snatched was tainted by the cries of leopards, hyenas, lions and buffalo. Even being an Idaho-bred farm girl who was used to roughing it made me wonder if there hadn’t been another way to accomplish this mission.
On the other hand, the meeting betwe en the gun-smugglers and Hutu insurgents bent on revenge for the massacres of the nineteen-nineties was proceeding as planned and was meant to be as secret as possible. But was it more than a human-to-human bad guy meeting? If that’s all it was we could report Stone’s eyewitness account of who was doing what to whom and be on our way to Paris.
"H E double c hopsticks," Jaylene cursed through the commset.
"Problem?"
"You ever try peeing from a tree?" came the disgruntled answer. "How in Hades am I—"
I swallowed a smile, accepting the break in the tension, even if it only lasted a few seconds. "All set now?"
"Sure. Till the next time. Why couldn't these bastards meet somewhere with flushing toilets,” Jaylene continued to grumble, “I’m so done with these bugs and the huge beast BS."
"They're not all huge beasts.” I glanced around. “There's a herd of ostrich not thirty feet from where I am."
"Girlfriend, if it has a hide, hooves or feathers, it's a beast in my book. I do cities. I do not do Outward Bound."
"Maybe you should come visit my hometown. It'll give you a whole new perspective," I offered, not surprised when Jaylene snorted.
"You’ve got to be kidding.” The snort got louder. “I so do not do Mud Spot in the boondocks."
"It's Mud Lake, not Mud Spot , and it's in Idaho."
"That's what I said."
A rustle and a grunt issued from the commset before Jaylene's voice came back on. "Give me a cardboard box and asphalt to sleep on before I play Tarzana in a tree again. There's a reason our ancestors crawled out of these branches to walk on the ground and I know why."
Jaylene was giving the mission her best shot, and no one besides me and Kelly on the other end of our communication devices would ever know how the model-tall black woman felt about our assignment or having to prove the team could carry it out.
Mandy and team leader Vaughn had disappeared last night to procure a helicopter from the nearest airfield. Our primary chopper had a killer landing on the airfield when we arrived and wasn’t going anywhere for two days. Our secondary chopper had been commandeered by the Rwanda government sometime around midnight. Sort of a what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is also mine attitude.
Of the eight airfields in Rwanda, three of them lacked a permanent surface. Come rainy season they were more swamp than asphalt and hard-packed mud. So having a helicopter just sitting on a field waiting for crazy Americans seemed too much a gift to pass up.
I cast a wary glance skyward, half expecting a deluge, but only the promise of a bright, open-blue sky met my gaze. So where were Vaughn and Mandy?
A copter for the team was vital if the men meeting with Stone decided to take off early and disperse. Given the location of the meet, disappearing north into the Hutu hotbed refugee camps, or east into somewhat stable Tanzania, or even west into the hilly and mountainous parts of Rwanda wouldn't be difficult. Any of those options meant failure for the mission.
Stone had decided to go in without a wire or transmitter after a close call when he thought the one he was wearing was about to be discovered. Instead he’d opted for a seismic tracker, based on motion. If he moved, anyone within a two-hundred-meter radius could trace his movement. But no one had taken into account the nearby elephant herds that were supposed to have been on their annual trek away from here . Evidently a very recent brush fire had changed their plans and now ours. Deciphering human movement from elephant activity was proving almost impossible, like trying to trace the sounds of a small rock rolling down an active volcano.
And that wasn’t the only fubar impacting the mission.
The
On the other hand, the meeting betwe en the gun-smugglers and Hutu insurgents bent on revenge for the massacres of the nineteen-nineties was proceeding as planned and was meant to be as secret as possible. But was it more than a human-to-human bad guy meeting? If that’s all it was we could report Stone’s eyewitness account of who was doing what to whom and be on our way to Paris.
"H E double c hopsticks," Jaylene cursed through the commset.
"Problem?"
"You ever try peeing from a tree?" came the disgruntled answer. "How in Hades am I—"
I swallowed a smile, accepting the break in the tension, even if it only lasted a few seconds. "All set now?"
"Sure. Till the next time. Why couldn't these bastards meet somewhere with flushing toilets,” Jaylene continued to grumble, “I’m so done with these bugs and the huge beast BS."
"They're not all huge beasts.” I glanced around. “There's a herd of ostrich not thirty feet from where I am."
"Girlfriend, if it has a hide, hooves or feathers, it's a beast in my book. I do cities. I do not do Outward Bound."
"Maybe you should come visit my hometown. It'll give you a whole new perspective," I offered, not surprised when Jaylene snorted.
"You’ve got to be kidding.” The snort got louder. “I so do not do Mud Spot in the boondocks."
"It's Mud Lake, not Mud Spot , and it's in Idaho."
"That's what I said."
A rustle and a grunt issued from the commset before Jaylene's voice came back on. "Give me a cardboard box and asphalt to sleep on before I play Tarzana in a tree again. There's a reason our ancestors crawled out of these branches to walk on the ground and I know why."
Jaylene was giving the mission her best shot, and no one besides me and Kelly on the other end of our communication devices would ever know how the model-tall black woman felt about our assignment or having to prove the team could carry it out.
Mandy and team leader Vaughn had disappeared last night to procure a helicopter from the nearest airfield. Our primary chopper had a killer landing on the airfield when we arrived and wasn’t going anywhere for two days. Our secondary chopper had been commandeered by the Rwanda government sometime around midnight. Sort of a what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is also mine attitude.
Of the eight airfields in Rwanda, three of them lacked a permanent surface. Come rainy season they were more swamp than asphalt and hard-packed mud. So having a helicopter just sitting on a field waiting for crazy Americans seemed too much a gift to pass up.
I cast a wary glance skyward, half expecting a deluge, but only the promise of a bright, open-blue sky met my gaze. So where were Vaughn and Mandy?
A copter for the team was vital if the men meeting with Stone decided to take off early and disperse. Given the location of the meet, disappearing north into the Hutu hotbed refugee camps, or east into somewhat stable Tanzania, or even west into the hilly and mountainous parts of Rwanda wouldn't be difficult. Any of those options meant failure for the mission.
Stone had decided to go in without a wire or transmitter after a close call when he thought the one he was wearing was about to be discovered. Instead he’d opted for a seismic tracker, based on motion. If he moved, anyone within a two-hundred-meter radius could trace his movement. But no one had taken into account the nearby elephant herds that were supposed to have been on their annual trek away from here . Evidently a very recent brush fire had changed their plans and now ours. Deciphering human movement from elephant activity was proving almost impossible, like trying to trace the sounds of a small rock rolling down an active volcano.
And that wasn’t the only fubar impacting the mission.
The
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