Nuri started walking in that direction, moving slowly. The men there must be dead, he knew, yet he was filled with nervous energy, anticipation.
Fear. That was what he was filled with. He was so tired he was starting to be afraid of things.
He stopped about ten yards from the closest dead body.
All dead. Nothing to worry about. Once again he scanned the field, left to right, then back, slowly. He could hear his heart pounding in his chest.
And something else. Something pushing against the tall grass.
He turned in its direction and started to raise his rifle so he could use the scope. A shadow rose near the road.
“Watch out!” he yelled.
In the same moment he lowered the barrel of his rifle and fired a burst, short of the shadow. Without thinking he raised his left arm slightly and fired another burst, this one dead on.
There was a scream. Boston, on the other side of the road, fired as well.
“You OK?” he asked Boston.
“I’m good, I’m good. We get him?”
“Yeah, he’s done.”
Nuri took a long, deep breath, then tried not to breathe at all, listening.
“Not bad work for a spy,” said Boston when he came close. “Back to the women?”
They found them exactly where Nuri had left them. The pistol was still on the ground, a few feet from Bloom.
Chapter 27
Kimko ran until his lungs felt like red hot iron burning through his chest. Explosions, gunfire, the Osprey — he was running from the Apocalypse, the Horsemen determined to drag him to hell. Finally his legs gave out: he tumbled forward in a heap, collapsing in the front yard of a native hut.
He had no energy, no will to live. The damp ground swallowed him; the night soaked into his pores.
At some point he realized the gunfire had stopped.
Finally, Kimko climbed to his feet and began walking. He took stock as he walked, figuring out where he was — east of the city, in the scrub hills that rose into mountains. He tried to make sense of what had happened: the Americans had intervened in the small war, surely to get their UAV back.
He tried to think of what to do. He couldn’t go back to the Sudan First camp, clearly, and to go back to the city was death. But by the same token, he couldn’t survive out here by himself. Even if the Americans didn’t hunt him down and the two different factions left him alone, the wilderness was not a place for a man with only a pistol.
It would take at least a day on foot to reach another settlement; it could easily take longer if he got confused.
What was he to eat? Or drink — he craved vodka, and would gladly now have drunk a liter without stopping, without even thinking.
He had his sat phone. He could call his supervisors for help.
It meant admitting that he had failed. It also wouldn’t guarantee help would be sent. On the contrary, further failure might be viewed in the harshest possible light. They might leave him to rot.
He needed to think of a better plan.
Chapter 28
Danny’s first priority was the Osprey. The aircraft could take off with one engine, the pilots assured him, but it would be slow and its lifting ability would be limited; better to wait while they assessed the damage to the propeller and the engine, which they believed might be easily repaired. Though dubious, Danny agreed. He assigned Hera and two troopers to help and maintain a perimeter.
The next problem was to retrieve the UAV Sugar had found in the building. The aircraft was light, but Danny didn’t want to waste time or manpower carrying it to the Osprey. Instead, he told Sugar and two other troopers to leave it in the basement with charges in case it had to be destroyed; in the meantime they would guard the house.
That left two problems: Li Han and the Russian.
According to MY-PID and Danny’s own review of the surveillance footage from their UAVs, the Russian had run off without taking anything. He was armed with only a handgun. They had a good view of where the Russian was, about a mile and half to the east. He was on foot, with no one nearby; Danny decided they could leave him for now and concentrate on Li Han.
Which meant getting across town. That was more a problem of distance than resistance: the fight had devolved into a raucous pillaging of the Meurtre Musique area, with about a dozen Sudan First members setting random fires and massacring any civilians who hadn’t fled into the fields and jungle to the west.
Danny mapped a path to Li Han’s hideout that would skirt the troubled area. It was about three miles by foot.
“Anybody with a gun gets in our way, take them down,” he told his small group as they set out.
“I’d like to just shoot them all,” said Melissa.
“Yeah, me too,” he muttered, then he added more loudly, “Let’s stay focused.”
They’d gone about a half mile when MY-PID reported a pair of pickups heading in their direction.
“Here come our taxis,” said Danny. He divided the group, splitting them along the road.
“Flash, you have the second truck; I have the first,” he said. “Shorty, if we don’t get the drivers, the trucks stop no matter what.”
“Gotcha.”
“Who you going with?” Danny asked Melissa.
She hesitated, then ran after Flash.
By now her body had been bruised and strained to a point beyond exhaustion. Her mind seemed to have sunk into a place below her head somewhere, as if her body were a tower where it could roam freely. The gunshots, the explosions, the Osprey rotors — all of the miscellaneous loud noises had hardened her eardrums and encased her head in a shell.
Melissa copied the team as they took positions, sliding down on one knee like the others. At the last moment her trail foot snagged and she tumbled sideways, rolling awkwardly. She stayed down for a moment, dizzy and embarrassed. Finally, she tucked her elbow against the ground and levered up just in time to hear a gun burst nearby. There was another pop, then silence.
Unsure what was going on, Melissa craned her neck and saw that everyone was moving. She pushed to her knees, then hopped up and ran with the rest.
Danny took a position a short distance from the road, visor up, sighting through his scope as the two trucks barreled toward them. The drivers appeared to be either drunk or having some sort of contest; they veered back and forth, the one in the front not letting the other pass. He zeroed in on the driver, pacing his weave.
“Mine,” he said, and fired. The bullet slammed into the driver’s forehead, killing him instantly. The pickup
