Page 44 - Archangel
P. 44
A load master appeared from nowhere, led MacIain to a jump seat, and
snugly strapped him in. He then bent down, and yelled into Skye’s ear,
“Captain Kenyatta says you’re family. So to the first albino in our unit,
Karibu! [Welcome, Swahili].” Thrusting an ice-cold Tusker into MacIain’s
hands, he added “I’ll keep you posted as the flight progresses. We’ve got
three to four hours of rocking and rolling, if we’re lucky. You’ll be fine,
since Captain Kenyatta says you’re crazy enough to hang-glide and jump
out of perfectly good airplanes, like our airborne unit.”
Seconds later, the laughing load master barely seated himself with a
wobble, when the plane started accelerating into the night and uncertainty.
Destination? Over 200 miles, six driving, or three flying hours to Tanzania,
and Benaco, one of the largest and most challenging refugee camps on
earth. But Skye was first destined for waves of dreamy images from the last
three months of the Great Lakes regional genocide–of which Benaco would
be only a single act in the play of one of history’s biggest mass murders.
MacIain prayed he could make the difference his friends seemed to think
he could.
Countless lives depended on it – including his own.
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