Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
W illow couldn’t believe Shep had apologized to her. After he left to go sleep off his jet lag in his condo, she puttered around her own kitchen, cleaning up and putting the dirty plates into the dishwasher. It was nearly noon when a knock came at her door.
Opening, it, she saw it was Dev. Stepping aside, she asked, “Everyone tucked into bed?”
Grinning, Dev walked in. “Yes, everyone is settled in, fed and have had a shower and I’m sure most of them are sleeping like babies. I showed Luke to the condo he and Porter are sharing. So, everything’s done.”
“Great, thanks for that. Have you eaten, Dev?”
“No. But I can go to my condo and scrounge up a sandwich.”
“Don’t worry, come on in,” and Willow shut the door behind her business partner. “I was just making a fresh cup of coffee. Want some? How about a sandwich? I got some tuna left over and it’ll be quick to fix.”
“Sounds good, thanks,” Dev said, walking into the kitchen with her. “How’d things go with your ex?”
Willow saw amusement dancing in Dev’s dark-blue eyes as she leaned against the counter next to the coffee machine. “Better than expected.”
“Tell all.”
Dev was like a sister to her. Willow plopped a K-cup into the Keurig. “Shep apologized for being a jerk while we were married.” Going to the fridge, she pulled out a bowl of tuna and quickly made a sandwich for Dev.
Making a humming sound of satisfaction, Dev said, “Were you expecting that?”
“Hell, no. We had a great friendship, and we should never have gotten married, but it was a mad, crazy, spontaneous moment when we did it.”
“Sometimes? Friendship is the best base for a good, strong, lasting relationship,” Dev said. And then she laughed abruptly. “Of course, who am I to say such things? I trust men as far as I can throw them.”
Willow nodded. It had been Dev’s uncle, her father’s brother, who had molested her as a child. She’d never breathed a word of what he’d done to her to her parents, afraid they wouldn’t believe her. But the damage to Dev’s psyche, emotions and self-worth, had been devastating. Dev saw all men through the same fractured, dark lens, thanks to that sick bastard. “Well, you’re twenty-nine and you’ve been around to see the world. You have every right to your observations.”
“You and Shep were good for one another.”
“Yes, in bed,” Willow admitted, leaning against the counter, waiting for the cup to fill. “Looking back on it? I think the stress, the danger, never knowing if you’d live one minute or die the next? That was one major cause of our divorce. We were too stressed to think straight or clearly when we’d get into a fight with one another.” She set to work on the sandwich and, in a few minutes, handed it to Dev on a plate.
“Never mind. Shep could never open up to you emotionally,” Dev said dryly, turning, taking the cup from the Keurig. “You want this one?”
“Yes, please.”
Dev handed her the freshly made cup of coffee and put in a second K-cup, sliding the mug beneath the machine. “Has he opened up to you at all? Or is he still the same immature surfer dude as before?” She took the tuna sandwich and began munching on it as she waited for the coffee.
“It’s too soon to tell,” Willow admitted, blowing across the steaming coffee, and crossing the dining room to the table, sitting down. After a moment, Dev, her own coffee in hand, took a seat opposite Willow, who went on, “He seems to really want to make amends. And to tell you the truth? I’d rather have him trying to smooth things out between us than be all closed up like he was before. He actually asked about me and my parents and family. I almost fainted, Dev. He’d NEVER asked me personal questions like that before.”
Chuckling, Dev drawled in her best Southern voice, “Looks like he had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment?”
Laughing softly, Willow said, “I don’t know. Maybe he’ll share it with me someday.”
“I saw the way he scanned you over at the airport.”
“Oh?” and she gazed in Dev’s direction, seeing that cat-like satisfaction on her face. “What look was that?”
“Well, if I may be permitted to surmise, I’d say the dude is still in love with you.”
Snorting, Willow muttered, “Gimme a break, Mitchell! There’s no way in hell!”
“Okay,” Dev said, giving her a shrug. “You asked. I’m just telling you what I saw.”
“You’re reading his face wrong,” Willow muttered defensively.
Dev gestured toward the buffet. “Okay, then tell me this: Why do you have Shep’s photo among your family’s photos, Willow? Ever since we hooked up as pilots here in Ethiopia, those photos have been out for everyone to see.”
