On target

THIRTY

Nightfall found the Gray Man just to the north of Suakin, looking out to the water of the lagoon. The Red Sea itself was three miles or so farther to the east. This finger inlet protected the small port and had made the water-way a natural transportation route for centuries, until 1907, when the opening of Port Sudan, forty miles to the north, rendered Suakin irrelevant. Gentry still wore his Sudanese clothing, Western in appearance but not at all out of the ordinary here. With his tan skin and his dark beard and hair, with the dust and grime of a full day of travel, with his white taqiyah prayer cap, he could pass from a distance and in the night as an Arab, perhaps a Rashaida, if no one looked too closely. The Bosnian pilgrim cover story was always there to pull out in a pinch, though it was no more plausible here than it had been twenty miles to the west.

He'd stowed his pack deep in the boulders ten yards from the warm water's edge. He'd found a dark cavelike indention in the rocks, and this he'd made a temporary LUP, or layup position.

The breeze from the ocean was not cool, but it was moving air, certainly less hot and stifling than had been Al Fashir or his six hours on the donkey cart. Compared to most of the last ninety-six hours, the steady currents of air off the water here in the dark shade of the boulders felt like the soft touch of a woman, not that Court had much experience with that in the past several years. He lay back, let his mind drift, let his bare feet dangle in a pool of seawater while his head rested on his boots, and he wanted a painkiller to help him relax one last time before the action and danger of tomorrow morning.

But he did not have time to relax now; he had to call Zack, needed to meet with him to pick up some equipment he'd need the next morning. He also needed to meet with Mohammed, the Suakin cop who was on the payroll of Russian intelligence.

He pulled out the Thuraya phone, pushed a couple of buttons, and then waited.

"You here?" Zack was all about the mission now. He was still angry at Court about Darfur, the teasing macho banter of their earlier conversations nowhere in sight.

"Affirm."

"Let's meet at Echo, four-five mikes."

"Roger that. Echo in forty-five."

"One out."

Echo was the code name for the ruined treasury building in Old Suakin, which was an island of shattered coral and stone buildings connected by a causeway to el-Geyf, or the new town of Suakin, which lay on the mainland shore. Court had ignored the causeway; instead he put his shoes and pants and his pistol in a small backpack, slipped it around his neck, and then swam across the lagoon at its narrowest point, not more than five minutes in the crossing. The lagoon channel on the other side of the island was deeper and wider. He could see it in the distance under the light of a large but antiquated-looking prison on the far shore. Several small wooden fishing boats anchored in the water near the causeway; farther on, pleasure yachts moored in the black water, their generators lighting their bows and sails, powering stereos that blasted Western-style music, and no doubt providing electricity to kitchens on board more modern than anything in the darkened city beyond the reach of their mast lights.

On the ruined island of Old Suakin itself he was enveloped by darkness, save for dull illumination from a crescent moon. The wreckage of ancient coral rag buildings, erected in the twelfth century, back when this was a main port in North Africa, had deteriorated down to piles of rubble under majestic walls, stairs to nowhere, regal colonnades and columns alongside overgrown bushes and roads of dirt and broken stone. The only human inhabitants of the island were a few caretakers in wooden huts on the far side. The only other residents were four-legged. Court was nearly surrounded by cats before he'd made it fifty feet inland. He followed a path up a hill, kept low in the dark so as not to be seen, and the cats followed him on all sides. But they were quiet and stealthy like he was; other than an occasional rumbling purr, they did not give away the movement of this odd entourage. After another fifty yards Gentry approached the old treasury warily and heard a noise in the brush too big to be feline paws. He pulled a silenced Glock 19 from his pack, only to find himself staring down his sights at a kneeling camel chewing its cud lazily and staring back at him.

Court holstered his weapon and watched the building from between two large, felled coral pillars, his ears tuned to any noises other than the music from the boats in the distance, the camel behind him, and the cats all around. After a short time a penlight flicked on and off twice from the second story of the building, and Gentry rose and approached across a narrow dirt road.

The building was little more than a two-story facade, a spiral staircase in one corner, and a couple hundred square feet of flooring on the second level. Everything else-roof, side and rear walls, the rest of the second floor-was all in a huge pile of stones and ancient wood piled where the first floor should have been. At the bottom of the staircase Court saw Sierra Two, Zack's second-in-command. The oldest in the Whiskey Sierra clan, Brad wore a salt-and-pepper beard and was dressed in local attire: a white turban on his head, a Kalashnikov cradled in his arms.

Sierra Two nodded, no friendliness whatsoever in the greeting. "Go on up," he said.

