Page 24 of Shadow Target

He remembered his own bitter childhood years, growing up in a poor village to the south. His younger sister and brother had both starved to death. The only reason he’d survived was by being the bigger and stronger, stealing the food from their very mouths. His parents had always struggled to find food, as had the entire village. The drought had hit them hard. The agriculture that had fed the village for decades had been burned up by the sun, and the land had cracked and dried. The herds of cows, which had showed a family’s wealth, had been slowly slaughtered and eaten over time. They had even drunk the cattle’s blood to stave off the constant threat of death through dehydration.

His mind focused back on the present. For the past three weeks, supplies had been flown in, the three trucks carrying their loads from the landing strip ceaselessly up the slight slope to where the large school with its many windows stood. There was no greenery growing around the little campus, because of the drought. This area of Ethiopia was hanging on, but water was still in short supply. A week ago, one of those huge helicopters, known as a ‘crane’, had flown in a well-drilling truck.

The school was going to get a well, and that was a huge plus for them. The well-drilling crew had been working from dawn to dusk. The pounding sounds of the pipes being driven into the earth had been constant. The well was being drilled below the school grounds while other construction workers were laying open the land with a backhoe so that pipe from the well to the school itself could be laid into the ditch and covered with gravel and then soil.

Word of the new well had spread fast throughout the small town of twenty-four thousand. Tefere had watched parents of the attending children walk miles to come up to the school to watch the progress. Others owned a donkey and cart, and would bring their whole family up to excitedly show them the well being drilled. It was a very big deal for Addis Zemen; everyone would have water, free of charge, and could come and fill their plastic gallon jugs any time they wanted. There was one pump inside the Delos school, and one outside it for the people of the town. Tefere had heard, as he’d walked the streets of the town, that the drilling crew was going to stay on, and sink three more wells nearby, in different parts of the city. No one would die from lack of water. That had been a momentous revelation for the gang lord. Climate change had made the rains that normally came to this region terribly weak and sporadic in comparison to the downpours they had provided in the past. This valley where the town sat had, for centuries, relied solely on water from the sky. Now, with the sinking of four wells, the Farm Foundation of Delos charity was working with the city fathers to lay out a long-term irrigation plan for surrounding farms to grow produce and feed the people. Indeed, Delos was on the lips of every inhabitant. There were even prayer services held for the charity in the Ethiopian Orthodox churches. Tefere scoffed at their stupid, blind faith in a God he had long ago stopped believing in. The only thing he believed in was his ability to survive.

The late November sun had just crested the horizon, sending its rays in broken, hazy beams across the lumpy, yellow, dried hills and the dead terraces around them, only highlighting the disaster the drought had brought. Soon, with a constant supply of water, those terraces would once again be filled with many kinds of vegetables. There would be the replanting of the many fruit and nut trees that had died in the drought, soon to be resurrected by these wells. The breeze was such that his flaring nostrils could smell the breakfast being served in the school’s cafeteria for the children. One of his soldiers had told him that the children came in at seven a.m., had breakfast, went to classes, ate lunch, more classes, and then at three p.m., were each given a sack of snacks large enough for their entire family, and taken home by the six yellow school busses that lined up in front of the school.

Tefere felt the sting of bitter jealousy once again; each child looked apple-cheeked and a good, solid weight for their age. He’d been a skin-and-bones skeleton growing up. His ribs had always protruded, his belly always distended.

The man in the red hard hat was the boss, his soldier had told him. Another spy that Tefere had placed in Addis Zemen had informed him that particular boss, a certain ‘Shep Porter’ by name, sometimes ate lunch down there in town around noon. And this ‘Shep’, it seemed, usually ate with Tefere’s target of interest, the red-haired woman pilot known as Willow Chamberlin. The pair favored a tiny Ethiopian cafe run by several women, all widows. And many times, they would bring back dozens of boxes filled with sacks of the local fare the women had cooked up. Those sacks would be distributed among the hard-working well-drilling team and the security people.

Tefere’s brow fell just even thinking about the head of security: Luke Gibson. He would bet good money that the tall, alert man, who always carried an M4 military rifle with the muzzle down across his Kevlar-covered chest, had been in the military. He always wore a brown baseball hat with that rising sun logo on the front of it. He was always wearing dark glasses and shooter’s gloves. Those gloves were a huge reason why Tefere knew in his heart that the man was ex-military; Gibson had cut off certain glove fingers so he could have direct contact with the trigger on his rifle. SEALs did that, and so did Army Delta Force operators.

