This isn’t fiction. It isn’t polished for TV. It’s a straight account of what it took to protect people in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake—and what it cost. In January 2010, Haiti went dark. Buildings fell. Hospitals collapsed. Government functions are shattered. The streets were filled with dust, hunger, and human desperation. Into that came the Utah Hospital Task Force—doctors, nurses, translators, and volunteers who stepped into the worst conditions most of them had ever seen. I was there as Chief of Security. My job was simple to say and hard to live: bring them home. This book is written from the protector’s side of the line. The healers scan for pain. I scan for trouble—hands, eyes, posture, spacing, exits, time of day. That doesn’t make my view better. It makes it different, and in Haiti, that difference mattered. When you’re trying to run clinics in tent cities and hospitals that barely exist, the threats don’t schedule themselves. They appear. Sometimes they stalk. Sometimes they surge. Sometimes they smile and wait. Bad Gods is about that tension—mercy and security, healing and hard boundaries—and the discipline it takes to keep both alive. You’ll go with us into a country that felt medieval: no reliable law, weak infrastructure, crowds that could turn in seconds, and criminals who understood that children, aid, and foreigners were currency. You’ll see why we lived by simple rules: never go alone; hide real funds; break contact early; authority shifts at dusk; we go up, you go down. You’ll see how those rules weren’t theory—they were the difference between going home and becoming a headline. You’ll also see the work that didn’t make press releases. * Orphans cleared to fly—paperwork battles in a country where the paper itself had been buried. * Clinics under pressure—doctors and nurses working until they collapsed, then getting up and doing it again. * Camp sick call—dysentery, dehydration, IV lines, bug bites, and nurses sitting on the ground with “the stare.” * Food drops that nearly turned lethal—where hunger and opportunism mixed, and a strand of wire felt like the only thing separating order from riot. * A child abduction mission—the centerpiece of the book, where we hunted for a stolen boy through alleys, mountain roads, and dead ends because a pastor asked and I said yes. This story isn’t told with hero speeches. It’s told with dust, sweat, command voice, and decisions made when you’re tired and hungry and still responsible for everyone breathing. It includes humor too—because humor is how real teams survive pressure without breaking. You’ll meet the “Fixer,” who arrived in full tactical costume and needed to ask his wife before he could fix anything. You’ll hear about the “Jack Bauer club”—people who think watching TV qualifies them for the ugly work. Haiti cured that illusion quickly. Faith is in these pages, but not as a sermon. It shows up the way it showed up in real life: a sacrament prayer in the back of a military truck, blessings in the field, and quiet steadiness when everything else was loud. It wasn’t a performance. It was a spine. Threaded through the narrative are my journal entries—short notes typed in real time while dehydrated, exhausted, and trying to hold onto what I was seeing: burning tires, kids playing with sticks beside mass graves, the smell of the city at night with no lights, and the strange moment of stepping onto a C-17 and seeing an American flag hanging in the cargo bay like it was the safest thing in the world. And then comes the part few people talk about: coming home. The quiet after the sirens. Walmart at 2 a.m. A slice of pizza that didn’t sit right. Painted lane lines on the road. Clean water from a tap. And the realization that your body is home, but your mind is still scanning rubble. If you want an inspirational highlight reel, this isn’t it. If you want a true story about protectors and healers working side by side in a broken country—about the rules that save lives, the ethics in the grey, the faith in the ruins, and the cost of carrying it all—this is the book. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit builtbyfire.substack.com
