by Naomi Niles
It was with a deep sense of relief that I felt the plane beginning to slow as we prepared to descend. Venturing a glance over the side of the plane, I saw a large rectangular building with a tin roof standing beside a large chunk of black asphalt. A couple of small figures in brown camo stood near the landing strip, gesturing to the plane with their hands raised over their faces.
“Hold onto your seat!” shouted Azzedine over the roar of the plane. I braced myself for the impact. A minute later, we landed with a jolt that sent me shooting up out of my seat.
As I waited for Azzedine to come around and help me climb out of the cockpit, I shut my eyes and allowed myself to really breathe for the first time since before the plane had taken off. In the moment, it felt like we were going to die before we ever reached the naval base, but somehow, we had made it.
Now the real troubles began.
I guess I had always pictured the Congo as being a scenic place full of lush beauties. I remembered having to read The Poisonwood Bible in college, a novel with more than a few similarities to my own life, and marveling at the richness of the descriptions. What I hadn’t expected was acres of dry, brown grass and bare, leafless trees that were slowly dying under the relentless glare of the summer sun. It looked more like the images of rural Texas I had seen on the news than I had envisioned Africa looking like.
“Is this where I’ll be staying?” I asked. I’d thought we would be closer to the city, but this was a remote base, and there was no sign of the hotel Evan had indicated I would be staying at.
“Only during the day,” said Azzedine. “At night, some of the men will drive you back to the city, and they’ll bring you back early each morning before dawn.”
I could already tell my schedule for the next two weeks was going to be exhausting. There was nothing I dreaded more than the prospect of having to wake up early twelve days in a row.
What was worse, I remembered Azzedine’s words about the dangerous nature of the road leading back to Kinshasha. Only now did it occur to me how often I would be traveling that same road during the next couple of weeks. I hoped we weren’t ambushed, and that if we were, the SEALs would be able to protect us.
A man wearing a cap, a dark brown shirt, and a pair of matching khakis was standing at the end of the runway, his hands folded behind his back. He had a dark complexion, and I could sense even before he introduced himself that it was Sergeant Mohamed Armstrong.
“Kelli Pope?” he said with a curt nod as he came forward. Behind him eight men, all in their mid- to late twenties, stood at attention. “It’s a real pleasure to have you.”
It might have been racist of me, but judging from his appearance, I had expected him to have more of a Middle Eastern accent. But of course that was ridiculous; he had grown up in the Midwest with Evan, and his voice had the warm, reassuring tones of a television news broadcaster. Chiding myself for my prejudice, I strode forward and extended my hand. He had a firm grip, and his eyes radiated a severe kindness.
Taking me by the shoulders, he led me out of earshot of Azzedine and the other SEALs. Quietly he said to me, “I know you’re probably tired after the flight you’ve had, and I know this isn’t exactly a vacation. I just want you to know you have nothing to worry about while you’re here. My men are going to make sure you’re well taken care of. There are militants who live in these woods, but they’re not likely to attack while you’re here, and if they do, you’ll immediately be moved to a safe location.”
I found myself wanting to thank him for his consideration, but at the same time, a shrewd suspicion seized me. In the event of an attack, was he going to have me moved out of the way so I wouldn’t witness the platoon’s response? Were there measures they were willing to take that he would rather I didn’t know about?
“Is this your permanent residence?” I asked, motioning to the rectangular building with the tin roof. I remembered seeing a movie once where a military colonel was forced to sit in a metal box day after day in the intense heat. I couldn’t imagine staying in that building was any more comfortable.
Sergeant Armstrong shook his head. “This is where we stay for now, but the boys are prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. It’s a distinct possibility given the number of lawless hordes, many of them armed, that roam the jungle. Last year, over a dozen women were kidnapped from a convent just a few miles upriver.”
“Yes, I remember seeing that on the news,” I said. “It was tragic.”
