Court was perplexed by his handler’s bizarre excitement over the operation. It was night-and-day different than the cool distance kept by his former employer, the English ex-spymaster Sir Donald Fitzroy. Sir Donald would no more fly along to stand around at the departure point of one of Court’s wet operations than he would execute the op himself. But Sid was a fan—a freak, in Court’s eyes—of this sort of thing.
Sid’s Russian accent broke the still. “Everything is prepared. Takeoff at ten a.m.”
“I know.”
“Seven hours fifteen minutes to Khartoum.”
Court just nodded.
“They say your pilot is very good.”
Court said nothing.
“Takeoff will be to the south. That’s Poland back there behind us, so he will probably fly south until he reaches the border with—”
“Sid. I really don’t care which way we fly.”
The Russian was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I do not know how you can be so calm. Everything that must be running through your mind. Everything that you must do in the next days. The danger, the intrigue, the physical peril. And you just stand there bored, like you are waiting for a train to take you in to your office.”
Court’s eyes remained on the aircraft ahead. Sid did not know the half of it, of course. Sid’s op was relatively— and relatively was the key word—easy, compared to what he really had to do. Shooting a man at five hundred yards and then hiding out in the hills for a week or so until he could just walk through airport gates and board a flight out of the country seemed so much simpler than pretending to prepare for an assassination but instead executing a split-second kidnapping and a perilous rendezvous in enemy territory to transfer a prisoner.
Court so wished he could just shoot that murderous fucker Bakri Abboud in the head and be done with it.
“How can you possibly remain so relaxed?” Sid asked Court.
The Gray Man turned to the Russian mafioso, the first time he’d made eye contact with his handler all morning.
“This is what I do.”
Gregor Sidorenko’s narrow mouth formed a surprisingly toothy smile. Even in the predawn light it glowed. “Fantastic.”
The aircraft was a behemoth, and it exhibited function over form. Called the Candid by NATO forces, the Ilyushin Il-76 had huge, high wings that sagged slightly when at rest. The plane looked big and fat and slumbering there in the dark. Court wanted to walk over and kick it awake, but he knew soon the Russian crew would handle that, and the aircraft would effectively transport him and whatever war goods it carried to Khartoum. It was not a military flight in the strict sense. The plane and the crew were property of Rosoboronexport, the Russian state-owned military export entity. Rosoboronexport flew cargo aircraft all over the globe, to the Sudan, to Venezuela, to Libya, to India, transporting exported Russian arms to some sixty countries in all, fanning and fueling the flames in trouble spots all over the earth.
With only idle curiosity, Gentry asked Sid, “What is the cargo?”
“Other than you? Crates of heavy Kord machine guns, ammunition, and support equipment.”
“And they are allowed in by the UN? What about the sanctions?”
Sid snorted in the cold morning air. “The sanctions are obtuse. Russia is allowed to sell military equipment to the Sudan, as long as the equipment is not to be used in the Darfur region of the country.”
“If Russia is shipping machine guns to Sudan, they can be damn sure they are being used in Darfur. That’s where the war is.”
“Exactly, my friend,” Sid smiled, not picking up on Court’s derision of the arrangement. “Moscow takes President Abboud’s word for it. That seems to satisfy the UN.”
“Unbelievable,” said Court, almost to himself.
Sidorenko patted him on the back. “Yes. Very good, isn’t it?” The Russian turned and headed back to the warmth of the terminal.
Court lay on his back across four of the Ilyushin’s red plastic seats. Next to him in the tight floor space between his resting place along the wall of the fuselage and the huge crates of cargo in the center of the aircraft was positioned a single MultiCam backpack. Gentry was a master at packing light. Inside the fifty-pound ruck was a disassembled Blaser R 93, a German sniper rifle, caliber .300 Winchester Magnum, and twenty rounds of ammunition. Also binoculars, two fragmentation grenades, two smoke grenades, and a small supply of dried food, water, and oral rehydration salts. A medical blow-out kit for major trauma was included,