For such a time as this

The jets were hovering in midair, Eurofighter Typhoons, gifts from the Americans being put through their paces by two of the best combat pilots the Nigerian Air Force had to offer. It was a strained relationship, the United States offering support to the Nigerian Armed Forces but careful to retain the most advanced and effective technology and weaponry, there was no sense placing advanced weaponry in the hands of a nation that had yet to get a hold of itself. This was different, in the wake of the kidnap of the 234 underage girls, the West needed a public relations stunt, something big, something that showed that Big Brother was solidly behind the Nigerian people.

The Eurofighters were big, one of the most powerful combat aircrafts in the world. When Wing Commander Alade, nicknamed ‘the Toad’,standing to his full height of 5 feet 2 inches in front of one of the jets, was reeling off its features to Ikemefuna and Hamid, the two pilots who would be taking the jets on their maiden flight in Nigerian airspace (to the knowledge of the Nigerian government). Ikemefuna feigned long snores while Hamid struggled not to double over in laughter at his colleague’s antics. They joked their way through talk of twin eurojet engines, forward facing infrared tracking and detection, air-to-air and air-to-surface combat capabilities, voice operated flight control, short range missiles and the 27mm Mauser Cannon. They even made jokes about how the modified underside of the jets carried massive glare lamps that could ‘produce more light than Nigeria’s Power Holding Company’.

Now, neither of them was laughing. They were hovering over the Sambisa forest in Borno State at 55,000 feet far above the reach of human eyes trying to decide whether or not to dive. Everything depended on the choice they both would make, neither of them could do it alone and they were aware of it. Even together, their chances of success were doubtful but they would rather do it together, they always had.

Their first memory of each other was of a hot dusty parade, clothes starched to cardboard consistency, clinging to their mothers’ legs watching their fathers get decorated. They admired the uniforms and the smiles the daddies were sporting. At that point in their lives, the larger living quarters, armed security and larger income that came with the rank of Brigadier General of the Nigerian Army meant nothing to them. Their world was food, television, football and now that they had met, each other.

Ikemefuna and Hamid were very different. Ike was short and fair, some said he had missed being an albino by a hair’s breadth. As though to lend credence to this assumption, the tips of his hair remained an obstinate ginger through his teenage years despite repeated dyeing sessions with the local barber, until frustration and service to his nation compelled him to shave it all off. The boy was as unruly as his hair, ‘intelligent but unwilling to be diligent’ was how one of his teachers had put it, he was constantly at play and no matter how stern your face was when you told him to, Ike was incapable of sitting in one place.

Hamid was tall and dark, his intellect sharpened to a point like the tip of his northern nose. He was polite and obedient; never a step out of line except Ike took him there. Tall, thin and charismatic, he would have made a great public figure if he found himself able to speak in public. Most of his classmates had only heard his voice in response to a question or in conversation with Ike. The same teacher had remarked that his was a ‘rare mind that Hamid must learn to share’. His father, who thought a 100% score was indicative of more than enough ‘sharing’,remarked that she might want to teach poetry instead of mathematics.

Proud as they were of their offspring, both fathers saw in the other’s son traits missing in his and in their bid to make one more like the other, they would prod and compare. In most children, constantly being asked to be more like that boy or this girl would have given birth to a steady resentment and/or a fierce rivalry. For Ike and Hamid, it was the birth of brotherhood. So when Ike’s father took away his football because of his poor grades, Hamid brought his over, to play with before and after a lesson in trigonometry. When Hamid’s father took away his bike for failing to greet the Field Marshal who came to visit and ‘embarrassing the family’, Ike let him have his for the whole day then taught him to imagine adults in funny clothing whenever he had to speak to them.

That was how they grew, the ying of Ike’s charismatic recklessness a perfect complement to the yang of Hamid’s antisocial genius. They became closer as the years went by, graduating at the top of their class, Head Boy and Valedictorian, the pride of their fathers who had by now tacked two additional stars to their green uniforms. In their graduation speech, both boys thanked their fathers and the Nigerian Army for their scholarships, acknowledged the unspoken expectation that they too would soon enlist and wear the green uniforms their fathers had worn before them, then promptly joined the Air Force.

Now, at 28, both Squadron Leaders in the Nigerian Air Force, not much had changed. Maturity and the Defense Academy had dulled Ike’s recklessness and time had found Hamid’s voice. They were still the best at everything and as more than one commanding officer was to discover, it didn’t matter that you separated them or pit them against each other, what they shared was an intense desire to be the best at everything. They had grown together, reading both the Bible and the Quran, agreeing that religion paled in the face of devotion to God. Ike remained Catholic, Hamid remained Muslim but they both lived their lives at peace with God, each other and with all men. Everyone loved ‘the twins’, everyone except the Toad.

