More Than Paradise Part 11

"No." Ash's mouth twitched. "Maybe just a little. Jesus, Charlotte.

Chill. So, we're attracted. Big deal. We're two adults. No one can make us do anything we don't want to do."

Charlotte wished she'd kept her mouth shut. Ash obviously had an easy-come, easy-go approach that meant none of this was an issue for her. And maybe she had a point. Maybe Charlotte was taking it all way too seriously.

* 100 *

Angry that she'd revealed herself more than she wanted to, she said, "I'm glad you see things that way. I had a different impression that night in my hotel room, but perhaps I misunderstood."

"What do you want me to say-that I desired you and if you'd felt the same way, we'd have spent the night together? What does it matter now? We're here. We dodged that bullet, and if you're worried that I'm going to hit on you when you're supposed to be looking at spores or whatever, don't be. You're not my type."

A hot little spear of anger embedded itself in Charlotte's chest, constricting her breathing. "Really? What is your type?"

She could have kicked herself for asking. What did she care? She wished Ash wouldn't even answer, but that was too much to hope for.

After chewing it over brie y, she replied, "I was in Boston a month ago and I picked up two women. They weren't brain surgeons but the three of us had some fun. So, I guess that's my type. Dumb blondes who want to party."

"The three of you?" Charlotte caught a ash of Dani Bush. Then she thought about Dani's lover banging on the bathroom door that sordid night in Tamsin's bedroom. She'd called a name. At the time Charlotte hadn't paid much attention, but it came back to her now with a sickening thud. Ashley.

Ash met her eyes un inchingly. "I appreciate variety."

Charlotte's voice froze in her throat. There was something very deliberate in the way Ash was telling her about this threesome. Surely not. The coincidence was completely improbable.

Ash seemed to read something into her silence. Without in ection, she said, "Was it you that night, throwing Dani out of the house?"

Charlotte's blood swamped her eardrums, drowning out the sound of the rain and the hum of voices elsewhere in the hangar. Ash had slept with that horrible little s.l.u.t and her girlfriend?

"You were the Ashley in the bathroom?" she asked numbly.

"Yep."

As Charlotte tried to gather herself, one of the security guards ran across the wet tarmac and dropped a backpack at Ash's feet.

"This what you were waiting for, Major?"

"Yes, thanks, Tanner. Are you all set?"

"Fully loaded and ready to roll."

"I'll change and be with you in ve."

The guard saluted her and jogged back to the helicopter.

* 101 *

Charlotte blinked, momentarily distracted by the interruption.

Since when did hired security staff get to dignify their work with military rank and salutes? "Major?" she queried sarcastically.

Ignoring her, Ash opened the pack and extracted a small pile of neatly folded clothing. Paying no attention to the men sheltering in the hangar, she stripped off her shirt and dropped it onto the chair next to Charlotte. Unable to stop herself, Charlotte stared at the beautifully formed body in front of her. Ash wore a black tank that made her shoulders seem even more muscular, if that were possible. She wasn't weirdly bulky, just powerfully built and carrying no excess.

As she pulled on a clean shirt, the play of muscles across her chest and belly was visible through the skintight tank, a glimpse of her strength that made Charlotte's mouth dry. She had a tattoo on one shoulder, a naturalistic design in dark jade. It looked like a rambling creeper, tendrils creeping toward her neck and down her arm. In the center was a small white ower with an inscription scrolling on either side along the eshy vine. Charlotte couldn't make out the wording.

"Major was my rank in the military," Ash replied, b.u.t.toning her shirt before tucking it into her loose cargo pants.

Charlotte didn't respond. Her mind relentlessly gnawed on the revelation about Dani. There was so much she wanted to ask, but she couldn't bear to show how disturbed she felt. Shocked, she stared down at the wet, cracked concrete around her feet. Of all the emotions jangling in the chambers of her mind, the noisiest was one she had never expected to feel again as long as she lived. Naked, crushing jealousy.

* 102 *

CHAPTER NINE.

As the Huey swooped over the rain-drenched emerald vegetation en route to Kwerba, Ash gazed out the side and told herself she had done the right thing. She didn't need a ha.s.sle and once Charlotte understood the kind of person she was, any naive romantic delusions she might be harboring would evaporate.

Women like Charlotte were not cut out for casual relationships, and that was the only kind Ash could offer. If they were fool enough to fall into bed with one another out of s.e.xual curiosity, it would only end in tears. They could kid themselves that they were just going to have a good time and move on, but they would both be ghting their instincts.

