They kept up the banter while Angelique stitched the eight-inch knife wound and dug the spent bullet from the back of his thigh. He was, she told him, very lucky. The bullet had barely missed the femoral artery.
* * * *
He’d come to her hut that night, Acosta had, softly calling her name. She heard a sharp intake of breath as the curtain fell closed behind him.
“It’s good to see you again, Angel,” he murmured, crossing the space between them. And he was literally seeing all of her as she stood there in a large plastic basin, sponge in hand. “Shall I wash your back?”
She couldn’t speak for fear that he’d hear the despair in her voice, that he’d know she’d been crying. She turned her back, held out the sponge, more than willing to accept what he was offering…the human touch, the warmth of a body against hers in the chill African night, and, yeah, sex—hot and hard and physical, just the way she liked it. She remembered that about him, that her physicality had really turned him on.
Angelique sighed as soapy hands smoothed across her back, stroking, massaging. He seemed to sense that she didn’t want words, so he remained quiet, rinsing her, patting her dry, lifting her and carrying her to the raised platform and the pitiful lump that passed for a mattress. But none of that mattered because Mitch Acosta of the wild Mardi Gras weekend was with her. He laid her down on the mattress and set her legs wide apart to feast.
“Ah, Acosta,” she whispered, curling her fingers into his too-long hair. “I need you to fuck me.”
He lifted his head, his gaze clashing with hers. “Oh, I’m gonna fuck you, Doc. All night long. But right now? Right now I’m fixing to make you come with my mouth.”
She came hard and fast, with a lusty cry. Acosta rolled on a condom, flipped her onto her belly, entered her with a hard, deep thrust, and she came again. “Yeeesss,” she hissed. “Ah God, Mitch!”
“Ah fuck, Angel, I can’t—” Four hard thrusts and he came with a shout. He was still inside her when he wrapped an arm around her waist and lifted her up so they could both stretch out on the bed. He spooned her, one hand stroking her belly as they floated on the edge of sleep.
A shout woke her, and she leaped from her bunk, only vaguely recognizing it came from her.
“What?” Mitch barked, coming off the bed, weapon at the ready. Her harsh breaths allowed him to locate her in the pitch-blackness of the hut. “Angel. It’s okay. No one’s here; you’re all right. It’s all right.”
A sob escaped her, and he reached for her, wrapping her in his arms even as she struggled to pull away.
“Talk to me, Angelique.” He lifted her off her feet and carried her back to the bed, then crawled in beside her. “What happened here today, it was horrible. We tried to get here in time, but we…we didn’t and I’m sorry you had to live through that. But you can’t keep it inside, honey. Do that, and it’ll eat you alive. You gotta feel it and move through it.”
Her breath caught in her throat. Was he serious? She didn’t want to feel anything. She gave him shrug and sat up. “I need a fucking drink.” She got up and fumbled in a small metal cabinet for a half-full bottle of vodka.
“That’s not the answer, Angel, and you know it.”
Angelique found a lighter and lit a candle, casting the room in a soft glow. She poured two fingers of vodka into a cup and walked over to slump into a worn camp chair. A sigh escaped her as she took a sip of vodka, the distinct taste of Anjou pears sparkling across her tongue. She poured another and looked at Mitch. “I don’t want to feel this, Acosta. This despair. This anger. It burns in my gut like a hot coal, and I’m afraid if I give it a voice, it’ll catch fire and burn this goddamn place down. Those children, those innocent little girls…” Her voice cracked. “I want to kill those motherfuckers. I want to shove spikes in their dicks so they’ll know what those little girls felt. I want us to drop a fucking nuke on this whole godforsaken continent and watch it burn and burn until all the evil is burned away. That’s how I feel. The doctor who took an oath to do no harm would happily castrate every one of those bastards with a dull knife.” She raised her glass in salute. “Here’s to the Hippocratic oath.” She downed one more shot, capped the bottle and put it away, and then crawled back into bed.
“I’m sorry, Angel. I’m sorry we didn’t get here in time. But we’re here now, and we’re going to help you get the injured to Nyala to the Amel Center. The doctors are expecting us, and then we have to fly your people out of here.”
“What? Why?”
