lady with a cute accent and large pink rimmed glasses. She had my paper work on her desk and did not even have the common courtesy to look me in the eyes when she told me what I had.

“You have AIDS,” she said, her voice was an emotionless chill that lodged itself into my body with the force of a dozen jarring uppercuts.

          Now every morning I obsess over death and dream of turning brown and dying beautifully like a leaf in the fall. I imagine a painter making my death infinite and honorable with simple brush strokes. As a dying leaf I could live forever in artistic memory. I could be remembered as the leaf that lived, the leaf that grew, and the leaf that fell before the start of a mournful snow.

          I am now on an Army post and pollen is like natures dust on my skin; it makes my eyes water and coats all the cars and sidewalks with its yellow tent. I sit in a cheap white 95 Saturn watching the young soldiers walk to and from barracks, brick offices, and motor pools. It is 90 degrees outside and a million percent humidity.  

          I wonder how many of the soldiers vegetate in offices, waste away behind lawn mowers and paint brushes, or fall asleep at the staff duty desk overnight. I use to think there was shame in that, I served six years and never stepped foot in a single war zone. Now I realize that it does not matter because the people back home don’t know the difference. Everyone here will die with a flag over their coffin, the firing of volley shots, honor guards, and a drumming ceremony.

          I, on the other hand, will die of Aids and there is no 21 gun salute for that.

          The virus that runs through my veins is a blessing and a curse. It is as beautiful as a baby’s cry and a couple’s kiss. I have developed a hunger inside me and I have named it my little monster. The hunger is like love at first sight and it makes me want to live forever. I imagine it is what all the invincible geniuses of history must have felt once they discovered their passion. I will soon die because of a virus that has wedded itself to my fate, but I want to create a piece of art so great that it will live forever.

          I have been a freelance writer for the past five years. I live from paycheck to paycheck writing research pieces about irrelevant topics that people read in airplanes, barbershops, and dentist offices. The key to making money as a freelance writer is to study the topic no one else has patience for. I research mundane stories such as the cost of dog insurance, the sleeping habits of squids, deep sea worms, and the world’s most expensive coffees. These are stories no one is going to remember when I die; my name will never be mentioned for a Pulitzer Prize or appear on the NY times best sellers list. For the past five years boredom has been my only motivation and this is why I must find the most dangerous place in the world and tell the story that people are afraid to tell. I want to report the type of atrocities that will get a man killed or introduce him to the type of horrors that will make him want to die.   

          It starts here waiting in an empty class six parking lot in the middle of the day. I cannot stop checking my watch every sixty seconds as I wait for Girard to show up. He is a special ops pilot and the only guy I know that flies anywhere other than the middle east when outside the states. I hate him for all his chauvinist stories and I know I am going to hear an ear full, but I can put up with him for a couple hours since he is my only ticket to redemption.

I called him once I noticed something unusual in a couple military magazines. There were a dozen Army casualties last month which is a high number, but not enough to cause a stir in the media. Nine of the casualties were in Afghanistan, but the other three stood out like a deer in the woods. They were three pictures of special ops soldiers in a small corner of the obituary section of the Army times. It read that they were killed in central Africa, in a small country called Kano. After a little research I found that there have been mass amputations of civilians by the Kano government, executions by firing squad, a bloody diamond search, and an oil pipe line that runs from the heart of the country to Iran. This has war written all over it.

An hour later Girard and I are sitting in Blue Moon Café, a privately owned hole in the wall bar five minutes from the Market house in Downtown Fayetteville. It is dark inside, the bartender is overweight and lazy, and the food is unhealthy. The abandoned setting is perfect because it’s the kind of place that is dead in the middle of the day. Girard is more likely to talk if no one is around, if only I can entertain all the stories of his immature exploits with laughter. All I need to do is pretend to be interested, display a couple smiles, and skillfully persuade him to give me the information I need.

          “She sat on my face for half an hour,” Girard says and for an instant humility is forced upon him.

I can’t react to this craft that he performs with such skill. Don’t get me wrong, his story telling is an art form; but it is too asinine to move me, too absurd to inspire desire, too grotesque for me to critique. I sit back and wait for him to get three drinks in so I can start pumping information out of him like oil from a well.  