The stone steps seemed stable enough, but Court saw proof all around that this structure hadn't been built to last. He walked gingerly up the staircase, found Zack Hightower at the top in the southwest corner of the second floor, the only second-story corner of the building to have a floor. Zack sat cross-legged in the shadows, dressed and armed similar to Sierra Two. He'd grown a short beard in the past eight days but otherwise looked the same as he did in Saint Petersburg.

Gentry sat down next to him, and several cats wandered around them both. Zack scooted back farther into darkness, and Court followed him, until they could see one another no longer.

"You aren't wet," Court mentioned.

"We took a Zodiac from the yacht, came in on the dark side of the lagoon. The Hannah is anchored fifteen klicks to the northeast," Zack said.

"In Sudanese waters?"

"Yep. We were boarded by a patrol boat and half-ass searched. They think we're Aussies cruising up the coast of Africa, waiting on an engine part to be DHL'd into Port Sudan. We gave them beer and smokes and made friends."

Court picked a black cat up off his leg, sent it on its way with a gentle toss towards the stairs.

"You been in town yet?" Zack asked as he tucked his butt closer to Court on the ruined flooring of the old building so he could talk softer. Their voices carried deceptively far in the night.

"Negative. You?"

Zack nodded. Court could just see the tip of his chin rise and lower. "Major hellhole. And I know hellholes. It's got an Old West vibe to it. The only power in town is from generators. There is one paved surface in the city. All the other streets and alleys are hard-packed earth, donkey shit, goat shit, and camel shit everywhere you step. The buildings are made out of cracking limestone and coral, like this shit here. There isn't a structure in the city that I couldn't topple with a brickbat and a half hour. Probably seventy-five percent of the buildings are little huts, made with driftwood and tin and rusted-out fifty-five gallon drums.

"So, no hardened cover when it goes loud," Gentry said, completing Zack's obvious point for him.

"Shit, if it goes loud tomorrow morning, buildings are going to fall down on top of you from the sound waves." Zack shrugged. Court heard the motion in the dark, but he could not see him in the shadows. "Which wouldn't be so bad for the locals. This joint could do for some urban renewal."

"Police presence?"

"Negligible during our recon. A few Chinese AKs on dudes in civilian dress patrolling around. Three or four pickup trucks and a couple of hundred-year-old cannon in front of the police station."

"Cannon?"

"Just for decoration."

Court nodded.

Zack said, "Just so you know, Sudan Station is still shitting bricks about your actions over in North Darfur. Everybody says Sierra Six has gone rogue; he's pulling his own op four hundred miles away from his target. You really fucked up. I don't hear from you for three days, and when I finally do, you don't offer much explanation for all the bang bang in the desert." He looked to Gentry for a reply.

"Yeah," Court admitted with a sigh. "It got weird."

Zack shrugged. "The White House is up Denny Carmichael's butt to know what is going on. I share their concern."

"I told you what happened."

"This woman from the ICC. The Canadian. She can ID you?"

"She doesn't know who I am."

"Is she going to make trouble?"

"Maybe for me, down the road. But not for this op."

"You're sure about that?"

Court thought it over and said, "Yeah. I'm sure. She thinks I'm the epitome of evil… but she does believe that our interests coincide as far as whatever it is I'm up to here."

Zack sat there in the dark for a long time. He seemed to let it go, albeit slowly. "Tomorrow at oh six thirty Abboud will leave the house where he's staying. It's a ten-mike walk to the mosque. It is five mikes to the square, one mike more to get him right in front of the bank building. The SLA will hit the square from the north at oh six thirty-six exactly."

"They got watches?"

"Sudan Station says they do."

"Whiskey Sierra isn't in direct contact with the rebels?"

"Negative. Sudan Station has a case officer in town; he's running the SLA." He shrugged. Kind of a What'cha gonna do? look about the gesture. "I need you to be on your mark in the bank when the shit hits the fan."

"Roger that."

"When you snatch Oryx, take him one block south and eight blocks west of the back of the bank. There is a four-door black Skoda Octavia sedan in the parking lot of a brick-making factory. Sudan Station put it there, paid one of the kiln operators to spend the night on the hood to watch over it. Here are the keys."

Court took them. He asked, "Where are you going to be between now and go time?"

"Me, Brad, Milo, and Dan are staying on the Hannah. We'll be in place tomorrow morning."

"Where's Sierra Five?"

"Spencer is already in town. He and the case officer from Sudan Station are staying at a hotel called the Suakin Palace. Spencer assures me it's no palace. What it is, though, is a decent third-floor overwatch on the square. The case officer is going to leave tonight to get out of the way, but Spencer will stay there, be the eye for us."

"That's good." Court was pleasantly surprised there would be another set of eyes at the target location in the morning, although he was also surprised Zack would want one of his men so close to the action. He didn't press his good fortune by asking about it. Instead he questioned Hightower on the rebels. "The SLA is in place and ready to go?"

