one of the men who had just moved between vehicles three and four, simply ceased to exist. Only his frightened horse running off into the distance gave any proof that he was ever there. Two more Arabs were burned and wounded by projectiles fired out of the exploding vehicle.
Six seconds after the blast, flaming scraps of debris were still falling and scattering all around them. Horses and camels alike were spooked; they danced and sprinted and wobbled on shaky legs.
Every single one of the SI crew were dazed at least and concussed at worst, but they’d all been on the ground and therefore were somewhat less affected by the blast. Gentry and Walsh made out the best of everyone because he’d covered both his ears with his upper arms and hers with his hands. Still, he staggered while rising to his knees. He glanced at truck four, looked past men staggering around like drunkards. Its cab was bent and blackened and twisted but intact, its wheels and chassis and gas tanks and flatbed were still in place, but the sides and roof of the cargo container were simply gone, the gas bladders contained there were up in smoke, the other goods that had been housed in the cargo space now all over the road and burning, or even still floating through the air. Court turned now, still a bit unsteady, took a full, awkward step towards the commander, who had somehow managed to remain in the saddle on his monstrous camel. The camel and one other horse were the only animals not to scatter after the detonation. The Janjaweed leader lifted his wire-stocked Kalashnikov up towards Gentry. The white man was the only person from the convoy on his feet now, but the commander himself was slow and disoriented. He just got his muzzle up when Court knocked it to the side with his open left hand. In his right hand Gentry retrieved the instrument he’d kept hidden under his shirt in the small of his back.
It was the hammer-hatchet combo, wielded to the sharp side, and Gentry windmilled it down from over his head with all the strength in his shoulder and back, sank the hatchet’s blade squarely into the kneecap of the camel-mounted Janjaweed commander.
There was no scream from the man, but his knee lurched up, and he grabbed at it in agony. The hatchet remained embedded in the bone of the kneecap and deep into the femur, and the handle pulled free from Court’s grip. The man slid off the saddle on the opposite side of his attacker, fell the six feet or so backwards, slamming his neck and back into the dusty earth, his rifle tumbling back with him.
Court turned away from the now riderless camel and spun towards Ellen Walsh, who was scrambling away from the men and the trucks on her hands and knees. From behind him he heard full automatic fire from a Kalashnikov. Even though he’d covered his ears before the blast of the truck, the gunfire sounded tinny and distant. His eyes next went to the rear vehicle. Fires burned all around it from the massive detonation. He knew the gas tanks could go up at any time, they all were well within the blast radius, and every living thing could be killed if they were this close when it detonated and the chassis and drive train turned to a thousand supersonic slugs of hot metal.
Another burst of AK fire behind him encouraged Gentry to find himself his own weapon. The Janja commander’s AK would be lying on the other side of the camel. Court began turning around to go after it, but then something huge slammed into his back, as if he had been hit by a bus at speed. He crumpled forward with an incredible weight on him from behind. Gentry fell to the ground face-first with a grunt, his arms askew. Instantly he knew he was pinned down on the hard earth by something massive and unyielding.
Looking back over his shoulder he saw the gargantuan camel lying on top of him, covering him from his waist down. The hairy beast’s head had flopped around in its death throes and ended up facing Court: vacant eyes with oddly long lashes, flared teeth, and a droopy wet tongue hanging out. The animal had been felled with an assault rifle, and after only a second or two of scratching into the dirt with his fingers and hands did Gentry realize there