CHAPTER 6
Fahd Ansari was careful. He’d driven easily into the Port Sudan International Airport in a Toyota Hilux, its white color a dusty yellow-brown from never being washed. The insides of the fenders were rusted, making it look like he was one of the men who worked outside the main terminal. The morning sunlight was strong from the east, highlighting the coastal piers that looked like hulking, metal monsters in the shadows. Cranes were busily swinging back and forth, taking containers off ships from around the world.
He continued to drive around slowly, imprinting the area in his mind and looking at buildings where a bomb might be placed. He paid special attention to the security, which seemed lax. That was good. Then, Fahd drove into a parking lot and got out. He was dressed in a pair of jeans, a black T-shirt, and sunglasses. He’d bought a black baseball cap with a Canadian flag sewn on the front of it, and even shaved his beard off to mingle without being identified as a Muslim. People would leave him alone precisely because he looked and behaved like a tourist. He’d gone to a Nubian barber who had trimmed his hair in what he called an “American” style—whatever that meant. Fahd had seen very few Africans before because his area of expertise was in Pakistan. The barber’s black skin was glossy, and he was mesmerized by the color. He even asked him in halting Arabic, if he got hot out in the sunlight. Black color drew heat. In his country, they wore white and cream colored clothing, not dark colors. The barber had laughed, his teeth big, white and evenly spaced. His laugh sounded like a deep drum to Fahd. The man was huge! At least six feet tall, very muscular and yet, he cut his hair so delicately. When done, Fahd had stared into the hand mirror that the barber had given him, shocked at how he looked without his scrawny, unkempt beard. Yet, he needed to blend in and look like a tourist so that he could go into places he wasn’t supposed to go, and airport security would shrug it off to him being lost or stupid.
He stood at the six-foot-high cyclone fence. There was no concertina wire across it to detour someone who wanted to climb over and reach the tarmac. There were several planes either boarding or disgorging tourists down their long flight of stairs. He noted that the luggage carriers wore dark blue one-piece uniforms, security wore black ones, and he saw some Sudanese men dressed in light tan one-piece uniforms who tended the fueling and other needs of each airliner. These were the mechanics. Fahd rubbed his smooth chin and smiled a little.
He turned, walking casually, hands in his pockets, emulating a tourist. He’d picked up a red and white knapsack from an open-air market yesterday. He could put all his bomb-making equipment, wires and everything else he needed, in there. Back in the cab of his truck, the heat of the day starting, the coolness evaporating beneath the rising rays of the sun, Fahd watched some more. He was a careful man, given to details—because it was the details that could get him killed. After another hour, he drove out of the parking lot, heading for a group of buildings south of the airport terminal. It was there that the Delos helicopter was hangared.
As he slowly drove by the aluminum-paneled structure, he saw the main and rear doors had been pushed open, allowing the briny breeze to move through the building. He was sweating now. The trickle down his temple and jaw felt odd, and he wiped it with his hand, laughing out loud. If he had his beard, it would have soaked up the sweat instead of tickling his skin. Fahd found it amusing that he had to learn how to shave to keep his cover. The fake passport identified him as Amir Khogani, a Canadian from British Columbia. There was a picture of him shaven in it as well. The address, if run by immigration security, was a mosque located in sprawling Vancouver.
Eyes narrowing, he saw a white man, who he instantly identified as Dan Malloy, the pilot who flew the Delos helicopter. He allowed his truck to drift by the opening. There was also a woman with him, an American from the looks of it. He didn’t recognize her. Spotting two Sudanese mechanics, dressed in tan uniforms, he smiled a little. This might be easier than he first thought because there were no security vehicles or any other type of guard around the hangar. Delos was a charity, and they probably felt they were harmless and therefore, not a target. His mouth curved disdainfully.
*
Dan tried to tame the knot in his gut. He’d barely slept all night, replaying the conversation with Sloan, the look on her face, the way her voice sounded last night after dinner. She had never exploded like this with him and been so emotional. She was upset for him, defending him, angry at the Army and the flight board for questioning his piloting skills. He didn’t take her anger personally. It was aimed at those who had devastated his career and broken him by demoting him.
Giving a slight shake of his head, Dan couldn’t get it out of his mind, or his heart. He wasn’t sorry he’d apologized for his behavior toward her all those years ago. This morning, he’d felt lighter, as if one of the many loads he carried constantly, had magically lifted off his shoulders. It felt good. He’d seen her expression turn so emotional when he apologized to her. It was then that Dan realized how deeply he’d wounded Sloan by his callous, knee-jerk reaction.
