by Mark Greaney
Court continued to lie there and shake, as if from extreme cold, a near complete physical and mental breakdown. His body and clothing were caked with matted bloodred sand. He gulped air for a long moment before saying, “You had . . . one chance to stop me from killing you. I was in your sights, and you made your choice. You chose badly, Zack.”
There was a pause on the line. Court sensed concern on the other end. “Whatever, dude. You just need to stay in that hole and die. I’ll be out of the country before you can pick Abboud’s brain matter out of your teeth. And if you do make it out of the Sudan, Denny has already told me I’ll be leading the task force set up to hunt you down.”
“I’ll save you some time. Come on down here right now. I’ll be waiting.”
“Love to, brother, but I think I’ll get out of here before Johnny Law shows up to see about that dead president smeared all over your shirt like pizza sauce. But I won’t be far. Milo and Dan and the rest of the guys on the Hannah have already hitched a ride out of the theater. It’s just me and you now.” He chuckled. “Oh yeah, plus the five hundred thousand members of the Sudanese Armed Forces.”
“And I will burn through each and every one of them to get to you, Zack. Six out.”
Hightower spoke up as Gentry made to end the call. “Court, Sierra Six was one of us, and you are no longer one of us. Your code name is no longer Sierra Six, it has reverted to Violator. You’re the enemy again. Just in case you’re keeping score. One out.” Zack hung up the phone.
Court was sick as a dog, half-dead in a ditch, out-manned, outgunned, and outplayed. He had failed. He lay in the sand as the full sphere of the sun appeared between the bungalows on the water. Slowly he made it to his knees and began crawling towards the resort, head low in case Zack was still peering through a rifle scope up on the plateau.
FORTY-EIGHT
The moon had gone for the month; the Red Sea caught and amplified the light of a million stars, but it was not enough illumination for Gentry to see the Hannah in the distance. He squinted to the southeast, following the direction indicator of the GPS beacon locator in his hand. He was less than a mile out, so he cut the engine of the four-man rigid inflatable boat.
His GPS also told him he was four miles offshore now, but he could not see the land in the dark. With the engine off there was all-encompassing nothingness, dark in all directions but up, and up was untouchable infinity.
The ocean was not still. It rose and lowered silently, no breakers or whitecaps out here, just gentle surges that lifted the Gray Man and his boat a few stories into the air and then let him back down again. It was more felt than seen in the darkness, but an occasional reflection off the water’s surface showed him hills and valleys all around, hills and valleys of black water that undulated with the undercurrents of the Red Sea.
It had been a long day. After making his way to the dive resort, he’d found it empty except for the husband and wife owners of the establishment. The few Western guests had all been rounded up and trucked to Port Sudan for lengthy interviews, a fishing expedition by the NSS for the kidnappers of the president. Court did the greatest favor he could imagine for the Dutch couple. He leveled his Glock at their heads and tied them up in the dining room of the establishment. He knew the Sudanese would find the president’s body close by, and he knew these two senior citizens would be questioned. If Court had, in any way, made them accessories after the fact, then they might have tripped over their stories or provided some sort of evidence that would incriminate them. It was also very likely that the NSS had installed listening devices throughout the Western resort as a matter of course.
So Gentry played the role of the bloodstained maniac to the hilt, shouted and ordered the frightened Europeans. He took from them food and water and medical supplies and a pickup truck and a small RIB with an outboard motor and dive gear without so much as a nod of thanks. He drove the truck ten miles to the south, waited in a mangrove swamp until dark, and then set off for the Hannah, following the coordinates on the GPS tracker.
He knew the two surviving members of Whiskey Sierra other than Zack had already been evacuated from the area, along with the rest of the crew. It was Gentry’s hope that Hightower was still on the mainland searching for him, but he knew it was possible that Zack had come back to the Hannah. He had the mini submarine, after all, so he could easily come and go as he pleased. Court wanted to get to the Hannah to use it to flee the Sudan. His earlier idea about crossing the border was fantasy now. When the body of the president was found, that part of the nation would be 100 percent impassable.
So Gentry hunted the black ocean for the yacht with the idea of stealing it and steaming away to safety, though he knew next to nothing about yachting.
Court’s boat moved with the gently rolling surface of the sea. The GPS tracker indicated the boat was not far ahead, so Gentry waited to catch a surge that brought him higher than the other waves so he could see the yacht in the distance.
There, a quarter-mile off, a blacker silhouette on a sea of dark, dark gray. Not a single light visible aboard.
Nobody home?
Court strapped a mesh bag to his waist. Inside were his Glock 19, down to the last seven rounds of ammunition, a folding knife, and his satellite phone in a plastic, waterproof bag.
Next he slipped a buoyancy control device over his shoulders, upon which a scuba tank had already been attached. Then he put on his mask, snorkel, and fins. He took a few test breaths into his regulator, and slipped silently into the warm water.
As he swam, he focused on his mission to keep his mind off the excruciating pain in his left shoulder, a pain that was always there, but a pain that snapped to the forefront of his consciousness every time he reached forward in his breaststroke.
