As they hummed along, dark in the dark sky, Lew explained to Patricia the clock method for describing where one had seen another plane in the sky, and once they saw far above them the light and flame trails of a multi-engine jet streaming northward above the planet, but that sighting of the two fighter jets while Ellen had been skirting Jinja Airport remained their last appearance. “Maybe,” Lew said, voicing a thought he’d been silent about for five minutes, “maybe their search area only extends as far east as Jinja.”
“I was thinking that,” Ellen told him. “I was afraid to say it.”
“So was I. Let’s see if I brought us bad luck.”
But another five minutes went by without the jets’ return, and finally they did all begin to relax and to believe they would get away with it. They were past Iganga, past Bugiri, over a hundred miles from Entebbe, with less than forty miles to the Kenyan border. Ellen, increasingly confident that they were alone in this part of the sky, was flying much closer to the highway, an unlit faintly paler ribbon across the black chest of the world. An occasional car appeared down there, moving at less than half their hundred twenty miles an hour.
“That looks like the flashes,” Patricia said.
Lew, his long day ending, had been half-asleep. He sat up, blinking. “What?”
“The flashes, when they were shooting at us at the airport,” Patricia explained. “That looks like the same thing. What would make that?”
She was pointing out her window, down toward the road. Leaning over, his arm against her breast, he looked down and at first saw only an automobile, a Peugeot, speeding along down there, traveling east as they were. They were already ahead of it, and pulling away. But then he saw the flashes at the side windows and said, “They’re shooting, that’s why.”
But what were they shooting at? Ahead of the Peugeot, visible in its headlights, being steadily overtaken, was someone on a small motorcycle, a narrow figure hunched over the handlebars, about to be shot or run down, his motorcycle or moped slower than the—
Moped. Lew stared. “That’s Bathar!”
“What?” Ellen dipped the right wing for a better look, dumping Lew more firmly into Patricia’s lap. “My God!” Ellen cried, “they’re killing him!”
“Jesus! Bathar!” Lew picked himself out of Patricia’s lap and held onto the back of Ellen’s seat. “I completely forgot that goddam moped!”
Ellen was swinging left, away from the road. She said, “Lew, do you have a gun?”
“Of course.”
“The window flap by my elbow here. It opens. But not yet, wait’ll I throttle back.”
Ellen’s left turn segued into a long arc to the right, finishing with her over the road, facing the other way, the Peugeot and moped just ahead, rushing toward them. She throttled back, dropping low, the wheels no more than twenty feet above the road. Lew, arm sticking out the top-hinged window flap, fired three shots as they and the car passed one another, but to no effect. “No good,” he said. “I can’t see, I can’t aim. Run parallel, let me broadside them.”
“They’ve stopped,” Patricia said, looking back.
So they had, apparently startled by the sudden appearance of a plane shooting at them. But as Ellen swung around for another attack, they started up again, tearing down the highway. “Good,” Ellen said. “The faster they go, the easier it’ll be to pace them.”
They came in on the car’s right, flying low, Ellen slowing to match the car’s ninety miles an hour. This time she held the flap up and out with her elbow while Lew crouched against her seat back, holding the pistol in a two-handed grip, bracing it by pressing his knuckles against the door panel just under the window, the barrel sticking out through the opening. The driver was on this side, clearly visible, staring at the plane, his eyes huge white circles in his dark face, making a toy target. A passenger in the seat behind him was firing wildly in the general direction of the plane.
Lew’s first shot went nowhere in particular, but his second made that target face disappear, like something in a shooting gallery. The car slued and careened, turned sharply right, went over on its side, rolled completely over twice, and landed bone-jarringly on its wheels, smoking. Ellen lifted them higher, and looking back Lew saw the first flames, and two men staggering out onto the pavement.
Ahead, Bathar and the moped still ran, not looking back, not slackening pace. Ellen accelerated to overtake him, while Patricia said, “Who is that?”
“A friend of ours. My employer’s son. We thought he was dead.”
“He almost was.”
They flew over the speeding Bathar, then Ellen brought the Cessna down onto the highway for a very bumpy and scary landing, the fuselage fishtailing the whole time. Once they’d stopped, Ellen opened the door, leaned out, looked back, and said, “Where is he?”
Lew went through the contortions necessary to get past Ellen’s seatback and stick his head out the doorway. The road back there was dark and empty. “He’s hiding,” Lew said. “He’s hiding from us. Let me out, I’ll go get him.”
“We can’t stay here forever,” Ellen pointed out, climbing down so he could get out. “Sooner or later, there’ll be traffic.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Taking a few steps back behind the plane, Lew cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Bathar!” No response. He yelled it again, then muttered something, and went jogging away down the middle of the road. He counted fifty paces, then stopped and yelled, “God damn it, BATHAR!”
A distant unbelieving voice said, “What?”
“Bathar, it’s Lew! Come on!”
A shadow separated itself from the roadside darkness some distance away. “Lew? Honest to God?”
“No, I’m lying. Come on, Bathar!” Lew gestured mightily for Bathar to come on, then turned and jogged back toward the plane.
Behind him, the moped sounded its nasal sputter. It rapidly approached, passed the jogging Lew, and as he reached the plane, Bathar was off the moped and embracing Ellen with great vigor. “Say, there,” Lew said.
Bathar, grinning from ear to ear, released Ellen, then immediately grabbed her again and kissed her smiling mouth. Then he truly did release her, turned, and enthusiastically shook Lew’s hand in both of his, saying, “I can’t believe it. I thought this was a dead Paki, Lew, I really thought that, I really did.”
“Let’s get in the plane,” Ellen said.
“Right,” Lew said. He started forward, but Ellen put up a hand to stop him, saying, “Oh, no, you don’t. You ride up front with me.”
“Oh, sure.”
“Get in, Bathar. Step there, and there.”
“Very good.” Bathar hoisted himself up, climbed into the plane, and was heard to say, “Well, hello.”
Patricia’s grin sounded clearly in her voice: “Hello, yourself.”
Lew went next, working his way over to the front passenger seat, and then Ellen climbed aboard and at once started them rolling down the potholed road.
“By golly, here comes a car,” Lew said, seeing the headlights appear around a curve far ahead.
“I hope he has sense enough to get out of the way.” Ellen switched on the Cessna’s landing lights so the oncoming driver would at least know what was out in front of him.
He wasn’t a particularly intelligent driver. First he flashed his high beams; whether requesting this airplane to get out of his way or objecting to the brightness of its single forward floodlight, it was impossible to guess. Then he just kept coming, for the longest while. In the backseat, Bathar and Patricia were oblivious, engaged in mutual introductions. “Ellen,” Lew said, “what if he doesn’t stop?”