“Shit,” he said. “I guess Shepherd wasn’t able to get through. Bashir has ordered all aid workers out of the country. If you don’t go—”
“They’ll kill us all. That bastard.” She pulled him in for a kiss. “I need you, Mitch. Please.”
* * * *
Nearly five years had passed since that awful day in Darfur. Would she never get past it? She heard the rustle of bedding behind her.
“Why are you awake so early? Come back to bed,
chérie
,” the pretty French boy said.
She turned and gave him her patented smile. “I wish I could, darling, but I have an early meeting; then I have to catch the train to The Hague.” She glanced pointedly at the door.
He pouted a bit, but when she remained unmoved, he sighed and reached for his pants. “Will I see you again?” Her negligent shrug earned her a frown. “You’re a cold one, aren’t you?”
Her laugh sounded as bitter to her own ears as it must have to his. Her voice was frosty when she spoke. “I’ll tell you what, my pretty young thing, when you give up your designer clothes and lavish lifestyle for the poverty and brutality of East Africa, you can call me all the names you want. Until then, don’t presume you know anything about me. Especially after what can only be categorized as an adequate roll in the hay.”
That last bit had been uncalled for, and she knew it as he slammed the door behind him. But the clarity of the dream had taken her back to that hellish day. Back to a defining moment in her life when she’d finally understood the meaning of man’s inhumanity to man. As a species, humans were capable of a savagery she’d understood only on an intellectual level. She’d witnessed it, and it had marked her. Unalterably. For better or worse. She wondered where Acosta and Boudreaux were and what they were doing now. She sighed and picked up the phone to order breakfast. That was something else she’d learned as she watched people starve to death in horrible conditions at the refugee camps. Eat whenever possible, because the next meal might not come before you die.
A discreet knock and a heavily accented, “Room service, madame,” had Angelique pulling on the thick terry cloth robe the hotel provided its guests.
Sunrise in Paris was something she would carry with her forever. The purples and pinks had disappeared while she was insulting Arnaud, leaving a glowing ball of white, surrounded by a warm, gold halo that peeked through the opening above the arched base of the Eifel Tower. The coffee was dark and rich, the bacon crispy, the eggs scrambled to perfection. While she did appreciate French cuisine, nothing compared to a good old American breakfast. The French could turn up their noses all they wanted. That was another result of her time in Darfur. She no longer gave a rat’s ass what anybody thought. If she wanted to get laid, she was going to get herself laid. If she wanted bacon and eggs, she’d, by God, have bacon and eggs.
She settled into the chair, propped her feet on the balcony, and raised the cup to her lips, savoring the rich, dark coffee and steamed milk. It was good, but she missed the bitter bite of chicory that was the hallmark of New Orleans café au lait. The bitterness offset the sweet powdered-sugar coating of the traditional beignet. She closed her eyes, thoughts going back to a Mardi Gras years ago, when she was a college girl in med school at Tulane. Had she ever been so young and wild? Mitch Acosta and Seth Boudreaux were two soldiers on leave from Kosovo. She’d met them on Bourbon Street at the height of Mardi Gras. One dark; one light. Colombian American and a native New Orleanian. They’d danced and drank all night, sandwiching her between them, then laughing and stumbling to Café Du Monde in the morning light. Three huge cups of café au lait and a sack of beignets later, they’d lured her up to their hotel room. Seth had been creative with the confectioner’s sugar.
“
J’ai une envie de toi
, cher,” Seth had murmured, licking her nipples.
I got a craving for you
. Yeah, she’d had a craving for him too. For both of them, and she’d been wild enough in those days to indulge those cravings.
Acosta was the one who really set her pulse to racing. When he’d knelt at the foot of the bed, she’d watched as he skimmed her jeans and panties off while his partner in crime had tormented her breasts until she was panting. Then he’d skimmed his hands up the insides of her legs and spread them apart.
“Knew you were a natural blonde,
querida
.” There was a slight Spanish lilt to his voice when he spoke, a gentle rolling of the
r
, and she’d wondered if that roll of the tongue would translate when he went down on her. It had.
Dear Lord, the things they’d done together. Her first and only ménage à trois. Hands and tongues all over her body, touching her everywhere. Two cocks filling her, taking her places she’d never been before. Orgasms so intense all other pleasure paled in comparison. They’d spent the entire two weeks with her before returning to their base and their next assignment. Then they’d found her again in Darfur, but there’d been no repeat of their time in New Orleans because Seth had been wounded in the assault on the village. But Acosta had stayed by her side. He and his men escorted them to Nyala; then she was off to the refugee camps in Chad, and Acosta was off to his next assignment.
