Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [69]
Gant would, too. Ever since she had been in Schofield’s Recon team, she had liked him. She respected him as a leader. He was firm but fair, and he didn’t mince words. And he had never treated her any differently from any of the men in the unit.
‘You like him, don’t you?’ Riley said softly.
‘I trust him,’ Gant said.
There was a short silence.
Gant sighed. ‘I’m twenty-six years old, Book. Did you know that?’
‘No.’
‘Twenty-six years old. God,’ Gant said, lost in thought. She turned to Book. ‘Did you know I was married once?’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Got married at the ripe old age of nineteen, I did. Married the sweetest man you’d ever meet, the catch of the town. He was a new teacher at the local high school, just arrived from New York, taught English. Gentle guy, quiet. I was pregnant by the time I was twenty.’
Book just watched Gant silently as she spoke.
‘And then one day,’ Gant said, ‘when I was two-and-a-half months pregnant I arrived home early to find him doing it doggy-style on the living room floor with a seventeen-year-old cheerleader who’d come round for tutoring.’
Book winced inwardly.
‘I miscarried three weeks later,’ Gant said. ‘I don’t know what caused it. Stress, anxiety, who knows. I hated men after my husband did that to me. Hated them. That was when I enlisted in the Corps. Hate makes you a good soldier, you know. Makes you plant every single shot right in the middle of the other guy’s head. I couldn’t bring myself to trust a man after what my husband did. And then I met him.’
Gant was staring off into space. Her eyes were beginning to fill with water.
‘You know, when I was accepted into this unit, the selection committee put on this big celebration lunch at Pearl. It was beautiful, one of those great Hawaiian BBQ lunches – out on the beach, in the sun. He was there. He was wearing this horrible blue Hawaiian shirt and, of course, those silver sunglasses.
‘I remember that at one point during the lunch, everybody else was talking, but he wasn’t. I watched him. He just seemed to bow his head and go into this inner world. He seemed so lonely, so alone. He caught me looking and we talked about something inane, something about what a great place Pearl Harbor was and what our favourite holiday spots were.
‘But my heart had already gone out to him. I don’t know what he was thinking about that day, but whatever it was, he was thinking hard about it. My guess is it was a woman, a woman he couldn’t have.
‘Book, if a man ever thought about me the way he was thinking about her . . .’ Gant shook her head. ‘I would just . . . Oh, I don’t know. It was just so intense. It was like . . . like nothing I have ever seen.’
Book didn’t say anything. He just stared at Gant.
Gant seemed to sense his eyes on her and she blinked twice and the water in her eyes disappeared.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Can’t go showing my emotions now can I. If I start doing that, people’ll start calling me “Dorothy” again.’
‘You should tell him how you feel about him,’ Book said gently.
‘Yeah, right,’ Gant said. ‘Like I’d do that. They’d kick me out of the unit before I could say “That’s why you can’t have women in front-line units.” Book, I’d rather be close to him and not be able to touch him, than be far away and still not be able to touch him.’
Book looked hard at Gant for a moment, as if he were appraising her. Then he smiled warmly. ‘You’re all right . . . Dorothy, you know that. You’re all right.’
Gant snuffed a laugh. ‘Thanks.’
She bowed her head, and shook it sadly. Then suddenly she looked up at Book.
‘I have one more question,’ she said.
‘What?’
Gant cocked her head. ‘How is it that you know all that stuff about him? All the stuff about Bosnia and the farmhouse and his eyes and all that?’
Riley smiled sadly.
Then he said, ‘I was on the team that got him out.’
‘Any sort of palaeontology is a waiting game,’ Sarah Hensleigh said as she trudged through