Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
W illow Chamberlin was just starting her second cup of strong, fragrant Ethiopian coffee at her office desk when there was a ‘ding’ from her laptop. She was wading through a pile of papers about the C-41 that would be landing later today at the Bahir Dar airport outside of town.
“Hey,” Dev called from the door, sticking her head in, “I think I’ve got final arrangement with General Hakym’s men to guard all this hardware coming in on that C-41 this afternoon.”
“That’s good news. Come on in,” Willow said, making a gesture for her to sit down in front of her badly scratched wooden desk. The office was small and she had a fan up hanging in one corner, sending a breeze throughout it. Air conditioning in her condo was always questionable. Some days, the electricity coming into the city was strong and constant. Other days? No so much so. It meant anything needing electric didn’t work. For her two-bedroom condo on the fourth floor, the place became sticky with humidity because Lake Tana’s shore was just outside the building’s doors.
Dev was wearing shorts that fell halfway down her long, curved thighs, a sleeveless gray athlete shirt and no bra. She was barefoot as she came in, a sheaf of papers in her left hand. When they didn’t have to fly out or otherwise leave the building, both of them chose Americanized outer wear, instead of covering up their arms and legs like Ethiopian women did. They could dress like this inside but when out, they too, covered up by wearing long pants and long-sleeved cotton shirts. No sense in bringing unwanted attention to themselves. Dev had piled her shoulder- length curly brown hair up into a loose topknot, held in place by two dark-green plastic combs. The high humidity always curled her fractious hair into a mind and shape of its own.
Opening her laptop, Willow looked down, eyes narrowing. The ding had been a folder arriving from Delos HQ. Now what? It wasn’t like they hadn’t had enough to do the last month, getting prepared for the massive supply build-up coming in on that C-41 later today. She and Dev had worked tirelessly with General Hakym’s people to firstly find a warehouse big enough to put all the construction supplies and equipment in. And secondly, to arrange for a twenty-four-hour security detail on it. Because if there was none, Willow knew the poor of this city would sneak like thieves in the night into the warehouse and steal it empty. What they couldn’t carry? They’d find a way to push or drag it out of the warehouse. No, nothing was safe from the poverty-stricken who would turn around and sell it all. And that money would mean survival, food in the mouths of their starving families.
Opening the laptop, she muttered, “Got a new file from HQ,” and her brows dropped. “I need this like a hole in the head…”
“Ugh, not another one!” Dev protested, setting her papers on the edge of Willow’s desk. “What does Wyatt Lockwood want us to do NOW? Clone ourselves? Doesn’t he realize we’re working at lightspeed to get this damned thing in place before that C-41’s arrival? Maybe Shield Security should send us two more pilots and a second Otter, so we can get some rest?”
“My, my, you ARE testy this morning,” Willow teased, throwing her a careless grin. “I just made a pot of coffee. Maybe you need a second or third cup? Hmmmmm?”
Grumpily, Dev said “Good idea. Actually, I’ve been up since 0400 working on this shit. This will be my SIXTH cup of coffee.” She looked down at her watch. “And it’s only 0800.” It sounded almost like a whine.
Snickering, Willow said, “Poor baby. Suck it up, Mitchell.” She hit the key that would open the encrypted file as Dev muttered a “fuck you” and left the room, heading for the small kitchen. Willow loved her copilot and gave her an evil laugh. The past year they’d worked together had been one of harmony, military ways of living, thinking, and seeing the world in the same way, which had made their teamwork flawless. They were a good pilot-copilot combo, and she appreciated Dev. Shield Security, their employer, paid them very well for their undercover jobs, so she could only bitch so much.
