Mission

by Amy Andrews

  ‘Jup, jup,’ she said again, and patted the space beside her. She turned back to him. ‘Richard, you’ll need to help them up.’

  ‘OK, then, chickadees,’ he crooned, crouching down to their level. ‘Whose gonna be first? Who wants to sit next to Holly?’

  Holly almost fell off the bench at the change in Richard as he spoke to the wary children. So he did have a soft side.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘Who likes balloons?’ He stood and drew a trolley closer that held various things, boxes of gloves amongst them. He pulled a few out, grinned wickedly at the kids and blew in the open end of a glove which he had narrowed into a neck with his finger and thumb.

  The glove blew up just like a balloon except it had a bizarre udder shape to it as the five fingers inflated to their full length. Richard tied a knot in it and then turned it the other way round. Now it looked like a head with spiky hair and Richard completed the look by drawing a face on it.

  One of the little girls giggled nervously and soon they were all laughing. He gave one to each child, lifting them onto the bench behind them as he did so. Suddenly they were chattering to each other and to Holly in their native language.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and hugged the now squirming baby to her breast. He wanted in on the act too and Richard handed him a glove balloon with a crazy face and earned himself a toothless baby grin.

  While the noise of happy children filled the air, Richard told Holly what he was going to do.

  ‘It’s just a finger-prick,’ he explained, ‘I drop it onto the test strip and it reads in seconds. Like a urinary preg test. Think they’ll be OK?’

  ‘Not sure,’ she admitted. The five kids had only come to the orphanage over the last couple of days and they still had trust issues.

  ‘You’re a nurse. You could help me. They might trust you more.’

  ‘Oh, no. No way. Sorry, but I need to earn these kids’ trust and I won’t do that by sticking a needle into their fingers. Sorry, but you get to be the bad guy today.’

  Richard could see her point but took up her suggestion that he run a test on her so they could see it wasn’t going to hurt them. She held out her finger dutifully and he smiled to himself as the laughter died and five pairs of eyes focused on what he was doing to Holly.

  Holly held her breath and tried not to flinch, both at the unexplained eroticism of Richard’s gloved hand rubbing her finger and as the lancet pierced the tip. He squeezed out a drop of blood onto the test strip and then gave Holly a cotton-wool ball to blot the blood. He showed the kids the strip and they watched as the pink test line appeared.

  ‘You’re safe,’ he teased in a low voice as the second line, indicating a positive result, didn’t appear. He picked up her finger again, removed the cotton-wool ball, wiped off the smear of dried blood and covered the puncture site with a sticky plaster.

  And then, because he couldn’t help himself and he had an audience, he kissed her finger. ‘All better now,’ he murmured.

  The children giggled and clapped, but Holly hardly registered them at all. Her finger felt hot, burning hot, as hot as the colour darkening her cheeks, and she sat pole-axed, momentarily stunned by his action.

  ‘OK, who’s first?’ he asked the little ones.

  The eldest girl held out her hand and he repeated the test on her. She didn’t make a murmur when her finger was pricked and Richard knew that the others would be fine. These kids had been through so much more pain and suffering than a simple finger-prick. They were tough. Survivors.

  ‘All done,’ he said to the first girl, but she shook her head and thrust her finger back at him. ‘It was good.’ He nodded and smiled. ‘All clear.’ He nodded again, curling her fingers into her palm and placing them in her lap.

  She shook her head again and thrust it back.

  ‘I think she wants you to kiss it,’ Holly suggested, coming out of the sexual haze his tiny kiss on her finger had caused.

  Richard looked at her doubtfully and she shrugged at him. The little girl held her finger out solemnly. He sighed and pressed a kiss to it, sure that this went against every protocol he could think of. Still, the same went for kissing Holly but that hadn’t stopped him.

  The girl beamed at him, a huge smile of such utter happiness that Richard immediately forgot about the rules. The other children clapped again and Richard laughed and clapped with them.

