and took Cecilia’s luggage, not quite being able to conceal their surprise that a black-woman-not-following-her-colonel-husband was to occupy the VIP guest house.
There was a living room, with flowers on all the tables, and a dining room, set for dinner for one, and with a bottle of champagne in a cooler.
“That your idea or Colonel Supo’s?” Cecilia asked.
“The champagne is my idea,” he said. “A little thank-you for not caving in to your boss when Willard was showing his a—ignorance. ”
“His ass, you mean,” she said. “My, you do talk dirty, don’t you, Major?”
“I try not to around you,” he said. “You got something you want to do here, powder your nose or something? The houseboys will take care of your luggage. I got SFC Jensen and Jose Whatsisname waiting for you, and it’s going to be dark soon.”
“Yes, thank you, I would like to powder my nose,” she said.
“Have you worked for Major Lunsford long, Sergeant?” she asked of the massive Green Beret from Chicago in the Congolese captain’s uniform. “Before you came to the Congo, I mean?”
It was a routine question, intended to put him at ease.
“Oh, yes, ma’am,” he said. “I was Father’s medic on half a dozen excursions into Cambodia.”
“I wasn’t aware we had troops in Cambodia,” she said.
“Not troops,” he corrected her. “Special Forces A Teams,” and then he caught her meaning. “You told me she was the new head spook,” he challenged Lunsford.
“As indeed she is,” Lunsford said. “I told Jensen, Miss Taylor, that you had all the appropriate security clearances.”
“I made a couple of excursions with Lieutenant Craig, too,” Jensen said. “When he was an enlisted swine.”
Cecilia realized she couldn’t think of a response to that, so she changed the subject.
“You’re a medic?” she asked. Hearing that this enormous man who looked as if he could pull arms off at the shoulders was a medic had genuinely surprised her.
“I can do anything but open the cranial cavity,” Jensen said matter-of-factly. “When I get my twenty in, I’m going to be a male nurse.”
“We talked about that,” Lunsford said. “You’re going to medical school and be a doctor, Doc.”
“Father thinks I’m a lot smarter than I am, ma’am,” SFC Jensen said.
Conclusion to be drawn, Cecilia thought: Major Lunsford has earned the respect and admiration of his subordinates, and Major Lunsford pays genuine attention to the concerns of his subordinates, not just lip service. There is more to him than he shows the world.
It became obvious in the next fifteen minutes that, in addition to being able to perform any medical procedure with the exception of opening the cranial cavity, SFC Doc Jensen was a soldier-type soldier.
There were Congolese soldiers standing in front of the vehicles Charley Willard had been unwilling to part with. They came to attention when they saw Jensen coming.
She examined the vehicles casually.
“They seem to be in good shape, Doc,” she said.
“You should have seen them when I got here,” he said. “They were really in shi—bad shape. Hoare’s ass—mercenaries either didn’t know to maintain a vehicle, or didn’t care.”
Jose Whatsisname, whose name turned out to be Elias Sanchez, was, so to speak, at the other end of the social spectrum. He— like many of the other B-26 and T-28 pilots—had been an officer in the pre-Castro Cuban Air Force.
He was now wearing the uniform of a Congolese lieutenant colonel. He was, Cecilia decided, of mixed blood. Like herself, he had long hair, and he was almost as dark as she was. Not as dark as Lunsford or Doc Jensen, but dark.
And it was obvious that he was torn between relief at being out from under Charley Willard’s orders and deep Latin macho concern at now being under the orders of a woman. The being-under-her -orders part bothered him, not the woman. He lost no time as he showed her his flight line, before turning on a warm smile and hoping that she would be free to join him for dinner at the officers’ mess.
“Well, I’m sorry, but Colonel Dahdi and I already have plans,” she said.
“Good try, Jose,” Father said.
Their final stop was the hangar in which Major Anderson had seen the flat-black L-19 and what he mistakenly thought were Congolese working on it. There she met Major Darrell J. Smythe and the three suddenly-recruited-from-Fort-Rucker aircraft mechanics. Smythe, Lunsford told her, was going to provide what they called “radio cover” for the outposts to be established at Luluabourg, flying over them on a staggered schedule to receive the intelligence gathered by