Mission Under Fire (7 page)

Looking into the hallway, I could see that Brad had left the back bedroom and crawled down the long hallway, while bullets zipped over his head. When he turned in my direction, Brad jumped up and rushed to the door of the veranda. He opened it, went outside, and slid the door closed behind him. I heard a shot, then a loud crack. When he looked back at the door, there was a bullet hole in the glass where his head had been just seconds earlier.

This is crazy,
I thought
.
I had to get that freezer closer to the window. The position I had left it in wasn’t helping; I had to finish what I’d started. I jumped behind the freezer, hoping the Haitians were growing weary of our resistance. I leaned into the freezer and pushed so hard it almost tipped it over.

Crap!
I started thinking,
I can’t get it any closer unless I—
.

At that moment something ripped into my leg. I screamed. I wanted to release the pain that tore my leg. I looked down, shocked to see a hole in my left thigh and agitated that I was bleeding. Why would they shoot me? I hadn’t fixed everything yet! Nothing was supposed to hurt me.

Dumfounded, I attempted to jump behind the wall to check out the damage. But when I took one step I fell on my face. My left leg wouldn’t support my body. I crawled through the hallway to the glass door that led to the veranda. I left a trail of blood that snaked behind my feet.

Brad quickly realized what had happened. He opened the sliding glass door, grabbed me from under my armpits, and dragged me out to the veranda. Blood flowed freely from my wound and Brad assessed the situation. He applied pressure precisely where it was needed so I didn’t bleed to death. 

A strange feeling of relief came over me. Though I was still so thirsty and bleeding, I thought
, I’ve done everything I can do now.
With my leg out of commission, I lay there whining to Brad about my thirst. Brad said, “Yeah, I think we’re all dealing with cotton mouth right now.”

Brad never felt comfortable about going on the trip. He didn’t know if he’d be much help other than his construction experience. As it turns out, he had finished one year of pre-med. He knew exactly how to stop the bleeding. God only knows what would’ve become of me if he had decided to stay home.

~•••~

T
he pain in my leg was excruciating. “Dude, let up a little!” I pleaded over and over.

Brad tightened his grip and said, “When I let up the blood starts flowing again.” I’m sure Brad’s a fix-it guy like me; I have to think that this one thing gave him a purpose and something he could fix... just what I was looking for myself.

He’d let up and the blood would flow again. His grip became more painful than the wound itself. I sat there wondering,
Is this why Sharon didn’t want me to come on the trip? Did she sense that something might go terribly wrong?
Her intuition had kept me out of more than a couple of bad business decisions.

Wounded and thinking about Sharon, I fell out of the fight. My body lay twisted on my left side and back. I couldn’t really see what was going on. I could only hear the commotion, and it sounded ugly.

Around this time, Jason had decided to jump out of his second-story bedroom window. The cell phone wasn’t working so he needed to make a run for Arthur’s house. He chose to leave his son, Cole, for the sake of getting help because it had become painfully obvious that help wasn’t coming.

Jason climbed through the windowsill, turned, and grabbed hold of the window with his hands. He hung there with his face against the cement building, contemplating the risks that came with letting go. But there was no other choice. He released his grip and hoped for the best. He landed on his bare feet on a small area covered in grass. If he had missed the grass, he would’ve landed on concrete. When he stood up, both legs still worked, so with no time to lose he sprinted toward Arthur’s house.

~•••~

W
hile the gunmen continued firing, Brad and I kept silent on the veranda. The silence caused the women’s hope to sink to a new low. They heard me scream out in agony, but nothing after that.

As I lay on the veranda, the women continued pleading for God to save us. Sheila never gave up hope, confident that God would come through for us. Prayer was our only weapon. We were wounded, exhausted, bleeding, and trusting that God would somehow stop the madness.

~•••~

A
rthur’s home was roughly one-quarter mile from the second gate. Jason kept moving even though he had felt the pain and swelling in his ankles. No one knew if the Haitians were focused on our living quarters or if they had surrounded the entire compound, so as far as Jason knew, he was at risk of being spotted by the gunmen. Worse yet, the Haitians could’ve made their way in while he had run off. The decision to run for help was as risky as staying.