  He finished the other children in no time. The baby was more difficult and cried a bit when the needle pierced his skin but was easily placated by Holly. All the kids were clear and Richard was helping them down when an army nurse stuck her head through the flap.

  ‘Sergeant, helicopter ETA fifteen minutes. Troops hit a landmine in their Jeep. Four critical. Sergeant Lynch wants you to stock up on fresh blood.’ And then she was gone.

  ‘I’ll get out of your hair,’ said Holly, rounding up her charges.

  Richard waved the kids goodbye and then forced himself to turn away and not watch the sway of her hips and the wiggle of her cute bottom. He had a job to do.

  CHAPTER THREE

  HOLLY was outside, playing hopscotch with a group of children, when Richard passed by.

  ‘Hey, where are you going?’ she called out to him, and watched as he slowed then stopped and turned around.

  He sighed heavily.

  ‘Ignoring me isn’t going to make me go away, Richard.’

  ‘I wasn’t ignoring you,’ he lied.

  ‘Oh, so you just…didn’t see me.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said, swallowing another lie.

  Holly wasn’t fooled for a minute but she let it pass. ‘Where are you going?’ she repeated, walking further down the fence line so she was nearer him because he obviously wasn’t going to come closer to her.

  ‘Collecting some more specimens.’

  ‘Pack looks kind of heavy.’

  ‘I’m used to it.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Can I come with you?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can help you collect your specimens.’

  ‘I don’t need any help.’

  ‘Have you ever, Richard?’

  ‘I’ve been self-sufficient all my life, Holly. I don’t need anybody.’

  Apparently so!

  ‘Which area are you going to?’

  ‘The eastern side. You’re not coming.’

  ‘Cool. We haven’t been to that sector for a while. I’ll just let Kathleen know.’ She turned away to head inside.

  ‘I’m not waiting for you.’

  ‘That’s fine, I’ll catch you up.’ She shot him a dazzling smile as she disappeared out of sight.

  Right. Like he was going to let her go wandering into the eastern side of the city all by herself.

  ‘Oh, you waited,’ she said innocently, reappearing a few minutes later.

  Like she didn’t know he would be waiting for her. He was pleased to see she’d got out of her scuffs and had put on some boots and thick socks. With her three-quarter length cargo pants and modest black T-shirt she looked kind of military and Richard tried not to go there. Women in uniform and all that.

  ‘Shouldn’t you have another worker with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Nah. Got a big tough-guy soldier by my side.’ She grinned as she pushed open the gate and joined him.

  Her purple eyes twinkled at him. He turned away abruptly, setting off at a killer pace.

  ‘Are we trying to set a world record?’ she asked, her short legs unable to keep pace with his.

  ‘You wanted to come,’ he said in a clipped voice, staring straight ahead, ‘so keep up. Don’t complain and definitely do not sprain an ankle or anything else typically female.’ He couldn’t bear emotional, scatty women who used their wiles instead of their heads. Way before Holly had come on the scene he had nearly married one and still felt blessed by his lucky escape.

  She daren’t ask what came under the typically female banner. She had a feeling he was talking about his mysterious fiancée t
hat he’d alluded to on a couple of occasions when they’d been together but had steadfastly refused to talk about.

  Whatever—he was letting her come so she scurried along, determined not to ask him to slow down. So what if she practically had to jog to keep up? She was fit, she would manage. ‘So, talk to me about mozzies,’ she said.

  Richard relented and slowed his pace a little at the breathy hitch in her voice. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Well, today, for instance, what’s the purpose of collecting the specimens?’

  ‘We’re entering a critical stage at the moment. Any real problems with malaria and other mosquito-borne illnesses are going to explode if we don’t monitor the situation and stick to our strategic plan.’

  ‘Why now?’