The security force hired by Delos was thorough and smart. They had four white Toyota Hilux pickup trucks, each with an array of radio and communications antennas and devices bristling from their tops. Two operators rode in each. Earlier, a small Caterpillar bulldozer, brought in by the crane helicopter, had created a long, oval dirt road ranging about one-quarter of a mile around the entire school, its playgrounds and buildings. The security men would slowly drive around this oval. The two security trucks would each go off in different directions so that they had eyes on the entire area. At night, these trucks did the same thing. The timing of when they made their circuits was always altered, making it all the more difficult for Tefere to move any closer to the school. And it was just another sign that Gibson was ex-military. Vets knew that, by never doing the same time twice, they kept any potential attack at bay. And it worked, damn them.

The next waves of incoming school children seemed happy, smiling and laughing together, as they disembarked from the yellow buses. There seemed an air of unearned pride in them, and Tefere snarled a curse under his breath, “The privileged little shits!”

The school had a kindergarten, grades one through twelve. There were fifteen teachers, a principal, an assistant principal, a school nurse, and many women employees making up the office staff. He’d found out from his spy that, while there were two other schools in this town, a lottery was held to choose the lucky children who would come here to the far superior school.

The chill of the morning made his skin bump up in response. He wore a matching heavy dark-green jacket and trousers, with sturdy leather combat boots on his feet. How badly he wanted to just march in and shoot up the school, as he had so many villages. But the big deterrent was that ever-alert, heavily armed security force. Every one of those men and women were military operators and he knew it. They wouldn’t only shoot to kill. Even worse, they’d hit center mass in his soldiers with their first shots and they’d be dead before they even got close.

No, his plans to kidnap the red-haired woman would not happen here. He had to devise another plan where it would be easier to apprehend her. If nothing else, Tefere had patience. And that had helped him build a five-hundred-man army over the last ten years. He would continue to have his spy follow this woman, find out her habits, and then he’d figure out the best way to kidnap her.

Removing his red hard hat, Shep was looking forward to seeing Willow alone, in her condo. It was the weekend, and he’d given himself permission to come back to Bahir Dar with Luke Gibson, to have some downtime after a month of hard pushing to get the project up and on its feet. They sat on the deck of the Otter as it landed on the concrete airstrip at the large, bustling city near Lake Tana. The day was cloudy, maybe promising rain. Rain that was desperately needed during Ethiopia’s winter season.

As Willow guided the Otter over to the Delos hangar, they were met by three Ethiopian mechanics. She shut off the engines and waited until they placed a hook on the main landing gear and started to pull the plane into the huge aluminum hangar with a small gasoline-fed cart. Unstrapping from her harness, she took off her earphones and set them on the cockpit dashboard. Turning, she saw Shep and Luke sitting cross legged on the deck a few feet from the cockpit entrance.

Dev seemed happier than usual and Willow, once more, wondered if it had something to do with Luke. For the first time, she saw her copilot actively engaging with a man on a friendly basis. It was probably only just that, she thought as she wedged between the seats and straightened up in the cabin. She felt happy at the thought that Dev had finally made some kind of peace with the opposite sex, but she still caught herself wondering if it was turning serious between the two, even as unlikely as that seemed. They’d been flying five to eight times a day in and out of Addis Zemen, and there’d been little time to chit-chat about anything else other than the on-loading and off-loading of the ferried supplies.

Shep unwound from the deck and gave her a warm look as she hunched over and walked past him to open up the hatch door. The airplane was slowly being taken into the cavernous hangar. She pushed the door in and over, her hands on either side of it, watching the two other crewman giving hand signals to the cart driver. The air was dank smelling, but at least the high humidity was decreasing. During the winter season, November through January, it was drier here, except on the occasional rainy day. She touched the tendrils of hair brushing her temples. They felt thicker and curlier. Her wavy hair did exactly what it wanted to do and, in high humidity it frizzed, which she disliked, but seemed ‘tamer’ today.

She felt Shep come up behind her. Not so close as to cause her discomfort, but she felt his presence nonetheless, and absorbed it hungrily. The last three weeks? They’d had little time with one another. About twice a week, he would drive her down to that nice little Ethiopian cafe and they’d order to-go for the security and well-drilling crews, plus eat a meal together there. And those were the only moments they’d had alone time with one another.

