Wilton's body wound tight, the muscles in her arms jerking, she yanked with savage concentration on the beam she gripped. A cascade of rocks and concrete fell. Wilton blinked into the tiny cavern, saw a beam of sunlight made its way through the settling dust. She could see Pastor Josiah's eyes, looking at her, myopically blinking wide with terror. His mouth opened and closed like a hookworm's, ragged with blood. She braced, then hauled the rest of the teetering building down on his head. His nice bald American head. She struggled in that dust-cloud blindness to throw, shove, propel every bit of rubble and stone on him, to crush him, bury him before anyone might come and see. She shoveled dirt forward with frantic hands. He must be buried. It must be over now. She needed it to be over now. All of it.

Pebbled chunks of concrete, pieces of metal, refuse from the ditch. She pried with her fingers, tearing at the piles of wrecked building and wall, digging in the deep ditch, moving the world. Burying it, ending it.

Once you start, you can't stop.

Chapter 65: Gilman.

February 1969 Uli Area, Biafra Startled to see Taffy Masters walking into her clinic, Gilman thought he'd never approach the hospital unless he'd been shot again. Or was Jantor injured? Taffy rapped his swagger stick against his leg as though embarrassed. Her heart pounded but he spoke before she could, his leathery face squinting.

"Doc," he said. "I've got a friend of yours outside. Found her in Umuahia after the bombing yesterday. Some chum of hers dead. She spent hours trying to dig him out from under a collapsed building. Civilian bombing site. She freaked. I..."

Gilman jumped up.

"You brought her to me," she said, pushing past him before he could answer. "Masters, I owe you. Big time."

"Hey, watch it, Doc," he said. "You'd better..."

His words had no hold on her. She hurried through the door.

What kind of injury might Wilton have suffered that made Masters so anxious? Shock? God forbid-rape? Who'd died? What did one say? Not until she stood by the side of the vehicle and looked Wilton in the face did Gilman realize that anything she said wouldn't make a difference.

Gilman forced herself to act, aware of Taffy Masters standing somewhere a distance behind her. There was nothing he could say to help.

"Wilton." Gilman felt astonished at the natural sound of her own voice. "I'm glad you've come back. We missed you here. It's been crazy busy."

At the Land Rover she reached for Wilton's hand, drawing back when she saw the battered oozing fingers. Instead of the hand, she took Wilton by one wrist. No resistance. The other arm clenched a sealed cardboard box and a canvas bag to her side.

"Come on, Wilton," Gilman said. "We have to take care of this. You shouldn't leave cuts like these unwashed, they'll get infected. This is Africa, you know."

Wilton submitted to her gentle tugging, lurching out of the Land Rover with a suddenness that nearly toppled both down. Masters and the nearer soldier helped to steady them, then Wilton found an uncertain balance, still clutching her goods.

"Twenty days," Wilton said.

It seemed inconceivable that any face so dead of expression and so lacking in response could have spoken. Gilman saw Masters's grim expression and felt an unbearable panic. Clean her up, fix those hands. She'd be better when she had something to drink. Wouldn't she? They moved the patient toward the clinic door.

"Wilton," Gilman said. "I need your consent."

She sat by the cot. Other more urgent cases had delayed her until now, but she wanted to do this job under the best light she could get, and while she still could focus. Wilton stared up at the ceiling, her box and bag laid on her stomach. Nothing to see up there but the olive canvas roof and maybe a spider.

Gilman could put Wilton under now that the vitals had stabilized. She turned Wilton's inflamed fingers between her own, noting the glitter of imbedded slivers of glass. Wilton caught her hands away and clenched them together. Gilman winced.

"Wilton." Gilman tried to coax the hands apart. "This is Gilman. Remember me? Please? Please listen."

She looked over at Sister Catherine and Allingham, who stood outside the doorway. She saw Allingham glance at the sister, maybe looking for advice to pass on, but the nun didn't notice, intent on the patient.

Wilton turned her head with unfocused eyes, then rolled it back again.

