Uganda.
It didn’t look much different from where we were now, with the lush jungle forest directly below us easing into a broad swath of savanna, but it screamed safety in a way our hiding from the latest helicopter fly-by never could. Far to our east and to our south, two of the bluest lakes I’d ever seen sparkled on the horizon.
By late afternoon we were more than halfway down the mountain and almost into the first valley when the sun, which had been teasing us all day, broke out in earnest to warm our way.
And when we paused for water and to share a snack so small it only made me realize how hungry I was, Kayla pulled another miracle from her pocket.
“A bar!” Her face beamed as she turned her phone display my way and a single signal bar flickered on the screen.
“What I wouldn’t give for GPS right now. Any clue how far we are from Kasese or which way it is?”
“I’m going to assume you got your A’s in anatomy and not geography,” Kayla teased. “We just came over Turaco Pass. It’s not like we’re lost.”
“Speak for yourself. I like my maps nicely gridded with well-marked streets and some woman robot telling me where to turn.” I flashed a smile her way. “I guess you telling me where to go will do in a pinch. But only if you do it in a really sexy robot voice and lead me up a tree or off a cliff every once in a while.”
Kayla rolled her warm chocolate eyes. “Kasese is almost due east, about 40, maybe 45 kilometers.”
“Damn metric system.” I had to mentally convert every measure.
“Kilembe is even closer. But it’s just a small mining town.”
“Miners have to eat too.”
“Look.” Her finger traced a barely discernible line in the swale of trees below. “A railroad track.”
“Signal bars. Trains. Oh, god, I miss civilization.” Could Kayla and I be any different—jungle mouse and city mouse? She was so at home here in the wild. If we were going to make this us thing work, one of us was going to have to do a lot of compromising.
Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t be her.
We walked in the direction of the strengthening bars. If Uganda didn’t want us, I was ready to march across Africa until we found a country that did.
My only stipulation was that I didn’t have to march alone.
CHAPTER 35
KAYLA
We pressed on, muscles that had just gotten used to the continual upward slog now twinging half in protest, half in relief at the steady downhill climb through the thinning jungle that opened to the sweeping valley below.
Thwock. Thwock.
Twin rotors beat in the distance. A helicopter on border patrol—heading our way. Too late to scramble back up the slope to thicker cover. I remembered the automatic fire when the outpost was attacked and cursed the simple double-barreled rifles we carried.
“It isn’t how much you have,” Mark recited grimly as he unslung his Winchester. “It’s how you use it.”
I recognized the reference. “A nice platitude if you’re on the slighted end. What if they’re well-endowed and know how to use it too?”
“Like me?” He let a tiny smile creep into his otherwise dark expression.
“Well…yeah. But we’re not talking bedroom here. Their rifles are bigger than yours. Those men from the outpost seemed pretty competent in the use of their weapons and look what happened to them.”
“I remember.” His hint of smile disappeared completely.
As I unslung my rifle, we headed for a grove of mahogany trees and slid behind their trunks.
Like a falcon on a sparrow, the copter bore down on us. “I don’t think we’ve been spotted yet!” Mark shouted. Likely the pilot was responding to some movement from the rhino or okapi.
“Come watoto,” I called to them over the strengthening beat of the rotors as I held fast to Jengo’s hand. If I could just get Tamu and Nyota into the shade where it would be harder to spot them… The okapi’s natural camouflage only protected her to a point. The helicopter at least didn’t taunt Gus the way a man on the ground would. Grudgingly, he stayed beside Mark and me, pacing anxiously between us, understanding something was up, just not sure what.
Tamu and Nyota slunk into the shadows with us where they cowered under the now-deafening roar above us.
That left only one of my strays to worry about. Wild animals I knew how to control. Mark, however, was a different beast altogether.
The helicopter circled our small grove, and Mark and I circled the trunk of our tree, keeping it between us and the soldiers in the cockpit with binocular eyes. One circle I was willing to put down to curiosity—a check of what they thought might be here. When it started a second circle, dread knotted my stomach and shot to my knees. The rough tree bark pressed into my back as I used it to hold myself upright as the dread grew. What if they were the type of men who’d kill babies for sport?
My fear only deepened when the copter stopped, hovering not 30 meters above. A rifle barrel snaked out, pointing toward my rhino.
I was far from an expert shot, but my father had taught me how to aim and not be afraid to shoot. That confidence would have to be enough. Dropping the gorilla’s hand, I raised the rifle and whirled—
—right into Mark’s broad chest.
“No,” was all he said. I couldn’t even hear the word over the sound of the blades and engine’s roar, just saw those sensuous lips mouth the word right before he batted me behind him. Then he stepped out from behind the tree, making himself a target even as he shouldered the gun and took aim.
I rushed at the rhino, waving my arms. “Move!” I shouted at her. Just enough to spoil the soldier’s aim was all I needed from her.
Mark’s rifle popped twice. The terrified rhino lurched away from me. The dog barked and the gorilla screeched. I took a step forward, toward the rhino, when Mark’s hand around my waist pulled me back with him to the comparative safety of the tree. I struggled against him.
“Stop it!” he shouted. “Look!”
