by Dale Brown
Right as usual, thought Danny.
“Give me directions to Agency officer Ilse,” Danny told MY-PID. “Avoid contact. Avoid the warehouse area.”
“Proceed forward one hundred yards.” MY-PID began a terse set of directions that took them over the old railroad tracks, skirting the warehouse area they’d raided. Then the system had Danny turn right and go up a hill; they passed a run of circular huts, each smaller than the next.
A red ball erupted in the city center.
“Mortars!” said Nuri.
“Colonel, these huts are filled with soldiers,” said Flash. “I just saw two guys in a doorway with guns.”
“Yeah, all right,” said Danny.
A second later something tinged on the fender.
“They’re shooting at us,” Flash said calmly.
* * *
Melissa heard the explosions in the distance as she helped the woman and child into the front room.
“Come on,” she said in English, scooping up the little girl. The mother grabbed her arm and together they ran out of the clinic, hurrying across the road into the empty field.
“Stay here,” said Melissa after they had gone about twenty yards. She handed the little girl over to her mother. “Here. OK?” She gestured with her hands. “Here.”
“Stay. Yes,” said the woman.
Melissa raced back across the street. She heard automatic rifle fire not far away.
One of the pregnant women appeared in the doorway, holding her belly. Melissa worried that she was about to give birth.
“Here. Quickly,” said Melissa, grabbing her arm. “Marie? Marie!”
“We’re coming,” said Bloom inside.
Melissa started walking the pregnant woman across the street. The woman was gasping for air, clutching her stomach.
“It’s OK,” said Melissa. “Relax. Relax.” A stupid thing to say, she realized, even under much better circumstances.
She steered her toward the other woman and her child. The tall grass made it harder for the pregnant woman to move; it seemed to take forever to get there.
“We have to go farther back from the road,” said Melissa. “Back in that direction — on the other side of those bushes.” She turned and saw Bloom and the other woman just reaching the field. “Come on,” she said, reaching down and scooping up the little girl. “Let’s go.”
A high-pitched whistle pierced the air. A dull thump followed, and the ground shook with an explosion. The girl screamed in her arms.
“Come on!” yelled Melissa. “Come on. They’re shelling us.”
* * *
Danny jerked the wheel hard, trying to stay with the road as it swerved between a pair of native huts. Shells fell fifty or sixty yards to his left, and there was sporadic gunfire from some of the houses nearby.
“We’re about a half mile away,” said Boston calmly. He pointed to Danny’s left. “They’re on the other side of that field.”
“That’s where they’re shelling,” said Nuri behind him.
Danny gave his phone to Boston. “Get Melissa on the line and stay with her,” he told him.
The Osprey was barely five miles away. He could call it in if he needed to.
And what then? He’d have to hit Li Han right away, then go for the Russian.
He didn’t have all his gear yet, and their presence would be obvious. But better to blow their cover and accomplish the mission than keep their cover and fail.
The road bucked with a pair of fresh explosions. The mortar shells were coming closer.
“There’s your turn,” said Boston, pointing ahead.
Danny started to slow.
“Duck!” yelled Boston.
The roof of the Mercedes seemed to explode. Someone was firing at them from the hut near the intersection.
“Shit on this,” said Boston, leaning out the window and returning fire.
Danny swerved hard, fishtailing onto the new road in a hail of gunfire. The car lurched to the right as he pushed hard against the wheel, trying to keep moving in a straight line.
“Our tires are shot out,” he yelled. “Hang on!”
* * *
Melissa struggled to keep the pregnant woman moving. The mortar shells were landing harmlessly in a wide, rocky ravine no closer than a hundred yards away. But she knew that at any moment the men firing them would adjust their aim.
Bloom and the woman she was helping caught up.
“There’s another farm there — see the building?” said Bloom, nodding ahead. The building was up a gentle slope about two hundred yards away.
“OK,” said Melissa. It was a destination, at least. She glanced to her right, making sure the woman with the child was coming.
A few seconds later she saw something moving through the field on the left. She thought at first it was an animal, a horse or even a zebra. Then she realized it was men — three of them, rushing down in the direction of the clinic.
Bloom started to yell and wave her hand.
“No, no,” hissed Melissa. “We can’t trust them.”
“They’re with Gerard,” said Bloom. “They’ll help.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“You don’t know!”
Melissa grabbed her as she started to wave. But whoever they were, or whatever side they were on, the men didn’t stop, or even seem to notice; they kept running in the direction of the building. The mortars had ceased firing, but there was another ominous sound in the distance — the trucks were returning.
Suddenly, the woman Melissa was helping screamed in agony and stopped moving. She bent her head and shoulders down, caught in the midst of a convulsive contraction.
Melissa dropped to her knee and looked at her face. The woman gasped for air, closed her eyes, then moaned with a fresh contraction.
Less than thirty seconds had passed between them.
“Marie! Marie!” yelled Melissa. “She’s having the baby now! Right here! Help!”
Chapter 11
Washington, D.C.