  ‘Well, it’s been three months since the typhoon, right?’ He looked at her and she nodded. ‘Now what happened back then was that there were these huge storm surges, where the wind was so strong it whipped up massive waves and hurled them at the shore. And because Rex chose the worst possible time to hit, during a king-tide, the result was much more catastrophic. As these surges inundated the land they cleaned out all the mosquito breeding areas, just sucked them right back into the ocean, and all the fresh-water habitats that mozzies need to breed in were washed away and replaced by salt water.’

  He stopped to see if she was following and she nodded at him again. ‘It takes about three months for the salt to evaporate from these puddles and ponds and waterways and make them mosquito-friendly again. Plus with the monsoon season just getting into full swing, all the fresh water from the sky helps to quicken the process by flushing out salinity and leaving plenty of puddles and pools and even man-made receptacles for mosquitos to breed in.’

  ‘What do you mean, man-made?’

  ‘Oh, anything that will hold water. Things like buckets, bowls, discarded tyres, even empty coconut shells that the locals leave lying around fill with water in the rain. A lot of my job is public health education. Going into the areas where the locals are living and talk to them about not creating opportunities for mozzies.’

  They reached an area that, even for Abeil, was exceedingly dingy. It had been the poorer section of the city but had survived remarkably well. It certainly wasn’t anything to do with the construction of the dwellings because the whole area reminded Holly of a shanty town. It was pure economics. The more affluent you were, the more you were able to afford a home closer to the sea. So the eastern side through sheer distance alone had survived reasonably well.

  ‘This’ll do,’ said Richard, pulling a map out of his pack and consulting it.

  ‘Why here?’ she asked, looking around and then trying to make sense of his map. ‘What are all those shaded areas?’

  ‘They’re areas I’ve already collected specimens from.’

  ‘So what do the specimens tell you?’ she asked as she accepted the handful of yellow-lidded pots he gave her.

  ‘It basically tells me if our earlier eradication programme has been successful. As I said earlier this is the most critical time to assess that. We look for, one…’ he held out a finger ‘…if there are any larvae in the water specimens and, two, if any, what sort of mosquitoes they are. That way I can map mosquito populations and keep an eye on their progression and change or alter our strategic plan accordingly.’

  ‘When did you become such an expert?’

  She lifted an old discarded tin to find a pool of trapped rain water. She’d been watching Richard poke around in the rubble and rubbish and figured he’d tell her if she was doing something wrong. She opened the lid of a pot and scooped some of the water in. She handed it to Richard and he wrote on the label.

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve been working in malarial research for about a decade now and had lots of field experience in Timor and Bougainville.’

  Holly stopped mid-scoop. He’d been to Timor and Bougainville? Why had he never told her these things when they had been together? He had never talked about his job other than to impress on her his total dedication to it.

  ‘You sound married to the job,’ she said, stopping to observe his concentration as he made some notes in a notebook.

  ‘I am,’ he said, looking up and fixing her with a knowing stare, the lid of his pen still between his lips.

  ‘Sounds lonely,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Nothing wrong with that, Pollyanna.’

  She was about to object, tell him he was missing out on all the good things in life, when he turned away and continued his foraging. She sighed and shook her head. She’d had the conversation with him a million times already.

  Holly returned to the job at hand in silence for a little while. But the quiet soon got the better of her and she had just opened her mouth to ask another question when a noise from behind stopped her. She was turning around when a low voice told her to stop. The request was backed up by the cold metal of a gun being pushed into her neck and a hand jerking her by the arm into an upward position.

  ‘Tell your friend to throw his gun on ground,’ the low voice spoke again.

  ‘He hasn’t got a—Yow!’ she yelped as her captor twisted her arm behind her back.

  It didn’t even raise an eyebrow from Richard, who had wandered a little distance away and was staring intently into a dark hole.

  ‘Ah, Richard,’ she said, her heartbeat thundering in her ears so she was actually unable to hear herself say the words.

  ‘Hmm?’ he said, not turning around, not looking up from what he was doing.

  ‘Richard!’ she said louder, more insistent as the gun was pressed harder against her neck.

  He looked up and, if the situation hadn’t so serious, the look on his face would have been comical. Now she had his attention!

