IT'S 6:30 A.M. WHEN ROMAN picks me up in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes. We race through the streets of Kinshasa, swerving around potholes that could disable a bus and immense piles of fermenting garbage. Barefoot people are thwacking mangoes out of trees, and gnarled women are tending gardens in the median strips. The city is Bemba territory, and it's tense. A pro-Bemba handbill is being passed around that rails against Kabila for being a puppet of the muzunga—whites from the World Bank and the UN—and calls on the people to rise up. "This place is gonna be on fire!" Roman says, laughing.

We drive through the "red zone"—where Bemba loyalists rioted in August 2006, killing 34—pick up copilot Bruce Watson, and head for N'djili airport, 16 miles east of the city. Watson is 61, thin and gray-haired, an Australian citizen who's barely set foot in Australia, having lived his whole life in Congo. The former chief pilot for Air Zaire, he's got 23,000 hours of stick time—"an all-star in the flying game of Africa," Roman says—and is now chief pilot for Roman's airline. The road to the airport passes through a "cité," a slum so dense it seems impossible. There are tens of thousands of people on the roadside, hanging on to the roofs and bumpers of minivans, running through the street. The car windows are up, the doors locked, the side-view mirrors pulled in tight. "They'll rip the mirrors right off the car," Roman says.

"Ever heard of the word lapidation?" asks Watson. "It means being stoned to death. That's what they do here."

We pass the airport, turn up a side road, come to a gate manned by soldiers packing AK's. "Presidente!" yells Roman. They salute, the gate swings open, and we roll onto the flight line, right up to a small executive jet that looks like it's seen better days. Soldiers are everywhere. A skinny guy opens the plane and starts wiping down the stairs; Roman checks the flaps, peers into the engine, and whips out a stack of $100 bills, which he hands to the fuelers.

Suddenly four men in dark suits appear, accompanied by more soldiers—the DRC's minister of finance, the Nigerian ambassador to the DRC, and two bodyguards. Watson is already in the copilot's seat. Roman sees the men into the plane, stows their bags, and motions me in. The plane is tiny—six leather seats—and threadbare. It's 30 years old, the gold carpet is stained gray, and I squish a cockroach as I strap into a flight attendant's seat behind the cockpit.

Ten minutes later we're up, breaking through heavy clouds into sharp sunlight, climbing to 31,000 feet at 440 knots. The heat and humidity and pathos of Kinshasa are gone. We are free. Roman fires up a Marlboro.