On target

THIRTY-EIGHT

By eight a.m., Whiskey Sierra was completely pinned down from the west and from above. Spencer had scooted back into the room with the other men. He'd taken a three-round burst from an AK-47 into his big chest plate and was bleeding from several shrapnel injuries to his neck and face.

Dan was still up on the roof. He'd found some concealment from the chopper and was trying to get an opportunity to bring it down, but he would need to expose himself to do so, and the Hip was circling too damn close to try it. The other four team members were flat on the ground of the first floor. The machine gun on the back of the jeep Brad had almost rear-ended earlier had found a crew, and it had been pulverizing the portion of the mall where Whiskey Sierra was hiding. Zack and his team could not even get their heads up to return fire, so withering was the enemy's attack.

"Dan, can you make it to the side of the roof to get a shot on this machine gun?"

"No fucking way, boss. The Hip is hovering right in front of my position. I stick my head out, and I'm going to lose it. I can't even engage it till it moves away." The noise of the helicopter came through the headsets with Sierra Three's transmission.

"Roger that."

Brad shouted over the noise from the incoming fire, "They are going to flank us here in a second!"

"Yeah," agreed Zack. It was his job, as the team leader, to think of a way out of this seemingly impossible predicament.

He looked at the hallway. Other than the windows and front door, it was the only exit to the room. "Spence, think the GOS has taken that next room yet?"

"I wouldn't doubt it. Lots of access from the street."

Hightower nodded. "Okay. All elements, here's what we're going to do, break. This ain't pretty, but it's all I got. Brad, on my command, you are going to throw all your smoke as far as you can out the window towards the west, try to get it on the road between us and the machine gun. Dan, stay down, but throw your smoke from the roof in the same direction, as far as you fucking can."

"Roger, boss."

"Spencer, throw your smoke out the window to the east, into the market between the malls. How copy?"

"Good copy."

"I'll pop smoke along with Spence. Then, on my command, Spencer goes out the window to the east, fires at the Hip, and hauls ass. You're going to try to get the chopper to go after you. As soon as he does-"

Dan finished the transmission. "I'll dump eighty rounds from the HK up its ass."

"Good man. Then Spencer continues on to Mall Bravo. Tries to make the GOS think we've relocated over there, while the rest of us keep heading south in this complex via the second floor."

"Roger that," said Spencer. Going out into the open like that was all but a death sentence, but the man did not show a moment's hesitation or an ounce of fear.

"We'll link up as soon as possible," said Zack.

"Sounds good," Sierra Five said. Still no indication that he knew he was likely about to die.

"Brad, Milo is your responsibility."

"I got him, but we're going to have to shit-can his gear so he can keep moving."

"Do it." A pause for Brad to get the assault vest and backpack and utility belt off his injured patient. And then, "All right, guys, let's make this happen. Go!"

Smoke grenades arced out of the windows and off the roof. Men under direct fire scrambled to their knees. Milo, though injured and weak, rolled to his knees and fired his borrowed weapon, threw a fragmentation grenade to the west.

"Frag out!"

Within seconds opaque red and white smoke had spurted from canisters in the streets on two sides of the building.

Spencer had unhooked much of the gear from his back and hips, and with only his UZI, a pistol, and a few magazines, he leapt out of the window of the shop, began sprinting across forty meters of market stalls and open ground to try and make it to the other strip mall. He was somewhat obscured by thick white and red smoke, but above and behind him the Hip turned on its axis and plunged through the air after him.

The big black operator slowed and turned to fire at it, raised his impotent weapon for a long burst, but the Hip fired first. The chain guns ripped up the wooden stalls to the left and right of him, and Spencer turned and began running again.

The Hip moved closer, creating distance between itself and the roof of the building behind it. Dan, Sierra Three, stepped out of his low concealment and brought the machine gun to his shoulder.

He lined the big rifle's red dot sight on the tail rotor assembly at the back of the big bird. He opened fire with quick controlled bursts to combat the recoil, and he did not stop, firing eighty rounds and turning the barrel white-hot.

A small puff of black smoke appeared in seconds. The aircraft shuddered and angled to the right, breaking off his chase of the man in the market. He banked harder and harder. Dan thought he was trying to fly back around and engage him, but an explosion at the rotor assembly, much larger than the original puff of smoke, sent the Mi-17 spinning on the vertical midline of its main rotor.

It was eighty feet in the air, completely out of control, and Dan ducked back into the stairwell with a warning to Sierra Five, "Spence! He's goin' down hard! Get clear of the market!"

