the intersection near the broken rickshaw and the smashed donkey cart and the other vehicles stuck in traffic behind the wreckage on three sides. Court pointed the pistol with his right hand, held the last of the burning road flare with his left, but then quickly flung the flare overhanded past the secret policeman and toward the rickshaw. In a swift single motion, while the sputtering flame arced nearer to the scooter with its leaking gas tank, Court Gentry dropped to a low squat, fired two rounds from the pistol, one into the chest of each of the National Security Service operatives. Then he spun low and dove into the backseat of the sedan. “Go! Go! Go! Go!” he screamed.
The rickshaw and the dusty street intersection burst into flames. The whoosh of the ignition of the fuel was audible through the open car door.
Ellen Walsh’s foot stomped down on the gas pedal.
The sedan shot forward towards the north.
No one fired a shot at it before it turned to the left forty meters on, disappearing down a side street into the dark, a fireball rising into the sky behind it.
“Where are we going?”
The crewman from the Russian military transport plane, who was obviously no Russian himself, sat in the backseat of the car as Ellen plowed through narrow, congested streets, past gray tin ramshackle buildings and mud-colored single-story walls running on both sides, seemingly in all directions, seemingly for miles. Through intersection after intersection she drove, sometimes getting the four-door up to forty kilometers or so, but often slowing down to a near crawl as she used the front grill to nudge her way through the evening congestion or to push groups of cows or sheep out of the way.
“Where do you want me to go?” she yelled it this time; the man behind her didn’t seem to be paying attention.
Finally he answered, his voice softer than back in the intersection. “Just keep going. You’re doing great.”
Yeah, she allowed herself to realize. I am doing great. She’d never in her life experienced shock, and she retained the presence of mind now to wonder if that was this strange sense of calm she was beginning to feel.
“You didn’t kill anyone back there, did you?” Ellen asked. Her voice was shaky, confused, she did her best to swallow the flood of emotions that threatened to pour forth at any second.
“Of course not. Just a couple of warning shots. I had to slow them down so we could get clear.”
She believed him. He certainly did not sound or act like a man who had just killed another human.
“Where are we going?”
“No place specific. Just keep heading this way.”
“Who are you?”
“Not now,” was all he would say.
“You aren’t Russian,” she said, looking at him through the rearview.
“Figured that out? You are a special investigator,” he replied, sarcastic in a vague way so that Ellen could not discern if he was trying to be playful or cruel.
“American?” She knew that he was from his accent.
But he just repeated, “Not now.”
They continued north for a half hour; they spoke little. The American muttered something about needing to change out the vehicle they were in, but he just told her to keep going, as if he could not bring himself to pull over in this town even for a few minutes to find another mode of transportation. He stayed in the backseat. At first she thought he remained back there to keep an eye out the rear window for anyone following, but later she ventured a few glances in her rearview and saw him sitting back there in the dark, just looking out the side windows, as if he were lost as to where to go. He’d seemed resolute enough back with the flare and the pistol and the shouted commands and the little man in the headlock. But now she worried that he had somehow worn himself out, either physically or emotionally, and now she would have to make the decisions.
She said, “I need to get to a phone. Call some people who can help.”
“Negative,” he replied flatly. “Just keep driving.” His voice was unexpectedly strong now.
“We’re going to be in the desert soon.”
“Not desert. The Sahel.”
She looked up in the rearview. “The what?”
“It’s scrubland. Between the savannah to the south and the desert to the north. Sparsely populated, hot as a desert, but not the same. The desert starts another hundred miles north of here.”
“Okay, whatever the geography is, do we really need to go out