Night Must Wait (20 page)

"Don't ever think you can take me down." He kicked at something in the red dust, a glint of metal. A knife.

He glared, focusing on the black faces of the soldiers in the circle.

"This never happened. No one here saw anything."

Jantor turned toward the doctors and Sister Catherine, his face changing from that strange greed to stern and focused. Gilman saw his eyes were hazel gray, long lashed.

"You remember this and speak of it, then it's court martial for the man."

"Why?" Allingham said, challenge in his tone.

"Striking a superior officer and all that." Jantor walked away.

Sister Catherine was at Gilman's side when she knelt. Gilman gave orders, pulled one of the bystander soldiers to brace the patient.

"God, I love this when it works," Allingham said.

She set her teeth before she hauled back hard, hoping he hadn't jinxed their luck. Another shriek and it was done, the fainting soldier patted and comforted by the soft touches of his fellows, his humerus back in its socket. Was he a man with a bad temper? Didn't accept the hazing privates got from officers? Was that it, with the knife added in for good measure? Or had this merc given the man's wife gonorrhea?

"Take it easy a few days," she told him. "No heavy lifting, you hear?"

When they went back to their table, someone had stolen their beers, worst of all, the glass bottles, which sold at premium prices in the market. The bartender was going to be pissed and do some carping at the foolish white people.
Onocha
, he would say like a curse and they'd pay him. Oh yes, they'd pay.

"God fucking damn," Allingham said.

Chapter 37: Gilman

April 1968

Airstrip Annabelle, Uli, Biafra

Supplies, goddamn it. Gilman needed this next air shipment even more than sleep and the only way to make sure it didn't go astray was to be here at the airstrip when it arrived. The loud radio in the adjoining room sputtered. Someone lit a match and held it near the radio to adjust a dial. Amazing the Fed gunners couldn't hear it crackle static at that volume.

"Why you done turn off this light so soon? You make me a blind man, eh?"

"I do fear too much Federal plane go see this light. He know we be here, he go drop bomb and pffft. You want we go die tonight, eh?"

The sound of their bickering continued in the thick air, but Gilman paid no attention. She felt the arrival of more silent people. Then she heard the Airport Priest's voice and the answering murmur of others, as though his presence conferred safety on everyone so they could speak.

"Listen." She interrupted them. "Here it comes."

The drone of engines grew distinct. Out in the darkness a gunrunner's plane sought their makeshift runway. On its tail followed a Federal fighter. Now everything depended on timing—that the plane outrun pursuit and that the Uli team light the runway for the necessary window of time to allow the plane's safe landing without giving away their location to the Federal pilot. She could see the slashing white flashes of fire in the black sky beyond the window.

"Doctor," a deep voice said, close.

Gilman jumped, automatically aiming a vicious elbow at the voice. Male hands caught the blow, blocked it and seized her arm.

"It's 90mm," the American merc said, "and calm down, Doctor. I'm not here to murder you. Wouldn't be in my own best interests. Might even need your doctoring one of these days."

"Damn you," she said, trying to wrench loose. "What possessed you to creep up and scare the crap…"

"Didn't mean to scare you."

They waited in the darkness, Gilman's fingernails hard against her palms.

"Your friend Wilton has some strange habits," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I found her handling a snake the other evening. Nothing poisonous, she said, but it's unusual."

"I bet she was releasing it in some safe place. Zoologist. She's got a doctorate in ornithology. Likes all kinds of live things. Frogs and millipedes."

Here came the plane, hard to tell if pursuit was still on its tail. Shit, yes, two engines.

"She's a better man than I am, Gunga Din. Can't stand snakes." he said. "I think we need a proper introduction—keep you from being so jumpy the next time. Major Tom Jantor, at your service, Doctor Katherine Gilman."

Though he spoke into her ear she could barely make out the words.

"Oh," Gilman said, raising her voice. "Yeah. Pleased to meet you. I'm sure."

The engine noise mounted to a roar. Gilman steeled herself not to cower at the shattering crescendo of engines and anti-aircraft fire.

