Love under Fire

Copyright © 2024 Dorothea Odom.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

844-714-3454

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 979-8-3850-1556-6 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-1557-3 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-1558-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023924359

WestBow Press rev. date: 07/10/2024

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To all US diplomatic employees, both American and non-American, at posts throughout the world

Your loyalty and sacrifice to our nation are invaluable. It was truly an honor for me to be counted among you, living and working in diverse cultural environments, often under very difficult circumstances.

Thank you!

PREFACE

I arrived in Colombia in March 1985 and served at the US Embassy in Bogotá for three years during an era when direct-hire American employees of the embassy received, in addition to their regular salaries, extra pay of 15 percent for hardship and 25 percent for danger. We were required to ride in armored vans to and from work, followed by a chase car, which served as a buffer between our vans and other vehicles. Our US Government-leased living quarters met rigid security standards. Most of us resided in apartments as houses were less safe because burglaries were common and numerous.

In this volatile atmosphere, I was among the staff who had to shelter in place (in my apartment) for four or five days because of threats from the terrorist element in Colombia. However, all was not doom and gloom. I found a wonderful church family at the Bogotá Baptist Chapel.

One evening, having agreed upon the taxi fare in advance, I found myself trapped in a vehicle with a rigged inside handle, which the driver controlled from his seat. To my dismay, he began quoting higher and higher fares; became agitated; and used some expletives which are not repeatable here. He drove to a dark, empty field and began to slowly circle it. By maintaining a calm demeanor, I eventually was able to reason with him by offering him all the money that I had in my handbag. He released me in that field but, strangely, forgot to turn off the light on his license plate. I committed it to memory; finally made my way on foot back to my apartment; and reported the incident to embassy security. A license plate check revealed that the taxi was registered to a member of the guerilla group M-19 (April 19 Movement). I cite this as one (summarized) incident of several during my assignment in Bogotá.

Buses were burned from time to time. Kidnappings for ransom and assassinations were common. Bombs exploded. (In fact, one exploded at a bank in El Chico Grande, where I lived after my move from the Santa Barbara neighborhood, killing a woman walking past the bank.)

The places mentioned in this book are authentic (Kennedy City, El Chico Grande, Bogotá Baptist Chapel, National Park, la Clínica Palermo, Tramonti’s, St. Ursula’s Anglican Church, etc.); however, the names of all characters, including the ambassador at that time, are fictitious. The car bomb explosion, mentioned in the prologue, really happened. A man’s leg was blown off. The woman struck in the neck by shrapnel did not survive. Most notable among true events were the Nevado del Ruiz volcanic eruption and the storming of Colombia’s Supreme Court.

By the grace of God and excellent security measures at the US Embassy in Bogotá (and at five other posts where I served), I am here today.

INTRODUCTION

Narcotics—big business, big money. Colombian traffickers were infuriated by US efforts to eradicate the country’s coca crop. They were even more incensed when Colombia signed an extradition treaty with the United States. (On June 25, 1987, the Colombian Supreme Court ruled the Colombian-US extradition treaty invalid.)

In April 1984, Colombian Minister of Justice Rodrigo Lara-Bonilla was assassinated on a side street in Bogotá. Threats to kill American diplomats ensued. The traffickers vowed that if such attempts failed, the diplomats’ children would be targeted. Schools that those children attended became much more vigilant.

Of equal concern were the activities of guerrilla groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the terrorist group M-19, which funded many of their activities in cooperation with the narcotics traffickers often called narcotraficantes. The sale of drugs made possible more weapons purchases, more kidnappings for ransom, and more violence, including murders.

In November 1984, a car bomb exploded at the US Embassy’s chancery in Bogotá. A deliveryman lost a leg. A woman passerby was killed by flying shrapnel.

Because of the bombing and the resultant security alerts, the US Department of State issued travel advisories to Americans planning trips to Colombia about off-limit areas and precautions to take. It also implemented a new policy for its diplomatic mission in Colombia: no minors at post. By late-January 1985, all the diplomats’ children, most accompanied by their mothers, had been evacuated to the United States. Thus, there remained spouses without immediate families and a large contingency of singles, which increased each time the assignments of diplomats or support personnel ended at the mission. (The US Mission in Colombia consisted of the US Embassy in Bogotá; a consulate in Barranquilla; and cultural exchange centers in other major cities of the country, excluding Medellín, the major operating base and headquarters of the drug-trafficking industry, and Cali in Valle del Cauca, where the Colombian Army’s Third Brigade and revolutionary guerrillas engaged in frequent combat.)

This story evolves at a time when Colombia’s political crisis compelled then-President Belisario Betancur to declare the country under siege. Colombia’s economic woes were of ever-increasing concern. High inflation and unemployment drove prices up and plunged the Colombian peso to an all-time low. Around the embassy, rumors circulated that a national strike was imminent.

This was a particularly violent era in Colombia’s history, and the crisis was critical, threatening the very stability of the nation. Some believed that the worst would soon be over; others predicted that the worst was yet to come. Only time would tell. (Former M-19 member Gustavo Petro was elected as President of Colombia in June 2022 under the banner of Alianza Democrática M-19 formed in April 1990.)

