On target

THIRTY-FOUR

The men below Gentry shouted and screamed, but not in panic. No, these were trained bodyguards. Their commands were to their principal, the president of the Republic of Sudan. Court knew the drill. They would hustle into the room in a tight cordon, with Oryx in the center. Once inside they would secure the door and then lead him towards the most secure portion of the building, likely the basement vault. Gentry didn't know how many protectors had come in with Abboud; that would depend on how they were positioned when the gunfire started, if any had been hit by Sierra Five or Three, and any number of other factors. But ultimately it did not matter whether there were two men or twenty downstairs; Court Gentry had a surprise for them.

Court pressed a button on a handheld remote device he'd left on the windowsill. By doing so he activated electromagnets on two bolt locks he'd attached to each side of the double doors below, firing the three-inch long iron bolts across the space between the two doors and holding them fast. This ensured no one else came through.

Next he lifted a twelve-pound device off the cheap linoleum flooring of the atrium by its carry handle, jammed his thumb under a switch cap, and then pressed the button. One second later he hefted it over the side railing. It fell towards the lobby, but it was attached with a six-foot cord to the railing itself, so when the acousto-optical nonpyrotechnic less-lethal stun device reached the eye level of all the men in the lobby, its two-second countdown clock beeping and flickering, thus ensuring all eyes would be upon it, it would create maximum effect. Court threw himself to the atrium's floor, tucked into the fetal position with his eyes shut tight and his hands covering his C4OPS earpieces.

The device was a prototype built by the CIA's Directorate of Science amp; Technology, and Zack just referred to it as the Big Bang. It was designed to cause both physiological and psychophysical disorientation, with incredible lights and sound. The eggheads at Langley had been careful to only use off-the-shelf equipment in the device, mostly from Japan and France and Germany, to avoid having a virtual "Made in the USA" label affixed to the contraption.

Even with his eyes closed, its bright burst of light reflected off the walls around him and burned into his eyes, and even with his noise-reducing C4OPS headset in his ears and his hands covering them, the high-pitched one-second siren's wail was deafening. Its advertised optical effect was akin to staring into the sun for 110 milliseconds, and acoustically it battered the eardrums and even concussed those within twenty feet of it when activated in an enclosed space. Court felt the teeth in his jaw rattle, and coral rag and other material from the ceiling above him rained down on his body, but he ignored pain and the falling debris, and jumped to his feet instantly.

He had no time to wait.

As he ran down the stairs, he raised his weapon in front of him, not 100 percent certain of what he would find. Gentry entered the lobby quickly. He found them all incapacitated to one degree or another, six men in total, one of whom would surely be Oryx. One of the guards was up on his knees, both hands feeling around on the carpet for his weapon. Court shot him in the back of the head, and the man fell forward, his face slamming against the pistol on the floor that he sought. He then stepped over two unconscious guards' lifeless forms to reach an older man, who was lying faceup. Yes, this was his target. Oryx was out cold, and next to him, two younger guards were conscious but completely disoriented. They lay on their backs and writhed in their own vomit. Immediately Gentry ripped open the thick president's white dress shirt and pulled his tie loose. Stepping in front of him, he knelt down, reached under his underarms, and hefted him until their chests were leaning against one another. Court ducked down, let the dead weight settle on his right shoulder, then he used his legs to rise up again into a standing position, heaving Oryx up with him into the fireman's carry. The American walked the big Sudanese man over the legs of another bodyguard and out of the room. At the dead-bolted back door he laid him back down gently and drew his pistol again.

Court hurried back towards the lobby. Though his ears rang from the siren he'd just set off, he could hear incredible amounts of gunfire outside. He was thankful all the heavy fighting was to the north and west, which would not interfere with his escape route.

Inside the lobby Gentry raised his pistol and fired one suppressed round into an ankle of each of the four living bodyguards. He looked around the room hopefully for a dropped rifle or submachine gun but saw nothing but a few Lado pistols, which he ignored.

Outside, men beat on the front doors, yelling to be let in. Gentry left the lobby and the injured men behind. They'd recover soon, some perhaps in under a minute, and their heads would kill them for hours or days. Their ankles would incapacitate them for longer, but more important, they would require immediate care, care that would take more guards, police, soldiers, and other first responders to organize and carry out, leaving fewer available to hunt for the kidnapper.

