Kealey hated that his government was now accommodating one bloody monster in order to stop another that it had given fangs and claws. He hated the facile blurring of moral lines and, most of all, hated feeling that he was being used as a pawn in a dirty political game.
But he had gotten involved with the Agency again for one and only one reason. For him it began and ended with the photograph that John Harper had shown him in that Pretoria bar, the snapshot of a plain, dark-haired woman in her midtwenties, an aid worker surrounded by starved-looking African children, her infectious smile somehow managing to catch hold on their gaunt, hollow-eyed faces.
He wanted the man who killed Lily Durant. He wanted him more now than ever. Call it justice; call it revenge; it didn’t matter. He could taste his desire for it at the back of his tongue, as he had tasted it every moment since he’d seen that picture….
And it was bitter. Unbearably bitter.
“That’s Jebel Atweila, about a mile east of us,” Mackenzie said. He pointed out the right side of his windshield. After passing through the main checkpoint into Kassala, he had crossed the Gash River over the bridge spanning its narrows and looped around the eastern edge of town, leaving the rutted blacktop behind for dirt and gravel tracks, then swinging completely off road toward the heaving escarpments. “The other two mountains are Taka and Totil.”
Kealey looked at his chronograph. “Almost noon,” he said. “Mirghani’s people should be there about now.”
Mackenzie steered toward Atweila and was soon bumping over the pebbly deposits spread out around the slope, glancing repeatedly at his GPS unit to check his coordinates against those that had been preset for their meet. Sticking close to the base of Atweila, he continued around it until he spotted a rock-strewn switchback in the shadow of a large, anvil-shaped spur. When he got there, he swung onto it, twisted up the mountain for about 50 yards, jounced to a halt, and cut the ignition.
Kealey glanced around at their surroundings, reached for his door handle, and got out, Mackenzie and Abby exiting with him. Seth Holland’s Glock 35 was in a sidearm holster under his Windbreaker, which also concealed the Muela combat blade he’d bought back in Yaoundé and carried in a sheath at his waist.
They had hiked 30 or 40 feet up along the switchback, taking several winding turns, when a group of fighters appeared from behind a knobby granite outcrop…almost all of them in khakis, head scarves, and combat boots, standing openly in the baking sun. All had rifles on their shoulders—M14s, AK-47s, Steyr and FAMAS bullpups.
Kealey and his companions stopped, waited as a wiry man with a short, dark beard on his tanned face approached.
“A s’amaa zarqaa,” Mackenzie said.
The bearded man gave his response to the code phrase. “Wa quul id-diir.”
They shook hands, had a brief exchange in Arabic. Then Mackenzie turned to Kealey. “This is Tariq…Ishmael Mirghani’s second in command,” he said, making their introductions. “Tariq, Ryan Kealey. And Abby Liu.”
The fighter extended his hand to Kealey and gave Abby a polite nod in keeping with traditional Islamic custom toward women. Then he returned his gaze to Mackenzie.
“Your trip has been without difficulty?” he said, speaking English now.
“Happily so.” Mackenzie gave a nod. “We are grateful for the invention of the GPS.”
Tariq grinned. But Kealey had noticed that not all the men were quite as demonstrative in their welcomes—quite a few of them eyeing the Westerners with narrow mistrust.
“Our camp is around the mountain in a…how do you say…kerf?” Tariq touched the fingers of his hands together to form a kind of wedge.
“A notch,” Mackenzie said.
Tariq nodded. “It is a short distance from here.”
“How many of your men have come?” Kealey asked.
“Half again the number you see with me now,” Tariq said. “We hope more will arrive before the day ends. The rest go north but will not take arms with Commander Nusairi.”
Kealey considered that. Mirghani had not wanted to arouse Nusairi’s suspicions by holding back his guerrillas from the attack and so had sent them along as if to join his forces. But they would experience convenient delays that would keep them from sharing the same fate as the raiders—if things went as planned.
“Do you know where Nusairi is right now?” Kealey asked after a moment.
