any way, made them accessories after the fact, then they might have tripped over their stories or provided some sort of evidence that would incriminate them. It was also very likely that the NSS had installed listening devices throughout the Western resort as a matter of course.
So Gentry played the role of the bloodstained maniac to the hilt, shouted and ordered the frightened Europeans. He took from them food and water and medical supplies and a pickup truck and a small RIB with an outboard motor and dive gear without so much as a nod of thanks. He drove the truck ten miles to the south, waited in a mangrove swamp until dark, and then set off for the Hannah, following the coordinates on the GPS tracker.
He knew the two surviving members of Whiskey Sierra other than Zack had already been evacuated from the area, along with the rest of the crew. It was Gentry’s hope that Hightower was still on the mainland searching for him, but he knew it was possible that Zack had come back to the Hannah. He had the mini submarine, after all, so he could easily come and go as he pleased. Court wanted to get to the Hannah to use it to flee the Sudan. His earlier idea about crossing the border was fantasy now. When the body of the president was found, that part of the nation would be 100 percent impassable.
So Gentry hunted the black ocean for the yacht with the idea of stealing it and steaming away to safety, though he knew next to nothing about yachting.
Court’s boat moved with the gently rolling surface of the sea. The GPS tracker indicated the boat was not far ahead, so Gentry waited to catch a surge that brought him higher than the other waves so he could see the yacht in the distance.
There, a quarter-mile off, a blacker silhouette on a sea of dark, dark gray. Not a single light visible aboard.
Nobody home?
Court strapped a mesh bag to his waist. Inside were his Glock 19, down to the last seven rounds of ammunition, a folding knife, and his satellite phone in a plastic, waterproof bag.
Next he slipped a buoyancy control device over his shoulders, upon which a scuba tank had already been attached. Then he put on his mask, snorkel, and fins. He took a few test breaths into his regulator, and slipped silently into the warm water.
As he swam, he focused on his mission to keep his mind off the excruciating pain in his left shoulder, a pain that was always there, but a pain that snapped to the forefront of his consciousness every time he reached forward in his breaststroke.
Soon his mind slipped off-mission, and onto one of many of the hundreds of tidbits he’d gleaned about this theater of operations, whether by reading Sid’s material or Zack’s material. This particular tidbit didn’t seem that important at the time, but at present it was allencompassingly crucial.
Nurse, white-tip, gray reef, hammerhead: the four species of shark common to the Red Sea.
Court kept swimming, pissed that he could not get the thought of being eaten by a hungry fish out of his mind.
He remained just below the surface and checked the compass on his wristwatch from time to time to make certain he was headed in the right direction. After ten minutes he surfaced silently, waited for a moment to catch a lift to get a better vantage point. It came soon enough, and the yacht was right there, some seventy yards ahead.
As he began dropping with the wave once again, the bow of the yacht caught his eye. The name of the boat was written on the black hull at the bow, written in either white or yellow lettering.
Arabic lettering.
What the hell?
He had never seen the Hannah, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t disguised as an Arab boat. No, he was more than sure. Zack had told him they’d passed themselves off to the Sudanese as Aussies. This would have been difficult to do with a yacht with an Arabic name.
Gentry dog-paddled closer, squinting in the dark to try to read the bow. At forty yards he could make out the characters, but his written Arabic was even poorer than his spoken Arabic.
He said the letters aloud. “F-a-ti-ma.” The Fatima.
Not the Hannah.
But the homing beacon was emanating from the yacht, which meant, clearly, that someone had taken the transmitter from the Hannah and placed it on this vessel.