Ash already knew she had some kind of deluded fantasy going on about Charlotte, and the loss of Emma would only make her thinking even more screwed up. And Charlotte apparently thought if she admitted to the attraction and a.n.a.lyzed her inconvenient feelings to death, she could make them disappear. Ash had gured she could save both of them some grief by disillusioning her up front.

By now Charlotte probably detested her. She was a nice, well-brought-up middle-cla.s.s woman with an obvious conservative streak.

In matters of love and s.e.x, things were black and white for her, Ash guessed. Gray was never okay. She would need to feel comfortable, even if it meant being bored. The Charlottes of this world chose safe partners who wouldn't challenge their beliefs or their understanding of themselves. They made rules and expected the people they loved to follow them.

Ash was not the type to get with the program and she'd made that * 103 *

very clear. Her admission about the threesome would cement Charlotte's poor opinion of her, and that was ne. Ash was happy to be written off as an uncouth, womanizing drunk if it meant Charlotte would keep her distance. She was not in the mood to resist temptation because it was the right thing to do. Right now she wanted to lose herself and not have to think about her life, her grief, and the decisions she needed to make.

And in this frame of mind, she was going to be stuck in a tent for the next six nights with a woman who tempted her for reasons she could not fully fathom.

Ash was puzzled that she still felt this way. Normally Charlotte's weird control-freak behavior back in the hangar would have sent her running in the opposite direction and not looking back. Instead she found herself strangely thrilled that Charlotte had admitted an attraction to her, and the fact that she seemed quite undone by it only made Ash want to kiss her. Then again, she had always chased unattainable women.

The difference now was that she was going to do her best to stay away from this one.

Ash allowed herself a grin, imagining how Charlotte was going to react to the news of their sleeping arrangements when she reached Kwerba. Obviously no one had bothered to tell her that, as the only two women on this venture, she and Ash would be sharing accommodations.

The men would be sleeping four or six to a tent, and Miles Hogan had made it clear that Charlotte would have to be housed and guarded separately. It went without saying that a woman was preferred for that task. Tubby had been emphatic. Ash had to work the a.s.signment for various reasons and that was one of them. She would just have to live with it until one of Nagle's few other female employees returned from her current gig on an expat wives' Coral Sea cruise. Some people had all the luck.

There was an alternative for tonight, Ash re ected. They would be in Kwerba and could sleep side by side on a mat inside a tribesman's hut, along with the rest of his family and any animals they kept, probably a pig or two. Germ-o-rama, no question about it. But she would offer.

"How's the forecast, boss?" Klaus asked as the Fojas started to occupy most of their window.

"Tomorrow morning is supposed to be clear," Ash said.

"So we're taking her into that lake bed?"

"It's the only way we can access the target zone."

* 104 *

Klaus glanced sideways. His bony, earnest face was anxious.

"We're cleared to put her down?"

"Six permits, no less."

Dealing with the Indonesians was never easy. They didn't welcome outsiders ying into remote areas of West Papua, and permits had to be obtained from both government and the police. Ash wondered how much the expedition organizers had laid out in bribes to cut through the red tape. She knew Tubby had spent at least fty thousand making sure the local military commanders wouldn't get in their faces, regardless of anything their government guaranteed. Those guys shot rst and apologized later.

Ash looked back over her shoulder at the two NGD guards on this shuttle. She didn't know them. Both were leathernecks, according to Tubby, honorably discharged marines looking for a second income stream that didn't involve private contracting in Iraq. The other two members of the four-man detail were back at the hangar with the rest of the scientists. Ash knew one by sight and had worked with the other, a former CIA operative nicknamed Nitro, supposedly because he left nothing standing when a situation called for extreme measures.

She was surprised that Tubby was wasting one of his most credentialed snake-eaters on a local cakewalk like the Foja expedition.

The last she'd heard, Nitro was pulling serious money in Azerbaijan on one of their BP contracts. The oil giant hired a private army of security contractors to ensure there would be no disruption to its Caspian Sea oil pumping, and Tubby had been making money hand over st there since the democratic government was overthrown back in 1993. BP liked to distance itself from that privately funded coup, but there wasn't really any question who bene ted. BP had promptly signed a "deal of the century" with the new regime.

Ash had thought about working that beat but she didn't like the political climate. Tubby's company was competing with the US contractor, Blackwater, so they couldn't be picky about a.s.signments.

Ash was aware of a couple wet teams in the region, hired to eliminate troublemakers. Nitro ran one of them.

Curious, Ash asked Klaus, "What's our friend Nitro doing down here?"