“He arrived in the city with some men yesterday and stayed overnight in Sikka Hadiid,” Tariq said. “That is where he met the other. There are still many buyut—”
“The other?” Kealey interrupted.
“A Westerner like yourself,” replied Tariq.
“About the same age and height? Brown hair?” Kealey asked.
“Yes.” Tariq touched his own eyes. “He wears naddaaraat.”
“Glasses?”
“Yes,” said Tariq.
Kealey turned to Mackenzie. “Cullen White,” he said.
“So the son-of-a-bitch bastard flew out of Khartoum after he shook me,” Mackenzie said, nodding. “The Sikka Hadiid is Kassala’s old railway quarter…. I’d guess it’s three, four kilometers west of these mountains and across the Gash. I’ve been there before. Tell you about it later.” He briefly raised his eyes to Kealey’s to indicate it was something he wanted to discuss in private. “The British railway station was built right around the turn of the last century. It was abandoned a long time ago, but most of the structures are intact. When you walk around the area, you see some big colonial buildings where the Brit administrators lived, and then rows and rows of round huts built for the workers and their families…. They’re spread out pretty good. Some are modernized inside, kind of like bungalow hostels, but a whole lot of them have hardly changed in a hundred years—there’s no electricity or running water. The locals have short-term rentals for travelers. Student backpackers, different types.” He gave Kealey another confidential glance. “They’re what Tariq called buyut.”
The rebel was nodding.
Kealey stood rubbing his chin in thought.
“What about the tanks and helicopters?” Abby said, breaking her attentive silence. “Have you seen them?”
“See, no,” Tariq said. “But I know they came ashore at Zula in Eritrea and were brought across the border by truck. And I know they are to strike in two places. Some go toward the Nile between Khartoum and Ed Damer…perhaps two hundred fifty kilometers to the west of us.”
“Where the oil pipeline from the fields down south follows the bend of the river to the Suakim oil terminal outside Port Sudan,” Mackenzie said. “It runs for almost a thousand miles and delivers three or four hundred thousand barrels of crude a day.”
“And the rest of the attack force?” Abby asked.
“It goes north.”
“To the Suakim terminal—and the nearby refineries,” Abby said.
Tariq’s head went up and down.
“All right,” Kealey said. He looked at Tariq. “I assume you have men keeping watch on Nusairi?”
“Yes, of course,” Tariq said. “He remains for now in Sikka Hadiid…and I do not believe he will try to leave until after nightfall.”
Kealey grunted, massaging his chin some more. “I think you’d better lead us to your camp so we can talk about making sure that doesn’t happen,” he said.
“Brynn, hello. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to return your call earlier,” said Israeli prime minister Avram Kessler over his secure line. He was staring out the window of his study at Bet Agion, his official residence in Rehavia, Jerusalem, watching night settle over the ancient city. “I’m afraid it’s been one of those days….”
“It’s like old times at Northwestern, isn’t it?” Brynn Fitzgerald said from her White House office. “Some things never change, Avi. You and I were always trying to make arrangements and going back and forth with our voice messages until it was too late. And then, of course, Lee would try to join in and further complicate things.”
Kessler had heard her to
ne suddenly grow subdued. Kessler, whose parents were American Jews, had done his undergraduate studies at Northwestern University along with Fitzgerald and their mutual friend Lee Patterson, the U.S. ambassador who had been killed riding alongside Fitzgerald when her motorcade was attacked in Pakistan the year before.
“I suppose the only difference is our game of phone tag’s just gone international,” he said. “What’s going on, Brynn? Your message sounded urgent, and I had a strange premonition it meant your esteemed commander in chief had decided on taking overt military action against Omar al-Bashir.”
Silence.
Kessler’s face drew taut. “Brynn…I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Let’s say your psychic receptors were well tuned but the signals hit interference somewhere over the Atlantic,” she said. “Avi, we need your help.”
