blockaded the break in the embankment. They were leaving the militiamen a way out, not, Dare assumed, as a gallant courtesy but to make things easier on themselves. The trapped animal fights the hardest. Some government soldiers took to the escape route and fled down the road on foot. A few more followed in one of the trucks, and though they were supposed to capture it, Kasli’s men couldn’t resist the target the truck presented. An RPG burst under the vehicle, which tottered on two wheels, then rolled over onto its side, spilling its passengers. A second RPG slammed into its undercarriage, and the whole thing was engulfed in a ball of flame. A Hollywood volume of rifle fire, almost as seamless as the tearing of a large sheet of canvas, went on for a full minute, then fell off to scattered bursts, then to single shots, and finally the morning’s peace returned, no more affected by the frenzied noise than a pond by the ripples of a thrown rock.
Michael the Archangel surveyed the destruction with his binoculars. “Let us go and see what we have got,” he said, betraying no emotion.
Inside the garrison every sight, scent, and sound reminded Dare of some other war. The snap and smell of flaming thatch triggered memories of Laos and Vietnam. The corpse with the back of its head blown away and the pudding of brains quivering on the ground called to mind a Congolese rebel, head-shot in a fight over an airfield near the Rwandan border. The dead Sudanese soldier with his abdomen ripped open and his viscera coiling out like some sort of revolting toothpaste from a tube—he’d seen a Contra looking like that in Nicaragua.
“Our boys sure did make these ragheads sorry they joined the army, didn’t they?” he said to Doug. “Don’t forget to get some close-ups of these here bodies. Enemies of Jesus Christ, Handy said.”
Water. He left his partner to go in search of it. Stepping around and over corpses and through the wreckage of the tent camp, cots, blankets, and shredded canvas strewn everywhere, he came to the stone building—the garrison headquarters. Inside, fingers of sunlight pierced the bullet holes in the tin roof and fell on several riddled jerry cans, lying helter-skelter in a puddle. He was thinking about licking the water off the floor when he spotted an undamaged container, upright in a corner. A Sudanese officer slumped against the wall beside it, but he was beyond all need of a drink. The five-liter plastic can was about half full. If he believed in miracles, Dare would have called its survival a miracle. Hoisting it in both hands, he tipped it to his lips. The water was warm and flat-tasting, and he gulped until his gut swelled.
He lugged the can outside and offered it to Doug, busy filming SPLA troops harvesting enemy weapons and loading them onto the two remaining trucks.
“I don’t have any tablets,” Doug said, setting the camera down. “Do you?”
“Sure don’t.”
Doug shrugged and drank with greedy swallows, water dribbling down his chin. “Goddamn, that’s good.” He wiped his mouth and guzzled more. “It’s worth getting sick over.”
Someone fired a shot from across the compound. There was another, and a third. Kasli, with a few other men, was kicking bodies and shooting any that showed signs of life.
“Y’all should get some footage of that, don’t you think?”
“No need for that.”
“Yeah. Handy’s movie would get an R rating instead of PG-thirteen. ‘The following film contains scenes of extreme violence and is not suitable for children.’ Still and all”—he lifted the Sony off the ground and pointed it at Kasli and his cleanup crew—“I figure he’ll want some realism to put those contributors of his in a giving mood.” Dare focused on a khaki-clad militiaman with an arm blown off the shoulder. He was quite dead, but Kasli shot him in the head with a pistol anyway, and then one of his men bent down to pull off the dead man’s boots. “Yup, they’re gonna empty their wallets when they see this.”
“All right, Wes, that’s enough.” Douglas grabbed for the camera. Dare let him take it. “They can barely take care of their wounded, so how can you expect them to take care of the enemy’s? It’s better than leaving them here to suffer.”
“Kind of like a mercy killing?”
“Call it that if you want,”
“Mercy,” Dare said. “Mercy, mercy, mercy.”
MICHAEL’S THRILLING, ASTONISHING declaration had left her in no fit condition for work. After she’d finished