PROLOGUE

The sounds of wrenching metal and shattering glass mingled with panic-filled screams and shouts. The Black woman fell to the floor, not from the force of the explosion outside but from a fear that buckled her knees. After what seemed an eternity, an announcement over the embassy’s public address system brought Sheila Dunbar cautiously to her feet. Despite instructions to stay away from windows in case of another blast, she moved gingerly toward the one adjacent to her desk. Very slowly, she pushed the drape back a fraction of an inch and peered out.

Down in the streets, there was pandemonium. The top of a Volkswagen had been blown off, and the car was engulfed in smoke and flame. The blast had hurled its roof over the high iron fence and onto the embassy’s rear parking lot. Curious office workers were leaning out of the building’s windows across the avenue. An excited crowd was converging on a young embassy guard squatting beside a prone figure.

Sheila thought, My God! Those weren’t empty threats. They’ve done it. They’ve really done it! She suddenly felt clammy all over as she thought of Kevin, her five-year-old son. A frantic pounding began in her right temple and spread to her chest as she fumbled for the telephone. The staff of the off-site kindergarten assured her that Kevin was fine. With an enormous sigh of relief, Sheila dropped onto a chair.

Her boss, Patrick Carmichael, walked into the office, his face pale and grim. To answer the question in Sheila’s eyes, he said, A woman’s been hit in the neck, and some guy’s leg is gone. Looks like they mean business.

CHAPTER

ONE

JANUARY 1985

WASHINGTON, MIAMI, BOGOTÁ

U ntil the moment Sheila Dunbar boarded the Eastern Airlines flight, everything was fine. Then, the nagging doubts began. No matter how often she told herself that she had made the right decision, the gnawing guilt persi sted.

When the new policy of no minors at post was implemented, Sheila was offered the option to curtail her tour of duty and accept an assignment where Kevin could accompany her. Despite the dangers, the work was interesting and, she reasoned, she had another year left on her assignment; however, her mother was insistent that Kevin spend that year at home in Washington, DC, so Sheila accompanied Kevin back to DC to be with her mother while she finished her tour of duty. How she would miss her son, although the extra benefits of post differential and danger pay would come in handy someday for his education. Still, her mother’s words mingled with the shrill whine of the jet’s engines as she disembarked, For once in your life, think of Kevin! Was she being selfish to leave her son with his grandmother? Yet she knew the answer wasn’t as simple as that. Her mother did not want Kevin to go anywhere overseas. Period.

Dorothy Dunbar had always been a shrewd and domineering woman, even when her husband was alive. In fact, Sheila’s father had teased her, Dottie, you’d argue with a billboard. That, however, had never stopped her mother from arguing and, nine times out of ten, getting her way. In matters involving her grandson, she was relentless. She didn’t approve of her daughter’s career because it left Kevin rootless. This latest incident, a bomb explosion at the US Embassy in Bogotá, should have persuaded Sheila to take a Washington assignment or, better, get out of the Foreign Service altogether and transfer to Civil Service. But oh no! Sheila wouldn’t listen to reason. Her mother had branded her foolish to go traipsing back.

Dorothy still couldn’t forgive Sheila for having taken Kevin to Dhaka, Bangladesh, her first assignment. When they returned to Washington, DC, her mother took one look at a thinner Kevin and launched into a tirade. She’d heard of the filth, the rats and snakes, and the pathetically few hospitals that served the teeming masses of that poverty-stricken nation. She’d warned Sheila not to take Kevin there, but she’d insisted on having her way. Well, Kevin had paid the price. He was practically skin and bones, and she wasn’t going to just sit back with folded arms and let Sheila finish him off! Sheila knew her mother was prone to exaggeration, but this barb hurt more than she cared to admit, even to herself. After all, she too had lost weight in Bangladesh, but neither she nor Kevin was emaciated.

Sheila’s self-control had been severely tested, but she stood her ground.

Kevin is my son and my responsibility, she’d firmly stated. Please trust me to know what’s best for him.

Best? Kevin won’t have any stability until you stop roaming around like a gypsy.

At that, Sheila had lapsed into wounded silence. She’d thought of the Foreign Service Officer position she had passed up for a support position managing offices so that she could devote more time to Kevin. Yet her mother had overlooked that fact. After Bangladesh, she’d warned Sheila to take a Washington assignment or she would phone Robert. Sheila tried to explain that as part of her employment contract, she was obligated to serve worldwide unless grave illness or danger intervened, but the sole response was What about your obligation as a mother?

Sheila had endured three humiliating years of Robert Horne’s affairs with other women before she divorced him. Dorothy insisted that Robert, being a top-notch attorney in the area, had provided her and Kevin with a good life—anything she wanted. Why complain about other women? He’d eventually settle down. When Sheila extolled the marvelous qualities of her father, Dorothy conceded that David had been a good man, one in a million, but he’d married late in life. He’d been forty when Sheila was born. So he’d had plenty of time to sow his wild oats. It was unfair to compare Robert with him. Nevertheless, Sheila had gone through with the divorce and resumed her maiden name. Dorothy objected, You should keep your married name for the sake of your child.

Sheila had been granted full custody of Kevin. Robert had been awarded visitation rights and ordered to pay child support. Immediately after the divorce, he remarried. He too opposed Sheila taking Kevin overseas