Chapter 36: Kings of the High Frontier
CHAPTER 36 Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors. -- W. Eugene Smith 24 June Joseph Lester felt more than conspicuous. Not only was he a white man wandering an African city, he was a big man among a nation of the starving. The ongoing sub-Saharan drought contributed to the starvation, but the major cause was the eternal one of power. Disguised as tribal warfare between the Bantu-speaking minority and the Somali majority, or as religious conflict among Muslim sects, or as political struggle between ideological splinter-groups, the real battle murdering Somalia and nearly every other nation in Africa and the world was between those who would rule the lives of others and those who wanted simply to be left to tend to their own lives. The former, minority group currently held the upper hand -- the one with irrigation water and relief food in its grasp. Lester waded through the emaciated victims of the perpetual struggle in an effort to locate Hillary. She had wandered off again to some damned slum for more video of hungry street urchins. How many more of them did she need? Lester considered the subject of hunger thoroughly covered. Yes, people starve in this world. People have always starved, there will always be marginal living -- human nature pushed systems to their limits, filled in every niche, survived at the extremes. Human nature also accepted such conditions and usually ignored them, and the news bureau chiefs to whom they sold their stories were extremely human in that aspect. His celphone warbled for his attention. He pulled it out, flipped it open, and said, "Yeah?" "Joe -- are you anywhere near the airport?" He snorted. "The whole city is near the airport!" "Then get over here. I have something to show you." "God, I hate that sort of teaser. Just tell me what's up." "I just saw Drs. Edvard Dobroshevsky and Laura Tutihasi. He's a Russian rocket expert and she's a Japanese scientist specializing in orbital struc--" "I've heard of them both. Why're they here?" "I don't know. Just get over here. I -- my God, they're being followed. A couple of locals. I'm going to video. Hurry!" The connection broke. The airport lay northeast of where he roamed. Lester debated looking for a cab or making a run for it at least part of the way. He looked down at where his stomach had been. In the year since he had made his decision to lose weight, he had dropped an average of two pounds a week -- about double what a safe weight-loss program ought to accomplish. He still felt overweight. Now down to one hundred eighty, he was within ten pounds of his target liftoff weight (as he liked to think of it) and much of that remaining weight he had turned into muscle through daily exercise. He chose to run. *** Twenty minutes of running brought him to the airport. On his arrival, he saw Kaye standing outside a blue-black line of airport police. She nodded toward him surreptitiously; he caught on instantly and walked in another direction. She followed and intercepted him around a corner. "I'm glad you got your cardiac workout," Hillary said with tight-jawed severity. "Take a look at what you missed." She hit the playback button and held the camera up for Lester to watch through the eyepiece. The tiny speaker mounted on the side replayed the audio with low fidelity. She had kept the camera supremely steady while rushing through the crowds to follow the hit men. The lens caught the panic of the onlookers as the two mysterious men withdrew silenced pistols and aimed at Tutihasi. The scientists turned at the sound of the commotion to see both men drop from shots to the head; shots that appeared to come from nowhere. The camera panned and tilted. No source for the protective fire was apparent. Drs. Tutihasi and Dobroshevsky were ushered out of the video frame by a red-haired woman. "Did you follow them?" Lester asked in an annoyingly demanding tone. "Not in that stampede." Lester huffed. "I want us to stake out the airport after the excitement's worn down. If we recognize any more scientists or anyone important, I'll want to see where they're going." He did not have long to wait. Six hours later -- after the bodies were removed, the police investigation finished, and some semblance of normality restored -- a flight from New Zealand arrived. Two women and a man among the arrivals hastily strode to the Velocet Airways counter to pick up connecting tickets. They were the only ones in line. "Recognize them?" he asked Hillary. "One of the women," she whispered, "is Dr. Joan McLaughlin, an expert in space medicine from Brisbane. The others, I don't know." "I've seen the other woman. She blew the whistle on some government contractor or something a couple of years back. Really bitter exchange of accusations, including attempted murder. She claimed they tried to run her off the road. Something to do with the company faking test data on inertial navigation systems for missiles." "And the man?" Lester peered at the skinny, nervous man in the drab brown, ill-fitting suit. "Could be anyone. Pretty expensive laptop he's carrying, though." After the three left the ticket counter, Lester strode up to it and asked the woman when the next flight was departing. "Where to?" she asked. He pointed at the three walking out to the Cessna. "Same place they're going." The