Sameh wanted Ellie to go back downstairs, to their room, to calm down. To calm down, and so Sameh could make sure Ellie was okay in private. Ellie said no, that she had to organize getting home. She knew what Sameh was trying to do, had been with her three years and knew her better than most people in the world, but it didn’t need doing. She tried to say so, but Sameh wouldn’t listen.
Sameh was convinced she was the hard one, that Ellie needed looking after, and Ellie was always hiding how she felt. Right now she probably didn’t want to think that Ellie was a monster who didn’t care enough about her own daughter to actually cry.
Ellie wasn’t sure if she ought to cry or not. She was upset, though.
Ellie wrote an email back to William and said she needed time off, a week or more, depending on the transport. She wrote up the action reports she’d been putting off for days, the houses they’d checked and intel they’d been fed and which of it Ellie thought was lies. She attached those to the email, and added that Miguel knew where they’d been and where was still hot. She checked the schedules of aircraft movement and tried to work out a way back to the world, but before she could finish that, William phoned her, and broke her data connection, and then wasted twelve dollars a minute asking if she was all right. He said he’d organize the travel home, and not to worry about anything, and it could all wait until she was back.
She was glad, in a way, not having to worry about details. “Thanks, mate,” she said.
He said she was one of their best team leaders, the only one willing to go this far out and stay in-country this long, and they needed her. They needed her with her head in the game.
Ellie though that was nice of him. Even though what he really meant was Miguel and Sameh were violent thugs, and Ellie could keep them under control. Under control enough to scare people well. That was what made them an effective search team, for actually making finds, Ellie knew, not how long they stayed deployed.
William was probably right about having her head in the game, though.
“Sameh needs to come too,” Ellie said, thinking.
Sameh looked up, and grinned. Relieved she didn’t have to ask herself, Ellie supposed.
William pretended to be surprised. He pretended, because the company were kind of rednecks, even though they were Chinese, and didn’t really approve of Ellie and Sameh being together. He wasn’t really surprised, though. It wasn’t like he hadn’t heard from other people, and it wasn’t like they hadn’t been sharing a room for years so that eventually he’d have to have realized that the demands for their own room and a closing door weren’t just modesty and privacy. And it wasn’t like Ellie and Sameh couldn’t have just got married and settled the matter for him, either.
William acted all reluctant, and Ellie realized it was probably because he wanted Sameh to take unpaid leave, so she snapped at him not to be a prick and then, looking guilty, he said yes, that was fine. He told her to hold on, that he’d make some calls and email her a schedule to get her home, give him ten minutes.
“Three days,” Ellie said. “I need to be back in three days.”
“I saw,” William said, because obviously he’d read the notification message, even though they were both pretending he hadn’t.
Ellie said thanks and hung up. Then reconnected the data link and sat and waited. Sameh sat on the edge of the roof and emptied her spare mags and polished the rounds inside them, overtly, on the edge of the roof, where the hajjis could see. It always gave them the shits because they thought the polishing made her shoot straighter. Even out here they’d seen movies. Sameh was an awful shot and cleaning her bullets wouldn’t help at all, but she scared them so much that whenever she shot at a hajji and missed they all assumed she’d done it on purpose, and was tormenting them for fun, and got even more scared.
“I love you,” Ellie said.
“I know,” Sameh said, and smiled at her.
There were advantages to hooking up with another girl in the middle of a war. You could share toilet paper and tampons and moisturizer, when you had to. And there was someone around to appreciate that you tried to keep your fingernails neat, even if they were full of blood and dirt and gun-oil all the time. And sex was easier, and a lot less messy. You could fuck with both your trousers still on, humping each other’s legs. You could finger each other after a week shitting in a hole and not be that grossed out. Cleanliness was such a bonus that some women went gay in-country just so they didn’t have to suck week-old cock, but Ellie and Sameh had never been just that. There was a connection there that was actually real.