The tail of the Mi-17 slammed into the second story of the mall Zack and the majority of Sierra Five occupied. It dipped forward and hit the ground nose first. It was only a drop of thirty feet or so, but the big machine was moving at speed, and the resulting explosion and fireball ensured there would be no survivors.

Hightower knew exactly what happened to the Hip, though he had not seen it take the hits from Dan's rifle nor had he watched it auger into the dirt between the two shopping centers. But he heard all the noises and the transmissions from his man on the roof, and when the chopper burst into flames, he and the two men with him were just coming out of the second-floor stairwell and passing a window, and the light and heat off his left shoulder left no doubt as to the fate of the Mi-17 and those aboard.

The three men continued down a short hallway, where they met Dan just as he came down a ladder from the roof. Brad and Dan each took hold of Milo, and Zack led the way as they tried to put some distance between themselves and the last point of contact with the enemy.

"One for Five," Zack called into his headset as he warily moved through a long sundry store that apparently took quite a bit of heavy machine gun fire. All around papers, woven baskets, ceramic pottery, everything in the room, was shattered or shredded.

"One for Five. How copy, Five?" Nothing. "One for Five. Spence?"

The team's headsets were silent.

Court entered the thatch-roofed dwelling, cleared it with his Glock in under five seconds. The walls were primarily burlap, and a fifty-five gallon drum had been pounded flat to use as a door. Treads from tires had been worked in with driftwood, plywood, and other refuse material to augment the burlap on the walls.

The inside was dark and sweltering, the air still and thick, an absence of the smells of food and smoke from cooking fires that made the American assume the owners had been gone awhile and were not coming back soon. He wiped away some cobwebs, kicked at some trash in the corner to make sure no one was hiding there and nothing dangerous came slithering out, and then used his knife to cut holes in the fabric walls to provide light and draft.

He had lucked into finding this hide. After Hightower's last transmission, the Gray Man had decided to not go all the way up to the marshland as he'd originally planned. Instead, he wanted to be closer to Suakin in case he needed to get back there to help extract Whiskey Sierra. So he pulled off the main road, wandered aimlessly down a lonely dirt track, passed a few donkey carts and one small village, looking for any place to park the car and find a few minutes' peace. The abandoned dwelling was surrounded by high grasses and was barely visible from the road, and immediately he knew it would do, although the grasses looked like they would certainly be full of all sorts of poisonous snakes and angry insects.

Gentry holstered his weapon and carefully retraced his steps back to the Skoda to get his human luggage out of the back.

Oryx was awake and alert. His eyes were wide and filled with alternating signs of relief, disdain, and a bit of drug-induced contentment. He'd downed the entire bottle of water and somehow even managed to get his undershirt ripped off of his body. His white shirt was literally clinging to him, soaked with sweat. His large bald head dripped.

The trunk had already begun to smell like death.

"You are not with the American government," Oryx proclaimed as he was led towards the dwelling. "The way you executed that man. The way you hit me, threw me in the trunk. The talk of money and assassination. These are not the actions of an American serviceman."

"Nope."

The president stopped and turned. "You are a soldier of fortune."

Gentry pushed him forward. "After expenses, I'm really more like a soldier of the middle class."

"I know who sent you to kill me."

"Do you?"

"Of course. It's obvious. Who has both the resources to pay you and to plan this, and hates me enough to set this in motion? Those American actors who are so against me and have so much money. I have seen them on television for years, speaking to your congress, making movies of lies that they call documentaries. I knew some day these infidels would make an attempt on my life."

Court wasn't in the mood for chit-chat. The barb in his back was causing all his muscles to seize and cramp in pain; even walking was difficult now. As they approached the open doorway, he said, "That's right. I'm gonna be a primo player in Hollywood when this is done. Fucking star on that sidewalk and all that shit."

"And I also know who sent you to kidnap me." His voice trailed off at the end, as he stopped at the entrance to the tiny structure. "Where are we? What is this place?"

"Keep going."

"What are you going to-"

Court struck him soundly on the side of the head with the butt of the gun. The big man staggered, turned to the shack, and began walking forward with no more questions. Once inside, he continued to the center of the dimly lit room, and then he turned around. Gentry could see his confusion.

"You are working with Bedouins?"

"Shut up."

Abboud shook off his confusion and began a sales pitch. Court had expected nothing less. "I can arrange to pay you more, more than you are getting to do this, I assure you."