Gentry returned to the back door while reloading his pistol, and here he rolled Oryx onto a two-wheeled hand truck that he'd been given by Zack. It was a small, collapsible, lightweight device, made principally of telescoping PVC pipes with a hard honeycomb plastic floor plate and fat rubber tires. He positioned the heavy body on the two-wheeler, took a moment to tuck the arms inside the attached bungee cord, and then paused a moment to catch his breath.

The gunfire outside continued in short bursts. It sounded confused, spread out.

It sounded like trouble, but still he heard nothing around his side of the building.

Court unhooked the dead bolt at the back door and opened it, looking first to the left, the direction of the square. It was clear.

Then he looked to the right. Two civilian men stood in the dirt road. They looked like Beja fishermen, and their arms were empty of weapons. Court pointed his pistol at them, and they raised their hands immediately. He told them to go in Arabic, and they just stood there. But when he waved the pistol with its long silencer attached, in a motion to mimic their getting out of the street, they seemed to understand, and they disappeared in seconds.

A minute later, Gentry jogged in the shadows, pushing the hand truck with the president on it in front of him. He'd made it two blocks to the south and had only seen the two confused civilians, who had done nothing to impede his progress. Court then ran past a long, low wall and turned inside an open gate to a private residence. In the small dirt courtyard he lowered the two-wheeler to the ground and knelt beside it. He was a hundred yards away from the front door of the bank now. He'd made one right turn and then a left down narrow passages and was semi-confident he had neither been spotted nor left any sort of a trail with his feet or his wheels.

The crackle of gunfire from the square continued.

As if on cue, Oryx's head began to roll to the left and the right. Court unstrapped the president and sat him up, slapped him a few times across the face. He pulled flexi-cuffs out of his backpack and fastened the Sudanese president's arms in front of his body. He reached for a bottle of water staged for quick access in a side pocket of his pack, opened it, and splashed it liberally across the big black man's face and poured a quick shot over his bald head.

Oryx came to fully. He was still disoriented, and his pupils were dilated. Gentry made him take a few swigs of the water, then he slapped him again.

Oryx spat the water up immediately, most of it hitting Court in the face. Abboud then tried to reach out and swat away the phantom bright lights in front of his eyes.

Gentry shouted over the inevitable ringing in Abboud's ears. "Wake up! Hey. Open your eyes! Look at me! Look at me."

He had the man's full attention now. His eyes were wide but clearly whited out in the center from the blinding light of the Big Bang. He took in the scene and the man in front of him by looking at him in a sideways glance. He was clearly shocked but recovering from what must have appeared little more than a dream a few seconds earlier.

Oryx shook his head, attempting still to clear out confusion, the bright dancing lights, the ceaseless ringing in his ears.

Court had been flash-banged many times in training, but the gizmo he'd used on Oryx and his guards was new, and it was nasty. Gentry was glad he'd never been on the business end of an acousto-optical stun device of this magnitude.

In Arabic Oryx shouted, "Who are you? Where… what is happening to-"

Gentry responded in English. "Listen up. I was sent to kill you. That was my job. But someone else wanted me to kidnap you instead. Do you understand?"

The president nodded slowly, as if he were still not certain this was not all some sort of a cruel hoax. Court stared him down several seconds, and then a wave of panic flashed in Oryx's eyes.

"I'm going to try to kidnap you, but here's the deal. If that gets too complicated, I'm going back to plan A. Plan A pays a lot more than plan B, anyway. Things get too rough, you make too much trouble when we try to get out of here, and it's plan A all the way. Plan A is a bullet between your beady eyes, and I leave you in the street, go home, and count my cash.

"You understand?"

Oryx nodded again. The panic was there, but there was an acquiescence in his expression. He understood now.

"So your job is to make sure plan A isn't the easy choice for me. Got it? We need to be on the same team here, so this all goes smooth, okay?"

"American? You are American?"

"Absofuckinglutely." Court was proud to say it. It had been a while since he'd operated in the interests of the United States.

"Good. What is your rank?"

"No rank."

"No rank? You are an officer, yes?"

Court laughed as he pushed the two-wheeler up against the wall to shield it from view of anyone walking down the street outside. "Just a grunt, dude. It was this or peeling potatoes, and I drew the short straw."

Oryx did not understand the joke. He shook his head again to clear the lights and declared, "I wish to surrender to your senior commander."