"There's some heat on him over that Armenian journalist. The one shot in the demonstration."

* 105 *

"Was that us?" Ash was disgusted. Taking out the occasional Chechen terrorist was one thing, but killing a woman whose only crime was criticizing a corrupt dictatorship? She had a bad taste in her mouth.

"No, Tubby says he turned it down." Klaus sounded like a believer.

"So why the heat?"

"There's a bid happening and all the PMCs are trying to lock each other out, so someone's blaming us."

"Another Ken Saro-Wiwa," Ash mused aloud.

Sh.e.l.l Oil was still trying to live that one down ten years later.

As if they could pretend they had nothing to do with a bogus trial and execution of their most powerful critic in Nigeria. They bankrolled the puppet regime that had murdered him.

"Someone published Nitro's mug shot in the Baku Sun," Klaus said.

"You're kidding me." An unspoken accord existed between the various private military companies that they wouldn't knowingly endanger any contractor's life. "So he's blown? That's dirty."

"Yeah. He shaved his beard and got the h.e.l.l out of there," Klaus said. "Brought the wife and kids, too."

"No s.h.i.t." Ash supposed Tubby had tossed him this a.s.signment as a consolation prize, a few weeks on easy street with a nice paycheck.

"You still thinking about that Aegis offer?"

"Every time I say no, they increase the salary."

"What's the going rate for Baghdad now?"

"For me, fteen a month for the Green Zone. More if I take on increased hazard. Tempted?"

"Maybe." Ash had been thinking about it since the funeral. She'd had a plan in the back of her mind for the past few years, but all bets were off now and that was probably a dangerous thing. She could see how it would be possible to let the years slip by as Tubby had, to build nothing else in her life worth a d.a.m.n.

She stared out at the bank of cloud suspended over the ranges. "I need to get out before I have nothing to get out for."

"I hear you." Klaus took the chopper down under ve hundred feet as they drew closer to their destination. "Three more years and I can pay cash for my farm. New Zealand, that's a good place for South Africans. And the land. You never saw anything like it." He gave a * 106 *

low whistle and behind his wire-rimmed specs, his hazel eyes were suddenly faraway. "Organic farming. That's the way of the future. The worse the pollution gets, the more people pay for natural food."

As he rambled on, Ash heard a homesick Afrikaaner whose family had been thrown off their land. Klaus was one of a generation of displaced young white South African men who had become soldiers of fortune, the elite of an emerging global phenomenon, battle hardened in the campaigns of Angola, Sierra Leone, and the Congo. No one called them mercenaries these days. They were security contractors who worked for global risk management organizations a.k.a. private military companies or PMCs. They worked and fought alongside regular military forces in con icts that, since Iraq, were increasingly privatized.

There were 20,000 contractors in the Middle East. As well as carrying out regular security operations, they were active in the shadowy terrain of a.s.sa.s.sinations, intimidation, and dirty tactics, enabling honorable men to claim deniability. When they were killed by the enemy no one added their names to rosters of fallen heroes. Their families didn't get a ag. They did not die in the line of duty. But they didn't die for a lie, either.

Maybe a change of scenery would be good for her, Ash thought.

She could keep her place in Madang and make sure she was home for the harvest each year. Her mind drifted, as it did all the time, insisting on sliding back to Emma as she died. Her chest rising and falling in diminishing increments, her pointed little face serene in the long good night. Around her, the machines fell still at last, unblinking mechanical angels witnessing her retreat from life. The frail hand in Ash's grew cold. The eyelashes uttered their promise no more.

"You got a lot of farm girls there. They know how to work." Klaus was still visualizing his sunny antipodean future. "I'll get married. Have some kids. A farm is a good life for kids."

Ash said, "Sounds like a plan." She stared down into the relentless cascade of brilliant green beneath them, watching for their con ned landing spot.

"How about you?" he asked. "What are you going to do?"

"Go somewhere clean and dry with no mosquitoes."

He laughed. "Hey, no mosquitoes in Iraq." He nosed down toward a small lake.

Ash checked their bearings. "You'll see a clearing beyond some thatched roofs."

* 107 *

Klaus swooped low. "That's some rainforest."

"Nothing like it on earth except for the Amazon," Ash said. "You could lose a city in there and never see it again."

"Heart of darkness," Klaus muttered.

Ash pointed three o'clock where it seemed a hole was torn in the lush, unending tapestry. "Put her down there. Tight and sweet."

Klaus grinned and called over his shoulder to their pa.s.sengers.