Soldier's Daughters (30 page)

She headed for a nearby Land Rover and unclipped the bonnet. She thought she’d have a quick check of the air filters and the oil level to make sure that the most superficial level of maintenance was as it should be. And it had better be, she thought, because if it wasn’t… Sheesh, the amount of work just to bring this lot up to snuff didn’t bear contemplating.

She was about to duck under the bonnet and get her hands dirty when she saw Luke appear from behind another vehicle, a few dozen yards away. His T-shirt was moulded to his tanned body, showing off muscles an athlete would be proud of. He had no right, she thought, to look that buff and yet be so utterly unapproachable. Covertly she studied him as he stared at the horizon with the bluest of blue eyes that contrasted with his gorgeous brown skin. Sam found herself wondering if he had any white bits. No, stop. And for once he was looking content, not brooding or dissatisfied, no scowl or frown, and for some reason Sam was glad. He often seemed troubled; maybe being in out here in this amazing country suited him. And was it the blinding sunlight that made the planes on his face so obvious? The angle of his jaw, his cheekbones… He was wiping his hands on his overalls, hands which she noticed were very long-fingered, like a musician’s. Beautiful hands, which he then ran through his hair, making it slightly dishevelled. Sam had an urge to smooth it down again.

Luke turned and looked in her direction. Instantly Sam dropped her gaze, feeling guilty that she’d been caught studying him. And even more guilty about some of her inappropriate thoughts. She forced her attention away from him and back to checking the oil level. The oil was nice and clean and between the lines on the measure. OK – so that was a start. She attacked the air filter next and extracted it from its housing. It’d do, she thought. Not new but certainly in reasonable nick.

She put it back and was about to straighten up when a voice said, ‘Morning ma’am,’ and made her jump.

She took a breath. ‘Blake,’ she said as she turned.

‘Sorry ma’am, I didn’t mean to startle you.’ He didn’t sound sorry in the least. Amused more like.

‘You didn’t,’ she lied. ‘Haven’t you got work to do in the workshop?’

The look he gave her insolently suggested that he thought she had too, but instead he said, ‘I wanted to know how well the resident team have maintained this lot. I thought I’d spot-check a few.’

‘Don’t you think that’s for me to worry about? After all, I’m the one in charge of work schedules.’

‘Ma’am.’ He stared at her and then said, ‘Every little helps.’

He was right, of course, which made him even more infuriating. And worse, she wanted to know the outcome of his spot-checks but she couldn’t bring herself to give him the satisfaction. ‘Then maybe you should report back to the ASM with your findings.’

Luke gave her a long stare, which Sam returned, unblinking. ‘As you wish, ma’am.’

Sam pushed against the hydraulic props and slammed the bonnet shut. ‘I do.’ She turned to move away.

‘Stop!’ shouted Blake.

Sam turned back. Now he’d really overstepped the mark. But he had bent down and was grovelling in the dust at her feet. He stood up again with a massive beetle in his cupped hand, his long, elegant, fingers making a cage in which he cradled it carefully.

‘Rhinoceros beetle,’ he said, showing her. ‘You were about to squash it. Isn’t it amazing?’

‘Er, yes.’ And it was, black and glossy with a massive ‘rhino horn’ protruding from the front. She’d never seen anything like it and she was glad she hadn’t trodden on it. The poor bug wouldn’t have deserved that.

‘Here, you hold it,’ he said. ‘They’re harmless.’

Before she could say
Not on your Nelly
he’d grabbed her hand and tipped the bug into hers.

‘Thanks,’ she mumbled, not looking at him, and ignoring the small shock wave his touch had caused. The beetle was surprisingly light and its scratchy little feet tickled her, but no, it
really
didn’t float her boat. She wasn’t scared, or even repelled, she just didn’t want it crawling about on her skin, although neither did she want Blake to think she was a wuss.

She stood it for about five seconds then she tipped it back into his hand, noting that his fingers weren’t just those of a pianist or violinist but that his nails were surprisingly clean for a mechanic; no ground-in engine oil around the cuticles, like all the other men she commanded.

‘I think it’d be happier doing what rhinoceros beetles do, don’t you?’ She watched Blake looking at it with delight and fascination, examining it as it crawled over his hand. No, not your average grunt, she thought. Apart from the fact that the average grunt wouldn’t have known what it was in the first place, he would also have squished it in case it could pack a punch. Kill a bug first, ask questions later. Carefully, Luke carried it over to some grass at the edge of the vehicle park.

