Hi-Tech Hijack Read Free

the same day to the same reconnaissance unit, and together they faced its challenges, trials, and tribulations and grew strong. On stormy nights they huddled together in their leaky tent, trying to keep warm by the light of a candle. And together they returned to their unit after the officers’ training course to become commanders of two young teams. The service was their whole lives, and they even spent their vacations together. Eddie’s parents embraced Amit with love and warmth, and it was almost like he replaced Eddie’s twin brother, who had passed when they were thirteen.
    When they were honorably discharged, it was only natural that they would take their big trip to South America together. Seven years passed since that trip. They both completed their studies—Amit two years before Eddie. But Eddie knew that the next trip—this time to Africa—they would also go on together. Now on the road again for two long months, they jumped right back to their old army humor and lingo. They would finish each other’s sentences, and the three-way conversation between them and Rose was really a dialogue between two Israeli boys and a girl from the wilderness. The main difference between the two boys was their height: Eddie was six-foot-two and looked even taller, being slim and lean, while Amit was a head shorter and quite stocky with wide shoulders, making him seem smaller than he really was. Standing side by side, they looked like a muted down version of Laurel and Hardy, though not quite as fat or quite as thin.
    “Did Amit eat all the food on the way here and leave nothing for you, Eddie?” asked Rose, teasing Eddie.
    “As if,” said Amit. “If you ask me, this skinny guy is of a different specifies. He’s like a predator. He can eat whatever he wants and not gain any weight. Whereas I am doomed to never part with a single calorie. I’m always carrying a few extra pounds, and he’s always missing a few, so between the two of us we’re even.”
    “He’s just jealous,” said Eddie, grinning. “And I keep him calm by letting him watch when I eat.”
    Willowy Rose thought Amit was more friendly and open, but was actually intrigued by Eddie’s relatively aloof behavior. Being a tall girl she would always focus automatically on guys who were taller than her five foot nine, so she tried to get close to Eddie, sometimes directly, but more often than not, via Amit. It was a real surprise for the two guys to find a girl as bubbly and vivacious as Rose on a farm in Zimbabwe, and after several weeks of all-male companionship, Rose looked like the most attractive girl on the face of the planet. Amit recused himself for being too vertically challenged, as he put it, from making a go at her, which allowed him to speak to her much more freely. Eddie was more hesitant when it came to conversing with members of the fairer sex, and his chatty wingman pushed him closer to Rose.
    When she was ten, Rose’s family moved to London. The British colony, named after Sir Cecil Rhodes back when the sun never set on the British Empire, gained its independence in 1979 and was renamed Zimbabwe. The future of the white residents, once lords of the land, was at once uncertain and daunting. Rose’s parents left behind a thriving farm to be run by Benjamin, a local boy who was the son of one of the farm workers. Benjamin’s father had been killed in an accident while working on the farm, and Aubrey, Rose’s father, felt a moral obligation to the widow and two-year-old orphan and took the child under his wing.
    Benjamin became part of the family, a brother to Rose, who was five years younger. They grew up on the farm together just like siblings until her family’s move to London. For the first ten years after the move, Aubrey would spend half his time on the farm and would be away from his home in London for long periods, leading his beautiful and sought-after wife into the arms of a glamorous, young English actor. Rose never forgave her