Rosa Rio
Copyright© 2025 by Jody Daniel
Chapter 2
Andrew Boucher was a bulky man — the kind who looked like he’d been built for the bush rather than the boardroom. Six foot three, shoulders like a cargo crate, the wiry strength of someone who’d spent more years under the African sun than anywhere near air-conditioning. His sandy hair was chopped short, purely functional, and his eyes — pale, electric blue — had that unsettling way of not just looking at you, but through you, as though he were checking your paperwork against the truth.
The beard was neat, trimmed, practical, but it gave him the air of a man who could stare down a charging buffalo and then offer you a cold beer afterwards.
Outside my hut, the air was heavy with the smell of red dust and woodsmoke, the low hum of insects blending with the distant thump of a generator and the faint metallic groan of sheet metal in the heat. Somewhere, a child laughed — quickly cut short by a woman’s scolding voice. This wasn’t just the Congo; this was the edge of the map where pilots like me flew into places that had never heard of timetables or paved runways. I was here to replace a man who’d been medevac’d out after a malaria relapse — my job now was to keep the relief flights going, hauling sacks of beans, boxes of antibiotics, and whatever else kept the remote villages alive.
“Sorry I was not around to welcome you to our unlikely tropical resort, but duty called and one must obey,” Andy said, stepping forward. His voice was deep and dry, with the unhurried cadence of someone who knew that in this part of the world, rushing got you nowhere. He offered a hand — a slab of an arm ending in a paw the size of a soup plate.
“Andrew Boucher,” he said. “But call me Andy. Everyone calls me Andy.”
“Pleased to meet you, Andy. Dolf van Reenen’s the name,” I replied, taking the handshake.
Andy lowered himself onto the bunk next to mine. The frame creaked like an old DC-3 wing spar in turbulence.
“You got this place all to yourself, Dolf.”
“No problem. I’m used to roughing it,” I said with a chuckle, though my body still ached from the corrugated airstrip I’d landed on earlier that morning.
“Unlike your fellow pilot,” Andy said. “But that’s her daddy’s money talking. He thinks she’s something to be wrapped in cotton wool. But I know the girl — a little tomboy rebel. ‘Daddy’ thinks he’s punishing her by sending her here to rot in this hell-hole.”
“What?” I raised an eyebrow. “I thought she was a spoiled corporate brat with her own biz-jet.”
“That jet she flew in with? Nah. That was a charter,” Andy said, shaking his head. “Don’t be so hard on her. She’s a little like her call-sign, but otherwise keeps to herself, stays out of trouble, flies by the book.”
“What’s her call-sign?” I asked.
“Ice.”
“Damn.”
Andy’s booming laugh rolled through the room like a thunderclap.
“You know her?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “About a year back, we flew together a couple of times on an A350 out of Doha to Madrid, and the rest of Europe. She’s a competent captain officer. But being Muslim, there are rules and laws she has to live by. That’s why she can come across as distant — even a bit frosty.”
“Thanks for telling me,” I said. “I’d already made up my mind to parcel her up with a one-way postage stamp back to Doha.”
“Don’t,” Andy said firmly. “Give her a chance. See for yourself.”
I lit my pipe, watching the tobacco curl and blacken. “Well, I did wonder why a Muslim girl would come out to Africa.”
“I can tell you,” Andy said, leaning forward slightly. “She refused to marry a nincompoop her daddy picked out for her. So he sent her here to ‘cool off’ and come to her senses.”
“Poor girl,” I muttered. “She really has a problem.”
“So humour her,” he said. “Don’t be too hard on her.”
“How do you know her father sent her here to ... cool off?”
“Jassim Al-Kuwari told me himself,” Andy replied. “I’ve got a line open to him — he supports the mission here in the DRC.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling my earlier judgement sag like a wet windsock.
Andy stood, stretching until his fingertips brushed the low plywood ceiling. “Well, I’ve still got a few things to do.”
And just like that, he was gone. No fuss, no ceremony.