Grumpily, while Dev grinned, Willow sipped her coffee and said, “Sometimes, Mitchell, you’re too friggin’ smart for your own good.”
“Maybe. Observation has always been a strong point of mine. The first time I came to your condo here, I saw the family photos and HIM. Remember? I asked you who he was?”
“Busted.”
“I won’t hold it against you, girlfriend.” Dev’s grin widened as she finished off the tuna sandwich. “So? Tell all. What happened when you brought him here?”
Flattening her lips, Willow stared over at Dev. “We were always good friends. Always. And it was as if three years hadn’t gone by at all; it felt like only a day had passed since last seeing him. We fell into our usual friendly back-and-forth with each another. It blew my mind. I walked out on him and I was the one who demanded the divorce, but it’s as if it never happened. Really crazy shit. I’m still confused about what’s going on here.”
“But?”
Grimacing, Willow looked up at the white stucco ceiling above her. “Shep is not a bad person, Dev. He never was. But dammit, he was closed-up emotionally. And I could never figure out WHY. And he would never talk about his past, his parents or what his growing-up years were like.”
“Yeah,” Dev intoned sourly, “we were all brainwashed, mangled and branded in that first eighteen years of our lives, weren’t we?”
Willow knew Dev’s childhood had been a hot mess. Her father was an F-16 jet pilot. They’d moved pretty much every two to three years to a new base somewhere in the world. Dev’s mother, Jennifer, was also an Air Force pilot and flew C-130s. Dev had taken strongly after her mother, and she too had flown the same C-130s for the nearly ten years she’d been in the military. “Yes, no argument from me.”
“If I didn’t have trust in you, Willow, I’d never have opened up to what happened to me as a very young child. And I feel strongly that Shep probably had a crappy childhood. And he’s not wanting to share it because he probably feels humiliated and shamed by it. Tell me? What kid in a rotten family wants to own up to it and brag about it? Nada.”
Willow said, “Then? Does it come down to a matter of trust? Is that why Shep never let me in? Never let me share what he felt emotionally within him?”
“I think it might be that, in part,” Dev said, hesitating. “I’ve found so many people are lousy parents, and that the child is deeply wounded and scarred before they even leave the nest and make their way out into the world, off-balance, and trying their best to look normal when they weren’t. They lived in a private hell.”
“‘Normal’ is a knob on a dryer and that’s it,” Willow muttered. “I always thought Shep did trust me, but maybe you’re right.” It hurt to think that because she had trusted him with her life. She loved him. She couldn’t see how anyone who was truly in love wouldn’t trust their partner a hundred percent.
Dev saw her frown. “Maybe he trusted you in some ways, but not in others? It sounded like you two really loved one another.”
“He was the first guy to make me think about having a serious relationship, Dev.”
“Well,” she said, “maybe that love still exists between you, even after three years have passed?”
“I don’t know,” Willow admitted tiredly, shaking her head.
“One thing’s for sure,” Dev said, “you are going to find out. This assignment is going to be a year long. It will be a shakedown cruise of another kind for you two birds.”
Willow admitted she was right. “I’m sure I’ll be a lot clearer about him and myself by that time.” With a loud sigh, she added, frowning, “We got terrorists lurking around here and that has my FULL attention. Everything else is second or third.”
***
Tefere David sat with his lieutenants in a warehouse far outside Bahir Dar. The morning was cool and they all sat around smoking American cigarettes, the white plumes rising lazily into the vast air of the semi-darkened, packed warehouse. Although just at the age of forty, Tefere appeared much older, with horizontal lines across his broad forehead and deep slashes on either side of his full mouth that was now puckered. He sat with three of his most trusted men at a makeshift table, a map of the Northern Province of Ethiopia spread out before them on its rough plywood surface.
“Our spy at the airport, who is a baggage handler for one of the foreign airlines,” he told his men, all in their twenties and thirties, all dressed in the garb normal to Ethiopians, “tells me a Delos transport landed with forty employees on board earlier today.” He sucked on his cigarette, inhaling the smoke deep into his lean body. “This is part of some kind of build-up within this charity. Forty is a lot of people. They all looked like Americans.”