Even though Dev looked like a modern-day Barbie doll, which she just hated being called, Willow thought her tall, languid, sable-haired, blue-eyed copilot really did match the Barbie ideal of beauty. Dev was extremely attractive and always drew men’s attention in a heartbeat. But Dev, like herself, came from bad marriage experiences and neither of them were much interested in the opposite sex right now. Dev had the same low opinion of men as her: good for sex, but little else. Yep, she could identify with that take-no-prisoners attitude. And most men in Ethiopia were devoutly Orthodox or Coptic Christians. And they had the tight reins of those doctrines firmly around women, treating them with bias and no respect. Seeing them as second-class citizens, at best. But it was still better than in the Sudan, Willow thought, where the Sharia Law of the Muslims reduced women to beings of lesser importance than a donkey or a cow. At least here in Ethiopia, they only had to cover up their arms and legs and didn’t have to wear a scarf on their head or a veil across their face. She was glad that the influence of the Muslim religion was minor in this country.
Her eyes widened as she read the terse email from Wyatt Lockwood, head of Mission Planning for Artemis, the in-house Delos security agency.
“Willow, please read the list of security and construction people who will arrive seven days from receipt of this file. The biggest hurdle to jump here, is with you. Your ex-husband, Shep Porter, has agreed to head up this multi-construction assignment. And he knows that you are there and that you two will be working with one another all the time. The only potential fly in the ointment is from your end. I need to know if you can work with him or not? Because if you can’t, I’ll assign another civil engineer to this project. Call me on the sat phone after you’ve read through this file. I need to know your decision. Happy trails, pardner, Wyatt.”
Dev came back with a fresh cup of coffee in hand. “My, you are looking pissed off all of a sudden,” she said, sitting down opposite Willow.
“I can’t believe this,” Willow muttered, looking up at her friend. She turned the laptop around, angling the screen so Dev could read Wyatt’s unencrypted email. Willow watched her fine, thin eyebrows dip and her lips crease to a thin line.
“You’re friggin’ kidding me!” Dev looked up; eyes huge with disbelief. “Your EX is coming HERE? And you have to work with him? What kind of sick joke is this, Willow?” and she jabbed her finger at the screen.
“Don’t kill my laptop,” Willow muttered in warning, pulling it away from her and turning it back around.
“Seriously?” Dev said, sipping the hot coffee. “Shep Porter is coming HERE? Mr. Patriarchy himself? Doesn’t like treating any woman with respect and the fact she is equal—or better than him? Ugh!”
Sitting back in the squeaky plastic chair, arms across her breasts, Willow scowled at the laptop screen. “I never expected anything like this… it’s a shock.”
“But you DO stay in touch with him,” Dev accused.
“Very, very infrequently,” Willow defended. “And it’s certainly not personal stuff. He doesn’t even know that I went to work with Shield Security in Virginia since we divorced.”
Dev gave her a one-eyebrow-raised look. She pushed hair away from her temple. “It’s been three years, Willow. And you two still exchange emails from time to time. What does that say? Doesn’t look very divorced-like, if you ask me.”
Willow grimaced. “I don’t know. He’s not a bad person, Dev. He’s got this shitty patriarchy societal thing that brainwashed him and every other kid. He has to work through it, and I’m not interested in being his whipping post in order to do so. He’s just not right for me, is all.” She let out a sigh. “And he’s a damn good civil engineer. I knew he worked for Delos undercover, but never in a thousand years did I think he’d ever take an assignment where he knew I’d be.”
Grumbling, which was Dev’s second nature, she muttered, “I smell a dead fish here.”
Lips curving faintly, Willow tipped her head back, looking up at the white stucco ceiling, sweat running down her ribcage. She hated the office on days when the air conditioning labored. It was like a sweat box in the room. “I don’t. Wyatt is giving me full authority to pull the plug on him being assigned to this gig.”
“Ditch him. I’ve seen very few patriarchal males EVER learn to become matriarchal and treat us like respected equals. Does a leopard ever change his spots?”
Willow heard the flatness in Dev’s husky voice. “You know? For being a trash hauler in the Air Force, flying those ugly looking C-130s, you really got a take-no-prisoners combat jet pilot attitude,” and she gave her friend a feral smile. Dev wrinkled her nose, consuming more coffee.