woman's smile grew. "And where would that be?" Lester paused. "I don't know," he said slowly. "All I know is I'm supposed to be with them." "Regrettably," she said, returning to her fixed smile, "the flight is booked. Very small airplane." "I'm really in a hurry. What about the flight after?" She made a show of looking down at a computer screen, tapped a few keys that Lester could see did nothing, then said, "All flights booked. Small planes. Sorry." Her English grew worse the more he pressed her. When she shifted into rapid-fire Bantu with a decidedly harsh tone, Lester gave up and walked over to rejoin Kaye. "I think we have a bogus airline here," he whispered. "What next?" He nodded toward another cubicle. "Let's charter a scenic flight." *** Lester -- only a semi-skilled haggler -- let the local dollar speak for him. Hillary -- videocam awhir -- sat in the rear seat of the dust-coated green Beech Bonanza while Lester, from the right-hand co-pilot's seat, gripped at his frayed seat harness and observed the ground fall away from them. "Velocet a new airline," the pilot -- a middle-aged Ethiopian woman clad in deep blue, oil-stained overalls -- said in broken English. Her dark brown eyes gazed intently at the horizon, rotating downward every few seconds to scan the instruments in a precise pattern. "They come and go so fast here now. Not enough dollars in capital equipment." She banked hard to the right, leaving the takeoff pattern at eight hundred feet. "I fly here sixteen year. Always pay heavy for good maintenance. Little dust okay, as long as engine purrs good, yeah?" She grinned at Lester with a mixture of pride and impishness that belied her matronly visage. "Do you own this plane?" Hillary asked, turning the camera toward the pilot. "Oh, yes," she merrily replied, pushing the throttle in to gain altitude and lowering the nose a tad to increase airspeed. "I flew route between Adis Ababa and Goba in 'sixties and 'seventies. Then come Mengistu and his Dergue party"--she made a spitting sound and touched a Coptic cross hanging from a necklace --"so one day I just keep flying from Goba across the border into Somalia. I own outright property from then. No bank loans. Banks same as the Dergue -- think they own you. See that patch there?" She pointed at a palm-sized piece of aluminum riveted to the left wing's leading edge. "I fought against invasion of Somalia in 'seventy-seven. When Mengistu finally go, I stay here. Like living on the coast." She made a smooth turn without so much as a slip or skid and dropped down toward Kismayu. She pointed. "There is your target." The Cessna -- cruising at a stately speed yet still ahead of the Bonanza with its throttle rammed all the way in -- was a grey-and-maroon spot above the horizon. "They're heading toward airstrip at Kismayu," the pilot said. "Take us there, then." Lester eased his grip on the shoulder harness and gazed out of the crazed acrylic side window at the browns and greens of the coast thousands of feet below. What would they find in this far-off place? he wondered. *** What they found, an hour later, was an armed escort presenting them to Chad Haley, who cordially introduced himself and asked what they were doing taping the exterior of the World Habitat Missions' latest housing project. "Joseph Lester, GSN," the reporter replied. "And this is Hillary Kaye, my crew. We'd like you to comment on why a charitable organization would be host to experts in space medicine and spacecraft guidance. And, for that matter, why you need armed guards." "Somalia's not exactly the most... pacific place in world. Still a lot of what you in the press call warlords running around. Put that thing down," Haley calmly said to Kaye. "Global Satellite Network, eh? You produced that documentary about Constitution, didn't you?" Lester nodded. He would have smiled at the recognition if it were not for the gunmen flanking him. "We tried to find you, and here you show up on our doorstep." Haley rubbed at his sharp chin. "Can you two keep your mouths shut for a few months in exchange for the scoop of the millennium?" "Define keeping our mouths shut," Hillary said. "Not leaving this development unescorted. Not communicating with the outside world. Not snooping where you shouldn't." Lester said, "Define scoop of the millennium." Haley smiled like the Cheshire cat. "Deal first, then secrets." Lester and Kaye glanced at each other and shrugged. "Deal," they said in unison. Haley beamed. "Ms. Kaye, you may switch on." *** Haley spoke candidly about the project and its far-reaching goals. Both Lester and Kaye barraged him with questions. The technical ones he answered easily. The ones about motive, though, gave him pause. "Why did you offer to let us cover this?" Lester asked. "I should think secrecy would be of paramount importance." "Secrecy before the fact, yes. Afterward, though, we can provide mutual aid to one another. You two get an exclusive on the biggest story of the century, and -- in exchange -- Grant Enterprises presents its position as clearly as possible, so that no government would risk the bad publicity of trying to sabotage our efforts." "We're not going to do a puff piece on you," Lester said. "We'll call it the way we see it." "Fine," Haley said. "What you see will amaze you." Proceed to Chapter 37 Return to the Table of Contents