High
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Chapter Thirty-Four
The first thing that Martin saw as the bus came to a halt beside the lake shore in Goma was a white 1972 Mini Clubman estate car. Of its owner there was no immediate sign. The second thing that Martin saw - could not fail to see - was the enormous, thronging mass of humanity that had taken up temporary residence on every stretch of open ground along the edge of the lake’s calm waters: the Mancala call to arms appeared to have met with a huge positive response.
It was two days before New Year’s Eve, and the date of the Mancala rally, and Martin realised just how close he had come to being late for the party. Surprisingly, it had been the sudden realisation that it was Christmas Day that had shaken him out of a lethargy that had engulfed him ever since the death of Mona. The next three days were to see him take his leave of the hospitable pygmy tribe who had bemusedly and good-humouredly fed and sheltered him during the period of his grief, and then, by way of foot, canoe, truck, and ultimately the hot and crowded bus on which he had eventually arrived, brought him to the prophesised ‘place of lakes and volcanoes’.
The city of Goma lies on the banks of Lake Kivu on the eastern border of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, although the main business district is actually located slightly inland, and was not immediately visible from the place where Martin alighted. Laid out before Martin along the lake shore, on either side of the Route de Gisenyi - the road which snakes its way to the border checkpoint with Rwanda - was a relatively well-organised canvas city; small, white domed tents of identical design, looking like the oversized heads of wild mushrooms, growing in orderly lines on every available patch of flat land, stretched out as far as it was possible to see. It reminded Martin of images he had seen on the TV of the Kumbha Mela gathering beside the banks of the Ganges, and of the massive encampment of tents that spring up for every Haj pilgrimage to Mecca. Looking more closely at the tents, Martin noticed that each one of them had the words ‘Work for Power’ and the Mancala sleeping lion logo printed on the sides of the white tarpaulin. Other, more makeshift, dwellings had sprung up in the gaps left between the organised shelters, some spectacularly elaborate in their temporary construction; others pitifully modest. People were swarming everywhere, their collective movement, viewed from a distance, seemingly aimless and comical: in and out of tents; in and out of the lake; back and forth along the shore. There was no collective direction; appeared to be no sense of purpose. The racial melting pot congregated in one spot, though, revealed the degree of success that Ghiliba had had in spreading his message far and wide: there were men - and they were almost exclusively young men with only very few exceptions - of all skin colours and racial characteristics; Arabs from the north; Zulu tribesmen from the south; short Bushmen; tall Nubians; men in national costumes; many others in work clothing, some wearing combat fatigues. The one thing unifying them all: the prospect of work and a belief that through Mancala they would be shown the way to a hopeful independent future that had always been denied them. Martin found it hard to estimate the number of disciples that had joined this particular pilgrimage, but it certainly must have numbered in the tens, if not in the hundreds, of thousands. There could be no denying that it was potentially a powerful force, but for exactly what purpose Ghiliba had assembled this ragbag army, Martin was still intrigued to find out.
Martin watched as two young men, both bare-chested, displaying dark, toned torsos, squared up to one another; voices raised in spontaneous angry argument. A crowd of onlookers quickly gathered, goading on the combatants in languages that Martin did not understand. The whole encampment was a powder keg of testosterone-fuelled anticipation. The combination of the hot equatorial sun, liberal amounts of available alcohol, and the boredom of long days and weeks spent in one cramped place waiting for salvation, had combined to produce a society close to the edge of total anarchy. Ghiliba’s message was going to have to be pretty impressive otherwise there was the potential for a riot in the making. Martin had already noticed that several of the pilgrims carried firearms, ranging in size from small handguns to, in one case, a mobile rocket-propelled grenade launcher. For the first time since his own African journey had begun, Martin started to doubt the scale of his own objective - suddenly the idea of ‘confronting the false prophet’ seemed an impossible and futile task, in the face of such huge opposition. Just locating Ghiliba among the milling ranks was going to prove difficult enough.
It was while contemplating his next course of action, that Martin felt a friendly slap on the arm, and a familiar voice behind him saying, rather too loudly given the politically incorrect sentiments expressed, “What ho! Good to see another familiar face. I was beginning to think I was the last white man left alive.”
Martin turned around to face Geoff. “It could probably be arranged,” he said grimly, indicating the fields of discontented youth.