D.C. traffic was surprisingly light, and Zen managed to make it to the Intelligence Committee meeting a few minutes early. He quickly wished he hadn’t: Senator Uriah Ernst hailed him in the hallway outside the room and immediately began haranguing him.
“What exactly is the administration up to, Zen?” said Ernst. “What the hell is your President doing?”
“Probably nothing good,” laughed Zen.
“Don’t try and snow me. I know you’re on her side these days.”
“I don’t really know what we’re talking about,” said Zen.
“I’ll bet. You’ve never heard of Raven?”
Zen shook his head.
“It’s an assassination program — or so I understand.”
“New one on me.”
“I’m getting to the bottom of this,” said Ernst. He shook his head and went into the hearing room.
Ned Barrington, the committee chairman, met Zen just inside the door. “Got a moment?”
Zen nodded and wheeled himself over to the corner.
“Ernst says the CIA is running an assassination program outside of the oversight procedure,” said Barrington. “He thinks the President set it up to circumvent us and the law.”
“I don’t know anything about it,” said Zen. “This isn’t one of the 6–9 programs?”
“No. Not at all. Supposedly, anyway. I don’t even know if it exists,” admitted Barrington. “I wouldn’t believe anything based on Ernst’s rantings.”
The 6–9 programs were targeted “actions”—the word assassination was carefully avoided — directed at terrorists who were deemed a threat to the U.S. Similar to other programs conducted by earlier administrations, 6–9 was tightly controlled, with targets approved according to a strict set of standards. As it happened, Zen had argued that the standards were too restrictive; they required two different sets of legal review, and many inside the CIA, which administered the program, f
elt they were too time-consuming.
“Your wife’s not involved in any of this, is she?” Barrington asked.
“I haven’t a clue,” said Zen truthfully.
“I hope not, for her sake.”
A few minutes later Zen found himself trying to clamp his mouth shut as the meeting began with a blistering diatribe from Ernst. He claimed that the President had circumvented the constitution by authorizing assassinations of “who knows who.”
“She’s leading us into World War Three. That’s where we’re going,” declared Ernst.
“With all due respect, Senator,” said Zen finally, “how exactly do you see this leading to World War Three?”
“The government cannot have a policy of exterminating its enemies. Especially when they are heads of state.”
“This program is directed at heads of state?” said Zen.
“That’s what I’ve heard. Raven is a sign of an Agency and an administration run amok.”
Barrington tapped his gavel. Zen suspected that Ernst was simply ramping up the charges so the committee would vote to investigate. For all Ernst knew, there might not even be a Raven program — or a rumor. He’d used the tactic before.
Unfortunately, he was a senior member of the Senate, an important fund-raiser for the other side, and a frequent talk show guest. He couldn’t simply be ignored.
“The senator from Tennessee has a point,” said one of Ernst’s fellow party members, Ted Green. “We should get Edmund up here and find out what the hell is going on.”
“And the National Security director,” said Ernst.
“Why not ask the President herself?” said Zen sarcastically.
“If she’d take my phone calls, I would.”
“All right, all right,” said Barrington. “We’ll have Edmund come in.”
Chapter 12
Duka
Danny managed to keep the car on the road as both tires on the passenger side blew out. He rode the rims for a few hundred yards, wrangling it more or less into a straight line, before the back of the vehicle lifted with an explosion. Someone in the shacks behind them had fired a rocket-propelled grenade; fortunately, it hit the road far enough behind them that most of the blast and shrapnel scattered harmlessly. But the shock threw the car out of Danny’s control, pushing it into a ditch.
“Everybody out!” he yelled.
They flew through the doors a few seconds ahead of the next grenade, which turned the Mercedes into a fireball. Danny could feel the heat as he scrambled through the field, trying to find cover. Nuri was on his left, Boston and Flash somewhere behind them.
It took him a few moments to orient himself. He checked his rifle — locked and loaded — then reached for his ear set, which had fallen a few feet away.
Boston and Flash were calling for him.
“I’m here,” he told them. “Forty yards south of the car. Nuri’s near me,” he added. Nuri was hunched over the control unit for the MY-PID a few yards away.
“I see ya,” said Boston. “Ya got three tangos coming down the road on your right as you look back at the vehicle. We have shots. What do you want to do?”
Once slang for terrorist, “tango” had become a generic word for any hostile.
“You have them?” Danny asked. “Take ’em.”
Two quick bursts and all three fell dead.
Danny crawled over to Nuri.
“Our missing CIA officer and the women are in a field over that little ridge,” said Nuri, pointing. “On the other side of this farm building. MY-PID says one of the women is in labor.”
“Labor?”
“The trucks are moving up from that direction, and there are men on foot coming straight up this way. We’re in the middle of deep shit, Colonel.”
“You’re a master of the obvious, Nuri,” said Danny, starting down in Melissa’s direction.
* * *
The baby was definitely coming. Its mother squatted in the field, bent low but still on her feet. Melissa, on her knees, cradled the woman’s head as Bloom worked on the other end, clearing the brush down and rolling the mother-to-be’s dress back so she could see what was going on.
