On target

FORTY

Fifty yards in front of the mouth of the alley, atop the crystal green water in front of the island of Old Suakin, sat a Sudanese Navy coastal patrol boat. It was one hundred feet in length; men stood on the deck behind a 12.7-mm machine gun. Quickly they turned the barrel of the big weapon towards the white men appearing in front of them.

Zack ground to a halt next to Dan. "Disperse!" shouted Zack, and his men broke left and right. Hightower himself grabbed the injured Sierra Four and pushed him back to the right, fell with him into a shop that wove and sold fishing nets.

The time for well-coordinated movements was gone. No more covering fields of fire, leapfrogging from one piece of concealment to the next. The four men began running, crawling, and leaping over obstacles as fast as possible.

The braying of the ship's machine gun was ungodly. Its rounds sawed through the building above Zack's head. He grasped Milo by the drag handle on his Australian body armor, found the shop had a back room, and the back room had a bent metal door that Hightower kicked open by spinning on his back on the dirt floor and shoving both boot heels up hard towards the locks. Through the door was another shop, and then a hallway that headed south. Zack crawled on his hands and knees, pulling Milo along with him.

The patrol boat brayed again, shredding wood and metal and stone and fabric above their heads. A jug of black lubricant split in two on a shelf above them, spilling warm grease over their gear and clothing.

A third burst came from the guns, and then it was quiet for a moment. "Whiskey team, report," whispered Zack into his mic.

"Sierra Three, I'm good to go. I'm with Two. His headset came off, but he's cool."

Zack breathed a quick sigh of relief. "One and Four are okay. That's going to bring the army down on us quick. We've got to get the fuck out of here, break. Sierra Six, are you receiving on this channel?"

Court replied, "Affirmative, One."

"Good. When you do come for us, do not go east of Mall Bravo. That ain't the Love Boat out there."

"Roger that. Any sign of Sierra Five?"

"Negative. Doesn't look like he made it to the waterline, though. We'd have heard that belt-fed bitch light him up. We'll move north a couple of blocks to see what we can see. And all elements: keep your heads down while we link back up."

Court spent the next fifteen minutes finishing work on a project he'd just begun when the patrol boat's loud machine guns opened up a quarter mile to the east. He'd come across a four-man squad of young GOS infantry guarding a dirt track to the northwest of the square. The track ended at the one paved road that led out of Suakin to the west, where it linked up with the north-south highway that continued up to Port Sudan and down to the rest of the country. A gas station lay at the intersection. The station was surprisingly modern, considering the rustic nature of the town. Court attributed this to the fact that it was on the highway, and Sudan did possess a relatively robust system of bus travel between major cities.

The soldiers' jeep was parked in the unpaved lot of the gas station, and a Russian PKM light machine gun sat mounted in the back under a black plastic cover. Many locals stood around the station, finding refuge there after having fled the center of Suakin, and the soldiers had their hands full with the crowd of people milling about.

Court had walked up to the jeep, careful to keep his turban covering virtually his entire face, and he took a look inside. The keys were not with the vehicle, which meant he needed to figure out which of the soldiers was the driver.

He had a plan boiling in his head, but for now he just needed to wait for Zack.

The two malls and the shacks and shops erected all around them were a flutter of activity now. Everywhere soldiers moved with weapons up, screaming at civilians to get out of the way, and the civilians screamed back. Beasts of burden clogged the alleyways, and a bucket brigade of rail-thin men dumped water on the last of the fire in the souk that surrounded the blackened helicopter and the charred remains inside. The soldiers pushed these men away, as well, but the locals re-formed their line and went back to work, so desperate was their need to keep their subsistence-level incomes alive by preventing their shops and their wares from going up in black smoke with the chopper.

But Zack, Brad, Dan, and Milo were not moving, were not running away or blasting themselves clear to safety. Instead, they lay prone, fifty yards north of the two malls, on the second floor of a two-story mud-brick building ringed by a low wall. The men all looked out the open arched passageway to the balcony, across the balcony, over the wall, over the road, and across a sandy runoff depression that led east to the harbor. On the other side of the depression, some two hundred meters away, was the bus station. And outside the bus station, sitting in the dirt, propped against a wall and surrounded by over two dozen soldiers, was a muscular black man, obviously wounded but obviously alive.

