Chapter 2 #2
Doing his best to tune out the thoughts—and his concern over what the next steps for all the women and children would be—Pyro followed behind Casper as they left the flight deck.
Three hours later, Pyro’s back ached from hunching over maps of Libreville as he and his fellow Night Stalkers scoured the area for the best places to have the next round of evacuees gather so they could be picked up as safely as possible.
From intel they’d received, they knew they had probably two more trips each.
Six more loads of US citizens to evacuate.
The first would be a mix of women, children, and men, and the last would be mostly men.
Those who’d made the decision to stay until the last possible moment as they did what they could to secure top-secret documents and help their Gabonese coworkers.
“Go get something to eat. Maybe a nap. We’re headed out in four hours. Things will be trickier in the dark, but hopefully it’ll cut down on the number of people in the streets who want to take us down.”
Pyro didn’t need Casper to tell him a second time to head out.
His stomach was growling, and he was more than ready to eat.
He wasn’t sure sleeping was an option, as the details about the upcoming mission were swirling around in his head.
And he still couldn’t shake the desire to check on Penny and Bowie…
and the other women who they’d evacuated this morning.
“You headed to the mess hall? I’ll go with you,” Chaos said.
“Wait up, me too,” Edge called out.
Pyro was glad for their company. They walked through the maze of corridors toward the main mess hall.
They were at the tail end of service time for dinner, but hopefully they’d make it and not have to settle for something from the grab-and-go area.
There was nothing wrong with the food offered in the to-go boxes, but Pyro needed something heartier than a sandwich and potato chips.
As he suspected, the mess hall was pretty empty, since there was only ten more minutes until the chow line closed up shop. He and his friends went through quickly, piling their metal trays with hot food.
“I swear this stuff gets less and less appetizing as the years go by,” Chaos bitched, as they sat at a circular table near one side of the open space.
“These have to be powdered potatoes for sure,” Edge agreed.
Pyro kept quiet, as he was too busy eating.
And he’d definitely had worse growing up.
Powdered milk, eggs, and potatoes were an everyday part of his caloric intake as a kid.
The families he’d lived with hadn’t been rich, but they’d always managed to put food on the table.
It might not have been gourmet, but for a hungry kid, food was food.
Even today, he wasn’t picky. Would eat pretty much almost anything. Didn’t care if the potatoes were instant out of a box or made from actual vegetables.
He tuned out his teammates’ complaints, and not for the first time in the last few hours, Pyro’s thoughts went back to Penny.
How long had she been in Africa? What did she do for work?
Was Bowie’s father in the picture? He was well aware he was obsessing, but he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the mother-daughter pair who’d been a calming presence in a sea of chaos on his mission.
“Heard you transported a blind girl today,” Chaos said.
Pyro froze with his fork halfway to his mouth and stared at his friend.
“What? What’s wrong?” Chaos asked, frowning.
“How the hell did you hear that?”
“I think Casper mentioned it.”
“You think?”
“Okay, he did,” Chaos said, with a shrug and a grin.
“During our break earlier. I asked why you were acting so weird, and he said he thought it was because of the blind girl. So, I said what blind girl? And he proceeded to tell me all about how she’d walked across the roof toward you like a boss while everyone else was freaking out. Wish I’d seen it.”
Pyro nodded and relaxed. He shoved the forkful of roast beef into his mouth, chewed and swallowed before responding. “Her name’s Bowie.”
“Interesting name.”
Pyro nodded again.
“You’re gonna go find her, aren’t you?” Edge guessed.
As if his friend’s question gave him permission to do what he’d been thinking about for hours, Pyro simply said, “Yes.”
“It can’t be easy to be blind in Gabon,” Chaos observed.
“Is it easy to be blind anywhere?” Pyro countered.
His friend looked a little embarrassed. “True. That was a stupid thing for me to say. All I meant was, Gabon isn’t exactly disability friendly. In the States, we’ve got things like talking crosswalks, braille menus…stuff like that. At least in some places.”
Pyro knew what his friend meant, and he felt a little bad about calling him out on his choice of words. But he’d been on the receiving end of pity too many times growing up, when people found out he was a foster kid, that he was especially sensitive to it even now.
