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Yet even with his teasing attitude, Rusty took his job seriously. Terrorism wasn't funny. Neither was fundamentalist Islam. Neither was famine, neither was genocide. Yet Rusty went to Palestine and interviewed members of terrorist groups, and went to London to talk to Muslims from a radical mosque, and went to Darfur where refugees were starving when they weren't being machine-gunned or bombed, and then played the tapes on the air.
He said to dangerous fanatics some of the things that Americans were dying to say. His listeners cheered. Of course, he ran the risk of literally dying for having said it. These were often pretty humorless people. But Rusty knew that his grin was better than Davy Crockett's—he had a talent for looking merry and happy no matter what he was actually saying, so bad people couldn't really believe they were being ridiculed to their faces. He walked out of some pretty dire places alive.
So Rusty's listeners were used to the idea that when something truly wasn't funny, Rusty would still find what was funny about it—while speaking truth to violent men. If there was a trouble spot, and he could get a visa and transportation, Rusty went there.
The trouble was that epidemics couldn't be jollied along. As Rusty's producer said to him, "You can't interview the virus. And all the people are dying."
So he hadn't tried to get into Africa until President Torrent made an exception to his quarantine. With the departure of hundreds of Christians to try to minister to the sick and dying, Rusty saw his chance. If these people could go there, he could get there, too. The problem was going to be getting back. He talked with his contacts in the Pentagon and they promised him that if he would consent to spend three weeks in quarantine before coming home, they could get him at least to the ships off the Nigerian coast.
That was his ticket in. He knew that once he was on a ship, he'd get to shore, and once on shore, he'd get his interviews and let his listeners know something about what it was like to be in the middle of a plague zone. Afterward he'd sit out the quarantine. Wherever the quarantine was, maybe he could do his show. If he had to, he'd do three weeks of radio over the phone.
As with his trip to Darfur back in 2008, he'd find humor in his own woes, while taking the victims of the sneezing flu—and the Christians who had risked everything to come and care for them—seriously.
And without his ever saying so, his listeners would know that he, too, had risked his life.
It would be great radio.
That was his plan, and so far it was working. Mrs. Malich had inadvertently given him a terrific interview—he didn't mind a bit when he got treated like in-your-face condescending journalists, because he knew his listeners loved hearing journalists get slapped around a little, even when it was a journalistic good guy like Rusty. You put a microphone in the face of a smart, honest American woman while she was busy trying to heal the sick, and you darn well should be given what for.
The danger was that he couldn't really make his recordings with a breathing mask muffling his voice. So he had to make sure he talked only to people who didn't have the nicto, because he really did want to return home to his half-orphan daughters. They didn't deserve to lose yet another parent.
Yet if he had to die, better to do it drumming up support for a good cause, while trying to tell people how to cope with an epidemic that was bound to hit American shores sooner or later, despite President Torrent's apparent belief that he could hold back the tide and move mountains to improve the view.
Was he the only person in America who wasn't shiveringly thrilled every time Torrent opened his mouth? Come on, kids, the man's been president for three years, he's revealed himself to have the instincts of your standard liberal-bordering-on-socialist politician. Doesn't it bother anybody that this guy has tight control over the nominating and funding process in both parties? That you can't get a major party's nomination to either house of Congress without sucking up to him first?
And now this quarantine—part of Rusty's pleasure in being here was the fact that these Christian demonstrators had practically forced Torrent to change his policy. He had it on good authority—a friend who was at the meeting—that Mrs. Malich had really helped change his mind. Rusty wished someone like her would run for president, but he knew she had too much sense. Isn't that the main problem with American politics? We keep having to choose among candidates who are so stupid they want the job, and so egocentric they think they can do it.
So he was standing on the side of a main road talking to a couple of African Methodist Episcopalians, a married couple who were retired. When they heard about the epidemic, they knew they had to spend their last years—or, if things went badly, their last weeks—ministering to the sick. "It's how we walk in the footsteps of Jesus," said the wife. "He said, 'Come follow me,' and then where did he go? To the sick and afflicted."
She had a great way of talking, and the husband interjected wry comments now and then, which she slapped down in a half-playful way that Rusty knew would get great laughs from both men and women in the audience.
Then he heard a truck coming up the road. That was fairly rare in Calabar, even now that things were getting back to normal. He was sure it was a truck coming from outlying farms, and so he asked the Haywards to wait a moment till the noise from the truck had passed.
But it didn't pass. The truck came to a rattling stop and Cecily Malich opened the passenger door. "Get on this truck, right now!"
What was this about? Rusty's natural instinct was to say, Uh, I don't think so. But she looked urgent enough that he sensed a story.
That sense became even stronger when he started toward the truck and she kept waving. "You too! Mr. and Mrs. Hayward! We've go
t to get back to the university!"
When they got to the truck Mrs. Malich seemed to assess the Haywards' ability to get up onto the back of the flatbed truck and decided it wasn't likely to happen. "Please direct this driver straight to the College of Medical Sciences building," she said as she helped them into the cab. "I have to get to General Coleman."
Rusty was happy as a clam that after all his working out and dieting, he looked so fit that she took it for granted that he could climb up; and so he did, then gave a hand to Mrs. Malich and her companion.
The truck was moving before they were completely on, and yet Mrs. Malich made no complaint. As they rode, she filled him in on what she knew about the army unit that was coming.
"Doesn't sound like we'll be glad to see them," Rusty agreed.
"I've got to get a call in to the Pentagon or the ships just off the coast here or to the President, if I have to, because if we don't get help here, and fast, it's going to be a massacre."
"It might just be a hostage thing," said Rusty.
"For us caregivers, yes, it might," she answered. "But remember that hijacked plane that had a Navy SEAL on board? They kicked him to death—and then treated the civilians as hostages."
"So our boys lying in their beds trying not to die from dysentery and fever and dehydration," said Rusty, "you think they'll come in and shoot them all?"
"The driver thought the soldiers looked Arab. Definitely not African. Coming out of the northeast—Chad is up that way, if you go far enough, and then Sudan."