“I’m a Type-A just like you, Chamberlin. And I hauled my C-130 around with the best of them. Got shot at many, many times spiraling into and out of Bagram. Not to mention, you taking those bastards out on the ground. You flew high in the sky, but I was well within range of our enemy’s weapons when I was spiraling in and out of Bagram. Plenty of holes in the fuselage.”
“Touché’,” Willow conceded. She knew Dev had only just missed out on being assigned to F-16 training by a bare two lousy points. In her opinion, the Air Force fighter command should have taken her, but she often thought that a woman’s looks had subtle, unconscious effects on the decision-making processes with the male officers and commanders who ran the pilot training programs. Dev looked fragile and had ‘help me’ written all over her. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Dev needed protection like a shark in its own environment needed anything but food, and Willow grinned a little at that sudden epiphany. Dev was, by nature, a combat jet pilot, pure and simple, which is why they probably got along so well together in the cockpit. Balls to the wall or get the hell outta their way!
“Well?” Dev goaded. “What are you going to decide? Are you willing to dip back into that vat of acid you and Porter swam around in before you wisely ditched one another?”
Shrugging, she said, “I don’t know… I need to seriously think about this.”
“How long do you have before you have to give that cowboy your decision?”
“Today.”
“Humph.”
“What would you do?” Willow respected her friend’s insights. And as crusty and belligerent and totally flippant as Dev could be, based upon the rough childhood she had barely survived, Willow knew she could trust the woman to be honest.
“Tell Lockwood no. You don’t need Porter back in your life. Hell, Willow,” and she gestured around the room, “this is the biggest assignment that has ever been handed by Delos. And this new thing isn’t a little one. It’s huge and damn near, in my opinion, unfair to put on our shoulders. We’re friggin’ pilots, not warehouse managers. We’ve been put in the position of renting a warehouse, dealing with General Hakym’s people, begging for security from them, and then? We gotta find a decent place to put ALL these security and construction people coming in. They all have to have an apartment where they can live while on this mission. The logistics on this are death-defying to me. I’d much rather be flying my C-130 at a thousand feet and be above all this shit rather than slog through it with waist-high waders daily like we have been doing the past few months. The run-up to that C-41 landing and knowing we were going to have to find housing for thirty people, has been brutal.”
“Yeah,” Willow said, rocking a little in her squeaky chair, “it’s been pretty sucky. I don’t like it either, but hey, we signed on undercover to Delos to serve. So? We’re serving, but not in a way we want too. Life’s like that, you know? You never get good stuff all the time. The bad is mostly what we get on a daily basis.”
“No argument there,” Dev muttered, sipping the last of her coffee, staring at the grounds in the bottom of the mug. “And Porter is TROUBLE with a capital T. You know that. You’ve told me what happened in that WrestleMania you had with him. The guy is a brick. He will NEVER change.”
“Well, I was a brick, too,” Willow conceded with a sour smile. “We were young, arrogant, full of ourselves and we thought we knew everything. We were both immature as hell. And we weren’t willing to compromise or give in to the other person. We both had egos the size of Mt. Everest back then.”
Dev gave her a wide-eyed look. “And you think that’s changed in him? A man? Really?”
Willow laughed a little, seeing the derision in Dev’s gaze. “Probably not. But I don’t know. The last year, Shep’s emails have been, well… kinder… maybe more sensitive, thinking of someone other than himself. That’s matriarchal, you know: putting your partner first over yourself? Maybe he’s learning how to share and compromise?”
Snorting, Dev rose and rolled her eyes. “He was NEVER sensitive toward anyone! You think he’s really changed that much?”
“Haven’t you changed in the last three years?” Willow asked mildly, seeing Dev’s face scrunch up like a sour grape.
“Hell no. I like myself just the way I am.”
Willow snickered and said nothing. Her friend had changed over the last year she’d been with her. She didn’t dare say that she was softening with age. Maybe Dev didn’t see or recognize it, but Willow did. But then again, Willow had always been more self-aware than most people. Except when it came to Shep Porter. Damn, but he’d been the best sex she’d ever had. He was an incredible lover. Those times of tossed sheets and tangled toes had been the ONLY moments he’d been sensitive toward her; wanting to please her as much as she wanted to please him. Willow could never figure out why their kindness, their love and passion for one another, never translated beyond the bedroom door. It was like they became different people whenever the sexual haze of need enveloped them versus the way they were together in their everyday combat world. She could never figure out the Jekyll-Hyde changes they made between the two of their realities. “Well,” she said, lifting her empty cup in Dev’s direction, “grab me another as well when you go get yourself a refill? Thanks.”
