Trisha Telep (ed)

by The Mammoth Book of Special Ops Romance (epub)

  The cloud cleared as quickly as it had appeared and a huge gibbous moon lit the area. He pushed himself up to sitting and examined the damage as best he could. Blood – he could smell its sharp metallic odour – and quite a lot of it. Black on his fingers. His forearm had been laid open from his elbow to his hand, and a gash spiralled across the veins of his wrist.

  “Bugger.”

  He downgraded “not dead” to “not dead yet”. Aware that in the Timorese tropical climate a wound like that would fester incredibly quickly, if he didn’t bleed to death first.

  It started to throb and sting, and the pain gathered momentum.

  He dragged off his soaked shirt, wadded it up and held it against the wound. He needed help. The rest of his team would find him, eventually, but the terrain between them was steep, covered in thick jungle and likely swarming with Indonesian patrols. It could take a while.

  He paused. Listened. Sniffed the air. He could smell smoke. Wood smoke. He scanned the area more carefully and, sure enough, he could see a distant dim glint of a light, barely perceptible against the bright moon. He dragged himself up to his feet and, stumbling in the flat moonlight, made his way towards it. Could be a village. Could be the Indonesian army. Both had numerous pitfalls.

  What he hadn’t been expecting was a nunnery.

  Amelia drifted in a semi-conscious daze. Her heart stuttered and jittered in her chest, every breath was almost impossible to take as the paralysis took its hold. Voices came clearly through the haze. It was true, what they said, about hearing being the last sense to go. Clara, unusually high-pitched and upset, was desperately trying to get medical help, though Amelia couldn’t hear the children, their chatter was silent. She’d miss them. They’d taught her so much. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t blink, couldn’t move. Death hovered. She could sense it. It had never looked so good.

  Aware that he hadn’t washed in the three weeks that he’d been on patrol, and that he was dripping blood all over their immaculate porch, Mick hammered on the door, below a small statue of Christ on the Cross. He heard movement on the other side and a small peephole opened at eye height. For an insane minute he was reminded of getting into a very dodgy club in Kings Cross last time he was on leave in Sydney.

  “Ajuda. I’m Australian. Ajuda,” he said, summoning the Tetum word for “help” from somewhere. Languages had never been his strong point.

  “Espera,” she said. Wait.

  So he leaned his forehead against the door and waited, listening to the pat, pat, pat of his own blood dripping on to the ground.

  An age later the peephole opened again.

  “Are you in trouble?” asked a calm, precise voice. He felt soothed just hearing it.

  “I’m sorry. I got caught in a flash flood and I’m badly cut. Do you have bandages? You could throw them out here. I don’t need to come in.”

  The door opened to reveal a nun, neatly dressed in a white habit despite the hour. Her lined face looked older than time itself, and deeply wise.

  “We have never turned away a person in need and are not about to start now, young man,” she said in perfect English.

  “I’m sorry. I’ve bled on your porch.” He held out his arm. It was the first time he’d seen the wound properly and it took him a moment to realize that the white glint amongst all the blood was bone. A wide strip of flesh had been ripped away and was dangling from his arm. It looked so horrific that his brain was having difficulty processing the fact that it was his arm. A weird disconnected feeling kept telling him that it must belong to someone else.

  He pressed his shirt back on to the wound, afraid he’d offended the nuns with the sight of it.

  “No!” There was a gasp of consternation, and he realized that behind the nun who had opened the door there was a small group of women. “That rag is filthy. Don’t do that. Come in at once,” said the nun.

  They ushered him through the dark halls of the nunnery. It was large. He guessed it was the one in the hills behind Maubara. Which meant the flash flood had dragged him a long, long way from his patrol. They’d come to find him. Without doubt. But the mission was screwed. They’d spent the last three weeks in the Timorese jungle, on patrol as part of Operation Astute, a United Nations initiative led by Australia to keep peace in East Timor. And now, just when they’d had concrete reports of the militia stirring up trouble, this accident would drag them away from where they could do any good at all.

  He groaned, quietly, deep in his chest.

