On Target

“Do you think any of them have an interest in what happens here?”

She turned to him, though they were still walking, regarding his question with a thoughtful sigh. The Arabian behind them snorted. “The Chinese have mineral rights in north Darfur. So far they haven’t found much, but if they did find something, then all bets are off as to how that would change the political landscape.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Chinese have a fragile alliance with Abboud. The Russians have a fragile alliance with—”

Court tried to finish the sentence, “The vice president, who would succeed Abboud if he were taken out of the picture.”

“No. The vice president is as weak willed as they come. I was going to say the Russians have a fragile alliance with the government in Chad. If Abboud were killed, some people think a power struggle would ensue, and the civil war would spread to the entire nation. Chad would use that opportunity to invade Darfur with Russian help. It would start a firestorm, with two nuclear superpowers involved in the outcome. Personally, I don’t believe that, as long as no major oil deposits are found in Darfur. This big conspiracy just sounds too big for Russia to fool with unless it turns out there is something really significant out here under the dirt.”

She sounded like she knew what she was talking about, which gave Court the sinking feeling Gregor Sidorenko had lied to him. The Russians wanted Abboud dead not because his death would give them Tract 12A but because his death would cause chaos, into which Chad could invade and take Tract 12A for the Russians via a shooting war.

Son of a bitch.

Court had a thought. “But you guys want to arrest Abboud? Wouldn’t that have the same effect as killing him? He’d be out of power and could not stop a civil war.”

“The thinking at the ICC is that if we could give Abboud a reason to use his influence and power to our benefit, then his followers would not fall into the trap of being used as pawns by the Chinese and the Russians.”

Interesting, thought Court, but he saw no possible way Abboud would have a reason to comply with the ICC.

They crested a gentle rise, palm trees at the apex. On the other side they saw the massive IDP camp splayed out in the valley below them over several square miles. It was flat and dark in the night, thousands of single-room tents. There were lights around the perimeter, and a few UNAMID vehicles in view. Camel-dung fires burned like a hundred fireflies in the distance, tiny pinpricks of amber across the wide valley floor.

“It’s incredible,” said Ellen, her hands on her hips.

“You see the gate?” asked Court, pointing towards an entrance in the fencing, protected on either side by white armored personnel carriers.

“Yeah.” She looked up at him. “You’re not coming with me, are you?”

Court mounted the Janjaweed horse.

“Nope.”

“Because of what I said about having you prosecuted? Look, you are safer in there than you are out here. You won’t be taken into custody here in Dirra, I promise you. We follow the law. You haven’t even been indicted yet.”

“I’m not going in there because I have a job to do out here. And I’m going to do it.”

“So you just ride off into the sunset?”

“It’s half-past midnight.”

Walsh shook her head, batted buzzing insects away from her eyes. “I bet you think you are a cowboy. But you’re not. You’re an outlaw. You are—”

“I need three days, Ellen. Three days from now you can do whatever it is you have to do. Make your report, send teams out looking for me.”

“Why don’t you tell me your mission? What happens in three days? Who you are working for? If our goals do intersect, I promise I will try to help you.”

“No offense, Miss Walsh, but I don’t need any help your organization can provide.”

She looked to the rifle on his chest and waved an exhausted hand at it. “Again, that’s all the help you need?”

“I’m not here to kill people. The last twenty-four hours I have been off mission. Like I said, you would one hundred percent approve of what I’m doing. I just need three days to do it. Your wait will be rewarded.”

Walsh did not reply. Court could imagine her giving him three days, just out of curiosity. He could also imagine her running to the front gate of the SI camp and yelling at the UNAMID soldiers to get themselves into their jeeps to chase the white horseman through the night. Ellen Walsh, like all women, was a complete mystery to Court Gentry.

“Three days. Please.” He pulled the reins on the horse hard, spun the big animal around, and then galloped off into the dark.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Court sat in his tiny hotel room in Al Fashir. Outside the open window above his tattered and soiled mattress on the floor, the morning bustle of the city rattled and whistled and bleated and shouted, as men and animals and vehicles passed by.

He was filthy and wanted a shower, but there was no shower here. Just a hole cut into a closet floor down the hall for a toilet. He’d spent the evening scratching bloody flea bites and had not gotten much sleep but, he asked himself, what did he expect for nothing?

It had taken a day and a half and most of the rest of his Sudanese pounds to get a car and a driver to transport him back to the capital of North Darfur. Court bought a satellite phone with the rest of his cash, using his watch and the two AKs to make up the difference. The man who’d driven him from Dirra had a cousin who owned a filthy boardinghouse in Al Fashir for Darfuris there to work construction on whatever project the NGOs were paying them to build, and the driver and the cousin had spoken and offered Court a room free of charge. The two men even took Court shopping for some local items and paid for them out of their own pockets. Many Sudanese, Court had noticed in his day on the road and in the town, possessed an intense kindness and willingness to give of themselves and their meager property for a complete stranger.

Court had little to offer in return but his gratitude, a few Arabic words of thanks, and an understanding of the body language of the culture. He held his hand to his heart and nodded deeply so many times in the past day he almost felt as if he could pass for a Darfuri, if not for the pigmentation of his skin.

Court had worked in dozens of different places in his career, either as a CIA singleton operator, as a CIA Paramilitary Operations officer, or as a private sector assassin, and many of those places, for want of a better term, sucked. But from time to time he found himself somewhere remote, both geographically and culturally, and completely taken in by the scenery or the people or the way of life in ways that stayed with him after he’d done his job and left the place behind.

He felt this way about Darfur. He wasn’t supposed to be here. There was much to hate. It was hot as hell and thick with bugs and controlled by a despot and murdering bands of marauders, but Court felt something about this place, the people, the stubbornness and discipline needed to face a miserable day armed with nothing but one’s own devices. He could not help but respect the people for scratching out what existences they had, and he appreciated their kindness to him.

He would love to repay the kindness by removing the man from power who was systematically killing them.

He reached across the mattress, picked up his phone, and called a number in Saint Petersburg.

Gregor Ivanovic Sidorenko had not slept. His man had disappeared into the depths of Darfur, the opposite side of the country from where he needed to be, and he had not heard from him in almost seventy-two hours. Furthermore, the international news channels were broadcasting reports from Darfur, reports of an attack on an aid