As he took his seat, he did what he could to avoid staring, but that proved difficult. This young woman was a true child of Africa, not black and not white, but the clear product of mixed parents. She appeared to be in her mid-twenties, but regardless, she was a stunning beauty, a petite build and likely on the rather short side, with hair not totally black, but rather streaked with shades of a wavy auburn color. She wore a dowdy white dress that looked straight out of the fifties, buttons running all the way up to her neck. Still, despite this cloak, she radiated a quiet beauty. Jake couldn’t believe his good fortune in having been given a seat next to her.

He smiled warmly the minute she realized he was looking at her. She returned the smile.

“Hi,” Jake said simply.

“Hello.” Her voice was proud, confident.

Jake arced a hand to her, bending it awkwardly at the wrist so he could shake hers despite their seated position. “I’m Jacob Fallon.”

She took his hand. “I’m Sarah Malumbo,” she said warmly.

“I saw you at the Victoria Falls Casino Hotel.”

She shook her head. “I don’t gamble.”

Jake laughed. “I didn’t say you were gambling. I saw you outside the door with a bunch of little kids.”

Her look of consternation bled to a heart-stopping smile. “Oh, I see,” she said. “They are from an orphanage in Bulawayo. The Sisters drove them in the convent bus to see the falls.”

“Nice of the Sisters.”

Sarah offered one long, slow nod. “How can a child be so close to one of God’s wonders and never see it?”

“You’re right about that,” Jake said. For a moment, he found himself uncharacteristically short of words. He discovered that every time his eyes met hers, breath rather failed him. “You, uh,” he stammered. “It’s uh . . . it’s a shame that they’re orphans.”

The moment the words escaped his lips, he chided himself inwardly.

Smooth, Jake, he thought. Real fucking smooth.

“Oh, there is no shame in that,” Sarah said, pressing her soft hand to what, even beneath her frumpy dress, appeared to be an ample breast.

“I am also an orphan.”

“No kidding.”

“I am not kidding,” Sarah said with a sad little frown. “I was brought up by the Sisters in the Convent school.”

Jake was snapped suddenly from his beauty-induced trance and realized that the conversation was not going as he’d anticipated. Quickly, he tried to gain safe ground. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to suggest that . . . But then I guess that’s why you speak English so well.”

Sarah’s face melted into a look of subtle confirmation.

“In fact,” Jake said, “some of your inflections make you sound Irish.”
To his great relief, his company smiled.

“There are two nuns that are Irish at the orphanage,” she said. “And one in Sinazongwe. So I suppose it must sound strange some of the time.”

Jake grinned, his eyes lingering on hers perhaps a little too long. He opened his mouth to speak, to say something romantic, whatever came to mind, but just as he did, the plane began to move and Sarah broke her end of the gaze. Jake looked then to the head of the aircraft, where the air hostesses were busy presenting the usual survival ritual. Then, to his right, Jake could see the massive Lake Kariba, partially visible in the distance through the window as the Viscount gathered speed down the runway and lifted off the ground.

He watched the scenery pass rapidly by, each passing moment feeling more awkward than the last. “Where’s Sinazongwe?” he asked finally.
“It’s a little town halfway up Lake Kariba on the Zambian side,” she explained. “I came from there originally.”

“What do you do?” Jake asked, feeling a little lame that he couldn’t come up with something more original in his line of questioning.

“There’s a small mission there. I have a job working as the Sisters’ cook.”

“That sounds ni—”

“I am also studying journalism through an American correspondence course,” Sarah interrupted, as if she felt the need to justify her future ambitions.

Just as she finished speaking, the no smoking sign switched off on the overhead panel. Jake dived into his pocket for his cigarettes, extending one to Sarah, a soft glint in his eye. “A cook who can write,” he said.

“And with the face of an angel.”

Sarah seemed to brighten up for a moment, but then she noticed the cigarette. She looked down at it with obvious disgust as she shook her head emphatically from side to side. “No thanks,” she said. “The Sisters would never approve.”

She reclined her seatback and stared up in the direction of the air vent.
Jake puffed for a time, then crushed his cigarette in the ashtray. He smiled at his companion and reclined his own seat. Then he turned in Sarah’s direction, looking with eyes half-closed into her lovely face. In time, it became clear that she was doing the same, facing him with the same half-closed eyes.

The four-turbo props whined vigorously on ascent as the Viscount made a steady climb out of Kariba Airport. In the distance less than ten miles from takeoff, a pocket of African freedom fighters under the supervision of a superior officer waited in a clearing in the bush. These were members of the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), a militant Communist organization headquartered in Zambia.

ZIPRA, under the leadership of Joshua Nkomo, were regarded by the natives as freedom fighters or guerillas, while to the white Rhodesian minority, they were considered terrorists. The men crouched in the brush, dressed in a mixed bag of battle fatigues, some Russian, some Chinese. The man in the center – a huge, oafish brute with jet-black skin and a chiseled jaw – focused a Russian SAM-7 ground-to-air missile on the ascending aircraft. When the officer kneeling behind him gave the signal to fire, the guerilla fighter released the missile.

A white stream of vapor trailed through the clear afternoon as the missile sought its target. The Viscount, with its broad underside, made for an easy direct hit when the missile found its mark. Such was the impact that the aircraft seemed to stop midair before banking and spiraling from the sky, a bright red fireball following the descent.
The twenty men on the ground leapt with glee at the sight.