  ‘What the—?’

  ‘Stay where you are. Throw your gun on the ground. One false move and I’ll kill her,’ the man stated.

  ‘OK, mate. Take it easy,’ said Richard in a steady voice.

  ‘Gun. Now!’

  Holly jumped as the demand ricocheted around her ear canal. Her denial that he didn’t have a gun died on her lips as he pulled something that looked like a pistol out from behind his back and tossed it a short distance away.

  ‘Kick it to me.’

  Richard did as he was told. The man said something in his native language and Holly watched as three men came from somewhere behind her and were suddenly all over Richard, patting him down then forcing him to kneel on the ground.

  ‘Stop!’ she said frantically, suddenly very frightened that they were going to execute him right in front of her. Her heart pounded in her chest. ‘What are you doing? He’s an Australian soldier, a medic, he’s here to help the people of Abeil. Stop it! Let him go.’

  The man holding her captive marched her over beside Richard and forced her to kneel, too.

  Faced with her own mortality, Holly suddenly felt very angry. And scared. She was about to launch into an angry diatribe when she felt Richard’s hand seek hers and squeeze. Was it for reassurance or a warning?

  ‘What do you want from us?’ Richard demanded.

  Holly was amazed his voice sounded so calm. So in control. And for whatever reason he had held her hand, it had given her a measure of calmness as well.

  When he got no answer Richard ploughed on regardless. He felt fear but his priority to remove Holly from danger overruled everything. He had been in some hairy situations in the past, but he had skills and training and knew when it came down to it he could defend himself. But Holly? She hadn’t signed up for this.

  ‘Whatever it is, you don’t need both of us. She’s an aid worker. A volunteer. Let her go. You have me, you don’t need her.’

  Holly felt a lump lodge in her throat and decided right then and there, kneeling in the dirt of a foreign land, a gun pressed to her head, that if she died there today, she couldn’t think of anyone she’d rather be with. Just his mere presence gave her courage in the face of such dire odds.

  It was ironic on s
o many levels. That the man who had hurt her the most was the one she was going to draw her last breath with, and that somehow it seemed kind of…fitting. And it shouldn’t. After all, the man in question still continued to dismiss her as being young and frivolous and it looked like she was never going to get a chance to prove to him otherwise. It just didn’t make any sense to feel like this.

  But holding his hand as she stared death in the face, she realised lots of things didn’t make sense in this world. Not typhoon Rex, not kneeling in an alley, awaiting her death, and certainly not their convoluted relationship.

  ‘Shut up and listen!’ said the man who appeared to be the ringleader. ‘We are soldiers from the Abeil Freedom Movement and you are prisoners of war.’

  And then everything went black.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE dark sacks that had been placed over their heads were impossible to see out of and air flow wasn’t great. It was stuffy and suffocating but Holly knew she could live with that. She was still alive and that was the most important thing.

  Their hands were bound behind their backs and Holly could feel the pulses throbbing through her hands as the tightness of the rope constricted the flow of blood. They were yanked off the ground and forced to walk a short distance, stumbling and tripping because of their blinded state.

  They entered some kind of dwelling where they were forced to sit on the ground next to each other while a heated conversation took place around them. Soon after they were manhandled to their feet again, the person ‘helping’ Holly letting his hand linger on her hip. She suppressed a shudder and refused to think about all the things they could do to her. There was no point dwelling on the what-ifs.

  They were led outside again and then someone picked Holly up and placed her none too gently on her back against a hard metal surface and ordered her to lie still. She felt Richard beside her and quelled her rising panic. If he was with her, she could get through anything.

  She remembered his earlier comments about typical females and guessed he didn’t need to cope with histrionics from her. It was a golden opportunity to prove to him she wasn’t the young superfluous girly that he had pegged her as. If she could show him that she could be brave and level-headed and mature, then maybe, if they actually got through this ordeal alive, he would realise she was a woman. Not a child.