“I know, sorry. And you’re right. But there’s something about Bowie that makes me think she could manage no matter where she lives. She’s fearless and trusting. And also cute as a button.”
“I want to meet her,” Edge said.
“Me too,” Chaos agreed.
For some reason, Pyro wanted his friends to meet her too.
“Her mom came in with her, right? Is the dad coming on a later transport?”
Edge’s innocent question made Pyro’s belly clench, and the food he’d just eaten suddenly made him nauseous. He’d assumed Penny and Bowie were on their own, but maybe they weren’t.
“I don’t know,” he said after a moment.
“You guys done? I want to meet this girl, but I also need an hour or so of sleep.” Sighing, Edge took in the expansive mess hall.
“Walking around this ship, seeing anew just how huge these things are, it makes me think about Zita and her situation. I can’t believe we were able to find her so fast,” Edge muttered.
Pyro nodded. Frankly, he was surprised as well.
Obi-Wan’s girlfriend had been kidnapped recently and taken to an abandoned shipyard. There, she was hidden on a decommissioned carrier just like this one, which had been gutted…and was a week away from being towed out to sea and sunk to make an artificial reef.
“Thank God for Fred,” Chaos said as they exited the mess hall, sincerity clear in his tone.
Fred was a search dog, brought in to see if he could sniff out Zita among the thousands of rooms. And he had, in a remarkably short amount of time.
Pyro’s mind wandered. He was also grateful to both Fred and his handler, Jennifer, but at the moment, he was completely focused on the here and now.
They approached the hangar, and the familiar smell of jet fuel greeted them as they entered.
Usually Pyro didn’t think twice about it, but today, he wondered how annoying or overpowering the smell might be to a bunch of women who weren’t used to it.
And they had to sleep in here. Would they end up with headaches? Would it do them lasting harm?
Of course, he’d never considered how the smell affected the men and women who worked on the aircrafts all day.
He felt especially bad for not thinking twice about Laryn being in here with their choppers, as she got them secured for transport or readied them to be brought to the flight deck. Especially now that she was pregnant.
He made a mental note to ask Casper about that.
If this environment was safe for the baby.
Laryn would kick his ass if he did anything that forced her to take a leave of absence from work before she was ready, but Casper was as good as a brother to Pyro.
And he’d protect his copilot’s woman and child from harm, just as he did his teammate while they were in the air.
“There’s the cots,” Edge said, pointing to their left.
Looking in that direction, Pyro saw several rows of cots lined up at the back side of the huge room.
They looked tiny compared to the aircraft that were parked in the hangar.
There were barricades set up around the cots, retractable belts keeping everyone away from the rest of the hangar for their own safety. But there was no privacy whatsoever.
The setup reminded Pyro of the old movie Revenge of the Nerds. When the nerds were relocated to the college’s gym after their house was destroyed.
Without hesitation, he headed in the direction of the cots.
There were people milling around, others lying on their makeshift beds, some talking on phones.
It was loud and chaotic, and it made Pyro feel uncomfortable just being there.
He felt bad for the women and kids. While this situation was better than the one they’d come from, and safe, it wasn’t exactly cozy.
Looking around, he tried to find Penny and Bowie. He wasn’t pleased when he found them at the end of one of the rows of cots. They were sitting cross-legged, facing each other on one of the narrow beds, a plastic bag between them that they were currently digging through.
To his surprise, Penny looked up and straight at him as he walked toward her. He had no idea how she knew he was there, but the welcoming smile on her face made his heart do funny things in his chest. She leaned forward and said something to Bowie, who turned in his direction as well.
Then the little girl got up and walked straight toward him. Pyro was confused about how she knew where he was or how she had the confidence to leave the cot in such an unfamiliar environment. He picked up his pace and met the little girl about a dozen steps from where her mom was still sitting.
“Hey, Bowie,” he greeted as she neared, so she’d know he was there.
“Kylo-Pyro! You’re here!”
“Of course I am, squirt. We’re in the middle of the ocean, nowhere else for me to be.”
He squatted down as he spoke, and to Pyro’s surprise, she didn’t hesitate to walk right into him, throwing her arms around his neck and giving him an enthusiastic hug. Then she pulled back but kept her hands on his shoulders.