“Tell me about it,” agreed Geoff, smiling. “The old girl broke down last night and I’ve been stuck here ever since. God what a racket! Have you ever seen so many people?”
“No. Impressive, isn’t it.”
“You could say that,” said Geoff. “Have you only just arrived?”
“That’s right,” said Martin.
“Got yourself a tent?”
“No. Not yet.”
“You’ll be lucky to find one now,” said Geoff, pessimistically. “Got one of the last one’s myself yesterday. That’s what all this squabbling is about.” He pointed to where the two youths were still pushing each other and shouting, neither sure enough of his own physical prowess to risk an all out offensive attack. “You can share mine, though, if you like. There’s plenty of room. No one else seems to want to put up with me.”
••••••••••
“At number three I’d have Georgi Markov. You know, Bulgarian defector. Got himself stabbed by a poisoned umbrella on Westminster Bridge in 1978. Assassin unknown, but it must be up there for pure James Bond originality. Number two, and it’s predictable, I know, but it would have to be Lee Harvey Oswald and the shot from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository that did for JFK. Or did it?” Geoff waved his hands melodramatically, at the same time simulating a slightly feeble ghostly wail, “Woo! Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theory. Number one, though, and now this is class. It would have to be Sidney Gottlieb.”
“Who?” asked Martin. He stifled a yawn, hiding his mouth with his hand. He was bored with playing ‘top five assassins’ but found himself asking the question out of an inbred sense of politeness. Geoff had been correct in one statement. There certainly was plenty of room in the tent.
Martin had grown accustomed to the quickness with which the sun settles in the tropics, and had even grown used to the absolute darkness of the night-time jungle from his long stay in the pygmy village, indeed, from first finding the total blackness of the forest terrifying he had actually grown to prefer its inky embrace to the washed-out tenebrous dullness of the nocturnal city. Night in the canvas city was practically indistinguishable from day: camp fires - some of which infernos were so spectacular and out of control as to have surely outgrown the sentiments originally implied by the description - illuminated the shoreline and cast a strange light over the lake’s surface, and the level of noise around the encampment if anything increased from its already deafening daytime volume. Geoff’s tent was a small sane oasis in the middle of bedlam.
Sane?
Geoff was explaining, “Sidney Gottlieb, aka Joseph Scheider, was a chemical and toxins expert. CIA, you know. He developed poisons for the spooks in the Company’s dirty tricks department. That was back in the days when America’s foreign policy towards third world leaders who they considered were a potential threat to national security was assassination.”
“What? Early noughties?”
“Say again?”
“Do you mean during the second Bush administration?”
“Is that your top hit then?” asked Martin.
“No. I think that far more impressive was his attempt on the life of the leader here, Patrice Lumumba, then Prime Minister of Congo.”
“Oh?”
“Lumumba was a leftist. You know the American’s paranoia at that time, Reds under the bed, and all that. He was a charismatic communist sympathiser in a politically unstable region of the world. It was not a situation that the US could allow to develop unchallenged.”
“So they called for Sidney.”
“That’s right. Unusually too, he even travelled to Leopoldville himself, in order to deliver his deadly package personally. There’s dedication for you. Do you know what he had planned?”
“No.”
“He concocted a lethal biological agent which he then mixed with a tube of toothpaste which he intended to slip into Lumumba’s personal baggage.”
“You said attempted. He wasn’t successful?”
“No. But only because one of Lumumba's local enemies did for him first. Ingenious, though, you’ve got to admit.”
“Very. It sounds like something from a movie. Not something that happens in real life.”
“You’d be surprised,” Geoff continued, “I was chatting away to a real life, genuine assassin, only last night.”
“Oh?” Martin sounded sceptical, suspecting his companion’s credibility. “Did he have a knife concealed in the toe of his boot, or was he stroking a white cat on his lap?” he asked, sarcastically.
“No, nothing like that. And he was a she, actually.”
Geoff suddenly had Martin’s attention.
“You mean a woman?”
“You're not slow. Yes, a woman. A Russian. Perhaps just the wrong side of fifty, but still pretty fit, if you know what I mean. Must have been a real looker in her day.”
“And this was here? I mean... What? I mean...” Martin was at a loss for words.
