On target

FOURTEEN

The Russian transport, an Ilyushin Il-76, was massive, with a tip-to-tail length of more than 150 feet, and a similar width from wingtip to wingtip. Court stood in front of the plane before dawn and inspected it through the faint illumination of frigid moonshine. Next to him stood Gregor Sidorenko. He'd flown with Gentry from Saint Petersburg to Grodno, Belarus, in the Hawker and landed at the main airport there just thirty minutes earlier. There was, unequivocally, no operational reason for Sid to be there; it was anathema to every relevant procedure and tactic that Court had learned in his sixteen years as an operative. But his Russian handler had wanted to go along for this part of the ride. Even though it was below freezing out here on the tarmac, Sid looked ridiculous bundled as he was in wool and cotton and leather and fur, his thin nose and his pointed chin jutting out from the mound of fabric and dead animal that blanketed him.

Court was perplexed by his handler's bizarre excitement over the operation. It was night-and-day different than the cool distance kept by his former employer, the English ex-spymaster Sir Donald Fitzroy. Sir Donald would no more fly along to stand around at the departure point of one of Court's wet operations than he would execute the op himself. But Sid was a fan-a freak, in Court's eyes-of this sort of thing.

Sid's Russian accent broke the still. "Everything is prepared. Takeoff at ten a.m."

"I know."

"Seven hours fifteen minutes to Khartoum."

Court just nodded.

"They say your pilot is very good."

Court said nothing.

"Takeoff will be to the south. That's Poland back there behind us, so he will probably fly south until he reaches the border with-"

"Sid. I really don't care which way we fly."

The Russian was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I do not know how you can be so calm. Everything that must be running through your mind. Everything that you must do in the next days. The danger, the intrigue, the physical peril. And you just stand there bored, like you are waiting for a train to take you in to your office."

Court's eyes remained on the aircraft ahead. Sid did not know the half of it, of course. Sid's op was relatively- and relatively was the key word-easy, compared to what he really had to do. Shooting a man at five hundred yards and then hiding out in the hills for a week or so until he could just walk through airport gates and board a flight out of the country seemed so much simpler than pretending to prepare for an assassination but instead executing a split-second kidnapping and a perilous rendezvous in enemy territory to transfer a prisoner.

Court so wished he could just shoot that murderous fucker Bakri Abboud in the head and be done with it.

"How can you possibly remain so relaxed?" Sid asked Court.

The Gray Man turned to the Russian mafioso, the first time he'd made eye contact with his handler all morning.

"This is what I do."

Gregor Sidorenko's narrow mouth formed a surprisingly toothy smile. Even in the predawn light it glowed. "Fantastic."

The aircraft was a behemoth, and it exhibited function over form. Called the Candid by NATO forces, the Ilyushin Il-76 had huge, high wings that sagged slightly when at rest. The plane looked big and fat and slumbering there in the dark. Court wanted to walk over and kick it awake, but he knew soon the Russian crew would handle that, and the aircraft would effectively transport him and whatever war goods it carried to Khartoum. It was not a military flight in the strict sense. The plane and the crew were property of Rosoboronexport, the Russian state-owned military export entity. Rosoboronexport flew cargo aircraft all over the globe, to the Sudan, to Venezuela, to Libya, to India, transporting exported Russian arms to some sixty countries in all, fanning and fueling the flames in trouble spots all over the earth.

With only idle curiosity, Gentry asked Sid, "What is the cargo?"

"Other than you? Crates of heavy Kord machine guns, ammunition, and support equipment."

"And they are allowed in by the UN? What about the sanctions?"

Sid snorted in the cold morning air. "The sanctions are obtuse. Russia is allowed to sell military equipment to the Sudan, as long as the equipment is not to be used in the Darfur region of the country."

"If Russia is shipping machine guns to Sudan, they can be damn sure they are being used in Darfur. That's where the war is."

"Exactly, my friend," Sid smiled, not picking up on Court's derision of the arrangement. "Moscow takes President Abboud's word for it. That seems to satisfy the UN."

"Unbelievable," said Court, almost to himself.

Sidorenko patted him on the back. "Yes. Very good, isn't it?" The Russian turned and headed back to the warmth of the terminal.

Court lay on his back across four of the Ilyushin's red plastic seats. Next to him in the tight floor space between his resting place along the wall of the fuselage and the huge crates of cargo in the center of the aircraft was positioned a single MultiCam backpack. Gentry was a master at packing light. Inside the fifty-pound ruck was a disassembled Blaser R 93, a German sniper rifle, caliber.300 Winchester Magnum, and twenty rounds of ammunition. Also binoculars, two fragmentation grenades, two smoke grenades, and a small supply of dried food, water, and oral rehydration salts. A medical blow-out kit for major trauma was included, but for cuts and bruises he'd packed nothing. On his belt and in his cargo pants he wore a Glock nine-millimeter pistol, a combat knife, a multi-tool, and a flashlight.

He was covered in a long white thobe, a robe customary in the Sudan.

The flight crew had left him alone. Their higher-ups at Rosoboronexport had ordered them to ferry a man to Khartoum, but that was all they knew.