          He talks about an Asian girl named Yen, like the currency. “She’s for ethnic purposes,” he says. “I don’t want anyone to call me racist, so I like to walk around town with an Asian girl in my arms every so often.”

“What’s it like with an Asian?”

“She has a flat face and a flat rear end.”

He tells me about his sugar Mama who lives in Spring Lake. “Her name is Wendy and I need her to gain wisdom,” he says with a cerebral squint in his eyes and a highbrow stroke of his faint blond chin hair. “Tomorrow I am going to Coffee Plantation with Selina. We are going to practice Spanish.” When he informs me of this he rubs his hands together like a fly does when it lands on feces. I desperately want to kill the mood by telling him that I have HIV, but that will only inspire a discussion about all the hookers in Fayetteville.

          I order a couple shots and watch his eyes widen when the clear Patron arrives at the table with a green lime wedged in the glass. I pound it with a quick snap of the wrist and he is quiet for a second because he knows he is now on the spot. He brings the small shot glass to his nose and smells it. He takes out the lime, shoots it and grunts when the liquor sets his throat on fire.

I notice his eyes lids fall a little lower once the shot settles. I am still sober. I train my tolerance daily to withstand hard liquor for when I need to intoxicate information holders.

          “How’s the writing going?” he asks.

          “I’m working on something big.”

          “Is it on the military?”

          “It’s on the war.”

          “Afghanistan?”

          “Kano.”

          Silence. I know I have him thinking.

          “I heard only the best are going there, they say it is the most dangerous place on earth.” I know I can get him to talk if I attack the alpha male side of him.

“Who are ‘they,’” he asks. “The world doesn’t know about Kano yet, hopefully no one ever will.”

“How do I get there?” I ask.

“You don’t want to go to Kano,” he says in a guttural eruption of excitement. “You’re not going to come back unless you join the military and go with a dozen tanks and a Ranger Battalion.”

A mudslide and a four horseman later he tells me that he can be dishonorably discharged for the information he has. He says that Kano is the new gold mine of Africa because it is abundant in oil and diamonds. Once the country struck oil a half year ago there have been threats from all four corners of the country; Egypt and Libya have built military post in Uganda at the north end of the country and are threatening to oust the Kano president, the Nigerians are proposing peace from the west, and South Africa has sent special ops from the south.

If American soldiers have already died in Kano that can only mean that America is planning to instigate a military overthrow of the current Kano regime.

“They have been amputating their civilians,” Girard says. “I was there a month ago when I dropped off a couple dozen civil affairs personnel. I walked around and saw kids with no arms, women with one leg, men missing eyes and feet. There is Rwanda level tribalism going on in Kano. Trust me you don’t want to be there if a civil war breaks out.”

Two hours later I have my tickets from Fayetteville to Amsterdam, then to South Africa, and ending in Zimbabwe. From Zimbabwe I will do a grueling seven day bus ride to Lake Victoria. According to Girard the southern part of Uganda is where I will find my connection to Kano. He is making arrangements for me to meet one of his friends from the French army special ops to give me a ride by boat through the Kano river.

Girard tried to get me to reconsider, he suggested I write a novel and fraternize with classic literature. He said Africa was an Inferno and that there were stories in Afghanistan that were more mentally nutritious. What Girard did not know was that I will die within the next year and failure does not interest me since success is the only other option.

He attempted to play down the situation in Kano, but I know the combination of diamonds and oil is no small matter. I was not going to stop until I squeezed out all the information he had. He finally broke down and gave me trails through the Kano jungle, the specifics of the Kano river and connections to special ops guys he knew working in the Uganda area. The thing about Kano that I love is that it is so easy for violence to go unnoticed in the media. A million people could be massacred in the Kano jungle tomorrow and no one would notice. Everyone would consider the bloodbath business as usual as long as Africa is seen as the dark-continent. Before this virus takes my life I will tell the story of the beckoning revolution in Kano. It will be my final service to humanity, my magnum opus.