‘There you go, buddy,’ she heard him say as he laid it on the ground. Then he turned back to her, saluted and walked away.

Immi sat at a desk in the shade of an awning, typing battalion orders onto a laptop. It was a slow process as every time she caught a hint of any movement she stopped and stared in that direction. Sometimes it was a bird skimming past or a dead leaf scuttering along the ground, propelled by the light breeze and, as soon as she’d reassured herself it was harmless, she returned to work. But on other occasions it would be a lizard or some massive bug and she would stare at it, watching its direction of travel, willing it not to come near her as she drew her feet up off the ground and tried not to panic.

‘Those orders finished yet?’ said the chief clerk, entering the ‘office’.

‘Nearly, sir,’ said Immi.

‘Well, chop-chop. I want them posted by lunchtime – today, that is.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Oh, and when you’ve done that, the adjutant’s got a job for you.’

Immi nodded. ‘I’ll see him as soon as I’m done.’ She returned to her task. Twenty minutes later she copied the orders to the chief’s laptop for checking and took herself off to the shaded space that Captain Bailey was using as his office.

‘Cooper,’ he said as she approached, ‘I’ve organised a vehicle and a driver and I want you to go to the airport and meet that journalist. He’s flying in tomorrow on a scheduled flight.’

Immi nodded. ‘How will I recognise him?’

Captain Bailey gave her an odd look. ‘Recognise him? Don’t you watch the news?’

He had to be kidding, right? ‘I’m more of a Radio 1 person,’ she told him. But the phrase ‘watch the news’ sent a little buzz of excitement through her. A TV reporter, not some Fleet Street hack. Cool.

‘So you’ve never heard of Jack Raven.’

Immi shook her head. She knew the name Jeremy Paxman and then there was that bird who read the news who’d done
Strictly
a few years ago, but that was about it. ‘Should I have done?’

‘Never mind. Take a large sign with his name on it, stand right by the arrivals door and he’ll find you.’ Captain Bailey handed her a sheet of paper. ‘All the details, flight number, ETA are on this and the vehicle will pick you up a couple of hours ahead of the landing time to take you there.’

Immi nodded. A trip to civilisation and a day away from the bugs. Result. Then she looked at the piece of paper the adjutant had handed her. She did a double take. Four o’clock. The vehicle would pick her up at four! In the morning? Captain Bailey was having a laugh. Except he wasn’t.

The next morning she was standing in the airport terminal, looking as smart as possible in clean combats, her hair immaculate, her beret picked clean of all fluff, her make-up perfect and trying not to yawn. The doors in front of her swished open and shut as a trickle of weary travellers hauling heavy suitcases began to emerge. The flight had touched down thirty minutes earlier and the first of the passengers had now made it through immigration, baggage reclaim and customs. Immi wondered how long it would take for her journo to appear. The plane was a Jumbo so there were hundreds of passengers to get processed. Idly she scanned the faces as they passed and suddenly her attention was caught by a fit, tanned bloke in cream shorts, a pale blue, open-neck shirt and canvas loafers. He was the sort of guy who modelled Breitling watches; that type of outdoorsy, man-of-action hero who featured in those ads for top-of-the-range luxury items. There were other men coming off the flight also wearing shorts but compared to him, they really oughtn’t. If they’d known what they’d look like alongside him they would have had second thoughts. She suspected, though, that The Hunk knew exactly how good he looked in his outfit. She took another sideways glance at him as he strode towards the gap in the barriers and the main concourse. He had wavy, dirty blond hair, she noticed, eyes so blue that surely he had to be wearing coloured contacts, and a lean, rangy physique that suggested regular gym attendance.

She looked again at the fat, pasty, unfit office types, the types she assumed her whisky-swilling, cigarette-smoking journo would resemble and tried to pick out the most likely candidate. But the businessmen streamed past with a cursory glance at her piece of paper before they moved on to the other meeters-and-greeters. She looked back towards the sliding doors and nearly squeaked when she saw The Hunk standing in front of her, a tired smile on his face.

‘Yes?’ she said.

He pointed at her sign. ‘You’re here for me.’