“If you mean insofar as providing a staging area for an attack, I’ll need to bring the Defense Ministry into this conversation—”
“I don’t, but he’ll need to be brought in, anyway,” Fitzgerald said. “And probably several other members of your cabinet. Internal Affairs, Internal Security…but these talks will have to be brief.”
Kessler’s thoughts suddenly did a double take. It was something she’d said a moment ago. He had had a long day meeting with heads of the Knesset, and he was feeling laggy. “What kind of ‘interference’?”
“I was thinking back to February oh-nine, when your planes hit that arms convoy in Sudan.”
“Reportedly,” Kessler said.
“Right, I stand corrected. When a squadron of F-sixteens reportedly hit seventeen trucks full of illegal Libyan arms in the Hala’ib Triangle. This occurred as they were reportedly being driven toward the Egyptian border by smugglers from Sudan, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, who intended to slip them through tunnels in Gaza to Hamas.”
“I do recall the stories in the press,” Kessler said.
“They followed reports that you’d knocked out a small convoy the month before with Hermes four-fifty drones out of Palmachim Air Base, though a little chirping birdie told me you’d moved them to Navatim. My recollection of the February story is that you’d made several passes and used the drones to assess the success of each one—”
“Brynn?”
“Yes?”
“Did that birdie happen to be wearing a yarmulke?”
A sober laugh. “Avi, you’re moments from receiving a classified intelligence packet via e-mail. It will tell you about a strike force equipped with two convoys of tanks and support helicopters that is preparing to invade or possibly destroy the northern oil pipeline and refineries. We do not have real-time intel about their current position, but we know they are close to their staging ground and that the siege is imminent.”
Kessler gripped the phone more tightly in his hand. “Who’s behind this?”
“An alliance of rebels led by Simon Nusairi,” Fitzgerald said. “I suspect your Mossad has exhaustive dossiers on him, but we’ll share all our own information.”
“It doesn’t sound like he has your backing.”
“He absolutely does not,” Fitzgerald said. “This attack must be stopped. But given the immediacy of the situation, the United States does not have sufficient resources in place, or time to move those resources to do so. And we are asking a favor of your nation that, if granted, will be something I promise you will not regret.”
Kessler inhaled. “You want us to launch a mission on behalf of Omar al-Bashir?”
“It isn’t that simple. We are cooperating with Bashir to defuse a situation with dangerous global ramifications. Should you opt to assist us, he will lift the no-fly zone over certain sections of his country to allow your aircraft total operational latitude.” She paused for a good ten seconds. “I will be up front with you, Avi. There may be diplomatic compromises forthcoming between my government and the Sudanese concerning Bashir’s status. But you have my assurance we will in no way remain passive if his regime commits further acts of blatant ethnic violence inside its borders…or attempts any aggression beyond them.”
Kessler thought he’d taken another breath, but wasn’t sure, and consciously told himself to do it. Then he tapped his computer out of its idle mode, opened his e-mail program, and noted the new message in the queue.
“I see your packet’s arrived,” he said.
“Read it and get back to me,” Fitzgerald said. “Don’t worry about another round of phone tag, either…. I’ll be standing by for your call.”
It was shortly before sunset when they took the bridge over the Gash to Sikka Hadiid, having left the east side of town and gone around and past the souq in a motley procession of vehicles. Kealey, Mackenzie, and Abby kept their Cherokee behind Tariq, who was in a battered Outback with several of his fighters. The rest of their group—its head count had grown to two dozen men as they filtered into the mountain camp throughout the day—rode in a dusty Jeep Wrangler, a Volkswagen hatchback, a Hyundai wagon, and an aging Ford sedan.
On the west bank of the river the Hyundai split off from the line and pulled under the trees outside a cultivated patch of farmland. Behind the wheel of the Cherokee, Mackenzie glanced briefly in the rearview mirror.
“Wish we had more men to cover that area,” he said.