Gentry had told the crew chief in Russian before takeoff that he was not to be disturbed except for emergencies, so when a member of the five-man cabin crew appeared above him and shouted over the shrill engines, he knew it was time to either be mad or be worried. The man summoned him to the cockpit, and Gentry followed him up the narrow channel alongside the gray wooden cargo crates, which hung from rollers attached to rails on the ceiling that ran down the length of the craft. There were no windows in the cabin; instead, quilted padding and netting and fastened equipment hung from the walls of the fuselage. It reminded the American of another cargo plane he'd been in, four months earlier, over northern Iraq. That flight did not end well for Gentry; his thigh throbbed where the bullet had torn through the muscle, but it ended even less well for the five other men who'd been with him in the cargo hold.

The cockpit of the Ilyushin was expansive; four men fit themselves in the upper-level crew area, and the navigator sat below in the nose among a sea of dials and buttons and computer monitors. The pilot, a redheaded Russian in his forties named Genady, who wore aviator glasses too large for his face and appeared, to Gentry, to be unhealthily thin, beckoned him forward. A young and heavyset flight engineer passed the American a radio headset so he and the pilot could communicate comfortably with each other.

"What is it?" Court asked in Russian.

"Sudanese air traffic control has contacted us. There is a problem."

"Tell me."

"We have been diverted. We are no longer going to Khartoum."

"Where are we going?"

"Al Fashir."

"Why?"

"I don't know, but I think perhaps the Sudanese Army must need the guns there in a hurry."

Court pulled a laminated map off the flight engineer's table. The man looked up at him but did not protest. "Where the hell is Al Fashir?" asked Gentry as he unfolded the map.

The Russian pilot turned and looked back over his shoulder and answered the question with one word, delivered in a grave tone. "Darfur." He put his gloved finger on the far edge, completely across the country from where Court's operation was planned.

Court looked up from the map. "Fuck."

"It is a problem for you, da?"

"My job is not in Darfur."

Genady said, "Nothing I can do. I have to divert; I don't have clearance to land in Khartoum."

"Shit!" said Gentry now. He tossed the headset back on the console and turned to leave the cockpit, yanking the map out with him.

Five minutes later he was on his Hughes Thuraya satellite phone, talking with Sidorenko. He'd spent the time waiting for the connection to be established looking over the map. "This is not acceptable! How am I supposed to get out of the airport at Al Fashir, cross a hundred miles of bandit-covered desert, plus another three hundred miles of Sudanese territory? I've got the fucking Nile River now between myself and my objective."

"Yes, Gray, I understand. It is a problem. You must let me think."

"I don't have time for you to think! I need you to get this flight back on track!"

"But that is not possible. My influence is with Moscow, not Khartoum. You will have to land where the Sudanese instruct you to land."

"If you can't fix this, then this operation is dead, you got that?" In fact, Court was concerned about Zack's op, Nocturne Sapphire, and not Sid's contract, but he did not mention this.

"I will do my best." Sid hung up, and Court continued pacing the narrow alley between the wall of the fuselage and the crates of guns.

This snafu was of the "shit happens" variety. It was no one's fault, but Court knew from much experience that no blame need be assigned to an operation for it to fail completely and miserably.

To Sidorenko's credit, he called back much quicker than Gentry had anticipated.

"Mr. Gray, we have a solution. You must fly out again with the plane after it off-loads in Al Fashir. Return to the air base in Belarus. There will be another flight to Khartoum in three days' time. It will be helicopter repair equipment, goods that are not likely to be diverted to Al Fashir. Everything will be fine." Sid seemed satisfied with the new arrangements.

"Three days from now?"

"Correct."

"One day before Abboud goes to Suakin? That's not enough time to get there and prepare." It would have been, thought Court, if Sidordenko's operation was the actual plan he intended on carrying out. It was not enough time, in Gentry's estimation, to adequately recon the area to increase the chances for success in Zack's operation. Again, he could not very well explain this to the man on the far end of the satellite connection.

Sid shouted back across the line, his stress getting the best of him. "I can't help it! I had no way to foresee this. The Russian government did not foresee this. Just stay with the flight crew and come back. We will try again in three days."

Court hung up the phone and continued pacing the narrow corridor of the aircraft next to the weapons. "Son of a bitch."

He next used his phone to call Zack. Hightower took the call on the first ring. He was clearly surprised to hear from Gentry. "You're about twenty-four hours ahead of schedule, Six."

"I'm about to fall behind schedule." Court told Sierra One what was going on. When he was finished he asked, "You know anything about this airport? Any way I can get out of here and over to Suakin?"

"You might as well be on the dark side of the moon. It's a war zone all around Al Fashir. The Red Cross, private NGO relief agencies, and African Union troops working for UNAMID, the United Nations Mission in Darfur, are about the only foreigners in the area. You might be able to buy a ride to the east from some local ballsy enough to brave the Janjaweed militia and the government of Sudan troops patrolling the badlands, but I wouldn't recommend it. Stick with Sid's change to the op orders, retrograde out of the Sudan with the aircrew, and reinsert in three days. It's the best we can do at this point. We'll just have to rush things when you get there. I'll let Carmichael know what's up."

"Roger that, Six out."

"Wait one," Zack said, "Just a piece of advice. Don't know what your turnaround time is in Al Fashir, but stay the hell inside the airport grounds. If you get popped by the authorities over there, they'll take you to the Ghost House."

"That sounds charming," Court said over the whine of the Ilyushin's engines changing pitch. They had just begun a turn to the south and a slight descent.

"It's anything but charming. It's the name the locals give to the government's secret prisons across the country, but the one in Al Fashir is extra special. You go in the Al Fashir Ghost House, you don't come out, and you don't die quick. It is legendarily miserable."

"Understood. I'll avoid the local tour, then. Six out."