The Sea and the Sand (Recovering Commando Series Book 2) by Finn Óg

Author:Finn Óg [Óg, Finn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Morph Media & Digi
Published: 2019-11-26T16:00:00+00:00

By night he heard Alea scream, which was an achievement given the noise and banging of the boat as she sailed, and the distance between the cockpit and the forecabin. He assumed she was yelling in her sleep. It disturbed him because he imagined the children could hear her too, but they didn’t mention it.

She and Sam had adopted a not-uncomfortable peace. Most of the time he just dozed as she sat in the cockpit and read voraciously through his stockpile of paperbacks. There was no deliberation, she simply peeled the next one off the shelf in the order they were stacked. He wondered how much she was able to understand and noted her incredible appetite for knowledge. Perhaps there was no better way to learn English – to prepare for life in the west, to be able to hold conversation, to better understand what was going on.

Occasionally she took a break and skipped up onto the deck, gripped the stays and gazed into the warm breeze, her hair blowing out behind her. Barefoot and lithe, Sam banished the flutter of a thought as he watched her, guilt edging it away. She only did it when he was asleep, and she always adopted the same pose. Sam often caught her as he stumbled out of a dream.

“You turn your face to the sun a lot,” he said, not really intending to verbalise his thought.

“Mmm.”

He couldn’t work out whether she was annoyed at having been caught. “It’s like you miss the sun on your face,” he tried, happy not to have been ignored.

She turned her head to her shoulder, her back to him, in deliberation.

“It has been long time,” she said.

“Why? The one thing Libya has, besides oil, is sun.”

“Not all places,” she said, her tone hardening.

Sam had a choice: pursue the dialogue or let it drift. He’d never learned to take the easy option.

“Why, where have you been hanging out?”

She turned, and the stare came back. Alea fixed him for a moment, then rotated again to the falling sun.

“Hiding from tribesmen.”

“What tribesmen?”

“Any of them. All of them.”

“Why?”

“We do what you do. Protect ow-er child. Keeping her from fighting.”

“The Spring?”

She stiffened again. “There is no Spring before your planes arrive-ed. Is small revolt. Benghazi only. Then you take-ed chance to remove-ed Gaddafi.”

“Will you quit with this you and your country carry on. I told you before – I am from Ireland. I am not American.”

“You speak both sides of mouth,” she stated, not inviting comment or rebuttal. “You fight for Great Britain.”

“I fight for no one. Not any more.”

“So is true. You have been army.”

“Not really army.”

“Then what?”

“I was in the navy.”

Then she said something curious. “Why not have tattoo?”

“Tattoo?”

“You not have,” she said, and Sam remembered she had seen him pretty much naked, which meant she had seen the scars – which perhaps explained her conviction that he had been in the military. “I believe men in navy have tattoo.”

“Just like all Arabs are filthy?” Sam retorted.

She snapped him a stare until she realised he was being ironic.

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