nailing a frame of pine four-by-four posts together with the hammer end of the device. The opposite side of the instrument was a sharp hatchet, and there was the hook of a crowbar on the side. “Why are we stopping?”
“Men in the road!” Bishara yelled back. Court could barely hear him. He had burrowed like a mole into the gear and luggage, and his hearing and mobility were affected by the sacks and suitcases and pallets of water bottles and large rolls of tarpaulin above him. Sweat from his hairline had run into his ears and eyes. Even taking a deep breath was a challenge in the dark, claustrophobic confines in the back of the truck. Bishara had been back with him helping for a while, but two men kicking and pushing and digging through the cargo proved to be more hindrance than help. After burying one another with their own movements one time too many, Gentry sent the young man back up front to the cab with instructions for the driver. Court had then tried to use the flashlight and the hammer at the same time while he worked, but he finally gave up. Slinging a hammer in pitch-blackness had caused him to bang his thumb and forearm four times in five minutes, but not having to screw with the light at the same time sped up his work rate, even though it was hell on his extremities.
After a long delay, Bishara responded. “It’s the Janjaweed!”
“Shit,” Gentry said to himself. He stopped hammering, grabbed his flashlight, and began crawling back to the top of the cargo. One more thing he had to do. He only understood the theory of this project, had never built anything like this before. Doing it on the fly, in low light, had been a nightmare. There were many things that could go wrong, so many, in fact, that the only way he knew how to combat the majority of them was by erring so far on the opposite end of the spectrum that his project really only had one major danger at this point. He wasn’t worried about whether it would work or not; rather, he was worried that it might just work too damn well.
Court was afraid of his project’s very real, and very literal, potential for overkill.
Acetylene and oxygen, the two components necessary for a welding torch, are extraordinarily combustible when placed in the correct mixture and contained in a confined space. Court had stood the two large tanks up, filled six forty-gallon contractor bags with this mixture, tied the bags tightly like balloons, and then placed them on top of the cargo, taking up the vast majority of the empty space above the truck’s load. He used the alarm clock, the cigarette lighter, and a healthy supply of strapping tape to fashion a timed detonator for the bags. He’d tested it twice, before filling the bags, of course, and found the moving hammer of the clock could activate the striker of the lighter and create a flame of burning butane.
He wanted to make a large bang, with much noise and flash, but not a great deal of shrapnel, lest he kill himself, Ellen Walsh, and the rest of the Speranza Internazionale convoy. No, he wanted only a diversion, an oversized flash-bang grenade. To achieve this effect he’d placed the bags at the top of the load, hoping the roof of the truck would blast off but all the cargo inside would not be propelled out at hundreds of miles an hour. He also did not want the truck’s massive gas tank to ignite, which would create a bomb that could easily kill everyone. He really had no idea if his truck-sized concussion device would have the desired effect—there were dozens of variables at play—but he’d also had no other options that he could see.
Court had also created a second stage to his diversion, presuming that the few seconds of confusion by the enemy would not be enough for him to take any sort of advantage. He struggled and fought and pulled and pushed the iron acetylene tank to the top of the cargo load, positioned it in the back by the sliding door, with its nozzle facing the bags of combustible chemicals and its blunt bottom towards the door. He pointed it slightly downwards, and then built an extremely crude wooden cage around it, essentially rails above and below that it could travel on, like a missile on a launching pad.
Last, after the truck stopped, he opened the tank’s nozzle slightly and began backing out of the cargo hold, moving the bags in front of him as he did so. At the cab end of the cargo space, he set the alarm clock, triple- checked the lighter to make sure the hammer of the timepiece would make contact with the lighter’s flint wheel, and then left it there next to one of his oxy-bombs.
He backed out of the hatch to the cab, covered in sweat and exhausted beyond belief, just as the driver backed his vehicle up several meters and then turned off the engine.
A turbaned man on a horse rode by the driver’s-side window, barked an order to the driver, who opened the door. Immediately the Janjaweed horseman struck Rasid several times with a heavy, braided whip before heading back to the last truck to hassle that driver as well.
Gentry followed Rasid and led Bishara out of the cab, worried as much now by his own contraption as by the armed enemy force around him.
Bianchi climbed out of the lead vehicle as the Janjaweed slowly enveloped the convoy. Half had dismounted and pulled their horses by their leads as they waved rifles around with their other hands. The other half, the senior men of the raiding party perhaps, remained on their mounts as they rode down both sides of the four vehicles on the hot road.
Bianchi identified the commander by his stature and by the heavy necklace of amulets hanging on his chest over his rifle magazines. These brown, square, clay charms were common among the Janjas, but the man on the largest camel, who wore the newest looking chocolate-chip patterned camouflage uniform and sported the longest beard, also wore the necklace with the most amulets. The charms were blessed by a holy man and were purported to ward of bullets.
This man was in charge, and Bianchi addressed him politely.
Bianchi continued in Arabic. “Brother, why do you stop us? Commander Ibrahim is a friend. He allows us to pass to Dirra.”
The man on the camel just looked down at him. Then his eyes rose to the other people from the trucks, who were being led over to the side of the road. Bianchi turned to make sure everyone was accounted for and behaving themselves. His four drivers, his four loaders, the Canadian woman, who still wore a terrified expression on her face, and the American man. He was sweat-soaked, his hair matted to his forehead, his face low to the ground in supplication. Bianchi regarded him for a long time. So brave he was with a gun in his hand and facing an old man. Now, with these true warriors around him, he looked like he just wanted to disappear.
Right before turning back to the Janjaweed commander, Mario Bianchi caught the American sneaking a quick glance at his watch. Bizarre at a time like this, the Italian thought, as he once again began deferentially explaining his working relationship with the Janjaweed to the obviously poorly informed man on the camel.
“This is not going to be good,” Court muttered under his breath. He wasn’t talking about the marauders on horseback; he was talking about the project he’d been working on for thirty-five minutes. His life and the lives of everyone in the convoy were in peril, and not just from the hotheads with the smelly horses and flea-bitten camels. Bishara stepped up to Court on the road and put his hand on his back.
“Is it going to work?” he asked softly.
Court turned back to him. “I don’t know if it’s going to work. But it sure as hell is going to explode.” Court put a tone on it and a look in his eyes that endeavored to convey the danger they were all in.
It was obvious to the Gray Man that young Bishara understood completely.
“Good luck, man.”
Court nodded. “You, too, kid.”
He wanted to talk to Ellen, to warn her about what was to come, but at that moment she was farther up the road, being led along with the rest of the SI personnel, all of them into one single group. When he did get close enough to her he could not speak. The common languages that he could have used, English or rudimentary Arabic, were likely understood by someone in the Janjaweed raiding party. So he did what he could to get next to her. She was close to Bianchi, who was standing below the leader of the Janjas. Court scooted behind the Italian. It wasn’t hard with the Janjas shuffling everyone into this tight knot by the side of the road. They were fifty feet or so from truck three, Court’s quickly fabricated diversionary device. He did his best to lead the SI staff a few feet farther away, but the Janjas just kept herding them back. Everyone was in a tight circle; he could literally smell the apprehension in this constricted gaggle of humanity standing together in the dirt. All eyes were on the Janjaweed commander high up on his camel, and another man on horseback with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher strapped