“That’s the easiest thing I’ll do today,” Dev grumbled, grabbing her cup.
What to do? Willow felt her heart stir, which surprised her. She was over Shep Porter. Did she enjoy the email jpeg photos he’d send her maybe once every couple of months? With some text that was not rabid, defensive or in some way trying to intimidate her? Yes, she always felt mildly uplifted when she saw his email and photos appear. He was big on photos because, as a civil engineer, he was always taking his digital camera out at some construction site or another and snapping pics for the work logs. He was meticulous and careful, and she knew he was a damn good manager of his military construction team.
She had seen through his snapshots, bit by bit, that the people who worked under his authority loved him. Well, she’d fallen in love with him too. At least, in the bedroom. Outside of it? Hell reigned. And why? Why? Willow could never figure that out as much as she tried. Shep was a good person with a good heart or she wouldn’t have fallen for the guy in the first place.
When they came together outside the bedroom? It was like throwing oil on a fire. It was explosive. And Willow didn’t like fighting. She fought enough as a combat pilot in the air. She didn’t need it on the ground after she landed.
She pushed away the red tendrils that lurked at the corners of her eyes and cheeks and tucked them behind her ears for the hundredth time today. They wouldn’t stay there long, however, because of how thick and naturally wavy her hair was. Her hair was like her; it had a mind of its own.
Dev came back, setting the mug of steaming black coffee in front of her.
“Tell me you’re not seriously contemplating letting Porter back into your life?” She sat down, tucking one leg beneath her body once more.
“I am,” Willow admitted, seeing Dev’s eyes go wide with shock.
“Why?”
“Because this is about more than us as ex-husband and wife. I hope I’ve matured and grown enough to look at the bigger, more important picture.”
“Which is?”
She smiled at Dev’s disbelief. “Which is why did we even start working undercover for Delos in the first place? It was to be of help somewhere in the world. To stop the suffering. Right?”
“Yes, that much I’ll agree with you on.”
Willow knew Dev’s childhood had been an unmitigated nightmare. Her father, the sick sexual predator he was, had started fondling Dev from six years old onward until she was ten, when she’d fought back. Softening her voice, Willow said, “We both know that other people have helped us when we’ve been knocked to our knees, Dev. And because we’ve personally had that experience, we want to turn around and help others. We know what it’s like to be abused, disrespected, and seen as little more than sub-human, less important than a goat or donkey in third world cultures. Maybe not in the same way these third world countries do, but we understand enough through our own experiences.”
Mouth quirking, Dev said, “Yeah, you’re right. So? You’re really seriously contemplating letting Porter come here?”
“And what if I did tell Wyatt no?” Willow challenged her, opening her hands. “What if he sends us some other patriarchal male asshole who is truly a pain in our collective asses?”
“What? Is this like the evil you know is better than choosing an evil you don’t know?”
Willow nodded, pursing her full lips. “Yes, that’s how I see it. Shep is a known quantity to me. I know where the potholes are with him and they’re all in the personal playing field, not in my professional life or duties. We’re not coming together as ex-lovers this time. He’s coming here to serve the downtrodden just like we do. There’s mutual agreement on that point.”
“Yeah,” Dev muttered derisively, sipping her coffee, “there’s the monkey wrench in the works. Is Porter really over you? Are you over him? Or are you going to fall to the lowest common denominator with one another and start your cat-and-dog fights all over again after you leave the bedroom?”
“No, I wouldn’t do that. This is strictly professional. There’s no bedroom scene.”
“You might not think that, but he could.”
