by Robin Winter
"Careful," she blurted out. He moved the flame toward the mantles. They flared into white brilliance.
Jantor straightened and turned, and Gilman met his searching look with a mix of defiance and shyness. What did he think of her? The lantern light made him look taller, forbidding. It was easier when he was next to her—now there was an immense distance between them. She waited for him, and he made her wait. She realized that and a burn of embarrassment spread along her cheekbones. He wasn't going to make it easy. He wanted to make her move first.
He grinned.
"What?" She smiled back. "What is it?"
He shook his head. He turned a little aside, as if her words had been the cue he waited for, took off his flak jacket and holster, unlaced his boots, and painstakingly arranged grenade, knife, and ammo belt on the bedside table, watching Gilman the while.
"Hey," he said, his voice soft, "get over here."
She went to him and he pulled her close, bending over her upturned face and annihilating her self-consciousness in a long kiss. They undressed each other, lingering at each discovery, items of clothing falling to the floor. Jantor ran a hand up her back, urgent, locking her to him. His breath stirred the small curls at her nape and he kissed her there.
Her hands grew bolder, pausing at the raised scar slanting across his stomach. Her fingers smoothed it carefully. It shouldn't be important—any doctor would have said it couldn't hurt him any more. As if some connection had been made by that old wound, she pulled his head down to kiss him, all ferocity and tenderness. Yes, this was what she wanted. He repaid her with mouth and hands.
"Oh God," she said, her voice caught deep in her throat.
He sought her mouth with his own, as if seeking to confirm her desire by tasting it. Perhaps the battlefield had taught him to control passion, to increase it through denial. She had not expected him to leash his hunger and Gilman was all but sobbing for mercy when he finally laid her on the cot and brought what they had begun to its shuddering conclusion.
Chapter 44: Wilton
June 1968
In Transit, Biafra
Wilton learned young the ability to pass unseen. No fear of juju kept her from explorations far beyond the back-bush village paths. She had an eye for snakes, insects and birds. She'd learned the habit to tell no one exactly where she went or what she saw. A bird woman, knowing the ways of wild things shy in the bush. For a while as she moved through Biafra, she had a bicycle. The rest of the time she bought brief passage on trucks and mammy wagons or walked.
At the front Wilton could hear sporadic outbursts of mortar and machine-gun fire. Nigerian and Biafran soldiers engaged with flurries of explosions and shots and screaming. In overgrown terrain, she stumbled over bodies. So many Biafran soldiers were children, meager under the claws of the vultures, storks and the buzzing flies.
She would have avoided the towns if she didn't feel this powerful need to witness the worst. Refugees crowded into camps. Survivors couldn't dig new graves fast enough. The living had so little strength. Dead flesh bloated swiftly, the vultures lurched sluggish with food. Putrefaction filled her days and nights. Sometimes Wilton imagined that no matter how deeply into the bush she fled, that odor would follow, sick sweetness in the air.
Towns attracted bombers, Ilyushin bombers the Nigerians bought with oil money from the Russians. Wilton learned terror at the sound of engines in the air, strafing runs. Panic when there was finally no right place to go, when it was too late to hide.
While the bombs fell, she crouched among ragged folk, women, children, old men, waiting. She helped dig out the ruins of buildings for those buried alive, for the dust-floured corpses, for the broken.
The bright-orange earth and puffing dust, the inedible green leaves and vines, the spreading tangle of trees and brush crawling over broken buildings once raised with pride, all these mocked the world that Wilton remembered. She recalled the kind hot days of past years when no sound of incessant agony rose and fell on the wind. When the air was clean.
She found herself nearing the border and decided she would head to the West once more, because she still held responsibility. Lindsey and Sandy were there because of her. Lindsey should know what Wilton saw out here in the dripping green of this endless war.
Why had Sandy remained? What did she gain? She must not take Sandy's persistence for granted until she understood it. She tried to care, but the effort seemed enormous.
All she could do was witness and pass the things she saw to those like Lindsey who had power. Yes, Lagos was her next destination. Leave Gilman to God.
