Let's just be Glad we had some Time to Spend Together
"Right then gentlemen listen up, oh sorry … and ladies" Charles gave a small apologetic smile and nodded his head in acknowledgement towards the medics at the rear of the plane "Just before we land at Sana'a, full protective gear please, including helmets, and we need to get a bit of shift on once we're down, the pilot says he doesn't want to hang about so anyone keeping him waiting …" He paused "You'll find yourself having to jump off or you'll be hanging out of the back, so you'll find it best to crack on guys"
The treacly warmth of humour in his voice was giving Molly a huge shiver of deja vue as she gazed towards the front of the plane where he was standing in the aisle, legs wide apart in order to balance against the sway and bump of the flight while he briefed them. She was fighting with every bit of her resolve not to focus on his face even though she, like everyone else, had to look at him as he was speaking but she focussed instead on the spot where there was a scar on his midriff, it would have been obvious if she'd made a point of not looking at him at all, even if he was still avoiding any sort of eye contact with her.
His gaze had swept over them, skidding past her, before he'd settled on a point somewhere right at the back as he went over what to expect, as much as he knew anyway which didn't seem to be an awful lot. Things apparently changed almost hourly in the carnage that was the Yemen, but as far as he did know there'd been a lot of heavy air raids by the Saudis who were still very active in the area.
"Did I hear Fingers say that he used to be your boss?"
Tilly stage whispered in her ear as Charles finished what he had to say and asked if anyone had questions, before accepting the resulting deafening silence as a sign that everyone was happy as fuck, or at least were pretending to be, before nodding decisively and sitting down. And he'd managed to do it all without looking in her direction once.
"Who, Fingers?"
"No, not Fingers, him" She pointed surreptitiously to where Charles was at the front of the plane "Good looking, isn't he? I wouldn't mind working under him, actually I wouldn't mind doing anything under him, he'd only have to ask once, or maybe I should offer, what do you think?"
"Used to be, me Boss I mean, and I wish you luck with the rest mate"
There was a bit of her that had immediately recalled Adam's words about how he could have moved onto some other girl by now, some girl who'd think he was wonderful just like she had, but the last thing she could bear to even think about was for Tilly to get all up close and personal with him …
"Is he nice as he looks?"
"Nah, he's not nice at all, Tills, he's a bloody Rupert and bloody Ruperts are never nice"
Molly was smarting that he hadn't looked at her, not even a glance as far as she could see, not once. Alright it was awkward, it was even perhaps a bit difficult for him and she could understand that because it was bleeding well difficult for her as well not to mention awkward but he had no reason to be ignoring her the way he was, none of what had happened between them was her fault. Okay, well maybe it was a little bit, but it was much more his fault than hers so why was he bloody behaving like he was the one who'd got hurt?
All the talking in the world from some good looking young officer with a posh voice hadn't prepared Tilly in the slightest for the sight that greeted her as she stood on the ramp and looked around. She stood so still and had such a horrified expression on her face that Molly patted her arm to bring her back to planet earth before giving her a hard shove and reminding her in a loud whisper that she had to get her bloody arse into gear and move, and then keep on moving for fuck sake because she was causing a pile up behind her, and if she weren't bleeding careful the Sergeant was going to come down on her like a ton of shit. Not even the most determined comedian could find anything remotely funny about Sana'a, there was simply nothing left except part of one bit of the terminal building and a lot of bomb craters and piles of rubble.
"I thought the Saudis were supposed to be on our side"
"Yeah they are, but it don't always seem like that, mind you I don't think they're after us exactly" Molly laughed "Actually not sure who it is they are after, but there's not much left to bomb 'ere is there so it'd be a waste of money, listen Tills, we'll be out of 'ere any minute" She patted Tilly's arm again "Hope they don't forget we're 'ere waiting for them cos I'm quite keen to get the fuck out of here 'n all"
Even as she nudged the other girl in a vain attempt to get an anxious looking Tilly to smile she knew she that didn't feel quite the same way as the other girl. Tilly kept shooting glances up at the sky because she was bloody certain she could hear planes so was expecting the bombers to arrive any second and if she was being honest she would have liked nothing better than to ask the pilot to let her get back on the plane so that she could get the hell out of there and go home where it was nice and safe.