Sierra Five.

Through the four-power scope of Hightower's TAR-21, the only weapon with optics left on the team, he could see that Spencer's shirt had been removed, and he bled from the face and neck and shoulders, and blood stained his brown pants. His torso was covered in the gleam of perspiration along with the crimson shine of his blood. He'd been handcuffed behind his back, he was conscious, and a civilian man knelt in front of him, talking to him. Every now and then, he turned the American's face towards him to ask him a question, then slapped him or punched him. Zack knew Spencer wasn't going to say a word in response to a little rough stuff, but he also knew the harsh treatment he was now being subjected to would deteriorate in seconds into real torture.

And there was nothing he could do to save him.

"Sierra One for Sierra Six."

"Go ahead for Six."

"You ready to try an exfiltration?"

"Affirmative. I just need to know where you are. As soon as you find Five, let's do it. Every second we wait is another second where I risk compromise."

Zack relayed his exact coordinates and then said, "They've got Five. We have eyes on. He's alive but unreachable."

No transmissions came through the headsets for several seconds. Finally Court responded. "Okay. Understand you have line of sight?"

Zack nodded in the darkened room. A dingy white curtain blew in the hot breeze in front of him, momentarily obscuring his view of his man. Zack knew what Court was asking. Court was a pro among pros. Of course he understood what must be done.

Hightower flipped the safety on his Tavor, rendering his weapon hot. "Affirmative, Six. I have line of sight. He's at the bus station just north of us."

Gentry's next transmission broke a short still. "I'll do it. I'll head down the hill and get eyes on. You just sit tight, and I'll take care of it."

The other three men in the room with Zack said nothing. Hightower knew that they all understood what was going to happen, but only Gentry offered to do it.

Court Gentry was one hell of a guy.

"Negative, kid. I appreciate it, but this is my job. It's what they pay me for, I guess."

"You sure?"

"Affirm. Just tell me you're ready to pick us up."

"I've got a diversion set up here. I'll need about thirty seconds to be under way, and another two mikes to be right on top of you guys."

"Roger that. Make ready. We go on my mark."

Dan was closest to Zack, just two feet off his left shoulder. He reached out and patted his boss on the arm, gave him a sympathetic squeeze.

Hightower shrugged off the hand.

Everyone on the team knew what was about to happen. They played by a set of rules that included this eventuality.

"Goddammit," said Zack softly. The men beating the shit out of Spencer now were blocking his shot; the aiming reticle on his Tavor was lined up on the tailbone of a secret policeman. Hightower wanted to squeeze the trigger, but killing one NSS officer was not worth exposing their position.

At this point, there was only one thing worth exposing their position: preventing Sierra Five from revealing his identity or mission to the Sudanese. He wouldn't do it willingly, but he would do it, and there was only one way to stop it.

Just then Hightower squinted into his scope. There was a ruckus of some sort on the other side of the secret policeman. Soldiers ran forward, one fell back in the dirt, another spun away down to his knees. The NSS officer blocking Sierra One's view was pushed aside, and then Sierra Five appeared, bloody and shirtless still, his hands shackled behind him.

"Six, execute in five seconds," said Zack.

"Go in five, roger," came the terse reply.

Spencer ran free of the scrum of men, showing incredible balance and fitness to do so. He head-butted another soldier and made it ten yards closer to Hightower's position, near the edge of the sandy depression.

"He's trying to get away," said Milo, watching without benefit of a rifle scope.

"No, he's not," said Zack softly. He blinked. "He's trying to help me get a better shot."

To the west, they heard handgun rounds and the boom of an explosion, Court's diversion, and in his scope Zack saw Spencer drop to his knees, saw his bloodied mouth move in a shout, and an instant later the distant sound made it to Hightower's position.

"Send it!"

"Sending." Sierra One pressed the trigger on the Tavor, sent a 5.56-mm round down the barrel, through the arched passageway, across the depression, and into the forehead of his man. Spencer's head snapped back, and he dropped still in the dirt, his body coming to rest on top of his restrained arms.

Within seconds, close gunfire began pocking the walls in the room, the white curtain whipped and tore and shredded, and dust from impacts between steel and clay bricks turned the air around the remaining members of Whiskey Sierra a smoky brown.