hill. His round went low, digging into the hard dirt and creating a tiny avalanche of dust and rocks.
Spencer got his gun reloaded and back into the fight just as the helicopter flew over the hill directly in front of him and Hightower. Zack could confirm now that it was, in fact, an Mi-17 Hip, a Russian-made chopper that the government of Sudan was not known to possess. He did not dwell too long on this revelation, as the Mi-17 opened fire with a heavy machine gun hanging from one of its outboard pylons.
“Move!” Sierra One screamed to Sierra Five, and both men turned to run for their lives.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Court pulled the little Skoda Octavia into the open gate of the private home ten kilometers northwest of Suakin. The brown wall stood eight feet high all around, and from the looks of the security gate, Gentry expected to see a large dwelling inside, but once in the gate he found just a tiny, single-story building with glassless windows and several loose goats chewing on hay all around the dirt yard.
And Mohammed’s filthy white Mercedes was there, parked in a back corner of the courtyard.
Court could no longer hear gunfire in the distance, and his radio attached to his headset was out of range of any transmissions, so he had no idea what was going on with Zack and his team back in Suakin. He couldn’t see the helicopter in his rearview mirror, but that meant nothing, as the chopper had been flying so low that it would not be visible from this distance anyway.
Oryx was behaving himself. Twenty milligrams of OxyContin saw to that. He remained conscious—alert, more or less—but he didn’t really seem like he gave a damn about what was going on. He sat quietly in the passenger seat, buckled in with his hands secured together in his lap, and he just looked out the window at the scenery on the drive like he was a first-time visitor to the country he ruled. They’d passed many donkey carts full of people getting the hell out of town, desperate to avoid whatever craziness was going on in their normally quiet streets on a normally quiet Sunday morning. There was the regular morning commercial traffic of the day, as well, and even this far from the city, trucks and buses and camels and donkey carts were heavy on the road, even in front of this house. And Oryx just took it all in. He wasn’t smiling, he wasn’t freaking out, he was just watching everyone go by.
He was just the way Gentry wanted him.
Court, on the other hand, was miserable. The sharp pain in his back got sharper with each bump of the tiny car, and there were a hell of a lot of bumps on the road from Suakin. Sweat drained into his eyes, and some bug that looked like a horsefly and flapped around like a small bird had harassed him the entire drive, causing him to swat and duck and inevitably to jab the motherfucking arrow deeper into his motherfucking shoulder.
Court parked the car and took a look at Oryx. No, he’s not going anywhere. He climbed out of the vehicle and stood up straight for the first time in fifteen minutes. He drew his Glock and held it down to his side. Mohammed was nowhere to be seen. Court assumed he was sitting in his car waiting, but he couldn’t see into the tinted windows and had no idea if the police official was in the car or in the house.
As he approached, Mohammed climbed out of the Mercedes. His hands were empty, so Court holstered his gun. The tall Beja man looked agitated, which did not surprise Court in the least.
Mohammed walked towards Court, who stopped not far from his own car. Clearly the policeman had not noticed the black man in the front seat, nor had he noticed, apparently, the arrow in Court’s back. Some policeman, thought Court, but the man’s mind was focused on other confusions at the moment. “What has happened? On the radio they say there is shooting. A lot of shooting!”
“Yeah, it’s nuts down there.”
“They were shooting at you? The army was shooting at you?”
“Some of them.”
“Did you do it?” Mohammed asked.
Court shrugged. “I did what I came to do, yeah.”
“But if you are here . . . who are they shooting at now?”
Court looked back over his shoulder, past the arrow in his back, and at his car. Mohammed followed