“Ha, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant you could take a short nap if you needed an hour. Once you show me what to check for, I can check and just wake you up if I have questions.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at her. Ana was seriously telling me, the trained one, that I could take a nap if I wanted to. It was comical how comfortable she was in the middle of the war zone.
“I think you should take a nap,” I answered.
“I’m not tired.”
“Neither am I,” I replied as I looked out the window to see if there was any sort of movement going on out there.
“Well, let’s get to work then; show me how to do this.”
“Just lift the corner and duck down to look out. Don’t open the shades in the middle and always make sure the door is closed behind you and there is as little light as possible,” I showed her. “Now you do it.”
Ana followed my directions exactly and was very careful as she looked out the window. I saw her look left and then right, then she placed the curtain back down gently so there was no movement. She was a natural.
“Very good. Now let’s go to the other side of the building.”
It only took about ten minutes for us to make out rounds and look out each side of the building. There wasn’t much going on, and I couldn’t see any signs of movement at all. There weren’t any curtains moving in buildings, there weren’t any cars driving on the streets, and there were no pedestrians walking around either. It was well after midnight so none of that was all that surprising, but I still had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“I’ll go around this way, and you go the opposite way. We can meet up in the middle,” I told Ana.
She went right to work and didn’t wait for any further instructions. She was a hard worker, obviously, but I couldn’t wait to get her out of that place. My mind drifted back to the time at my cabin and how angry and confused she had been that first night. I couldn’t help but smile at how she had thrown me out of her bedroom because she thought I was trying to hurt her. Yet only a few months later, here she was following me to Syria and trying to help me on one of the most dangerous jobs of my career.
Ana was certainly the kind of woman who would keep me on my toes. I think that was one of the things I admired most about her. She liked taking risks, and even after everything she had been through, she obviously still had risk taking in her bones. That was the same with me. I couldn’t go a month without doing something exciting or dangerous.
Maybe that was why we got along so well. Sure, at first I just wanted her because of her beauty and she needed someone to rescue her. But beauty fades and you can only rescue someone once. Now my passion for Ana was growing into something much bigger, much more rounded, and nothing like anything I had dealt with before.
For the first time in my adult life, I felt like I was with a woman who was my equal. Sure, we had our differences, and I didn’t mean equal in strength, intelligences, etc., because we all have our strengths and downfalls in those areas. I meant that Ana was my equal in personality and lifestyle. She was the woman of my dreams, but I just hadn’t had the balls to dream about her until she dropped into my lap.
As we each made our rounds, I couldn’t help but enjoy having Ana there with me. It was nice to see her sexy smile as I came around from my side of perimeter checks. Ana was certainly easy on the eyes. Her tiny frame was even evident through the layered, beige clothing she had on.
“Hey, stranger, do I know you?” Ana joked as we met up after a perimeter check.
“Nope, but I’d like to know you,” I teased.
We each made another round and as we came back together again, she said something else that made me laugh. It didn’t feel like we were working, and deep down I knew I needed to be paying better attention to what was going on around us. I knew that the interaction I was having with Ana was exactly why men didn’t want to work side by side with women in a war zone.
Yes, it’s politically incorrect to say such a thing, but women are distractions. I don’t blame the woman, or Ana, in this case. It wasn’t her fault that I was distracted by her every time she walked by. It certainly wasn’t her fault that I wanted to pull her into that room again and hear her moan underneath me. But the male, primal instinct was to impress a woman and to catch her attention. It was too difficult to ignore my primal instinct.
Men just couldn’t keep their hands, or thoughts, to themselves when a beautiful woman was around. It didn’t matter how well trained he was; a man was always a man and it was my opinion that they couldn’t handle being around women in war zones.
Of course, I couldn’t tell Ana any of my thoughts on the matter. It certainly wouldn’t make her very happy if she knew I didn’t intend on letting her train to work with me. In fact, the last job in the world that I thought would be all right for Ana was working in dangerous places like I did. Especially because I wanted to be with her, I couldn’t live with the idea that she was going to be in danger all the time.
“It’s 0345; I’m going to call Rake and the guys and tell them to make their way over here. It’s quiet as hell out tonight.”
“What do you need me to do?” Ana asked.
“Let’s ge
t everyone separated into two groups. Women and children in one group, we will send them first. Then the men in the second group. Everyone will have to just sit on laps and cram into the SUVs.”
“I’ll go talk to Roane and have him help translate; the women seemed pretty afraid of you.”
Ana was right. The women were either afraid of me or not supposed to look at me because of religion. Either way, it would be quicker if Ana and Roane gathered everyone then I could talk with Rake and the other guys about the plan. I used my radio to get Rake on the line.
“Rake, come in, we are a go, ten-four.”
“Copy that. Go for all?”