"Let's get an IV going," Gilman said to Sister Catherine, trying to think. "She needs more rehydration, plus a sedative so we can get to work. I don't think we have any hope of gaining her consent, so let's just pretend we did."

Chapter 66: Wilton.

February 1969 Uli Area, Biafra "Wilton, wake up, please..."

From the haze of something deeper than sleep, Wilton could hear. She could have seen if she tried, but kept her lids sealed against the world. Let them think her incapacitated. Noises warned her of the presence of others, she felt them with her skin, the movement of air, the vibration of their nearness. Too tired to pull herself back into one person, she let herself fragment, slide away and drop down into that safer place.

"Wilton? Wake up, please?"

She'd been hearing this same cadence. It beat upon her, irritating, urging, gentle and repulsive in its tender intonation. Wilton barely lifted her lids, saw Gilman bent near, blurred face. Wilton rolled her eyes up. Let Gilman see the whites and leave her alone. Leave her. Until God wakes me, I leave life. Until I leave until leaves fall until the fall of leaves until He leaves me from my fall.

Pain woke her the next time. She let it move in waves through her pulsing hands and arms, the knitting-needle stab in her side, the throbbing of her head. She felt sweat under bandages, the irritant fever of living. She felt her fingers swell with too much blood. Slit them, let it go, let it all flow.

No one with her. She let her bones sink into the lumpy cot mattress, let knowledge seep through. No one to see her pray. No one to hear her ask God for her last chance. She must give herself. A true gift given with willing heart.

The decision tree of Abraham. The whispers in her dreams said, there is no lesser sacrifice. No escape. For God you kill what you love. So the next question is how.

For Abraham there was a ram in the bushes. Surely, she did not sin if in her act she left a chance for God to send an alternate sacrifice. It is not because I would cheat You of what is due. It is because I would put the choice in Your Hands.

Chapter 67: Gilman.

February 1969 Uli, Biafra Gilman unlocked the door to her frame tent as quietly as she could manage, knowing from the past few days' experience that Wilton might go ballistic if startled. She cringed inside while she eased the door open, peering around the edge of the frame. At first in the darkness she could see almost nothing and waited for her pupils to adjust. Would Wilton be sleeping? She looked first at the cots.

No, Wilton stood at the far end of the tent, vaguely outlined against the dense drab of the tent side. On her own two feet. Wow. Oh, that was a huge improvement. Gilman drew in her breath to warn Wilton she was coming in, then thought better of it and knocked softly on the wooden door frame.

What happened next was fast. Wilton jerked around and Gilman saw the gleam of metal in her bandaged hands. All Gilman heard in her head was Jantor saying "Self-injury...never understood it." Wilton's hands rose, the gun clasped in bandaged fingers.

Gilman flung herself across the room, knocking the revolver out of Wilton's fumbling hands, and thrust Wilton against the desk. The revolver fired. In the strange silence after, Wilton fell across the chair. Even knowing that the gun had gone off from striking the floor, Gilman held her breath, scrambling back to her feet. Running feet and calling voices outside. She saw Wilton pull herself into a sitting position, shaking, as if everything hurt her.

"I'm sorry, Wilton," she said. She babbled. Slow down, soothe. "I was afraid, you startled me. Where did you find that? You shouldn't be handling guns. You'll scare the shit out of all of us. In fact I think you already have."

She'd left it in the locked drawer of her desk. Jantor used to mock her for keeping a loaded revolver under lock and key. Said it would be useless when she needed it. But she still had all her keys dangling on a string around her neck, normally hidden between her breasts but now out swinging, clinking against the buttons of her shirt because she'd pulled them out to get into her tent. Wilton moved again, straightening herself, staring in the dim at Gilman while a voice shouted outside.

"Doctor, you all right in there?"

"Okay in here." She drew a long breath. She sidled to the gun, scooped it up, slipped on the safety. "Accident. Dropped the damned gun. Anyone hurt out there?"