Wing Commander Alade had sweated his way through the ranks. It took him decades of grueling work, ass kissing and an impeccable record to get the stripes he now wore and he didn’t see why it should be different for anyone else, whether or not they were privileged army brats more familiar with armed security, salutes and awards than any officer of their rank. It was his hobby to write subordinates up for even the slightest infractions, puffing his chest in righteous indignation at their less than stellar conduct. Hamid and Ike did not care, while their conduct, individually and as a unit had been in the gray several times, they had never truly crossed the line. Until now.

Hamid’s voice filtered into the headset fastened snugly around Ike’s head, the logical near-whisper transported from the jet hovering slightly above and behind him, directly into his ears so it felt like the man was next to him. The room of technicians who came up with the technology had touted the improved ease of communication for the pilot, how he would never have to strain to hear a fellow combatant or the control center even in the middle of an active warzone. Now, all it meant was that Ike couldn’t pretend that he did not hear Hamid’s insane suggestion. Had he tried, his efforts would have been abruptly terminated, Hamid repeated himself.

“Ike, I know what you’re thinking. I’m not mad. They are directly beneath us. Look at the Heads Up Display. Look at that clearing in the middle of the forest, that’s where they are. Look at what we have been given, these weapons, we can do something.”

“Hamid, we have express orders. We are to fly these things cross country and take them back. Just this hovering we’re doing has pushed us past our ETA, we have no authorization, not for the use of the assets or for the mission you are proposing, we can get court martialed. Guy, let’s just go home.”

“But think about it Ike, the things these planes can do, weren’t you listening to the Toad? These things are perfect. I’m just sitting here and it’s like I can see this play out in front of me. They gave us these planes Ike, they came at the right time, with the right equipment. It’s like Esther, we might lose our heads, but what if we have been put in this position for such a time as this?”

“Yes, but that Bible also asks us to obey. For that matter, so does Islam. Surat An-Nisā’ 4:59 does not only require us to obey Allah and the Messenger but all those in authority. That is our duty. Besides, you know as well as I do that the reason the Army isn’t storming that forest right now is because they have been ordered not to.”

Silence filled both the cockpits. When both jets went into a steep nosedive heading directly against express orders and spotless conduct, it was Ike’s aircraft that led the way. In the camp below, life, the semblance of it that existed, went on oblivious to the pointed nosed weapons of death barreling down towards them at breakneck speed. There were huts scattered around the clearing, miniature towers closing them in a square, meters away from the tree line, unmanned 50 caliber machine guns glinting in the moonlight. Men idled in front of their huts, their wives gathered in groups casting furtive glances at the enclosure in the center of the camp.

The enclosure itself was fashioned out of wood. Long thin strips loosely bound together like a sheep’s pen, a little gate at one end which even though it was never padlocked was only swung open by the wind and terrorists. The 234 young women who sat in that enclosure were packed together, barely any space between them. In the month since their captivity, they had learned to live without little luxuries such as personal space and dreams of a future. What they saw beyond the fence was the future they had been promised, lives spent bound to men who killed in the name of God, men who would kill themselves and leave them widows for their cause, men who stole them from their homes, their families and from the lives they could have had.

While they dropped, Hamid hurriedly relayed the plan to Ike. It was simple, Ike ran his mind over it. It was risky, a lot was riding on whether the aircraft could deliver what the Americans and the Toad had promised it could. 1000 feet from the ground, both jets pulled out of their nosedives sharply, the pilots activated their infrared trackers, locked on each other and let the autopilot guide the jets into a perfect circle, chasing each other mid-air, they guided the jets, descending in formation. 500 feet above the camp, they turned on the glare lamps and all hell broke loose below.

When the girls told the story, they swore a circle of light had appeared in the night sky, a large circle, made out of pure light, like an angel’s halo that slowly became larger until it was right above the trees. They insisted that the circle stayed there, right above their pen, and that their captors ran this way and that trying to escape the light and that the circle let them but when one of them, the large one who had led the team that came to their school headed towards their enclosure to guide them out, a burst of light hit him in the chest and he exploded.

