Page 17 - Archangel

Dr. Collins said, “For Christ, His Mother Mary and all the Saints, we’ve
got to go back. It’s got to be Layla, mate! I know it breaks our lifesaving
protocol, but every soul in this tub would be dead or dyin’ without her
courage and help, they would.”
Neither Skye, nor Sean, nor their 23 passengers ever wanted to return
to Rwanda in their lifetime, much less tonight when they and others they
loved sacrificed all to escape it. Their detection could still mean a grizzly
death upon their discovery. Yet with Sean’s entreaty serving as deciding
vote in the instantaneous debate already raging between MacIain’s head
and heart, he signaled with a rotating hand to those who paddled that they
were going back.
From the bateau’s mass of humanity came a swift movement and
the flash of a knife which was silently placed against MacIain’s neck,
brandished by a desperate father whose wife and child were lying on
the deck.
He croaked, “We can’t go back. If we return, we’re all butchered. They’ve
already killed 11 of my family, and we’re all that’s left.”
Staring calmly at the petrified father and husband, Skye whispered, “Was
the woman who saved you named Layla?” After 10 excruciating seconds
and following dejection, he admitted “Yes.”
With hazel eyes flashing, MacIain slowly drew nose to nose with the
blade–bearing, panicked parent, pointed to the burning shore signal, and
said. “Y’all would already be dead without her, and there in the dark waits
the brave woman who rescued you. So either kill me now or start paddling
the friggin’ boat. Or we’re not moving another yard.”
Locked in their stand-off stare for another moment, Skye slowly pushed
the knife away from his neck, resumed his place at the helm, and started
paddling shoreward from the stern.
He was soon joined by all the other oarsmen. MacIain, no stranger to
passion or trauma, turned his intense gaze away but refused to blame the
father who could have been Skye if roles were reversed in this heinous
world. In five minutes which felt like forever, they were re-approaching
the Rwandan shore. And from the darkness and shallows appeared a slim
woman with a two-year-old baby over her shoulder. Layla.

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