“I sleep in the bus.”
“Fine. We’ll make something to eat.”
Boston took a quick tour of the perimeter, making sure they were alone. Nuri had posted sensors all around, but Boston didn’t trust them.
Danny took one of the battery lanterns and checked out the building. About a third of the stone partition between its two rooms had tumbled down. Nuri had set up some camp chairs in the front room, along with a small table. A hand of solitaire was laid out on the table, the deck skewed as if the player had tossed it down in disgust.
Most of their gear was still en route and would be dropped via parachute the following night. They had a camp stove, cooking utensils, extra clothes, a tool kit. A backup radio, two GPS units, a pair of AK-47s and spare ammunition were in a small trunk at the side of the back room. Digging gear — picks and shovels, sticks, strings, the finer trowels and tools of the paleontology trade — sat near the front door. There was a dirt bike; Nuri had taken the other one to scout.
Danny looked at the roof. A tarp could easily cover it. But there wasn’t much chance of rain at this time of year, and with luck they wouldn’t be there long enough for it to matter.
“Nuri made some sort of stew,” said Boston, coming in after checking around. Between his light and Danny’s, the room was fairly bright. “We can just heat it up.”
“Where is it?”
“In that box there.”
“Not in a refrigerator?”
Boston laughed. “Colonel, they don’t have any iceboxes in hell.”
Danny went over to the box. The food was in a covered ceramic pot.
“I think if we eat this, we’ll end up in purgatory,” said Danny, examining it. “Or at least the latrine.”
“I’ve been eating it for two days straight, and I’m not sick.”
“It’s two days old?”
“You get it good and hot, all the germs die.” Boston picked up the pot and put it on the stove. “What do you think of Abul?”
“I guess he’s all right.”
“You trust him?”
“You tell me. You’ve been with him.”
“I don’t know. Nuri thinks he’s okay, but doesn’t really trust him. He doesn’t trust anybody. He’s got that look about him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Remember Stoner? The guy we lost in Romania?”
“Yeah.”
“You think those rumors about him being alive were true?”
“I doubt it.” Danny looked into the pot. It was a bubbling mass of gray, with unidentifiable black chunks floating on top. “I’m not going to eat that crap.”
“Suit yourself, Colonel.”
“You probably shouldn’t call me colonel,” said Danny.
“What should I call you?”
“Danny.”
Boston made a face.
“Then Doc or something like that,” suggested Danny. “Boss. Chief. Anything that’s not military.”
“I keep wanting to call you captain. Kind of think of Colonel Bastian every time I call you colonel.”
“Yeah.”
“Funny guy.”
“Funny?”
“I mean—
“Yeah.”
Danny heard a sound in the distance. He didn’t know what it was at first — it sounded like an airplane very far away. Then he realized it was the sound of a truck.
“Kill the lights,” he said. “Let’s see what this is.”
Boston led the way to one of their lookout posts, detouring quickly to grab the night vision goggles, which he’d left in his pack on the bus. Abul, who’d heard the noise but decided to ignore it, joined them. Danny squatted next to the rocks and pointed the night glasses in the direction of the noise. Red Henri’s ragtag armada appeared in the distance, the ambulance leading the way.
“Jesus. It looks like the whole Sudanese army is coming for us,” said Danny.
He handed the glasses to Boston.
“Shit — but they’re coming from the wrong direction,” said Boston. “This must be another unit — they must have radioed for help.”
“Can I see?” asked Abul.
Boston gave him the glasses.
“This is not the army. This is Red Henri,” said Abul.
“Who’s he?” asked Boston.
“A rebel commander,” said Danny. “He’s the one that’s not attached to any of the religious movements. Right?”
“He is a heathen,” said Abul.
“Whatever his religion is,” said Boston, “he’s coming straight for us.”
Danny took back the glasses. Between the pickup trucks and the troop truck, there could easily be two hundred men there.
“What do you want to do, uh, Doc?” asked Boston. Doc didn’t sound right, he decided.
“We should hide,” said Abul. “Red Henri — very unpredictable. Sometimes nice. Sometimes…”
He put his hand to his throat and made a strangling sound.
Danny turned back and looked at the camp. They’d put out the lights; it looked deserted. But they’d have to leave the bus there.
Two hundred versus two? Even with a Megafortress backing them up, the odds would have been pretty long. As much as he didn’t like the idea of hiding — it smacked of running away — there was no other choice.
“All right — can we get up to that high ground there?” he asked Boston.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking.”
“Grab the rifles and extra ammo and let’s go.”
11
Listening to Red Henri pontificate about how he financed his campaign in the Hummer, Nuri couldn’t decide whether he was a little crazy or very crazy. He was definitely crazy, and eccentric besides, but his economic arrangements suggested that he had at least an occasional attachment to reality. Such as it was.
Red Henri had built his movement around his control of a copper mine about thirty miles southeast of Eddd. Though ostensibly owned and operated by a Belgium consortium, Red Henri and his troops had more to say about production there than the production manager, let alone the individual stockholders. The company paid him a fee to provide security — basically money so his troops wouldn’t wreck the place, though in theory they were defending against other rebel groups and robbers. The company also paid him personally as a “political consultant”—basically a bribe to keep him from wreaking havoc. But the biggest portion of the mine-related income came from a “transport tax” that Red Henri’s soldiers collected from anyone going into or out of the mining area. Miners and anyone who wanted to do any business with them there had to pay the U.S. equivalent of three dollars going and