Geoff misinterpreted Martin’s reaction of fear for surprise. “I know, not what you expect is it. She didn’t mind admitting to it too. There we were, chatting, and I just asked her, pally like, what she did for a living. And do you know what she said? Killing. Funny really. Do for a living. Killing.”
Martin gripped the collar of Geoff’s shirt, pulling the smaller man towards him. He spoke quickly, his anxiety showing in his voice, “Tell me. Exactly. Where was this?”
Now it was Geoff’s turn to register surprise. “A bar in the centre of town. Le Moustique. Here, now, steady on, matey. What is all this?” He attempted to loosen the hold that Martin continued to have on his clothing.
Martin suddenly became aware of his aggressive action. “I’m sorry.” He let go of Geoff’s shirt and brushed down the front of his creased clothing. “I’m sorry. It was just such a shock. What you said. Please, tell me everything you know about this woman. It is really important.”
Far from being affronted by the recent attack upon his person, Geoff was actually flattered to be called upon for information: normally people were always trying to keep him quiet; it was a rare day when he was actually requested to speak. “Well, like I say, she was quite a sight. Turned my head, at any rate. I don’t know quite how I had the confidence to speak to her. Out of my league she was,” Geoff admitted, realistically self-deprecating, “It was just that she was sitting all alone, and it looked as though she had had a few. Vodkas, you know, that was what she was drinking. That was what cottoned me on to her being a Russian.”
“Did she tell you so?”
“No. Not in so many words. No, I don’t think so. Bleached blonde hair, it was obvious though. You know the look.”
“And age?”
“Well from a distance, I must admit, at first I thought that she was younger. You know her dress, her style, everything, made her look more like a... well, not so old. Her face, though, up close, you could see she’d been around a bit. It was cold and hard. Expressionless. I mean, still not unattractive, just a bit tough. I suppose with what she must have seen though, it is not surprising.”
“And she told you that she was an assassin?”
“Straight out. She allowed me to buy her a drink. We got chatting, like you do. I told her about the old girl, breaking down and all, and she listened, and we had another drink, and then I asked her what she was doing here, and she said...”
“She had come to kill someone.”
“That’s right.”
“And did she tell you who?”
“No, she left soon after. I tell you, I wasn’t sorry. After she had said that. I mean, I don’t want to get involved with any woman whose into wet work.” Martin looked momentarily confused, so Geoff clarified, “Hits. Killings.” Geoff fashioned his hand to imitate the shape of a gun, pointing it at Martin’s head. “Bang, bang. It’s not my pigeon, if you know what I mean. No matter how much of a looker she was. Can’t say I cared for her manners, either. I like a woman to be a bit more feminine.”
“How do you mean?”
“This one. The way she ate, it was disgusting. Quite turned my stomach. She was sitting at the bar, had this big plate of congealed fat in front of her, white you know, like it had been stripped straight off the side of an animal, and was sticking it in her mouth like you and me might have eaten a packet of crisps. I tell you, I almost gagged. Wouldn’t have stopped me, you know, doing her, if I had had the chance, but on top of the assassination thing... well, it’s just not attractive, is it?”
“And did you find out her name? Or where she was staying? Or anything?”
Geoff shook his head. “I’m sorry. I had had a few drinks too. You know, what with the old girl breaking down I was in need of a bit of alcoholic solace. I don’t remember.”
“And she didn’t mention me?”
“You? Why should she? You don’t mean...”
“Yes.” Martin said, resignedly, “I think it’s me she’s looking for.”
Geoff nodded gravely, assessing this information. For once he was at a loss for words: empathy did not come automatically to him. Finally, he slapped hs hands together to break the uneasy silence and, as if the conversational pause had effectively drawn a line underneath the previous subject, said, moving on, “Top five formula one drivers. I’ll start. Senna.”
Chaper Thirty-Five
Medea did not strike during that night. Nor even the next one. Martin awoke, with a degree of surprise on each occasion, to two, bright African dawns. The new sun was full of optimism and life: it seemed inconceivable that he could be killed on a day that began with such a burst of natural hope.