“Well, anyway,” said Sergeant Armstrong, nudging his head in the direction of the eight men who remained standing motionless on the asphalt. “Shall I introduce you?”
“Please.”
He went down the line and introduced me to each of the SEALs one at a time.
“This is Carson Wallace, one of our best swimmers and climbers. Thinks of himself as a comedian, but his real gifts lie elsewhere.” Carson nodded at me, not seeming to have noticed Sergeant Armstrong’s stealth insult. He had a thin, weaselly face with a long nose, bushy brows, and small, beady eyes.
“Chuck Howell.” He motioned to a man, slightly older than most of the others, with a broad, bulky frame and a red beard. “Chuck is the only member of our platoon who’s married. He’s got a wife and daughter back in the States, and he treats the rest of the platoon like his own sons. He’s about the most serious guy I’ve ever met. If you can get him to laugh, you will break the spell that has been on him these seven years.”
True to form, Chuck did not even break a smile. Sergeant Armstrong moved on to the last man.
“And this here is Zack Savery. Every platoon needs a peacemaker, and Zack is ours. He has a natural flair for resolving disputes, which is fascinating to me because he’s never been trained in conflict resolution. I think it must come from all those books he reads.”
Zack winced, evincing just the slightest hint of impatience with the sergeant’s musings. He was oddly handsome; this I could tell despite the fact that he was covered from head to foot in camo. He had one of those perfectly symmetrical faces that are the exception in nature rather than the rule. When I looked at him, I thought I saw his eyes twinkling with mischief for a split second. But then the moment passed, and I wondered if I had imagined it.
“They’ll be starting their physical training tomorrow at 5:00am,” said Sergeant Armstrong as he led me toward the back of the warehouse where a truck was waiting. “I’ll send one of the boys to come get you about an hour before.”
The thought of having to wake up at 4:00am was the most horrifying thing I could imagine. Yet, having met the boys, I felt oddly resigned to my fate. “But that would mean they’ll have to get up at around 3:00am to come get me,” I pointed out.
“We’ve always got a couple of guys on night duty,” said the sergeant. “They get plenty of sleep; more than they really need, to be honest. Anyway, you’ll be wanting to get back to your hotel and get settled in. I think Azzedine wanted to take you since he was going that way.”
It felt like an oddly short meeting for all the time we had spent in the air on our way here. By now, it was late afternoon, and the sun was beginning to set over the scrim of trees surrounding the clearing. As I rode back to Kinshasha, clutching my satchel tight to my chest to keep my nerves steady, I thought about the boys I had just met—several of them quite handsome, all of them apparently dutiful, responsible gentlemen. But of course, there was no way to tell what they were really like from just a cursory introduction, and I had been deceived before.
Chapter Five Zack
That night, I ate a delicious dinner of turkey sausage, steamed vegetables, brown rice, buttered toast, and egg whites, topped off with a banana and a couple glasses of orange juice. The entire mess hall was buzzing with talk of the new reporter. The arguments of the last few days were forgotten as we discussed our initial impressions.
“Am I the only one who thought that girl was strangely hot?” asked Carson, tossing back a protein supplement. There was a murmur of “nos” accompanied by several
shaken heads. “Fuck, if all big city reporters were like that, I’d have gone into journalism.”
“Language,” said Chuck, who had an aversion to cursing.
Carson glared at him in annoyance. “What did you think, Chuck? You’re bound to have an opinion. Is she hotter than your wife?”
“Nobody’s hotter than my wife,” said Chuck tersely, taking a sip of his juice. Several of the guys laughed.
Down at the far end of the table, Bernie’s eyes gleamed. There had been a fresh glow about him ever since the reporter’s arrival. “I’d love to bend her over a bed and show her how a real man does it,” he said, smacking his lips. “I bet all her past boyfriends have been limp-wrested vegans and small-dicked Bernie bros. Art school rejects squatting in abandoned warehouses on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, building bonfires out of old office paper.”
