Bombshell - Jane Harvey-Berrick Read online

  “Her? She won’t last five minutes.”

  How rude!

  Irritated, I was also surprised by his English accent—I’d expected him to be American like Clay and Zada. If pushed, I’d say he was working class, probably Home Counties. That Estuary accent was everywhere these days. Not that I cared two hoots, but I knew that as soon as I opened my mouth I’d confirm everything he already thought about me just from seeing me in my coral-pink salopettes.

  ‘It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him.’ George Bernard Shaw put that line in his play Pygmalion over a hundred years ago, but it still held true today. I wondered if it was the same in America. Perhaps.

  Not that I despised James for his accent or upbringing, but I was pretty sure from his surly demeanour that he wouldn’t return the favour.

  “Dude, can you stop being an asshole for a whole minute and say hello to the lady?” Clay frowned. “She’s travelled a long way to work with us.”

  Grudgingly, the man studied me slowly, then held out a dirty hand, the nails black with grime, his expression challenging.

  I shook his hand gingerly, forcing myself not to reach for a tissue.

  “Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Spears,” I trilled, my cut-glass accent ensuring that I would meet his low expectations.

  “Likewise, Ms. Forsythe,” he said.

  His voice was flat and unemotional, yet somehow still imbued with sarcasm.

  Clay smiled, his eyes darting between us.

  “Go make your report, James. Show Harry where we file the electronic copy and the hard copy. She’s going to be helping us organize the office a little better. May as well start now. Then both of you come on in to supper. Stew again—yum yum yum!”

  He slapped James on the shoulder, then we both watched silently as Clay strode away sucking on his lollipop, calling greetings to a group of dishevelled women who must have been with James out on Task, as I’d learned it was called.

  They looked as tired and dirty as him. I couldn’t begin to imagine what their work was like. I had a lot to learn.

  Without speaking, James turned on his heel and I tiptoed after him, picking my way through the mud, back to the office where I’d just come from. He stopped at a standpipe that had a bucket next to it, and proceeded to wash his hands in the freezing water, breaking the ice first.

  It made me shiver just looking at him.

  “Are you going to watch me clean under my fingernails?” he asked without looking up.

  I jumped, surprised that he’d addressed me directly.

  “Yes, it’s fascinating,” I chirped, determined to slay him with smiles.

  He grunted, wiped his hands on his muddy trousers then opened the office door. I was surprised and pleased when he held it open for me.

  “Thank you, James.”

  He didn’t respond, but I hadn’t expected him to.

  In the office, he shrugged off his heavy coat and tugged off the muddy scarf that he’d been wearing.

  His hair was shaved to almost nothing—more than military short, only a millimetre of hair covered his head like a pelt. Not many men could have carried off the look without seeming like a thug, but to my irritation, he was just handsome.

  I sat quietly, gazing around the dusty office while he typed up his report with two fingers. There was a huge map on the wall covered in coloured pins. I looked closer and realized that it was a map of landmines in the area—some cleared, some still to make safe. A shiver ran through me and my eyes flicked to James.

  He might be rough around the edges, but he saved lives. And me? For all my polish, for all my expensive education, I was useless. There was no point to me.

  Sighing, I turned to the filing cabinets. This morning, Clay had shown me where the personnel records were kept, but it was a confusing mess because some were in English and others were in Armenian. At least I think that was the language. Clay said some of the locals also spoke Azeri. Either way, to me it was an impenetrable mass of squiggles.

  I realized that James was no longer typing, so I spun my secretarial chair around to look at him.

  His lips were pressed together in a thin line as if my mere presence annoyed him.

  “Finished?” I asked brightly.

  “This report gets emailed to head office and copied to the local government liaison, then saved into the day log here,” and he pointed at a folder on the screen helpfully entitled ‘Day Log’. “You print off a hard copy and file it.”

  I watched carefully as the ancient printer whirled and whined, then finally spat out two sheets of paper.