The lights flashed on. Torches flared outside. Trucks lined up to illuminate the runway turned on their headlights. Blinded, the crowd at the shack door shielded their faces. The airplane's roar hurt her ears. Three shattering explosions, but when the sound faded, the airway and the station still stood, the sound of the plane's engine grumbling down the roadway. Headlights off, torches quenched in a hiss, plunging all back into what felt like total darkness. An instant and Gilman's eyes started to adjust, to pick out the dim lines of trucks and trees, black on black and the tiny prickle of stars.

"All safe!" a jubilant man called from outside. Then one last explosion and screaming ran over that voice and erased it.
No, not safe, not hardly.
Screaming high as a girl's, and men came hauling in some guy, blood pumping out of his leg and belly red in the erratic flashlights.

Gilman trembled, but she knew her job. Maybe it was adrenaline shakes rather than fear, she told herself. A jolt more violent and warming than coffee. There was a med bag for times like this in the shack and the soldiers had the guy down and pinned in no time. Peter and Ivor had relit torches, then someone brought a big flashlight.

Jantor had the flashlight. Gilman's hands flew. No time for gloves with arterial blood spraying.

"Major, get the fucking shadow off my hands. Pay attention," she said, hard, then she felt rather than saw the other men's eyes flash as if they couldn't believe Gilman was ordering their commander around like that. But she heard him give a short bark of amusement.

Cheating death. This was her bread and meat, the thing that got her up. Not a saint nor a nun, but a person with something she could do that made her go. Made her run. He had to understand that about her and besides, he held the flashlight absolutely right.

Chapter 38: Gilman

April 1968

Uli, Biafra

Gilman let her aching body relax in the sun that poured through the clinic window. She was engrossed in feeding an infant. Rickety chair, baby on her lap. Not her job, really, but there was something hypnotic in the occupation—mechanically filling the spoon and slipping into the small mouth, scraping away the excess porridge, all the while watching the dull brown eyes that followed her hand. She fell into a kind of dream.

A loud click broke it, and Gilman found herself confronting a grim-visaged man in the uniform of a Foreign Legion paratrooper, a Biafran sun stitched over his breast pocket. He'd just slipped the safety of his Schmeisser submachine gun. The metal glinted in the warm light.
Not a dream
. She raised her gaze to meet his.

"Can I help you?" she said as politely as possible, hoping to convince herself and the blue-eyed man that this was a perfectly normal transaction.

Her words met a laugh. Her attention startled away from the man with the Schmeisser, she recognized the man behind him as Major Jantor. Another mercenary stood at his side, eyes and gun trained on the door to the clinic's interior, and the radio beside it. The three men had insinuated themselves into the room like magic.

"Chrissake, Colonel," the third man said. "She's not gonna shoot you with a spoon."

Gilman felt more ridiculous and helpless than ever, set the spoon back in the bowl, and scowled at the speaker. It seemed to her that he should be an ally, not a tormentor.

"Cover the yard," the Colonel said to Jantor.

Jantor established himself by the door with lithe ease, pulling his bush hat over his eyes as a shield against the sun. But Gilman found her attention riveted on the Colonel. He must be the German, Steiner. She'd heard speculations about him, and seeing him at close range did not reassure her at all. Nazi Youth, Algeria and the Congo. He thrust his Schmeisser at her. She jumped, holding the passive baby tighter.

"Pay attention."

She nodded at him to emphasize that she did.

"Are you alone here?"

Gilman swallowed. Allingham might still be in the next room. She didn't want to betray him into a potentially dangerous situation, but the third merc was watching the door like a cat at a mouse hole. God only knew how he'd react if Allingham blundered in.

"Alone?"

The door of the inner room opened. The third merc dropped to one knee and cleared his gun.

"Gilman, why are you chat..." It took him a breath. Allingham saw the gun aimed at his belly and gulped.

"Get out here." The mercenary covering him grinned at Allingham, and standing up, poked him in his stomach with his Schmeisser. Gilman felt her palms break sweat. "You got the keys to the supply room?"

"No." Allingham eyed the mercenary with a mixture of hatred and terror in his broad sallow face. "I'm International Red Cross," Allingham said. "I'm a completely neutral agent."

