It's an effort to open my eyes.  

So I don't.  

Tecala has long since fallen away and it's been years since I've cared to watch the patches of brown and green pass beneath me.  After seeing it up close and personal from the flight deck, with the wind in my face and the steady thwocking of the rotor humming in my ears, watching it from behind a piece of safety glass no longer has the power to hold my interest.  Clouds and coastlines, ribbons of road and glittering lights winking in the dark.  In truth, none of it has the power to interest me anymore.  It looks the same the world over.  The cabin does too, although I find there's an odd comfort in that. 

Considering the amount of time I spend in the air, I suppose I should be thankful.  I'm not.  It's a bit like an office that follows me wherever I go.  The only thing that really changes is the name on the outside of the plane.  No matter where I am, there's always the same low, rumbling whine of the engines.  The same leather chair that looks comfortable - but isn't.  The same stale smell of recycled air.  The same moderately attractive, overly attentive flight attendants.  I don't know how the hell they manage it, but brunette or blond, they all have the same look.  It makes me think Dino's got the right of it when it comes to women.  Certain women, anyway.  On a flight, I expect service - not to be serviced.  It's not that hard a concept to grasp and yet, inexplicably, there's always one whose eyes spend more time on my lap than on my face. 

At least the bloody drink's the same, and for that, I am thankful.  At the moment, it's sitting on the tray-table beside me, sweating a ring into the paperwork I should be working on.  Honestly, I don't really care.  My mind won't stay on my work because I'm busy trying to unravel the mysteries of life.  Ah, bollocks.  I measure words for a living and that didn't sound even the slightest bit convincing.  Actually, I think it's less like unraveling the mysteries of life and more like my eyes still ache and I've a strong urge to get well and truly pissed. 

God knows I've earned it.      

You know, I find it disturbing that the only constant in my life is some Twilight Zone of an office found high above the Earth.  Fitting though.  It's detached from life, just as I am.  I've lived the majority of my life in airplanes, in the negotiating chair and in the field.  All places I'm detached from the rest of the world.  It's almost as if the only time in my life I even encounter 'real' people is when I'm in transit from one of those places to the next.  Life lived in transit.  Literally.  Brief measures of time where I'm expected to put aside the soldier and exist as a man. 

Those are the only times I'm a father.  And the only times I indulge my more base desires.  Something the clusterfuck in Tecala brought home in a way I hadn't felt since the time I returned home to find the baby I'd left behind jabbering like a jaybird with a vocabulary that did not include the word 'dada'.  I found myself relegated to a position behind mum, uppies and 'nana.  Second fiddle to a fucking banana.  Quite a humbling homecoming, all things considered. 

I'd spent nearly four months on that job.  Rough bit of work, that one, but I'm good at what I do.  I saved a life.  Sitting at home, smoking on the back deck, I watched my small son hide his face against my wife's legs because he was afraid of the stranger in his home.  I wondered then if the life I'd saved was worth the one I'd let slip away.  Christ, look at us now.  His boyhood is all but gone and he still doesn't call me dad, only 'sir'.  I hate the way he says it - with a reserved formality that's somewhere between awe and fear.  You know, I can't remember the last time I hugged him.  We shake hands and speak only of necessities.  He is a stranger to me, and I to him.  And yet even knowing that, I wouldn't go back and do things any differently.  See, mate, I might not be a good father, but I've always been a good soldier. 

For a man paid to notice subtle nuances, it was a nasty start to realize I felt more comfortable in other people's homes than I did in my own, and in fact, was likely more appreciated there as well.  At least on the job I wasn't the bloke who fucked about and screwed things up.  There I was useful.  Needed.  Wanted.  Perhaps that's why I prefer airplanes.  Or the bitter cold of Chechnya.  Or the stink of decaying vegetation in a South American jungle. 

Or the arms of Peter Bowman's wife.    

I can't remember what she tasted like or the scent of her skin or what her hair felt like between my fingers.  All I remember is the sense of desperation when we touched.  Mouths meeting hungrily in the dark and hands that held on too tight.  Words neither of us could speak, given voice only as rough gasps, panted against slick, sweaty skin.  I found myself wondering how long it had been since a man had listened to her.  Really listened.  I listened.  But then again, it's my job to listen.

