The town and small airport lay in a broad valley within the foothills of the Himalayas, which seemed far taller than the tail end of the Rocky Mountains that surrounded the Salt River Valley of the greater Phoenix Metro area.
Chilly air seeped through Dree’s clothes, and she grabbed her jacket to pull on over her shoulders. It wasn’t cold enough to zip it up, justbrisk.
Maybe she was already acclimating to the cooler temperatures.
Batsa and Maxence talked for a few minutes, pointing at the mountain ranges surrounding the town.
The two ridiculously tall blond guys sized up their surroundings with casual glances but didn’t say anything. Isaak seemed to have recovered, though he was still inhaling deeply through his nose.
The small Jumla airport had a short runway and helicopter landing pads next to a low concrete building. A few people wearing light blue coveralls scurried between the helicopters and a small plane that stood beside the terminal. A diagonal staircase led from the plane’s exit to the ground, and a dozen people disembarked from the plane and walked into the airport. The women’s saris and scarves waived like vibrant flags in the wind funneled through the mountains and scraping across the valley.
Batsa grabbed one backpack and whipped it around, settling it on his shoulders, and he trotted toward the terminal.
Maxence gestured to the other guys. They began to hoist the backpacks on, sling the duffel bags onto their shoulders, and balance the boxes on top of each other to carry them in.
Dree started to grab the backpack she knew was hers, but Isaak already had one hand on it. “That’s okay, Andrea Catherine. I’ve got it.”
Maxence whipped her backpack out of Isaak’s hand. “I’ll take it.”
Okay, that was weird. Dree started to lift a box of the medical supplies the sisters had packed for her to take.
Alfonso lifted the cardboard box out of her hands. “I’ll take that for you.”
Okay, she got what was going on. “Guys, I can carry things.”
Just as Dree was seriously going to fight for her equal rights to carry heavy luggage into the airport, Batsa zoomed back over the rough asphalt, pushing a luggage cart, and they piled all the supplies and most of the backpacks onto it.
Okay, she would let the guys push the cart.
Batsa said something to Maxence, who raised his arms from his sides and yelled over the taxiing airplane’s engine and the whine of another helicopter landing at the far helipad, “We have to get off the tarmac. More helicopters are coming in.”
They all double-timed it toward the terminal.
Dree caught Maxence watching her as if he might have to carry her if she couldn’t keep up.
Dree kept up.
As a matter of fact, Dree beat them all to the terminal and held the doors open for the boys to push the cart inside.
Once in the doors, Maxence turned to Batsa and said, “Seriously? There’s a problem?”
Batsa told him, “I don’t know if the driver is correct, but he said there are no more jeeps this week. He said other people asked for the jeeps. They were all rented to other people since Friday.”
“Then what was the point of a reservation?”
Batsa shrugged. “Sometimes, things like this happen.”
“What do they have? Do they have pickup trucks or a small van with good suspension? Or a mini-bus?”
“We have to go talk to the men at the rental lot, but he said that they are all out of vehicles. He said that many people have come home to Jumla this year for Divali and stayed very long because Divali was late this year. Many of the people who work in Kathmandu are still here after the Divali holiday.”
Maxence glanced at Dree, and his expression was worried. He said to Batsa, “We’ve got everybody here. This mission has to happen.”
“The driver is here with a truck to take us and our supplies to the rental lot so we can look over what they have left.”
Maxence waved the rest of them over and told the two blond guys and Father Booker what Dree had overheard. He shrugged and said, “Sometimes, unfortunate things happen on charity missions. We have to figure out how to do it anyway.”
The guys fell over each other to get in the bed of the pick-up and insisted Dree ride in the cab. Maxence climbed in right after her, and she thought she saw him scowl at the four other guys.