Sloan had paid the price for him being kicked out of the Night Stalkers squadron. He’d been angry, upset, and he’d felt abandoned. Again. Only this time, it was by the Army who did it. His past had this damnable pattern to it. Women dropped him, too. He was always honest with them from the first meeting. He didn’t mind hooking up for sex, but he made it clear there would never be any other commitment from him. If a woman could handle that, she agreed to it. Many didn’t.
Sloan was the only woman who had lasted as long as she did. She had listened closely to his demands, his rules, and agreed to abide by them. Until last night when she let it slip that she’d fallen in love with him.
This morning, he was trying to keep things on an even keel. Sloan had met him right at eight a.m. and said little. Dan had seen her skin stretched tautly across her cheekbones and there were shadows beneath her eyes, telling him she hadn’t slept well, either.
Dan introduced Samiah to Sloan, and they’d taken an instant liking to one another, laughing and speaking in Arabic. While Samiah sat down with her to show her the schedules for the volunteer medical teams arriving, Dan wandered out into the hangar. Malusi, his chief mechanic, was going around the Chinook, carefully checking each tire and assembly on the landing gear. He wore his tan, one-piece flight suit that identified him to airport security as a mechanic. Rauf, the second mechanic, lifted his hand in hello, giving him a big smile. He was sitting in the copilot’s seat, checking out one of the gauges on the cockpit dashboard. Dan lifted his hand to him in return. He didn’t feel like smiling this morning.
The hangar doors were slid open to allow the sea breeze into the building. It had no air conditioning, the walls ramshackle and in dire need of repair. It was an old place, and like many things in Port Sudan, it had seen better times.
Dan moved his hand across the dull, tan surface of the fuselage, feeling the grit of sand against it. He removed his hand, and continued down the long, odd-shaped fuselage, seeking all the possible places where a bomb could be hidden. The most vulnerable area was the landing gear assembly because it was easy to reach. Halting, Dan took more time to look at this area, but found nothing out of place or changed. He rubbed his face, feeling the building heat up as the sun rose higher in the pale blue sky. He found it impossible to sort through all his roller coaster feelings. His heart felt bruised in his chest. He’d killed Sloan’s love for him. Darkly, he knew he didn’t deserve her at all.
Sloan and Samiah’s laughter drifted through the open door of the office and lingered sweetly in the hangar. Dan saw Rauf grin and lift his head toward the laughter. He envied Rauf. The man was always so positive, outgoing, and had a smile for everyone. He wished he could be like him. How long had it been since he’d laughed?
Dan continued to check the landing gear closely. They weren’t flying anywhere today, but he needed to get into a new routine of checking it when they unlocked the doors to the building each morning. Although the hangar was relatively secure, some of the corrugated aluminum panels were no longer nailed to the wooden frame that it hung on. Anyone could pull one of them open and easily slip inside. Maybe Dan needed to think outside the box and purchase several cameras. He could replay the video on them every morning after coming to work. He’d discuss that tactic with Sloan later. Dan was sure that she would come up with some ideas, too, as she went over his schedule with Samiah.
*
Sloan saw Dan ambling their way. It was nearly noon. She and Samiah had gone over all the flight plans to different parts of the country where Dan had flown in medical teams. There was at least one, sometimes two, a month depending on the time of year. Samiah had been very shy with her at first. Her face was distorted because several men had caught her in an alley and thrown acid on her. When she realized Sloan spoke passable Arabic, the young woman opened up to her. Sloan’s heart broke for Samiah. Her skin was a beautiful burnished mahogany, her eyes a light brown. She wore a black cotton abaya with a bright red hijab over her hair and black slippers on her feet. Sloan found her intelligent, and highly skilled on computers, and discovered that she was a graduate of Red Sea University with a degree in computer science. Samiah had the world in front of her until the men, who were jealous of her grades in the computer courses, threw acid on her. She couldn’t even attend her graduation because her face was a mass of burns. She was in the hospital when one of the professors brought her the degree she’d earned.
Now, her life was limited, and Sloan knew it. Her family was destroyed by what happened to her. Even though she had bravely gone to the police to charge the men, they were never brought in, and charges were never leveled against them. Sloan knew women, in general, were treated as less important than cattle in this country. No one would consider her marriage material due to the heavy scarring of her face. Her whole life and reason for being had been wiped out and taken away from her.
Sloan felt her heart opening as Samiah told her that Dan had tracked her down after calling the university because he wanted to hire someone like her to run his office. He had been a savior to her, Samiah said. He was a good man who paid her more than she could ever make anywhere else. He was kind to her and always brought her wildflowers for the vase on her desk because he knew how much she loved them. Dan gave her time off every week, and she was also given a lunch hour, something that was unheard of in her world. She couldn’t understand why he wasn’t married because women would swoon for a man such as him in their life. Sloan could only nod, a lump forming her throat, unable to say anything.