Chapter 45: Gilman
June 1968
Uli Area, Biafra
Gilman woke in early morning while the sky grayed with the first of the dawn. Jantor's heavy arm crossed her shoulders. She shifted, careful not to wake him, and turned her head to look at his face in the dim, ghostly light. His ribs rose with each indrawn breath. Gilman lay watching him sleep. Soothed back to sleep herself, she reentered the confusion of her dreams.
The muted roar of an approaching plane put an end to that. Nearly dawn, too much light for one of their aid planes or a gunrunner trying to land. Who in hell?
"Tom," she said. "Bombers..."
His eyes opened and the arm tightened around her.
"That's an Ilyushin," he said, "looking for the strip." His feet hit the ground at the first bomb.
"Close." He snatched up his clothes from the tangled pile on the ground. Gilman grabbed her own, fumbling buttons and cinching her belt, while they both listened to the Russian jet bomber grow fainter, then louder again when it circled for another attack run.
"They keep trying," Jantor said. He smiled.
"They know Airstrip Annabelle is somewhere here, and they keep guessing. But they don't have the guts to fly low enough to see us."
He looked at her before he strode out the door, and she paused in her fumbling attempt to dress, shyness catching her by the throat so that she couldn't speak. Jantor swung back to her and kissed her. He slammed the door behind him and she stood a moment, staring at it.
On the afternoon of Jantor's departure, Gilman caught up with Allingham in the infirmary.
"So you're here," Allingham said. "Sucking chest wound just came in. Other casualties. We need to get to the underground unit."
"Goddamn. Okay." Gilman glanced at the dour face of the doctor, knowing she would never like him. "Let's take it."
A hard run of surgeries, the kind of day when between the heat and the sweat she had a difficult time seeing straight. Early evening settled in by the time Gilman emerged from the underground operating room. She headed toward the kitchen area, noting vaguely the pink sunlight blooming on the hospital's battered walls. Allingham's sharp voice stopped her.
"Gilman, where're you going?"
"The kitchen," she said. "Why? I need a good bath."
Allingham came over the rubble-strewn yard toward her. His stubbled face spoke of a reluctant morning. He must still have a world-class hangover.
"What's wrong? What's bugging you, Doctor?" she said.
"Only wanted to tell you you're a damned fucking fool," Allingham said. "He's a merc. Whoring for cash. Kills for the highest bidder, and don't you forget it. What does that make you?"
Gilman felt herself blush with rage.
"It's none of your business. Shut your hole right now."
"You have an obligation to all of us. Don't forget it," Allingham said. "He'll see you to your death, or better yet, you'll see him to his. And maybe then you'll know it's time to go home."
Gilman watched Allingham walk away. Spindle shanks and heavy body, like a misformed crab. All she should feel was pity, but she wanted to run after him and kick him in the ass. Sandy would have.
Chapter 46: Lindsey
July 1968
Lagos, Nigeria
Lindsey came in with Oroko. She saw Sandy glowering and the rusty mark of Sandy's sneaker on the waiting room wall at the same time.
&nbs
p; "Lindsey, you goddamned better explain. Why can't I get my fucking cash outa the office? I was planning to leave at five this morning, the lock's been changed and here I am waiting on you."
Here it came. Well, Lindsey knew she was right, whatever Sandy felt. In the long run this was justified. She kept herself from looking over at Oroko who had followed her in. Forget he's there, that's best.
"I'm sorry, Sandy," she said, putting on her apologetic look—she'd practiced it in the mirror before brushing her teeth. "I really meant to say something earlier, but with that oil guy's illness and getting him airlifted back to the States…"
"Fuck the nice talk, Lindsey. Spit it out."
"Sandy, it's not safe," she said. "You can't go on trips to your geological sites."
"Not safe? What the hell?"
"Don't sound so amazed. You know the risk you take every time you head to the field."
"God, Lindsey, it's safer than Lagos. The rocks aren't gonna mug me."