Soon his mind slipped off-mission, and onto one of many of the hundreds of tidbits he’d gleaned about this theater of operations, whether by reading Sid’s material or Zack’s material. This particular tidbit didn’t seem that important at the time, but at present it was allencompassingly crucial.
Nurse, white-tip, gray reef, hammerhead: the four species of shark common to the Red Sea.
Court kept swimming, pissed that he could not get the thought of being eaten by a hungry fish out of his mind.
He remained just below the surface and checked the compass on his wristwatch from time to time to make certain he was headed in the right direction. After ten minutes he surfaced silently, waited for a moment to catch a lift to get a better vantage point. It came soon enough, and the yacht was right there, some seventy yards ahead.
As he began dropping with the wave once again, the bow of the yacht caught his eye. The name of the boat was written on the black hull at the bow, written in either white or yellow lettering.
Arabic lettering.
What the hell?
He had never seen the Hannah, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t disguised as an Arab boat. No, he was more than sure. Zack had told him they’d passed themselves off to the Sudanese as Aussies. This would have been difficult to do with a yacht with an Arabic name.
Gentry dog-paddled closer, squinting in the dark to try to read the bow. At forty yards he could make out the characters, but his written Arabic was even poorer than his spoken Arabic.
He said the letters aloud. “F-a-ti-ma.” The Fatima.
Not the Hannah.
But the homing beacon was emanating from the yacht, which meant, clearly, that someone had taken the transmitter from the Hannah and placed it on this vessel.
Someone? No, not someone.
Zack Hightower.
It also indicated one other thing to Court.
Goddammit, he said to himself.
This was a motherfucking setup.
Court looked back in the dark. There was zero chance he’d be able to find the skiff he’d left behind him ten minutes earlier on the open water.
He’d have to press on.
He lowered his mask back over his eyes and began to submerge again but stopp
ed himself. He thought he’d heard a noise. He shook water from his ears and cocked his head.
A man shouting.
Boom! A gunshot, immediate and unmistakable across the quiet night sea, Court dove under the water’s surface in fear he’d been spotted.
But no. Underwater it continued. More gunfire. One gun responding to another, and then another. There was a shotgun in the mix, Court’s practiced ear could discern, but a handgun was firing as well. Quick and controlled.
Another scream. Court surfaced again to try to make sense of what he was hearing.
He felt his body lift in the warm water, he surged upwards towards the stars, and Gentry saw the flashes of light in the sky above the yacht before the vessel even came into his line of sight.
And then there it was. Court saw the yacht, but no one was visible on deck.
There was another volley of gunfire and the flashes in the portholes. The fight appeared to Gentry to be down in the lower decks of the eighty-foot-long vessel.
All was quiet for a moment, but this still was broken by the sound of a small outboard motor coming to life. Seconds later a wooden skiff appeared from behind the stern of the Fatima, one man on board controlling the motor, and he pushed the little engine’s throttle to the limit as he streaked off into the darkness.
What the hell was all that? Court wondered if Zack was on board the boat and had been surprised by a group of soldiers.
He swam above water the rest of the way, keeping a wary eye on the deck and upper levels of the yacht. He strained to hear any noise at all other than the gentle lapping of waves from the departed skiff against the side of the big fiberglass hull, but there was nothing.
Until he arrived at the boarding ladder at the stern of the yacht. Just then, a single small-caliber pistol shot cracked from belowdecks. It was answered almost immediately by a larger handgun.
Silence again, save for the lapping waves.
Court pulled off his fins, unfastened his scuba gear, and let it drift away. He grabbed hold of the ladder and climbed up as slowly and as carefully and as quietly as he could. He rolled over the guardrail and onto the teak deck in his bare feet, winced along with the fresh burst of pain in his shoulder, and held his waterlogged but dependable Glock out in front of him. Carefully he moved to the companionway to descend to the lower decks of the darkened yacht.
The first two bodies were at the top of the stairs. Two black men in combat uniforms, bullet wounds in the chest. The men didn’t look like they were Sudanese Navy, but that was no surprise. The Sudanese Navy was so small, and the mission of the day, checking and rechecking every floating object off its coast, so large, that it was very possible the GOS Army just co-opted boats and boaters to ferry soldiers out to all the yachts and freighters and fishing boats to board and search.
Next to their bodies were wire-stocked Kalashnikovs. Court wanted to pick one up but was worried about making noise while doing so.
Blood smeared the mahogany of the companionway steps. Court followed it down, his pistol at the ready.
He entered the lower saloon and saw the carnage in the soft green light of a fish tank’s glow against the wall. Two more black men, dead, and one white man, flat on his back in the middle of the floor, with his feet towards Gentry and the staircase.
He was unarmed; his chest was bloody.
But he was not dead.
Court flipped on the overhead light of the lower saloon, keeping his weapon trained on the wounded man. He called out to him from across the room. “Zack?”
“Know why they call it a sucking chest wound?” Hightower asked without looking towards Gentry’s direction. His voice was weak.
Court nodded slowly and answered, “ ’Cause it sucks.”