I stayed on the bunk a while longer, the air thick with the smell of woodsmoke, fuel, and the faint medicinal tang from the stores stacked in the next hut over. Somewhere, a radio crackled in the Lingala language, a burst of laughter following. I drew slowly on my pipe, the ember glowing in the dim light.
“Oh well,” I sighed into the haze. “Let’s see how this goes...”
Early the next morning, Andy cornered me at breakfast.
I was still getting used to what passed for a “Goma-style” start to the day. The kitchen girls had stacked three thick slices of toast on my plate — cut from a loaf that had clearly seen better days. Too stale to just slap some peanut butter on and call it done, but still edible if you didn’t think about it. Butter or margarine was a distant dream, so toast with a generous spread of peanut butter it was. Alongside, a heap of scrambled eggs — the powdered kind, reconstituted with lukewarm water until they looked vaguely convincing — and a slab of tinned corned beef glistening with its own briny sheen.
The coffee came in an enamel mug, strong enough to stand a spoon in, with what I call a cat’s spit of powdered milk. I drowned it in four teaspoons of sugar, not for sweetness, but to hide the taste of the milk, which had all the charm of chalk dust stirred into water.
“Dolf!” Andy’s voice boomed across the mess hut. “I need you to run up to Rutshuru — deliver some maize meal and a crate of medical stuff.”
I took a swallow of coffee and nodded. “I’ll preflight after brekkie and fly out.”
“Use the Yeti,” he said, grinning. “It’s only a forty-minute flight. Six hours by road, but forty minutes by air.” He chuckled, knowing full well that in the DRC, six hours by road could mean anything from losing an axle to being politely relieved of your cargo by men with rifles.
I glanced across the table to where Nisreen was seated, the morning light from the open shutters casting her face in half shadow. This morning she discarded the formal attire of yesterday and was more casually dressed. Casual for an Arab woman from Qatar.
Her breakfast was more deliberate than mine: toast softened under a ladle of beans in tomato sauce, a small plate of sliced papaya and banana, and a steaming mug of tea. She ate neatly, with that same quiet discipline I’d seen in the Land Cruiser coming here.
I caught her eye and smiled. “Ready to get a look at the bundu?”
“I will be ready, Dolf,” she said evenly. “I’ll meet you by the hangar.” Then she returned to her meal — halal, of course — unhurried, as though the Congo itself could wait until she’d finished.
By 09:12, the two of us were climbing out of Goma, the Porter’s engine humming steadily behind the prop. The tank held a full 170 gallons of fuel, which still left us 1,376 pounds of useful load. Our cargo weighed just under a thousand — sacks of maize meal strapped down with cargo netting, and a battered wooden crate stencilled with a red cross. The destination was Mutabo, a small village in the Rutshuru district, east of the town proper, where the airstrip was little more than a dusty stretch of dirt road with termite mounds all around.
From up here, the volcanic ridges rolled away beneath us, dark green forests broken by the glitter of tin roofs and the winding silver of the Rutshuru River. Forty minutes, Andy had said — a quick hop, but in the Congo, nothing was ever just forty minutes.
This is Africa. You don’t just approach a landing strip — you treat every one of them like it’s booby-trapped until proven otherwise. Back home, an airfield comes with wind socks, radio calls, and neatly painted numbers. Here, you get termite mounds, goat herds, and kids who think running under your wing is a sport.
Forty-four minutes after leaving Goma, the hills fell away and I eased the Porter down to 200 feet, hugging the contour of the land. Our “runway” was a section of dirt road — relatively straight by Congolese standards — running right through the middle of the village. From up here it looked barely wide enough to keep the wing mirrors of a Land Cruiser intact, never mind a turboprop on short final.
I kept the aircraft offset slightly to the right so I could lean over and look out the left-side window. Every bump, rut, and puddle showed itself in the harsh late-morning sun. This was no runway — it was a living, breathing street. A pair of ox carts lumbered along, a cloud of flies trailing behind. Children darted between the huts, one of them chasing a mangy dog that barked at us as if it could actually catch a plane. A string of cattle wandered across the far end like they had all day to get where they were going.
