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?”