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Willow Chamberlin was just starting her second cup of strong, fragrant Ethiopian coffee at her office desk when there was a ‘ding’ from her laptop. She was wading through a pile of papers about the C-41 that would be landing later today at the Bahir Dar airport outside of town.
“Hey,” Dev called from the door, sticking her head in, “I think I’ve got final arrangement with General Hakym’s men to guard all this hardware coming in on that C-41 this afternoon.”
“That’s good news. Come on in,” Willow said, making a gesture for her to sit down in front of her badly scratched wooden desk. The office was small and she had a fan up hanging in one corner, sending a breeze throughout it. Air conditioning in her condo was always questionable. Some days, the electricity coming into the city was strong and constant. Other days? No so much so. It meant anything needing electric didn’t work. For her two-bedroom condo on the fourth floor, the place became sticky with humidity because Lake Tana’s shore was just outside the building’s doors.
Dev was wearing shorts that fell halfway down her long, curved thighs, a sleeveless gray athlete shirt and no bra. She was barefoot as she came in, a sheaf of papers in her left hand. When they didn’t have to fly out or otherwise leave the building, both of them chose Americanized outer wear, instead of covering up their arms and legs like Ethiopian women did. They could dress like this inside but when out, they too, covered up by wearing long pants and long-sleeved cotton shirts. No sense in bringing unwanted attention to themselves. Dev had piled her shoulder-length curly brown hair up into a loose topknot, held in place by two dark-green plastic combs. The high humidity always curled her fractious hair into a mind and shape of its own.
Opening her laptop, Willow looked down, eyes narrowing. The ding had been a folder arriving from Delos HQ. Now what? It wasn’t like they hadn’t had enough to do the last month, getting prepared for the massive supply build-up coming in on that C-41 later today. She and Dev had worked tirelessly with General Hakym’s people to firstly find a warehouse big enough to put all the construction supplies and equipment in. And secondly, to arrange for a twenty-four-hour security detail on it. Because if there was none, Willow knew the poor of this city would sneak like thieves in the night into the warehouse and steal it empty. What they couldn’t carry? They’d find a way to push or drag it out of the warehouse. No, nothing was safe from the poverty-stricken who would turn around and sell it all. And that money would mean survival, food in the mouths of their starving families.
Opening the laptop, she muttered, “Got a new file from HQ,” and her brows dropped. “I need this like a hole in the head…”
“Ugh, not another one!” Dev protested, setting her papers on the edge of Willow’s desk. “What does Wyatt Lockwood want us to do NOW? Clone ourselves? Doesn’t he realize we’re working at lightspeed to get this damned thing in place before that C-41’s arrival? Maybe Shield Security should send us two more pilots and a second Otter, so we can get some rest?”
“My, my, you ARE testy this morning,” Willow teased, throwing her a careless grin. “I just made a pot of coffee. Maybe you need a second or third cup? Hmmmmm?”
Grumpily, Dev said “Good idea. Actually, I’ve been up since 0400 working on this shit. This will be my SIXTH cup of coffee.” She looked down at her watch. “And it’s only 0800.” It sounded almost like a whine.
Snickering, Willow said, “Poor baby. Suck it up, Mitchell.” She hit the key that would open the encrypted file as Dev muttered a “fuck you” and left the room, heading for the small kitchen. Willow loved her copilot and gave her an evil laugh. The past year they’d worked together had been one of harmony, military ways of living, thinking, and seeing the world in the same way, which had made their teamwork flawless. They were a good pilot-copilot combo, and she appreciated Dev. Shield Security, their employer, paid them very well for their undercover jobs, so she could only bitch so much.
Even though Dev looked like a modern-day Barbie doll, which she just hated being called, Willow thought her tall, languid, sable-haired, blue-eyed copilot really did match the Barbie ideal of beauty. Dev was extremely attractive and always drew men’s attention in a heartbeat. But Dev, like herself, came from bad marriage experiences and neither of them were much interested in the opposite sex right now. Dev had the same low opinion of men as her: good for sex, but little else. Yep, she could identify with that take-no-prisoners attitude. And most men in Ethiopia were devoutly Orthodox or Coptic Christians. And they had the tight reins of those doctrines firmly around women, treating them with bias and no respect. Seeing them as second-class citizens, at best. But it was still better than in the Sudan, Willow thought, where the Sharia Law of the Muslims reduced women to beings of lesser importance than a donkey or a cow. At least here in Ethiopia, they only had to cover up their arms and legs and didn’t have to wear a scarf on their head or a veil across their face. She was glad that the influence of the Muslim religion was minor in this country.