"Those terrible roads? What if something happens? No ambulance, no reliable police…What about kidnapping?"
"It's what I do," Sandy said. "What about the word geologist don't you understand? I know rocks. I go out and find them. I can tell where they come from. What made 'em."
"The rocks talk to you."
"Yeah, they fucking do. You better start talking—who are you? My mother?"
"That's not the point anyway," Lindsey said. "Playing out in the wild you could be murdered. Kidnapped. I can't cover your back when you're prospecting. My trip with Wilton to Biafra made that clear to me. There's no way to control the things that happen out there."
"You can't control what happens here."
"Try me." Lindsey could not stop herself from smiling, though she knew it would offend.
"You thinking about your debtors? I used to think they were fools to put themselves into your hands, but I knew then what you were doing. What Wilton thought you were doing. But that's not it any more, is it? I should ask her what's changed. Make her tell me."
"What do you mean?" Lindsey looked down. She hadn't meant to do that, but she sometimes had trouble giving Sandy the old simple straight Lindsey.
"Wilton's here. Got in late last night and I put her to bed. But what I mean is you're having some other kind of thrill out of this business of loans. I hear stories. Saw Jack Damano coming out of your office last week looking like you'd taken pieces of his guts and fried them in front of him. I don't know you any more Lindsey, and I can't imagine what Wilton…"
"She's not my boss."
"Yeah? Once she was your compass."
Lindsey shoved her chair back, feeling her pulse pounding in her throat. Control it or not? What did she have to lose? What had Sandy meant by not knowing her? In the end she'd win this thing.
"Of course you know me. You're the only one who does. I know what I'm doing. Trust me. I'm just the same…"
"You don't control me."
"I never wanted to."
Sandy slammed the door behind her. Lindsey took a deep breath.
"That went better than I expected," she said, glancing at Oroko who stood sculpture silent by the window. "In the long run it will be all right."
Chapter 47: Sandy
July 1968
Lagos, Nigeria
Sandy hadn't asked questions when Wilton arrived last night too tired and dirty. When Sandy erupted back into her office, Wilton sat on the bench as if waiting for her. Wilton looked pretty much okay today, and goddamn it, Sandy had to talk to someone. How could Lindsey want to keep her safe? Safe? That wasn't what they'd come here for. Not for safety, not to be controlled, that was the shit they'd left behind in America.
"But she does," Sandy said to Wilton. "What Lindsey wants does control me, because of so many things. The servants, the armed camp we live in both here in Lagos and in Ibadan. We've got to think of her safety."
Maybe she shouldn't be saying these things to Wilton, who sat there so quiet, her face turned toward the window with its frantic street sounds muted by the louvered glass.
She walked around the table and Wilton tracked her, black eyes intent.
"Wilton. Listen to me. What's Lindsey doing? I live here in the same city she does, share the housing, pay the servants, but God, what's going on? There are people who know she's a spook for the USA, people who want her out of the way and her influence blocked, but it's gone personal. She ruins people. She eats it up. I feel like I'm blood sister to a Mafia don, and you know I still…still like her—it isn't that I'm mad, exactly. I mean she annoys me, but it's gone different."
"Will you stop going out for field work? Stop prospecting?"
Sandy didn't want to answer. She pushed her hair back from her eyes.
"How could she want to stop me? So she won't feel guilty if I have an accident?"
Sandy turned her back to Wilton. Terribly, inside herself she felt her rant go on as though she were pounding out words before Lindsey, not Wilton. How long before you decide it's better not to have me around as a liability, Lindsey? Will you worry about me talking? And then what? Trust you? I've done nothing else all these years and I think I'm the greatest fool of all.
"Why do you stay in Nigeria?" Wilton said. "You like the work in the field, but that's never been the whole story for you. You're not getting rich, you don't have a love life, what's here for you?"
"Freedom," Sandy said. "It's like I never had to leave college, or at least that's how it felt before this goddamned war. Before Lindsey put a chain on me."
"Do you miss home? Do they miss you?"
