“Nothing. We need to move.” Court had given the location of the shack to the CIA operators on the Hannah . He knew he needed to get out of here before Zack or someone else came calling.
“Tell me, Six. What was all the arguing?”
Court cut the president’s zip tie from the center beam with a small folding knife. He said nothing to the man as he closed the blade and slipped it back into his pocket.
“What is happening?” Abboud was extremely agitated. Court imagined he himself would be even more stressed-out right now but for the remnants of the drugs in his system. He wondered how much it affected him. Would he be able to drive? Would he be able to find a new hide without stumbling into all the people who were searching for him and his captor right now?
Oryx began to ask once more about the phone calls. Court stood in front of him and pulled two new zip ties out of his backpack to restrain the man’s hands in front of his body. Before he had done so, Court shrugged. Whatever. “I’ve been ordered to kill you.”
“By the American actors.” The big black man made it as a statement, but it was clear he was asking. He pulled his hands back and away.
“Negative. The CIA wants you dead, too. It’s pretty much a unanimous consensus, at this point. Give me your hands.”
Oryx’s face contorted in shock, like he’d been doused with cold water from an ice bucket. “No! We had an agreement. They need me alive. The European—”
“Shut up! We need to get out of here so I can think without worrying about them—”
“I can help them with their—”
“Calm down! Give me your hands!”
“They cannot just change the arrangement like—”
Court pulled his Glock. The drugs slowed him, and his stiff gun arm wavered. He pressed it against Abboud’s throat.
“I said, calm the fuck down!”
Oryx’s hands went up in surrender, and then they went for the pistol.
FORTY-FIVE
President Abboud was a big man, taller and broader and thicker than Gentry by a wide margin, but he was sixty-six years old and did not possess even a modicum of the training in the brain and muscles and soul of the American warrior. It should have been no match.
But for the morphine. Abboud knocked the Glock pistol away with his first strike, wrapped a meaty hand around each of the American’s wrists, and pulled their bodies together. Six moved slowly and sluggishly, did not even realize he was being attacked for the first few seconds of the action. He thought Oryx was just freaking out about the possibility of having the CIA’s backing pulled out from under him and was just slapping at Court like a frustrated child.
But when Gentry hit the ground, slamming into his wounded back under the weight of the huge Sudanese president, the danger of the situation became apparent to him through the dulled reality of his doped-up senses. The drugs were not enough to block the flash fire of excruciating agony as it registered in his shoulder and then transferred to his brain. He screamed out, and a series of punches rained down on him from above. Court covered his face, focused on the pain in his back to wake his adrenaline, to jump-start his muscle memory and to get this big bastard off of him.
From the light of the tiny fire, Court’s narrow eyes located the next punch, a right hook already on its way from on high. Gentry short-circuited the attack with an attack of his own: he hit Abboud hard in the nose. The president’s hook landed a quarter second later, but it was weak and poorly targeted, the fist turned quickly into a hand that reached up to his face as he fell on his back, holding his broken nose and wiping free-flowing blood from the swollen nostrils.
Gentry kicked Oryx off of him the rest of the way, rolled over, and began crawling around looking for the pistol. He found it against the wall, retrieved it as he stood, then retrieved Oryx by his shirt collar and pulled him into a standing position. Within seconds he had the moaning man’s hands zip-tied behind his back, and a minute later the Skoda tore through the high grasses on its way back to the main road.
Gentry thought over his options, and this did not take long, as there were so few. He had no