Jenna cupped her hands to drink as Troy pumped the handle, then thrust her head beneath the flow, moaning gently as the tepid fluid poured through her hair and trickled down the back of her flight suit.
Next, it was Troy's turn, and Jenna pumped water onto him. He had never in his life been so happy to wash his face.
'All I need now is some aromatherapy gel and some cucumber slices for my eyes.' Jenna giggled, her voice already sounding less gravelly.
'All I want is that shower you were talking about this afternoon,' Troy said, looking at Jenna in the half light. She had peeled back her flight suit to the sports bra beneath. Seeing Munrough's breasts, nice ones at that, was like seeing foliage for the first time after an eternity in the desert. He knew that such phenomena existed, but actually seeing it made it so much more real, and so very appealing.
'Look, there's a dude under all that dirt,' Jenna said as she leaned closer, reached out and put her hand on his cheek.
nadil!'
The two startled Americans turned at the sound of the voice. It was a short man in his early twenties who was missing several teeth. They had been so preoccupied with the sensual joy of the water, and so used to being alone in the desert with no one else around, that they had dropped their guard.
'Ma-smuk?'
Another man emerged out of the shadows. Both were short of stature, making the AK-47 that each carried seem enormous. By the way they had the muzzles pointed downward, it was apparent that neither had noticed that the two Americans were carrying sidearms.
'Sorry, we didn't mean to steal your water,' Jenna said in an apologetic tone as her fingers crawled slowly toward her holster, which she had set aside when she pulled back her flight suit. She had no idea what they were saying, but hoped her tone would set the men somewhat at ease.
'La 'afham,' one of the men said with a shrug, as though he had no better idea of what she had said than she had of his earlier assertions.
'Mundhu 'an kuntu murahiqan 'ahbabtu 'as-sayyidata s-suwidiyyat,' the first man said to the other, nodding toward Jenna and obviously remarking about her blond hair. It was something these men didn't see every day. Perhaps never.
Having the attention focused on her allowed Troy the opportunity to get his hand around the grip of his Beretta.
'Al-'an wajadtu imra'a li-z-zawaj.' The man chortled.
`Ana 'aydan 'uhibb 'as-sayyidata l-misriyyat, khassatan hawajibahunna s-sawda,' the other said, shrugging as if to say that he didn't care for blondes.
Troy wrapped his finger around the trigger and gently slid his Beretta from its holster.
Chapter 16
'This is really awkward, Troy,' Cassie Kilmer said nervously.
'Let me give you some space.' The man in the coral-colored polo shirt smiled as he put on his sunglasses and stepped out the front door onto busy Sepulveda Boulevard.
Across the office, Yolanda Rodriguez watched him leave, then glared back at her keyboard, pretending that she hadn't been watching.
'Well, shit, Cassie, this is a little awkward for me too!' Troy said, looking at Cassie in disbelief.
'You were gone for two years,' Cassie said angrily. 'And back only twice in that whole time.'
'That was my job… we talked about it—'
'What was I supposed to do?' Cassie interrupted angrily. 'You had your job and it was your life. What was I supposed to do? Just put my life on hold while you were off somewhere living your life? You can't just go off and expect me to stay here all frozen in time like a state of suspended animation or something. I'm a person too. I'm entitled to live a normal life.'
'How was I supposed to know you had this guy?' 'Enrique is not just a guy.'
'Excuse me, how was I supposed to know you had this `not just a guy'? Why didn't you at least tell me, so I don't come walking in here and make an ass out of myself.'
'I didn't… y'know… I didn't know you were coming back,' Cassie said, glancing at the large ring on her left hand. 'Enrique and I didn't become officially engaged until… you know…'
'So you thought I was dead and you jumped into bed with In-Reekie?'
The inadvertent, giggly yelp emanating from Yolanda's desk indicated both that she had in fact been eavesdropping, and that she was well aware that Cassie had been in Enrique's bed long before she received the report that Captain Troy Loensch was missing in action and presumed dead.
'I'll run these down to the FedEx drop box,' Yolanda said, standing up and grabbing a stack of important- looking orange and purple envelopes.
'I cried when I heard the news,' Cassie said sadly, tears forming in her eyes. 'I cried all damned night when I heard that you weren't coming back. I cried for you and I cried for me. That was when I realized that it didn't matter… you were gone from my life a long time before that… and I realized that I should have moved on long before. I'm glad that you're all right… but I'm still moving on. There's nothing left for you here, Troy. There's nothing left in my heart for you.'
'Hey, but Cas—' Troy started to say.
'There's nothing more to talk about, Troy,' Cassie said emphatically. Her body language as she stepped toward him read not as a move to be close, but as pushing him toward the door.
Troy realized that it was neither possible nor desirable to beg her to reconsider. She wouldn't, and he didn't want it.
He left the real estate office wishing he could kick a dent into an expensive panel on Enrique's Porsche, but the punk had already driven off
As he walked down Sepulveda, back to where his mother's car was parked, Troy thought about everything that had happened to him over the past months. They were the kinds of experiences that people describe as life- changing, but Troy couldn't tell. Everything in his life, every point of reference, had changed, so he couldn't really tell whether he had changed, or if it was just a case of everything changing around him.
His nearly three weeks of wandering in Eritrea with Jenna Munrough had been like a bad dream, punctuated by experiences like that night at the well when they shot the two men, and the two desperate days of being chased by the local militia. When they had reached that Doctors Without Borders compound at the end of their wanderings, they had finally learned why the American helicopters never came.
After the calamity over Dhuladhiya Island, in which eleven American aircraft were shot down attacking the sovereign nation of Eritrea, the United Nations had pulled the plug on the operation and the United States was given forty-eight hours to withdraw its forces.
The fears that the Joint Task Force base at Atbara would be overrun were finally realized, but by that time only a few dozen Americans remained. They never made it home.
Troy Loensch had made it home.
The Doctors Without Borders people had gotten him and Jenna across the border into Djibouti, where the American embassy had arranged for a flight back to the United States.
As Troy climbed into his mother's Chevy Equinox, he thought about how strange it was to no longer be strapping himself into an aircraft. During his two years overseas, he had rarely driven a car, spending much more time in the air than on a highway. In Sudan, he hadn't driven at all. After four days back home he was only just reacclimating himself to Los Angeles traffic.
He didn't know whether he would ever be back in a cockpit.
So much had happened while he was on the run in Eritrea that he felt like Rip Van Winkle. When he and Jenna landed at Dulles Airport, they were met by Air Force personnel who whisked them to a military hospital to be checked out, rehydrated, and treated for dysentery. They expected to be promptly shipped back to the Intelligence,