“That’s the unanswered question, isn’t it?” She compressed her lips and sat up. “I’m going to call Wyatt on the sat phone and talk with him directly. That’s what I’ll hinge my final decision on.”
“Well,” Dev said, “if Porter can’t be mature, keep it on a professional, detached level, then it’s gonna bleed out on everyone, Willow, not just on you two. And that’s a bad outcome. You know that.”
“Yeah, I agree with you and I know that.” replied Willow. “I wouldn’t compromise this assignment and helping those villages like that, Dev.”
“Geez,” Dev muttered, “this sucks. It’s not like we aren’t gonna be pushing balls to the wall on this assignment, Willow. We’re gonna be working overtime all the time. Shield needs to give us a big raise or hire two more pilots to help relieve some of the workload we’ve taken on.”
“According to the schedule Wyatt sent us, that’s not quite true. The buildup to getting everything flown out to the first village will require us to put a lot of extra flight hours in. We’ll max out our flying time and he knows that. The timesheet allows for that. But once we get the supplies, equipment and people flown into a given village, things will slow down for us to a degree.”
“Until we need to move everyone to the next village. This feels like that movie ‘Groundhog Day’.”
Willow smiled a little. “Well? You were bitching a couple of months ago that you were growing bored and that you needed more flight time. Now? You’ll get that time in spades. So? Which do you want worse?”
Dev gave her an evil grin. “I’m a tough one to please, ain’t I?”
Willow wasn’t fooled by her Tennessee drawl. Sometimes, Dev wanted people to think she was slow and stupid, which of course, was the antithesis of her. It was a ploy she’d learned at a very early age and one that had saved her several times. She could hide behind her soft, pleasing southern drawl when she wanted to, like a chameleon deciding who to be for any given person or situation she had to deal with. Did they get the stupid version or the super-intelligent woman that Dev really was? Who knew? Willow had seen all the sides to Dev over the year they’d worked together. “No, you’re really easy to get along with,” Willow said, giving her a warm, sincere look.
Dev was twenty-nine years old, making Willow a year younger than her. But at times, Dev’s life history made her seem decades older than Willow herself. The predatory incest, the sickness and dysfunction of Dev’s poverty-stricken Tennessee household, had matured her in ways Willow could not fathom. But she knew the chinks in Dev’s well-worn armor. Of course, Willow had her own set. And chinks in it, too. All women had them. A lot of them.
“Listen, I need to have the security list of soldiers, their names, and the times they’ll be at the warehouse. Is it ready?”
“Almost.” Dev unwound from her scrunched position on the chair and walked to the opened door. “Make your call to Wyatt,” she said. “And I’ll get the papers together at my condo and bring them over to you in about an hour. By then, you’ll know the outcome of that call, and your decision?”
“Yep,” Willow promised. She watched Dev disappear and heard her condo door open and close. Her throat was tight with tension, and she felt more emotion than she wanted to admit to rising in her chest. Picking up the satellite phone, she dialed in Wyatt’s number. Might as well get this over with. Willow wasn’t sure what she would decide. It all hinged on Wyatt’s talk with Shep earlier. He wanted to come over here. But was she prepared for it at all? She hated indecision, and usually wasn’t one to hesitate in the slightest. As a combat pilot, indecision could get people killed. Feelings stirred deep within her, ones she’d tried for three years to ignore.
“Lockwood here.”
“Wyatt? This is Willow Chamberlin. I wanted to speak to you.”
“Good to hear from you, Willow. You obviously got my file and email?”
“Yep,” she said, resting her arm on the desk.
“Was it a shock to you?”
She smiled a little. “Minor earthquake, Wyatt.”
“Okay, so what’s your down-and-dirty on this situation?”
“You tell me. You talked to Shep. Right?”
“Yes, we had a mission briefing with him yesterday. He knows you’ll be intimately involved in all phases of this assignment as the pilot-in-command.”
“What was his reaction?”
“Surprise. But I don’t feel in a bad way.”
“Uncomfortable?”
“Yeah, I’d go so far as to say that.”
