and could take a passenger. She returned to her tent and packed her trunk.
“You are really going to go through with it?” Anne said, watching her. “I’d hoped you’d have second thoughts. I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” Quinette replied, though she scarcely did herself. It was critical for her not to think about her actions but to carry them out. She recalled a war movie she’d watched with her father. It was about paratroopers in World War II, making a night jump into France. One soldier stepped up to the doorway and balked at the last minute. A sergeant behind him gave him a kick, and he plummeted into the darkness. She had to be her own sergeant, overcoming all reluctance, booting herself into the unknown.
The following morning, before sunrise, Fancher and Rob Handy came for her in their pickup. When he saw her bulging rucksack and trunk, Fancher asked, “Looks like you’re planning to stay awhile.”
“Yes,” she said coyly. “Quite a while.”
“We’re going to be neighbors then,” he said, driving to the airfield. “Rob and me figure we’ll be up there three, maybe four months.”
The Friends of the Frontline were embarking on a campaign to set up ministries throughout the Nuba mountains. Fancher and Handy would base themselves in New Tourom and, in the manner of the circuit-riding preachers of old, range out from there, evangelizing, training civilian pastors and SPLA chaplains, giving support and encouragement to beleaguered Christian congregations, seeking converts among the Nuba’s Muslims. Quinette was happy to hear that familiar faces would be around for a while; it would help her through the transition into her new life.
At the airfield, ground crews were loading the Antonov while Alexei and the aircrew readied the plane for takeoff. The Friends were bringing in an awesome amount of supplies and equipment: a ton of schoolbooks, hymnals, and Bibles in Arabic and several Nuban languages, another ton of food and medicine, along with generators and fuel, solar panels, bicycles, movie screens, TV sets, tape recorders, mosquito nets, and boxes labeled EVANGELISM KITS or JESUS FILMS.
“We think of what we’re doing as a spiritual offensive,” Fancher said, gazing at the band of light that belted the sky to the horizon. “And of all this”—he jerked a thumb at the cargo—“as our weapons and matériel.”
“Satan is strong in Sudan,” added Handy, flexing a muscular arm. “We have got to be stronger.”
Quinette remarked that their “spiritual offensive” would be a dangerous undertaking.
“The hand of God never takes you to where the grace of God cannot keep you,” Handy said.
Quinette’s trunk was the last item to be taken on board. The loadmaster secured the cargo nets and motioned to her and the two men to get in. They strapped themselves into fold-down seats on one side of the fuselage.
“So what’s taking you up there for an extended stay?” Fancher asked.
Judging on instinct that he and Handy would react more positively than Anne had, she told him. It took them a minute or two to recover from their surprise; the plane had begun to taxi before Fancher spoke again, and his words confirmed that her judgment had been correct: raising his voice over the noise, he asked if she and Michael had chosen a minister. She answered that she hoped Barrett would fulfill that role.
“I’m ordained in the ECS, too,” he said. “So if you can’t get him, I’d be happy to do the honors.”
She could not have asked for a more auspicious beginning. Then the engines built to a deafening pitch, the plane rolled and lifted off, and she felt in its rise an escape from the gravity that had held her to all she knew, all she was.
THE AIRSTRIP WAS thronged with people—hundreds were needed to transport the cargo—and ringed by watchful soldiers manning antiaircraft machine guns. Quinette was greeted by Negev, by Pearl and her cousins Kiki and Nolli, and by a crowd of women and girls crying out “Kinnet basso!” which meant, Negev informed her, “Quinette has come!” By this time the bush telegraph had transmitted the news that Michael and the white woman were to be married, and the calls of “Kinnet basso!” told her that the marriage would meet with general approval. If she was an outcast in Loki, she was welcome here, loved by the Nubans for casting herself into their lives. She loved them back, unbidden tears coming to her eyes.
“Had no idea you’ve got so many fans,” Fancher said, struggling to get through the swarms of