“Hey, some of us voted for Bernie,” said Chuck, his eyes twinkling. When the rest of the platoon looked at him in alarm, he added, “I’m not saying who. But some of us.”
“Better him than the alternative is all I’m sayin’,” said Carson.
But our Bernie wasn’t done discussing his new favorite subject. “I wonder what she looks like under those bulky shorts and camo vests,” he said with a faraway look in his eyes. “She was standing right in front of me while she and the sergeant talked, and I got a pretty good look at her. She’s way more slender than she looked. I’d reckon she doesn’t weigh more than about a hundred pounds.”
“And not much taller than my mom,” said Carson.
“Carson, don’t bring your mom into this,” said Chuck.
“She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, is what I mean. Maybe not even that. What do you think, Zack?”
I knew he would never let it go if I failed to have an opinion on this most critical of subjects. “I just want to see her standing naked in front of a window,” I said dryly, “clutching an eggplant to her bare chest.”
Carson wasn’t the smartest guy, but he could always tell when he was being made fun of. “No, for real, though,” he said with a hint of impatience.
“She’s very petite. I’d be curious to see what she looks like with her clothes off. If she’s that slender, she probably doesn’t have huge boobs, but I’ve been surprised before.”
There was a slight pause during which everyone seemed to be pondering my past sexual exploits. I had warned Carson not to tell anyone the story of my airport encounter, so of course it was all over base by the end of our first day back.
“Well, I don’t think it would much matter in her case,” said Bernie. “If she’s a reporter, she’ll be in her mid- to late twenties, but she doesn’t look a day over sixteen. And I bet she’s dynamite in bed.”
“Bernie, I look forward to reading the love manifesto you will inevitably have smuggled out of prison,” said Chuck. Everyone laughed except Bernie.
Right as dinner was ending, the sergeant ordered us back to our rooms to check our gear. This was one of my least favorite parts of the job; I would sooner be shot at than have to comb through my equipment to make sure it was all in order.
As I sat there at the foot of my bed holding my hydration bladder in one hand, Carson strode up and slung his backpack down on the floor next to me.
“You never did tell me what you really thought of that girl,” he said softly as he pulled out his hunting knife and turned it over in his hands.
“I told you I thought she was petite,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but that’s just a fact. I still don’t know how you, Zack Savery, feel about this gorgeous woman. You managed to tell me everything but that.”
I shrugged. “I mean, she was a cute woman. I guess I’ve always had a thing for blondes. The woman I was dating while on leave had the prettiest long blonde hair, but she wasn’t all that bright. She was like a walking stereotype.”
“Well, I guess that’s to be expected when you’re dating a public school teacher in a rural town,” said Carson. “They say you only go into teaching if you’ve failed at everything else in life.”
“Fair enough, yeah.” I reached into my bag and pulled out my watch, making sure it was set to the right time. “This woman is bound to be a step up in that respect. Investigative reporting isn’t a job for idiots.”
“I didn’t know a woman’s brains meant so much to you,” said Carson. “The way you went after that bimbo in the airport, I figured one pussy is as good as another.”
“On balance, I think intelligence makes a woman way hotter,” I replied. “There’s something a little bit sexy about a gal who can yell Shakespeare in bed.”
Carson raised his brows in surprise. “Hold on,” he said slowly, “this is really interesting to me. So, and I’mma need your honest opinion here, if you were given the choice between a woman with brains but no boobs, or a woman with boobs but no brains, which one would you pick?”
“Am I ever going to be in a situation where I have to make this choice?” I asked.
“It could very well happen!” cried Carson. “Say you go back to Dallas and there are two girls hanging on you. One of ‘em is a bimbo, but she’s foxy as hell. The other girl, she’s—you know, kinda ugly. But she’ll sit there and talk to you for an hour about, I don’t know, the Great Fire of London.”
I smiled, beginning to feel mischievous. “How ugly are we talking?”
