On Target cg-2

by Mark Greaney

  “You bastard! You are no better than them!” she berated as she ran alongside, trying to get in front of him.

  “They’re dead; I’m alive. I’d say I am doin’ a lot better.” He said it mirthlessly, continuing forward. But she finally made it in front of him, put her hand on his chest. Her small sunburned fingers clenched his sweat-drenched brown T-shirt. With his free left hand Gentry snatched her hand, spun it backwards into a wristlock, and pushed her back, away from him. He angrily raised the butt of the AK towards her with his free hand as if he were going to slam it into her face.

  Ellen was unafraid; her rage had pushed her past concern for her own personal well-being. “Ah, you beat women, too, do you? You fucking animal! Executing wounded men! Picking over dead bodies like a vulture! Blowing up—”

  “How the fuck were we going to haul them across thirty miles of desert? They would have bled out anyway, and we would have died trying.”

  “We could have carried them on the horses!”

  “And moved at half speed! You want to be out here at nightfall?”

  “Don’t make excuses! Just admit it, you wanted to kill them!”

  He lowered the gun and let go of her hand. “I’ll admit this. I don’t give a fuck about those two guys, about the bodies lying around here. Other than Bishara, I could not care less.”

  She looked over the bodies, back up to him. “What? What are you?”

  “I’m whatever you want me to be. The son of a bitch who shoots the wounded, or the guy who’s pulled your ass out of the fire more times in the past eighteen hours than I’d like to remember,” he said, climbing into the saddle of a large gray Arabian mare. “I can get you out of this alive, but you have to let me do my job.”

  “Your job is to shoot injured men?”

  “Not if I can help it, but we needed to go, and wasting those two shitheads was a means to that end. I could have waited thirty minutes for them to die on their own, but I didn’t want to wait. I could have left them behind, knowing that if the Janjas came back and one of them had enough strength to point which direction we took off in, it could get us killed, but I didn’t want to do that either. Do you even know what these fuckers do? They rape and slaughter defenseless women, they burn children alive in fire pits in front of their parents for shits and grins. Four hundred thousand dead. Is that just a fucking number to you? You can cry for the Janjaweed if that makes you feel self-righteous, but I won’t bat an eye after shooting the killers of women and children.”

  She stared at him a long time. Tears streamed down a face still wild with fury and hatred. Clean lines in the caked dust on her cheeks. She said, “Okay, they are killers of women and children; I understand that. But what does this make you?”

  Court slid the AK into a strap on the rear of the saddle, then tightened his grip on the big mare’s reins. He looked down at Ellen Walsh and kicked the animal’s haunches. The horse was already galloping towards the east when he answered her.

  “I am a killer of men.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Thirty minutes later Ellen Walsh and Court Gentry were a mile north of the desert track to Dirra, heading east through a narrow canyon that ran parallel to the distant road. Walsh’s chestnut mare had nearly bucked her twice; it was accustomed to a heavier hand controlling the bridle. Gentry deftly led his horse, and he led the way without speaking.

  He felt the fury of the woman behind him, sensed the hating eyes burrowing into his back like the scorching heat of the sun’s rays. Off and on she would speak, continuing to berate him. “You are a war criminal now. You realize that, don’t you? And the fact that you executed two wounded prisoners right in front of an ICC investigator leads me to wonder what you do when no one is around to hold you accountable for your crimes.”

  Court looked deep into the afternoon haze, searching for any stationary or slowly moving dust clouds ahead, telltale signs of approaching horses. He did see dust clouds here and there, but they moved quickly across the landscape, indicating they were caused by the wind and not hooves or feet or tires.

  “I came to the Sudan to help bring a wanted man to justice. But you know what? I ran into someone else, someone who maybe isn’t as dangerous, scale-wise, as President Abboud, but someone with just as little regard for human life. That’s you, Six. I’m going to make sure you are brought to justice for what happened today.”

  He turned his horse a little towards the north now. The path he was on led back closer to what passed for a road out here, and he wanted to stay out of sight of any passing traffic. “Do you ever take a break?” Court mumbled it to himself. The way forward, out of the canyon and back into the scrubland of the Sahel, looked clear, for now. He spoke louder. “You know what killed them? You killed them. You not doing what I told you to do. Out here, if you want to live, you do what I say. If I’m on trial in Winnipeg or wherever the fuck, I will listen to you, but out here, in enemy territory? You listen to me.”

  Apparently his remark caught her off guard, so accustomed she had become to his ignoring her.

  It took her a while to respond, and even then, her words seemed ineffectual. “I am not a trial lawyer. And I’m from Vancouver.”

  Court did not reply, just looked ahead, scanning for threats.

  “How can you do it? How can you kill like that?”

  “Training.”

  “Military training?”

  He did not answer.

  “I need to know who you are,” she said. He could hear the wheels turning in her head. He was now the subject of her investigation.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Do you really work for the Russians?”

  “I did once, but that didn’t work out.”

  “Because of me?”

  “Yep.”

  “But . . . you are American. Are you CIA?”

  “Negative.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’m currently unemployed.”