Contact.  Assess.  Listen.  Negotiate.  Make the drop.  Collect the cargo.  I'd done it more times than I could count.  The players change, but the game never does.  Not in any of the ways that truly matter.  And yet this time, it was different.  Never invest yourself emotionally.  Never become personally involved.  Not with the cargo.  Not with the cargo's family.  Christ.  I think I left my detachment on a snowy Chechen battlefield.  Having a reminder every time I looked in the mirror didn't help matters.  Each time I saw that cut above my eye, something inside me twisted.  I couldn't put my finger on it.  But whatever it was, it was enough to put me off my game.

And it damn sure left a big enough crack in my shell that when Alice talked of Africa and lost children, I couldn't help but be moved.  The feeling was sharp and painful.  Something startling to a man who'd been detached for so long he'd become accustomed to feeling nothing.  In the field, emotion is a handicap.  In negotiation, it's a thousand times more deadly.  Shunting it aside is the only way to survive.  If you can't do that, it sucks you down.  Fucks about with your head-which makes you worth precisely shit to the client.  Negotiation is a game played with the head, not the heart. 

Never the heart.   

And that conversation with Alice?  It touched my heart.  It shouldn't have, but it did.  That's when I stopped wondering about Alice and started wondering about myself.  What the hell was I doing?  And just when exactly was the last time I made any effort to connect with someone beyond working relationships and the transitory physical pleasure I found in one-night stands?  You know, mate, when the answer came to me, I was a bit shocked.  

Discounting my failed attempts with my son, and Dino, who's more brother than friend, the last time was when a pretty, blue-eyed general's daughter caught my eye.  It must have been what?  Nearly two decades ago now?  Christ, I was green.  And she was so sweet and ripe.  An intensely powerful combination, but not necessarily a good one.  Oh, but I wanted it then.  Wanted it so bad I ached with it.  Wanted her body and her heart.  And the little white house with the picket fence-footie on the telly, dog at my feet and my wife in the kitchen with my baby in her belly. 

Dino called it 'cockblind'.  It wasn't just the sex, although that was a big part of it.  I loved her; or at least I did in the beginning.  We were young and naïve, blinded by the stars in our eyes and our dreams of a fairytale life. 

Ashes in the wind now, mate.  Duty called and I went.  

I did get the house and the dog and the baby.  And a wife who married me to get back at her father.  Was I so unsuitable, then?  A wet behind the ears Aussie just out of basic.  I sure as fuck tried my best to earn his respect.  Soldiered on through some of the worst shit imaginable and because of it, moved up pretty quickly through the ranks.  It still wasn't enough for the general though, and never would be, to hear him tell it.  His disapproval only drove me to push myself harder.  I think it was as much to distinguish myself as it was because I'd always gotten on better with my men than I did with my family.  Birds of a feather, I reckon. 

The harder I worked, the more I closed myself off.  The more I closed myself off, the worse things got at home.  The worse things got at home, the more time I spent away from it, throwing myself into my career.  Damned vicious cycle.  To this day, I find it ironic that I can successfully negotiate K&R demands even in the midst of the worst setup imaginable, but I couldn't negotiate a partnership with the one woman I'd ever really cared about.  But then again, when I found out she only married me to spite her father, I no longer felt like trying.  Even the stupidest soldier knows when to cut his losses.     

Chechnya was my wake up call.  I hadn't lost my edge.  That experience had honed it so finely it damn near cleaved me in two.   A Thorne, pierced.   If it wasn't so tragic, it'd almost be funny.  I'd barely gotten my feet back under me when I was assigned the Bowman case.  And so I found myself in Tecala, scrambling about like a bloody loon.  Heads rolled for that, mate, I can assure you.  Alice was right.  I gave her my word.  My word.  But like the good soldier, I was recalled and I went.  Duty doesn't necessarily go hand in hand with honor.  Back home, if you can even call it a home given my vagabond lifestyle, her words ate at me.   

