“Sure, that was my plan. I figured a good night’s sleep under your belt would put you in stead for tomorrow. I want to introduce you to Samiah, my office assistant, and my two mechs. We’ll seed your cover with them. That way, anyone seeing you work with me isn’t going to suspect anything.”
“Good,” Sloan said, finishing off the bowl of stew. She smiled a little. “You’re really a good cook. This tasted great. Thank you.” She saw a ruddiness come to his cheeks and realized belatedly that Dan was blushing. She’d never seen that before, and it endeared him to her.
“My pleasure.”
“Can we look over your schedule tomorrow? I want to see where you’re going, and the medical teams coming in. I need to do a lot of prep work on each flight, where you land, how long you stay, and what types of medical relief are being given to the village.”
“We can do that,” Dan promised. “Samiah will have the details on my computer, and she can email you a copy.” He smiled slightly. “All the electronic conveniences of home out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Wow,” Sloan teased, “I’m impressed, Malloy.” She saw him perk up a little more as if she’d invisibly reached out and caressed his cheek.
Dan got up and removed the dishes, placing them in the sink. He made coffee earlier and brought it over, filling the two cups. He knew she liked sugar in hers and brought over the sugar bowl, setting it nearby.
“I need to apologize to you, Sloan. I never did at Bagram, and I’ve regretted it every day since then. I’m sorry I walked out on you like that.” The pain built within him as he saw her eyes go dark with anguish. “We’re going to be working together again, and I can’t handle not clearing the air between us. I thought you might arrive here angry, upset, or…something. But you aren’t any of those things. I’m sure you’re over me, and with good reason, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t apologize for my actions and my decisions toward you…us.” His mouth thinned, the words so hard to push out between his lips. “I should have told you the real reason why I left. This was not your fault, and I’m so damned sorry I hurt you like I did. I can see it in your eyes right now, and it tears me up inside. I didn’t mean to do this to you.”
Sloan sat very still, absorbing his emotional apology. She folded her hands in her lap, holding his pleading gaze. “I didn’t know what I’d done wrong, Dan. All you said is that you had to leave and that was it. I’ve wondered for years what I’d done to cause the breakup.”
Dan shook his head. “No, there was nothing you did, Sloan. You were the victim in all of this.” He laid his hands on the table, staring at her, seeing the glimmer of unshed tears in her eyes. “At the investigation hearing, I never expected what happened to me. My arm had two crushed bones in it. I wasn’t sure I would ever heal up enough to fly again, but I was cleared. It had never entered my mind that I wouldn’t remain in the Night Stalker squadron so long as the Army cleared me of the crash.” Even now, it hurt to talk about that morning when he’d stood at attention, hearing the final investigation report from the three-man tribunal. “They told me the primary cause of the crash was weather-related conditions, but then, the unofficial version I got said that I should have piloted the craft better. They removed me from the Night Stalker unit and demoted me to a Black Hawk driver in a Medevac squadron. My orders were to leave Bagram immediately and join the squadron at the forward operating base in Kandahar. That totaled me. I was reeling emotionally from the crash, my lousy piloting skills getting Andy killed, and the MH-47 being destroyed by RPGs.”
Sloan watched him wrestle with so many raw feelings, each one written in his eyes and his tortured expression. She ached for Dan, knowing how hard it must be for him to confess all of this to her.
“When the Army finished their report on my crash, I was told it was due to the thunderstorm in the area where we had to pick up your team.” His mouth flattened. “But they also said that because of how it happened, me landing and then taking the bird up after that gust hit it, that they felt I no longer had the necessary skills required to remain a Night Stalker pilot.”
“Wait a minute, Dan. My captain got a copy of that report, and it said nothing in there blaming you for pilot error.”
“Yeah,” he muttered, “on the official report to the NTSB, it says weather-related. But this was the Army version, Sloan. This was a field investigation by my peers who were pilots, and all of them served in the Night Stalker squadron before moving on to other ranks and responsibilities. One colonel made it clear to me in that room, that even though weather conditions contributed heavily to the situation, it was still up to me to nail that landing.”
