From somewhere nearby, Professional Hunter Dougie Stephenson suddenly called out. He had been in the machan with me; and, yes, he had fallen, too. But he was ok, he said. He would be right over. Yes, he could walk.

There was, quite literally, no one in the world we could call who would be able to do anything for us in less than a matter of days, if ever.Momentarily, he fell to the ground beside me. He was breathing heavily, obviously in pain himself, but fully alert. He had the satellite phone, he said. Everything would be ok. Help would come.

With that, he moved away in the darkness to look for the guns and for the local tracker who had been in the tree with us. The tracker was hurt but able to walk, Dougie told me on returning. And both of the guns were fine.

At that point, he leaned over me in the rain and began to fumble with a flashlight so he could see the numbers of the satellite phone. Soon, he had it on and began to dial. It was too early, though. No one at camp had their phone switched on. Yes, it was a satellite phone, and we could have called any number in the world. But to what end? There was no US Coast Guard within 9,000 miles. There was, quite literally, no one in the world we could call who would be able to do anything for us in less than a matter of days, if ever. Our only hope was to reach the camp, some 50 miles away.

"We'll just have to keep trying," he said in a trembling voice.

Ultimately, it was over three hours before we reached anyone in camp and more than five hours before help came. The low point in that pain-wracked, five-hour-long ordeal was the moment when Dougie whispered hoarsely, "I'm going into shock. I'm losing it." He was still slumped over me in the rain. It was getting light enough for me to make out his face.

Recalling such moments clearly is impossible, but I do remember shouting, "You can't do that, Dougie! I don't have the number of the camp." With that, I remember striking out with my right arm, hitting him somewhere - the face, the shoulder, the upper chest? The blows roused him, and he dialed again. Momentarily, or maybe it was sometime later, I heard him call out the name of the camp owner, and I knew he had connected with help.

Indeed, around 8 am the camp owner arrived with enough help to build a primitive stretcher out of poles, which was used to transport me back to the road and from there back to camp. More important at the moment was the fact that the camp owner came with a powerful pain killer of some sort, in liquid form, which he poured down my throat. After that, everything was a blur for hours.

Now comes the interesting part. Back at camp, it was clear (to me at least) that I could not safely walk, or even sit up. Attempting to even do so sent lightning bolts of pain down both sides of my groin. I had some numbness in my right leg that got ominously worse after a particularly energetic effort to get up and muster the resolve to catch my charter flight back to Douala, where I would have to catch a six-hour flight to Paris and then a 10-hour flight back to Miami.

It was clear (again to me at least) that I was simply in no condition to make such a journey. I would have to be flown back to the States, or to a first-world hospital somewhere, strapped into a horizontal position. Intuitively, I knew the alternative was potential loss of mobility, maybe even paralysis.

Our first call was to the American Embassy in Yaoundé. I didn't make the call. Dougie did, as he was able to walk outside where the satellite phone could pick up a signal. He reported back that the Embassy had listened intently to everything he said. At one point, he said he heard an individual in the background say, "Yes, I've got him on the screen now. He's a Vietnam-era vet. We have to help him get out of there."

Our request for help was a modest one. We didn't ask for a helicopter. We asked the embassy to help us work with Air France to fly me out of Douala on a stretcher placed across six Economy-Class seats and then with American Airlines to do the same thing out of Paris. Yes, we were prepared to pay for all those seats. Our problem was linking up with suitable medical facilities in Douala and Paris that would certify me as being medically able to fly. We also needed some help simply getting Air France on the phone and focused on the problem. Ditto American Airlines.

The embassy's help with all this was necessary, we already knew, because too many lawyers have sued airlines recently on behalf of medi-vaced passengers who worsened or died enroute. Some airlines simply don't medi-vac passengers any more under any circumstances. Those that still do want a medical facility in the line of fire between them and lawyers. Handling all this via sat phone in a remote corner of Cameroon was all but impossible. Hence our call to the embassy.

When the embassy called back, we were all stunned. The reply was, the embassy just could not help us in any way. No, they couldn't call the French Embassy for us or Air France. Relations between the countries were so bad, we were told, the embassies were barely speaking with one another. "We've had Americans literally dying of malaria, and the French Embassy won't lift a finger," the US Embassy official said. With that, she volunteered the phone number of the US Ambassador. "Call him if you want. But I assure you that we cannot help you in any way."

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