Zere, thirty-five years old, his second-in-command, said, “Some Latinos and Blacks were among them. Perhaps they aren’t all from the USA.”
Shrugging, Tefere said, “Doesn’t matter, although American women bring us more money on the market.”
Zere lifted his chin, staring over at his leader. “There are no children among this group, my lord.”
Tefere snapped back, “I have talked to Rasari and he’s shown interest in American women in their twenties. He is paying well for them.”
“Why that old?” Zere demanded, scowling. “Men want children for sex, not women in their twenties.”
“Look at it from Rasari’s trading instincts. American women are hated the world over by all terrorist factions. If they can buy one from him? It saves them the trouble of trying to find one in the Middle East to capture, put on video, and then behead them for all the world to see.”
“Hmmm,” Zere murmured, “that’s brilliant.”
“Yes, there’s no question he’s a genius,” and Tefere grinned. “He doesn’t really want them for sex trafficking as much as he does for building a market to get American women captives in who are wanted for other reasons. He already has one buyer in Pakistan who is willing to pay five million dollars for one.”
A murmur went through the lieutenants huddled crowded around the makeshift table. The air was filled with whitish dust from the bales of cotton stacked nearly up to the top of the two-story aluminum building. Tefere was always changing his meeting spots, staying one step ahead of the Ethiopian Army who hunted him and his crews. Even though they dressed like tribal Ethiopians, and appeared as such to the outside world, underneath they were the most dangerous of men. In order to not give the game away, they had their caches of AK-47s, and ammunition stored elsewhere. They were never safe, and for that reason, Tefere rarely came to Bahir Dar. But his one lieutenant, Assefa, who kept his ear to the ground in the Lake Tana region, of which the city sat at the southern end of, had heard gossip at the airport. And it had been enough to bring him in.
Tefere stubbed out his cigarette on the plyboard tabletop. “My spy says that there are two American women who pilot the Delos plane.” He pulled out two photos from within the dark-green vest he wore over his white shirt, placing both on the table. Everyone craned their necks, studying them in the low light. “The one with the red hair is the one I want. The other woman, the one with brown hair, would be my second choice.”
“What do you know of them?” Assefa asked.
“Not much. Not yet. My spy is going to try and find out their names over at Operations at the control tower. They must have flight plans and their names will be on them. He has to be careful. He knows an Ethiopian woman who works at the weather desk. He feels she is someone who can be bribed to give him more information.”
“Who cares what their names are?” Teka, the youngest of the group at age twenty-five, spoke up.
Tefere gave him an impatient look. “With a name, we can go on the Internet and find out a great deal more. Before I try to capture this red-haired woman, I want to know who she is. I then need to call Rasari and tell him the information. He has a buyer, but the buyer has demands. If this woman doesn’t fulfill those demands, I’m not going to waste my time trying to capture her.”
Teka nodded. “That makes sense.”
***
The next day, Willow and Dev had the entire group meet at the hotel’s largest banquet hall. They had spent a month putting together a Power-Point on the first village they were going to be upgrading for security. At nine a.m., the crowded room was quiet as Willow went into her presentation projected onto the huge screen at the front end of the room. The supervisors were taking notes while many of the workmen watched on as well. Everyone on the security team, she saw, were also making notes.
“Addis Zemen is the closest village flight-wise,” she told them, flashing a picture on the screen of the many homes with tin roofs and stucco block scattered across the valley, ringed behind by high mountains. “It sits east of Lake Tana, up in the hills where it’s cooler, at 6,480 feet in elevation. Addis Zemen has a population of twenty-four thousand people. They are of the Amhara tribe, as are the people of all the villages you’ll be working in. It’s an agricultural area and the people are farmers. They have herds of cattle and goats. Herds that can forage year-round, due to grass being available during every season. A lot of vegetables are raised there, and sold in other cities, notably the capital, Addis Ababa.”
She flashed a picture of a one-story brick building with rows of windows along it up on the screen. “Addis has a Delos Home School. It’s a big enough town to have teachers brought in to educate the children. There are many smaller villages surrounding Addis Zemen, and the children are brought in from them every day for nine months out of the year by pickup trucks. There are no school busses, just parents who are pitching in to help. Delos gives the men who drive the children to and from other villages a stipend for gas, as well as paying them for their time, so it works out well for all.”
