On target

FORTY-TWO

Twenty minutes later the Skoda drove under a flight of four Sudanese Army helicopters that were following the highway from Port Sudan down to all the activity in Suakin. The choppers continued on and disappeared in Gentry's rearview mirror.

Hightower had not spoken at all. He seemed utterly spent, dejected, nearly unconscious. The injured Four was passed out in the backseat, and Three looked like his moderate blood loss from the shoulder wound, plus the other wears and tears of the morning, had left him completely worn out.

After a while, Zack pushed himself up from his seat with difficulty. He had Court lean forward over the steering wheel as he drove, and Sierra One pulled the robe off his shoulder to check his wound.

"Your back smells nasty."

"Yeah," Court replied distractedly, scanning the skies ahead for another chopper. This tiny team of wounded and virtually unarmed men was in no condition to fight anyone. Gentry was desperate to keep them away from any threat more potent than a head cold.

"I know this place is filthy, but how does a wound get that kind of putrefied stink in four hours?"

"Dunno. You got any antibiotics?"

"Negative. We just brought basic trauma shit. Used most all of it, didn't we, Danny?"

"Yeah, boss." But Sierra Three took some of the clean bandaging from his shoulder wound, tore it free, and handed it up to Zack.

Hightower took some tape from his med pouch and positioned Three's gauze over the hole in Gentry's back to stanch any more bleeding. It was a perfunctory job, just marginally better than nothing. "You'll make it. When we get to the Hannah, we'll get you fixed up."

"Cool," said Court. He wasn't that worried about it, though it hurt like hell.

Hightower's satellite phone buzzed in its chest pouch. The device was blackened with dirt and soot and oil and blood, but at least it was still functional. Sierra One had pulled off his headset while attempting to revive Sierra Two, so he just pressed the speakerphone button.

"Go for Sierra One."

It was Denny Carmichael. There was no "Hello." No "How are you?"

"I just got a call from the White House. They say the U.S. ambassador to Sudan is asking if there is some sort of Agency involvement in what he is describing as, and I quote, 'a Black Hawk Down incident up in Port Sudan.' How am I supposed to respond to that?"

Zack smiled, his head back on the headrest and his eyes closed. His face was black from filth and red from the blood that had smeared to nearly every square inch of his body, except for where his eye protection had kept the mess away.

"Well, sir, if I were you, I'd say that it looks like State's intel sucks as bad as CIA Sudan Station's intel. We're forty miles south of Port Sudan."

"That's not the point, is it? Do we have, or did we have, a Black Hawk Down incident?"

"Absolutely not. You didn't outfit us with any Black Hawks to go down."

"Don't get snippy with me, One. Did you secure Oryx?"

"He's secure."

"Have you extracted him to the Hannah?"

"Negative. But that's the next item on my to-do list."

"Sierra Six has him?"

"Uh, negative. Six is with us, what's left of us. I lost a couple of operators to enemy fire. Thanks for asking about my guys, by the way." Court turned to look at Hightower. It was shocking, even after all that had happened in the past several hours, that Zack would snap at his superior like that.

Denny's response showed his focus was on Nocturne Sapphire, not on the health of the team members of Whiskey Sierra. "Who is with Oryx right now?"

Court Gentry answered while driving. "Oryx is secure. He's not going anywhere."

"Why are you and he not in the same damn place?"

"Whiskey Sierra was compromised. I came back to help. I did not put Nocturne Sapphire in jeopardy."

"And if you had been killed?"

"I transmitted the location of Oryx to the Hannah before I set off."

Denny's anger and frustration were evident in his voice. "It is not the job of the men on the Hannah to extract Oryx from the Sudan. The Hannah does not have operators of your supposed caliber, Six, although I can't possibly express to you how disappointed I am with your decision-making abilities in the past week! You should have gotten Oryx out of the country before going back for the others."

Court began to respond, but Zack grabbed the phone and pulled it up close to his mouth. "I've got one hundred percent casualties! Two KIA! We just spent almost four hours battling an infantry force several hundred troops strong, with supporting air assets. Infantry and air that was not supposed to be there. And our local support, support that was supposed to be there, didn't fucking show!"

"My information from Sudan Station is that they did show, albeit a few minutes late."

"Sudan Station may have paid four hundred grand for a donkey cart full of rejects to each fire a magazine up an alley and then run away, but other than that, we didn't get a goddamned bit of assistance."

There was a significant pause. Court expected a little contrition, but none was forthcoming. "Nevertheless, you should not have allowed yourselves to be compromised. And Six should not have gone off mission to extract you from your own mess. You knew the risks." There was an annoyed sigh audible over the satellite transmission. "Now… pull yourselves up by your bootstraps and continue on with Nocturne Sapphire. I will do what I can to negotiate the political fallout over here. That is all." The line went dead.

Zack dropped the phone into his lap. It rolled down his legs to the floor. He was too tired to pick it up and resecure it to his chest rig.

Court said, "Damn, Zack. Your boss is an asshole."

"Tell me about it."

An hour later, Court Gentry parked the Skoda at the shack hidden in the marsh grasses, climbed out, and entered with his pistol raised in front of him. The dark hooch was just as he'd left it, though even hotter and stuffier.