  James clipped them together, pushed the document into the cardboard folder and slapped it onto his desk.

  He scowled again and each word he spoke sounded like it had been yanked out of him.

  “The power fails here regularly. There’s a backup generator, but we can’t always get the oil to run it, so it’s crucial that each time you create or alter a document, you save it to this flashdrive,” and he pointed at a shallow dish containing a plastic USB stick. “There’s an automatic backup onto tape, but we don’t want to rely on that.” He shrugged. “Old technology.”

  “Why don’t you send it to the iCloud?” I asked, trying to be helpful.

  “Mountains.”

  “Pardon?”

  I could almost hear him grinding his teeth in irritation at my confusion.

  “We’re surrounded by mountains. There’s no WiFi, no phone signal, only a Sat-phone for emergency comms.”

  “Oh,” I said stupidly, “but you were sending emails?”

  He breathed in deeply then out slowly, and I cringed, recognizing the signs of someone struggling to hold onto their temper.

  “They’re in the Outbox right now. When Clay gets the chance, he takes the laptop down to the village, logs into the UNMAS database and NDMAA, and sends the comms in a batch.”

  “Right, got it. Um, UNMAS? And the other one?”

  He closed his eyes, his nostrils flaring slightly, but when he spoke he was civil and composed.

  “United Nations Mine Action Service and NATO Defense Manpower Audit Authority. We get some funding from the UN, so part of the job is to report back to them. This report,” and he waved the Day Log folder at me, “it says the number and type of mines that we found per 100 metres, the depth we found them at, how we neutralized them, and whether or not it was a nuisance minefield.”

  I blinked at him.

  “This is probably a stupid question, but aren’t all minefields a nuisance?”

  He glanced up at the ceiling as if searching for divine patience. When he finally spoke, it was slowly and clearly.

  “A ‘nuisance’ minefield means that the mines are spaced irregularly—it makes it harder to find them—and significantly more dangerous.”

  “Oh, that makes sense,” I said awkwardly.

  He ignored my comment, and I wondered if I was supposed to be taking notes.

  “UNMAS reports to the Inter-Agency Coordination Group on Mine Action,” he continued. “They need to know which areas we’ve identified and which we’ve cleared.”

  “Okay, another stupid question: why don’t the governments pay for the mines to be cleared?”

  “You’d think, wouldn’t you? Politics, cost,” he sneered. “Four-fifths of all landmine clearance around the world is done by Halo or Mines Advisory Group, and they’re both British charities. We have the expertise.”

  He stood up from the desk so suddenly, I scooted back in my wheeled chair and crashed into the filing cabinets.

  He shot me a look of contempt and strode from the room.

  That just pissed me off.

  I leapt up, rubbing my head where it had bounced against the metal drawers, and raced after him, slipping and sliding the mud.

  “Wait!” I yelled, but he ignored me. “Just wait one bloody minute, will you?!”

  He spun on his heel, his face taut with anger.
<
br />   “What?”

  I slid to a halt, breathing hard.

  “I think we got off on the wrong foot,” I offered breathlessly. “Somehow, I seem to have annoyed you, but since all I’ve done is say ‘hello’ and, you know, breathe, I’m at a loss as to why that might be. Perhaps you could enlighten me?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him.

  For a second, he seemed taken aback, a flicker of surprise in those glacial eyes. Then he shrugged.

  “I’m not treating you differently to anyone else,” he said grudgingly.

  “So you’re just rude and miserable with everyone?”

  He cocked his head on one side, considering my question. Then he nodded curtly.

  “Yeah.”

  He turned and walked away.

  Unbelievable!

  James

  THAT WOMAN WAS annoying. Her questions were keeping me from showering, eating and sleeping—my three current objectives. I’d only closed my eyes for four hours in the last 48, and I was pretty sure I hadn’t slept then either.

