time of year they could, more or less, race on by most any small group of men bent on doing them harm.
Except for the Janjaweed, whom he paid well so that they would leave his convoys alone.
The Italian was just a few steps from the American man now, the lone white talking to some of SI’s African drivers and freight loaders who’d left their vehicles to smoke by the side of the road. The American did not have any equipment with him, not even a pack on his back. He wore a sweat-stained brown T-shirt and some sort of local black pants. His T-shirt rode up on his back when he turned.
The man was bearded and tan, and grime from the Sahel covered the parts of his face that the beard did not. He spoke in French to the locals. French was not uncommon here, as it was a common language in Chad, and Chad was just one hundred miles to the west.
The American was facing the opposite direction. When he reached to shake the hand of another of his employees, a young Darfuri loader, Mario saw the butt of a pistol on his right hip.
The Italian relief coordinator’s mouth dropped wide. He could not believe this man dared to carry a gun. An American cowboy! And he expected to just jump on one of the Speranza Internazionale trucks and get a ride out of here to safety? He would bring nothing but danger with that instrument of evil tucked so cavalierly in his drawstring pants.
Without a word to the American, Mario Bianchi angrily walked up behind him and reached out to disarm him.
And that, as it turned out, proved to be an extremely bad idea.
TWENTY-THREE
Putting one’s hand on the personal weapon of a man with Gentry’s training and disposition might not have been quite as dangerous as sticking one’s arm in a rusty bear trap, but it was damn close. As soon as Court felt the pressure, long before Mario’s fingers had fully wrapped around the grip, and way before he’d begun to tug the gun out of his pants, the American assassin spun towards the threat, used the momentum in his turning torso to sweep his right arm back up with incredible power and speed, knocked the arm of the threat up and away from his gun. His turn continued, and with his left hand shooting across his body, he reached in front of the threat’s face, swept his left leg out behind his threat’s legs, and slammed his left hand back hard under the threat’s chin. This sent the man reeling backwards, over the leg behind him, falling onto his back and into the cloud of dust kicked up by Gentry’s flurry of movement.
Gentry drew his gun like a phantom’s blur, pointed it at the threat on the ground, and then scanned the area for more attackers.
Ellen stood ten feet away, her face white with horror.
Five minutes later all was neither forgiven nor forgotten, but the sixty-year-old Italian had been hauled back to his feet, brushed off, and his hat had been returned to his head. He needed a minute to compose himself, so he sat on the running board of one of the trucks, drinking a cold orange soda and smoking a cigarette. Ellen Walsh sat with him and spewed apologies, more like a diplomat than the lawyer she was, or the journalist she claimed to be. Court stood off the side of the road by himself, a pariah to all, for what he saw as simply having the temerity to carry a fucking pistol in the middle of a fucking war.
“No guns! No guns!” One of the African aid drivers, a middle-aged man with silver hair, stood ten yards away from the American and waved his hand in a no-no gesture over and over as he chastised.
“You aren’t getting my gun,” Court said, definitively.
“No guns. No guns!” Court listened to what was, apparently, the only two English words this man knew, over and over and over, and watched him wag his finger back and forth.
“Say that one more time, dickhead,” Court snapped. The man did just that—twice more, actually—before he stopped and stepped to the side to allow his boss and the white woman access. From their gait and fixed expressions, Court could see that Ellen and Signor Bianchi were still mad.
Court looked to Ellen. “You don’t put your hand on someone else’s weapon,” he said.
“You mentioned that already, Six,” she responded angrily. “Look. I’m