Oryx was just as Court left him, as well. Gentry had injected the Sudanese president with a syringe preloaded with a sedative that would knock him out for roughly two hours, and then he'd flexicuffed his hands behind his back and around the sturdy central support beam of the shack. Upon return he was cross-legged, and his head hung down as if sleeping. Between his knees Gentry had left an open bottle of water. He didn't really know how Abboud would have drunk from it, bound as he was. But as it turned out, it appeared that the president had slept the entire time.

Thirty minutes earlier Court had dropped the surviving members of Whiskey Sierra, and one of their two dead operators, at the ocean-side pickup point fourteen miles north of Suakin. The men immediately concealed themselves and their fallen colleague in a thick mangrove swamp. Zack handed Court a small receiver that picked up a transmitter on board the Hannah so he could know where the boat was at all times, even if coms went down for some reason.

The original plan had been for the Zodiac dinghy from the Hannah to come to shore and pick up the team, but there was no way they would attempt that in daylight now. Instead, one of the crew on the CIA ship would pilot the two-man mini sub into the swamp and pick up each man, one at a time. It would take the rest of the day to effect this retrieval but it was felt by all that this was far preferable to having four injured men sitting chest-deep in brackish water for eight hours while waiting for a night pickup by the Zodiac.

Court had been instructed to return to his hide and get Oryx ready to move at a moment's notice. It would be late evening before someone could return for the final two trips to bring out the president of Sudan and the Gray Man, but if the pickup site became somehow compromised, Gentry would need to be ready to scout out a new location on his own.

Court unhooked Oryx from the support beam of the shack, laid him on his back, then placed next to him his bottle of water and a bag of raisins that had been in his backpack.

"Eat," he instructed.

Oryx did not move.

"You aren't unconscious, asshole. That hypnotic I gave you has worn off."

The president continued to lie still.

"Dude, I'm really not in the mood to play right now."

The man did not move.

Court knelt down above him and lifted his meaty left arm into the air by his wrist. Gentry acted like he was taking his pulse, but he held the arm over the prostrate man's face and let it go. If he were unconscious, the hand would have hit the president in the nose, but instead it lowered slowly and then flopped dramatically to the side.

"Sit up," Court said angrily. The man still did not react.

Court pulled a multi-tool from his pack, opened the wire cutters, and placed the president's pinky finger between the cold metal pincers.

Immediately President Abboud opened his eyes. He smiled sheepishly, his white teeth a stark contrast to his coal black face. "That is a clever trick, holding the patient's arm over his face like that and letting it go."

"Glad you liked it. Get your ass up, or I clip off this finger. Turning you over to the ICC with nine fingers instead of ten is just as good as far as I'm concerned."

Oryx sat up in the dirt. He took the water and drank half of it before placing the bottle back down.

"I feel sick."

"Just the meds. It will clear out soon enough. And you probably have a mild concussion from the Big Bang this morning."

Oryx nodded. He asked, "How is your back?"

"It feels like some asshat shot me with an arrow. How do you think it feels?"

"Did you rescue your men from my men?"

Court looked into the man's eyes. "Some of them."

Oryx nodded slowly. "I regret the loss of life on both sides of the battle today."

"That's incredibly comforting, douche bag."

A genuinely offended expression covered Abboud's face. It remained as he asked, "What happens now?"

"We wait."

"How long?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?"

"Nobody tells me nothing," Court said as he pulled items out of his bag. "For now, eat your lunch and stop asking me questions."

Oryx shrugged and opened the package of raisins. He seemed more relaxed than Gentry would have expected. As he picked at the tiny pieces of fruit, he said, "Mr. Six, you must admit I am not giving you any trouble. I do not know why you show so much anger towards me."

Court began taking off his shirt. The burning sting deep into the bone of his scapula made the action miserable. "Remember, I was coming in to blow your head off, so I honestly don't think you're being treated so bad."

"I was talking about your words to me. Your striking of me back in Suakin. You are not the image of the honorable American soldier that your country tries to sell to the world."

"I am not an honorable American soldier."

"Then what are you?"

"I'm the guy they send in when some asshole does not deserve to be treated honorably."

As Oryx chewed raisins slowly, he looked across the darkness at his captor. "But, sir, this is your profession. You are here because of what the West considers to be war crimes in the Darfur region. That does not involve you personally, nor, I will venture to say, does it involve members of your family. There is no reason for you to treat this as a personal vendetta. Can we not keep our relationship at a professional level while we are together?"

Court did not respond. Instead, he opened a tiny bottle of disinfectant he'd retrieved from his bag. He leaned forward, reached back, and did his best to pour it where it would run down his shoulder and into his wound. Oryx continued, "Back in the car. You hit me in your moment of rage because you cannot control yourself. Your anger is more base, more degenerate, than the calm reason that I apply to the war in Darfur for which I have been indicted by this kangaroo court of yours."

Gentry winced as the medicine penetrated the swollen hole in his back. But he looked at Abboud across the three feet of dim space. "You think I hit you because I was out of control?"

"Of course you did. I saw it in your eyes. You were scared and angry, and your emotions controlled you. You lashed out-"

"Look in my eyes now. Am I in control?"

"Yes. In this moment you are, but-"

Court punched Abboud in the face again. The man's beefy head snapped back and then forward, his lip fat and red immediately.

"What is wrong with you?" Oryx covered his face as he shouted.

Gentry tossed the empty container of antiseptic back in the bag. "All sorts of things."

"Maniac."

"Yeah. You might want to remember that."