  There was going to be hell to pay.

  “Not far now,” said the nun, misinterpreting his groan as one of pain. “We’re going to the infirmary. We’ll stitch you up there.”

  The thought of stitches made him queasy and he glanced at his arm again. Everything had a strong dreamlike sense of unreality about it. He realized he was in shock and shivered suddenly, the movement making the horrific wound tense and stab painfully. This time he did groan in pain.

  In the infirmary they irrigated the wound to clean it and stitched the hanging flesh into place as best they could. They had no pain relief to offer him, and he would not have accepted drugs anyway. Alone, in an area where there may be militia activity, and where local violence could break out at any minute, he wasn’t taking anything that’d slow him down.

  He sat in a hard wooden chair, arm laid across a table draped in a clean white sheet. He squeezed his eyes shut, but found it only made it all worse, so instead distracted himself by telling Sister Mary Francis – the nun who’d opened the door – about his home in Sydney. A younger sister worked on his arm, and he had to stop speaking each time she pierced him with the needle.

  When she’d finally finished, and bandaged him from wrist to elbow, Sister Mary Francis offered him a room with a bed to wait until his patrol found him. He accepted gratefully.

  “Wash first,” instructed Sister Mary Francis, flaring her nostrils and directing him to a utilitarian bathroom. He washed carefully in a basin of cold water, keeping his bandaged arm dry. The pain made him hazy and he had to concentrate to stop it becoming overwhelming.

  A sister tapped on the door and he yelped in fright.

  “Clothes,” she said. The door opened a crack and clothes were dropped on the floor. He pulled them on. They were far too small. But he zipped up the trousers and decided that if he had to sit down, the pain of squashed testicles would take his mind off his arm.

  Sister Mary Francis waited for him when he emerged in his new outfit. A ghost of a smile flittered over her lips when she saw him. “This way. You can sleep now. I’ll send a sister in with some herbal tea. It will help with the pain.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He glanced out the window of the room they’d given him. Dawn was creeping over the hills to the east. Another nun came quietly in. Shy and withdrawn, she didn’t look at him. He stepped back into the corner, cradling his arm and trying to give her as much space as he could.

  Being over six-foot tall, he was keenly aware that his size often frightened the local women. Poor diet and practically no modern medical help meant that the average height of a man in Timor was around the five-foot mark. His dark-red hair made them hesitate as well.

  Hoping that no one else was planning to visit, and unable to stand the tight trousers a moment longer, he peeled them off awkwardly and slid between the clean sheets of the narrow bed. It felt like lying on a cloud after weeks of roughing it.

  The pain in his arm intensified quickly when he lay down, clawing at him, so he struggled up to sitting, and that seemed to ease it a little. Under the bandage, it felt like a thousand ants were biting him, and he was sure it was infected.

  He glanced at the tea, realizing how thirsty he was. It was herbal – how much harm could it do? He sniffed it. It smelled like hay. Grassy and outdoorsy. It was a nunnery, for heaven’s sake! They were hardly going to be giving him something laced with opium.

  He sipped the tea. It tasted completely innocent, so he finished the cup
. After a few minutes the pain in his arm began to fade rapidly and as day broke outside the window he drifted into a weird semi-conscious sleep.

  When he woke it was pitch dark again. He’d been dreaming vividly about ants crawling into his arm and biting him, and he’d woken with a start. Heart pounding, his skin felt hot and tight. A breath, cool against his cheek and smelling like mint, made him reach out.

  Someone was there.

  Something was very wrong.

  He never slept deeply enough for someone to creep up unawares. He tried to sit up and jarred his arm. Pain screamed through him. The covers slid off his heated body. He reached out again. Silken hair brushed against his fingers, and the velvety curve of a breast.

  Hazy desire shot through him. This was one weird dream. It must be a dream . . . What the hell was in that tea?

  She pressed her lips to his. Any sense of reality vaporized into mind-numbing desire.