  I wasn’t lying when I said I treated everyone the same. Clay put up with my bastard behaviour because he felt sorry for me and I was good at my job; Zada, because she felt sorry for me, because she understood.

  She’d endured an incredible amount of loss in her life already—her brother and then her sister. I sometimes wondered if she put with me for Amira’s sake, because I’d loved her sister and she knew that. We shared the same loss—we understood.

  All the others just ignored it, ignored me, and I was fine with that. I wasn’t here to make friends—I was here to keep Clay away from the dangerous shit and train the teams that followed, to keep them as safe as possible. I was expendable.

  This woman looked more like a socialite than a humanitarian aid worker, and yet she’d been the only person who’d called me on my shit—and within the first thirty minutes of meeting me, too. Pretty impressive. But, like I said, annoying.

  I unlocked my room and grabbed clean clothes, then realized too late that I’d trailed mud over the peeling lino. Swearing under my breath, I walked back to the standpipe to clean my boots then trudged back to the men’s shower block, finally managing to wash off the sweat and dirt of the last few days, wishing the water was hot and plentiful, when the reality was tepid with a two-minute limit for each person.

  My mind replayed the day’s work. That near-miss with Maral had been closer than I liked. I couldn’t seem to make the team realize that threat-triage was not just linear. You had to search upwards, you had to look down, you had to do 360o search. Maybe today would make them aware, at last. I definitely needed to set up more training, but we were always short of time and manpower.

  Shivering in the cold, concrete cubicle, I dressed quickly and tossed my dirty clothes into the empty washing machine. I had 38 minutes for the washing to complete a cycle. I had to be back by then or my kit would mysteriously disappear. I knew it was my co-workers, but I wasn’t sure if it was dislike or poverty that drove them to steal. Probably both. But I couldn’t afford to lose another set of clothes. So I had 38 minutes to eat dinner, then hang up the wet laundry in my room and lock the door before the blissful oblivion of sleep. Or not.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept a solid six hours without the aid of alcohol.

  Dinner was the same stew as always, but this time there were three people sitting at our table when I arrived. I didn’t know why that surprised me—where else would the new woman sit?

  I helped myself to a bowl of stew and slid into an empty seat without speaking. Zada said once that I ate my food like I was angry with it. Whatever that meant.

  I stiffened immediately when she stood up and hugged me.

  “That’s from Maral,” she said, her dark eyes glistening with emotion. “She has five children. She says thank you for saving her life.”

  I patted Zada’s shoulder awkwardly, thankful when she pulled away. Across the room, Maral nodded gravely then stood up and began to clap. The women on her table copied her and soon the whole room was noisy with applause and Yad yelling.

  I hated it. I hated their acknowledgement, their idealization of what I contributed. I was doing my job. No one was hurt. That was enough. This was … too much.

  I buried my head in my food and ignored them all, relieved when the noise died away. I was on edge, waiting for the new woman to ask what I’d done, but she didn’t. Instead, she turned to Clay and Zada.

  “Will it stay this cold for long?” she asked.

  Yes, be British and talk about the weather.

  Grateful for the change of subject, I began to relax, concentrating on shovelling stew and flatbread into my mouth as quickly as possible. I was ravenous, as if the empty days and endless months could be filled with food. They couldn’t. They couldn’t be filled with anything, only obliterated with alcohol.

  But now I’d stopped drinking, my strength was coming back, that much I knew, and the deafening cry to kill myself with whiskey was a little quieter now, a little less demanding.

  “The mountains stay cold all year around,” Clay answered. “And the Task teams will be heading further into them over the next couple of weeks. After that, in the Spring, we’ll be covering land that’s more agricultural further onto the open plains, so it’ll be temperate, mild and foggy—like a British summer, right, James?”

  I grunted, not wanting to be drawn into the conversation.

  “I’ll miss working in the health centre and teaching English at the school,” sighed Zada. “But maybe I can find something to do at our next base.”

