To the left in a shallow cove, were a dozen curved brown backs jutting from the water. As one, lined up as though waiting for a show to start, the hippos studied them, eyes barely visible above the surface of the water, ears twitching.
Jimiyu put the rudder over, steering right to give the pod a wide berth. He caught Fisher's astonished expression and grinned. "Impressive, are they not?"
Fisher could only nod, eyes still fixed on the gallery of hippos receding in their wake. Each one had been the size of a VW Beetle.
A few minutes later, Jimiyu said, "Irving tells me you are looking for a plane."
"That's true."
"The Sunstar."
"Yes."
"Old legend, that one."
"What's your opinion?" Fisher asked. "You know the area we're headed?"
Jimiyu thought for a moment, biting the inside of his lip. "Yes, very well. Many people have come looking for the Sunstar, but no one's looked in this place yet." He shrugged. "Who knows?"
Fisher didn't respond. From his expression, Jimiyu seemed to be still considering his answer. "I think it is either lost in the Rift or somewhere in Turkana. Lake Turkana, you know."
"I know."
"That lake--everyone thinks it is very shallow. Mostly it is, but there are parts that aren't so shallow." He grinned knowingly. "If we do not find it here, you and I, we will rent a submarine and look in Turkana, okay?"
Fisher smiled back. "Okay."
30
GREAT RIFT VALLEY, KENYA
THEY'Darrived at their campsite--a flat section of beach in a gorge--in the late afternoon the day before, and though there was still four hours of daylight left, they both decided to get a fresh start the next morning. Peter's coordinates were four miles away, to the northwest. With luck, they could start at dawn, reach the site by midday, and be back to the campsite by nightfall.
They spent the remaining hours of daylight gathering firewood, and then, as Fisher got the fire started, Jimiyu disappeared into the jungle for an hour and returned carrying what looked like a large rat. It was, in fact, a rat, Fisher learned, but charred over the fire it tasted, predictably, like rubbery chicken. After supper, Jimiyu made coffee in a rust-spotted enamel pot, then tossed the remaining wood on the fire and slung a pair of netted sleeping hammocks from trees along the edge of the beach.
FISHEReased the strap off his shoulder, shifted the M-14 to his right, and then stopped on the trail and gave Jimiyu a soft tsst. On either side of Fisher the jungle was a thick wall of green. He sat down on his haunches. Jimiyu, walking ten feet ahead, stopped and looked over his shoulder. Fisher curled a finger at him, and he walked back.
"We're being followed," Fisher said.
"Yes, I assumed so," Jimiyu replied. "We're on the border between the Samburu and Turkana tribes. Do not worry; they are simply curious. We are not one or the other tribe, so our presence should not upset them." Jimiyu smiled and placed a hand on Fisher's shoulder.
"Is that a hard-and-fast rule?"
Jimiyu shrugged. "I see the jungle is not foreign to you."
More like an old friend,Fisher thought.
"Perhaps you are Samburu or Turkana," the Kenyan said. "How did you know?"
"Because there's a pair of eyes watching us. Ten feet to your left."
Very slowly, Jimiyu rotated his head to the left and scanned the foliage. As Fisher had said, a pair of white-rimmed brown eyes were peering at them from behind a palm trunk.
"Turkana," Jimiyu whispered. He raised a hand to chest level, palm out and said, "Hujambo?"Which means: How do you do?
The figure ducked out of sight and a few seconds later soundlessly emerged from the jungle ten feet down the trail. The man was wearing denim shorts and a faded red T-shirt bearing the words THE CLASH ANARCHY TOUR 1976. A butcher knife with a rope-wrapped handle jutted from the front belt loop on his shorts.
"Jambo,"he said.
Jimiyu stood up and walked forward. The men shook hands and began speaking in rapid-fire Swahili. Most Kenyan tribes, Fisher had learned, speak at least two languages--Swahili and their own native dialect, of which there are more than thirty--and many speak a modicum of English. Jimiyu and the man spoke for another few minutes, then shook hands again, and the man stepped off the trail and disappeared.
"What's the verdict?" Fisher asked.
"He's Turkana; they and the Samburu have already talked about our presence. As long as we do not hunt here, we have safe passage."
"He didn't want to know why we're here?"
"I told him you were a . . ." Jimiyu paused and scratched his head. "The word does not translate so well. I told him you were a spoiled white adventurer."
Fisher laughed, and Jimiyu gave a pained shrug. "Apologies. It was a convenience on my part. Better that than try to explain. I also asked about the plane. Both tribes are aware of the legend, but neither have seen any sign of it."
THEYwalked for another three hours, sometimes on well-worn paths, sometimes on narrow game trails, and other times through the thick of the jungle Fisher navigated via his GPS unit. The purist orienteer in him resented the gizmo, but the pragmatist in him knew it was a necessary evil. With limited time on his hands, a compass was a luxury he couldn't afford.
Jimiyu, armed with a long Ghurka knife, sliced his way through the foliage with practiced swings of his long arms, ducking and weaving like a boxer as he stepped over roots and ducked under branches and pointed out various plants and animals beside the trail along with a running, colorful commentary: "Very rare . . . do not touch that . . . not poisonous . . . tasty, but hard to catch . . ."
At noon they swung back to the northeast, and after another hour's walk Fisher heard the muffled roar of water through the trees. The landscape sloped downward until they were picking their way along switchbacked hillside. At last the slope evened out, the trees gave way to low scrub foliage, and they found themselves standing at the edge of a cliff.
Fifty feet below, the river surged down a narrow gorge. The water was a clear blue and in the still pools formed behind the boulders he could see the riverbed covered in smooth, round stones. A hundred yards to their right was a twenty-foot tall waterfall that split into three channels over a jagged rock face before splashing into a pool below.
Fisher studied the GPS unit. "This is the place." He lifted his binoculars to his eyes and scanned the length of the gorge, tracking along both tree lines as far as he could see in both directions. "I don't see anything," he said.
"You are not looking in the right place," Jimiyu murmured beside him.
"What?"
Jimiyu raised a bony hand and pointed straight ahead at a thick, vine-encrusted tree jutting from the edge of the cliff. Fisher stared at it, seeing nothing for a full thirty seconds, until finally his eyes detected a too-symmetrical shape hidden in the branches: a straight vertical line, another horizontal, a gentle curve . . .
Good God. . .
What he was seeing wasn't a tree. It was the inverted tail section of an airplane.
Fisher was dumbfounded. Of course, the brother in Fisher had prayed Peter's letter had been more than the ramblings of a sick and dying man, but with the thoughts so seemingly incoherent and far removed from the core of the Carmen Hayes/PuH-19 puzzle, he'd also had his doubts.