In Our Dreamtime

The Bone Collector: This is all Nick remembers of what followed: a mammoth explosion hurled him cartwheeling into something hard. He later theorized his body was blown back through the vault door into the only “soft” items the garage held, classified diplomatic pouches piled against a rear wall. If the blast had slammed him into the wall instead of the pouches, he’d be dead. He later learned details of the explosion. It had been one of the first attacks carried out by al Qaeda in revenge for American military bases on Saudi soil. The attack had killed twelve of his colleagues and more than 200 Kenyan civilians. The initial bang had come from a grenade tossed by the attackers as they drove a truck full of explosives toward the access gate to the underground garage. The al Qaeda strategy was to tail the mail car that made a daily run into the compound through the gate, then enter the garage and detonate the device. Apparently frustrated at being thwarted by local security guards, the terrorists threw a grenade, hoping to kill the guards and open the gate themselves. When they realized the tenacious Kenyans had stymied their plan, and with time running out, they panicked and set off the truck bomb some distance from the embassy building. The glancing blow killed employees inside and outside the embassy, but the majority of casualties were inflicted upon the Kenyans crowding the streets alongside the mission. After regaining consciousness, he found himself slumped like a contortionist against the orange diplomatic bags: legs splayed, shirt shredded by the heat of the blast and right arm crushed. He moaned instinctively for help, but knew it was in vain: he learned complete silence immediately follows horror. A dull ache began in the stomach so he lifted his left hand to feel for damage. The sticky ooze welling from the belly told him he was in serious trouble. He’d have to save himself. When he rolled onto his left side the right arm flopped lifelessly beside him. The pain was excruciating. He pulled himself to his knees, then propped his unsteady body on the left arm. He’d lost his glasses in the explosion and dust filled the air, so only a vague rectangle of light outlined the vault door. Shuffling in the direction of the light, he stumbled over bomb debris. He steadied himself against the doorjamb, then lurched into the carnage. He hobbled toward the garage entrance and daylight through chunks of concrete. The left hand stanched the flow of blood from his abdomen. The seepage was steady, so he staggered alongside the obliterated building to where the embassy’s front entrance and Marine post were located. The short journey was an obstacle course through hell: an incinerated city bus filled with dead lay blackened on the side street bordering the perimeter, while hundreds of corpses littered the area around it. He came around what used to be the corner of the embassy building and saw a colleague emerge from what was left of the front entrance. She was guiding the wounded through an apocalyptic debris field, loading them into one of the few embassy vans the blast had not destroyed. After she helped him to the van, he passed out during the high speed ride to the central hospital. He was lying on a gurney in a crowded hospital corridor next to wounded and dying Kenyans. Blood was everywhere, even smeared on walls and floors. The acrid smell of burned flesh filled the air. He remembers being glad to be off the floor and somewhat removed from the dirge of pain. When the overwhelmed doctors finally got to him they bandaged his stomach, said it had been punctured by shrapnel, then set his fractured humerus. Later that night he was loaded into a C-141 for the eighteen-hour flight to Andrews Air Base. From there, it was a short trip by ambulance to Walter Reed Medical Center, where he spent the next month having metal plates affixed to his upper right arm and bits of shrapnel plucked from his gut. He knew he was one of the lucky ones. Physically sound for the most part, Nick arrived back in Nairobi three months later. The temporary embassy building abutted the bucolic expanse of Nairobi National Park. The first weekend back in Kenya he drove his ‘86 Chevy pickup into the Rift Valley. He found the drive from Nairobi over the forested hump of Kikuyu land and down the cactus covered escarpment into the parched Rift cleared the mind, so he made a habit of it. Each weekend following the inaugural drive, he donned his black fishing hat and explored the dirt roads of the valley, with Little Richard, Elvis, Fats Domino and other greats blaring from the pickup’s speakers, sending giraffe, zebra, gazelle and baboon scampering for cover in a trail of billowing rock and roll. The bones of animals were everywhere, especially along dry creek beds. But they were never complete. He would always stop and look for the odd animal bone. Often he found impala, eland, gazelle and topi skulls with the horns still attached. Most of the time, though, it was scattered leg, spine and rib bones he’d toss into his pickup. He would take these remnants back to Nairobi.