Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures) by Andrew Thomson

Author:Andrew Thomson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Heidi, October 3 – Mogadishu

India Base never sleeps, so watch officers work in two twelve-hour shifts. Day and night we log the details of battles that shift around the country in patterns and rhythms I start to recognize, like water flowing around a rock.

Matt and I usually work the day shift together. We’ve been learning the intelligence business on the job, fast. Matt arrived in-country a few months before me and is territorial about his position in the office. He’s secretive and tries to keep the most interesting jobs for himself, including those that require contact with any of the U.S. military commands. But when Luke, the intel officer from the U.S. Liaison Office, comes looking to share information, Matt knows I’m all he has to barter with. Women are the only things the Americans at USLO don’t have.

So when Luke stops by every afternoon, I make him coffee and Matt slips discreetly out the door. Even the boss, when he walks into the room and sees us talking, abruptly leaves. Is obtaining intelligence a cover for flirting, or is flirting a cover for obtaining intelligence? In either case, I’m crazy about Luke and look forward to his visits.

He brings me chewing gum and jars of peanut butter and Ziploc bags, the wartime equivalent of flowers and candy. Even if I’m not on duty that day, I always make sure to show up at the afternoon Joint Operations Command briefing, where he and I stand on the dark side of the room, side by side, just barely touching. I can smell his scent and it gives me an enormously pleasurable sensation right at the front of my brain, a few inches above my eyes. I’m afraid that if I let myself turn toward him just a bit, our bodies will slam together like two magnets and I may not live.

It’s a wonder to me how this blue-eyed farmboy from Montana wound up in the intelligence business. ‘Major,’ I asked him once, as I fondled the U.S. Marines patch sewn on the chest pocket of his uniform, ‘can you get me one of these patches?’ It was a good excuse to run my fingers over his chest. Without hesitating he pulled an assault knife out of his belt, cleanly severed the threads anchoring the patch, and slapped it down on the table in front of me. In unison the baby marines gathered around us at the PX sucked in their breath, wide-eyed at the sacrilege, waiting for the earth to crack open and swallow Luke up.

I feel oddly ashamed in these moments and I blame it on Andrew. Everything with Andrew is work and saving lives and God forbid you should enjoy yourself while you’re at it. I think I can make love with a few sexy young soldiers, and a Somali or two, and not forget that children can’t go to school in this country. Does he think the Haitians or the Somalis aren’t making love? Somehow I can’t imagine him throwing his clothes off and lying underneath a naked woman.

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