Kealey looked at him. Back in the mountains, Mackenzie had walked from camp with him and made good on his promise to expand on his familiarity with Kassala and the Sikka Hadiid. For forty years, he’d explained, fugitives from persecution during the endless civil wars in Eritrea and Ethiopia had crossed the border plateau into Sudan, many entering through treacherous passes in the Taka range. On his assumption of power, Omar al-Bashir had attempted to crack down on the flow of refugees, since many had ancestral ties to antigovernment factions within Kassala’s Beja and Rashaida clans.
“Bashir’s problem was that he had his hands full with the secessionists in the south and couldn’t commit enough forces to keep a tight fist on this area,” Mackenzie had said. “What you should know is that Mirghani hasn’t just gotten more tolerance than other opponents because he’s from the north and not an avowed separatist. It’s racial…. He’s Arabic, and the divisions in this country are really between Arabic and black Muslims.”
“Like the refugees that came through the mountains,” Kealey had said.
Mackenzie had nodded. “It wasn’t so far back historically that the Arabs were making slave raids on the south. And there hasn’t been much progress in the way of attitude among the people who rule this country,” he said. “What you need to know is that the majority of refugees are black, and some are aligned with the opposition in Darfur. Over the past decade we—the Agency—did some things to assist their entering the country. That included helping them dig a tunnel between the west side of the river and some of those huts in Sikka Hadiid. They’d take temporary shelter there and get out of the city. For them it was a lifesaver while their own countrymen were burning down their villages. For us it was building another segment of the population that was hostile to Bashir…completely win-win.”
Kealey had taken a long moment to digest all that, standing in the hot sun beating down on the craggy slope. “We’re going to have to keep the tunnel’s entrance covered tonight,” he’d said. “In case Nusairi and White try using it to make a getaway.”
“Yup.”
“That means you’re going to have to let Tariq know about it.”
“If he doesn’t already. There isn’t much that gets past Mirghani or his headmen.”
“That isn’t my point,” Kealey said. “It’s one thing for them to be aware the tunnels exist. Another to find out the Agency had a role in digging them. Or that it chose to support a particular group—ethnic, political, whatever—over theirs.”
Mackenzie had shrugged his shoulders. “Them’s the breaks,” he’d said. “This is a complicated world. Now we need them, and they need us. A whole new codependency is born. We can’t worry about Tariq feeling slighted.”
All of wh
ich was true, Kealey thought now as they rolled by the decayed, sun-bleached railway station with its merging of Arabian and British architecture—the simple curve of the entry arch overlooked by Victorian gables with elaborate moldings and the remnants of a high clock tower, its dial and workings long ago removed by thieves or vandals.
With the station and its splintered, torn-up tracks at their rear, they doused their headlamps in the deepening night, then passed the buildings that had housed the British officials and finally saw the long rows of workers’ huts ahead of them in the dimness.
“We’ll be there in a couple minutes,” Mackenzie said to his passengers. “Better get ready.”
Kealey took three sets of thermal night vision goggles on headsets from a compartment under the dash, passed one back to Abby, and put the other between himself and Mackenzie. A moment later he heard Abby palm a 30-round clip into her Sig 552 5.56mm assault rifle and reached for the 552 in his seat well, setting it across his lap. Seth Holland’s knee-jerk admonition to treat the weapons with care back at the embassy had been almost the same as when he’d handed Kealey his Glock 9mm pistol before they headed out to Bahri.
Under very different circumstances, the recollection might have struck Kealey as humorous. But he found nothing remotely amusing about what was about to go down tonight, just as he could find nothing to like about the rapidly shifting political expedients and allegiances around him. On the other hand, he thought, it was worth reminding himself that his own objective was neither complicated nor ambiguous.
He wanted Simon Nusairi; it really couldn’t have been simpler, or more serious, than that.
“The commander is in the beyt there…the last in this line,” Tariq said, pointing. He had braked to a halt in front of the Cherokee, gotten out, and hastened over to speak with Mac through the driver’s side window. “There are three or four of his men in the one next to it.”
Mackenzie nodded, gazed out into the night. He could see what appeared to be firelight in the windows. “No chance he could’ve left the lamps burning to trick us and snuck off while the cats were away?”
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