"I write. That's all they need to know. They're better off without me and I'm better off without them. We embarrass each other."
Wilton would never understand. Sandy checked Wilton's expression, but it was so unmoved she wondered if Wilton listened. Sandy simply didn't want to talk about it, especially with Wilton of all people. God she was angry. It made her think unforgivable things. Exaggerate. Dramatize. Sandy looked again at Wilton. The poor kid seemed too small for this, too turned inside herself. Wilton didn't need more worry. Get a grip, return to what they both knew in this cuckoo place and time.
"Maybe I'm crazy," Sandy said. "Lindsey's what she's always been. You'd sense if that wasn't true, wouldn't you, Wilton? She's been my best friend all these years. Maybe it's the war, maybe it's that I really needed to get out of Lagos and away from all these people for a couple of weeks, get a sunburn and some free air and she said no. Sure, I'll be able to talk her down. She's not keeping me in a fucking canary cage."
"You think she'll change her mind?" Wilton said. "I go where I want when I want. You could too."
"But that's just it," Sandy said. "She trusts me not to do a bunk on her and so I can't. If she put Oroko to watch me then it'd be fun to see if I could sneak out, but this way I can't. She's trusting me. We'll have to fight it out."
Chapter 48: Lindsey
August 1968
Lagos, Western Region Nigeria
In an air-conditioned room with thick red curtains, Lindsey sat at a massive mahogany table after greeting Major Yakubu Gowon, commander in chief of the Federal Government. What a setting—luxurious in an old-fashioned way that matched Colonial days of elegance and polish-darkened wood trim.
Gowon in private disliked ceremony. He brought his idiosyncratic austere Christianity with him to any meeting, even when it inconvenienced or offended. His teeth flashed in a warm smile for her and he glanced down again at the folder open on his desk. It was too easy, Lindsey reflected, to win this man's trust. He assumed everyone worthy until proven false. And yet, he wasn't stupid.
"I need information about our foreign volunteer pilots."
The Biafrans called the Federal foreign "volunteers," mercenaries. A difference of perspective. The Biafrans had their own but didn't fuss as much over the terminology. Paid volunteers made for a funny definition of the word. She had her own doubts about the outsiders manning Nigerian Federal bombers. Russian, Egyptian and East Eurpoean pilot
s dropping British-made bombs on Africans. Bad for public relations with other nations.
"I hear that they're compromised by old friendships that run across Biafran and Federal lines. Mercenaries hang together." Rumor had it that the mercenaries on both sides of this war played tag in the sky. So many of them believed foremost in the brotherhood of soldiers of fortune, not the abstract politics of an African war.
"Would you consider Anann's proposal?"
Anann wanted the foreign volunteers paid a bounty on hits, not by air hours.
"I might." His lips closed stubbornly with the look she knew so well.
She dropped the subject. She'd return to that later.
"Sir," she said. "We're seeing increased problems with intelligence. Nothing has yet been done about the lack of effective air reconnaissance. I need not emphasize how vital..."
She spread several sheets from her attaché case. Gowon smoothed his short mustache with one finger, his clear interested eyes following her actions.
"I delegated an examination of our intelligence operations to Abiola," he said and accepted what she handed to him. "His report stated that our air photography division served adequately."
She watched him scan the papers and his frown when he read the figures. Privately, she sighed. Now he would get distracted by the fact that Abiola was unreliable, and this would take time. But she'd expected that. Equations—why didn't he see this was a simple set of numbers? Personal betrayal wasn't important. Facts were. You made a mistake when you took matters personally. Gowon looked up, his expression disappointed and severe.
"So Abiola is unreliable. I shall speak with him tomorrow."
Lindsey barely saved herself from smiling. No matter how serious the crime, Gowon always had the same answer. Even the army officer who'd attempted Gowon's assassination two months ago was invited in afterwards to discuss his grievances with his intended victim before receiving a pardon and dismissal. One of these days Gowon would get himself killed with such notions of mercy. She would never make a mistake like that.
