The airport does have a convenience store, but it’s closed. I groan out loud when I see the metal gate pulled down. Blue whines and sits next to me. “I’m sorry, boy,” I say, laying a hand on his head. “I’m hungry, too.”
I pull out the bottle of water I brought from the hotel and Blue’s collapsible bowl, giving him the last of it. He laps thirstily, leaving just a little at the bottom. “We’ll be home soon,” I promise.
We wait outside, the empty building depressing for its lack of food. Dawn bleeds pinkish-gray into the edge of the world and the cool mist of morning settles onto the tarmac. I pull out the phone Robert gave me. There is nothing from him. I’ll have to trash it before I board the Joyful Justice flight. Dan would kill me if I brought this thing home.
A twinkling light in the sky grows closer, expanding into an aircraft. It lands with a roar of sound, then taxis slowly over to where Blue and I wait. The door opens and a slight woman with blonde hair swept up into an elegant twist hops lithely out. She’s wearing a khaki button-down shirt, a blue silk scarf tied at her neck, and black cargo pants tucked into ankle-height laced boots.
“Hey,” I say with a wave as she crosses to us. The woman moves like a dancer—all controlled elegance.
“Hello,” she says, her accent French. “It is a wonderful day…” She says the first half of our code phrase.
“For justice,” I answer.
She nods. “Sydney Rye.” She says my name as though she’s heard it a million times; she says it like I’m famous. “I am Sophia Boucher.”
“Nice to meet you.” I offer my hand. She takes it with her left and that’s when I realize she is missing part of her right arm—her sleeve is folded at the elbow.
“Dan told me to bring snacks. I have dog food and sandwiches. Would you like to eat?”
“Yes, oh my god, I love that man.”
She nods, as if that is to be expected. Who doesn’t love Dan? Sophia pulls a bag from the seat well in the back of the plane, another Cessna, though this one is newer, and hands it to me. Inside I find a ziplock with kibble, another with two sandwiches, and an apple.
I pour Blue’s meal into his bowl, and he dives in while I unwrap one of the sandwiches. “He also told me to check you for bugs,” Sophia says.
I nod, swallowing. “Sure. There is a sat phone we need to dump.”
Her brow creases, but I don’t answer the unasked question. Why do I have a satellite phone I have to destroy? None of your business. That’s why.
Sophia moves back to the Cessna, returning with a device that looks like a miniature metal detector. Black and about the length of my forearm, it has a round sensor at the end of a rod with a screen and handle at the end.
I kick over my bag, unwilling to unhand my sandwich to pass it. “The sat phone is in my pocket. I’ll leave it here,” I say.
Sophia goes through my bag, finding nothing. I’ve finished my first sandwich and before moving on to my second, I take out the sat phone and place it on the ground, then do a spin so that she can check my body.
“Okay,” she says. “All clear.” Sophia returns the device to the cockpit. “I will have a smoke, and then we will go.”
“Sounds good,” I say around a bite.
She moves downwind from me and pulls a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. My gaze travels back to the phone on the ground. I should destroy it before we leave. Wouldn’t want someone else finding it.
It rings as I’m staring at it. That same number coming up. I swallow my bite of food and continue to stare at the thing. Blue goes over and investigates it as it vibrates around on the pavement.
He lets out a short bark of excitement, like maybe this is a new toy for him. Blue looks up at me, his tongue hanging out. Can I destroy it? he’s asking with his eyes.
“Not yet,” I answer, before swiping it up. “Hello,” I answer.
“Good morning,” Robert says, sounding fresh as a daisy. I take another bite of my sandwich, not answering. “I just wanted to give you an update.” I make an agreeing sound through my food. “You got something to eat, excellent. I was worried.” I snort as if I don’t believe him. He ignores me. “I just left our prisoner. A sad story really. His mother is ill and he needed the money desperately. It would have pulled on your heart strings, Sydney.”
“Not yours though?” I ask.
“No,” he says, almost like he’s happy about the fact that he can hear a sad story and not give a fuck. “I don’t allow myself to be sucked into other people’s desperation.” I shake my head and take another bite of sandwich. What a dick. “He could not tell me any new information. He didn’t know about Fernando. Which makes sense. He’s very good.”
“Who?” I ask. “Fernando?”
“Yes,” Robert says. “I’m impressed.” I swear, there is fatherly pride in the man’s voice.
“So you’re impressed with the man who’s trying to kill you and don’t give a shit about the pawns he is using.”
“It’s not that I don’t give a shit, as you so eloquently put it. But rather that I choose not to take on other people’s problems.”
“And what’s the difference between not caring and not acting?”
“An entire world, Sydney, an entire world.”
Sophia comes back, the scent of cigarette swirling around her. She cocks her head at me, asking if I’m ready to leave. “I have to go,” I say to Robert.
“Safe travels,” he says before disconnecting the call.
I drop the phone on the ground and stomp it—cracking the screen. I stomp it again, busting off a piece of the plastic. It feels good. So I stomp it one more time just for good measure.
