Fly by Night

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Six hours.

That was how long Davis had been in-country, and he already had five confirmed enemies. Three Arab thieves, Schmitthead, and now an overwrought Italian physician. At that rate, by the end of next week—No, he decided, no need to go there.

The doctor’s slap hadn’t mitigated anything — she still looked furious. He found himself wondering what she’d look like if she smiled.

He said, “You’re welcome.”

Way too early for a smile. Just anger. Or, best case, maybe quizzical anger now.

“I will not thank you. You have done me no favors,” she said. Her English was decent, albeit laced with a hard accent.

He said, “You were digging a pretty deep hole for yourself. I got you out.”

She didn’t reply, only stood there. Impassive. Defiant. Pretty. He caught her scent, and she didn’t smell like any doctor he’d ever known. No olfactory assault of iodine or antiseptic soap or latex gloves. She smelled sweet, like rain on jasmine.

“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry you lost that shipment, but I’m sure there will be others.”

“Not for weeks. In that time, do you know how many of my patients will suffer? How many could die?”

Davis took this for a rhetorical question. Still, he had a good reply. “And how many would suffer or die if those thugs had taken you away? I haven’t been here long, but I’d bet that losing a good doctor is a lot worse than losing a few crates of supplies.”

He thought that might hit home, the idea that she could have been taken away by the South Khartoum Crew. If so, it didn’t show. She was still frosty, even in this heat.

“So who were those guys?” he asked.

“I have never seen them, but other aid workers have warned me about them. They have a warehouse and come here occasionally to keep it full.”

“Are they really soldiers?”

“Technically, yes. Men like that have been terrorizing this country for years. Lately, however, killing, rape, and mutilation have become unfashionable, so they have turned to more practical endeavors.”

“Like stealing shipments of medicine to sell on the black market?”

“Yes. And they will keep doing it until someone stands up to them.”

Davis said nothing

“Who are you?” she asked. “You are clearly American, but you are not with the U.N. — I know all the U.N. people here.”

“I’m here to investigate an aircraft accident.” He gestured to the DC-3 parked nearby. “One of those went down two weeks ago.”

She glanced at the airplane and seemed to thaw. “Yes, I heard. It was a terrible tragedy. I knew one of the pilots.”

“Really?”

“He helped at our clinic once or twice.”

“Tell me, doctor, does FBN Aviation bring in all your shipments?”

“Most of them. But we sometimes use other carriers.”

Davis eyed the clipboard sitting on the front fender. He walked over and picked it up. It was interesting, not some standard-issue aid agency request form, but an actual load manifest from the airplane, or at least a copy of it.

Looking over the list, Davis asked, “Would you have had an ohmmeter in that shipment?”

“A what?”

“It says here there was an ohmmeter. You know, for measuring electrical resistance.”

“No, that would not have been ours. We receive only part of each shipment. FBN is too lazy to create separate manifests, so they make copies and highlight our portion of each delivery in yellow.” She stepped over and pulled a finger down the list. “See? The rest goes elsewhere.”

“Really? Like where?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when you unload your cargo and there’s a secondary load on these FBN flights, where does it go?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes the airplanes stay here when we leave. Other times they are towed away.”

Davis could just see the FBN Aviation hangar from where they were standing. “Have you ever seen one of these airplanes towed over there? To that hangar in the distance?”

“Once or twice, perhaps.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve ever been over there? Inside?”

“No. Why are you so concerned with this? Has it to do with your investigation?”

“I don’t know. Tell me, do you keep these load sheets on file?”

“We keep a permanent record, yes.”

“At the clinic?”

She nodded.

“You know,” Davis said, “it might help my investigation if I could see them.”

Her mouth parted immediately, about to say no, but then she hesitated. “You want my help? After the damage you have done?”

“Maybe I can make it up to you. You told me another pilot helped at your clinic.”

“The other pilot was a decent man.”

Davis said nothing.

The doctor stared at him, made some kind of survey. “However,” she said, “you might be useful.”

“I can be very useful.”

“If you come, will you come to work?”

Davis considered that. He had an airplane crash to solve, a lost drone to find. “I have a lot on my plate right now,” he said, “but I could make some time. Let’s call it a trade — I help you at the clinic, and you let me take a look at those records.”

“Very well. Tomorrow morning.” She gave him directions to the camp.

“Twenty miles,” he remarked. “I don’t have a car.”

“You seem resourceful.”

“When I need to be.”

For the first time he saw something different in her eyes, a glimmer that wasn’t sharp or accusing. There was a crease at the corner of her mouth. Light, even playful. The lady was stunning. Even better, she didn’t give a damn. Davis liked that. He watched her climb up to the driver’s seat of her empty truck. Watched her sidle into the cab and pull the door shut hard. Harder than she needed to.

He called through the open window. “By the way, my name’s Davis. Jammer Davis.”

She looked down, paused to make him wait. Like women did.

“Antonelli,” she finally said. “Dr. Regina Antonelli.”

With that, the truck jerked into gear and was gone. A thin cloud of blue smoke trailed behind, and that soon dissipated into a brilliant red sky as the horizon split the sun.