"Shut up."

"Not money from Sudanese banks, no. I have accounts all over the world. Friends in the West and in Asia. This could be a larger monetary event for you than you now realize. You can just double what you are being paid and I will see-"

"Shut up and listen!" Court holstered his pistol again, the agony showing in his face as he reached across his body and gingerly removed his backpack by unbuckling the shoulder straps. Then he began working on his brown shirt, tearing at it with grunts and winces. After several tugs it tore free, and he stood bare-chested in the dim shack. "I need you to help me get this out."

"The arrow?"

"No, the coffee stain on my crotch. Yes! The arrow!"

The president's thick eyebrows rose. "What if I do not agree to help you?"

"I will kill you."

Court could see the gears turning in Abboud's brain. The crafty man knew his kidnapper needed something from him. He was now trying to find a way to play it to his advantage.

"What will you do for me if I do help?"

"I won't kill you. Yet."

That slowed the gears down a bit.

"What do I have to do?"

"I am going to lie on the ground, facedown. I need you to put your foot in the center of my back, grab the arrow just behind the head, and pull it out of the bone."

There was a flicker of fresh light in the president's eyes, and Court Gentry knew exactly what he was thinking. "You will want to drive the arrow into my back or neck when you pull it out. If you do this, you better find the place on my neck that will kill me instantly, because I am going to roll over and shoot you sixteen times if you don't."

"Why sixteen?"

"Because my gun only has sixteen bullets. Remember, I gave you a lot of dope back there in Suakin. You are slower than you think, you are weaker than you think, and right now, you are not half as smart as you think you are. You need to consider your actions very carefully before trying anything stupid, because I swear I will blow off your fucking nuts and watch you flip around till you bleed out if you don't succeed."

Silence hung in the air like the cloying heat. Oryx's face showed the unpleasant mental image dancing in his head.

Finally, Court asked, "Are you ready to try this?"

President Abboud paused a long time. Finally he said, "This will be extremely painful for you."

"And that's a problem for you, why?"

"You may think I am trying to kill you when I am only trying to help."

"I will expect pain in my back, where the arrow is. If I feel pain anywhere else, then the president of Sudan will lose his balls. That means no more little baby despots for you. You understand?"

Abboud nodded. Court drew his pistol and worked his way slowly to his knees, then onto his stomach. The arrow was into his scapula. It would not come out easily, and when it did, Court knew he would bleed considerably. He had a small trauma kit with him but no real way to dress a wound he could neither see nor reach, and having the president of Sudan bandage him just seemed too damn weird to bear.

And while Oryx's drug-induced lethargy and diminished capacity worked to Court's advantage as a kidnapper, it certainly did not benefit him as a patient. For all he knew, big Bakri Abboud was going to fall on top of the arrow instead of pull it out, and thereby pin Court to the floor of this shit hole shack like a butterfly in a bug collection.

Any way he looked at it, the Gray Man knew this was going to suck. He wanted to pop some pills, but he was smack-dab in the middle of a massive operation. That the thought of narcotics even entered his brain at this moment was disappointing to him.

Court fingered the Glock in his right hand. For a while he heard or felt nothing. He wondered if Oryx was trying to sneak out the door. Finally the booming African's voice called out from above. "Can you release my hands? It will make it easier for me to-"

"Hell no. Just grab it and pull."

He felt the pressure of the large sole of a big shoe between his shoulder blades, the painful adjusting of the arrow in his muscle and bone as it was grabbed hold of, and then an excruciating yank that caused Gentry's eyes to fill with tears and his throat to emit a cracking scream. The burning and tearing did not stop. Instinctively, Court flipped onto his back, raised his Glock at the attacker above him, and ran his finger tip from the trigger guard down to the trigger.

He sighted on his target, just a couple of feet from the tip of the gun's barrel.

Oryx stood above him, his hands bound together and shielding his eyes. The bloody arrow fell from his fingers onto Gentry's chest.

He'd done it. Oryx had not tried anything and, Court realized, he'd come incredibly close to shooting him between the eyes nonetheless.

The pain in his shoulder did not subside, but still he rose to his feet, found himself more mobile if only because he no longer had to move carefully to avoid bumping the long projectile.

"Good."

"What is your name?"

"Call me Six."

"Mr. Six. Fine. And you may call me President-"

"I'll call you whatever the fuck I want. Now, shithead, I need to make a phone call, so I need you to sit in the corner and be a good boy. Can you do that?"