“I’m…so sorry, Dan. They weren’t there. They didn’t see it happen. I was there! No one, not even God himself, could have landed that Chinook under those conditions.” She pushed her fingers through her hair in an aggravated motion. “Did you know that our team was called into that investigation? Each of us gave our eyewitness testimony to them about the crash. None of us said it was your fault. We all said it was a gust of wind that hit your bird as you landed it the first time. We saw that wind knock the helo sideways. And if you hadn’t quickly lifted it up off the scree, those blades would have slammed into the slope, destroying them. You did the right thing, Dan, under those horrible circumstances.”
“I didn’t know they’d called in your team for the investigation. It was never brought up. And it’s not in the final report.”
“They swore us to secrecy, Dan.” She turned, holding his confused stare. “I couldn’t tell you anything about it. That tribunal didn’t know you and I had been in a relationship.” Her voice wobbled. “It tore me up not to tell you about it. I could see what the investigation was doing to you. I felt helpless. I’m so sorry they released you from the Night Stalkers. I know how much it meant to you to be one of them, Dan.”
It was then that Sloan realized Dan had taken responsibility for the crash squarely on his shoulders. “You’ve been thinking for four years that the crash was pilot error, haven’t you?”
Dan sighed heavily. “I’ve rerun that approach and landing a thousand times in my head, in my nightmares, and during my waking hours, Sloan.”
“And what did you come up with? Are you going to believe the Army’s crap about you being the secondary cause of it?”
Giving a painful shrug, Dan muttered, “I don’t know, Sloan. What you’re telling me, I didn’t know before. This puts things in a different light, and I have to think about it.”
“I found out through my captain, weeks later, that you broke up with me the same day as the Army ordered you to come in and receive the final report on that investigation. You never told me you’d been demoted to a Black Hawk squadron.”
“I had immediate orders to leave for that FOB,” he said, humiliation flooding him. “I came back and told you that our relationship was done. I never told you why and I should have. That’s why I’m sorry, Sloan. You didn’t deserve what happened to you. I’m a failure in a lot of ways, and I never meant to hurt you like I did.”
She made a helpless gesture with her hand. “I was waiting for the Army to give a reason for the crash so I could tell you that my team and I had protected you during the investigation. I never thought they’d demote you like that.”
Dan stood up and walked up to Sloan. “I felt disgraced. I didn’t think anyone, much less someone like you would ever want to be seen around me again or have any kind of relationship with me.”
“You’re kidding me!”
He frowned, seeing the disbelief in her eyes. “I got an Army demotion, Sloan.”
“So the fuck what? I didn’t fall in love with you because you were a Night Stalker pilot! I fell in love with you, the man, dammit!” She took several steps away from him, shaking her head in disbelief over his admittance.
She had fallen in love with him? They’d never said they loved one another at Bagram! The topic never came up for discussion. They both worked in black ops where death was a bullet away. Ther
e was no way Dan wanted to profess how he really felt toward her. He was afraid Sloan would abandon him one day as his mother had.
When his father came home one evening with bad news that he’d been fired from his job because his company was bought out by a larger corporation, he remembered his mother losing it. He remembered her storming into the bedroom, grabbing her coat, filling a suitcase, and marching to the door. She slammed it behind her. That was the last time Dan ever saw her.
His father fell to the floor, sobbing, his hands buried against his face. Dan hurried over, never having seen him cry before, thinking he was going to die. He’d held him with his spindly arms, trying to get him to stop crying, to help somehow, but it was no use. He must have cried for half an hour and acted like a zombie afterward. At a later age, Dan realized his father had been in shock.
How could he go back to Sloan with his own brand of bad news? Dan decided to walk out of her life for good instead of her telling him she was leaving him. She was a beautiful person with a large, giving heart and deserved someone much better than himself. He was a loser. No high visibility. No one admiring him or his status as one of the finest pilots the Army had. Now, he was one of the thousands of nameless pilots who flew without being recognized for their worth, their bravery, and flight abilities.
As he stood there gripped by that horrible day in his life, he didn’t see Sloan. He saw his father on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. At night, after going to bed, Dan would press his face into the pillow, sobbing for his lost mother, wanting her back, wanting her to walk through that door again. He had cried endlessly the first three months she’d abandoned them. His father eventually got a new job for lesser pay, and he seemed to have all the life sucked out of him. A year later, his father received the divorce papers. Dan had seen tears in his father’s eyes that night as he’d read through the legal papers, but he didn’t cry. He just seemed too thinned out and was never his larger-than-life self again.
