Warily, but not warily enough, Mohammed passed by the white man and knelt down to look through the open passenger window. His body stiffened in shock. Quickly he rose back up. “It’s His Excellency. I don’t understand. I thought you were supposed to—”
Mohammed spun around, the irises of his wide eyes narrowed on the silencer three inches from his forehead.
He did not hear the gunshot that killed him.
“Who is this man?” Abboud asked as Court helped him out of the car. Already the American had lifted the man’s car keys out of the dirt, had wrapped the bloody head in a blanket. He turned away from the president and began dragging Mohammed by his arms to the back of his own vehicle.
“Local policeman. He was working for the people who hired me to assassinate you.”
“What?” And then, “Traitor!”
The American opened the trunk of the Mercedes. With the arrow piercing muscles in his upper torso it was torture to scoop the dead weight off the ground and then lift it, then roll it into the back. But he got the job done. He then looked up at Abboud. “How’s your heart?” He unzipped his pack and retrieved a clear plastic bottle of water.
“My heart?” Abboud asked, unsure if he understood the question. “My head feels a little strange. But my heart is good. Why?”
“Your health okay? Blood pressure? Any respiratory issues?”
Abboud walked closer, stood behind the car next to the white man with the arrow in his upper back and the odd questions. The man dropped the water bottle in the trunk with the body. What sort of insanity was this white devil a part of?
“I am very healthy. What are these inquiries about my condition? And why do you give a dead man a bottle of water?”
Court pulled the president’s tie from around his neck, then he unbuttoned the remaining buttons of his starched white shirt. He pulled it free of his black slacks and let it hang loose, exposing a white V-neck undershirt. “It’s not for him. Hop in.”
“Hop?”
“Get in the trunk. Now!”
“With—”
The white man pulled Abboud by the back of the head, shepherded him more than pushed him into the back of the car, then used a folding knife to cut out the internal trunk release cord. The thick Sudanese man pushed the dead body out of the way to comply with his instructions. He did not want to cross this man.
He did not want to assist the man attempting to kidnap him. He did not want to climb into the dark sedan with this bloody carcass of a traitor to his country.
But more than anything, he did not want the American’s operation to switch to plan A.
Ten kilometers southeast of Gentry’s position, Zack Hightower had managed to get all of his men into the first of two long, symmetrical, uniform, two-story buildings. The shopping center had a nongovernmental-agency cold and efficient construction look to it, and handmade wooden stalls with low-hanging eaves were built haphazardly around it. It was more like a low-rent urban flea market than an American mall. The floor inside the building was full of dirt, like runoff from the hillside washed through the ground floors during the rainy season. Also, along with the goods for sale inside shuttered and gated kiosks, trash was everywhere in the open center, as if squatters were common. This was no great surprise, considering these buildings were a hell of a lot more secure than the actual homes of the majority of those living in and around Suakin. Hightower assumed there must be some security here, but the security had apparently cleared out when five wild-eyed and bloody white men, dressed like soldiers and firing machine guns at helicopters and government troops, came rolling and sliding down the hill outside.
The row of buildings was ruggedly built but certainly not impenetrable. There were waist-high windows without glass, doorways without doors, and behind this shopping center was another, identical two-story block of shops, literally dozens of windows and a long rooftop from which someone could get line of sight into an open window on Whiskey Sierra’s position.
And the motherfucking helicopter was circling right over them now.
Four’s leg was a mess, bleeding from multiple points. Zack guessed he’d lost well over a liter of blood already. Most men would not have been on their feet, much less still in the fight, but Milo was a former Navy