Early on the previous morning, a vast team of men, each identically dressed in white, full-length boiler suits and dark blue hard hats, had disembarked from a cavalcade of similarly liveried lorries, and had proceeded, during the course of the day, to construct both a towering, many-tiered grandstand and an equally tall stage and platform alongside an area of lakeside which had previously been cordoned off to the gathering masses. The Mancala roadshow was rolling into full operation. Right on time. Martin and Geoff had both watched the scene of building activity, all day long, from the relative shade of their tent’s awning: in the midst of the canvas community there was little better to do to pass the time. At nightfall, and with their job completed, the team of construction engineers had departed as abruptly as they had arrived, and were replaced in equivalent numbers by severe-looking security personnel, the message of the no-nonsense expressions on their faces reinforced by the no-nonsense AK-47 automatic weapons that they wore about their persons. The situation was clear: the pilgrims were free to thieve, and fight, and murder amongst themselves to the limit of their temporary favala township, but once they stepped into the designated Mancala compound, a new law of order applied. Ghiliba’s message
was not going to be subverted by personal insurrections.
Martin was impressed by the level of organisation. He wondered how the man he had met, so many months ago now, in the bar in Swakopmund, had managed to co-ordinate such a complex logistical operation.
“Did you ever meet this guy Ghiliba during any of your travels?” Martin had asked Geoff, as they had stood at the entrance of their tent the previous evening, Geoff enjoying a cigarette, Martin alternatively watching the stars and following the serpentine progress of a teenage youth who appeared intent on eluding the newly-appointed security patrols in order to gain access to the Mancala stage, for an undisclosed nefarious activity.
“Short guy with a stick. Yes, I saw him talk once at an open air gathering in Lusaka. Can’t say that I was that impressed, but he seemed to get the crowd going.”
“A short guy? You must be thinking of someone else. Ghiliba is a giant of a man. He was wearing a djellaba when I saw him.”
“Oh. My man was just wearing jeans. He definitely said his name was Ghiliba though. He was handing out these.” Geoff had disappeared back inside the tent momentarily, reappearing holding a familiar-looking handbill that he had recovered from the depths of his baggage. Martin had only had to glance at the leaflet to know that it was identical to the one he had been shown before.
“Perhaps he has disciples?”
“All calling themselves the same name?”
Geoff had shrugged, not really caring, “It’s possible.”
Martin had turned to look in the direction of the sound of a shrill whistle. The crawling youth had been spotted by one of the uniformed security men at the very moment that he had been attempting to slither underneath the wire fence which surrounded the Mancala compound. Three guards had converged on his prone form and a summary punishment was metered out there and then with the butt ends of their assault rifles. The young boy had remained, lying unconscious on the ground, as the three guards strolled away, the sound of their laughter only barely audible above the confusion of noise emanating from the surrounding tents. Martin had witnessed several other people having been stretchered away from the encampment during his brief stay of residence, although whether their incapacity was the result of too much sun, too much alcohol, or as the result of a violent physical attack, he did not know. The lakeside community was a powder keg of human frustrations. Martin wondered if Ghiliba was planning to light the fuse.
The eve of the new year and the advertised date of the Mancala rally was a day of considerable confusion. No one seemed to know precisely what form the presentation would take, or indeed, what its message would be. Neither did anyone know when the ceremonies were determined to commence: a steady stream of people had begun to assemble around the perimeter of the enclosure fence soon after sunrise, all pressing forward in an attempt to gain the optimum view of the lofty stage area. The makeshift grandstand was still being maintained as an exclusion zone by the heavy-handed security personnel, suggesting that there were still some guests to arrive who rated higher up the social pecking order than the bottom-feeding pilgrims who had to jostle and vie for their position. A large white cross, chalked across the dry grass, close to the stage area, suggestive of a helicopter landing pad, supported the theory of VIP visitors.
The trucks which the day before had ferried the construction crews to the site, today reappeared, this time loaded with sophisticated electronic equipment, and attendant workers: massive speakers, amplifiers, impressive plasma screens, all were unloaded and swiftly assembled upon the stage. A walk-around console, more in place on the flight deck of a space ship in a sci-fi movie than perched on the edge of a third world jungle, completed the arrangement of technical gadgetry, and it was from this vantage point that it was apparent that a range of lights, projections and sound effects could be manipulated. Certainly no expense had been spared in the presentation of the Mancala message.