Hamid fired the shot reflexively. In his original plan, they were meant to stun with the lights and give the young women the opportunity to run into the forest but at the sight of the bare chested insurgent, machete in hand, marching towards the enclosure, he had let a short burst fly from the Mauser cannon. His deviation was fortunate; they both noticed the insurgents, almost collectively, back away from the light and beneath it, the pen. They stayed in formation, the circle of light in the sky, firing short bursts whenever anyone dared approach the pen. Four more bodies littered the ground before an ageing man limped forward, fell to his knees and shouted loud enough for everyone in the camp to hear “Allahu Akbar!”.

The camp fell to its knees like a pile of dominoes, men women and children, all except those in the pen, on their knees, heads to the ground in worship of a power they did not understand. A silence and calm fell on the camp, one that seemed to stretch into eternity. One of the captured girls watched the unfolding scene with wide eyes; she was the closest to the gate, the first to receive a stray slap, the most likely to catch leftovers with the side of her head, the half-eaten projectiles launched by the adolescent sons of their captors. When a small breeze blew open the small gate that closed them in, she was the one who took the first step to freedom.

The first step was pure fortitude. As the girls filed out, the pilots broke formation, Hamid, lights glaring in front of them, Ike behind them, pillars of light to guide them. As they stepped through the camp, its inhabitants fled from the approaching light and the young women who walked with it. The pillars led them through the forest, leaving captivity, fear and a camp of people with their faces pressed to the earth behind. At the edge of the forest, the lights went off and the Pilots ascended to 10,000 feet, hovering long enough to watch the small collection of heat signatures merge with the much larger crowd at the edge of the forest before they pointed their jets in the direction of the Nation’s capital and headed home.

It had taken the young women a few minutes to get used to the darkness, they had felt the fear to which they had become accustomed, return, then they had started to notice the little pockets of light, nothing near the blazing fire from heaven they had previously been bathed in but the more familiar bleached glare of halogen lamps. They ran out of the forest into the eyes of the world’s media, the army barricades and the parents who had run out of tears in the days since their capture.

When they were questioned about the circumstances of their escape, they were unanimous, it was angels, angels from above. They had not seen them but they knew they were there. Not one of the civilians and the soldiers stationed outside the forest had noticed the strange light that led them out, they chalked it up to imagination. The insurgents had gathered their dead and recognized the large bullet wounds for what they were, they insisted the armed forces were involved and threatened further mayhem but in the camp, there was a sudden rise in runaways, people who were no longer interested in blowing themselves up in the name of God. The Nigerian Army denied any involvement in the rescue/escape. None of them was wrong.

In his office, the Toad watched the muted screen hanging on the far wall. It was filled with the face of yet another CNN reporter reciting the miraculous escape of the Chibok 234. His ears were filled with the cockpit recordings from both Eurofighters. Open in front of him were copies of the inventories taken before the test flight of the Eurofighters and after the pilots had returned an hour and thirty minutes behind the scheduled ETA. Between the three media, he had as clear a picture of the events of that evening as if he had been there. His instinct was to file a report, surely the pilots would be court martialed even though they ought to be rewarded. He had started to type the beginning paragraph of a chronicle of what was undoubtedly the end of two stellar careers.

For the first time, his hate for Ike and Hamid notwithstanding, he toyed with the idea of refusing to do what he knew to be his duty. He ran over the conversation before the dive again, listening to the soft spoken Hamid, “It’s like Esther, we might lose our heads, but what if we have been put in this position for such a time as this?”the image on the screen had shifted to display a group shot of the rescued girls, their parents as close to them as humanly possible, waving at the camera and at the world they had now rejoined, giving thanks to God and his angels. The Toad hopped past his inhibitions, and hit the backspace key continuously till the page in front of him was as free as the young women smiling at him from the screen on the far wall.

NOTE:

This is a work of fiction. Like you all I hope daily for the safe return of the kidnapped girls, this is one of the ways I have imagined our collective dream coming to pass and I hope you enjoyed reading it.

However, I have a greater hope, that the message you receive is not to wait for help from the heavens but to realize that you and I can be that help. That if you find yourself, whether by birth or position, able to influence, to control, to in one way or the other, no matter how little, contribute to the safe return of these young women, please do. Because perhaps you have been given what you have, for such a time as this.

Oladimeji Ojo. @iStalkWriters

P.S. the Eurofighter Typhoon is an actual aircraft and it has all the features that I have described. The application of its capabilities in this story is purely fictional and there is no evidence to suggest that the aircraft can be used in that manner. Neither Nigeria nor America makes use of these planes.