Night Must Wait (23 page)

"Oh, I don't know." Jantor turned his glass in his fingers and smiled at the crate top. "Probably time for his nightly cold shower."

Gilman laughed. She cut it short and took another swallow of whiskey.
Slow down.

"He's a good doctor, but he's still such an ass."

"Yeah, so I've seen." He continued to play with the glass after one quick, almost apprehensive glance at her. Gilman watched the rough brown fingers with drunken fascination.
Strong hands, long boned. Attractive hands.
Absently she reached out to finger the edge of his sleeve, absorbed in the play of his fingers against the clear glass and amber whiskey.

"We're both a bit under the influence," Jantor said. "How about a walk?"

Gilman lifted her head, her heart giving a lurch of expectation.

"All right. I need some fresh air." That at least, was true.

They threaded their way between the haphazard tables and guzzling soldiers to the door. Jantor put his arm around her, steadying her with his body. Funny how the assertive contact seemed to increase the unsteadiness of her knees.

Outside the streets had emptied, dusk had fallen, dimming the outlines of buildings in a deep lavender haze, black-out shades allowing a gleam of light to edge an occasional window while sounds of merriment came from within. A few steps past a half-destroyed hotel, Jantor stopped. He turned her to face him and pulled her with an edge of roughness into his arms to kiss her. A sense of being trapped rose in Gilman, but when his hold slackened again, she no longer wanted flight. She reached up with intoxicated wonder to touch his mouth. It wasn't just the whiskey that made her tremble. He kissed her again, taking his time.

"Let's go," she said, and he loosened his hold with reluctance, keeping her against his side. They made their way along the street, through the black evening to her deserted tent, and to her astonishment he stopped short before her door.

"You're sure?" his voice husky in the black shadows.

She tried to laugh and grasped his hands, drawing him after her.

It was dark in the tent, and darker still when Jantor closed and locked the door. He moved away from her, as though he'd memorized where to find her lantern, leaving her alone, shaken by the pounding of her own blood. She tasted panic and exultation and she realized she'd passed the point of no return. Gilman suppressed an urge to laugh wildly at her own recklessness.

The flare of a match startled her. Jantor bent over the Coleman lantern, pumping up the kerosene, his hard face strangely altered by the warm dim light and flickering shadows thrown by the match.

"Careful," she blurted out. He moved the flame toward the mantles. They flared into white brilliance.

Jantor straightened and turned, and Gilman met his searching look with a mix of defiance and shyness. What did he think of her? The lantern light made him look taller, forbidding. It was easier when he was next to her—now there was an immense distance between them. She waited for him, and he made her wait. She realized that and a burn of embarrassment spread along her cheekbones. He wasn't going to make it easy. He wanted to make her move first.

He grinned.

"What?" She smiled back. "What is it?"

He shook his head. He turned a little aside, as if her words had been the cue he waited for, took off his flak jacket and holster, unlaced his boots, and painstakingly arranged grenade, knife, and ammo belt on the bedside table, watching Gilman the while.

"Hey," he said, his voice soft, "get over here."

She went to him and he pulled her close, bending over her upturned face and annihilating her self-consciousness in a long kiss. They undressed each other, lingering at each discovery, items of clothing falling to the floor. Jantor ran a hand up her back, urgent, locking her to him. His breath stirred the small curls at her nape and he kissed her there.

Her hands grew bolder, pausing at the raised scar slanting across his stomach. Her fingers smoothed it carefully. It shouldn't be important—any doctor would have said it couldn't hurt him any more. As if some connection had been made by that old wound, she pulled his head down to kiss him, all ferocity and tenderness. Yes, this was what she wanted. He repaid her with mouth and hands.

"Oh God," she said, her voice caught deep in her throat.

He sought her mouth with his own, as if seeking to confirm her desire by tasting it. Perhaps the battlefield had taught him to control passion, to increase it through denial. She had not expected him to leash his hunger and Gilman was all but sobbing for mercy when he finally laid her on the cot and brought what they had begun to its shuddering conclusion.

