Andrew Britton - The Exile

“The car keys,” he said, holding out his hand. “Now!”

Mackenzie got the key ring from his pocket and tossed it to him without asking questions…not that Kealey would have lost a moment pausing to answer before he raced from the hut into the night.

No longer wearing his goggles, Kealey white-knuckled the Cherokee’s steering wheel, its high beams lancing the night, his foot hard to the gas pedal as he roared over the curving, potholed road toward the river. It was two miles to the mountains, just over a quarter that distance to the bridge. Head start or not, Nusairi was on foot. He would not be able to gain much distance on him.

The rail station behind him now, Kealey sped past square patches of farmland to the grove of trees at the river’s edge, came to a short stop. Where had Tariq positioned his men?

He glanced over his left shoulder, then right at a copse of shrubs and trees. Yes, there.

Leaving the headlights on, he pushed out his door, hastened a yard or two through the screening brush…and then almost stumbled over something underfoot.

He knew what it was before looking down. The body lay sprawled faceup on the ground, a bullet hole in its forehead, the toe of its boot against its outstretched arm. The second of Tariq’s men was on his side only inches from the first, blood oozing from what was left of his mouth and chin.

Their old Ford sedan was gone. A few feet away from where its tires had flattened the surrounding vegetation, Kealey saw the hinged trapdoor to the tunnel. It was thrown wide open, the packed sod and twigs that had camouflaged it flapped aside.

He turned back to the Cherokee, keyed it to life, and tore off for the river crossing.

Kealey was coming off the east side of the bridge when he spotted the wink of taillights up ahead of him to the right, on the street turning off toward the souq at the heart of Kassala. There were no other vehicles on the road, no people around; the town had rolled up whatever damned sidewalks it had… He would have to take his chances that it was Nusairi.

He swung onto the narrow street, pouring on the gas. The taillights, where were they? The main part of town was a labyrinth of twists and turns, and he’d momentarily lost sight of them…

Mouthing a string of profanities, Kealey whipped his head back and forth, then thankfully picked up the gleaming red lights around another sharp bend to his right. He swung into it, found himself on a relative straightaway, and accelerated, noticing the car ahead had sped up, too. He’d gambled correctly, then-it had to be Nusairi.

He bumped on over the cobbled street, his foot to the pedal, gaining on the Ford. It would be no match for his Cherokee, but Nusairi probably knew the city’s layout better than he did, giving him that far from negligible advantage. Kealey was afraid he might yet reach another twisty section of town and shake him loose.

Reaching the next corner, the Ford took a sudden left, Kealey almost on its bumper now, able to see Nusairi hunched over the wheel. He swerved after him, realized they’d gotten to the wide-open central market-there were stalls and wagons all around, everywhere, some emptied out for the night, others with their wares covered with tarpaulins.

Kealey poured it on now, getting closer, closer, and then cutting his wheel to the left so he pulled directly alongside the Ford. He looked out his passenger window, briefly met Nusairi’s gaze through double panes of glass, and swung the wheel hard to his right.

He felt the collision of their doors jar his back, heard the tortured, scraping grind of metal on metal. Then Nusairi’s lighter vehicle half bounced, half skidded to the right and went plowing into a cart of woven textiles, knocking off its wheel so it spun wildly over the cobbles, the cart toppling onto its side, blankets and sheets of fabric spilling everywhere over the street.

Somehow, though, Nusairi managed to hang on to control of the Ford. Kealey swung hard into his flank again, this time almost lifting Nusairi’s wheels off the ground to send him careening through a high stack of packing crates. The crates broke apart over his hood and windshield, wood flying, the burlap sacks of millet and corn inside them breaking open to disgorge their contents. Nusairi tailspun across the square into a vendor’s stall and smashed into a long wooden table, upending it before he hit the back of the stall and brought its bare plank walls crashing down on him, demolishing the Ford’s windshield.

Kealey stopped the Cherokee and exited it in a heartbeat, rushing across the square to the Ford as Nusairi pushed himself out of its scraped and beaten driver’s door. Blood trickling from under his eye, cuts on his cheeks and forehead, Nusairi looked at him, turned away, and started to make a break for the shadows.

On him now, right behind him, Kealey took a running leap at Nusairi that almost knocked both men to the cobblestones, wrapping his arms around his back to try and catch hold of him. But Nusairi, staggering, managed to stay on his feet. He twisted around to face Kealey, locking eyes with him, his features distorted with rage and malice-the rage showing above all else, completely overtaking him, his eyes flaring, his lips peeled back from his tightly clenched teeth in an almost bestial grimace.

And then he dove at Kealey, literally dove, giving Kealey little time to realize that the bottom of his shirt had pulled out from the waistband of his cargo pants and bunched up to reveal the handle of his combat knife.

Nusairi snatched hold of the knife, pulling it from its sheath, the blade flashing in his right hand as it came up. He took a vicious swipe at Kealey, barely missed carving a deep gash across his abdomen, and might have done so if Kealey hadn’t feinted backward at the last instant. As Nusairi came charging at him with the blade again, Kealey recovered his balance, pivoted on the forward part of his left foot, and shot both hands out in front of him, his right clenching Nusairi’s knife hand, his left grabbing the same elbow, twisting it around, yanking it up and back toward Nusairi.

They grappled like that for an endless minute, strength against strength, their faces inches apart. Kealey could feel Nusairi’s breath, see his cheeks puffing with exertion, the blade suspended between them.

And then he felt something in Nusairi’s grip give way, just for a split second. He moved forward into him, knowing it might be his one opportunity, bending the knife back toward Nusairi’s chest, back so its point was directly under his rib cage…and, mustering everything he had, gave it a hard upward shove to bury it inside him to the handle.

Still on his feet, Nusairi produced a feral sound that was something between a grunt and a moan, his hands going to his chest, his blood pouring over them in crimson sheets. At last, after what seemed another long while, his legs began to sag.

Kealey pulled out the knife before Nusairi could fall, stepped back, and stood looking at him, looking into his eyes…

Looking into his eyes, his gaze calm and unwavering as the life faded out of them.

“That was for Lily Durant,” he said before the last spark was extinguished. Then, waiting for Nusairi’s body to finally hit the ground, he bent over him to add something that had struck him almost as an afterthought. “And by the way, all your tanks and choppers are about to get blown to kingdom come.”

True to Brynn Fitzgerald’s “chirping birdie,” the Israelis did indeed launch the Hermes “Ziq” 450s out of Navatim for their strikes at Sudan. Although the unmanned aerial vehicles were indeed a component of the 166th Squadron at Palmachim Air Base near Tel Aviv, moving them to the base outside Be’er Sheva in the southeastern part of the country-and closer to the Red Sea route to the Sudanese border-extended their tactical range both in terms of fuel usage and data communications.