There were no good choices. The gunmen could’ve barged in with guns blazing taking everyone out. We were trapped. The
fight
was completely in the Haitian’s favor, so Jason chose
flight
as his only means of defense. Besides God’s gracious hand upon us, Jason was our only hope. But getting to Arthur’s place was no easy task.

The first obstacle Jason encountered was a ten-foot iron gate. This gate should’ve kept the gunmen out in the first place. After clearing the first gate, he ran a short distance and came to a little drainage ditch and scaled yet another ten-foot iron gate. He clambered up, dropped to his aching feet and continued running.

When Jason reached Arthur’s little house, he pounded on the door, desperately calling for help.

~•••~

W
hile on the veranda, we were still using my flashlight to evaluate my leg and monitor my blood loss. But then we thought we saw flashlights coming around the corner of the building. Brad thought the gunmen were looking for another way in, so he told me to shut off my light and I did right away.

Were they coming in at all costs?
I wondered. Perhaps they were more committed than we were prepared to handle?
What did they want?
With everything that had happened, we still had no idea why they were attacking us. And the relentless shooting continued. 

Pop! Pop! Pop!

“I’ve been shot!” I heard Morgan cry out. “Shit!  Shit! I’ve been shot!” I felt sick to my stomach knowing that he, too, was wounded. Would he die? How bad was it? Are they coming in now? Our situation grew more desperate by the minute. Four of us had been shot, and our ability to fight back or secure the door had quickly diminished. 

Morgan shouted, “Please! Stop shooting at us,” while he and CB, both wounded, continued pressing their bodies against the door.

I’m sure the gunmen didn’t understand a word Morgan said, but I understood the desperation in his words and distress in his tone. Unfortunately, his plea couldn’t bridge the language barrier. They had won another battle. Another one of our team had taken a bullet, and they were still six strong. Morgan stayed put, unable to apply pressure on his wound. Later, when I looked at the pictures of our battle, the pool of blood was the biggest where Morgan held the door.

I couldn’t imagine surrendering to those guys, or losing the war, but that’s where we were headed.

Blood escaped out of my flesh, and I cringed with every life-saving squeeze that Brad forced upon me. Bruce had retreated to the back bedroom. Cole and Monte remained in their bedroom bunker. CB had never left the door, and Morgan held his position. The ladies, as far as I knew, were still in the bedrooms praying. We were losing blood, hope, and time.

~•••~

A
rthur finally woke up, opened the door and found Jason out of breath, frantic. Jason explained what was happening and then collapsed on the floor, while Arthur put on his clothes and grabbed two handguns. When Arthur returned with the weapons, he and Jason ran outside and hopped into Arthur’s truck.

Arthur handed Jason a gun. As he steered back toward our complex, Jason grabbed the wheel and forced Arthur to turn toward Jeanpy’s house. Jason knew that after what he’d been through, Jeanpy would be a great help.

Jeanpy (zhon-pea) is clean cut, tall and has a winsome smile. He was Arthur’s assistant, a Haitian, although I don’t think he ever imagined working in such a dangerous capacity. Violence isn’t anything new to the Haitian people, but our emergency was out of context in relation to the traditional crime and political uprisings that took place in the city.

When they arrived at Jeanpy’s house, located on the compound, they informed him about the shooting and he hurried into the truck. Jason gave his gun to Jeanpy and they headed for the clinic. While driving, Jason repeatedly said, “This is for real. They will shoot you! They will shoot you!”

Jeanpy was friends with a police officer so he called him on his cell phone. The officer was close, but Jeanpy didn’t know how soon he’d get there. Minutes? Hours? Jeanpy had hoped that he’d alert other officers nearby. But the hour was late. The night was dark. And time was running short.

Arthur slammed on the brakes when they came within a safe distance from the clinic. He and Jeanpy ran for the stairway and Arthur shot a few rounds into the air. Jason crawled out of the truck and into the field to assess the situation. He crouched down in the grassy terrain, aching, breathless.