In the end, I didn't care what my superiors thought.  I didn't care what Dino thought.  Hell, I didn't even care what Alice thought.  I didn't go back for her.  I went back for myself.  To satisfy my honor.  And yet even as I did, I knew while I was satisfying one portion of my honor, I was risking another. 

Hostage recovery, it's a touchy situation even under the best conditions.  It's a bit like being in one gigantic pressure-cooker.  In grief and stress, humans naturally turn to each other for comfort.  The time we spent alone together, the days and weeks of learning each other's little idiosyncrasies, the sheer number of nights without the comfort of another person to wrap ourselves around or even the relief from the normal physical demands of our bodies-it can (and does) tempt even those with the most unshakable foundations.  For the two of us, it was infinitely worse.  She was a woman desperate to stop feeling.  I was a man desperate to feel something, anything at all.

It was not our finest hour.  

She wanted a rock.  Someone solid to cling to, someone in control in a world that was out of control.  I wanted a taste of the life I'd given up for my career.  Someone to make me feel alive again in a way cheating death never could.  Someone to breathe life into the softer parts of myself that had been cold and dead for more years than I cared to count.    

Desperation is a tricky bedfellow.  Sex brought us both a measure of peace, but exacted much in return.  We both made sacrifices for that choice.  We each gained something, but we each lost something too-she, a portion of her virtue, and me, equal measures of both pride and honor.  And as always, in the end, like the good soldier I am, I swallowed my wants and did what I had to do.  Did what was right.     

It might be uncharitable, but my memories of her will always be tainted because of the choices she made, even though I'm just as guilty.  Flashes of her come to me-Alice with fire in her eyes, fighting for the best chance she has to save Peter.  Alice grieving for her lost child as her husband rots in the jungle.  Alice moving to embrace the man I rescued.  As pure and as good as those are, they are interspersed with memories of a different sort.  A darker sort.  Alice begging me to fuck her harder in the bed she once shared with her husband.  Alice on her knees in front of me, swallowing my come while her husband was attempting to escape his prison.  Alice being so selfish as to think I could stand aside and watch like some fucking eunuch while she fussed and cooed over the man who would no doubt spend the next few weeks rooting her blind.  Christ.

I don't hate her for making the choices she made.  I feel sorry for her.  It's not a sin to love two men.  But what we did together was most assuredly sinful.  While I do not deny my share of the wrongdoing, I'm also not the one with a ring on my finger.  And we both know it wasn't strictly grief that drove her to seek solace in my arms.  And it wasn't just fucking.  Or perhaps it was.  Someone sure as hell got fucked, but it wasn't me.  Or Alice. 

But for a little while, Alice got to have her comfort, and the touch of a man who was in control.  A man who'd lived life on the edge...  and one who also had a big cock and knew how to use it.  I got to have feeling in place of detachment and a small measure of time to play house, only this time it wasn't white and it didn't have a picket fence.  It was filled with scorpions and the woman in the kitchen was wearing another man's ring. 

Even now, I don't regret what happened.  It reconnected me to life.  And more incredible still, it burned away the numbness surrounding my heart and gave me back feeling.  Ice shifts in the drink next to me and tinkles against the glass, changing the direction of my thoughts.  In my head, I can hear Dino's voice.  'Cockblind'.  The tosser.  He wasn't right any more this time than he was the first, but in the way of best mates the world over, he knew what to say. 

And what not to say.               

The stuff of legends.  Fuck.  Flights of fancy, more like.  Sweat, determination and bloody big bollocks, no doubt helped along by a massive portion of good old-fashioned luck and probably the prayers of every last one of us.  Still, I can't help but feel a rush of satisfaction as I think about what we managed to pull off.  Fucking righteous coup is what it was.  Now on the other side of our trial by fire, baptized by our own blood and still glittering from the gilt of flawless victory, I know what happened in that jungle really will become the stuff of legends. 

A sly smile turns up the corners of my mouth as I think on what our hard won coup brought this tired, old soldier.  A familiar 'office' with an uncomfortable chair.  Cool, stale air on my face from the vent above.  A reputation that will open damn near any door I please.  An account in the Caymans.  And the freedom of three men.  Two freed from ramshackle huts in the jungle, and a third whose heart was finally freed from shackles of his own making.