  “You will, babe,” Clay said affectionately, placing a kiss on the top of her headscarf. “You always do.”

  I scraped the last piece of bread around my bowl then pushed away from my chair and left the room, feeling the eyes of the new woman burning into my back, her unasked questions hovering in the silence.

  My washing had another twelve minutes, so I squatted on the floor, unseeing as my clothes whirled around in front of me. I was tired, so tired, but something had changed in me today. I could feel it, I just wasn’t sure what it was. Like something had woken up, something I hadn’t known was still alive inside me. I was too tired to work it out, so I watched the clothes spin faster, hypnotizing, my life on the final cycle.

  Clay had told me that he’d stay with the Trust for a couple more years at least, but he and Zada were trying for a baby and when that happened, he’d send her back to the U.S.

  The guy needed his head seeing to if he thought she’d go without him. I didn’t know anything about relationships, but even I could tell him that being apart wasn’t going to work for them. They’d stay together, no matter what. The reminder that Amira hadn’t stayed was a bitter taste in my mouth, seasoned with sadness and silence.

  I hadn’t really known Zada before, except as Amira’s little sister. I didn’t know anything about what she’d been like, her hopes or dreams. I did know that she was thriving out here, loving the challenge of her work, trying to organize medical aid where it was needed, and teaching in the school. I couldn’t imagine her going back to the States alone. But maybe having a kid would change all that. That’s what you did when you loved someone more than yourself—you put them first. At least, that’s what I’d been told.

  The washing machine beeped at me, and I pulled out an armful of damp clothes that cooled quickly in the frigid air, then walked back to my room, footsteps dragging with tiredness.

  Tomorrow was another day.

  Unfortunately.

  Arabella

  I FOLLOWED JAMES’S sudden departure with astonished eyes.

  “Is he always so…”

  “Sad?” Zada finished.

  I’d actually wanted to say ‘rude’ but had been searching for a more diplomatic alternative. What Zada said surprised me: I wasn’t getting sad vibes from him. Resentment, yes. Bitterness, definitely. Rage, hell yeah.

  Even though I should have known better than
to ask, my curiosity was piqued.

  “Why’s he sad?” I asked.

  Zada sighed, meeting my curious gaze.

  “It’s a long story,” she said.

  “It’s James’s story, babe,” Clay added, glancing across at his wife.

  “It’s our story, too,” she chided gently.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” he agreed with a long sigh, wistfulness in his expression as he stared at the door James had just passed through.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” I lied.

  “The short answer is that James was in love with my sister,” Zada said quietly. “Her name was Amira. She was an ER nurse. She’s why I decided to go into nursing. She was seven years older than me and I always looked up to her.” She paused, her eyes glassy with tears. “She met James when they were working together but…” Zada blinked hard, taking a deep breath as Clay held her hand. “Amira died 18 months ago and ever since then James has been…” She searched for a word, then gave a small shrug. “Broken.”

  Clay leaned towards me, his eyes full of emotion.

  “I know he comes across as an asshole, but the man’s been through a lot. I’m hoping that being out here, working, helping, that he can … I don’t know … find himself again.” He looked at his wife, and his eyes were full of love. “Amira wouldn’t have wanted this … emptiness … for him.”

  They shared a moment, and once again, I felt like an outsider.

  “So, if you could just cut him some slack,” Clay finished. “Plus, my brother is good at his job. He saved my life.”

  My eyebrows flew upwards.

  “He did? Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  Clay rolled up his trouser leg to reveal a prosthetic limb.

  “I’ve got this as a souvenir, but without him, I would have been killed.”

  I was utterly taken aback.

  “I had no idea! You walk really well.”

  I felt my cheeks redden. Was that the wrong thing to say?

  Clay didn’t seem offended; he simply nodded.

  “Yeah, well, I had to learn again, but this gal here,” and he smiled at his wife, “this woman pushed me hard, making me keep trying when I felt like giving up. You’re a total drill sergeant, babe.”