  When he woke again there was soft daylight in the room, giving everything a surreal feel. The woman was there. She stood, with her back to him. As he watched through half-closed eyes, she shrugged into a long white dress that slithered over her round bottom and long legs. Beautiful body. Her hair was long and blonde; her skin tanned. Her hand was bandaged, just up to the wrist.

  It hadn’t been a dream. There had been no hallucinating. The unforgettable night was real.

  He realized what had woken him: the sound of a motor. It was getting louder and louder. A helicopter, but not one of the army’s Black Hawks – he’d know that sound from miles away. He shifted a little and she glanced around, almost frightened.

  “Who are you?” he whispered.

  Her eyes widened. There was a blankness there, an emptiness, like nobody lived behind those incredible eyes. “I’m not sure,” she said in an Australian accent. “I can’t remember.”

  She looked out the window at the helicopter, descending noisily into the clear area beside the nunnery. “They’re here for me. I have to go.”

  “I’ll find you,” said Mick, raising his voice over the sound of the machine. He would find her. Just because.

  Then she hurried from the room, lithe and light even though she was limping, barely putting weight on one foot. It was bandaged as well, he saw.

  Mick sat up slowly. The room rocked and swayed, and it felt like the helicopter blades were ricocheting off his forehead. He peered out the window. A sleek black machine – a corporate number with AUSTRATIMO OIL emblazoned on the side – had landed. A man climbed out, ducking low under the slowing blades. He reappeared moments later, his arm protectively around the blonde woman’s shoulders, hurrying her along. She stumbled and sank to the ground. Mick stood quickly, nose millimetres from the glass, as if he could leap through it to help her. In a swift movement the man scooped her up in his arms, her head lolling against his shoulders.

  “Look after her,” Mick muttered as the helicopter roared into the sky. Movement from the jungle at the periphery of the nunnery drew his attention. He smiled faintly as he saw his patrol materialize from the dense scrub. The medics would have antibiotics and would get him home. They waited as the helicopter took off then headed purposefully towards the nunnery.

  Sitting at the computer, even with the air conditioning on and the curtains closed against the unrelenting Sydney summer glare, Amelia was too hot. Midsummer pregnancy in Australia sucked. The baby wriggled, as if to say, “Hey, it’s thirty-seven degrees in here all the time, what the hell are you complaining about?” She smiled and stroked her belly.

  “Hey, sweetie. Are you awake?”

  The baby stretched, making Amelia’s belly undulate.

  She continued her email to Clara.

  So the pregnancy continues to go very well. My parents are still extremely angry; they think I’m keeping the identity of the father a secret, and that my time in Timor was spent having some illicit assignation.

  But they’re coming around slowly. At least my friends have stopped telling me to give her up for adoption. The very thought of losing my little girl makes me feel stabbed in the heart.

  Give my love to everyone at the orphanage. The baby and I will be visiting just as soon as we can. And thank you once more for your love and support.

  She hit the Send button as the door to her study was pushed open.

  “Joss, you are the best,” she said to the housekeeper, who had appeared with a cup of peppermint tea. Trotting along behind her was Kissy, Amelia’s Pomeranian. “Hello, beautiful,” she said and snapped her fingers. The little dog jumped up on to her lap, scrabbling for balance when she found less room than she’d expected.

  “How are you feeling?” asked Joss.

  “Good. No nausea at all today. I’ll take Kissy out for a walk later, before I go up to the big house for dinner with Mum and Dad.”

  Joss nodded. “I’m heading up there now. Your mother is unhappy with something Chef produced for last night’s dinner party, and I want to be on hand when they discuss it. Just to make sure nobody kills anybody.” She grinned and rolled her eyes.

  “She was here this morning moaning about it. Serving sardines to the Premier of New South Wales or something? Knowing Chef I bet they were spectacular.”

  When Joss had gone Amelia tried to concentrate on sorting out her latest fundraising scheme for the orphanage, and drank her tea as the baby shifted and moved languorously. But the twinges in her back changed from annoying to painful and soon it was unbearable to sit still any longer. The sun’s scorching midsummer rays had lengthened into afternoon and the intensity of the heat had waned a little.