Zack shrugged. "Better be. Sudan Station paid four hundred thousand bucks to secure their participation. There are thirty-five rebels who will attack from the north at our command tomorrow morning."

"Thirty-five?"

Zack nodded.

"What happened to one hundred?"

Hightower had promised Court, back when he'd been trying to get him to agree to the op, that a force of rebels one hundred strong would keep Abboud's security and local police tied up. But Zack showed no contrition in explaining the discrepancy. He just waved his hand, like it was a minor matter. "That would have been overkill. A couple of trucks at the square, a couple more at the police station, a couple more on the road into town. We know that if Abboud's personal security detail is close enough to the bank when the raid hits, then they are going to shove him into the bank, no matter how much or how little shooting occurs. We don't want or need a major battle on our hands. Thirty-five rebels is the perfect amount."

"You sound like someone sold that to you, so now you are trying to sell it to me."

Zack smiled a little, the first time he'd been anything but furious with Court since their sat phone conversation when he was flying into Al Fashir, four days earlier. After a second's thought, he raised his hands in surrender. "Yeah. Sudan Station told me one hundred rebels. Then they told me thirty-five. Their explanation was just as I said. It makes sense, especially after looking at the layout of the town, but I sure don't like planning an op under one set of presumptions and then executing it under another set of presumptions."

Court just nodded in the dark. "But you still want to go ahead?"

"Hell yeah," Sierra One said without hesitation. "We're good."

The evening call to prayer came from the minaret in the mosque to the west. If everything went according to plan, Court would be a couple blocks away from that very mosque tomorrow before sunup. He looked at Zack. "You got the stuff for me?"

Zack used his thumb to press a wireless push-to-talk transmission button mounted on the side of the index finger of his glove. He spoke into a small headset angled around his right cheek. "Brad, let's have the ruck."

Sierra Two appeared at the top of the stairs a few seconds later. The rucksack was about the size Court had expected, roughly the same as his other pack, stowed back at the water's edge three hundred yards to the north of this location.

"I need a fucking Sherpa."

"Hey man, you're officially running two ops; for that you need two sets of gear."

Zack next handed over a small plastic box, and Court opened it. It was a C4OPS radio system, the same as the Whiskey Sierra team would be using the next morning. It was new technology, and it had everything but the kitchen sink rolled up into it. A radio, a GPS, wireless PTT buttons to mount on a glove or a weapon, earpieces that also provided noise reduction during gunfire, and a covert microphone headset that was virtually invisible when worn on a face with a beard. Zack had given him a primer on the C4OPS system back in Saint Pete, but before that Court had never heard of it.

"How's the encryption? Any chance the opposition can pick up the transmissions?"

"I'll show you." Zack flipped on the device, pushed the wireless transmit button. He spoke into the microphone in a whisper. "Good evening, all you skinnies and ragheads. My name is Zachary Paul Hightower. My social security number is 413-555-1287 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 413-555-1287 end_of_the_skype_highlighting. President Abboud sucks camel dicks."

Sierra Two was at the top of the stairs. He turned back to Hightower. "That's my social."

Zack smiled. Shrugged. "Is it? My bad, Bradley." He turned back to Court. "You can listen in on our transmissions on this. Just so you know what's going on at our end. But I don't want you clogging the net. Don't transmit. If you need to talk to me, use the Thuraya. I'll have it on at all times, wired into my headset, even if we are in hard contact."

"Why would you be in hard contact? I thought you guys were gonna be out of the way until we rendezvous in the marsh."

"Hey, shit happens, bro. If it breaks bad, who knows what's going to go down? We're all ready to go to shore in support if the situation calls for it. Sudan Station has a van staged for us if we need to move into town in the morning. They also got us local clothes. We brought in secondhand gear. We aren't going in with all U.S. equipment, for deniability's sake. We've got guns from Israel and Germany and Russia, boots from Croatia, packs from China, body armor from Australia."

Court was surprised there had been so much preparation for Whiskey Sierra to be ready to get into the fight, but it had been a long time since he'd been part of a big operation. As a singleton, he normally arranged all the gear and logistics himself.

Zack leaned forward into the soft moonlight. He put a gloved hand out in the dark, and Court shook it.

"Good luck tomorrow. I'll be seeing you, and Oryx, when it's done. We'll party like rock stars on the Hannah once we exfil."

"Sounds like a plan. But first how 'bout you guys give me a lift back across the lagoon."

"No prob."

Court searched Hightower's face and body for any signs of deception. He saw worry, anxiety over the op itself, but nothing in his body language gave Court any reason to suspect deception. It comforted him to know that Sierra One did not seem to be working on a different objective in this operation.