Zack nodded sleepily. His right arm was heavily bandaged both above and below the elbow from where he’d been shot two days earlier.
“What happened?” asked Gentry.
“Fucking backup gun. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson after you popped me with that Derringer back in ’06.”
Court looked again at the two men at the foot of the stairs. Both had shotguns by their bodies, but a small automatic handgun also lay next to one of the men’s hands.
The man appeared clearly dead now, but Court shot him in the back of the neck anyway, and then slipped his Glock back into his hip bag. “Whose boat is this?”
“Dunno. The GOS has boarded everything they can up and down the coast, pulled a lot of people into Port Sudan, trying to find someone with knowledge of the president’s kidnapping. I figured if I got on board one of the empty yachts, the GOS goons wouldn’t come back and check them again. There was no reason for these dudes to be here. I figure they came back to loot it, and we just all got unlucky to bump into each other.”
“What about the mini sub?”
Hightower looked Gentry over through thin eye slits for several seconds. “I scuttled it. Denny’s orders. I was going to use this boat to get down to Eritrea.”
Court regarded his former team leader for several seconds. He said, “I can stop the bleeding. Stabilize you. Get us out of here.”
“No, thanks.”
“Suit yourself. You’re going to die if you don’t get some help.”
“There will be a GOS naval gunboat on top of us in a few minutes. The pilot of the skiff that brought these guys is probably on the horn to the navy already.”
“Then I’d better get busy. I’ll patch you up, but before I do anything, I want some answers from you.”
“Give it a rest, Court.”
“Why was I burned? Who put out the shoot on sight? What the hell did I do wrong?”
“When the gunboat gets here, they aren’t going to board us, they are going to blow the living hell out of this prissy yacht. All that sexy Court Gentry, Gray Man, faggot ninja shit isn’t gonna help you when their deck gun opens up.”
“I thought you wanted me dead.”
“Hey, it’s not what I want; it’s my job. If you put a pistol in my hand right now, I’ll shoot you, but I don’t guess that’s gonna happen, so maybe you’ll take a little professional advice and go for a swim. This yacht might be able to do twenty-five knots; a Sudanese coastal patrol boat can run thirty-five, chase us down in no time.”
Court wasn’t listening. He wanted answers. “Who burned me? Was it Matt Hanley?”
Zack’s eyes were glassy, but they rolled in frustration nonetheless. “I don’t know.”
“Was it Lloyd?”
Zack’s brows furrowed now. He looked up. “Who the fuck is Lloyd?”
Court’s shoulders slumped. Then shrugged. “That’s what I said.”
FORTY-NINE
“Zack! Listen. You aren’t too far gone. I can treat you. You can walk away from this. Just tell me who put the hit out on me and why.”
“Fuck it, Six. I ain’t walking, and I ain’t talking.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m a good soldier, Court. My orders are to make you dead. Not to make you dead, unless you can save me, at which point my mission is no longer valid. Look, man, you are a good guy. I’m rooting for you here, I really am. But I’m not lifting a finger to help you out. Can’t do it. It would go against my op orders.”
“You are fucking crazy.”
Zack smiled. Gentry could see the pain on his face. “I just do my job. More sons of bitches should do their jobs. No offense, Violator.”
“Dammit, Zack!” Court shouted it in frustration. He stood there over his former boss, thought for a long moment, and then he left the saloon and ran up two levels to the cockpit of the ship. Here he found a first aid kit. In seconds he was back, and he knelt down next to Sierra Six.
Zack turned his head slowly to face him. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You know what I’m doing. You are an asshole, but I can’t just stand here and just let you die.” Gentry ripped open Zack’s shirt, exposed the wound. It was small, two inches below his right nipple, Court k
new the bullet would have gone through the lung. He reached under Zack to feel for an exit wound.
“You patch me up, and I’ll kill you!”
“No, you won’t.”
Hightower looked up at the ceiling with his half-mast eyes and shook his head slowly in disbelief. “You are a terrible judge of character, Court.”
“Tell me about it.”
Five minutes later, Gentry had Hightower stabilized, at least for the time being. There was no exit wound, which meant there was a bullet or fragments of a bullet somewhere in his damaged chest cavity. Court used a folded cover from a magazine from the bookcase and duct tape from the aid kit to create a valve over the chest wound that would allow air to escape from Hightower’s lungs when he breathed out, but not allow air into the chest cavity when he breathed in.
It was all he could do at the moment.
Then Court left Zack and returned up two flights to the helm of the ship. Within minutes he’d turned all the systems on, ignored most everything except the engines and the compass and the wheel and the autopilot. He ran down to the deck and checked to make sure the anchor had not been lowered. He was sure there was some way to check from the helm, but he figured eyeballing it would be faster than trying to figure out which computer monitor displayed that nugget of information. He refrained from turning on any lights; he wanted to move as stealthily towards international waters as an eighty-foot luxury yacht possibly could. He knew he would not hit a shipping lane for some time, but he hoped that any civilian sea traffic out there in the dark had radar on board, because Court did not know how to operate that particular function of the big multifunction display at the center of the mahogany and brass helm, and he did not want a collision with some other boat.