  “Right.” She didn’t believe him. “So all this isn’t business? It’s just pleasure?”

  “More fun than a barrel of Janjaweed,” said Court as he swigged from the canteen he took from one of the men he killed.

  “I’m serious, Six. I have every intention of writing a report on what happened back there.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You aren’t afraid of the ICC?”

  He laughed cruelly. “Terrified, but I’ll get over it.”

  “You are a dangerous man who must be stopped.”

  He did not slow his mount, but he pulled the reins to the left so that he could make eye contact with the woman. “But I’m not so dangerous that you won’t accept my help. And I’m not so dangerous that you aren’t afraid to be alone with me in the desert while I’m carrying two firearms, and I’m not so dangerous that you aren’t afraid to tell me that you are going to do all you can to have me thrown in prison. What does that tell you, Walsh? It should tell you that you see me as more savior than demon.”

  She thought about it a moment. “The justice I want to administer to you is not the same as what you administered to those people back there. I respect the rule of law.”

  “Well, you didn’t respect it enough to get all those bastards to stop bashing heads and sit down at a little makeshift courtroom in the dirt to be judged properly. Respect the rule of law all you want, but out here, the rule of law is not going to save your ass like this rusty AK and a fistful of dirty bullets will.”

  “I’m not a fool, I—”

  “That’s exactly what you are! All of you international law people are fools. Naive, foolish sheep who think the way to get the government of Sudan to put down their weapons and stop a genocide is to draft indictments in the Netherlands and send do-gooding lawyers down here to wander the desert and write fucking reports. You can feel good all you want, but you won’t change a goddamned thing.”

  She had locked onto something h
e said. “And what you’re here to do, it will change things?”

  Court wanted to keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t. “You’re damn right, it will.”

  “So you smuggle in weapons with the Russians and shoot the wounded. Is that all part of your plan to make the world a better place?”

  “No, it’s not. All this is just a distraction.”

  “Then what is your mission?”

  “I’m not going to tell you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you are just another obstacle in my way.”

  “Maybe we can work together.”

  “Surely I don’t look that stupid, do I?” Court said. “Until we get to Dirra, we are on the same side. After that, you go your way, I’ll go mine, and we’ll just leave it at that.” There was a finality in his comment that Walsh recognized, and she left him alone.

  They covered three hours more of hard ground with no words between them.

  Just after five in the afternoon, Gentry looked back over his shoulder to check on the woman. She was sunburned and exhausted but still upright on her mount. He pulled his horse to a stop, slid off the side, and untied a bladder from the saddle. He gave the gray Arabian warm water, which the animal drank eagerly. After thirty seconds he repeated the process with Ellen’s horse. As he did this, Ellen looked around, as if she’d been sleeping upright and was only now recognizing her surroundings.

  After a moment Court looked up to her, noticed an odd look on her face.

  “What the hell is that?” she asked, her voice more curiosity than worry.

  Gentry followed her gaze into the distance, back the way they had come.

  “A haboob,” Gentry replied gravely. “A dust storm.”

  Ellen stared in awe at the sight. It was as if a huge mountain had risen out of the flat ground they had just crossed. And the mountain grew and moved towards them.

  “That looks bad.”

  “It’s not good.” Court replied.

  “Is it going to catch us?”

  Court hurriedly retied the three-fourths-empty bladder on the back of his horse’s saddle. Then he lifted a foot back into the stirrup and climbed back up. “Get off your horse. Get on with me. Hurry!”

  “No,” she said. But then asked, “Why?”

  “We’ll get separated if we’re on two horses, and we cannot afford to get separated out here. Climb on with me, now!”

  Ellen hesitated but soon slid off her chestnut mare, grabbed the water bladder off its back, and went to Court. He pulled her up behind him, and she held her arms tight around his waist. He handed back one of the brown turbans he had taken from a dead Janjaweed horseman. “Cover your face,” he said. “Even your eyes.”

  “What about you? How will you see?”

  Court threw a similar wrap over his own face. “I won’t see. I’ll try to keep us going in the right direction. But the most important thing is we stay on the horse. There is nowhere out here to hunker down and wait this out. We just have to barrel right on through it.”

  Ideally Gentry would have dismounted and waited out the storm, but commonsense action was a luxury he could ill afford. He’d seen haboobs in Iraq that lasted three days, knew every minute they were out here in the badlands was another minute the NSS had to send more men out to hunt them. The last thing he wanted was to have his horse blindly stumble down a gulley or wander smack into a camp of Janjaweed fighters, but attempting to continue on, to run these risks, seemed preferable to just hanging out in the open with little water and no protection.

  A cooler breeze hit them a minute later, and the sand and dust were on them shortly after that. Suddenly it went from daylight to night; the sun’s rays were blotted out above them in an instant, and then they were surrounded, enveloped. A sense of claustrophobia overtook Ellen, but all she could do was tuck her face tighter into the turban and then press her face into the sweaty T-shirt of the man in front of her. The man who had kept her alive but who considered himself the arbiter of the life of others.