"No, dammit, Gilman. Talk about a fool thing to do," Allingham's voice coarse with rage. "For Chrissake..."

"Got enough people shooting at us without you joining in," Sister Catherine said from somewhere outside.

"God will give you peace," Wilton said, clear, perfect. She placed her bandaged hands in her lap.

Gilman puttered about the tent for as long as she could, but she got nothing from Wilton who sat at the desk like a doll, her face slackening back to that idiot look that Gilman found so unbearable.

Checking the drawer, Gilman found the lock hadn't been broken. How could she have been so damned thoughtless to leave it unlocked with a patient alone in the room? Criminal carelessness. She would never be so stupid again. In fact she'd use the holster and belt Jantor gave her, damn his eyes, and make sure the cursed thing stayed as far from Wilton as possible.

She tried to coax another word or act out of Wilton, but Wilton slipped so far away again that she soiled herself sitting there in the chair and Gilman had to clean her before moving her back to the cot. Gilman took the restraining straps to secure her friend, though she struggled with a disconnect between who this was and what she had to do.

Gilman stood for a while in the faint chill after lighting her lantern. Wilton belonged on the ward instead of in this seclusion. She wasn't safe, that was for sure. So hard to make a decision, maybe a side effect of not enough to eat. Gilman had asked Sister Joseph to stay here last night while Gilman was on duty, but she couldn't keep demanding extra service. Pure luck Wilton hadn't snuck the revolver last night. And there were other things than revolvers.

She went to find the orderlies to move Wilton back to the ward. She couldn't see any more ways to fail.

Chapter 68: Gilman.

February 1969 Uli Area, Biafra "Well you know she can't stay here," Gilman said. She fretted about infection in Wilton's hands. Had she really removed all the glass? Metal was easier to find. She sat across the little table from Sister Catherine in their post op room and tried to find answers in the triangle of the nun's face.

"I've got to take her away," Gilman said, answering herself. "We don't have the sodium pentothal to treat her. I've never worked with shell shock before, and hell, Sister, what if I tried the standard procedures and blew it? She's got to get into the hands of a specialist. Once I get Wilton to Lindsey..."

"But I can't understand why you're taking her to Lindsey," Sister Catherine said. "You've always been suspicious of Lindsey. Why turn around and believe in her now? You ought to pack up and head back to the States, Gilman. That's your best chance to get out of here. Find a life there, out in the American West somewhere. There's got to be a place that you'd be welcome. Make a home."

"You telling me you think Biafra's lost?"

"None of the important nations has recognized Biafra. We needed that to win."

"That's not true. Biafra's been recognized by other nations."

"Five," Sister Catherine said. "And who are they? Gabon, Haiti, Zambia, Cote d'Ivorie, Tanzania. No nation that really counts or can give us arms."

"Well, France sold us some."

"Do you honestly think that's worth a damn? France likes our money. We're blockaded, we're starving, Nigeria's outgunned us and the sooner by God's Grace we're allowed to lose, the better it will be for all these poor people. If not, we're all going down like a patient with gangrene. Inch by inch and limb by limb." Tears brimmed over in the blue eyes.

Appalled, angry, Gilman stared. "Well go home already, if that's how you see it," she said and her throat hurt.

"I'm not leaving yet." The nun blotted her eyes with her sleeve. "Excuse me. The matter at hand-this idea of taking Wilton over the border into Nigeria to Lagos or Ibadan makes no sense. You're avoiding the real question. What if Lindsey doesn't want her?"

"Wilton can't stay here at Uli, but she's got to stay in Africa. That much I know. The closer she can stay to the place of her deracinating event the better. She had her breakdown in Umideke. They say in the book what devastates shell shock victims is putting the seal on their guilt by taking them away to a different location for safety , making them both deserted and deserting. So we absolutely can't send her to the States. That would symbolize desertion for sure. Lindsey in Lagos is the best we can do. Dammit, Sister, Wilton deserves the chance, however difficult it is to get her there."

