chances that it was Nusairi.
He swung onto the narrow street, pouring on the gas. The taillights, where were they? The main part of town was a labyrinth of twists and turns, and he’d momentarily lost sight of them…
Mouthing a string of profanities, Kealey whipped his head back and forth, then thankfully picked up the gleaming red lights around another sharp bend to his right. He swung into it, found himself on a relative straightaway, and accelerated, noticing the car ahead had sped up, too. He’d gambled correctly, then-it had to be Nusairi.
He bumped on over the cobbled street, his foot to the pedal, gaining on the Ford. It would be no match for his Cherokee, but Nusairi probably knew the city’s layout better than he did, giving him that far from negligible advantage. Kealey was afraid he might yet reach another twisty section of town and shake him loose.
Reaching the next corner, the Ford took a sudden left, Kealey almost on its bumper now, able to see Nusairi hunched over the wheel. He swerved after him, realized they’d gotten to the wide-open central market-there were stalls and wagons all around, everywhere, some emptied out for the night, others with their wares covered with tarpaulins.
Kealey poured it on now, getting closer, closer, and then cutting his wheel to the left so he pulled directly alongside the Ford. He looked out his passenger window, briefly met Nusairi’s gaze through double panes of glass, and swung the wheel hard to his right.
He felt the collision of their doors jar his back, heard the tortured, scraping grind of metal on metal. Then Nusairi’s lighter vehicle half bounced, half skidded to the right and went plowing into a cart of woven textiles, knocking off its wheel so it spun wildly over the cobbles, the cart toppling onto its side, blankets and sheets of fabric spilling everywhere over the street.
Somehow, though, Nusairi managed to hang on to control of the Ford. Kealey swung hard into his flank again, this time almost lifting Nusairi’s wheels off the ground to send him careening through a high stack of packing crates. The crates broke apart over his hood and windshield, wood flying, the burlap sacks of millet and corn inside them breaking open to disgorge their contents. Nusairi tailspun across the square into a vendor’s stall and smashed into a long wooden table, upending it before he hit the back of the stall and brought its bare plank walls crashing down on him, demolishing the Ford’s windshield.
Kealey stopped the Cherokee and exited it in a heartbeat, rushing across the square to the Ford as Nusairi pushed himself out of its scraped and beaten driver’s door. Blood trickling from under his eye, cuts on his cheeks and forehead, Nusairi looked at him, turned away, and started to make a break for the shadows.
On him now, right behind him, Kealey took a running leap at Nusairi that almost knocked both men to the cobblestones, wrapping his arms around his back to try and catch hold of him. But Nusairi, staggering, managed to stay on his feet. He twisted around to face Kealey, locking eyes with him, his features distorted with rage and malice-the rage showing above all else, completely overtaking him, his eyes flaring, his lips peeled back from his tightly clenched teeth in an almost bestial grimace.
And then he dove at Kealey, literally dove, giving Kealey little time to realize that the bottom of his shirt had pulled out from the waistband of his cargo pants and bunched up to reveal the handle of his combat knife.
Nusairi snatched hold of the knife, pulling it from its sheath, the blade flashing in his right hand as it came up. He took a vicious swipe at Kealey, barely missed carving a deep gash across his abdomen, and might have done so if Kealey hadn’t feinted backward at the last instant. As Nusairi came charging at him with the blade again, Kealey recovered his balance, pivoted on the forward part of his left foot, and shot both hands out in front of him, his right clenching Nusairi’s knife hand, his left grabbing the same elbow, twisting it around, yanking it up and back toward Nusairi.
They grappled like that for an endless minute, strength against strength, their faces inches apart. Kealey could feel Nusairi’s breath, see his cheeks puffing with exertion, the blade suspended between them.
And then he felt something in Nusairi’s grip give way, just for a split second. He moved forward into him, knowing it might be his one opportunity, bending the knife back toward Nusairi’s chest, back so its point was directly under his rib cage…and, mustering everything he had, gave it a hard upward shove to bury it inside him to the handle.
Still on his feet, Nusairi produced a feral sound that was something between a grunt and a moan, his hands going to his chest, his blood pouring over them in crimson sheets. At last, after what seemed another long while, his legs began to sag.
Kealey pulled out the knife before Nusairi could fall, stepped back, and stood looking at him, looking into his eyes…
Looking into his eyes, his gaze calm and unwavering as the life faded out of them.
“That was for Lily Durant,” he said before the last spark was extinguished. Then, waiting for Nusairi’s body to finally hit the ground, he bent over him to add something that had struck him almost as an afterthought. “And by the way, all your tanks and choppers are about to get blown to kingdom come.”
True to Brynn Fitzgerald’s “chirping birdie,” the Israelis did indeed launch the Hermes “Ziq” 450s out of Navatim for their strikes at Sudan. Although the unmanned aerial vehicles were indeed a component of the 166th Squadron at Palmachim Air Base near Tel Aviv, moving them to the base outside Be’er Sheva in the southeastern part of the country-and closer to the Red Sea route to the Sudanese border-extended their tactical range both in terms of fuel usage and data communications.
Another tactical advantage to having the drones take off from Navatim, alternately known as Air Base 28, was that it put them at the same spot as the 116th “Defenders of the South” Squadron and the 140th “Golden Eagle” Squadron, both of which were home to the F-16 fighter jets that would be essential to destroying tanks and helicopters. The UAVs, with their respective payloads of two Rafael missiles, were formidable weapons against convoys bearing arms and missile launchers. But when it came to destroying thirty-three tanks and over a dozen choppers, they were best used in a support role, sending the Israelis real-time pictures, taking out a secondary target or two, and perhaps doing some cleanup.
Having Sudanese air space unrestricted to them, however, the F-16s left little to be cleaned up. Their massive array of air-to-ground missiles and laser-guided bombs took care of the convoy quite neatly in just three runs-the third precautionary.
It was not always the size of the strike force, but how it was used, that counted. Simon Nusairi’s purchase barely got out of the box, however, rendering even that observation moot.
CHAPTER 22
SUDAN,WASHINGTON, D.C.
As the Cairo-bound Gulfstream 550 charter jet taxied left onto the runway at Khartoum International, Ryan Kealey looked out his window and saw the Sudan People’s Armed Forces troops that had escorted his group through the airport break into spontaneous applause, standing there ranked alongside the tarmac.
Abby Liu sat beside him, Mackenzie in the seat facing her. Cullen White, in wrist and ankle cuffs, was next to Mackenzie and opposite Kealey. The rest of the charter jet’s cabin was occupied by a contingent of 6 dark-suited Agency men who had flown in from Egypt the day before.
“Well, Kealey, it seems you’re a local hero,” White said in a quiet voice. His eyes had fixed on him through his wire-frame glasses. “The man who saved the compassionate and lawful regime of Omar al-Bashir from scheming rebels…and their infidel coconspirator.”
Stone-faced, Kealey ignored him and stared out at the clapping soldiers in their dress regalia. He was glad when the plane angled off so they were out of sight.
“You should be proud,” White said. “You even bagged the Western devil alive. Here I sit, flying back to America in shackles. Shame on me, right?”
“Shut up,” Mackenzie said.
White glanced over at him. “What?”
“You heard me.” Mackenzie met White’s gaze with his own. “I don’t want to hear your fucking mouth.”
“Are you going to gag me?” White said with a small acid smile. “Or maybe just shoot me in my seat. If you’re careful, there’s very little risk of puncturing the side of the cabin. Though I know you all want me back in