Chapter 44: Wilton

June 1968

In Transit, Biafra

Wilton learned young the ability to pass unseen. No fear of juju kept her from explorations far beyond the back-bush village paths. She had an eye for snakes, insects and birds. She'd learned the habit to tell no one exactly where she went or what she saw. A bird woman, knowing the ways of wild things shy in the bush. For a while as she moved through Biafra, she had a bicycle. The rest of the time she bought brief passage on trucks and mammy wagons or walked.

At the front Wilton could hear sporadic outbursts of mortar and machine-gun fire. Nigerian and Biafran soldiers engaged with flurries of explosions and shots and screaming. In overgrown terrain, she stumbled over bodies. So many Biafran soldiers were children, meager under the claws of the vultures, storks and the buzzing flies.

She would have avoided the towns if she didn't feel this powerful need to witness the worst. Refugees crowded into camps. Survivors couldn't dig new graves fast enough. The living had so little strength. Dead flesh bloated swiftly, the vultures lurched sluggish with food. Putrefaction filled her days and nights. Sometimes Wilton imagined that no matter how deeply into the bush she fled, that odor would follow, sick sweetness in the air.

Towns attracted bombers, Ilyushin bombers the Nigerians bought with oil money from the Russians. Wilton learned terror at the sound of engines in the air, strafing runs. Panic when there was finally no right place to go, when it was too late to hide.

While the bombs fell, she crouched among ragged folk, women, children, old men, waiting. She helped dig out the ruins of buildings for those buried alive, for the dust-floured corpses, for the broken.

The bright-orange earth and puffing dust, the inedible green leaves and vines, the spreading tangle of trees and brush crawling over broken buildings once raised with pride, all these mocked the world that Wilton remembered. She recalled the kind hot days of past years when no sound of incessant agony rose and fell on the wind. When the air was clean.

She found herself nearing the border and decided she would head to the West once more, because she still held responsibility. Lindsey and Sandy were there because of her. Lindsey should know what Wilton saw out here in the dripping green of this endless war.

Why had Sandy remained? What did she gain? She must not take Sandy's persistence for granted until she understood it. She tried to care, but the effort seemed enormous.

All she could do was witness and pass the things she saw to those like Lindsey who had power. Yes, Lagos was her next destination. Leave Gilman to God.

Chapter 45: Gilman

June 1968

Uli Area, Biafra

Gilman woke in early morning while the sky grayed with the first of the dawn. Jantor's heavy arm crossed her shoulders. She shifted, careful not to wake him, and turned her head to look at his face in the dim, ghostly light. His ribs rose with each indrawn breath. Gilman lay watching him sleep. Soothed back to sleep herself, she reentered the confusion of her dreams.

The muted roar of an approaching plane put an end to that. Nearly dawn, too much light for one of their aid planes or a gunrunner trying to land. Who in hell?

"Tom," she said. "Bombers..."

His eyes opened and the arm tightened around her.

"That's an Ilyushin," he said, "looking for the strip." His feet hit the ground at the first bomb.

"Close." He snatched up his clothes from the tangled pile on the ground. Gilman grabbed her own, fumbling buttons and cinching her belt, while they both listened to the Russian jet bomber grow fainter, then louder again when it circled for another attack run.

"They keep trying," Jantor said. He smiled.

"They know Airstrip Annabelle is somewhere here, and they keep guessing. But they don't have the guts to fly low enough to see us."

He looked at her before he strode out the door, and she paused in her fumbling attempt to dress, shyness catching her by the throat so that she couldn't speak. Jantor swung back to her and kissed her. He slammed the door behind him and she stood a moment, staring at it.

On the afternoon of Jantor's departure, Gilman caught up with Allingham in the infirmary.

"So you're here," Allingham said. "Sucking chest wound just came in. Other casualties. We need to get to the underground unit."

"Goddamn. Okay." Gilman glanced at the dour face of the doctor, knowing she would never like him. "Let's take it."