“However you define ugly,” said Carson. “Scrawny, yellow teeth, no boobs, not much of an ass.”
“I think I’d pass on the yellow teeth. If she found her way to a dentist, then we might talk.”
“Oh, so now we see what’s important,” said Carson loudly, addressing the whole room. “Old Zeke here doesn’t care if a girl’s got huge boobs, as long as her teeth are clean.”
“Clean teeth are important.” At this point, I was mostly trolling him. “What, did you think I nailed that chick at the airport because of her boobs?”
Carson goggled at me. “So much to unpack in that statement. Did you really bang her?”
I shrugged, struggling hard not to smile. “We got pretty close. Another ten minutes, and it would have gotten to that point, I’m sure. She was ready.”
Carson shook his head and muttered a word that sounded suspiciously like, “Fucker.”
But at that moment, we were both startled by a tremendous banging in the hallway and a volley of curse words. It sounded like someone was slamming a locker—hard—over and over again.
“What in the hell?” muttered Carson, getting up and walking to the door with his knife in hand. The rest of us set down our bags and followed.
I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when I looked through the door. Bernie stood at the end of the hall, his face strained and sweaty. He was slamming his fists into the lockers, hitting them so hard and with such frequency that the metal was beginning to bend under the onslaught.
Chuck brushed past us and ran down the hall toward him. “Bernie!” he yelled. “What are you doing, man?”
Bernie lowered his fists, having only belatedly realized that the rest of us were gawking at him in fear and surprise. “I can’t do this anymore!” he said angrily, punching the locker one last time for good measure.
“What, you mean the training?” Carson balked. “Are you quitting?”
Chuck raised a hand to silence him. Carson swore under his breath; he had always resented Chuck’s air of being older and smarter than the rest of us.
“No, not the service,” said Bernie, his shoulders slumped in defeat. “Life. I’m no good at it.”
“Well, none of us are great at it,” said Chuck warily. “But that’s no reason to go and do something drastic.”
“You think I enjoy being lectured by you?!” Bernie shouted. He looked insane, and for the first time I began to fear for his safety. “You’ve got a wife and a kid. You’re happily married, and you’re probably the smartest person in our platoon. I’ve seen you take a gun apart and put it back together in less than a minute. You’re t
he best swimmer, the best climber, the best sniper, the best blah, blah, blah. Whatever. If you wanted the girls, you could have them. I suppose the fact that you don’t want them is another point in your favor.”
“Bernie, man, we all have longings,” said Chuck, raising both hands in the air. “Whatever this is about, however it started—”
“I’ll tell you how it started,” said Bernie. He pointed a finger into the air, and I could see his hands were shaking. “It started when that—woman—showed up this afternoon. God, she’s got to be the prettiest girl I’ve seen in ages. And I just got to thinking, what would it be like to bed someone like her? Just for a single night, even. But of course, when I made the mistake of sharing how I felt at dinner, every single one of you mocked me. ‘That idiot Bernie thinks he has a chance with a lady! Bernie has a crush on a girl, so he’ll probably end up in prison!’ Hilarious!”
Chuck lowered his hands, looking simultaneously confused and full of pity.
“Not one of you,” said Bernie, “stood up and said, ‘You know what? Bernie’s not a great guy, and yeah, he’s kind of dorky and awkward-looking, but he could totally bang a girl if he wanted to.’ The thought never even crossed your mind because it’s already a given that our new friend will end up in Carson’s bed, or Jake’s, or Zack’s. Hell, she could end up in Chuck’s bed if he made the effort. But the one thing that will never happen, because it could never, ever happen, is that she might choose to sleep with me. No, not Bernie. Awkward, repulsive, nerdy, woman-repelling, hunchbacked Bernie!”
This was such an astonishing outpouring of resentment and fury that for a long time after it ended, we stood there in silence. No one seemed to know how to respond, not even Chuck. Carson looked completely dumbfounded, while Jake sighed and shook his head, his eyes misting over.