either; he was staring straight into the Nile, as though the Heavenly Father dwelled in its murky depths. “Bless our brothers Ken, Santino, and Mike, bless our sisters Quinette and Jean.” Quinette was trying to focus on God, but she was distracted by the self-consciousness the camera aroused in her. Did she look all right? It was hard to keep your mind on prayer with a TV crew videotaping you from only a few yards away. “Bestow your blessing, Heavenly Father, on the captives we seek to set free. Hold your hand over them as you held it over your children in captive Israel. We ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.”
“Amen,” Quinette murmured with the others, then stood and brushed her knees. Her baggy safari shorts dropped over them. Not the kind of thing she would have chosen for herself, loving as she did bright figure-flattering clothes to offset her drab brown hair and a face that was a little like Iowa, neither pretty nor ugly. Back in Nairobi, Ken had taken her to a camping store on Biashara Street and made her buy the shorts and the olive drab shirts to go with them. He’d objected to the outfits she’d brought from the States: a kaleidoscope of canary yellows, teal greens, salmon pinks. It was the dry season in Sudan, Ken had told her. Government planes could be flying, militia might be patrolling the countryside. Making herself so obvious could prove dangerous, to her and her companions.
They took off their hiking boots and sandals and waded in, the water warm as bathwater, and with the paddlers holding the unstable craft steady, got on board: Phyllis, her crew, Mike and Jean in one with two of the soldiers, Quinette, Ken, Santino, and Jim in the other with the remaining soldiers. They sat on the gunwales, three to a side, their gear between them. With sign language, one of the soldiers cautioned them to sit very still. A pod of hippopotami wallowed a little ways downstream, their gray-black backs humped out of the water. Quinette had never seen a hippopotamus before, except in one of those National Geographic specials Jake Mueller, her brother-in-law, liked to watch. The most dangerous beast in Africa, Ken had informed her on the flight from Loki. Killed more people every year than all the lions and leopards put together.
The stern paddler launched the dugout with a strong shove, then hopped in so nimbly that it barely rocked. Just then Quinette spied a crocodile basking on a mud bank toward the far side of the river, stationary as a log, its long head tilted slightly, like someone with his chin in the air, its plated back silvery green in the sunlight. Ken had given her some information about crocs as well—if hippos got the gold medal for killing people, crocs got the silver. They usually nabbed native women, washing clothes by the riverbank, dragged them in and rolled them over until they drowned, then devoured them. The thought of such a death stirred a primal dread in Quinette. Back home you tossed dirty clothes into the Maytag and forgot about them; here doing your laundry could have gruesome consequences. She could only trust that the Heavenly Father had listened to Jim’s petitions.
Eddies creased the surface of the dark Nile, little whirlpools formed and vanished and re-formed. Angling upstream to make up for the river pushing the dugout in the opposite direction, the paddlers dug in hard, their ropy muscles writhing. They were a beautiful people, these Dinka, so tall and lithe, with big, oval, slightly slanted eyes and skin so dark it looked as if God had cut bolts out of the midnight sky and made human beings from them.
The croc slipped off the mud bank with a leisurely sweep of its tail and disappeared. She pictured it cruising through the half-light below and felt vulnerable, sitting on the edge of the canoe. The soldier across from her must have seen the look on her face because he made a reassuring movement with his hand, then patted his automatic rifle. Yeah, she thought, a lot of good that’ll do you if you end up in the drink with the rest of us.
The paddlers in the second boat, lagging a little, quickened their strokes and pulled up parallel to the one she was in, allowing the cameraman to film it broadside as it crossed. The camera’s glass eye stared straight at Quinette from five yards away, and she