her lip.
'So, why'd he leave?'
'Escurecer offered him a job that has some flying involved,' Jenna explained. 'He really wanted to get back into the air….. That and umm, y'know… Fire-hawk has this thing about not wanting employees married to other employees.'
This time, Jenna bit her lip after she let slip something that she wanted not to have slipped.
'Married?' Troy asked 'Who? Wait… you guys got married?'
'No, not yet.' Jenna shrugged. She hadn't planned to be discussing wedding plans with the conquering hero tonight, but she knew she was foolish to delude herself into believing it would not come up. 'We've been together a long time… talking about it… so it was finally time to commit.'
'Congratulations.' Troy smiled.
She was pleased to have detected a trace of disappointment in his tone.
'Didn't notice a ring,' Troy said, glancing at her hand.
'Oh, it's at the jeweler… umm… getting sized,' Jenna lied.
The ring was in her purse.
'Is Hal gonna be joining us tonight?' Troy asked after they had been seated at the restaurant.
'No, he's out in New Mexico for a training thing…. not sure exactly what… He can't talk about it, y'know.'
The dinner conversation grew more and more relaxed, measured in increments by the number of drinks they had. It had started out as typical co-worker chitchat. They talked at length about Firehawk. Troy spoke of mutual acquaintances with whom he had worked in the field, and Jenna regaled him with amusing and occasionally ridiculous stories of home office politics.
'Glad that you and Hal are finally making it…. urn… official,' Troy said at a break in the conversation.
'Girl's gotta think about her future,' Jenna said. 'Biological clock, y'know.'
'So you're thinking of having kids?'
'Probably… sure… I guess.'
'Can't picture Falcon Two all settled down in the suburbs with a minivan and soccer practice.' Troy laughed.
'Where do you picture me?'
'Well…' Troy felt himself going red.
'Yeah,' Jenna said. 'You and me both.'
'I'm sorry I didn't… y'know… back in Las Vegas that time.'
'I'm sorry too,' Jenna said. 'But you were right…. Hal and me…'
'Doesn't mean that I haven't wished that… things…. well, would have gone different… and if you and Hal hadn't been…'
'He's a rock,' Jenna said. 'He's the kind of guy that a girl thinks about as a father of her children. He's solid… he's a good guy.'
'What about me?'
'I'm sorry, but when I think about you, I see this crazy dude taking shots at SAM sites… the dude who smoked all these MiGs over there… a dude who's gonna be impossible to tie down. Did you ever think about settling down, y'know, really settling down?'
'Well…' Troy's expression told all that needed telling. The notion of settling down was an anathema.
'And what about monogamy?' Jenna said. The wine was talking. 'How many girls do you have waiting for you in all your ports of call?'
'What is this? Twenty questions?' Troy said indignantly.
'I'm sorry,' Jenna said soothingly. She reached across the table and gently took his hand. She felt him willingly let it be taken.
'I'm sorry,' she repeated. 'It was none of my business… it's the same things that make you not husband material that make you so very… very appealing to me.'
Chapter 29
'We'll have to give the Sandies something to chew on,' Raymond Harris said as he walked Troy back to the operations building from the Gulfstream that had just flown him in from Bangkok. 'We'll have to show them that this is damned serious.'
The 'Sandies' were the firm of Sandringham Partners, Ltd., one of the other PMCs operating in Malaysia. The name made it sound like a firm of London chartered accountants, but in fact, the company was a Cayman Islands — based gang of what Harris referred to as 'damned mercenaries who change sides more often than most people change their shirts.'
'What do the Sandies have to do with us?' Troy asked. 'I thought they were mixed up in some sort of special ops thing way down near Kuantan. We're not even really engaged in country here.'
The compound in Kota Bharu Province, officially sanctioned by the Malaysian government, was Fire-hawk's base of operations for the Gulf of Thailand missions against the Cambodian Air Force, but Firehawk was not actually running operations within Malaysia.
'We're not functioning in a vacuum here, Loensch,' Harris said. 'Guarding the perimeter at these bases is key. It's not something that you'd notice, but you'd sure as hell notice if it wasn't being taken care of. Whenever we go into one of these Third World shitholes like this, Firehawk has to pay the right people to take care of us…. usually local people who know the lay of the land.'
'I understood that, but I admit that I didn't think about it too much,' Troy admitted.
'Well, it's something that I have to think about when I set up an operational base anywhere,' Harris explained. 'In this case, we've been paying this organization run by a guy named Buddy — that's not his real first name, but he calls himself that — Keropok, Buddy Keropok. We've been paying Buddy to take care of us, and his people have been doing a damned good job. There weren't any perimeter incidents when you were serving your first tour out here, right?'
'Right, I mean there were no problems that I knew of,' Troy said.
'Anyway, Buddy and his people are also doing some other sorts of operations down around Kuantan. That's where they've been having some trouble with the Sandies. The Sandies have killed about a dozen of Buddy's people, and he's getting real pissed off.'
'As well he should,' Troy agreed.
'Buddy's people killed some Sandies too,' Harris conceded. 'But only in retaliation. It's an eye for an eye in this culture, same as any. So Buddy came to me and asked me, since I'm running PMC ops here and the Sandies are another PMC, couldn't I just talk to them and figure out a way to end this.'
'Were you able?' Troy asked.
'I went down to Singapore for a sit-down with Sandringham's station chief. He's got a real nice flat in a modern building down there. I told him that Buddy's people were doing a good job of taking care of us, and asked what his problem was.'
'And…'
'Turf war. Buddy's got a little contraband transfer thing going on south of Kuantan.'
'You mean smuggling?' Troy asked, interpreting the phrase contraband transfer.
'I wouldn't exactly call it that, but whatever it is, it got in the way of something that the Sandies were doing.' 'Smuggling?'
'Probably.'
'Not enough for both?'
'Trouble is that the Sandies have been fighting the rebels for so long down in that area that they essentially control the whole east coast of Malaysia. This includes contraband transfers. The rebels used to run all that, but now the Sandies do.'