Willow had her condo, and she would finish each day by flying back at dusk or sometimes after dark, drive home with Dev, and crash on her bed, exhausted. Only later, after waking up around midnight usually, would she get out of her sweaty, smelly flight uniform and go take a welcoming cool shower where she’d wash her hair and scrub the smell of perspiration off her body with fragrant soap. At least, until she entered the cockpit the next morning, she felt clean. By midday again, both she and Dev would smell, but it couldn’t be helped. They were constantly out on the baking tarmac with loud, belching trucks bringing supplies to be placed into the Otter, and had lengthy weight load calculations to consider on every flight. They were out in the heat and humidity of the day, sweating, and only dreaming of the air-conditioned comfort of their condos.

She’d tried to tone down her expectations with Shep. But hungering for deeper discussions with him, exploring him personally, and learning so much more about why he was the way he was, had driven her to ask him over for dinner tonight. Willow didn’t know what was going on, why they were like north and south magnets, powerfully pulled toward one another. Again. This reminded her of when they’d first met, unable to stay away from one another whenever they’d had the downtime to spare. Her heart ached to have quiet, personal time with this man. Were the changes she was seeing in him real? Lasting? Or was he doing it on the spur of the moment to entice her in once more? She wasn’t sure which was the truth and felt gun-shy.

Looking at her watch as the Otter came to a gentle stop, she saw that it was four in the afternoon. She felt Shep behind her, sensing again that he wanted private time with her. The last three weeks had made her want intimate communication with him more, not less. It was like opening a treasure chest and finding that he was finally sharing some of those private hidden gems within, however painful that was for him. How hungry Willow had been for just such a breakthrough. Again, she wondered if all this was honestly real, or something he was wearing like a mask.

The two mechanics put chocks behind and in front of the landing gear wheels, then brought over a rolling staircase and slotted it against the fuselage. Only then, did they finally give her the signal that everything was locked into place, and they could disembark. She smiled and waved to them in thanks.

“Okay, all ashore that’s going to shore,” she called over her shoulder. She saw Dev hunched over behind Shep, close to Luke. Willow wished nothing but happiness for her friend. Could this truly be the right man to open her up? To help her heal? To learn that not all men were to be feared? Dev hadn’t been able to separate out her traumatic experiences with one man from all the rest. Maybe, just maybe, Luke was showing her that she didn’t have to be wary and afraid of him. Fingers crossed! She stepped down the ramp’s stairs quicky onto the concrete floor of the hangar, straightening to her full height, waiting for the others to egress.

Then, it was the usual uncomplicated transit back to the condo for all of them. Once there, the men went one way, and they went the other. Willow and Dev got off the elevator at the fourth floor. The silent look that Shep had given her had been filled with readable longing. Her heart was unsure what it would do when he was back with her tonight. Once in the condo, she checked her slow cooker that had wat in it. With lamb and veggies this time. The smells of spices filled the condo, and she inhaled them hungrily, her stomach growling. The sponge bread was ready as well. Quickly setting the table and getting everything prepared for Shep to arrive at five p.m., Willow then hurried to the bathroom to shower and wash her hair.

Shep tried to still his expectations as he stood at Willow’s condo door, and knocked on it. At last. Three weeks of hell, not being able to have a moment alone together for some decent downtime with her, had finally paid off. The door opened. His heart thudded in his chest. Willow had traded out her olive-green flight suit, showered, and now wore a pair of light-blue linen slacks and a loose pink cotton top. Her hair was piled up haphazardly on top of her head with two thin copper combs. She was barefoot, and he smiled. She loved being barefoot and hated shoes, wearing them only when mandatory.

“Come on in,” Willow invited, stepping aside.

Shep inhaled as he entered. “Whatever you’re making smells great.”

“It’s that Ethiopian meal of wat that you’ve come to love,” she said, shutting the door and locking it. “Hungry?”

Shep nodded, following her in, appreciative of the sway of her hips. Seeing the table was already set, he noted that she’d poured some red wine in goblets, as well. “What are we celebrating?” he asked, pointing to the wineglasses.

She smiled and pulled out a chair for him. “Our quiet time and being away from that stress everyone is under. Sit. I’ll bring the wat casserole over.”

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