On Target

into the country.

So he just stood there, watching, as the NSS men handcuffed her, and she kicked out at Gennady as he stood in front of her shouting in Russian. Soon four armed GOS soldiers stormed in, alerted no doubt by the shouting and wrestling in the interrogation room. Gentry’s Russian cohort scooted back out the door, and a couple of the other Russians peered in, with gawking stares of fascination and even amusement.

The older secret policeman grabbed her by her chin and turned her face towards his. “There is a place we take unwanted guests. I promise you that within minutes of arriving at the Ghost House, you will regret your espionage against the Republic of Sudan.”

“Espionage? I am not a spy! I have every right as a member of the international community to—”

“Don’t say another word, lady!” Court shouted aloud, no attempt now to hide his American accent and stay in cover. This fool was making her own situation direr by the second. “Just shut up and do what you’re told. You don’t know anything. Get out of here and do what you have to do, but don’t let on that you know any—”

“You speak English?” She looked at Gentry, confusion replacing her fury.

Court tried to reason with the woman in short bursts so the others would not understand. He switched to French. He hoped like hell that, as a Canadian, she understood it and hoped, also like hell, that the Sudanese did not. “You are not ICC! Do not say you are ICC, or they will kill you! Tell them you were lying. Tell them you are nobody. UN, that’s all.” One of the NSS men looked up at him in surprise but was too busy trying to pull the strong woman over to a chair to stop what he was doing.

Ellen began crying, screaming at the same time, “I don’t speak French, asshole! Do you speak English or not? Help me!”

After she was led to the chair, her small hands still cuffed behind her back, some of the soldiers cleared out, and one of the NSS men left the room to use the phone. The Russians had all returned to the concourse, sensing that the show was over.

Court remained in the room with the girl, pacing back and forth. He stepped in front of her and leaned close. Her lip bled where Gennady had slapped her, and her rust-colored blouse was torn at the shoulder from the soldiers’ rough treatment.

He spoke to her softly, quickly, so the NSS would not pick up all of it. “Listen carefully. Don’t fight with them, but be firm. Demand to speak to someone from UNAMID. Don’t say anything else. You are not in the ICC. You saw nothing. You know nothing.” Gentry looked down at the floor. Not up at her eyes. “You’ll be okay.” He turned away and headed back out the door slowly. “You’ll be fine.”

“Who are you?” she called out to him.

He slowed but did not turn back and look at her. “Nobody.”

Gentry and the rest of the Ilyushin’s crew walked together across the darkened tarmac towards the huge aircraft.

Court was mad and worried, and he felt like shit about the Canadian woman. His shoulders sagged as he walked in the rear of the group, his head slumped down. He tried to tell himself that her outburst condemned her, and that was her fault, not his, and he could not do anything about it.

He’d told her she’d be fine, but from pretty much everything he could see and guess about the situation, he was certain she would be killed. It would be just too easy to make her disappear right here and now, and too damaging to let her walk away to reveal what she knew. Court also knew that if he could come to this conclusion, it made absolutely no sense for the NSS or the GOS to come to any other conclusion.

Miss Ellen Walsh was dead.

“Your fault, Gentry.” He said it aloud, softly, as he walked through the night with the flight crew.

They were still a couple hundred yards from the aircraft. Court began to slow. He looked up and saw the others were ahead of him by several yards now. He slowed some more. Then his slumped shoulders raised and stiffened. He looked up from his sulk and said, “Gennady. Don’t leave me.”

The pilot turned, continued walking backwards. “What? Leave you where?”

“Just wait for me. I have to—”

“We are going now. Fifteen minutes for preflight, and then we are in the air. I don’t know what you are talking about, but I’m not waiting for you. Come on.”

Court stood firm in the dark; insects chirped and buzzed and trilled and clicked in the scrub around him. He looked back over his shoulder towards the dark terminal. A black four-door sedan pulled up to the employee access door.

“Dammit!” he shouted into the night.

“Let’s go!” barked Gennady, angrier this time.

Court looked ahead at the aircraft still two hundred yards ahead. He thought about his fifty pounds of gear. He wished he had some of it with him now.

Gennady asked, “What is the matter with—”

Court interrupted him. He pointed a threatening finger in his face. “Don’t leave me! I’ll be right back. Do not take off until I get back!” He knew if he invoked the name of Gregor Sidorenko this pilot would do exactly as he said, but he was not about to violate operational security to that level just yet. Instead he just threw out a “Please!” He did not wait for a response. Instead, he turned on his heel and began running back to the terminal. “Dammit!”

NINETEEN

The Gray Man had sprinted one hundred yards through the warm night, with no real plan other than to find the woman and to figure out some way he might help her. He wasn’t going to pick a fight with an airport full of secret police and soldiers, so he didn’t have any real idea where he was going with this impetuous charge, but he’d been around long enough to put some confidence in his powers of improvisation. Ahead he saw the bright shaft of artificial light from the opening of the terminal’s employee access door. The two NSS men appeared in the beam, and behind them, two armed GOS army sergeants pushed Ellen Walsh forward and into the back of the four-door sedan. The soldiers climbed in on either side of her, and the NSS men got in the front. The vehicle pulled away, in the opposite direction of Gentry’s run, just as he arrived at the terminal’s side entrance. He knew they were heading to the exit of the airport, taking the woman away.

And he knew where they were going.

The NSS detention facility in Al Fashir.

The Ghost House.

“Dammit!” he shouted again as he stopped running. Two airport guards eyed him from the doorway, vaguely curious perhaps, but they did not come outside.

Gentry looked around for a vehicle but found nothing. Instead, he turned around and began walking back towards the aircraft. As soon as he left the dim lights coming from the terminal and disappeared from the guards’ sight, he began running again. This time he turned around the side of the building and shot between several shipping containers that had been lined up to serve as mobile offices for some NGO that had apparently long since pulled up stakes. Passing these, his feet left the warm tarmac and sank into thatch-covered sand and hard dirt. A small hill rose towards the end of the airport property, another fifty yards away. There was a metal fence here. Court had noticed that it ran alongside a reasonably well-trafficked road, back when there was still enough light to see this far into the distance. Now he did not see any headlights, but neither did he see any guards out here in the desolate darkness. He ran past the wreckage of a hulking, high-winged, twin prop aircraft that had obviously crashed and then been towed here to await the eventual burial in the sand that would occur over years of swirling winds.

Court skidded to a halt at the base of the fence. It stood ten feet high and was topped with thick coils of razor wire. He untied his boots but left them on his feet, then climbed the fence quickly and adroitly. At the top he