Her next assignment was already set too. She was off to the wilds of Ecuador to work with the people impacted by the drug and arms trades on the border with Colombia. Not only did they have the cartels and FARC to worry about, but gold had been discovered in them there hills and more and more Colombians were being run off their own land as the guerillas and militias sought to fill their coffers and increase their personal wealth and power. Still, it would be a walk in the park compared to her last posting. She was testifying before the International Criminal Court on Darfur.
ICC, The Hague
“I arrived in Darfur in 2004, after completing my residency. The violence had begun the previous year and raged, unabated, as I began my first deployment with the Helping Hands aid organization. Target populations of Sudanese militia forces, known as the Janjaweed, were the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit ethnic groups. As I traveled from Nyala to the camps, I encountered bombed-out villages, burned crops and food stores, wells poisoned by butchered animals and people. As a young intern, I’d seen my share of gang violence at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, but I was completely unprepared for the savagery I encountered in Sudan.
“Prior to the expulsion of aid organizations, I was working in a field hospital established in a camp some distance north of Nyala. The camp was attacked by Janjaweed forces. We heard the screaming from inside the hospital compound, the pleas of the villagers, gunfire, cries of pain and fear, smoke from the burning of what few food stores were available. Then a truck broke through the gates and flooded the compound with militia soldiers. Women and children were dragged from their rooms.” Angelique paused for a moment, gathering herself, then continued. “Our doctors and nurses were dragged outside to bear witness. I saw babies ripped from their mother’s arms and bayoneted while the women were being raped. One of my nurses was nearly assaulted. If I hadn’t stepped between her and her would-be attacker…but the commander ordered the man to ‘kill the black slaves,’ and then he told me we were being spared so we could tell our American friends that the same would happen to them if they continued to help the people of Darfur.
“The hospital was heavily damaged by gunfire. Drastically needed medical supplies and equipment…” Angelique took a deep breath, but there was still a quaver to her voice when she continued. “We gathered what we could. Women who had been savagely assaulted climbed to their feet and began sweeping up, setting things to right so we could help those who had been shot or mutilated with machetes.
“I…we…were lucky because the director of our little hospital was in Nyala, and he informed some American military advisors that we were stranded with no communication and so we had no way of knowing Helping Hands had less than twenty-four hours to evacuate. The Janjaweed fled when the advisors arrived, and they helped us with the injured, set a guard, and kept us safe throughout the night. At first light, they loaded us into trucks and transported us to Nyala, where we were flown to Chad to continue our work. At the time of our departure, it is estimated that some two hundred thousand individuals had been killed, while over two million had been driven from their homes.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I could tell you of my time in the refugee camps in Chad, but that task falls to someone else. My time in Darfur is done, and I’m moving on to another country, another crisis. Before I leave, however, I urge this court to continue to pursue arrest warrants for the men responsible for the genocide in Darfur. Justice demands it, the victims deserve it, and the world is watching. Thank you.”
MITCH STOOD IN the shadows and listened to Angelique’s testimony, watched the slide show that slowly moved across a screen displaying the grisly sights Angelique had documented during her time in Darfur. His heart hurt when he thought about what she’d endured for the past five years. It was no wonder she was damaged. Her refusal to deal with the trauma worried him. She dulled her emotions with alcohol and sex, fiercely trying to shut out the horror she’d witnessed, but it all came back to her in dreams and a coldness she hadn’t possessed when first they’d met.
She was no less lovely than she had been when he and Seth had first met her dancing down Bourbon Street during that wild, unfettered Mardi Gras. But the vivacious, idealistic, young med student was gone, replaced by this emotionless doctor who could testify about horrors so vile they made hardened soldiers flinch. There were times when he’d felt he could almost see waves of anger rolling off her. It was there in the way she held herself aloof from anyone who lived in the world beyond the humanitarian arena. She was scornful of those who did not know or care about the suffering experienced by people in faraway countries with exotic names. One day, he was sure, that anger would boil over with consequences he dared not contemplate.