Ellie didn’t quite know why, when they were so different. She told Sameh she was used to crazy Lebs because she was from Western Sydney, and Sameh told her she was a racist and to shut the fuck up, and then they usually had sex. But it was true. Ellie understood Sameh better than most people, and Sameh definitely understood her. She thought she’d found something important, and acted like it was, even though she couldn’t be sure because they’d never tested what they had in the outside world.
Now she was about to. On the way to her daughter’s funeral, the daughter she’d never told Sameh she had.
Ellie sat where she was and watched Sameh and waited. It was cold and dusty and Ellie looked at the goats and the mountains and thought in all her life she’d never seen anything like this.
The tablet pinged. Ellie opened the email. William said a ride would be there in three hours, and he had flights set up to get them home in two days, with fifteen hours to wait in Dubai. Miguel was to stay, and brief the substitute team they were sending in, and Ellie was to be back in a week at the most. Ellie sent back yes and thanks and told Sameh, “We’re going.”
They went downstairs and packed, and that only took ten minutes. After that they sat and waited.
Ellie started to feel a little odd again. A little dizzy, and too warm, now they were inside and out the wind.
They were in full armor, sleeved vests and thigh pads and helmets, survival gear in packs and sidearms as well as rifles. You didn’t fly the hajji wilds without being ready to walk yourself out if some prick took a shot with one of the old Soviet anti-air missiles that still, fifty years later, no-one had tracked down yet.
Ellie needed a drink. She was thirsty, but didn’t drink before helicopter flights because trying to pee in a chopper in combat gear just wasn’t worth it, and peeing down your own leg was worse, only for emergencies.
Sameh was fidgeting too. She was scared of flying. She always got into an odd mood before they flew anywhere, which was once or twice a month on redeployments.
Sameh had quite specific worries about flying that went way past being SAMed and fireball crashes. She’d told Ellie a little of it, late at night, ashamed of her fear. Being shot down and injured, the only survivor and having a broken leg and being helpless while whole villages took their turn with her. Ellie calmed Sameh down, usually, as they waited for helicopters, said that wasn’t going to happen because Ellie was going to survive too, and unlike Sameh she could shoot straight and so would fight her way out.
Ellie thought she should say it again, but she felt hot and odd and tired and couldn’t be bothered. Sameh wouldn’t just be thinking about helicopters, either. She didn’t like civilian airliners, because of hijackers and not being allowed a weapon, and Ellie understood that one and almost felt the same.
Sameh was going to be worried about flying to Sydney, and Ellie thought she should say something, and reassure her.
For some reason she didn’t, and just sat there instead.
After a while, Sameh said, “Are you really okay?”
“I’m okay,” Ellie said.
“You don’t seem it.”
“I’m okay.”
“Stop saying that. You’re not.”
Ellie looked at her. “I really am.”
Sameh looked at her, unconvinced.
“Thank you,” Ellie said. “For coming too.”
“What have I got here? If you’re gone?”
Ellie nodded. “After the funeral,” Ellie said. “I need to do some things.”
“I heard.”
“It might get complicated. It’s Australia.”
“I understand.”
“We might get caught.”
Sameh looked at her for a while. “I know.”
Ellie though about that. “Thank you,” she said.
Sameh shrugged.
A lot of Sameh was an act for the hajjis and the boys. Inside, she was a fairly calm, sweet person. In the field, on deployment, she didn’t have a conscience and killed people without a thought, but that was only because they were in a war. As if she had the hajji idea about Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb back to front, and saw Dar al-Harb as everywhere with other Muslims where guns were pointed her way. In the world of peace, the outside world, she went all calm and normal.
Ellie had noticed that before, and wondered how Sameh would cope with this.
But maybe Australia was about to become Dar al-Harb, like everywhere else they went for work, and Sameh would just do what was needed without worrying too much.
“You’ll really come?” Ellie said.
“Of course I will. I love you.”
Ellie nodded, and hugged Sameh, but she still didn’t cry.