Dan wandered into the office, and Sloan lifted her chin. She wished she wouldn’t respond so powerfully to his quiet presence, but she did. He leaned casually against the door jamb, arms across his chest.
“How are you two doing?” he asked her.
“Fine. Getting things sorted out. Getting a picture of your activities on a monthly basis,” Sloan said.
“Are you at a stopping point?”
“Sure.” She looked at her watch. “It’s noon. I’m hungry.”
Dan smiled a little. “Come on, we can eat out in the hangar.”
Sloan stood and smiled over at Samiah, telling her she’d be back after lunch.
She waited for Dan to step aside at the opened door. The pain of loss flowed deeply through her, and she avoided his eyes, stepping through the entrance and into the main hangar.
“Let’s sit in the cockpit,” Dan said, gesturing toward the opened ramp at the rear of the helo.
“Can’t be any warmer in there than it is in here,” Sloan said, as she walked up the sloping ramp, her boots making a metallic sound against the lightweight metal.
Dan walked at her side, but not too close to accidentally touch her. “I sometimes come out here to grab a quick lunch,” he confided.
They walked through the darkened fuselage; all the nylon seats had been stripped from the long tube except for near the cockpit area. There were ten seats on either side, and that was it. The rest of the space was for the medical team’s luggage and the pallets carrying necessary items for the villagers. “How often do you fly this?”
“At least twice a week,” he said. “I have to keep my flight skills current, and that’s the only way to do it.”
“Makes sense,” she murmured. There was an aluminum staircase leading up to the cockpit, and she gripped the sides of both seats, hauling herself into it. She took the copilot’s seat and sat down. The cockpit was large in one way and small in another. A person had to squeeze through the opening between the two seats, and as Dan moved to the pilot’s seat, his hip brushed against her arm. It couldn’t be helped but Sloan, feeling starved for any kind of contact with him, willingly absorbed that momentary graze. It was impossible to stop her hunger for him.
She noticed there were two lunch sacks sitting up on the console in front of them. Dan reached up, handing her one.
“I made us lunch this morning,” he offered.
“Thanks,” she said, trying to keep the emotion out of her tone. This was so much harder than Sloan ever expected. Four years was like four days without Dan in her life.
Dan sat back in the seat, opening his bag. “It’s tuna. We never had tuna fish at Bagram, so I didn’t know whether you liked it or not.”
“No…this is fine. Thanks.”
He lifted his boot, placing it against the console, looking out of the Plexiglas. “There are some sweet pickles and chips in there, too.”
Giving him warm look, she dug out the different plastic bags. “Looks like you thought of everything.”
“I wish I was better at it.”
The comment didn’t go unnoticed by Sloan, but she was too strong to ask what he was really referring to. She had a job to do and was hoping like hell that Fahd Ansari wasn’t around yet because she wasn’t at her best today.
“I saw you out here checking out the landing gear earlier,” she said, wanting to get on a benign topic.
“Yeah, from now on when I come in every morning, I’m going to do a very thorough walk-around.” He gestured to a couple of loose aluminum panels on the opposite wall. “I’m going to hire carpenters and get the siding nailed down so someone doesn’t slip into the hangar unnoticed.”
Nodding, Sloan chewed on the sandwich. “All good improvements.”
“Have you had a chance to see anything else we might do to improve security?” he asked.
“Not yet. I’m up to my eyeballs in your flight schedule.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do without Samiah.”
“Yeah, she’s sharp, on top of things, and she worships the ground you walk on.”
“She’s a good woman who got dealt a hand of bad cards in life,” he groused, frowning. “Life for a woman here in Sudan sucks.”
“Yeah, on that we can agree.”
He cocked an eyebrow, his smile increasing. “Oh, come on. We’ve been pretty good at agreeing on a lot of things in the past.”
“Yes, we did.” She stopped tasting the sweet pickle.
Dan watched her and his smile dissolved. “I keep hurting you, Sloan. I don’t mean to.” She was the last person he ever wanted to hurt, and yet, he’d hurt her the most.
She shifted in the seat. “We have to work together, Dan. But we can’t pretend we don’t have a past. We do. Neither of us can wipe our memory of it. There will be plenty of times, now and in the future, when we’ll probably harken back to that time together. It can’t be helped.”
“It’s like it was yesterday,” he admitted, staring down at his half-eaten sandwich.
“I know,” she managed, “I thought four years would make it easier to work with you on this assignment.” But it didn’t.
“Being around you brings so many memories back to me, daily things, little things. I didn’t know how important they were until I walked out on you,” he sighed.
“We’ll just make the best of it, Dan. That’s all anyone can ask of us.”
“One day at a time,” he agreed.