I followed the point of his finger. A ribbon of black wove around the base of the copter’s tail even as the great metal bird began to rock in place. Then its tail whipped around and it was spiraling down. I caught glimpses of the pilot frantic at the controls, the second man holding tight to the open frame, and the orange flick of flames just behind the bubble of the cockpit as the machine spun.
They were going down. Hard.
Mark scooped up the little gorilla and shoved my attention away from the impending crash. “Go, go, go!”
Would my rhino even trust me now? “Watoto!” Mark and I ran down the slope, Mark’s hand on my arm keeping me from stumbling as I craned my neck around to see if Nyota and Tamu were following. Tamu was too young, too terrified. Nyota stood over her—a big sister doing the only thing she knew to protect her sibling. I was about to turn back when Gus broke away and streaked back to them.
That’s when the helicopter spiraled into a distant tree and cracked apart, the flickering flames bursting into a halo of fire. Only the rain-soaked bark and ground kept the tree and long-leafed ferns from burning too.
The engine growled a moment more before grinding to a stop. I didn’t know if the pilot had switched it off or if he was dead and the engine had given out on its own. I didn’t immediately care. My eyes and ears were for Gus circling the rhino and okapi and, with firm barks and a couple of insistent nudges with his muzzle, herded them toward me in the eerie silence broken only by the distant popping of the fire.
“Watoto-wazuri! Good!” I encouraged as Mark and I broke back into a run, with Gus and the babies—all built for running in a way Mark and I and the gorilla weren’t—easily catching up to us.
Together, we fled down the mountain, the railroad tracks in the valley below our goal.
“That’s Uganda,” I panted.
Crossing the border, of course, was no guarantee of safety, certainly not this far from any Ugandan habitation, but it gave us a focus and a possibility that we’d soon be fre
e of pursuit and reprisal. It didn’t even matter that, when we at last reached them, sweating and out of breath and every muscle aching, we saw the tracks lay abandoned, unused for maybe a generation.
We were in Uganda. That’s what mattered.
Political refugees seeking asylum.
Well, I was at least. Mark was a foreign visitor from a rich and powerful country, not subject to African law.
Me they might detain. I had no idea what my future might hold, how my orphans might fare.
In Uganda, however, Mark was assured of finding a way back to the States, back to his practice, back to his home.
Everything I’d known and loved was gone, save for the strays with me now. I didn’t want Mark to go any more than I’d wanted Nyota to leave. But I couldn’t force him to stay any more than I could force Nyota to.
She had made her choice.
I would have to give Mark the same freedom to make his.
CHAPTER 36
KAYLA
We sheltered in Uganda that night, although neither of us slept well. I wish it had been the excitement knowing we’d soon be within communication range with the rest of the world again that made us restless, but for my part, at least, I saw the helicopter going down and heard the automatic fire from the outpost attack whenever I closed my eyes. Had the pilot or passenger survived? Had they radioed their position in before crashing? Had Mark and I been part of those communications? Were more soldiers already on their way? Would they dare cross the border to find us?
The optimism of the day fled away in the terrors brought by night.
In my arms, Mark rolled and pitched with nightmares of his own until we both gave up the attempt at sleep a couple of hours before dawn. Gus’s soft snores and the gorilla’s butt in the air beside us told us they weren’t plagued by the same memories or fears Mark and I were.
I punched at the buttons on my phone, futilely trying to bring the weak signal to life. A few more kilometers closer to the data tower would probably do it, but for now there just wasn’t enough there. I switched it off before I over-drained the battery.
“What if the men in that helicopter are still alive? What if they need medical attention?” Mark kept his voice low so as not to disturb our sleeping companions. “I keep thinking how I didn’t even check on them. And it was me who…who…” The distress in his voice pained my heart.
“My mother used to say that guilt is like a snake eating its tail. There is no start or stop to it, just an endless loop of consumption. If you hadn’t fired on them and they’d killed our watoto and captured us, you’d feel guilt over that. If you’d gone back to them and they were alive enough to shoot you and leave the rest of us abandoned, your spirit would feel eternal guilt over that. There was no right choice or wrong choice, only the choice you made. We’re safe. All of us. I cannot—will not—wish the choice you’d made was any different. The same with the hyenas you killed. I can wish the circumstances had not been so dire as to lead to the loss of such magnificent animals who were only doing what they had to for their pack to survive. But the choice you made then ensured Tamu and Nyota and Gus are with us today. And the choice you made yesterday ensures they’ll be with us tomorrow. Feel sadness, certainly. Anger even. But for giving us our lives, don’t give in to guilt.”
“Your mother was a very wise woman.” Mark laid a hand along my cheek—a strong and capable hand, a skilled and sensitive hand that carried in it the power of life and death. It was a hand I had come to love. “You’re a very wise woman.” He was quiet then for a long moment as the hand on my cheek found its way to the top button of my shirt, unfastened it and slid its way inside to cup my breast. “I bet your children will be wise as well,” he whispered.
Desire flushed me. Not sexual—although I was only a heartbeat away from that—but maternal. A sudden overwhelming need to have those children who would grow up wise. How crazy was that when I didn’t even have a home any longer for the wild orphans I already had?