Gentry chuckled. "Sorry, I'm all you get for now."

"Very well." He said it in a disappointed tone. "My head-"

Gentry pulled two pills from his front pocket. "Take these for now."

Oryx took the pills in his hand, looked them over, but did not put them in his mouth.

"They're just mild painkillers. I promise you will thank me in a few minutes."

Abboud popped the pills in his mouth slowly, swallowed another swig of water and choked on it, but did manage to keep the pills down.

"Can you run?"

"Run? I can barely see!"

"Can you move fast, then? Say no, and plan A is my best bet, because we're going to have to haul ass to get you out of here."

Oryx nodded helpfully. "I can run."

"Good man. Now, I'll help you stand."

Oryx looked around. He seemed to just now notice all the gunfire. "Who is shooting? What is all this shooting?" Court realized his prisoner really wasn't quite caught up to what was going on yet. It was no surprise.

"Friends of mine. They are keeping your friends busy. We are going to head through the back of this house here, go south a few blocks, and get in a boat. You ready?"

Oryx nodded again. He was helpfully conspiratorial in his own kidnapping. Even though he was clearly still disoriented, he recognized the alternative and had no doubt in his mind, looking at the serious American man in front of him, that it would be no problem for him to carry it out.

"Let's move," said Court. And he pushed Oryx around, shoved him hard to propel him towards the little stone house.

Sierra One, Two, and Four bounced around the inside of the cargo van as it bottomed out, lurched back into the air, and began climbing a little hill. The back doors were wide-open, but Four had strapped himself in with a belt tied to the bolted-in center seats and affixed to him with a quick-release buckle. No one knew where they were exactly, even though they had all spent weeks studying maps of the town. Brad even had a satellite photo of Suakin taped to the steering wheel in front of him. But all the streets looked the same, all the alleyways looked the same, the endless sea of dilapidated burlap and driftwood shacks looked the same, and apparently all the road signs had long ago been used for roofing material or firewood.

The three men had spent the past three minutes stumbling into and then out of little engagements with government of Sudan soldiers from the Sudanese People's Armed Forces. The GOS units in town seemed disorganized as hell. As often as not, Brad had turned their van onto a road only to find themselves behind a column of men. Twice they'd come face-to-face with army trucks, and both times not a shot had been fired as both vehicles backed up to get out of danger.

This was a confused ambush, if that's even what it was, but what the government troops lacked in organization, they made up for in sheer numbers. As the Whiskey Sierra van blasted through the little streets lining a seemingly endless vista of hovels on the north side of town, more and more Sudanese troops seemed to be coming out of the woodwork. Sierra Four had emptied an entire magazine from his weapon at enemy threats during and since breaking through the corral, and now Milo reloaded quickly, certain there'd be more fighting to come.

Sierra Five's voice came over the net between bursts of automatic fire a quarter mile from the van.

"Yo, One. I could use some help over here. GOS has backed up out of my line of sight, and I've repositioned to a second-floor window, but it won't be long before they come back and blow the shit out of this hotel."

"Roger that, Spence," said Zack. "We're coming to pick you up ASAP; we're just a little turned around over here."

"Just follow the sound of the shooting. I've got a dozen or so of Oryx's guards taking potshots at me from the square. You ought to be able to orient yourself on that."

"We're trying," Zack replied, as Sierra Two made two quick turns to his left, pulled right behind an army jeep with an unmanned Russian machine gun mounted on its rear bed.

Brad made an immediate right.

"Sierra One to Sierra Three, gimme a sitrep on your position."

Dan did not stop firing to communicate. "They're hitting me from two alleyways." Two cracks of his rifle distorted the transmission in Zack's headset. "Not coordinated fire, and I've got the high ground on the roof here, but there sure as hell are a lot of them. They get in below me, and I'm toast. How copy?" Several more cracks delayed Hightower's response.

"Good copy. We're on the way."

"Contact rear!" Milo shouted from behind Zack. In the small metal space of the van, his machine gun sounded like a jackhammer amplified by a heavy metal band's amp stacks. Zack spun around to engage with his Tavor, but Brad made another quick turn that took them out of the line of fire.

"One, this is Three. I've got eyes on a chopper approaching from the north."

"A chopper? Civ or military?"

