So what had changed?
Guessing his thoughts, Mallory was quick with an answer.
“The ground team has been delayed, and instead of meeting you at the airport, they will be waiting for you at the Hôtel la Commanderie.”
“What about transportation?”
“A vehicle will be waiting for you when you land,” she answered. “Any more questions?”
“Yeah, who is she?” he asked, nodding toward the blond-haired girl.
“A passenger, Mr. Hayes,” she said, motioning for Wikus to bring the girl.
Yeah, right, he thought.
Wikus escorted the girl across the hangar, giving Hayes his first clear look at his passenger. She was pretty, with ash-blond hair and smooth, sun-bronzed skin that from a distance made it difficult to determine her age. But as she drew near Hayes guessed that she had to be in her early twenties.
Old enough to know what she’s getting into, he told himself.
“One more thing,” Mallory said, leaning in. “Zoe is a Type 1 diabetic.”
“You’re just telling me this now?” he hissed. “What if . . .”
“It won’t, she has an insulin pump. The only reason I mention it is because like all girls her age, she is self-conscious about it.”
“Well if she is self-conscious about it, I don’t imagine she’s going to like some stranger knowing about it.”
“Just make sure she doesn’t leave her insulin in the plane,” she whispered before turning to the approaching girl. “Zoe, this is the pilot I was telling you about. His name is Adam Hayes and he is going to fly you to Grand-Bassam,” Mallory said by way of introduction.
Not sure what else to say, he stuck out his hand.
“Nice to meet you.”
“An American?” she asked Mallory in French, her eyes never leaving Hayes’s.
“It was last-minute,” the lawyer said with a Gallic shrug.
Hayes wasn’t used to taking shit off someone he’d just met, but he clung to his pretense of not speaking the language and bit down on the smartass comment he wanted to hurl at the two women, figuring that if he could keep his mouth shut for a few more minutes, he might just get the hell out of here alive.
“Just pretend he is one of your dogs and you’ll be fine,” Wikus added in his guttural French.
Stay cool, you can do this, he told himself.
Mallory suppressed a smile and switched back to English.
“Well, now that you two have been introduced, I suggest you get in the air.”
“Best thing I’ve heard all day,” Hayes said, turning to the plane.
“Hey, asshole,” Wikus said, stepping up behind him, “you let anything happen to her and there’s not a place in the world where you’re going to be able to hide. Get me?”
“You aren’t going to have to look for me,” Hayes said.
“Oh, yeah, and why’s that?”
“Because when this is over, I’ll be coming back for my property,” he said, nodding to the 1911 stuck in Wikus’s waistband.
Zoe was halfway to the plane, but with his anger stuck on simmer, Hayes ended up beating her to it. He stomped into the cargo hold, went to the control box, and shoved the lever into the up position.
Seeing the ramp lift free of the ground, Zoe broke into a run, whatever names she was calling him drowned out by the engines.
“What was that?” she demanded in English, when she made it inside.
“You know how these American planes can be,” he said.
Zoe pulled off her sunglasses and looked around the bare cargo hold, scowling at the nylon troop seats. “Where am I supposed to sit?”
“That’s up to you,” he said, already heading to the cockpit.
Hayes had already strapped himself in and was contacting the tower when Zoe’s head appeared over his shoulder.
“Can I . . . ?”
He leaned over and grabbed the pair of headphones from the copilot’s seat and handed them to her, not noticing the blood until Zoe had pulled them on.
Oops.
“Better take a seat,” he said, waiting for her to comply and then showing her how to strap in.
“Comfortable?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Good, now let’s get the hell out of here.”
Hayes contacted the tower, more out of habit than anything else, and after receiving clearance, maneuvered the Provider to the end of the runway.
Let’s get the hell out of here, he thought, shoving the throttles to full power.
29
GRAND-BASSAM
Hayes leveled off at twenty thousand feet, his mind racing as he double-checked his heading. It was a little more than three hundred miles to Grand-Bassam, and while he would have preferred to spend the time in silence, he had questions—questions that needed to be answered before they landed.
He glanced over at Zoe and found her sitting with her eyes shut, arms folded tight across her chest, the iPhone she’d produced shortly after takeoff plugged into her ears. Hayes had no idea what she was listening to and was pretty sure that even if she told him he wouldn’t have recognized the artist.
Her posture, on the other hand, was an entirely different story.
Like all married men, Hayes had been on the losing end of enough arguments to know that nothing good ever came from disturbing a woman sitting like that.
But it was either talk or spend the next three hours in silence.
Well, here goes nothing, he thought.
He tried clearing his throat and then faked a few deep-chested coughs, but with the engines droning like a pair of swamp fans Hayes realized that he could fire a howitzer in the cockpit and she probably wouldn’t hear it.
Guess I’m just going to have to take it up a notch, he thought.
He hauled back on the yoke, let the Provider’s nose climb skyward for a few seconds before shoving the controls forward.
Compared to the roller-coaster ride he’d taken across southern Burkina Faso, the maneuver was gentle as a summer breeze, with the only noticeable effects being the tickle in the pit of Hayes’s stomach that came during the few seconds of zero gravity.
The same could not be said for his passenger.
Hayes wasn’t sure if Zoe had nodded off or if she simply wasn’t accustomed to flying, but whatever the case, she jumped so hard that if she hadn’t been wearing the harness, he was pretty sure she would have blasted right through the windscreen.