it on!” came the shout from the trunk monkey behind him.
Gentry was less than five blocks from the square when the Whiskey Sierra van drove through it. He heard squealing tires, then questioning and answering rifle and pistol fire that continued unabated.
He also heard a smattering of fire farther to the west, probably outside of Suakin, AKs both inbound and outbound, and this he took for the lopsided battle between a portion of the GOS force and the SLA guys the CIA had managed to browbeat into showing up. They were getting their asses handed to them, from the sound of it. It would probably be a while before Sudan Station convinced the SLA to do any more fighting at its behest.
With all the action in the early morning town, as near as Court could tell, his sector was clear. He and Oryx were on their knees under the shaded lean-to that covered an old brick oven and served as a tiny open-air bakery. They were only fifty yards from the boats. He could see the little wooden craft on the still water of the bay, red hulls rocking back and forth invitingly. Just fifty yards, yes, but fifty yards of open ground. Gentry worried about GOS men to the north along the beach or the causeway to Old Suakin Island, but more than this, he worried about the reports of a helicopter above. Even if he and Oryx could snake down to the boat, traveling over the water would leave them totally exposed to that chopper.
He thought it over for a few more seconds. “Forget the boat,” he said aloud, then turned to Oryx. “I have a car, eight blocks southwest of the square. That’s where we’re going. Now!” Court pushed Oryx into the alley, and they both began running.
They’d made it just one block up an alleyway when Oryx broke off quickly to the left, dodging down an even smaller alley that ran up a gentle hill. Court chased after him, reached out to grab the big man by the neck and get him back on track, but a squad of five GOS soldiers on foot came out the back door of a small coral building, not fifteen feet from their president. They raised their weapons in confusion, took a moment to size up the situation they had just stumbled upon. Court took advantage of the delay. He put himself between the soldiers and Oyrx and shoved the president out of the way roughly, raising his weapon at the same time. He fired two rounds from his pistol into the chest of the first man in the squad, got his free hand around Oryx’s tie, and yanked his prisoner back out of the tiny alleyway as he dropped another soldier with a round to his forehead.
The remaining soldiers scrambled for cover in the building they’d just exited, and Court let go of Oryx, darted towards the rifle lying next to one of the dead trooper’s bodies. But a long burst from an unseen shooter’s rifle stitched bullets down the alley just feet in front of Gentry, so he turned and retreated back around the corner, grabbed his prisoner again, and ran away as fast as he could with one hand on his weapon and the other on the neck the president of the Sudan.
THIRTY-FIVE
Suakin is a town filled with Rashaidas and Bejas, mostly, but as it was a market and a port town, and somewhat of a port city still, there were transplants from all over the country. Dinka, Fur, Nuba, Masalit, Nuer, most all of the tribes came here to trade and to live. There were also some Nubians, dark black non-Arabs who congregated principally around the Nile River to the west.
One such Nubian family lived in a burlap, driftwood, and tin shack to the southwest of the square. The shack was also their business, as the man of the house made goat-hide sandals with tire-tread soles and sold them in the dirt alleyway in front of their hovel.
The man’s son was dead, so the sandal maker helped raise his four grandchildren: three girls and one boy.
The man of the house huddled over the girls, called to his twelve-year-old grandson Adnan to come over to his side of the shack and lie in the dark with the rest of the family, but Adnan refused to cower. Instead, Adnan opened an old chest next to the sleeping mat, and from this he took the prized possession of his