stopped.
'Whatcha looking for?' Jenna asked.
'I dunno, just thinking there might be some condensation in the dark, deep corners here.'
'Well…'
'Baked dry centuries ago.'
'Hear that?'
'Hear what?'
'Thought I heard a chopper,' Jenna said with guarded excitement.
'At last.' Troy sighed, as the whup-whup-whup grew louder. 'First thing I'm gonna do is get me a shower and a beer, or a beer and a shower.'
'Where's he going?' Jenna asked as the whup-whupwhup grew more distant.
'Sounds like he's searching the place where we landed, maybe one of the crash sites?'
'Let's go get us seen,' Jenna said, scrambling up a low incline that they had just descended a few minutes earlier.
Troy followed, nearly colliding with her when she stopped abruptly.
'What's the—'
'Oh shit,' Jenna exclaimed. 'Look at—'
'Oh double shit,' Troy whispered.
The helicopter was orbiting the spot where they had come down, but it was not an American Black Hawk. It was a green and tan Mil Mi-8 with the Christmas-treeornament-colored insignia of the Eritrean Air Force.
Without a further word, the two Americans raced back to the cliff and shoved themselves as deep into the shadow as they could.
Jenna's hand went to her Beretta M9, as though merely touching the standard-issue automatic pistol would provide her some consolation. Each of them had two thirty-round magazines, but against an armed helicopter, or even an unarmed helicopter filled with armed troops, the Berettas were scant consolation.
'Maybe we can outshoot 'em.' Troy smiled.
'Save the last round for yourself,' Jenna replied grimly.
Troy looked at her expression. There was no way that she would allow herself to wind up as a female POW in Eritrea.
Chapter 15
'Maybe we can steal a boat.' Troy laughed.
'And sail off into the sunset,' Jenna said with a growl of mock sarcasm, her voice raspy from too little water and too much dust.
'Technically, from this coast it would be the sun rising.'
The two downed American pilots had been walking for three days in the tortuous heat of the Eritrean desert. Had it been summer, not spring, they could very well have died of heatstroke by now. Had they not pulled some only slightly brackish water from an abandoned well that they had found, they could well have died from dehydration.
No American rescue helicopter had come, despite Troy's transponder broadcasting their position. They had given up trying to figure out why.
Fortunately, they had seen no further Eritrean choppers. They didn't care why. They were just glad.
Troy and Jenna had decided that it would be suicide to try hiking straight back to their base in Sudan. There was too much inhospitable distance, and too many AlQinamah bad guys. Therefore, they had decided to try to reach the Red Sea coastline. They hadn't yet decided what they'd do when they got there — except find a place to get a long, cold drink of water.
'I'm surprised that Hal hasn't tried to find us,' Troy said, making conversation. Aside from walking eastward and worrying about water, that was all they had to do. 'Like, y'know… you and him… '
'Me and Hal what?'
'Oh come on… I saw your hand on his ass… ''
'So?'
'So I figured there was something going on… figure that on account of that… he'd come flying over this damned place trying to spot us.'
'Maybe he did… Maybe he did back where we were… we're a long way from there now.'
'Maybe.'
'What?' Jenna asked in that 'I-know-what-you'rethinking' tone that people have when they think they know what you're thinking.
'Whaddya mean, 'what'?'
'Are you jealous?'
'Well, I guess, y'know,' Troy said, groping for words. 'I've been listening to you snore every night and it's hard not to think about… when you're sleeping with somebody and all that's happening is that you're trying to sleep…'
'You saying I snore?' Jenna laughed.
'Yeah, but…'
'Okay… since we may never get out of this thing alive…'
'Don't say that,' Troy interrupted.
'Okay… since we may never get out of this thing alive,' Jenna repeated, 'I should admit that I've…. y'know… I've had those kinda thoughts about y'all.'
'Really?'
'You're a hunk, Loensch,' Jenna said in a matter-of-fact way. 'Sometimes you're obnoxious, but you're a hunk and I have had… kind of a thing for y'all.'
'What kinda thing?'
'Yesterday… all day when we were walking through that ravine, y'know,' Jenna replied. 'I had this fantasy about taking a shower with y'all.'
'I've been thinking about showers a lot too,' Troy admitted.
'I was thinking about what came after the shower,' Jenna said with a hoarse chuckle.
At that moment, the two of them reached the crest of a ridge and looked down into a landscape totally unlike anything they had seen for days. They could see the Red Sea in the distance, probably no more than five miles distant. In the foreground were patches of vegetation, even a date palm orchard and clusters of buildings. They could even see the coastal highway.
'Green sure looks weird when you ain't seen leaves for a week or two,' Jenna exaggerated.
'Green sure looks like there's water to me,' Troy said.
'We better be careful,' Jenna cautioned. 'We get caught down there, we'll get ourselves turned in.'
As painful as it was, they waited until dusk to approach the date palms. As they sat in the shade of the boulder, talk did not return to the after-shower fantasy, but to earlier fantasies of drinking water.
Unfortunately, when they reached the first irrigation ditch, the water failed to match the water of even the least-demanding fantasy.
'Nasty shit,' Jenna exclaimed as they studied the greenish liquid in the half light of the evening.
'Probably really is a sewer,' Troy said disgustedly. 'There's got to be a well somewhere. Let's move out while we got some light.'
As they snaked their way through orchard, field, and vacant patch of ground, they were careful not to get too close to any buildings, and they took cover whenever a vehicle passed nearby.
At last they found it.
It was a simple hand pump on a rickety wooden platform. The water was not the best they'd ever tasted — but to them, it was the best water in the world.