"Uhhh, wait one, break. He's military. Big, fat fucker. Looks like he's about seven or eight klicks out, low and fast, headin' this way like he's got someplace to be… Looks like an Mi-17."

"The Mi-17 is a Hip. The Sudanese don't have Hips." Hip was the NATO designation for the Russian-built MI-17.

"Pretty sure it's a Hip, boss."

"Roger that, goddammit," Zack growled. Not much he could do about an assault from the air right now.

"Five for One!"

"Go Five."

"I've got small arms fire to my west. Not on my position. Sierra Six isn't a klick to the west of the square, is he?"

"He shouldn't be. Six, if you are able to transmit, let me know if that's you."

"Six, to One." Court came over the net. His voice was sure and succinct. "Negative. I have Oryx, and we are southeast of the square. We're making a try for the harbor."

Zack thought it over as the van made another hard turn, this time to the left. "Must be the SLA rebels. Better late than never, I guess. I'll take whatever I can get at the moment. Sound like much, Five?"

"I'm not impressed. Doesn't sound like half of what I've got going on right on top of me!"

"Wait a sec," interrupted Sierra Two from behind the wheel of the van. "This is that alley that runs into the northeast corner of the square."

"You're sure?" asked Zack. He had no idea. It looked the same as the last dozen alleys they'd driven through.

"Yeah. We stay on this, we're in the square in thirty seconds. We want to do that?"

Zack thought it over for a second, then said, "What the hell. We don't want to get lost again, and Spence and Dan are going to run dry if we can't pick them up."

"There are gonna be troops in the square. And Abboud's guard force," Sierra Two noted as he drove on.

Hightower just nodded. He began transmitting, "Three and Five, we'll hit the square in twenty seconds, blast through it shooting, whip around behind the bank, and pick both of you up outside your positions in the alley one block west of the square. Keep your heads down!"

A pair of "Roger thats."

"Four, it's gonna get crazy," Zack shouted back to Milo.

"Bring it on!" came the shout from the trunk monkey behind him.

Gentry was less than five blocks from the square when the Whiskey Sierra van drove through it. He heard squealing tires, then questioning and answering rifle and pistol fire that continued unabated.

He also heard a smattering of fire farther to the west, probably outside of Suakin, AKs both inbound and outbound, and this he took for the lopsided battle between a portion of the GOS force and the SLA guys the CIA had managed to browbeat into showing up. They were getting their asses handed to them, from the sound of it. It would probably be a while before Sudan Station convinced the SLA to do any more fighting at its behest.

With all the action in the early morning town, as near as Court could tell, his sector was clear. He and Oryx were on their knees under the shaded lean-to that covered an old brick oven and served as a tiny open-air bakery. They were only fifty yards from the boats. He could see the little wooden craft on the still water of the bay, red hulls rocking back and forth invitingly. Just fifty yards, yes, but fifty yards of open ground. Gentry worried about GOS men to the north along the beach or the causeway to Old Suakin Island, but more than this, he worried about the reports of a helicopter above. Even if he and Oryx could snake down to the boat, traveling over the water would leave them totally exposed to that chopper.

He thought it over for a few more seconds. "Forget the boat," he said aloud, then turned to Oryx. "I have a car, eight blocks southwest of the square. That's where we're going. Now!" Court pushed Oryx into the alley, and they both began running.

They'd made it just one block up an alleyway when Oryx broke off quickly to the left, dodging down an even smaller alley that ran up a gentle hill. Court chased after him, reached out to grab the big man by the neck and get him back on track, but a squad of five GOS soldiers on foot came out the back door of a small coral building, not fifteen feet from their president. They raised their weapons in confusion, took a moment to size up the situation they had just stumbled upon. Court took advantage of the delay. He put himself between the soldiers and Oyrx and shoved the president out of the way roughly, raising his weapon at the same time. He fired two rounds from his pistol into the chest of the first man in the squad, got his free hand around Oryx's tie, and yanked his prisoner back out of the tiny alleyway as he dropped another soldier with a round to his forehead.

The remaining soldiers scrambled for cover in the building they'd just exited, and Court let go of Oryx, darted towards the rifle lying next to one of the dead trooper's bodies. But a long burst from an unseen shooter's rifle stitched bullets down the alley just feet in front of Gentry, so he turned and retreated back around the corner, grabbed his prisoner again, and ran away as fast as he could with one hand on his weapon and the other on the neck the president of the Sudan.