Gilman got up and paced across the small room. "Sandy'll want her. Lindsey has to want her. Of course she will. Lindsey and Sandy, they can manage anything. Wilton's always been close to Lindsey..."

"What if it's not shell shock?" Sister Catherine asked.

"I don't know. What are you suggesting?"

The nun shook her head.

"I wrote a note to Tom," Gilman said. "Asked him to come by."

Sister Catherine looked at her, no smile, no agreement.

"Have you told Wilton about going to Lindsey?" Sister Catherine stood up as though she'd decided not to question Gilman's plans any more.

"Couple hours ago. I don't know how much she understands. Some days I think she understands a lot, and then...it's like nothing's getting through."

"Keep her under restraints," Sister Catherine said. "You don't want to regret anything."

Gilman waited for Jantor. She lit her desk lantern and went out under the jacaranda tree leaving the door closed but for a hairline thread. She counted on Jantor coming to answer her note. She needed him, his warm shape and the comfort of his hands and his listening. Needed his help, his connections. Oh that sounded bad. Now you need him, you're going to ask him back, so he'll be easy to use.

The night held some sounds that Gilman couldn't identify. She leaned under a tree in the warm blackness, straining her senses for a rustle, for a warning, then she heard a thin wavering trill. Perhaps an insect, something not good to eat, that was for sure.

On the horizon she saw the last rich blue fade until the branches of trees melted into the sky. She shuddered. No dark in America had ever been so profound as this. All things die, and most fight it, but here she could almost believe in her own death. In walking into blackness like someone so tired, she knew it was the right path to take and no longer cared.

Her mind crowded with the images of the day, a day too long and slow and full. She forced her thoughts to Jantor and his war. But who was she fooling-it was her war, and Sister Catherine's war, even Allingham's. Sister Catherine talked like they could simply pack up and leave. Allingham sounded like he'd go tomorrow. But none of them did.

Jantor hardly talked about the Congo and the "fucking Kaffirs." But he talked of his Biafrans as if he saw heroes. He'd shot Samuel for some infraction of his authority. How did she reconcile these things? Was it her job to do so? Was it any of her business? If it were, she'd never have kissed him, would she? She didn't even know what Samuel was supposed to have done. How would she respond to Jantor telling her she made a surgical mistake? But what Jantor does is wrong. It's all killing. So then, Gilman, walk away.

She breathed fear, they all did, even the priests and nuns. She'd imagined herself in a movie, dressed in surgical whites, her hands healing pain, disease and destruction. But it was filthy work from beginning to end, sour and grimy with panic.

Jantor kills to save us. To save the people here. The people he's paid to save. I'm meeting Jantor for Wilton.

Fucking liar. You want him and this is the easy way. Ask him for something you know he can do. Tell him he's wonderful for doing it, because it's true. He could easily turn his back.

So why do you think he won't?

That was the answer to all questions. She knew he wouldn't refuse her. And sooner or later she had to admit that nothing he did in his profession was hers to judge any more than he judged her. If she had a problem with that, then she belonged in America. Tomorrow. Now.

If she could do anything at all, as Wilton had once made her believe, what would it be? Assassinate Ojukwu? Assassinate Gowon? Have a major outside power enter the fray and rescue Biafra? Cavalry over the hill? Hell, the horses would all keel over from sleeping sickness.

Where was the United States when they really needed help? The champion of freedom. The whole world was watching, oh yes, but it watched a spectacle in which it wouldn't dirty its hands.

Where was Jantor? Could he have been injured and no one told her? He would keep his men from telling her if he were hurt. Exhaustion and shock had made her too vulnerable, and even in the heat of the night, she shivered. Her stomach clenched in on itself.

Then she saw him, even before she heard the grate of his boots in the gravel. That dear profile, the way his shoulders turned. She ran across the yard.

"God, Gilman." He grabbed her shoulders. "I coulda shot you, coming at me like that out of the dark. What the fucking hell is wrong with you?"