Flashing up another picture, she said, “This is the Farm Foundation office. We have ten people there working with the farmers to improve agricultural methods; teaching breeding techniques and ways of better domesticating animals, mostly oxen, cows and goats. This group has created a network between grocers in the capital, as well as arranging truckloads of vegetables to it. They have four diesel trucks that make runs to Addis Ababa whenever the veggies are in season.”
She turned to Shep, sitting next to her, and asked him, “Do you want to show everyone the plans for the security upgrades on both these areas?”
Nodding, he took over the talk as Willow sat back down. He flashed a new photo up. It was of the heavy chain-link and poles they called cyclone fencing. He then clicked to a blueprint of the school showing where the ten-foot-high fence, with razor wire spooled out along its top, would be built. Citing some theft from the school, as well as from the Farm Foundation, Shep covered all the security that would need to be built into those areas. He talked at some length about the soil and the underlying lava rock of the region, and about the machines they’d need on hand to break through below to properly install the secure fence posts. Once he was done, he said, “Let’s break and go out into the hall where they’ll have coffee and tea ready for us.”
He turned, meeting Willow’s gaze. Feeling the easy connection between them, he wanted to drown in her green eyes, but resisted. Handing her the remote, he said, “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“I’ll go with you,” she said, rising. She turned to Dev. “Might as well stretch?”
“For sure.”
Willow saw Luke walking toward them. The two women parted ways as the security officer went over to talk to Dev. Finding the scene interesting, Willow glanced back toward Luke and her friend. Usually, Dev was wary and cool toward strange men, and Luke fit that description. He’d been here barely a day. True, Dev had worked closely with him to get the employees to the nearby hotels after they’d landed, but that had just been business as always, hadn’t it? She saw a pinkness come to Dev’s cheeks as Luke smiled and spoke to her. Willow was too far away, heading for the door, to hear what was said.
“What’s the funny look on your face?” Shep asked, placing one hand beneath her elbow to guide her around the clumps of people talking over their coffee and snacks.
“Oh,” she said, “I just found it interesting that Dev wasn’t giving Luke the cold shoulder.”
Halting at one coffee urn, Shep dropped his hand from her elbow, took a cup, and poured her coffee, handing it to her. “Is Dev already in a relationship?”
Stepping aside, Willow leaned against the wall so that others could get their drink of choice. Shep joined her, about a foot separating them. Today, he was dressed in ivory-khaki pants and a dark-blue short-sleeved shirt. He’d recently trimmed his beard a bit, his longish brown-and-gold hair gleaming with highlights from the overhead chandelier hanging in the middle of the hall. “She doesn’t like men. Well,” she quickly amended, “that came out wrong. She had a really horrible childhood and was abused by a male relative in her family when very young. Since then, she’ll work with men, but she’s never had a relationship with one that I could find out about.”
Frowning, he murmured, “That’s too bad. Must have been really awful for her growing up?”
“Yeah, it was.” Willow didn’t want to go there. Shep might have to know some things about Dev, but he didn’t need her life story. “She seemed to perk up when Luke wandered over to her, that’s all.”
He sipped his coffee, watching his people mingle with the security team. Luke came over, poured two cups of coffee, then crossed back to the briefing room on the tail of Dev, who was also headed back in. “Well,” Shep drawled, giving Willow a slanted glance, “that seems hopeful.”
Her mouth quirked. “I can’t believe it. That would be a first. She gives every other guy the cold shoulder and tells them to pretty much fuck off.”
“Glad you haven’t said that to me,” and he meant it, holding her upturned gaze. Willow was so close that he inhaled the feminine scent that was only her. Shep had never realized the power of smell until he’d fallen in love with this willful woman. It wasn’t that she wore a perfume, and it wasn’t the soap she used. He would never forget the fragrance of her flesh. He saw Willow stare at him, wishing he could read her mind.
“We have to work together. Besides? You apologized to me. That meant a lot to me, Shep,” and she boldly held his stare.
