Whiplash

33

While the President was meeting with her advisors, Danny and Nuri were trying to figure out what had happened to Tarid. The biomarker was still active and showed that he was moving, indicating he was alive. That in itself was a minor miracle — from the looks of the video shot by the Owl, the Sudanese army had overwhelmed Colonel Zsar’s force near the road, killing nearly all of the men there. A much larger force of rebels, arriving after the battle was finished, had been repulsed with light losses, leaving the body of their leader behind.

Tarid and the other rebels had been rounded up and driven about a hundred miles to an outpost near the village named Al-Quazi. The camp wasn’t much — a few buildings inside a minefield about a half mile from the outskirts of the village. But it was the most secure spot the army had in the area.

Shortly after dawn, an American ferret satellite picked up a Sudanese transmission indicating that the prisoners were to be taken to Khartoum for interrogation as soon as possible. The commander replied that he would set out the following day.

“Gives us a little time to rescue him,” said Nuri, reading the message with Danny not ten minutes after it had been sent. Neither man had gotten much sleep.

Danny Freah furled his arms and rested his elbows on the top of the table. He leaned closer to the computer screen, staring at a satellite image of the camp area.

“Can we get them out?” asked Nuri. He unpacked a bagel from its vacuum-packed container and put the two halves on the camp stove to toast. The bagels came preslit, but tended to be a little mushy.

“I don’t know,” admitted Danny. He sat back. “There are a lot of troops. I’m not sure we have enough firepower.”

“We can hire more mercenaries.”

“That’s the problem. I don’t know that we can trust them if things get tough.”

“I can ask Reid for more people.”

“I have the military end,” said Danny, only to emphasize the point; there was not enough time for reinforcements to arrive. “I’ll ask.”

“Fair enough.”

Danny flipped through the satellite images, examining the defenses at the post. The pictures had been made over a period of several days, but the defensive posture was always the same. A pair of soldiers manned a single checkpoint on the road between the village and the camp, blocking the road with a large troop truck. They had a sandbagged position nearby where they could retreat to if necessary. Their job was to check traffic and provide a warning for the fort in the unlikely event that rebels decided to move up the road in a column.

The road swept toward the camp, veering south about a hundred yards from the gate. A Chinese-made Hummer knockoff sat blocking the turnoff. It wasn’t clear from the photos how many soldiers were in the vehicle, or even if there were any inside, but Danny assumed at least two men would be posted. A simple wooden gate barred the entrance. This was flanked by a pair of sandbagged gun positions and patrolled by four or five men.

Machine guns were located at the four corners of the camp in sandbagged positions. With the exception of the machine-gun nest on the southwest corner, they were all elevated about four feet above ground level, giving the occupants a better view of the distance and excellent firing lines, but also making them easier targets. The post at the southwest was heavier than the others, angled differently, and a little farther from the base perimeter. It appeared to be a cement bunker left over from an earlier camp and incorporated into the new defenses.

The gun posts were connected to trenches that zigged backward through a minefield surrounding the perimeter, allowing the soldiers and any reinforcements to get there without going through the minefield. A single fence topped by barbed wire surrounded the perimeter of the camp. This was not guarded, the commander either short of men or trusting to the machine guns and mines to keep the base safe.

There were several sandbagged walls along the sides of the rectangular camp, which could be used for cover if the outer defenses were breached, but there were no prepositioned guns behind any of them. However, there were six pickup trucks with weapons mounted in the back bed — five of them were machine guns, the last a grenade launcher. These could easily be rallied if the camp were attacked, and Danny saw them as potentially the most difficult obstacle to an assault.

The camp itself measured hardly more than an acre and a half. There were two buildings on the north: a barracks, where the soldiers who had taken part in the raid the night before were staying, and a smaller headquarters building adjacent to it. A large pair of gasoline tanks sat in the southeast corner, not far from the entrance. Next to them was a large open pen where the prisoners were being kept. The prisoners had no shelter from the sun or elements except for a small tarp strung at one side.

“No helipad,” said Danny.

“No, the choppers would have come from further west and north,” said Nuri. “They’re part of an Egyptian-funded initiative. They wouldn’t risk them on the ground here where they’d be potential targets.”

Danny stared at the screen.

“So can we do it?” Nuri asked.

“Maybe. We better ask for permission first.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re not at war with Sudan.”

“You shot down two of their helicopters last night.”

“Only because they were going to kill me if I didn’t.”

“I think we just do it if we can do it,” said Nuri. “That’s why we’re here.”

“We’ll ask anyway,” said Danny.