Mary English was a toddler.
“Got no idea what that was all about,” he said in answer to her question. “Some clan feud. Maybe a few thugs from Mogadishu out for a Sunday drive in their Technicals. Got bored, decided to raise a little hell.”
“Abdul cheated Abdullah on a business deal, that’s my guess,” Tony said. “Or Abdullah cheated Abdul. Or Abdul caught Abdullah making eyes at one of his three hundred sheilas. Or was it Abdullah’s sheilas Abdul was making eyes at? Crazy Somali bastards.”
He motioned at the pockmarked windshield, and because the unsteadiness in his hand was obvious, Dare could not help but observe the difference between his copilot’s reaction to the experience and Mary’s. Tony had done damned well, and he made the observation without judgment, though the mere making of it might have been a kind of judgment in itself.
“So you guys don’t think it was us they were after?” Mary asked.
“Ever roll a ball in front of a cat and see what it does?” Dare said. “One of those firefights gets to goin’, and they’ll shoot at anything that moves just ’cause it’s movin’, and we were the biggest thing in motion out there. Four legs and claws, two legs with a gun, a predator is a predator.”
A puzzled frown from Mary, as if she wasn’t sure what to think about this bleak assessment of the human animal. She changed the subject slightly, complimenting him on his flying. Pretty fancy work, the way he’d cleared the dunes, then dropped down below them.
“Defilade, it’s called,” Dare explained, surprised to discover that he enjoyed being flattered by her. “Learned it contour flyin’ in Laos. Clip the treetops, put a ridge, a hill, anything you can between you and the bad guys.”
“Bum one?” She gestured at his cigarette.
“Didn’t know you smoked.”
“I decided just this second to say yes to nicotine.”
“After today I’ll bet you’re gonna sign up for another hitch of milk-run airdrops.”
He turned partway around to give her a light. She held the cigarette awkwardly between puckered lips, blew out the smoke without inhaling, her mouth a perfect little O.
“Not likely. Not bloody likely, as Tony would say. If I wanted to play it safe, I would have stayed in Canada, flying sportsmen to wilderness lodges.”
“Aw hell, don’t tell me y’all came here for the adventure.”
“Sure. Partly. Mostly it’s the money. I can make three times what I could back home.”
“That’s a whole lot better. I trust folks who do things for the money. “
“And we’ll be making a pile in less than a month,” Tony said, referring to the six-month contract Dare had signed recently to fly Laurent Kabila and his people in the Congo. “Can’t come soon enough, far as I’m concerned.”
“Yup, African Charter Services is gonna be the official airline of the Congolese rebels.”
“The Congo’s pretty dicey,” Mary said.
“Right. Not like good old safe Somalia.”
Dare conducted a brief debate with himself. Had she brought them bad luck or good this morning? Bad they had been shot at, good they hadn’t been hit. Maybe the god of fortune had been neutral about her presence. He’d started the argument because he was considering hiring her. She and Tony could fly the G1 on some runs, giving him a break. Mary’s nerves were certainly right for working the Congo. That left three things to be resolved: her flying abilities, his ability to afford her, and his troubling attraction to her, which could, under the right circumstances, undermine his loyalty to his copilot and lead him to do something he would regret. Taking the last problem first, he recalled that he had worked closely with a woman only once in his career, the year he flew deliveries for Federal Express. His first officer, Sally McCabe, had been smart, fairly good-looking, and single, but he discovered that the closeness of their association and the routine practicalities of flying a 727 together dissolved her feminine mystery, which had the same effect on his romantic impulses as he hoped khat did on the Somalis’ sex drive. Sally became one of the boys in a female body. It could go the same way with Mary; of course it also could go the other way; was it worth the risk?
Tabling that question for the moment, he calculated that he could pay her seven thousand a month for the six months. It was only a bite out of the seven hundred thousand he figured to gross. Then he decided to test her skills. He took