I hoped the message was getting through — that the big white-and-green bird circling low was about to land right where they were standing.
It must have clicked. I saw women gather up children like laundry, shooing them toward the huts. Men shouted, waving sticks to hustle the cattle to the roadside. One of the ox cart drivers pulled his team into the shade, glaring up at us as if we’d interrupted his morning commute.
Once the path was mostly clear, I fed in power, climbed the Porter out to circuit height, and swung her into a tight 180-degree turn. The road now stretched ahead, crooked as a politician’s promise, but long enough if I did my part.
Final approach: power back, speed nailed at sixty-five knots, eyes scanning for the next surprise to appear from behind a hut. The Porter’s big tires kissed the dirt, stuck, and I dropped the power into reverse thrust while tapping the brakes. She slowed like she’d been glued to the road, stopping a neat forty meters from touchdown.
Good old Porter — the bush pilot’s guardian angel. Stops on a dime and gives you change.
After shut-down, the engine’s whine wound down into the still, heavy air. We stepped out, the heat hitting like an open oven door. The smell of dust, woodsmoke, and cooking of the root vegetable, cassava, hung over the village.
And that’s when the incident took place.
As we stepped out of the cockpit the kids and a few adults were congregating around the aircraft. It was apparent to them that the “food trolley” had come calling.
The first ones to reach us were kids — always kids. Barefoot, wide-eyed, some grinning, some still sizing us up like we were half magic, half trouble. A few bold ones poked at the tires, craned their necks to peer into the cockpit. Behind them came the adults, slower, careful in that way people are when they’re weighing if this is a blessing or a complication.
A woman in a red wrap balanced a baby on one hip and stared at the crates Nisreen and I started to wrestle from the cargo bay. The logo stencilled on the boxes — food and medicine — spoke its own language. You could feel the atmosphere shift: hope, yes, but also that quiet calculation about who would get what, and who would make the rules.
We’d just started stacking the aid under the shade of a battered mango tree when the crowd’s noise bent — not faded, but folded in on itself. The kind of sudden hush that’s louder than any shout. I didn’t have to look to know why.
Three men came up the road from the east, their boots sending little puffs of dust with each step. AKs slung over shoulders, M23 armbands catching the sunlight. They weren’t hurrying — they never did. When you own the fear in a place, there’s no need to rush.
The leader was a lean man with a thin moustache and a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He scanned the stack of boxes like a shopkeeper checking inventory, then looked past me to the chief, who had appeared without a sound, his hands clasped behind his back.
“Chief,” the man said, his voice smooth as oiled wood. “We’ve come to collect the tax.”
No one moved. No one needed to. The meaning was as obvious as the rifles.
I hadn’t moved the whole time. I stood by the left main gear, arms crossed, looking like this was just another Thursday — which it probably was. Nisreen had also not moved and there was tension and fear reflecting in her eyes.
The moustached rebel kept his eyes on the chief, but it was I who spoke first.
“Five percent,” I said, using the Swahili language that the rebel leader used. Just like that. No preamble.
The rebel’s smile faltered. “Five?”
I shrugged. “It’s the standard rate. Enough to show respect. Not enough to upset the people who make sure you’ve got somewhere to come back to next time.” I let the words hang there, casual as if I were talking about fuel prices.
The chief said nothing, but his eyes flicked between me and the rebel leader like a man watching two snakes circling each other.
The rebel’s companions shifted their rifles, testing the weight of the moment. The moustached one spat into the dust, then gave a slow nod. “Five percent. And medicine. Antibiotics. Painkillers.”
I took my time answering. “Three boxes food. Small crate medicine. That’s it.”
The rebel chuckled. “You bargain like a Congolese trader.”
“And you tax like one,” I said, smiling for the first time.
Ten minutes later, the deal was done. The rebels slung their share onto their shoulders, the leader offering the chief a handshake that was accepted with the barest of touches. No shouting. No shots fired. Just the crunch of boots on the dirt road as they headed back the way they came.
I watched them disappear into the tree line, then turned to Nisreen with a half-smirk.
