In October of 1989 I traded my stateside law enforcement job for a career in international  security.  My first assignment was in Liberia, West Africa.  My mission, according to the company, was to "deal with internal discipline problems" within the 700 man US Embassy security force.  But it wasn't as simple as it sounded.  Liberia was under the grip of Samuel K. Doe, a vicious dictator commonly called "Sergeant Doe", and a member of the cannibalistic Krahn tribe.  Doe had become Africa's most bloodthirsty ruler since he and two Liberian Army Sergeants mounted a coup d'etat in 1980 and topped it off by literally eating the previous ruler.

     Doe's death squads conducted regular nightly search and destroy missions throughout the capital city of Monrovia, eliminating opponents and potential trouble makers.  And two months after my arrival Liberia was invaded by a group of Libyan trained rebels headed by Charles Taylor, a deposed Liberian government official.

      Despite Doe's best efforts to quell the invasion, reports continued to filter in verifying that the rebellion was swelling with former victims of Doe's oppressive regime and his own Liberian Army soldiers eager to switch sides.  With each passing day, the rebel force fought its way closer to Monrovia and the tension within the city grew.

     This was clearly not a "police matter".  It was becoming obvious that my law enforcement career had done little to prepare me for the growing anarchy I was witnessing.  My life appeared to have dissolved into a nightmarish version of the Five o'clock International News roundup.  Only this was no dream.  I had been catapulted into the insane arena of African revolutions.  And each day seemed to be worse than the one before.

     The wake-up call that signaled the degree of deteriorating political instability for me was the shooting death of my American roommate by the Liberian Army at a roadblock in the middle of the night. The Embassy filed an official protest over the incident, but it had no noticeable impact.  The following week two armed men in military fatigues shot their way into the General Manager's bungalow next to mine in the middle of the night.  Before any of us could react, they had robbed the GM and his wife of several hundred US dollars and escaped into the jungle.  The GM happened to be a retired US Marine Lt Colonel who undoubtedly would have handled it better were it not for the fact that the Liberian Government restricted the ownership of weapons by any but their own military and police.

     The following Sunday we were swapping lies over a bottle of Johnny Walker around the pool in our compound when a sudden burst of automatic rifle fire from the next compound shattered the calm and we dove for the pavement.  The firing continued while we huddled there beneath the wicker table awaiting the spray of bullets that would turn us all into another bloody news item.  We laid there listening to screams and shouted threats punctuated by the unmistakable "thud" of a rifle but impacting  human flesh.  We didn't know the language, but it didn't take a linguist to figure out some terrified soul was pleading for his life.

    Suddenly, three shots from a forty-five pistol rang out, and the screaming stopped.  The GM grabbed his wife and made a bee-line for the house while I darted over to the beach gate to see if I could determine where the shooters were headed next.

    Flies buzzed in the hundred degree heat as I peered cautiously through a slit in the heavy wooden gate.  The popular beach was totally deserted.  Suddenly, two Liberians in army fatigues emerged from the clutter of shacks up the beach.  Each had an AK-47 in one hand and the thin wrists of a young dead man in the other.  The victim was about sixteen and dressed in a single tattered tennis shoe, blue jogging trunks and a white T-shirt with "New York City" printed on the front.  They dragged him to the water line and dropped him face down in the shallow surf like a sack of potatoes.  One guy lit a cigarette, took a drag and handed it to his partner.  Then, after chuckling a few minutes and applying a few brisk kicks to the corpse with their boots, they shouldered their weapons, turned and sauntered up the beach without a single glance back, leaving the waves rocking the head and shoulders of the victim gently back and forth.

     I crouched there transfixed by that bloody spectacle for some time, vaguely entranced by the way the blood dribbled slowly into the white sand from a gaping hole where his left ear had been a few moments before.  Each gentle caress of the waves rinsed the growing pool of blood away, allowing a new one to form in its place.  I was struck by how the clear, green water seemed to be struggling to purify the beach of the corruption of death.

         A few days later I was passing the Hospital when I noticed a crowd milling about the entrance and caught a glimpse of six disembodied heads lined up on the steps in a perverted display of  indescribable brutality.  My stomach lurched as I realized Doe's nightly death squads had been working overtime again last night.