shouted something to his dismounted men. It was Sudanese Arabic, but close enough to the Gulf Arabic that Gentry understood.
“Beat them all to death.”
Rifles were raised and turned upside down. The weapons’ butts were then used to viciously slam into the crowd from all directions. A half dozen men hammered into the bodies of nine men and one woman; they went about their cruel business amid shouts and screams and begging pleas from the victims. At the same time those Janjas on horses and camels began shoving the group tighter and tighter together, using the thick animals’ massive bodies to literally crush the pathetic group of defenseless civilians.
Court took a glancing rifle butt in the right shoulder while he was looking in the other direction. It propelled him sideways and knocked him into the haunches of the camel upon which the commander sat. The Janjaweed leader looked down at him with his coal black eyes showing through the folds of his turban. Court winced in pain but again looked down to his watch.
Then he turned to Ellen. She tripped backwards over a felled man and then rolled onto her stomach at Court’s feet. She started to get back up as if to run, but there was nowhere to run to. They were completely encircled by the Arab thugs.
And only Court Gentry knew that the safest place in the world for her right now was right where she was, facedown in the dirt.
He dove onto her, used his body to slam her down and his arms to cover her ears.
Here we go, he thought to himself as he tightened his body.
From the third truck, the vehicle in which Court and Bishara had ridden, there came a muted pop, like a car backfiring through its muffler. It was audible, even above the shouts and the cracking of rifle stocks on thin arms and legs, but it wasn’t one-tenth the volume Court had expected it to be.
Huh? He lifted his head, looked back, had no idea what he’d done wrong. Underperformance had been the absolute least of his worries.
The beatings stopped momentarily as the Janjaweed looked to the vehicle. Even the Speranza Internazionale staff, lying prostrate or fetal on the ground all around Gentry and Walsh, looked around in confusion.
Smoke billowed out of cab windows and through the slits of the sliding lift door at the back of the cargo space. But the roof did not blow off, there was no cacophonic concussion blast, and certainly no shrapnel.
Orders were barked in Arabic, and a pair of men on horses dismounted, passed their reins off to others standing around, and ran over to the truck. Court knew these men had planned on looting cargo. They needed to see why the cargo in one of the trucks was now smoldering.
The Janjaweed leader shouted another command to the rest of his men, and again Court understood.
“Shoot them all.”
The men moved, formed in a single ragged line facing their prostrate victims.
Kalashnikovs were raised, and safety levers were clicked down to the fully automatic setting.
Court stood quickly. One man against dozen, he reached behind his back and under his shirt to grab something hidden there.
And then it happened. For whatever reason, stage one of Gentry’s diversion had been all but a dud.
But stage two?
Stage two was a goddamned masterpiece.
As the men neared the rear of the vehicle there was another loud bang, then the demonic high-pitched scream of a missile launch. The acetylene tank rocketed out of the back, a jet of fire behind it. Almost faster than the eye could pick up its image it smashed in a downward angle through the windshield of truck four and buried itself into the cargo space of the rear vehicle.
The big four-ton truck shuddered on its chassis.
Court spun back towards Walsh, tackled her to the ground once again.
The truck exploded in a flash of fire, eardrums were assaulted with a deafening thunder, brains were slammed around inside skulls with a concussion like a brickbat to the temple. Court felt the flame envelop his body and then dissipate in an instant. The quick burn sucked the oxygen from the air and starved his lungs. He gasped and grunted, inhaled nothing until new air moved in and he could catch a fresh breath.
He fought the pain in his chest and the daze in his head, looked up to see that the concussive battering had rendered one Janja dead instantly, while three more were knocked off their horses and stunned. One more fighter,