A hard run of surgeries, the kind of day when between the heat and the sweat she had a difficult time seeing straight. Early evening settled in by the time Gilman emerged from the underground operating room. She headed toward the kitchen area, noting vaguely the pink sunlight blooming on the hospital's battered walls. Allingham's sharp voice stopped her.

"Gilman, where're you going?"

"The kitchen," she said. "Why? I need a good bath."

Allingham came over the rubble-strewn yard toward her. His stubbled face spoke of a reluctant morning. He must still have a world-class hangover.

"What's wrong? What's bugging you, Doctor?" she said.

"Only wanted to tell you you're a damned fucking fool," Allingham said. "He's a merc. Whoring for cash. Kills for the highest bidder, and don't you forget it. What does that make you?"

Gilman felt herself blush with rage.

"It's none of your business. Shut your hole right now."

"You have an obligation to all of us. Don't forget it," Allingham said. "He'll see you to your death, or better yet, you'll see him to his. And maybe then you'll know it's time to go home."

Gilman watched Allingham walk away. Spindle shanks and heavy body, like a misformed crab. All she should feel was pity, but she wanted to run after him and kick him in the ass. Sandy would have.

Chapter 46: Lindsey

July 1968

Lagos, Nigeria

Lindsey came in with Oroko. She saw Sandy glowering and the rusty mark of Sandy's sneaker on the waiting room wall at the same time.

"Lindsey, you goddamned better explain. Why can't I get my fucking cash outa the office? I was planning to leave at five this morning, the lock's been changed and here I am waiting on you."

Here it came. Well, Lindsey knew she was right, whatever Sandy felt. In the long run this was justified. She kept herself from looking over at Oroko who had followed her in. Forget he's there, that's best.

"I'm sorry, Sandy," she said, putting on her apologetic look—she'd practiced it in the mirror before brushing her teeth. "I really meant to say something earlier, but with that oil guy's illness and getting him airlifted back to the States…"

"Fuck the nice talk, Lindsey. Spit it out."

"Sandy, it's not safe," she said. "You can't go on trips to your geological sites."

"Not safe? What the hell?"

"Don't sound so amazed. You know the risk you take every time you head to the field."

"God, Lindsey, it's safer than Lagos. The rocks aren't gonna mug me."

"Those terrible roads? What if something happens? No ambulance, no reliable police…What about kidnapping?"

"It's what I do," Sandy said. "What about the word
geologist
don't you understand? I know rocks. I go out and find them. I can tell where they come from. What made 'em."

"The rocks talk to you."

"Yeah, they fucking do.
You
better start talking—who are you? My mother?"

"That's not the point anyway," Lindsey said. "Playing out in the wild you could be murdered. Kidnapped. I can't cover your back when you're prospecting. My trip with Wilton to Biafra made that clear to me. There's no way to control the things that happen out there."

"You can't control what happens here."

"Try me." Lindsey could not stop herself from smiling, though she knew it would offend.

"You thinking about your debtors? I used to think they were fools to put themselves into your hands, but I knew then what you were doing. What Wilton thought you were doing. But that's not it any more, is it? I should ask her what's changed. Make her tell me."

"What do you mean?" Lindsey looked down. She hadn't meant to do that, but she sometimes had trouble giving Sandy the old simple straight Lindsey.

"Wilton's here. Got in late last night and I put her to bed. But what I mean is you're having some other kind of thrill out of this business of loans. I hear stories. Saw Jack Damano coming out of your office last week looking like you'd taken pieces of his guts and fried them in front of him. I don't know you any more Lindsey, and I can't imagine what Wilton…"

"She's not my boss."

"Yeah? Once she was your compass."

Lindsey shoved her chair back, feeling her pulse pounding in her throat. Control it or not? What did she have to lose? What had Sandy meant by
not knowing
her? In the end she'd win this thing.

"Of course you know me. You're the only one who does. I know what I'm doing. Trust me. I'm just the same…"

"You don't control me."

"I never wanted to."

Sandy slammed the door behind her. Lindsey took a deep breath.

"That went better than I expected," she said, glancing at Oroko who stood sculpture silent by the window. "In the long run it will be all right."