The cockpit of the Ilyushin was expansive; four men fit themselves in the upper-level crew area, and the navigator sat below in the nose among a sea of dials and buttons and computer monitors. The pilot, a redheaded Russian in his forties named Genady, who wore aviator glasses too large for his face and appeared, to Gentry, to be unhealthily thin, beckoned him forward. A young and heavyset flight engineer passed the American a radio headset so he and the pilot could communicate comfortably with each other.
“What is it?” Court asked in Russian.
“Sudanese air traffic control has contacted us. There is a problem.”
“Tell me.”
“We have been diverted. We are no longer going to Khartoum.”
“Where are we going?”
“Al Fashir.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, but I think perhaps the Sudanese Army must need the guns there in a hurry.”
Court pulled a laminated map off the flight engineer’s table. The man looked up at him but did not protest. “Where the hell is Al Fashir?” asked Gentry as he unfolded the map.
The Russian pilot turned and looked back over his shoulder and answered the question with one word, delivered in a grave tone. “Darfur.” He put his gloved finger on the far edge, completely across the country from where Court’s operation was planned.
Court looked up from the map. “Fuck.”
“It is a problem for you,
“My job is not in Darfur.”
Genady said, “Nothing I can do. I have to divert; I don’t have clearance to land in Khartoum.”
“Shit!” said Gentry now. He tossed the headset back on the console and turned to leave the cockpit, yanking the map out with him.
Five minutes later he was on his Hughes Thuraya satellite phone, talking with Sidorenko. He’d spent the time waiting for the connection to be established looking over the map. “This is not acceptable! How am I supposed to get out of the airport at Al Fashir, cross a hundred miles of bandit-covered desert, plus another three hundred miles of Sudanese territory? I’ve got the fucking Nile River now between myself and my objective.”
“Yes, Gray, I understand. It is a problem. You must let me think.”
“I don’t have time for you to think! I need you to get this flight back on track!”
“But that is not possible. My influence is with Moscow, not Khartoum. You will have to land where the Sudanese instruct you to land.”
“If you can’t fix this, then this operation is dead, you got that?” In fact, Court was concerned about Zack’s op, Nocturne Sapphire, and not Sid’s contract, but he did not mention this.
“I will do my best.” Sid hung up, and Court continued pacing the narrow alley between the wall of the fuselage and the crates of guns.
This snafu was of the “shit happens” variety. It was no one’s fault, but Court knew from much experience that no blame need be assigned to an operation for it to fail completely and miserably.
To Sidorenko’s credit, he called back much quicker than Gentry had anticipated.
“Mr. Gray, we have a solution. You must fly out again with the plane after it off-loads in Al Fashir. Return to the air base in Belarus. There will be another flight to Khartoum in three days’ time. It will be helicopter repair equipment, goods that are not likely to be diverted to Al Fashir. Everything will be fine.” Sid seemed satisfied with the new arrangements.
“Three days from now?”
“Correct.”
“One day before Abboud goes to Suakin? That’s not enough time to get there and prepare.” It would have been, thought Court, if Sidordenko’s operation was the actual plan he intended on carrying out. It was not enough time, in Gentry’s estimation, to adequately recon the area to increase the chances for success in Zack’s operation. Again, he could not very well explain this to the man on the far end of the satellite connection.
Sid shouted back across the line, his stress getting the best of him. “I can’t help it! I had no way to foresee this. The Russian government did not foresee this. Just stay with the flight crew and come back. We will try again in three days.”
Court hung up the phone and continued pacing the narrow corridor of the aircraft next to the weapons. “Son of a bitch.”
He next used his phone to call Zack. Hightower took the call on the first ring. He was clearly surprised to hear from Gentry. “You’re about twenty-four hours ahead of schedule, Six.”
“I’m about to fall behind schedule.” Court told Sierra One what was going on. When he was finished he asked, “You know anything about this airport? Any way I can get out of here and over to Suakin?”
“You might as well be on the dark side of the moon. It’s a war zone all around Al Fashir. The Red Cross, private NGO relief agencies, and African Union troops working for UNAMID, the United Nations Mission in Darfur, are about the only foreigners in the area. You might be able to buy a ride to the east from some local ballsy enough to brave the Janjaweed militia and the government of Sudan troops patrolling the badlands, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Stick with Sid’s change to the op orders, retrograde out of the Sudan with the aircrew, and reinsert in three days. It’s the best we can do at this point. We’ll just have to rush things when you get there. I’ll let Carmichael know what’s up.”
“Roger that, Six out.”
“Wait one,” Zack said, “Just a piece of advice. Don’t know what your turnaround time is in Al Fashir, but stay the hell inside the airport grounds. If you get popped by the authorities over there, they’ll take you to the Ghost House.”
“That sounds charming,” Court said over the whine of the Ilyushin’s engines changing pitch. They had just begun a turn to the south and a slight descent.
“It’s anything
“Understood. I’ll avoid the local tour, then. Six out.”
FIFTEEN
Ellen Walsh’s low spirits rose instantly when she saw a ray of the late afternoon sun glint off metal in the distant sky. It was an airplane, big and lumbering, turning onto its final approach, a thousand meters above the brown highland plain of north Darfur. An aircraft landing here at Al Fashir airport meant a potential way out of this miserable place.
Ellen had been stuck here since arriving on a UN transport plane ferrying in aid workers. There had been a problem with Walsh’s documents; her UNAMID travel authorization was missing the requisite stamp that would have allowed her entry into the UN camp for internally displaced people in Zam Zam. This oversight meant she was not allowed to leave the airport, unless it was on a plane out of Al Fashir.
So for three days she’d waited for a flight that would take her back to her office. UN aircraft had arrived, but they remained parked on the hot tarmac awaiting a resupply of UN jet fuel from a UN tanker. Chinese state-owned oil company planes had come and gone, but they’d returned to Beijing and not Khartoum, and they’d made it clear she could not go with them. Sudanese military flights had arrived and departed, as well, but they weren’t providing taxi service for some white woman.
But this new aircraft, this mysterious arrival floating in the hazy mirage to the north and lining up on the runway, could be her ticket out of here. It wasn’t military, it wasn’t painted in UN white, and it did not have the same shape as the Chinese planes she’d seen. Ellen knew aircraft, and normally she could ID a cargo plane in a second, but this craft in the distance was now banking across the late afternoon sun and was therefore impossible for her to identify. But she did not care. Whatever type of plane it was, whoever was flying it, and wherever it was headed next, she determined to do everything in her power to see that she was on it when it left.
Ellen was neither vain nor any sort of slave to fashion, but even before the lumbering aircraft touched down
