of Abboud’s bodyguards against one hundred rebel forces. Now it’s the bodyguards, a company of GOS troops, and an NSS contingent of unknown size, all against a couple of pickups full of untrained dipshits who’ve already been compromised!”
“I told you, Sudan Station doesn’t think they’ve been compromised. And even if they have, Whiskey Sierra will be the force multiplier. We’ll get it done.”
“This plan needs an enema, Zack.”
“Kid, back in the day, how many of all the Goon Squad’s ops went to plan?”
Court thought. Shrugged. “Can’t think of a one, but—”
“Exactly. This plan is the best we got, and if it all goes south on us, we’ll come up with something else on the fly. Just like always.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I will make note of your dissent, and I will place it in the ‘who the fuck cares what Court thinks’ file.” Zack laughed at himself. “What did I tell you back in the day, Six? You don’t have to like it—”
“You just have to do it,” Court finished the thought. He was pissed, but he was a beaten man on this. He’d do his job, and Hightower knew it.
“You want to get back in the fold? You stick with your part of Nocturne Sapphire. You will make Carmichael a very happy and very appreciative man. Don’t worry, dude. Whiskey Sierra will be around to help you through.”
After a long pause Gentry muttered, “Six out.”
THIRTY-TWO
Court awoke and looked down at his watch. Tiny bits of tritium gas-filled tubes illuminated the hands, told him it was time to get up.
It was four thirty in the morning; the air was cool with the ocean’s breeze. He rolled into a sitting position and filled his lungs.
He’d slept fitfully for a couple of hours at most. The operation ahead had kept him tossing and turning, his mind spinning with details and contingencies and with a multitude of if/then statements that he could not seem to reconcile. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t imagine this day being anything other than a massive cluster fuck. He felt like a train wreck was coming, he was on the train, and it was too late to jump off.
From the pack Zack had handed off to him the night before he retrieved a peanut butter Soldier Fuel bar, a vitamin and protein-fortified energy bar created by nutritionists in the U.S. Army. He opened the package and ate it quickly and efficiently, his game face hardening by the minute as the day’s operation approached. He washed it down with water from his CamelBak bladder.
Gentry crab-walked down the boulders to the water’s edge. As he relieved himself into the lagoon, he considered changing clothes into something more tactical, but decided against it. He’d love to have pants with more pockets—pockets were important to an operator—but his grungy, grimy, local attire—clothes that he’d hiked in, swam in, slept in, even ridden on a donkey cart in—just looked too authentic to eschew for something clean and alien to the environment.
He crawled over to his Russian backpack, the one provided to him by Sid. He hefted it over a shoulder and stepped into the cool black water of the lagoon. The heavy bag was watertight and built with an air chamber that would allow it to float, and Gentry hung on to it as he swam across.
Twenty minutes later, his head appeared at the top of the minaret on Old Suakin Island. He climbed into the gallery of the structure, the open room just under the crown at the top of the tower. Back when the island was alive and the mosque open, two hundred years ago at the most recent, from here the muezzin sang the adhan, the five times daily call to prayer. Now it was dormant and home to birds; Court’s arrival stirred pigeons from their sleep. They flitted off, but the noise and movement was no worry to Gentry. The cats around here certainly harassed the feathered creatures often enough to where a small group of them taking flight in the night would not raise the alarm. Court crawled carefully across the minaret, smearing fresh pigeon droppings with his knees and gloves, pulling his pack behind him. He was less concerned with being spotted and more concerned with the structure giving way, falling apart and falling down, taking him along with it. But it held, and Gentry unzipped his pack and pulled out the pieces of the Blaser sniper rifle and began assembling the weapon.