Molly was torn between wanting to leave so that she could get out of somewhere that gave her the willies, and wanting to stay where the lads were. That total crap that she'd spouted at Adam about how she was sure that there wasn't anything dangerous here had come back to bite her on the bum, if this wasn't a war zone then she sure as fuck would hate to see somewhere that was. Just showed how much she knew, but it might be different at Obock, of course, it was a good two hundred miles away for starters and for all she knew it could be …. nice …. well no, not nice exactly, that was bloody unlikely, but it might be … a FOB of sorts … secure …. have running water, showers and buildings in one bit, even tents would be …okay… but she couldn't help the horrible suspicion that it was far more likely to turn out to be a mirror image of this rubble pit than anything else.
The lads were stacking up boxes of supplies next to kit bags and Bergen's as the pilot got his wish and shoved off leaving them all standing in a huddle with their heads turned away from the cloud of dust and debris that was kicked up by his departure as it enveloped them. They were left spluttering and coughing and rubbing their eyes as they spat the muck out and yelled at him, calling him a lot of less than flattering names which of course was a total waste of energy bearing in mind that he couldn't hear them, but which made them feel better.
"I'm so not booking this again next year Boss"
"Shit, didn't anyone check this out on TripAdvisor?"
The loud comments came from a couple of those that had been in Afghan and produced the expected gale of laughter from the rest, including Molly, all of whom remembered only too well the last time they'd heard that, being in a ditch and shit scared before they'd realised it was a thunderstorm causing the bloody noise. Charles had been on his phone when the pilot had taken off so he'd had to hunch over and move away with one finger stuck in his ear as he struggled to hear over the racket of a Hercules, but had now moved back with a grin on his face which showed that he also remembered as he came and stood next to her, so near that she could smell the familiar smell that was him and so close that she could easily have slipped her fingers into his without moving them more than a fraction of an inch. He was almost, but not quite, touching her as she did her level best to ignore the inconvenient fact that Lane was standing on the other side of him, not quite as close to him as she was but still ….. too close for her liking.
"You okay?"
He'd inclined his head towards her slightly so that his voice was quiet and low so that she wasn't sure for a second if he was actually speaking to her until he nudged his knuckles against hers lightly, touching in her in a way that she knew hadn't been an accident, that it was deliberate in order to encourage her to answer hi, but her breath hitched in her throat. When she finally did manage to get her voice to work she couldn't think what to say, of course she wasn't okay, but there was so much she wanted to tell him that she couldn't think of how to say any of it, or even if he'd want to hear it.
"Yeah, think so, you?"
He said something so quietly that she didn't catch what it was and couldn't ask him to repeat as he moved away when Sergeant Morris started clapping and yelling for them to listen up and give her their undivided attention, which the other seven did, but Molly was far too busy trying to work out what he'd said to pay that much attention. The others were all shooting anxious glances skywards as they stood waiting in their huddle, Tilly's nervousness had proved extremely contagious.
"Right, our carriages await, so stop pissing about and let's get the fuck out of here"
Sgt Morris waved her hand vaguely towards two very battered and filthy Land Rovers which had just announced their arrival with a loud screech of tyres before pausing with their engines running and revving hard every so often to show that they had no intention of hanging about for very long. Just for a second Molly wished that they could go on a nice helicopter ride, but then maybe not if there were some buggers out there looking to shoot things down which looked more than a bit likely from where she was standing.
There were grins all round from the other medics as they hoisted their kit and set off at a fast jog across the runway, they were making no secret of the fact that they were bloody glad to be going so didn't need telling twice to watch where they put their feet, and to keep away from the craters as the Sergeant pasted an evil grin on her face and promised that if anyone broke a leg or even twisted an ankle she'd have them up on a charge. She added with a malevolent smirk that if anyone fell down one of the holes that some wanker had half-filled in with rubble she wasn't going to come back for them or wait, she was going to leave them there ..…
Molly could see him out of the corner of her eye, an unmistakeable figure standing motionless off to one side with his hands on his hips as he watched them getting ready to leave and although he'd been wrong when he'd once suggested that she had a death wish, she didn't want to leave, not like the others who couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there. She didn't actually want to stay either, not exactly, because it was a total shit-hole and eerily quiet, as if it was really dangerous, and she was more than a bit scared. She'd felt exactly the same way once before when she'd been walking slowly towards a sheet lying in the middle of a road with a body under it and had been waiting for some fucker to detonate it and blow him to bits.
"Come on Dawes, fuck sake get a bloody move on will you, we're waiting to get going and you're going to get us all fucking jackpotted dawdling along like that"
"Sorry Sarge, just coming"
She grabbed hold of the hand that someone was waving about to help her hoick herself up into the back of the Land Rover and then cursed loudly that all military transport was built for giant blokes with extra-long legs and not for ordinary sized people like her, so that Tilly, who was a good six inches taller at least, crowed with a deeply smug expression that she'd never had a problem which made Molly grin and give her the universal one finger salute. The thought of getting out of there had obviously restored the other girl to her usual happy self, but it filled Molly with a deep sense of reluctance, at that moment she would have given anything to swap places with Lane.