A rumour spread through the burgeoning crowd that the start of the formal proceedings would not begin before nightfall: someone had heard six o’clock; someone else had been told ten; someone else had said that the commencement of events would be signalled by the sounding of a cannon; someone else had heard that it would be drums that would herald the arrival of Ghiliba. An atmosphere of nervous excitement permeated the entire gathering: no one appeared certain of precisely what they were expecting to witness, but at the same time, no one dared miss being present at the event, nor seemed to be in any doubt that the words of the prophet, when they were eventually delivered, would in some measure alter their lives. To Martin, the crowd, which had taken on the properties of a single collective entity, each small individual somehow subsumed within the anticipation of the whole, represented a vacuum, every past injustice and bitter experience having driven out the last vestiges of ordinary humanity. The only thing that still remained to plug the vacuum was hope, and it was hope that Ghiliba was so efficiently peddling. Martin’s assessment of the mood of the congregation was that it little mattered what Mancala’s message was going to be, it would be sucked up as eagerly as if gold coins began to rain down from the skies. A disenfranchised population, searching for a collective crutch. Taken away from their homelands these men did not even have the support of a familiar past to fall back upon. Ghiliba had created a baseless army, loyal to no borders, a modern day French Foreign Legion, compliant to his every doctrine because they had no better alternative; no single alternative. In the same way that the revival of Islam had swept across a war torn Somalia in the 1990s, and branches of MacDonalds through an economically isolated and burger-bereft eastern Europe during the same decade - in each case the new influence which had prevailed was largely the first to have arrived, but Islam in eastern Europe and MacDonalds in Somalia could have proved equally successful if only their chronological arrival had been different - so the vacuum would inevitably be filled: it is true what they say, that Nature abhors a vacuum, be it physical, spiritual or moral, it can not be allowed to exist in isolation for too long. Martin only hoped that he was not going to be swept up in its fateful momentum.
During the course of the long afternoon, food was distributed to the waiting masses, and plastic bottles filled with mineral water. Several of Martin’s closest neighbours chewed qat continuously, the rhythmic manipulations of their jaws unconsciously marking time as regularly as the most accurate of clocks. Other men smoked; some, ironically, brought on mancala boards, and bent their heads in fixed concentration on the game. Of Geoff there was no sign: Martin had not seen him since he had vacated the tent that morning and in the crush of bodies there was no prospect of chancing upon him either by accident or design. The crowd had swelled dangerously as nightfall approached, and with the sun beginning to sink behind the horizon in the west and an encroaching darkness making its way across the lake’s surface like a black sheet being drawn up, Martin found the pressure of so many bodies almost unbearable. Increasingly, he was finding his arms pinned to his sides by the mass of people bearing down upon the people immediately to his left and right, as more and more latecomers to the show crowded forward, anxious to obtain a view of the stage. Several gun shots sounded some distance off to Martin’s right, but whether they were fired by one of the security personnel in an attempt to restore some semblance of order or had actually emanated from within the unruly crowd itself it was impossible to tell. The effect of the reports, though, was to send a steadily increasing ripple of movement through the mass of bodies as, first the people closest to the gun shots cowered back in a natural defensive reaction, and by so doing caused their neighbours to step backwards, forcing their neighbours, in turn, to do the same. Martin, having the advantage of being almost a head taller than most of his fellow onlookers, watched as the tide of motion rushed outwards from the epicentre, progressively heading towards him, people falling like dominoes deliberately toppled, incapable of resisting the momentum. There were screams as people were crushed and trampled, their cries cut short as e
ven more bodies fell on top of them. When the human wave struck Martin, as he could see that it must inevitably do, he had at least had enough forewarning of its arrival to brace himself, but even so he could not prevent himself from being lifted off his feet and thrown backwards, his gangly frame being deposited forcefully on top of a squat Arab-looking man who stood pressed up beside him and who was pushed to the ground in the ensuing surge of bodies. Martin attempted to ride out the crush like a surfer, attempting to stay always just above the main thrust of forward-forcing pressure, and in so doing found himself bobbed up, almost like a cork, suddenly riding upon the shoulders of some of his peers. As the push of one falling person on to the next one continued, Martin found himself being propelled along above the sea of tumbling bodies, every forward motion bringing him nearer to the Mancala stage, like a conquering hero hoisted shoulder high above the grateful liberated. Or a god, looking down upon the devoted. Martin recalled the enigmatic outcome of his earlier divination; the words of the prophecy which had brought him to this place of lakes and volcanoes. Yes, this was truly his destiny.