Her eyes widened as she read the terse email from Wyatt Lockwood, head of Mission Planning for Artemis, the in-house Delos security agency.
“Willow, please read the list of security and construction people who will arrive seven days from receipt of this file. The biggest hurdle to jump here, is with you. Your ex-husband, Shep Porter, has agreed to head up this multi-construction assignment. And he knows that you are there and that you two will be working with one another all the time. The only potential fly in the ointment is from your end. I need to know if you can work with him or not? Because if you can’t, I’ll assign another civil engineer to this project. Call me on the sat phone after you’ve read through this file. I need to know your decision. Happy trails, pardner, Wyatt.”
Dev came back with a fresh cup of coffee in hand. “My, you are looking pissed off all of a sudden,” she said, sitting down opposite Willow.
“I can’t believe this,” Willow muttered, looking up at her friend. She turned the laptop around, angling the screen so Dev could read Wyatt’s unencrypted email. Willow watched her fine, thin eyebrows dip and her lips crease to a thin line.
“You’re friggin’ kidding me!” Dev looked up; eyes huge with disbelief. “Your EX is coming HERE? And you have to work with him? What kind of sick joke is this, Willow?” and she jabbed her finger at the screen.
“Don’t kill my laptop,” Willow muttered in warning, pulling it away from her and turning it back around.
“Seriously?” Dev said, sipping the hot coffee. “Shep Porter is coming HERE? Mr. Patriarchy himself? Doesn’t like treating any woman with respect and the fact she is equal—or better than him? Ugh!”
Sitting back in the squeaky plastic chair, arms across her breasts, Willow scowled at the laptop screen. “I never expected anything like this… it’s a shock.”
“But you DO stay in touch with him,” Dev accused.
“Very, very infrequently,” Willow defended. “And it’s certainly not personal stuff. He doesn’t even know that I went to work with Shield Security in Virginia since we divorced.”
Dev gave her a one-eyebrow-raised look. She pushed hair away from her temple. “It’s been three years, Willow. And you two still exchange emails from time to time. What does that say? Doesn’t look very divorced-like, if you ask me.”
Willow grimaced. “I don’t know. He’s not a bad person, Dev. He’s got this shitty patriarchy societal thing that brainwashed him and every other kid. He has to work through it, and I’m not interested in being his whipping post in order to do so. He’s just not right for me, is all.” She let out a sigh. “And he’s a damn good civil engineer. I knew he worked for Delos undercover, but never in a thousand years did I think he’d ever take an assignment where he knew I’d be.”
Grumbling, which was Dev’s second nature, she muttered, “I smell a dead fish here.”
Lips curving faintly, Willow tipped her head back, looking up at the white stucco ceiling, sweat running down her ribcage. She hated the office on days when the air conditioning labored. It was like a sweat box in the room. “I don’t. Wyatt is giving me full authority to pull the plug on him being assigned to this gig.”
“Ditch him. I’ve seen very few patriarchal males EVER learn to become matriarchal and treat us like respected equals. Does a leopard ever change his spots?”
Willow heard the flatness in Dev’s husky voice. “You know? For being a trash hauler in the Air Force, flying those ugly looking C-130s, you really got a take-no-prisoners combat jet pilot attitude,” and she gave her friend a feral smile. Dev wrinkled her nose, consuming more coffee.
“I’m a Type-A just like you, Chamberlin. And I hauled my C-130 around with the best of them. Got shot at many, many times spiraling into and out of Bagram. Not to mention, you taking those bastards out on the ground. You flew high in the sky, but I was well within range of our enemy’s weapons when I was spiraling in and out of Bagram. Plenty of holes in the fuselage.”
“Touché’,” Willow conceded. She knew Dev had only just missed out on being assigned to F-16 training by a bare two lousy points. In her opinion, the Air Force fighter command should have taken her, but she often thought that a woman’s looks had subtle, unconscious effects on the decision-making processes with the male officers and commanders who ran the pilot training programs. Dev looked fragile and had ‘help me’ written all over her. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Dev needed protection like a shark in its own environment needed anything but food, and Willow grinned a little at that sudden epiphany. Dev was, by nature, a combat jet pilot, pure and simple, which is why they probably got along so well together in the cockpit. Balls to the wall or get the hell outta their way!
“Well?” Dev goaded. “What are you going to decide? Are you willing to dip back into that vat of acid you and Porter swam around in before you wisely ditched one another?”