Their driver was an evil looking bugger with a lot of facial hair and a face filled with about as much humour as a slab of concrete and had yet to say a single word to any of them, but set off with a showing-off type ramming of his foot on the accelerator so there was another huge squeal of tyres, without a single warning to hold on or anything. He didn't react at all to the torrent of abuse that was directed at him from those in the back seat as they fell on top of one another and had to hang onto the sides to stop themselves being thrown out completely, but the speed of the departure had made one person with extra-long legs disappear from her line of vision in a matter of seconds, but not before she'd lifted one hand slightly to give him a sketchy wave goodbye. She didn't know if he could still see her but hoped that he could even if he was now a vanishing dot in the distance. She wished more than anything that she knew what it was he'd said, even her wishful thinking at its best was having a hard job believing that he might have said what she most wanted to hear, but she wished that she'd told him to take care, had shown him that it mattered to her, but it was far too late for any of that now ….…
-OG-
"Good to see our Dawesy again wasn't it Boss? Felt quite like old times, only hope she'll be alright with Lewis Hamilton, looked a bit dodgy him, didn't he?"
"Indeed, but I'm sure she'll be fine Fingers, they'll be fine"
"I'm just saying …. you know, just hope he's passed his bloody test …. be a shame if …. you know, something happened"
"Fingers….."
"Yes, Boss?"
"Shut up"
"Yes Boss"
Fingers was smirking all over his face but Charles had hastily wiped the smile from his when he'd turned to look at the section's resident gossip and chief piss taker who seemed to have appeared out of thin air to stand in the space next to him. He knew full well that Fingers was on one of his notorious fishing expeditions and wondered if it'd been prompted by him seeing their little exchange meaning that he was now busy adding two and two and making at least a hundred. Fingers didn't miss much as a general rule and Charles knew that he'd allowed a very wide and probably very ill-considered smile to spread across his face when he'd been watching her, he was sure as he could be that she hadn't heard him say that he missed her but then she'd given him that little wave…
-OG-
There was nothing for them to hang onto as their driver continued his 'bat out hell' progress by swerving violently from side to side past huge craters on the way to the town so that it felt as if they were on some sort of switchback theme park ride, which had always made Molly go green, and they hadn't even got a safety bar to hold onto. She just prayed that he was going to calm down and slow down soon and start driving a little less like he had the coppers after him otherwise she'd be hurling her guts long before they got anywhere near Obock.
All conversation had dried up completely by the time they reached the centre of Sana'a, what was left of it, not only were they all scared shitless at the way Mr Happy was driving, but there was this air of desolation about the place. The odd one or two people who were about were picking their way through the rubble and didn't bother to look up at the UN flags, in fact didn't bother to look up at them at all, so that once again she was flooded with anxiety for the lads, worried about how safe they were going to be wherever it was they were going to stay in this benighted hole, if there was anywhere left in one piece to stay …..
An incoming text alert had her scrambling for her phone with this happy grin of anticipation plastered across her face, only for a massive surge of disappointment to hit when she saw the name that popped up on the screen, Adam. Shit, she'd thought …. well, she'd been sure who it was ….. so sure that she'd had to stop for a second and think who Adam was exactly and he definitely didn't deserve that.
Twenty four hours, that was all it had taken, less than that really for her to forget everything she'd been so determined about before Brize, beforehe'd waltzed back into her life and turned it bloody upside down again. She still didn't know what it was he'd said to her, but told herself that it didn't really matter what it was, it was time for her to stop wondering and to get back to sticking with her plan to stop being a soft fool and to remind herself that she didn't need a bloke in her life to make things right. She was going to get on and live without, and was going to be fucking brilliant… and living without meant living without the one who hadn't had the bloody decency to be the one who'd just sent her a text.
-OG-
A/N: It's taken me a while because I have been running a sanatorium (warning, severe man flu alert) which has required the soothing of a fevered brow and the regular supply of tissues, cups of tea and sympathy (as well as keeping the urge to yell "oh for fuck sake what now?" under control). Nursing is not, as my hero keeps telling me, my vocation in life, I am far too impatient. Back to the Yemen, I know that some people are impatient for them to kiss and make up, but I have resisted the urge to wave my magic wand as there is a lot of baggage that needs to be sorted ….. Thank you for all your lovely words of encouragement, they keep me going, and I hope that you are still with me, and them, for the ride.
