The officer stood watching like a patient headmaster, waiting to beat down any dissent. It was the woman who finally ended the stalemate. She bounded down from the driver’s side of the cab, circled around back and began yelling at the enlisted men. Davis was fifty yards away, but he could hear enough to know she was speaking Arabic. The words meant nothing to him, but her tone was clear. Accusative, demanding. When she yanked one box out of a soldier’s hands and threw it back on her truck, the men froze with stunned looks on their faces.
A line had been crossed.
Davis was impressed. It was a stupid move. Exactly the kind of move he might make. The soldiers were clearly not used to getting yelled at by a woman. Having stopped the flow, she stood defiantly with her hands on her hips. Davis couldn’t help but notice that they were nice hips. Her work clothes were drab and loose, but cinched in the right places, certain seams challenged when she moved. Her hair was black and full and long. The woman began barking orders, gesturing for the supplies already unloaded to be put back. The soldiers didn’t move.
Their commander did.
So did Davis.
Davis had only gone two steps when he felt a hand on his arm, pulling him back. It was Johnson.
“Easy, buddy,” the burly mechanic said. “They might not act like it, but those are soldiers. They show up once or twice a week and take whatever they want, call it a tax.”
“The government is raiding aid shipments?”
“Not exactly. The government looks the other way. They can’t pay the soldiers much, so nobody cares if they take a little on the side.”
“Who is she?”
“I don’t know her name, but I’ve seen her before. She’s an Italian doctor, I think. Works for one of the NGO’s.”
NGO. Non-governmental organization. Davis had heard the term before, but never seen one up close. He liked the sound of it. Anything nongovernmental had to be good. It was probably an organization that worked, one that wasn’t bound by organizational charts and performance evaluations. Just a handful of committed individuals getting a job done. Which was what the lady on the ramp was trying to do right now.
The officer stopped a few paces in front of her. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, the woman unloaded. Both barrels. She began screaming, Arabic again, but if Davis wasn’t mistaken with a few Roman expletives thrown in. He wondered what the officer could be thinking. Of all the reactions he might have expected from a female Italian doctor, a military-style ass chewing probably wasn’t one of them. The woman’s partner in the truck was staying out of it. Smart kid. Johnson’s arm came down, and Davis held steady as he tried to calculate outcomes. There was a chance the soldiers would simply settle for what they had and leave. If so, the woman might stand down and watch as a few of her supplies were driven away. If that was how things progressed, Davis would stay put.
But the doctor didn’t allow it. She worked herself into a lather, hands jabbing and hair flying. Davis wished she was in a hospital somewhere, setting a broken bone, giving an immunization, shining a light in somebody’s yellow eyes. There, if she felt the need to come unglued, she could vent at a nurse or another doctor. Maybe a difficult patient. That was the kind of conflict doctors were used to dealing with. Not squads of armed soldiers.
“Shut up,” Davis muttered.
The commander only stared at her, and Davis had a bad feeling. Every country has its indigenous equations of culture and morality. This woman was pressing hard against the local standard deviation. But there was another variable, something Davis had served long enough in uniform to understand. The dynamics of command. Discipline, particularly in a ragtag outfit like this, was a precarious thing. No officer could allow himself to be dressed down in front of his men by a civilian. Let alone a foreigner. Let alone a woman.
Davis had a very bad feeling.
Johnson must have sensed what he was thinking. “I’m telling you, don’t get in the middle of that. The military here doesn’t play by our rules. They don’t worry about judges or court-appointed lawyers, and it won’t matter if you’re an American or a pilot — whatever. That bunch will make you disappear.”
Davis didn’t respond. He was watching the officer’s hand. When he saw it edge toward his sidearm, Davis moved.
“Jammer!” Johnson whispered harshly.
Davis ignored it.
“That’s enough!” Davis yelled. He said it at maximum volume. Intonation, command. He might have been calling a formation of Academy cadets to attention. Only these weren’t cadets. Still, it had the desired effect.
Everyone looked.
Larry Green got Davis’ message just before lunch. It came via secure courier, forwarded by the CIA after they’d done their magic — unscrambled, cleansed, filtered. The flow of communications was something Green didn’t like, but he figured he had to choose his battles.
The message read:
NEED ALL AVAILABLE BACKGROUND ON TWO DC-3S. TAIL NUMBERS N2012L AND X85BG. FULL BACKGROUND, INCIDENT REPORTS, OWNERSHIP HISTORY. ALSO NEED RADAR DATA AND 121.5 RECORDS FOR NIGHT OF CRASH. CHECK WITH U.S. NAVY/AIR FORCE.
Green read it again, and thought, You don’t ask for much, do you Jammer?
He wondered about the tail numbers. N2012L was the accident aircraft, but the second registration number meant nothing to Green. He dialed Darlene Graham’s number and was immediately put on hold. She had told him all requests were to go directly through her office. The director had been pleased when he’d told her that Davis had accepted the assignment. She had a lot of faith in the man, as did Green. The fact that there was nothing in the message about Black-star meant Davis hadn’t gotten into the hangar yet. But he’d find a way.
Green had been working with Davis for a long time. He had dressed him down more than once, and also put him up for commendations. There was a strange asymmetry to Jammer Davis. Investigating aircraft accidents could be delicate work. Intricate forensics, technical know-how, sensitive interviews with the next of kin. In that kind of environment, a blunderbuss like Davis would seem a surefire liability. Indeed, every time Green put Davis on an investigation he felt like he was pulling up a deck chair to a dangerous intersection, just waiting for the crash. On one occasion, Davis had blown up a mothballed airplane to see how a pressure bulkhead would fail. He hadn’t gotten any kind of permission or permit — he’d just packed a jet with explosives and blown it up. Green had once seen Davis climb into a bulldozer and push around sections of wreckage until he found the defective engine fan blade he was after. Then there was the full-bird colonel who had ended up in the hospital with a broken jaw because he’d tried to order a lieutenant to fly a jet that Davis was convinced wasn’t safe. That had gotten Davis busted from lieutenant colonel to major, the rank at which he’d retired. It had also saved the taxpayers an F-16 and probably the lieutenant’s life.
Wherever he went, Davis managed to piss somebody off. But he got away with it, because he was right. At least, every time Green had seen him in action. In some Neanderthal-savant way, Jammer Davis knew where to stick his big nose. And once he had a scent, there was no shaking him. You might as well light off an Atlas V rocket, then try to keep it on the pad.
Green wished he was there to watch. Right now there was probably only one person in all Sudan who even knew Davis, and Bob Schmitt hadn’t known he was coming. So a little airline had readied its books for inspection, stacked manuals on desks, and double-checked logbooks. All the procedural ducks were lined up in a nice neat row, everyone standing at attention with belt buckles polished. Ready for the usual ICAO inspector, a button-down overseer of standards and protocols. A stiff professional in a stiff suit. What they’d get was Jammer Davis.