Dan not only lost his mother, he lost his father, as well. He never remarried, and as Dan grew up, he saw the devastation of what loving someone could do to the other person—and he never wanted that to happen to him. Through his late teens and early twenties, he had plenty of willing bed partners. But as soon as one of them professed their love to him, or wanted to make their sexual relationship something more substantial than just going to bed, he walked away without saying a word. Just as he’d walked out on Sloan. It was his pattern of behavior toward women, and deep down, Dan knew it came from his mother abandoning him.
“I’m sorry, Sloan. I didn’t know you loved me.” And he didn’t.
“I didn’t say anything because it would have been stupid to do so. We were in black ops. We were in constant danger. I didn’t want to tell you that because if I got taken out, you wouldn’t suffer as much, Dan.”
Sloan loved him. The epiphany struck him like a bolt nailing him where he stood. “I can’t fix the past, Sloan. Neither of us can. I hope this helps explain why I walked out on you—and I was a coward not to tell you everything.”
She slowly straightened, squaring her shoulders, “You’ve never been a coward, Dan. I know that from our Army days at Bagram. As a Night Stalker pilot, you were the bravest of the brave, so there’s no coward in you.”
Dan gave a bare nod of his head. “I think this is enough for tonight? I’m sure you’re tired and wrung out. I know I am. Why don’t we sleep on it? I’ll knock on your door at 0800 tomorrow morning, and we’ll go to the hangar. Fair enough?”
Her mouth twitched, eyes blazing. “There’s nothing fair about life, but then, you already know that and so do I.” She walked stiffly past him. Jerking open the door, she whispered unsteadily, “Goodnight.”
*
Sloan couldn’t believe the tears pouring down her face as she rushed to get inside her apartment and as far away from Dan as possible. Admitting that she’d been in love with him while they were at Bagram, had been a bomb blast going off in that living room. She’d seen sudden awareness in Dan’s eyes, and then, to her horror, watched him shut down. It was as if those were the last words he ever wanted a woman to say to him, much less her. There was such a powerful sense of denial in him at that moment.
She locked her door and leaned heavily against it, pressing her fingertips against her hot, wet face. Sloan stumbled into the dark bedroom and sat down on the creaking springs of the thin, lumpy mattress. Her weeping deepened, and she laid down on the hard pillow and pulled her knees up toward her chest. She couldn’t get the bewildered look on Dan’s face out of her mind. All along, Sloan thought that she’d seen love in Dan’s eyes for her. She’d never reached that level of intimacy with anyone but him. What a fool she’d been! Dan had never loved her. Whatever she’d seen in his expression, she’d misinterpreted.
After some time, Sloan sat up, hands shaking as she wiped the last of the tears from her cheeks. She sat there in the gloom, a small light on in the kitchen, chasing away the darkness in the room. The one good thing to come out of tonight’s conversation was that Dan now knew that her entire A team had been interviewed about the crash, and they had all said in one voice to the Army investigators that Dan had not committed pilot error. Maybe knowing this, he would no longer blame himself for what happened.
Despite how hollow she felt inside as she took a tepid shower, Sloan still wanted only good things for Dan. He seemed so tragically alone and appeared disconnected from the throbbing life she lived in every day. If he swallowed the Army’s secondary cause of the crash as pilot error, she knew that would have devastated him. He was so proud of his stature as a Night Stalker pilot. The damned Army had robbed him of that. Those bastards! She climbed out of the shower, simmering with anger toward the military. They’d obliterated Dan’s career. They’d destroyed him personally, and now, what she was looking at was a shell of the former man he used to be.
Slipping into a pair of cotton pajama pants and a tee, all Sloan wanted to do was fall off a cliff and sleep. She was exhausted on every level, not expecting the intense and emotional confrontation she’d just had with Dan. Her hair was still a bit damp, but in this sullen, dry heat within her apartment, it would dry soon enough—and Sloan didn’t care for once.
Maybe by tomorrow morning, she’d be more alert and less the fool when it came to Dan Malloy. It shook Sloan’s confidence in herself to identify emotions in others. As a medic, it was an acquired skill. She could have sworn she’d seen love in Dan’s eyes for her. But she’d been wrong. So wrong.
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 li
ke 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.
Dangerous: Delos Series, Book 10 Page 6