The gun nudged him again, harder.

"Quite sure you don't have them?"

"I've got the keys," Gilman said. "If you tell me what you want, I'll get it for you."

"We want the keys," Steiner said. "Now."

Gilman hesitated.

"Oh, terrific. Can I search her?" The merc covering Allingham shot a sidelong look at her.

"You had your turn last week, Masters," Jantor said from the doorway.

Gilman fumbled in her pocket for the ring of keys and thrust them at Steiner.

An exaggerated sigh of disappointment rose from Masters. "Too bad, Jantor," he said, and shook his head.

Gilman almost trod on Steiner's heels. She followed him out of the room still holding the infant, rather than stay with the jokester. Masters came right behind her and the skin on her back twitched at his nearness. Even if she couldn't stop them, she could at least see what they were going to steal.

Chloroquine, morphine, penicillin. She winced when Steiner took boxes of each. His gesture loosed Masters to grab packages of gauze and bandages.

"We know your work is important," he said, formal, no contractions. She saw again the flash of his pale eyes. "We will leave some of each kind of medicine."

"You ever decide you like frontline surgery, we might use you," Masters said.

Her courage revived.

"Cold day in hell." Gilman patted the baby. Steiner and Masters strapped shut their knapsacks.

"Yeah." Masters gave one wary glance to his commander as if he worried that his talk might annoy. "That's what they all say. Ta-ta, Doc."

Gilman sat writing up her notes in her tent. The troops returned early that morning from a successful ambush. There had been casualties and wounded to attend. A noise broke her concentration and she looked up, fixing on the tall grimy figure of Jantor before her.

"Sit down," she said, assessing the uncontrollable shudders that wracked the mercenary, noting the hunching of his shoulders. She gave him a professional stare. He made the effort to smile. One week since the raid on her supplies and this man looked a wreck.

"Malaria, Doc," Tom Jantor said.

"Had any antimalarial?"

He looked at her. "Wouldn't be here if I had."

Gilman scowled at him, checking what she had on the dispensary table. She thrust a thermometer into his mouth.

"Out of chloroquine again," she said. "Wonder what you do with the stuff. I thought you filched a supply on your last visit."

He shrugged, his mouth closed around the thermometer, jaw quivering in his effort to keep his teeth from chattering.

"Don't bite it." She pulled out a box of chloroquine. He seemed untroubled by her manner, checking her out in a way that made her want to laugh. Men. Even sick men. She tried not to react, checking his vital signs, reading his temperature and silently agreeing with his diagnosis of malaria.

"You've had bouts before," she said. "Where'd you pick it up?"

"In the Congo."

"Take that cot." Gilman gestured to the corner of the tent. The cot was on the small side, barely big enough for her. How would he manage to fit? All the other beds in the hospital held patients, she rationalized to herself, glaring at him when he hesitated. Under all the dirt his skin had a grayish cast. He could have left this too long and God knows malarial complications could kill. She watched him walk the few steps to the cot. She almost reached to steady him.

Why had he come in so late? Had he been left behind on some detail that brought him back almost a day later than the rest of his force? She watched him arrange himself half curled on the cot and tossed a few thin blankets over him. She bent and teased the knots on his boots loose, tugged the muddy things off, dumped them at the foot. She allowed herself a smile.

"Revenge is sweet," Gilman said.

"Don't you mean coals of fire?"

Although she sat and moved papers across the desk for a while, Gilman found it took a long time before she really began to work again. She had to rid herself of the uneasy but somehow pleasant awareness of that alarming shivering figure on the cot.

Allingham came for her an hour later, and she spent the next four hours in OR. After the surgeries of the night, she'd nearly forgotten about Jantor when she came back to the tent to leave her clipboard. Seeing the bulky shape on the cot startled her. Gilman felt for a moment as though the whole episode centered around him had happened days, or even weeks ago. She left her kerosene lantern on a crate and went to see how he slept.

Some mud had flaked away from his skin. She had the impression that he must have hated to come to her, though he'd tried to carry it off with humor. The other times she'd encountered him, he'd been clean, like a good predator, well groomed except for his unruly hair.