“Maybe we needed time to grow up?” And then he quickly amended it with a sloppy grin, “Well, I needed that time far more than you did.”
“More like it,” she snorted, sipping her coffee, hiding her smile. Warmth flowed through her because she saw that softening in Shep’s eyes and she knew that look. Willow wasn’t going to say it was love. But maybe an offer of friendship? That would be nice. After all, it was the foundation they’d started out on in the first place.
Chuckling, he finished the coffee off and took the empty cup over to the white-linen-covered table. He returned to her, planting his hands on his hips. People began to return to the room for the second part of the project briefing. Once Willow was finished with her own coffee, he took her cup from her hand, their fingers touching briefly. It sent his heart yearning as he turned away.
Willow tried to remain immune to Shep’s nearness. Wishing he wasn’t so sensual; she pushed away from the wall and didn’t wait for him. She felt him wanting to establish some kind of emotional connection with her, but she wasn’t ready for that. Yes, he’d apologized, but she needed time. And besides, they were going to be so insanely busy flying up to ten flights or more a day, bringing supplies in, that they wouldn’t have any together time even if she wanted it.
She was surprised to see Luke sitting with Dev. They seemed relaxed, talking quietly between themselves. He had his elbows on his long, hard thighs, his cup of coffee held between them. Luke was a handsome man, no question. A little worried, she saw the pink in Dev’s cheeks. Plus, she seemed riveted to his every word. That wasn’t like her at all. Okay? So, what was going on? Willow would find out when they were alone.
Luke saw her and straightened. “I’m taking up your seat,” he said, rising, giving her a slight smile.
“No worries,” Willow assured him.
In another five minutes, everyone was squeezed into the air-conditioned room. Shep took the remote and Willow sat down, listening to his soothing voice. He had the kind of voice that had always calmed her whenever she’d come off a particularly tough mission. Before meeting Shep, it would take her hours to climb down off that adrenaline charge she rode when on a bombing run. His devastating smile, the warmth that lingered in his blue eyes, his low, husky voice all conspired to be a tranquilizer of sorts for her. She’d never experienced that with anyone else. Just Shep. Groaning internally, Willow gazed circumspectly around the room. The people selected by Delos cared. There wasn’t a single one among their ranks who was not listening intently or taking notes. That made her feel good. She was sure, before this year was out, she’d know every one of them.
Luke Gibson then stood up, took the remote and proceeded to give them their security briefing.
“Our biggest worry is a Somali named Tefere David,” he told them, flashing the man’s face up on the screen. “He’s the wild card here in the country. The Ethiopian Army is working directly with us regarding him. He’s a sex-trafficker and he’s a mercenary with five hundred plus child soldiers. He was down in southern Sudan, in the Darfur region for many years. That’s where he picked up these children and armed them with weapons.” Luke’s voice went hard. “He and his soldiers, over the last year, have attacked every village that Delos has a charity in. We’re not sure if it’s aimed at the charities, or if this is just his normal M.O. The worst part is that he’s kidnapped young girls and boys, between eight to fifteen, from each of these villages.”
Luke scowled, looking around at the people in the room. “The Ethiopian Army wants this bastard. Delos and Shield Security are working 24/7/365 with the general of the Northern Province where we’ll be located. If they spot Tefere, we receive an immediate call. Or, if we spot him , we call the general’s HQ. Tefere’s armed, he’s dangerous and he’s sneaky as hell. Often, he’ll send one of his child soldiers, usually mid-teens, into a village, pretending to need help. A family will take the child in, feed and help him, and then he’ll do his undercover work of locating the other young kids, which hut, which family. After about a month? He’ll gather the intel and give it to Tefere, who will launch a raid, usually fifty armed men, and capture those targeted children. Tefere and his men are the type that fire first and don’t bother asking questions later.”
Luke leaned down to the mic, putting his serious scowl on for real, and continued, “Which is why you will always carry a sidearm on you. If you’re not working, you’re sleeping with it within hand’s reach. You’re all expert qualified. And most of you are in the military, undercover, which can only help if he ever does attack our position.”
A hand rose.
“Yes, Charlie?”
“What’s the SOP, Luke? We’re in the construction business, and we’re focused mainly on what we’re supposed to be building.”