  “C’mon, Kissy,” she said and went to find the lead.

  Mick stood outside the tall iron gates of the north-shore mansion. She hadn’t been difficult to find. The nuns had told him that she was Amelia Dubonnier. Of the mega-wealthy Dubonnier family, who owned almost every oil rig in the stretch of ocean between East Timor and Australia. Nobody had been quite sure how she came to be in Maubara.

  The fact she inhabited the upper echelons of society did not really penetrate his brain until he saw where she lived. The massive garden was surrounded by a high brick wall, the top studded with broken glass. Distantly, set in the middle of the lush oasis, was a mansion, white and ornate. It looked like a wedding cake, and was surrounded by smaller buildings – garages, no doubt, housing a huge car collection.

  There was movement at the front of one of the nearest buildings. The door opened and his heart stopped dead in his chest. There she was. Amelia. The woman who had haunted his thoughts for the past six months. Blonde hair pulled back from her tanned face. Wearing a dark top and three-quarter-length jeans.

  He’d tracked her down out of curiosity. With no more intention than to see where she lived, he’d continue to hold her in the corner of his heart where it seemed she’d taken up permanent residence.

  She had some kind of fluffy dog on a lead that she was taking for a walk. She bent awkwardly to pet it and his only recently started heart stopped dead again.

  Amelia was pregnant, the bulge obvious beneath her loose top.

  Disappointment shot through him, driving a spike into the centre of his heart, and he walked quickly away. She belonged to someone else. He should never have looked for her. The entire idea had been insanity.

  He’d only gone a few hundred metres up the street when the fluffy dog shot past him. Reflexively, he stepped on the lead, bringing the pooch up short with a strangled yelp. He bent and picked up the lead slowly, giving his shell-shocked emotions a few seconds more to settle themselves.

  He was going to have to talk to her.

  He was going to have to look at her, and finally find out the colour of her eyes.

  His mind went blank and he couldn’t think what to say.

  She made her way slowly up the steep street towards him. Large sunglasses covered her eyes, but she was smiling. Every bit as stunning as he’d remembered. He walked down to her, nerves churning in the pit of his stomach.

  “I’ve
got your dog,” he said and cleared his throat. Excellent start. She could quite plainly see that.

  She grinned as they stopped, a few metres apart. “Thanks. She’s a pest.”

  “No worries,” he shrugged, taking in every detail of her face: the fine straight nose, full red lips and smooth creamy skin. “Nice dog. Very, er, fluffy.”

  “Have we met before?” she asked. She pulled the sunglasses off. Beautiful soft brown eyes, just like he’d hoped. “It’s just you seem so familiar.”

  She kept smiling, curious, friendly and polite. And likeable. So likeable. The warm feelings he’d kept quietly in his heart expanded.

  “No,” he lied. “I’m based in Perth. Just on my way to visit the zoo.”

  “You’ve come the wrong way then,” she said. “You need to go back to . . .”

  He shook his head. “It’s OK, I know where I am. I was just admiring the real estate.”

  She raised an eyebrow at this. “Well, have fun.”

  She started to walk away, and suddenly he couldn’t stand to never see her again, couldn’t bear that this would be the sum total of their communication.

  “We have met before,” he called after her. “In Timor. I thought you were a nun.”

  She froze. The dog looked up at her in question and whined.

  Mick stood and waited. Unwilling to approach her, afraid he might frighten her.

  She turned back to him, eyes wide with shock, hand curved protectively around her round belly. His eyes dropped to it again. A question blossomed in his mind. A rather startling one.

  Amelia stared at the tall red-haired man. The familiarity began to make sense. He was the man in her dream – that vivid dream she’d experienced at the nunnery.

  As she’d hovered at death’s door, Clara had given her a local herbal remedy for the snail sting. It had worked and the paralysis had been immediately halted. But the side effects had included appalling seizures and hallucinations, so to combat them they’d kept her doped up on opium tea.

  When she’d woken up in Darwin Hospital, all she could remember was a disconnected passionate dream about a redheaded man, his skin burning hot against her own cool flesh.