lying between two low ridgelines, resembled a fairway in need of serious maintenance. Dare radioed the SPLA on the ground, asking if the field was secure. Someone said it was, but there was tension in the voice, and DeeTee chirped an alert. Dare pulled his Beretta from under the seat and jammed it into his belt.
A strand of black smoke rose from one end of the runway, indicating a crosswind. He quartered into it, then touched down. As Nimrod opened the aft cargo door, a squad of SPLA soldiers popped out of the surrounding brush, led by an officer who looked ready for a parade: clean boots, a clean uniform, a polished shoulder-holster, and a silver-knobbed swagger stick, which he brought to the brim of his beret in jaunty salute.
“Good day, captain!” he called, standing below the cockpit.
Dare opened the side window. “And good day to you, rafiki. How y’all?”
“Quite well, thank you. May I have a word with you, sir?”
“Polite as hell, ain’t he,” Dare said in an undertone. “C’mon, Doug. I think we’ve got problems. Quinette, you stay inside.”
“What kind of problems?” she asked.
“Soon as I find out, you’ll be the first to know.”
Outside, closely watched by the soldiers, a crew of civilians, barefoot and with prominent collarbones showing above their tattered undershirts, were lugging crates and containers out of the forest, toward the airplane.
With an amused expression, the officer glanced at the protruding butt of the Beretta.
“All Americans have a constitutional right to bear arms,” Dare said.
“I know. My brother is in America. He recently got his green card. I and a few of my men will be accompanying you to Yei to make sure you arrive safely.”
“You must of gotten some bad information, major. We’re goin’ to the Nuba, War Zone Two.”
“You were going there. Your destination has changed. Your cargo is now needed more in Yei than in the Nuba.”
Doug said, “We can’t do it. Can’t take you and your men. We’d be overloaded.”
The officer gave an abbreviated nod that more or less congratulated Doug for making a nice try. He then snapped an order to a couple of his men. Motioning with their rifles, they instructed the workers to put the weaponry on board.
“I don’t believe this. You’re hijacking cargo that’s meant for someone fighting on the same side as you.”
A quick, efficient smile—Doug’s indignation appeared to amuse him as much as Dare’s pistol.
“Know what, major?” Dare said. “When you started talking, I thought you were some kinda customs man. Like you only wanted to collect duty on imported goods.”
The officer straightened his shoulders, bracing his swagger stick across his thighs. “Thank you for the promotion, but I’m a captain, not a major. Also a fighter, not a bureaucrat.”
“I was only joking. But what would you figure the customs duties would be on all this stuff?”
“I have no idea.” He spoke with firmness, but a wavering look came into his eyes. “Perhaps you do?”
He didn’t slam the door, I can get to him, Dare thought. “I’ve got something in the plane that will give me an idea. Y’all don’t mind if I take a look at it?”
“Not at all.”
With Douglas, he went into the cockpit. Quinette, occupying the pilot’s seat, was looking out the window at the captain.
“I’ve been a good girl and stayed in my room, so tell me what’s going on.”
Dare reached into the seat pocket where he stowed flight manuals and charts and withdrew a vinyl purse, the kind shopkeepers use for carrying cash to the bank. It contained his emergency gratuities fund.
“What’s goin’ on is a lesson on why these blacks are never gonna win this war. Some commander over in Yei has decided he needs what we’ve got more than Michael does, and he sent that errand boy to collect.”
She clasped his wrist tightly. “We can’t let that happen.”
“I’m tryin’,” he said, counting out the fives and tens.
“If you need more, there’s fifty in my rucksack,” she said.
“Think this will do,” Dare said, and wrapped the bills into a delectable bundle that he secured with a rubber band. Figuring the captain would want to conduct business in private, he called through the window, “If it’s not inconvenient, could you join us up here?”
Douglas and Quinette stood outside the cabin door to make room for their guest.
“I calculate the duty fees come to this,” Dare said quietly, and held the wad close to the man’s face.
It probably was as much as a junior officer in the SPLA made in a