“You’re an ex-SEAL. I know you have intuition amped up your ass and back down to your socks. What’s your feel on his reaction?” Willow was going to put the screws to Wyatt. She liked the Texas cowboy’s laid-back nature.
“Honestly? I felt his discomfort was more about him than you. I think he feels that he’s matured, that three years of water under the bridge can allow him to work professionally with you, and not get trapped in your collective past.”
“Hmmm.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It’s going to be an adjustment,” she said more to herself than him. “I’m okay with it because, God knows, these people need all the help they can get. That local gang, Tefere David’s one, is a thorn in everyone’s side. I know the general has his men trying to find the bastard, but he’s really causing a lot of pain and suffering here in the provinces, Wyatt. We honestly need that ten-foot-high cyclone fence with razor wire strung across the top of it to protect all those Delos schools and charities. David is targeting the charity because we have food, water and money at each site. And one of these days? He’s either going to kill the employees or he’ll start kidnapping the children or teachers, holding them for high ransom or he’ll behead them.”
“I hear you, Willow. So? You think you can get beyond the past and deal with Porter on a professional level, then? It sounds like it, but you need to tell me.”
“Is Shep in a relationship presently?”
“Not that I know of, but we never discussed that aspect of it. On his resume he put ‘single’ if that counts. Most of the civil engineers in our employ are single or divorced. They go out on a year-long assignment like this one. They can’t bring their loved ones along with them because of the dangers involved in the countries we work in. So, everyone else I know of in that division does not have a family, nor are they in a serious relationship presently.”
“I know the type,” Willow said. Shep had always had one-night stands before meeting her, not any long-term relationships, he’d said, because of the moving around that he had to do for his job. Military engineers were tumbleweeds in Willow’s opinion; footloose and fancy free.
“So?” Wyatt challenged in his best Texas drawl, “what do you think, Willow? Want to take that pony out for another spin? Try him out?”
She smiled, always loving his Texas colloquialisms. “Sure, but what if it doesn’t work?”
“I told Shep, just like I’m tellin’ you, that if it gets to be too much, if you or he can’t keep it at a professional level? To call me. We’ll get a replacement for him and he’ll fly out of your life, simple as that.”
“I needed to hear that from you. I love what I do here, Wyatt. I don’t want to leave. Dev and I are a good team and we do good work here.”
“Yes, and we don’t want that disrupted, Willow. You’re committed and we appreciate everything you and Dev bust your asses over for Delos. If this goes south? It will be Porter who will be asked to leave. Not you two. Okay?”
A load slid off her shoulders. “Yeah.”
He laughed. “It’s kinda tough to find any pilots who love dirt strips out in the middle of nowhere,” he drawled, teasing her. “We’ll keep paying the toll for you two ladies. You’re the best.”
She laughed a little. “Thanks for the compliment.” Willow had a dream of living in Oregon, in the gorgeous Cascade Mountain Range, hiring an architect to create a cedar log cabin for her. That dream was her future, and her nest egg was growing well enough, but not even close to hatching right now.
“Okay, then, pardner, let’s make this official. You’re saying yes to Porter coming over there?”
She swallowed a little, convulsively, her heart suddenly taking off in an unexpected flutter. “Yes, I am.”
“You know he still looks like a California surfin’ dude, still has that short beard, and tousled hair. I think he likes not having to shave daily.”
“He was like that back at Bagram, never shaved often and they never got after him.”
“That’s because he was a good leader and manager of people in a pigsty situation. He was, and still is, a good officer, in my opinion.”
“I guess I’ll keep my surfboard jokes out of our conversations,” she said.
“Lake Tana ain’t no surfboarding kind of place,” Wyatt agreed, with a chuckle. “Still, he’s the surfer dude by looks, but I sense he’s matured a lot since you two broke up. Just my SEAL intuition, now, you understand?”
“SEAL intuition is gold in my world,” she promised him. “Thanks for the update on him, Wyatt. I feel things will be okay between us. Three years is a long time. Most people mature over time.”
Chuckling, Wyatt said, “Women mature far more than any man.”
“No kidding,” and she laughed, ending the call.