  Court held his watch up to his eyes, under the head wrap like a little tent. He could barely see, and hot grit dusted his corneas in seconds. The GPS function on the watch still seemed to be screwed up, but at least the compass worked. He headed east-northeast. Dirra was in this direction, but he had no idea how fast they were going in the haboob, so his main worry was passing right by the town in the dust or even in night. Surely there would be lights from the village, even if electrical power was virtually nonexistent, but there were low hills and sagging dry streambeds and wall-like rock formations that could easily obscure any distant light source, even if the dust storm did die down.

  Court could feel dehydration affecting his performance. He felt dizzy, tired, even a little drunk. He needed to take in some more liquid quickly. Though he could not see an inch in front of his face, he pulled the canteen off the horse’s saddle, opened it, and held it to his mouth. The grit and dirt and sand in the air and on his mouth immediately mixed with the hot, rank water, creating a mouthful of soupy mud. He gulped it down nonetheless, understanding how important hydration was for him right now, even if he didn’t enjoy sucking down this hot sludge.

  He reached back and put it in Ellen’s hand. It took her a minute to realize what it was and what he was asking her to do. She took a swig herself, then immediately began hacking.

  “It’s full of dirt.”

  “Your face is full of dirt. Drink it. You need it.”

  “I’m okay,” she said and tried to give it back to him.

  “Drink. You have to stay hydrated out here in these temperatures.”

  “But it’s full of dirt.”

  “You’ll shit it out,” Court said coldly.

  “That’s disgusting. I don’t want to shit it out.”

  “Do you want to die of heatstroke? Drink the fucking water!” he shouted at her.

  Reluctantly, angrily, she gulped down several more swallows. The grit and the mud made her cough several more times, but the liquid stayed down. When the bladder was empty, she dropped it in the dirt and the horse kept moving.

  The haboob lasted until well past nightfall, and Court somehow managed to keep the animal moving in the correct direction. When the dust cloud moved on, he and Ellen dismounted and continued on foot, while Gentry led the big horse by its reins. The animal had proven incredibly reliable, and he wanted to give it a break by relieving it of the weight of two riders for an hour or two.

  Their bodies were completely covered in grime. They could have been black Africans or Asians or space aliens under the coating of brown, and no one would know. Court realized this unintended consequence just might work in their favor as long as no one came too close. He was wrong, though. Their white skin may not have shown through, but their Western appearance was impossible to mask.

  They had stayed away from the one desert track between Al Fashir and Dirra, had covered nothing but wide-open and desolate ground for hours, but as they neared their objective, they began passing through tiny villages and across dirt roads, and the traffic around them picked up. Donkey carts and small pickup trucks passed them, Darfuri villagers stared at them unabashedly, two filthy kawagas leading a Janjaweed horse, the man with two Kalashnikovs strapped to him and the woman wearing a turban like a man. Hardly an everyday occurrence out here in this wild land.

  Court worried about the locals. He knew there existed a phenomenon in places like this, referred to as the bush telegraph, where somehow, inexplicably, news travels from community to community as certainly and as swiftly as a satellite phone. Gentry knew that at any moment he could meet up with Janjaweed or NSS or GOS soldiers and find himself outnumbered in a gun battle out here in the dark. Or he could find himself overrun by UNAMID soldiers from the African Union, who would arrest him and put an end to his operation.

  But there was nothing for him to do but continue on; he had to get the woman to safety. He did his best to avoid settlements, gave the dung-fueled cooking fires a wide berth, waited for ve
hicles to pass instead of crossing in front of their headlights.

  Ellen was dead tired. The heat and the stress and the long day and the lack of food and water all added up to put her in a temporary trance, which she occasionally snapped out of to try to engage Court in conversation. Just like the evening before, Gentry found himself talking to her more than he would anyone else. Even though she was 100 percent against him now, an adversary after he wasted those two worthless pieces of shit back with the convoy, he still kept talking to her, and it pissed him off. But it did not piss him off enough to stop.

  The air finally cooled around eleven, and Ellen seemed to be reinvigorated by this. Court gave her the remainder of the water and, like a thirsty brown plant in the corner, the hydration seemed to cause her to spring back to life before his eyes.

  “How much farther?”

  “Not long. Another half hour or so.”

  “Can we get back on the horse?”

  “Negative. We need her rested in case we get into trouble and have to escape.”

  “Okay,” she said. “That makes sense.” They walked shoulder to shoulder through low grass and beneath acacia trees so large they blocked out the stars. She looked over at him a few times. He could tell she was thinking about something. He ignored her, hoping her thought would pass, but it did not.

  “Six, I think a lot of very bad people started out as good people, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Be careful you don’t become that which you hate.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. I believe you. I believe that you believe you are here for the right reasons. Maybe in your head you are. But this place needs people who are saving lives, not taking lives.”

  Court stopped her from stumbling over an anthill in the dark. He led her around it by the arm, and then immediately let go. “Saving a life and taking a life are not opposites. Sometimes they are two sides of the same coin. I may take lives from time to time, but I wouldn’t do it unless I felt I was saving some, too.”