On Target

He reached back and put it in Ellen’s hand. It took her a minute to realize what it was and what he was asking her to do. She took a swig herself, then immediately began hacking.

“It’s full of dirt.”

“Your face is full of dirt. Drink it. You need it.”

“I’m okay,” she said and tried to give it back to him.

“Drink. You have to stay hydrated out here in these temperatures.”

“But it’s full of dirt.”

“You’ll shit it out,” Court said coldly.

“That’s disgusting. I don’t want to shit it out.”

“Do you want to die of heatstroke? Drink the fucking water!” he shouted at her.

Reluctantly, angrily, she gulped down several more swallows. The grit and the mud made her cough several more times, but the liquid stayed down. When the bladder was empty, she dropped it in the dirt and the horse kept moving.

The haboob lasted until well past nightfall, and Court somehow managed to keep the animal moving in the correct direction. When the dust cloud moved on, he and Ellen dismounted and continued on foot, while Gentry led the big horse by its reins. The animal had proven incredibly reliable, and he wanted to give it a break by relieving it of the weight of two riders for an hour or two.

Their bodies were completely covered in grime. They could have been black Africans or Asians or space aliens under the coating of brown, and no one would know. Court realized this unintended consequence just might work in their favor as long as no one came too close. He was wrong, though. Their white skin may not have shown through, but their Western appearance was impossible to mask.

They had stayed away from the one desert track between Al Fashir and Dirra, had covered nothing but wide-open and desolate ground for hours, but as they neared their objective, they began passing through tiny villages and across dirt roads, and the traffic around them picked up. Donkey carts and small pickup trucks passed them, Darfuri villagers stared at them unabashedly, two filthy kawagas leading a Janjaweed horse, the man with two Kalashnikovs strapped to him and the woman wearing a turban like a man. Hardly an everyday occurrence out here in this wild land.

Court worried about the locals. He knew there existed a phenomenon in places like this, referred to as the bush telegraph, where somehow, inexplicably, news travels from community to community as certainly and as swiftly as a satellite phone. Gentry knew that at any moment he could meet up with Janjaweed or NSS or GOS soldiers and find himself outnumbered in a gun battle out here in the dark. Or he could find himself overrun by UNAMID soldiers from the African Union, who would arrest him and put an end to his operation.

But there was nothing for him to do but continue on; he had to get the woman to safety. He did his best to avoid settlements, gave the dung-fueled cooking fires a wide berth, waited for vehicles to pass instead of crossing in front of their headlights.

Ellen was dead tired. The heat and the stress and the long day and the lack of food and water all added up to put her in a temporary trance, which she occasionally snapped out of to try to engage Court in conversation. Just like the evening before, Gentry found himself talking to her more than he would anyone else. Even though she was 100 percent against him now, an adversary after he wasted those two worthless pieces of shit back with the convoy, he still kept talking to her, and it pissed him off. But it did not piss him off enough to stop.

The air finally cooled around eleven, and Ellen seemed to be reinvigorated by this. Court gave her the remainder of the water and, like a thirsty brown plant in the corner, the hydration seemed to cause her to spring back to life before his eyes.

“How much farther?”

“Not long. Another half hour or so.”

“Can we get back on the horse?”

“Negative. We need her rested in case we get into trouble and have to escape.”

“Okay,” she said. “That makes sense.” They walked shoulder to shoulder through low grass and beneath acacia trees so large they blocked out the stars. She looked over at him a few times. He could tell she was thinking about something. He ignored her, hoping her thought would pass, but it did not.

“Six, I think a lot of very bad people started out as good people, don’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Be careful you don’t become that which you hate.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“Yes, you do. I believe you. I believe that you believe you are here for the right reasons. Maybe in your head you are. But this place needs people who are saving lives, not taking lives.”

Court stopped her from stumbling over an anthill in the dark. He led her around it by the arm, and then immediately let go. “Saving a life and taking a life are not opposites. Sometimes they are two sides of the same coin. I may take lives from time to time, but I wouldn’t do it unless I felt I was saving some, too.”

“Sounds like you’re trying to justify it to yourself.”

“I have to justify it to myself. But I don’t have to justify anything to you. People like you will never understand. Waste of time to try to convince you.”

“You will be indicted for war crimes for what happened today.”

There was a tone to her voice that Gentry picked up on. She seemed to be disappointed in him for what happened but conflicted in her feelings.

“I believe you mentioned that.”

“We will catch you.”

“Right. You’ve been trying to catch Abboud for three years, and you have his goddamned address.”

That sank in a moment. “We are trying. The ICC will get Abboud, sooner or later.”

“Not if the ICC is sending Canadian women into Darfur alone. You people are going to need a lot of help to bring him down.”

He could tell this comment made her curious. “Are you going to help us? Is that your plan?”

Court had said too much, and he knew it. “If I was here for Abboud, do you think I’d be in Darfur? No, I’d be in Khartoum, where Abboud is.” He hoped he’d sold that to her.

She shrugged. “Abboud isn’t my job, anyway,” Ellen said. “I am working on illegal weapons proliferation. Armament imports are the symptom. Abboud is the disease.”

“You think he’s single-handedly responsible for the genocide here?”

She thought it over. “Responsible? Not entirely. But he can stop it. I believe that. He has the power.”

“Somebody should just shoot him in the head; that would stop it.” For the first time today, Court was interested in the conversation. He wanted to see how she’d respond to the comment.

“Your gun is the answer to every question, isn’t it?”

“Not my gun. Like I said, I’m not in Khartoum.”

“Fine, not your gun, but you really think killing him will fix things?”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I don’t. His followers could continue the war for years, decades even. If he died, all the gains the NGOs had made, just by being allowed in here, would probably be lost. Whoever takes over won’t want the prying eyes of the west in Darfur, especially if the campaign of brutality continues.”

“So Abboud is a good guy?” He was baiting her to get more intel on the political landscape.

“Of course not! He is as evil as the day is long. I’m just saying his death could bring about some unintended consequences.”

Court knew about an intended consequence the Russians had in mind. They wanted Abboud out of the way so the Chinese would lose access to Tract 12A.

But at what cost to the region?

He pressed her a bit, trying to pull a bit more info from her. She knew more about the Sudan than he did, and he respected her knowledge, even if he assumed her conclusions to be naive at best and stupid at worst. “What about other actors in the region? The Russians, the Chinese, the U.S., the African Union.”

“What about them?”