Page 79 of The Session

Mark couldn’t comprehend what the world looked like to the people who lived here. There were plenty of flickering TVs around, and he could hear rap music playing and see the glow of cell phones in the hands of adults and teenagers as they made their way through the city.

The closest analogy Mark could think of was rural Georgia, where in some parts poverty was the norm. It wasn’t geographic isolation that made the biggest impact on people’s mindsets; it was socioeconomic.

Mark’s sociology professors had warned against taking on a savior mentality, but he wondered if that was often just an excuse for complacency. There’s a difference between telling someone you’re going to solve their problems and asking, How can I help?

Mark knew he couldn’t save the world by teaching kids how to hold a baseball bat or swing a tennis racquet, but he realized his own world had been improved by the fact that, when his mother was too busy with work and there was nobody in the house to teach him the things young men learn from fathers, he could find some support on the playing field.

“And now we enter the most dangerous part of Haiti,” Norm warned as they turned a corner and drove through a densely packed part of the city.

Mark looked through the tinted windows and saw signs for nightclubs and young women, some of them barely into their teens, standing by doorways watching the convoy.

“Red-light district?” Mark asked.

Norm nodded.

The convoy continued on for another twenty minutes, then reached the fuel depot, where they joined with the tanker trucks they were escorting.

Their vehicle consisted of Ari, the driver, and Norm in the passenger seat, using thermal vision to keep an eye on the darker areas around them. There was also a drone flying overhead, and they received sporadic reports from the pilot back in the command center, flagging suspicious movement nearby. While mobile communications could move at the speed of light across the country, gangs would sometimes shadow convoys, sending people on motorcycles and pickup trucks on parallel side streets.

The convoy headed toward the hospital, traveling along streets where the lighting came in clusters with long patches of darkness between them. Norm was extra attentive in these stretches, keeping vigil for anything unexpected, but he maintained casual conversation with Mark, pausing occasionally to listen to radio updates.

Burton’s estimate was that it would take forty minutes to make it to Delmas. There were two smaller checkpoints they expected to evaporate as they got closer, with one critical intersection.

The gang’s goal was to get a bribe, often in the form of fuel—sometimes threatening drivers at gunpoint to fill oil cans by the side of the road, and in other cases taking the tanker outright. Although a police presence could sometimes act as a deterrent, it was not always enough. Enter Constellation . . . Police escorts could be overwhelmed by the gangs, which consisted not just of a handful of armed men but often entire crowds of people of all ages. This was how the gangs exerted their control: They coerced the community into action, making a police response all the more complicated. A simple dispute over a bribe could quickly turn into a riot.

“We’re spotting armed figures on the roofs near the intersection. At least five,” came the voice over the radio.

“Is that normal?” Mark asked.

“At nighttime, it can be. They think they’re invisible,” Norm answered.

“How do you let them know they’re not?” Mark asked.

Norm flipped up his night-vision goggles, reached down to the bag by his seat, and pulled out a large flashlight.

“We’ve got the positions marked out on a map, so we just light them up and say, Hi there.”

The convoy continued and began to traverse uneven terrain. The asphalt was buckled and missing entire sections in some places. While the unfinished infrastructure and buildings that seemed to be either in a state of collapse or mid-construction no longer surprised Mark, he was fascinated by the pockets of normalcy: stores that were well lit, restaurants that were open, and cars driving back and forth with families going about their normal lives. To his untrained eye, all of this seemed erratic, but to the people who lived here, he assumed it wasn’t much different than knowing which neighborhoods were safe and which were dangerous back in the US.

“Two minutes out,” Norm said as they approached the blockade.

The convoy turned a corner and came to a stop, with Mark’s vehicle angled so Norm could see the front of the procession.

There was a stack of tires on fire, giving off an orange flame. Behind it, across the road, was a school bus with broken windows and graffiti across the side.

Mark could see a man in black dress pants and a white button-up shirt talking to one of the police lieutenants who had exited the vehicle.

“That’ll be the negotiator,” Norm explained. “He’ll present himself as impartial. Usually he’s somebody with a position in the town and explains that he’s doing the best he can to get the gang to move it, but they won’t budge unless some sort of payment is made. He is in on it, of course. But that’s the charade.”

Over the radio, Mark could hear a back-and-forth exchange in Haitian Creole, but he only understood a few words.

Norm translated: “The negotiator is explaining that the people are upset that the state hasn’t been doing enough to provide for them. There’s not enough fuel, there’s not enough food, the kids are hungry, and they are demanding payment.”

“Is that typical?” Mark asked.

“For here, it is, and it can sound pretty persuasive,” Norm replied. “Some of the NGOs come in and provide aid with good intentions, but it’s an easy bet that if fifty sacks of flour are handed over tomorrow, you’ll find those fifty sacks for sale in the market—none of it going to the people here, or at best just enough to keep them dependent on the gangs.”

The voices became more animated.