One of the sets of wooden steps, from which it was possible to gain access to the left-hand edge of the main stage, was now within touching distance of Martin, and by a subtle redistribution of his weight he was able to persuade the domino motion to deposit him immediately beside them. The security men, who had been guarding so conscientiously the access routes to the platform, had all dispersed in an attempt to quell the potential insurgence and genuine panic caused by the stampede within the crowd, and Martin took advantage of their lack of attention and the general confusion, to climb swiftly the flight of stairs, and step out on to the stage proper. There were still several workmen, dressed in their Mancala uniforms, engaged in last minute technical alterations to the set and equipment, looking like busy roadies working on the backdrop before a massive pop performance, but, perhaps due as much to the colour of his skin as to the bold manner with which he had set foot on to the wooden boards, none of these officials challenged Martin as to the reason for his presence on stage. From his heightened vantage point, it felt as though Martin had momentarily stepped above the darkness which was beginning to envelop the ground, and before the sun finally sank below the horizon he had one brief moment of clarity about his surroundings. The crowd was enormous, far greater than Martin had believed from his previous position in its midst; a vast swathe of humanity which seemed to expunge several decades of gruesome history from the land: continual tribal disputes, power-hungry warlords and rival gangs, economic exploitation, spontaneous massacres, torture and maiming, and intermittent cannibalism. A soup of human bodies stretched backwards from the stage for as far as the eye could see, only prevented from encompassing the entire field of view by the natural barriers of the lake to the right-hand side and the forest further off to the left. Although the wooden platform on which Martin stood was not so towering as to rival that of the surrounding trees, nevertheless it afforded longer vistas such that, for the first time, Martin was able to glimpse, in the distance, the taller buildings in central Goma itself and, further along the same bank of the lake although, due to the natural geography of the lake, appearing as if they lay on a separate shore, the lights and structures of the town of Gisenyi in Rwanda. Rising above all of the man-made constructions, the background of alternate black and verdant volcanic peaks was a constant reminder of the supremacy of nature, their lowering, encircling presence revealing the vast crush of mankind to be as insignificant as a few ants held in the palm of one’s hand.
Nevertheless, it was hard not to be impressed by the sight of so many expectant faces, all raised, looking up towards where Martin stood. In his youth, he had been to many rock concerts at big, open-air venues and, as one of the anonymous specks in those massive audiences, had often wondered what went through the minds of the performers as they set foot on stage, the simultaneous object of attraction of so many pair of eyes. Now he had the answer. It was all he could do to restrain himself from punching the air and whooping, his feeling of self-importance such that he fully expected the gathered throng to imitate his every motion.
A large dais, complete with microphone, had been set up at the centre of the stage, ready, no doubt, for the imminent appearance of Ghiliba, and it was towards this altar that Martin now went, no longer expecting to be challenged at every moment, instead supremely confident that everything before him was meant for him alone. As the sound of a distant helicopter could just be heard above the background hum of the crowd, it seemed like just one more sign to Martin, that he was in the right place: he would preach his message of Higher We; he would give the same speech that he had given that day, more than a year before, on top of the Wendelson Building to Garnet Wendelson himself; the arrival of the helicopter in their midst would be like a spiritual visitation, a visual representation of his words.
Martin stepped up on to the raised podium and tapped the bulbous end of the microphone experimentally, in imitation of more knowledgeable public speakers. He would have liked a drink of water to moisten his throat, but there was none available. Was there a sudden, anticipatory hush descended upon the crowd of men, or was it just his imagination? He closed his eyes, mentally picturing the first words that he would utter when he opened them again; the words to begin the most important speech of his life.
••••••••••
Medea watched Martin’s progress across the stage and up to the podium through the cross hairs of the sight on her Tokarev sniper’s rifle. Her fingers felt sticky from the salo she had just eaten, and she allowed herself the exquisite pleasure of sucking each digit in turn to remove the last vestiges of grease.
Medea watched Martin tap the microphone, the telegraphic sight on her rifle compressing the distance between them such that she felt that she could have been standing directly beside him; could have wiped away the bead of sweat which she saw trickle down his forehead and run along the side of his nose. As she saw his eyes close she slowly squeezed the trigger.
Part Four: Crash Landing