this tumbledown, fly-plagued, rubbish-strewn crossroads. It would seem like the heart of civilization after a few days in the Nuba.
Douglas reached across his lap and swatted the smoke out the window.
“How did a big-time soccer player get hooked on those damned things?”
They were passing the aid agency camps now. Brown storage tents as big as barns. Stacks of blue fuel drums. Razor wire. Radio antennae soaring.
“After eight years of keeping in training, I felt that I needed a vice,” Fitzhugh grumbled, annoyed at Douglas, not for criticizing his habit but for making them late.
This morning, after taking a long shower, shaving, and combing his hair, he decided he could not appear in the same shirt he’d worn yesterday, as if anyone would notice or care. Finding the one he wanted—a pale blue denim—involved unpacking and then repacking his rucksack and wasted a good ten minutes. In the mess, he lingered over his eggs and bacon and was pouring himself a third cup of coffee when Fitzhugh, patience at an end, tapped his watch and reminded him that they were to have met Tara’s driver five minutes ago. Douglas shrugged and said that no one was going anywhere without them.
A Turkana askari swung open the gate to the airfield, where a PanAfrik Hercules was taxiing for takeoff on the morning run. Tara’s aviation company was headquartered near the western end of the landing strip. Four white Cessna Caravans and two Andovers, each with a maroon stripe and the word PATHWAYS above it in back-slanting letters, were parked on the apron. A wave of reassurance washed over Fitzhugh, calming his fears of flying in small planes. One look at Tara’s, so immaculate they appeared to be made of bone china, told him they weren’t going to suffer engine failure because of careless maintenance. She was in the small terminal, conferring with one of her pilots, an Ethiopian with a chiseled burnt-umber face. Static and distant voices crackled through the high-frequency radio on the varnished counter against which she leaned on her freckled forearms. Flight plans on clipboards hung from the wall behind her, between a tapestry of aviation maps and a chalkboard containing remarks on conditions at various airstrips. All the order and cleanliness of her domain spoke of something deeper than mere efficiency. She herself looked as put-together as her surroundings—khaki trousers with a military crease, starched white shirt set off by captain’s epaulets, hair brushed and makeup on just so.
“I suppose I should be cross,” she said when she finished up with the pilot. “Wheels up at eight, and here you are at ten past.”
Douglas apologized, but some devil in him did not allow him to leave it at that. He explained that they had taken extra time to give their gear a last-minute check, and with a look he asked Fitzhugh not to betray the outright lie.
“No harm done,” said Tara. “I had to go over a flight plan with the chap who just left, George, my senior pilot.”
“Your senior pilot? How many have you got?”
“Twenty.”
Douglas whistled appreciatively.
She packed an insulated cloth case with sandwiches, a Thermos of coffee, bottled water. “Shall we, then?” she said, and slung the case over a shoulder and tucked her sleeping bag under the opposite arm, declining Douglas’s offer to carry one or the other for her.
They crossed the apron to one of the Caravans, Douglas lagging a little, studying the other planes as he had the grounds and buildings in the compound yesterday afternoon—with a covetous, appraising look. Noticing his interest, Tara volunteered that Pathways flew fourteen airplanes, ten out of here, two in Somalia, and two more out of Nairobi.
“I own the Caravans. Lease the rest,” she said, and opened the baggage compartment under the rear door.
Another whistle from Douglas as he stowed his rucksack. What was she going to do if things were ever settled in Sudan? Not that that was likely anytime soon, but what if?
She was standing under a wing, her hand on the strut. “Are you implying something?”
“Nope.”
“That I hope the mess is never settled because it keeps me in business?”
A ground crewman kicked the blocks from under the wheels. There was a silence several seconds long; then Douglas, with outspread hands, appealed to her to believe that his question had been innocent curiosity, nothing more. She opened the door and, with a jerk of her head, told him to climb in.
He strapped into the copilot’s seat, Fitzhugh into the seat behind him.