the normal shift. The two soldiers spotted by the Voice through the blimp’s feed were coming to replace the men on watch.
The men went to the side door of the factory, talking and laughing loudly enough that Nuri could hear them quite clearly, even before they began shouting to wake the guard, who’d fallen fast asleep less than an hour after coming on duty. It took a few shouts before they rousted him; they found that hilarious rather than troubling. When he finally woke and let them in, they claimed they had just left his wife and suggested he look for evidence in nine months.
Nuri listened to the Voice’s translation, which was flat and without humor. When they were done joking, they asked if he’d seen anything, which for some reason elicited a new round of laughter. Then they told him to go home to his wife and “sloppy seconds.”
The Voice confessed that it could not find the proper definition of the slang term.
As he listened, Nuri slipped across the rafters to the edge of the open area, planting a video bug in a position where it could scan nearly all of the front room. He placed another one to cover the hallway, then slipped back over the bathroom area, pressing himself down and trying to breathe as softly as he could.
29
Boston threw the Land Cruiser into reverse even as Danny pulled himself inside. Dirt and gravel spat in every direction. Mortar shells exploded forty or fifty yards away. There were more helicopters nearby, their rotors pounding the air like the excited heartbeat of an oversized dinosaur.
They made it to the highway.
“Wait up,” said Danny, struggling to get his bearings in the passenger seat. “I want to make sure they get out of here in one piece.”
“We got to get the hell out, Colonel,” snapped Boston. “All hell is breaking loose.”
As if to underline his statement, a fresh volley of mortar shells landed nearby.
“You’re going west,” said Danny.
“We can’t go back the way we came. We’d be running right by the Sudan troops.”
“I have to make sure Tarid gets away,” said Danny, still having trouble getting his bearings. “Pull off the road.”
“We’re sitting ducks here.”
“Just pull off the goddamn road.”
Boston veered off the asphalt. The other Land Cruiser stopped behind them.
Danny pulled out the control unit of the Voice. “I need the overhead images of the contact point,” he told the computer.
The video from the UAV came onto the screen, streaks and flashes of gunfire, flares and explosions.
“Locate marked subject.”
“Located.”
Two stars appeared on the screen. The Owl was supplying the image.
“One of those is Tarid,” said Danny. “Who’s the other?”
“Rebel identified as Tilia.”
“Highlight Tarid and zoom.”
The image zoomed on Tarid, but the screen was so small that Danny couldn’t get a good feel for his situation. Was he trapped? He seemed to be moving, but even that wasn’t clear on the small screen, which was intended primarily as a control display.
“What’s Tarid doing?” Danny asked the Voice.
“Subject is moving south of the road, accompanied by seven other soldiers.”
“Boss, we staying here forever?” asked Boston.
“Relax,” Danny told him.
“Not understood,” said the Voice.
“What is the disposition of the Sudanese army troops?” Danny asked MY-PID. “Mark the main groups on the screen.”
The computer did so. All of the troops were north of the road.
“All right,” Danny told Boston. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Boston got back on the road. Danny leaned his head back and closed his eyes, reliving not the firefight, but his emotions, his hesitation and the butterflies. He’d accomplished his mission, and yet he felt like a failure — a coward.
Any objective observer would have scoffed. Yet it was the fear that Danny remembered.
“Army troops approaching,” warned the Voice.
“What?” said Danny, sitting up.
“Four armored personnel carriers on road ahead, traveling east at a high rate of speed.”
“Will they reach the intersection before us?”
“Affirmative.”
“Boss?” asked Boston.
“Keep going,” Danny told him. “MY-PID, I need an alternate route back to Base Camp Alpha. Pronto.”
“Working.”
30
Nuri lay across the rafters above the sheetrock, waiting as the new set of guards took their posts. One stayed in the small vestibule near the door, snuggling into the soft chair. Despite the ridicule he’d heaped on his colleague, he was dozing within a few minutes, done in by boredom, the stale air, and the late hour.
The other guard walked through the building, turned into the hallway, and headed for the restroom, his way lit by a soft red light activated from the threshold. He hummed as he walked, bouncing and full of energy.
The man had learned that his wife was pregnant with their first child earlier in the day, and the prospect of a new son — and the bonus Colonel Zsar paid to all married men when their children were born — filled him with something approaching glee. He’d taken inside guard duty before, though always when people were working; tonight the laboratory would be dark, its last batch of material processed twenty-four hours before.
Though guard duty was a boring, mindless task, he liked the chance to let his mind roam, filled with songs he was constantly inventing. He wasn’t much of a soldier, as he would have been the first to admit. He’d joined the colonel’s army for the pay, choosing to be a rebel because soldiers were hardly ever paid on time. Religion was also a factor in his choice; he wouldn’t have joined Uncle Dpap, even though his reputation for watching over his men was better than the colonel’s, because Dpap was a nonbeliever. As dim as the soldier’s own concept of Islam might be, he nonetheless observed the proper forms, praying and dreaming of one day making his own hajj, the sacred pilgrimage to Mecca.
Nuri held his breath as the guard walked down the hallway nearby, then entered the restroom. The light shone through the fan covering. Nuri slipped over to the fan and peeked into the room through the open space. He couldn’t see the rebel — he’d gone into the commode nearest the door — but he could see the man’s rifle, an early model AK-47, complete with a battered but polished wooden stock, leaning up against the exterior of the stall almost directly below him.
The man’s humming continued. Nuri wondered if it might be possible to somehow plant a bug on his gear.
He could put one of the small ones into the gun barrel. The gum would make it stick.
It was a crazy idea. The device would be found as soon as the man cleaned his rifle.