“You gave them — those snakes—a part of the cargo!” she hissed. “That is conspiring with the enemy!”
“In Africa, it’s not about what you fly in with — it’s about what you fly out with. And today, we’re still ahead.”
“But ... but ... you gave the enemy food and medicine meant for these people!” Nisreen’s eyes spit fire. “I’m going to report you!”
“Do as you wish. And welcome to the DRC,” I said, turning to the chief.
“Mwami,” I said, using the title for a respected elder and village leader. I spoke in Swahili. “There is enough for everyone. The tax we just paid to the M23 was accounted for. You and your people lose nothing.”
“Bwana Pilot,” the Mwami replied, “for that we are grateful. Welcome to our village. Please, sit awhile and celebrate with us.”
“Mwami, my co-pilot and I must respectfully decline. We still need to reach other settlements today, and the sun is already lowering his head. But let me leave you with this gift.” I turned back to the cockpit, retrieved two cartons of cigarettes, and handed them to the old man.
He accepted them with a gesture of profound pleasure.
“Go in peace, Bwana Pilot. Next time, make us your last stop so we can celebrate.”
We spoke in Swahili, so Nisreen didn’t follow the exchange. Normally, there would be someone in the community who spoke English — but not today.
Without another word, I climbed back into the aircraft. Nisreen caught on and mounted up as well.
Twelve minutes later, we were airborne, the Porter’s nose pointed south toward Goma.
I didn’t speak. The cockpit was quiet, save for the hum of the engine and the occasional rustle of a paper chart from Nisreen’s side. She stared out the window, her profile etched against the fading light. The Ice Princess, still frosty. So be it. Who cares.
I turned my attention to the sky. There was a build-up of clouds ahead — cumulus and stratocumulus, thickening with intent. The kind that doesn’t shout but whispers of change. Patches of sunlight still broke through, casting golden streaks across the lake below, but the atmosphere was shifting. I could feel it in my bones, in the way the Porter nudged against the wind.
Humidity hung in the air like a damp curtain, somewhere between 76 and 80 percent, making the cockpit feel heavier than usual. The wind was light, coming from the south-south-east at about 8 clicks an hour, just enough to stir the air but not enough to scatter the gathering gloom. I knew the signs — there was a moderate chance of rain, maybe even a short burst of thunder if the clouds decided to flex.
I didn’t mind. Rain over Goma had its own rhythm, its own scent. It cooled the earth, washed the dust from the leaves, and gave the town a brief reprieve from the heat. But it also brought its own kind of chaos — muddy roads, flooded alleys, and the kind of silence that made you listen harder.
We landed at Goma under that brooding sky, the Porter touching down like a whisper. I taxied to the hangar and shut her down. Nisreen watched me, silent as ever.
“You can go write up your logbook and retire for the day,” I said and got out of the cockpit, shutting the left door behind me. I walked around the nose of the aircraft. Ricky came out of the of the hangar wiping his hands on a rag.
“She’s all yours, Ricky,” I said, giving the Porter over to her real caretaker.
“How did you find her?”
“She flies like a dream, but Ricky, check on the rudder trim tabs. She tends to swing a bit faster to the right between sixty and seventy-three knots indicated. It might just be something small, but you should know what to look for.”
“Right. Thanks for telling me,” Ricky replied, and then he looked over my shoulder. “How’s your co-pilot working out?”
“I can’t hardly say. I did not give her stick-time, but I will soon find out.”
“Are you still checking her out?”
“Yeah, I can’t make my mind out about her...”
“Hush, here she comes...”
I heard footsteps behind me and turned around. Nisreen was still halfway between us and the porter.
“You still need me?” She asked as she stepped up to us.
“No, everything is in order,” I replied with a lopsided smile. “Have you met Ricky? He’s our mechanical engineer.”
“No not yet,” Nisreen replied. “Hello, Ricky. I am pleased to meet you. I am Miss Al-Kuwari.”
Pleased to meet Miss Al-Kuwari,” Ricky replied and struck out his hand. Nisreen ignored it.
“If you gentleman don’t need me for anything, I’ll head up to the main complex.”
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