Page 52 of Shadow Target

Nodding to the tall man, she said, “Please get those fence posts in here, Zere,” and she pointed where to place them behind the co-pilot’s seat, next to the hatch. They were the main staves for the ten-foot-tall cyclone fences. Normally, they would be placed horizontally across the deck of the plane for safety, but it was already piled with too many boxes. There would be nobody in harm’s way on this trip anyway, so it would have to do. This was the heaviest load she’d carry today; weighty items had to sit in the center of the Otter, and in this case, near the hatch so they were balanced against all the boxes on the left side of the fuselage deck. Last on, first off.

“Yes… ma’am,” Zere struggled in halting English, giving a quick bow of his head.

Smiling, she nodded. “Come on board when you get done, Zere. I’ll go through my pre-flight check list right now. Just find someplace to sit in the back, behind me.”

Willow didn’t know exactly how much of what she said Zere actually understood, but he seemed to get the gist and nodded obediently, beginning to handle the thirty staves with his thickly gloved hands, carefully stacking them, sliding them in from the rear hatch. His eyes narrowed as he watched her weave between the gear, going to the pilot’s seat and strapping in. Smiling to himself, sweat dripping off him from the hard work, he looked back and saw the foreman and the remaining worker going to the truck cab near the hangar entrance, to sit and eat their pastis. Once they had disappeared inside, he pulled out his cell phone, moving outside the plane, back behind the truck, to send a quick text to David with the details of this fortuitous change. Once done, he continued to slide the heavy iron staves carefully into the cabin.

Glancing back, Willow saw Zere was half-finished with the last of the load. She made a call to Luke Gibson, letting him know her status.

“I’m flying without Dev and Ginny today,” she told Luke, giving him the details.

“You’re alone?”

Hearing alarm in Luke’s voice, she said, “Zere, one of the foreman’s men, is flying in with me. He’ll help offload all this stuff and I’ll keep him with me all day for the rest of the flights.”

“I don’t have his name on my roster of personnel cleared to fly with you. Do you know this guy?” Luke demanded.

“He’s worked for our foreman the last two weeks. Quiet, very respectful and a hard worker. He doesn’t know a lot of English, but enough. Seems like an okay dude to me.”

“Damn,” Luke muttered. “I don’t like this, Willow.”

“It’ll be okay,” she breezily assured him. “It’s a twenty-five-minute flight to where you are at Addis Zemen. You can buttonhole him all you want once we land. Fair enough?”

“Do you have his last name?”

“No, and he’s originally from Somalia, and speaks only very basic Ethiopian and English it seems. I don’t speak much Somali, nor could I spell his last name probably, even if he understood what I wanted,” she said. “He’s fine. He’s been very nice. Besides,” she joked, “I bring this team a bag of pastis every morning so it’s in their best interests to look out for me. Seriously though, they’re a reliable, hard-working crew.”

“Somalia, Willow?” said Luke, his voice grating. “That’s where Tefere is from!”

“Luke, a bunch of the laborers here are from there. It doesn’t mean they are all in with Tefere.” replied Willow.

“Okay, fair enough, but I don’t have him on my cell phone list, either,” Luke muttered unhappily again.

Willow could hear his frustration as he returned to flipping through a sheaf of papers, on his ever-present clipboard. “I’ve put his name in my cell phone security app, but there’s nothing coming up on him. Without a last name, I’m screwed.”

“He’ll give you his last name in about half an hour,” Willow promised. “I’ve got a clear blue sky, no wind.” Willow knew that flying in the cool early morning like this is always easier than later in the day when they get bounced all over the place with air pockets formed by the afternoon heat rising off the lake. “I should arrive right on schedule.”

“Okay…,” Luke grumbled unhappily.

She heard concern in his tone. “Relax. Things will be fine. Hey, is Shep around?”

“He’s down below with the well-drilling crew right now.”

“Oh… okay.” Willow wanted to talk with him, but it wasn’t possible. And as soon as the materials were offloaded at the airport, she’d have to turn right back around and return to Bahir Dar. She wouldn’t see him until tonight. “Gotta go, Luke. See you soon.”

“Roger that,” he said.

Just after she was finished on the phone, it suddenly rang, and she answered it. The foreman was calling, telling her that they were going back to the warehouse for the next shipment’s load. She thanked him and saw the truck drawing away from the airplane hangar.

“Uhhhh….ma…madam?” Zere called from the hatch.

Willow turned. “Yes?” So, Zere knew SOME English, although the way he said it, it took her a moment to realize the English word he’d struggled to speak.

He motioned toward the fully packed cargo and then to the wheel chocks with a questioning, pulling gesture.

“Great. Yes, remove the chocks. Thanks, Zere!” and she turned, pulling on her earphones, making a call to the tower for a runway clearance and designation.

As she waited on instructions, she kept busy, finishing up the pre-flight list and saw Zere removing the chocks. Focused on her work; checking the gauges, making sure there was plenty of fuel in the wings, the weight of the plane, that the oil was at the correct setting, she heard the rear hatch slam closed. She felt the familiar pressure that followed and kept checking off each item with her pen.

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