Oh, yes! Immi swallowed. ‘Am I?’

‘Your sign says Jack Raven so unless there’s two guys with the same name on that flight…’ He smiled. ‘And you are?’

‘Corporal Cooper.’ She gave him her best smile, the one she called her L’Oreal smile – he was worth it. ‘If you’d like to follow me there’s a vehicle waiting outside to take us to Laikipia. Good flight?’

‘It was a flight, it was on time.’

They began to push their way through the rest of the crowd of people jostling to catch sight of the exiting passengers and made their way to a less congested part of the concourse.

‘Can I take anything?’ said Immi, as they headed across the polished floor to the exit. Wordlessly Jack Raven handed over his carry-on bag. Immi almost buckled under the weight, but heaved it onto her shoulder and tried not to look as if she was struggling. ‘You must be tired,’ she said.

‘No, not really, I slept.’

‘You did? But it’s not proper sleep, is it? You can’t get comfy, can you, when you’re trapped in that little seat?’

‘You can in business class.’

‘Business class?’ blurted Immi.

‘I’m here to work. No point in the BBC sending me all this way if I can’t do what I’m being paid to do from the outset.’

Immi thought about her own journey out and the way everyone had had to hit the ground running on arrival. Maybe she should suggest to the army that soldiers would function better if the RAF had lie-flat beds on their trooping flights. She suspected she knew what the answer would be.

‘Been to Kenya before?’ she asked as they approached the airport exit.

Jack Raven nodded. ‘A couple of dozen times. The last time I was here was to cover the terrorist attacks. Hopefully, this exercise will be less bloody and with a lower body count.’

Immi wanted to ask which terrorist attack but suspected if she did she’d look really stupid. And she wished she’d known who this guy was before she’d met him: she could have checked out his CV on Google and known things he’d done. If she’d had that sort of stuff up her sleeve she might have stood a chance of impressing him. But as it was… oh well. On the bright side, she was his escort for several weeks so maybe she’d manage to work some Immi-magic on him over the coming month. Although, she thought more morosely as she trudged after her charge, her magic hadn’t worked on Luke. But he was odd. Maybe Mr Raven was more normal.

It was with relief that Immi handed back the hand luggage to Jack as the driver put his suitcase in the rear of the open vehicle. He jumped in the front seat and Immi sat behind. Without the windshield for protection, her hair was going to take a proper battering. She was going to arrive back at camp looking minging.

When she climbed out two and a half hours later she knew she’d been right. Jack Raven stepped out looking immaculate and she… well, she looked like a haystack after it had been hit by a particularly violent gale, she thought as she caught sight of herself in the rear-view mirror. And her make-up wasn’t much better. When she’d got something in her eye at about the mid-point of the trip, she’d rubbed it and now she saw that she had a mascara smear halfway down her cheek. Shit, she’d been like for about an hour. Hurriedly she licked a clean tissue and rubbed the black smudge away. She tucked away as much stray hair as she could under her beret as Jack hauled his holdall over the side of the open Land Rover.

‘Right,’ she said, breezily, hating the fact she looked rank, ‘I’ll take you to meet the adjutant. Follow me.’

She walked off across the dusty ground towards Captain Bailey and handed over her charge, who smiled at her gratefully. Suddenly, being stuck out in Africa seemed a much better prospect now she was going to be chaperoning Jack Raven. A few weeks in the company of such a fit guy was going to go a long way to compensate for all the hardships and privations.

With Jack Raven entrusted to the care of the adjutant she was free again. She headed for the cookhouse. She was starving, having missed breakfast and she hoped the guys there would take pity on her and let her have some toast or a coffee or something.

When she got into the building Luke was at the water cooler, filling some bottles to take back to the workshop.

‘Hi, Luke.’

‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked. ‘You weren’t at breakfast.’

Aw, he’d noticed and it made Immi feel happy.

‘Nah, had to go and get that geezer from the airport.’

‘What geezer?’

‘That reporter bloke. You know, the one I told you I’d be looking after on the exercise.’

‘Oh, right. So you know who it is now?’

Immi nodded. ‘He’s off the BBC. Some guy called Jack Raven.’

Luke dropped the cap he was screwing on the bottle. ‘Jack Raven. Bloody hell.’

‘You’ve heard of him?’ Immi was genuinely surprised.