“Crowning!” said Bloom. Her voice was steadier than before, braver, as if by attending to the woman she was finally able to push away her fear.
Melissa’s training for birth consisted of a single twenty minute lecture with a quick simulation involving a plastic doll. She held her breath as the woman pushed in response to another strong contraction.
“Almost, almost!” said Bloom. She switched to Nubian, pleading with the woman to push. The woman was beyond instructions, acting instinctually; her body tensed, and Melissa gripped her, knowing she was about to convulse.
The outside world had slipped away. If there was gunfire, if the mortar shells were still falling, Melissa heard none of it. She was oblivious to everything except the pregnant woman’s body as it pushed a new life into the world.
The mother fell back against Melissa. Bloom held up the bloody, gasping infant.
“I need a knife!” she said.
“I don’t have one.”
“Here!” yelled a voice in the field a few yards away. “I’m coming!”
It was Danny Freah.
Chapter 13
Duka
Milos Kimko lowered the field glasses and rubbed his forehead.
“Very good, these mortars, no?” said Girma. “You see how we crush our enemies.”
“These were your allies, weren’t they?”
Girma waved his hand. He was still in the middle of a khat jag; Kimko doubted he had slept in the past forty-eight hours.
There were at least three firefights in the city, two on either end of the main street and another up in the area where most of the Meur-tse Meur-tskk followers lived. Kimko hoped Li Han was hunkered down well.
“By tonight we will own Duka,” said Girma proudly. “And from here, we make our mark — all of Sudan.”
“You’re not to target any building near the railroad tracks and the old warehouse, you understand?” snapped Kimko. “Or you will get no more weapons.”
“You give me orders, Russian?”
Girma’s eyes flashed. For once Kimko forgot himself. Seized by his own anger, he balled his hand into a fist. Only at the last moment was he able to hold back — there were too many of Girma’s followers nearby.
“I need what the Chinaman has if I am to get you more weapons,” said Kimko. “If it is destroyed, I will have a very hard time.”
Girma frowned, but turned and said something to the men working the mortars.
Be patient, Kimko told himself. Once you have the UAV, you can leave. Take it back to Moscow personally — the hell with the expert Moscow is sending, the hell with the SVR, the hell with everyone but yourself.
“I need a jeep,” he told Girma.
“Where are you going?” yelled Girma. “Are you trying to betray us?” He grabbed the pistol at his belt.
“Don’t be a fool,” said Kimko. “My country wants the aircraft. I have to meet the Chinaman. It’s almost dusk.”
Girma pointed the pistol. Kimko, his own weapon holstered, felt the strength drain from his arms. But he knew that the best way to deal with Girma was to remain defiant and bold; these Africans hated weakness.
“Shoot me and you’ll never get another bullet,” he told him Girma. “My employers will come and wipe you out.”
Girma frowned. Slowly, he put his thumb on the hammer of the pistol and released it.
“You are lucky I like you,” he said.
Chapter 14
Duka
Danny folded the umbilical cord against the edge of his combat knife and pushed hard, slicing clean through. The baby seemed pale but breathing.
The shelling had stopped, but there was still plenty of gunfire in the distance. A black swirl of smoke rose from the center of the city.
“They’re fighting on both ends of town,” said Nuri. “Sudan First has some men and
trucks moving up the road in that direction. The last of the Meurtre Musique men will be down there in a few minutes. Our best bet is that way,” he added, pointing northeast.
“Any action where Li Han is?” asked Danny.
“Not even a guard posted,” said Nuri. “Two brothers are in a building about a quarter mile closer to the village.”
“What are they doing?”
“They’re inside. Maybe they’re sleeping.”
“They sleep through this shit?” said Boston.
“They’ve probably slept through worse,” said Nuri. “They’re two miles out of town,” he added. “As far as they’re concerned, the fighting might as well be in L.A.”
“What about the building where he was yesterday?” asked Danny.
“The two brothers that went back are still inside. The trucks are around back.”
Danny rubbed his chin.
“Whatcha thinkin’?” asked Boston.
“I’m thinking we hit that building first,” said Danny. “It’s close enough to the fighting that they’ll be distracted. We take out the trucks, get in there, see what’s what. Then we go and get Li Han.”
“When are we doing this?” Nuri asked.
“It’ll be dark in an hour,” said Boston.
“You think we should wait?” asked Nuri.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” said Boston. “But the Osprey is an easy target in the day — if it comes down now, they can hit it with RPGs, let alone a missile.”
“We’ll take the women someplace safer,” said Danny. “We’ll have the Osprey come in when it’s dark, if we can wait that long. They pick us up, and we’ll go directly to the raid.”
“What do we do about the women?” asked Nuri.
“We’ll take them with us. Evac them as soon as we get a chance.”
“All right,” said Nuri. “Fighting’s going to stoke up in a few minutes. The two sides are just about close enough to see each other.”
* * *
“Come on,” Danny told Melissa.