One was small and squat, little more than a locker. The other, about thirty yards away, was a three-story shell, a ruin that towered over everything around it.
Danny slowed to a stop about two hundred yards from the building. The back of the house where Li Han had been when they left the bug was to his right, nearly a quarter mile away. The warehouse they had raided was in the complex, a half mile to the east, directly on his left as he looked at the three-story building.
“What do you think, Colonel?” asked Flash. “We close enough?”
“Big one first,” said Danny, magnifying the image the helmet was projecting. If people were around, they were well hidden. “We check them, bug them, then swing around to the other side and wait. This way, when the Osprey comes in, we’ll have the far side covered.”
Danny lifted the visor and looked at Flash. The trooper nodded. Melissa was a few feet away, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath.
“You all right?” Danny asked.
She held up a hand, waving at him.
“Does that mean yes or no?” he asked, coming over.
“I’m good,” she gasped. “You set a pretty quick pace.”
“I like to run, I guess.”
“So do I.” She looked up and smiled. “At least I thought I did.”
“Can you breathe?”
“I can breathe,” she snapped.
“Come on around this way. We’re going to check the buildings. If they’re empty, we’re going to bug them, and then duck back to a spot over there where we can cover them both.”
“What if they’re not empty?”
“Then we’ll deal with it.”
Chapter 19
The body they dragged through the yard of the house and into the dirt road was barely recognizable as a human being. It had been battered and its clothes almost completely torn off, except for the shoes. As Kimko approached, it looked more like a collection of meat held together in a mesh sack.
Remarkably, the man was still alive. He writhed and jerked, arms flailing. Kimko watched as the men pulling him let go, ducking away as if afraid of his blows.
Two men nearby held torches; they threw a yellow hue around the semicircle of tormentors and victim. Half a dozen Sudan First soldiers stood in a loose circle watching the man as Girma walked over and laid his boot into his midsection. He placed it there gently at first, letting it rest easily on the man, who paused his writhing to stare up at him. Girma grinned, then stomped. The man curled around the blow, gasping.
Kimko saw the man’s face clearly as he turned in his direction. It was Gerard.
A shudder of revulsion ran through Kimko. If the man had any true courage, he would have died fighting rather than letting himself be captured and humiliated.
Animals.
“How great are you now, Gerard?” yelled Girma. “Now that your bodyguards and lackeys are gone? Where is your haughty manner?”
Girma kicked him in the head. Blood spurted onto Kimko’s boot. This enraged him; he stepped back, than lowered his AK-47 and fired point-blank into his enemy’s skull. The men nearby shielded their faces against the bits of flesh and blood that splattered toward them.
“Let the dogs have his body!” yelled Girma. He fired into the dead man’s midsection to emphasize his point.
A woman screamed inside the hut on the other side of the road. Gunfire quickly followed. Kimko turned in time to see three soldiers, none older than fifteen, emerge from the hut. It took absolutely no imagination to realize what they had done.
“We are in control!” yelled Girma, clapping Kimko on the back. “Come! We will go and get your airplane. You are our hero. You have made all of this possible, with your weapons.”
Chapter 20
They went to the smaller building first. Even at a trot, Melissa found it hard to keep up with Danny and Flash. They were dressed in full combat gear, helmets, vests, and heavy boots, along with their guns and assorted equipment, and yet they moved like cheetahs, leaping forward. She quickened her pace, then dropped belatedly as they hit the dirt.
“What?” she said, but either they didn’t hear or simply ignored her, rising and moving in opposite directions to flank the concrete structure. Unsure what to do, Melissa decided to follow Danny; she half crawled, half ran in an arc behind him.
“Clear,” hissed Danny when she caught up to him.
At first she thought he was giving her some sort of command, but then realized he was telling Flash over the radio that there was no one on his side.
“Come on,” he told her. “Let’s have a look. I want to plant a bug inside.”
The only opening was a steel door, secured by a combination lock. Danny took out a small key gun — a lock-picking device that offered various small picks to work keyed locks.
“I hate picking locks,” he said.
“Here, let me see,” she told him.
Melissa took the small device — folded, it was about the size of a pocketknife — and worked the main lock on the door, clicking the tumblers quickly. But the combination lock was wedged in a way that prevented her from seeing the back. She twirled the dial a few times, then tried a popular combination, passing thirty-six, then coming back to twelve, then coming back as she gently applied pressure, hoping to find the last number.
She didn’t. The lock remained fastened.
“You’re going to have to remember some numbers for me,” she told Danny.
Holding the lock in her left hand, she put her right ring and middle fingers through the lock and began turning the dial gently back and forth, feeling for the gates. She ended with ten numbers, separated by four digits.
“What are you going to do? Try every combination?” asked Danny.
She wasn’t, just the most likely ones, which on that sort of lock were almost always the solutions. She went slowly at first, then fell into a rhythm. She got it on the fourth try.
“Here you go,” she told Danny, slipping the lock off its hasp.
He creaked the door open, dropped to his knees and peered inside.
“Forget it,” he said. “Inside’s filled with junk. They’re not meeting here.”
They were halfway to the second building when MY-PID told Danny that the Russian had just gotten into his vehicle.
“They’re on their way,” Danny told Flash over the radio. “Drop back and cover me. I’ll get some bugs down.”
“Yeah, roger.”
Danny turned back to Melissa, who was huffing next to him as he ran.
“They’re coming,” he told her. “I want you to hide over there.”
He pointed to the ditch across the road. It was about thirty yards from the building.
“What are you going to do?”