Although Arthur had no idea who the attackers were, he and Jeanpy continued shooting. Pop! Pop! Pop!

~•••~

I
could hear gunshots exploding faster somewhere in the distance. Something had changed. The Haitians were no longer shooting into our building. There seemed to be a shift in resonation, an increase in intensity. I could hear gunfire from the veranda and it sounded like the shots were firing in two directions.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

And then again... Pop! Pop! Pop!

I could tell the gunmen had the larger caliber weapons. But they no longer had the advantage. They seemed to have switched into a defensive mode, and turned their attention to someone more threatening than our ragtag band of missionaries.

I remember taking a breath, feeling a temporary sense of relief, but that didn’t last. The guns were still blasting, and I was still bleeding. Forgetting my condition wasn’t much of an option. I lay beside Brad, listened, and took everything in. There wasn’t anything else to do besides pray, and I had done plenty of that.

I couldn’t hate these guys. I can’t speak for everyone on our team because we’ve all had to deal with the trauma in our own way. I felt compassion for these people, and still do. Their country, which was already in economic and political turmoil, had been brought to their knees overnight. They were destitute. Prisoners had escaped. Food and shelter was scarce. The economy, what little there was, had collapsed, and the men they voted into office in previous years had been forced out of the country by the powers that be.

How would the fathers feed their children? How did they earn an income? What choice did they have? I wondered what I would do if I were in their shoes. How would I survive? How would I feed my family?

The cost of rebuilding Haiti’s infrastructure left little to nothing to help its people cope in a real and impacting way. The total cost estimated by the Haitian government neared 8 billion, close to 100% of the countries Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at the time. Mother Nature toppled the government, and the people of Haiti in one swift blow. And at the time of this writing, although there has been some infrastructure and economic restoration through extensive worldwide monetary assistance, the funding has proven to be insufficient. For the Haitians, the battle for survival continues, and their struggle is a daily fight to the death.

With that said, I hope I wouldn’t stoop to violent, criminal activity if faced with the same challenges, but who knows. It’s hard to imagine their plight. Desperate times, as they say, call for desperate measures. They are human and so am I. They were desperate and so were we, but for drastically different reasons.

We were there to serve them, to lift their spirits, to sing and worship and show them God’s love. I couldn’t hate them.

~•••~

A
s I lay on the warm concrete, bleeding, growing weaker by the minute, I resigned to defeat. I didn’t care anymore. I don’t know if it was the blood loss, if I had run out of gas, or overcome with physical and mental exhaustion; I could no longer fight. I was so thirsty. My wound was stinging like crazy, and I could almost feel my leg bruising with every vascular throb. Brad continued squeezing, and that created its own pain. I was ready to lay down my weapons, although I had none. I was done—done thinking, done fighting, and done fixing.

W
ith only the moonlight to guide them, Arthur and Jeanpy shot into the shadows exchanging gunfire with our attackers, and then it got deathly quiet.

Jason lay still. He didn’t know what was going on. The silence was frightening. He desperately tried to come up with a plan. His feet were killing him, swelling and aching, so he continued crawling until he heard someone coming toward the gate. He cautiously slunk through the field convinced that whoever had approached was one of the gunmen. He didn’t know it at the time, but it was actually Jeanpy running toward the huge generators.

~•••~

T
he gun battle continued and bullets fired relentlessly into the kitchen. Trapped in the darkness, unaware of Jason’s position, Brad and I kept low and quiet. After a time of silence, a faint, unfamiliar voice called out, “Are the police here?” Arthur answered back, “Yes they are.” But it wasn’t a voice any of us recognized. Thinking it was one of the gunmen trying to fool us into opening the door, Brad yelled, “No they’re not!”

At the time, we didn’t know where the extra shots were coming from. The redirected gunfight, and the call from outside, could have been a ploy. We couldn’t possibly know what was going on out there, and we weren’t about to take any chances.