I covered his hand on my breast with mine. “Only if their father helps teach them to be wise…and caring…and good.”
Settling into the spoon of his hips and the cup of his hand, all my anxieties fled. I closed my eyes and fell asleep, waking again only when the sun rose over our Uganda.
Eyes closed in wise and guiltless peace, Mark slumbered beside me.
By early afternoon we had covered another 10 kilometers and were already stumbling over dirt roads carved through the checkerboard of wide savanna and thinning rainforest. The first bar on the phone was strong now, and persistent, and a second bar flickered off and on. Attempts to contact my friends in Hasa, however, were met with silence. It would take a long time before the data towers there were functional again. Meanwhile, we were still just outside range of internet connectivity from the towers here. It wouldn’t be long, though, before we’d be able to bring up the information we needed to contact…who?
“Maybe the American consulate in Uganda,” Mark suggested.
“Yes, yes, for you. But what about us?” I gestured toward the rest of our ragtag group.
Mark shook his head. “You don’t get it, do you? We’re all us.”
My heart warmed with his assertion. But, “The governments won’t see it that way—not yours, mine or Uganda’s.”
“Then screw them. We’ll appeal to Doctors MD…or the UN, if we have to.”
“Appeal? To do what?”
“To help relocate us.”
“To where?”
“To— Isn’t Ethiopia where you wanted to go?”
“It’s the only place I thought I could go under the circumstances. But circumstances changed. What about you? Where do you want to go?”
“Me?” He looked genuinely surprised. “I don’t really care. As long as I’m with you.” His expression fell. “That is— If you want— Hell, we need to talk about this, don’t we?”
Biting my lower lip, I shook my head. It seemed he had made his choice. My heart sung in silent ecstasy. “Just be sure it’s the choice you want.”
“It isn’t.”
Mid-song, my heart stopped beating.
“Because it isn’t a choice at all. Just like falling in love with you isn’t a choice. It just…is.”
Had he just admitted the “L” word? I wasn’t sure my heart could survive the rollercoaster ride it was on. Why did saying something out loud make it feel more concrete than what the heart already knew? “In…love?” There was barely enough oxygen in all the jungle for me to get the words out.
“Oh god. You don’t feel the same.” The stricken look in his eyes cut deep.
“No.” I had only one desire—to kiss that hurt away. “I do. I really, really do.” My lips on his swore the truth of it.
The long arms that hugged our thighs and the cold nose that nudged its approval was as much a part of that truth as the rhino and okapi who circled close.
From the northeast, above the trees, came the drone of an engine. We both started, whirling toward the intruder, expecting to see a flock of enemy helicopters intent on running down their prey.
I don’t know which of us snorted out a nervous laugh first. It was a prop plane, the cycling whine of its single engine sounding nothing like the distinctive thwocking of a helicopter once we listened with less-panicked ears. As we watched, it swooped low over the valley, trailing a faint yellow smoke behind it.
No, not smoke. “Crop dusting,” I supposed, although I saw no sign of farms or crops where it flew.
“Mosquitocide,” Mark guessed. “It’s laying down a barrier outside the city. Uganda’s fighting back.” He grinned.
In a single moment, I realized my world revolved around that grin. I would still mourn the loss of Zahur, my plantation—that was needed, that was right—just as it was needed and right that I mourn Ushindi. But in that grin I saw what Mark saw—that, like us, Uganda was looking for a future too.
It felt like a good match, Uganda and us.
I nodded in silent agreem
ent, the heart once again needing no words.
Arm-in-arm, hip-to-hip we watched the plane dip and turn, dip and turn while our babies browsed and played, safe beside us.
“Won’t you miss your home?” I asked. “Your family?”
He gave me a ‘Kayla’s crazy but I love her anyway’ look. “Home is where my family is. And you’re my family now. Although, wonderful as it already is, I wouldn’t mind creating a couple of wise little humans with a Mama Bear like you.”
Not every woman needed children to be fulfilled, but I had never envisioned my life without them. If not my own, then a host of human orphans to complement my wild ones.
I smiled, a coy and secret Mona Lisa curve, thinking back to the afternoon at the waterfall when Mark had filled me with his essence.
“That day may be here sooner than you know.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “What—?”
I covered his lips with my fingers. “Call it ‘woman’s intuition’.”
“You can’t possibly know.”
“No.”
“But it is possible?”
“Yes.” I watched him carefully for any sign of regret or indecision. There was only joy.
In a flash, he lifted up my shirt and bent to kiss the hollow of my stomach. Gripping the back of his neck, I held him there as a mix of hormones and desire tingled up and down my legs and electrified me to the core.
Not willing to be left out, the other strays gathered close. I stood above them, feeling like First Woman, Eve, the All-Mother. Then I lifted my consort, my protector, my lover to his feet.
There in the shadow of the Mountains of the Moon, in the cradle of civilization, we kissed. Long and sweet and deep under the Ugandan sun, our kiss went on and on, echoing back to our ancestors and forward to the generations to come.
We were home.
We were family.
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Noble Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 3) Page 21