Sophia watches me with a bland expression, as if destroying phones is a regular occurrence in her life. I nod at her, ready to go, and she turns without comment to the airplane. The back door is still open, and I motion for Blue to jump in, putting my bag next to him before circling around to climb into the copilot’s seat.
By the time I climb in, settling into the leather, Sophia has headphones on and mirrored aviators that remind me of Robert’s. Her pouty lips and elegant little nose are all I can see with the gear on. She is stunning. This epitome of what women are supposed to look like—tiny, blonde, even fragile-looking with her long neck. But she’s not what a woman is supposed to be.
Somewhere along the line she did something reckless enough to lose part of her arm. Maybe it was just a car accident, but I’m guessing more than that. Instead of taking her beauty to the bank, she put herself here—fighting with Joyful Justice. Following some ideal. She cares.
I care.
“How did you end up in Joyful Justice?” I ask as the plane taxis to the end of the landing strip.
Sophia speaks into her headset, ignoring me, totally focused on the task at hand. Blue leans forward, popping his head between us, and panting.
Sophia ignores him too. Her focus is complete.
The plane speeds up, the wind buffeting against the small craft. I reach down and grip the edge of the seat, steadying myself for take-off as the cabin starts to shake from the speed. And then we lift, the plane floating into the air, and we rise up toward the quickly brightening sky.
The island below us is dark green, edged in sand with aquamarine blue that quickly changes to almost black as the depths of the Pacific drop off. “You asked me a question?” Sophia says, drawing my attention back to her.
“Yes, I was wondering what brought you to Joyful Justice.”
“Idiots,” she says with a sly smile.
“Oh?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Maybe they are not all idiots. But I was a pilot in l’Armée de l’Air et de l’Espace Française—the French Air Force. When I lost part of my arm, they honorably discharged me with a pension.”
“And you didn’t want to stay retired?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No. I did not become a pilot to retire. I want to die fighting, don’t you?”
I blink at her, surprised by the question. “No,” I answer honestly. “I don’t want to die.”
“Not today, no,” Sophia agrees. “But not in my bed an old woman with nothing to show for my life.”
“You can die old and have a lot to show,” I say, thinking of my grandmother. “Fighting isn’t the only way to live.”
“Not for me,” Sophia says. “And if you really believed it didn’t fulfill a life, then why fight?”
“For others,” I say, the words popping out. “I don’t do it for me. I do it because I can’t sleep…I mean.” I laugh. “I don’t do it for the peaceful night’s rest.” Sophia laughs as though she knows the nightmares that haunt people like us. “I like this life because I can feel like I’m trying. The idea of not trying. Of…”
“Just letting wrongs go without making them right,” Sophia fills in for me.
“Yes, exactly,” I say. “I can’t stand it. To be passive when I can be active.”
“So isn’t that for you, then? Isn’t that about you?”
“Yes,” I admit. “But not because I think it will offer a good life. Maybe just the only life I can live. But I also know it’s not for everyone.”
“But if everyone joined us, then we could all have peace. It is because so many are passive, that we must fight, no?”
I don’t answer for a long moment. Sophia glances over at me, then returns her focus to the way ahead. The sun rises to our right, the world ablush with newness—the sky and the sea pink with its rebirth. “I don’t think…” The sentence stops, tries to restart but can’t seem to go anywhere. “I hate to blame others’ passivity for the ills of the world. Aren’t bad actors the heart of the problem? How much can we blame the man who does not stop a,” I wave my hand around looking for something terrible, “a rape, let’s say, rather than blaming the rapist himself.”
“Why not blame them both?” Sophia asks. “If every time someone attempted something cruel, everyone around them revolted against it, how long would it take to end cruelty?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t know how anyone can stand to see something wrong happening in front of them and not stop it, but so much of the evil in the world happens out of sight. Before I lost my brother, I never would have considered vigilantism. I figured there were people who had that job—that it wasn’t mine.”
“I was a professional soldier,” Sophia says. “I always wanted to be one—my family are military.”
“So what about unjust wars?” I ask. “What about soldiers who fight in wars that should not be waged?”
“This is a problem,” Sophia admits. “I lost my arm in Afghanistan—could you question if I should even have been there? Yes, I think you could. Why would I be fighting a war so far from home because of an act of aggression against a country that was not my own? But I think the goal—as misguided as it might have been—was to keep us all safe. By destroying those who would harm us. Now I see that destroying another’s homeland will not save mine.”
A deep sadness settles into my bones as I think of all the homes destroyed in a futile attempt to save one’s own. Violence so often feels like the only option and yet… “I like how Joyful Justice does things,” Sophia says, pulling me out of my reverie. “We wait for people to come to us. And then we help them. We don’t try to help them against their will, you know. We don’t try to free people from their own governments without them asking. And we don’t go in and do it for them. I like that. I like the invitation, and the partnership. This seems like a good way to do things.”
The invitation and the partnership… Yeah, but what about just burning it all the fuck down?