The turbulence on the military transport is making her sex rub against her seat, and the men's stares aren't helping.
Evangeline avoids their eyes—shrouded by helmets and visors but still as piercing as the bullets in their guns. While they check out her body, she checks her watch for the hundredth time. Thank goodness. In a few minutes, she'll be there: at the base. On the ground. In the field.
She chooses to ignore the friction against her sex. She also chooses not to hold the men's staring against them.
Have a little empathy,
she reminds herself. They've likely been away from home a long time. She can only imagine how hard things must be for them. Very...hard. She pushes the thought out of her mind.
She self-consciously shuffles the papers in her lap. She shouldn't be worrying about the sexual tension in the plane. She should be worrying about the geopolitical tensions in the region, which are about as high as they get. They've got a population under significant stressors, an adrenalized civilian militia, and a local government that isn't used to anything but power.
The top brasses back home have been making plans behind closed doors. She doesn't know it, but they've spent the last six months arguing over whether to place their bets on peacemaking or make a move when they have the chance.
Eventually, internal conversations aligned on attempting negotiations, and with the begrudging agreement of the head of defense, they dispatched their most expert (and, according to some, expendable) negotiator. Her.
• ⚙ ☸ ❂ ☸ ⚙ •
They land on the airstrip. She fumbles with her seat harness, which is annoyingly good at keeping her immobilized.
A man leans close to her. He's trying to get a closer look, but she rationalizes that he's just making sure she can hear him over the noise of the airplane. "Need a second pair of hands?" he asks.
"Or more?" jokes another.
All the men snigger as they start to traipse off the plane.
"No, thank you," she says in as polite a tone as she can manage while wrangling with the buckle. She finally wrests it loose. She carries her folder and follows them out into the gaze of the bright desert sun.
As she walks, she spends a good ten seconds getting adjusted to the light, and when she can finally open her eyes without squinting, she realizes that two new men are walking beside her. The one on her left is dressed in a dark uniform with a rainbow of badges and patches, and the one on her right wears camouflage. She looks up at each of them and smiles warmly—it's a well-practiced tactic of hers, as is waiting for the other person to speak first.
"Miss Hoy!" bellows the man to her left. His voice is booming, not unlike that of the airplane of which they're just getting out of range. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes?"
"General Wright?" she asks, switching her folder to her left hand and offering her right hand to him.
"You can call me Wyatt," he says. He shakes her hand vigorously, his gaze roving over her body. Sore eyes they must be. She pretends not to notice and doesn't let her smile falter for a second.
The general indicates the man to her right. "This is your PSD. He's been assigned to accompany you any time you leave the perimeter."
"PSD?" she asks the PSD.
"Personal security detail, ma'am," the personal security detail says.
"A.K.A., your slave," the general laughs.
"What may I call you?" she asks, offering her hand to the PSD.
He looks her in the eye and grasps her hand more than shakes it. "Travis."
She smiles, and she doesn't have to pretend this time.
Travis.
When she was a child, her parents got a puppy for her and her siblings. She immediately named it Travis, even though the dog was a girl. After a quick risk analysis, she forms the professional opinion that she should not tell him that story.
• ⚙ ☸ ❂ ☸ ⚙ •
Over the next few weeks, Evangeline alternates between getting her bearings around the base, participating in briefings, and reading and writing reports.
Ussef Bukhari. That's the man she'll be working with—or as the general says, locking down. He's a local figure: part unelected official, part celebrity, complete powerhouse. None of their plans can move forward until they win Bukhari's allegiance.
Once the jet lag wears off, Evangeline is back at a hundred percent. Maybe more, now that she has to be on her guard in a war zone. It's amazing how quickly a person can get used to restrictions. It's not like her conditions are terrible. She can take hot showers (communally), and the food isn't half bad (though she couldn't call it half good). She even has her own quarters.
But the toughest part about entering any new environment is the loneliness. Thankfully, she's not the only woman here. And occasionally, she sees the familiar faces of the men who flew in with her, but for reasons she can't explain, they're no longer taking much notice of her. She almost wishes they'd go back to being too friendly. Travis will answer her smiles with a nod, but nothing more.
Wyatt is the person she sees the most. As the general of the base, he must have a plethora of responsibilities. So it always surprises her when he spends so much time chatting with her after briefings.
"How are you holding up?" he asks one day.
"Quite well," she says. "How about you? Is there anything I can do to help you?"
"Just keep brightening the place up," he says.
The compliment makes her smile.
"Anything
you
need, Miss Evangeline?" he adds.
Reciprocation. Not always effective on Wyatt's type, but she's glad it worked this time. "Thank you for asking," she says. "I wanted to see about visiting town. I've familiarized myself with the intel on the layout and considerations, and getting a live reading of it would be helpful as I prepare for next week's engagement."
He pauses and looks at her thoughtfully. "You want to do recon," he says. "It's dangerous, but if you think it'll help the mission, I'll make it happen."
• ⚙ ☸ ❂ ☸ ⚙ •
Evangeline sets down her lunch at the table with the other women, most of whom are military.
"Those boys get to you yet?" one of them jokes.
"Do I want to know what you mean by that?" Evangeline smiles at her.
"You get to
them
yet?" asks another woman.
"I'm afraid my flirting abilities have reached their limits. When I came here on the plane, they were all so eager, but now they'll barely look at me."
"Oh, Ev," a woman says. "I thought you were supposed to be good at reading people."
At that moment, they all stop talking and look at someone behind her. She turns around. It's the general.
"Got you an extra," he says, grinning and reaching over her to put a bread roll on her plate. "Come by my office at sixteen hundred and we can talk about the plan."
She smiles and nods, but she's at a loss for words.
All the women hold their breath until the general is out of sight. Then they burst into giggles.
"Man, you are so red," one of them tells Evangeline. "Better get that under control, Miss Pro Negotiator."
"Get it now?" says another. "There's your flirt-interference. No man here will go against him."
She doesn't say anything. She's relieved when the conversation turns to other topics—what their family members said in their letters from home, what they think the key turning points in the conflict will be, what they'll do once it's all over. But even as she joins in the discussion, the incident with the general doesn't leave her mind.
It's true, the times she's worst at reading people are the times those people have crushes on her (and every time, she finds out when it's too late). She's always been confident in her skills but never in her looks. As a result, she can be both an accomplished professional and an insecure mess. Any time men give her the slightest sexual attention, including here, she assumes that it's only because of who they are and not who she is.
• ⚙ ☸ ❂ ☸ ⚙ •