Luke, naturally understanding ‘SOP’ as jargon for ‘standard operating procedure’, replied, “At this town, my people will have wheels. There are four white Toyota Hilux’s on the road as we speak, headed out from Bahir Dar. They’ll arrive at Addis Zemen around about 2300 tonight.” He grinned a little, and continued, “That’s eleven p.m. to the few civilian types among us.”
A couple of laughs broke out.
Losing his smile, Luke said, “We’ll be having five people on and five off, twelve-hour days for our security team. We will be roving around the areas where the charities are located, as well as where all of you will be housed for the duration of this project.”
“Which is where?” Charlie asked. “I thought we were gettin’ tents.”
More laughter.
Willow touched Luke’s arm. He turned.
“Let me handle the logistics?”
“Gladly,” and he handed her the remote.
For the next hour, Willow went through all the daily things that were important for a group like this. There was an old barracks that had been kept up by the Ethiopian Army until five years ago. Then it had been turned into a cheap hotel. Dev and Willow had dealt with the owner and, over the last couple of months, upgrades, new mattresses, sheets, towels and other amenities of civilization, had flowed in. Delos had paid for all of them. The hotel owner was very happy because he would receive a monthly check from Delos for the forty people who would be sleeping there.
The barracks also had a large, working kitchen and Willow had hired six women to be there to cook three meals a day for the hard-working group. Some of the food would be Ethiopian. Other meals, more American, like hamburgers with fries. There was a lot of head-nodding on that one, and Willow grinned. Charlie was the supervisor for one of the construction teams. He’d already asked George to be the logistics manager having anything to do with bed and food.
“Hey,” Charlie called out, not bothering to raise his hand because he was now on a roll, “tell me Willow, is Delos gonna fly pizza in from time to time for us?” He grinned hugely.
Everyone was nodding like bobble head dolls.
Willow broke out in laughter and so did Shep, Dev and Luke.
“I dunno,” she deadpanned. “If Delos doesn’t come through, what will you do, Charlie?”
“Well,” he blustered, good naturedly, lifting his brown cap with the Delos logo on the front, “I guess we’re gonna have to teach those nice ladies how to make pizza dough and find the right ingredients and have ’em make ’em.”
“Oh,” Willow murmured, “I don’t think you’ll have to go that far.” She held up a list from her folder. “George? Since you’re the hotelier for this motley crew? Do you want to look in your file? There’s a monthly menu there.”
George, who was in his forties and lean as a rail, dug quickly around in his kit. He found the menu, rapidly read down it, then yelled, “Hot damn! Pizza once a week! Hamburgers once a week! Holy shit! We’re gonna get STEAK once a week!” He looked up, grinning like a wolf. “This is better vittles than my wife, Linda, makes when I’m back home!”
The room burst into laughter, hoots, hollers and plenty of clapping. Willow had never worked with Seebee construction or security crews before, but she liked their easy-going spirit. This was a group that, if they didn’t have what they wanted, they’d scrounge it up from somewhere. She had a good feeling about the men and women in the crew, some of them in their mid-twenties. Charlie, who was fifty, was the oldest, and his red hair had streaks of silver in it, making him the boss for sure.
“Okay,” Shep called over the tumult, “Charlie? Next time something goes south? I’m gonna go email Linda and tell her what you said.”
“Oh,” Charlie said, chuckling deeply, “you’ve never worked with me and my crew, Mr. Porter. You’ll find out right quick we’re the best at what we do. You aren’t gonna have to email my wife and tattle on me.”
Shep nodded, trying not to smile. “Well, I wouldn’t do that anyway, but it was sure good for a laugh.”
“Hey,” Charlie said, holding up his hand as if he were standing up in front of a senate hearing, taking an oath on the Bible, “this is the best damned menu I’ve ever seen. Delos has fed us well before, but this one is the ace.”
“Good,” Willow called out, “because, even though it’s winter here in Ethiopia, you are all going to be sweating out there while you work. By the time you get trucked back to the hotel, you’ll be starving big time.”
“That’s okay,” Charlie said, becoming serious. “We’ll work hard, and we’ll play hard.”