Mark Greaney - On target

Court's eyes remained on the aircraft ahead. Sid did not know the half of it, of course. Sid's op was relatively- and relatively was the key word-easy, compared to what he really had to do. Shooting a man at five hundred yards and then hiding out in the hills for a week or so until he could just walk through airport gates and board a flight out of the country seemed so much simpler than pretending to prepare for an assassination but instead executing a split-second kidnapping and a perilous rendezvous in enemy territory to transfer a prisoner.

Court so wished he could just shoot that murderous fucker Bakri Abboud in the head and be done with it.

"How can you possibly remain so relaxed?" Sid asked Court.

The Gray Man turned to the Russian mafioso, the first time he'd made eye contact with his handler all morning.

"This is what I do."

Gregor Sidorenko's narrow mouth formed a surprisingly toothy smile. Even in the predawn light it glowed. "Fantastic."

The aircraft was a behemoth, and it exhibited function over form. Called the Candid by NATO forces, the Ilyushin Il-76 had huge, high wings that sagged slightly when at rest. The plane looked big and fat and slumbering there in the dark. Court wanted to walk over and kick it awake, but he knew soon the Russian crew would handle that, and the aircraft would effectively transport him and whatever war goods it carried to Khartoum. It was not a military flight in the strict sense. The plane and the crew were property of Rosoboronexport, the Russian state-owned military export entity. Rosoboronexport flew cargo aircraft all over the globe, to the Sudan, to Venezuela, to Libya, to India, transporting exported Russian arms to some sixty countries in all, fanning and fueling the flames in trouble spots all over the earth.

With only idle curiosity, Gentry asked Sid, "What is the cargo?"

"Other than you? Crates of heavy Kord machine guns, ammunition, and support equipment."

"And they are allowed in by the UN? What about the sanctions?"

Sid snorted in the cold morning air. "The sanctions are obtuse. Russia is allowed to sell military equipment to the Sudan, as long as the equipment is not to be used in the Darfur region of the country."

"If Russia is shipping machine guns to Sudan, they can be damn sure they are being used in Darfur. That's where the war is."

"Exactly, my friend," Sid smiled, not picking up on Court's derision of the arrangement. "Moscow takes President Abboud's word for it. That seems to satisfy the UN."

"Unbelievable," said Court, almost to himself.

Sidorenko patted him on the back. "Yes. Very good, isn't it?" The Russian turned and headed back to the warmth of the terminal.

Court lay on his back across four of the Ilyushin's red plastic seats. Next to him in the tight floor space between his resting place along the wall of the fuselage and the huge crates of cargo in the center of the aircraft was positioned a single MultiCam backpack. Gentry was a master at packing light. Inside the fifty-pound ruck was a disassembled Blaser R 93, a German sniper rifle, caliber.300 Winchester Magnum, and twenty rounds of ammunition. Also binoculars, two fragmentation grenades, two smoke grenades, and a small supply of dried food, water, and oral rehydration salts. A medical blow-out kit for major trauma was included, but for cuts and bruises he'd packed nothing. On his belt and in his cargo pants he wore a Glock nine-millimeter pistol, a combat knife, a multi-tool, and a flashlight.

He was covered in a long white thobe, a robe customary in the Sudan.

The flight crew had left him alone. Their higher-ups at Rosoboronexport had ordered them to ferry a man to Khartoum, but that was all they knew.

Gentry had told the crew chief in Russian before takeoff that he was not to be disturbed except for emergencies, so when a member of the five-man cabin crew appeared above him and shouted over the shrill engines, he knew it was time to either be mad or be worried. The man summoned him to the cockpit, and Gentry followed him up the narrow channel alongside the gray wooden cargo crates, which hung from rollers attached to rails on the ceiling that ran down the length of the craft. There were no windows in the cabin; instead, quilted padding and netting and fastened equipment hung from the walls of the fuselage. It reminded the American of another cargo plane he'd been in, four months earlier, over northern Iraq. That flight did not end well for Gentry; his thigh throbbed where the bullet had torn through the muscle, but it ended even less well for the five other men who'd been with him in the cargo hold.

The cockpit of the Ilyushin was expansive; four men fit themselves in the upper-level crew area, and the navigator sat below in the nose among a sea of dials and buttons and computer monitors. The pilot, a redheaded Russian in his forties named Genady, who wore aviator glasses too large for his face and appeared, to Gentry, to be unhealthily thin, beckoned him forward. A young and heavyset flight engineer passed the American a radio headset so he and the pilot could communicate comfortably with each other.

"What is it?" Court asked in Russian.

"Sudanese air traffic control has contacted us. There is a problem."

"Tell me."

"We have been diverted. We are no longer going to Khartoum."

"Where are we going?"

"Al Fashir."

"Why?"

"I don't know, but I think perhaps the Sudanese Army must need the guns there in a hurry."

Court pulled a laminated map off the flight engineer's table. The man looked up at him but did not protest. "Where the hell is Al Fashir?" asked Gentry as he unfolded the map.

The Russian pilot turned and looked back over his shoulder and answered the question with one word, delivered in a grave tone. "Darfur." He put his gloved finger on the far edge, completely across the country from where Court's operation was planned.

Court looked up from the map. "Fuck."

"It is a problem for you, da?"

"My job is not in Darfur."

Genady said, "Nothing I can do. I have to divert; I don't have clearance to land in Khartoum."

"Shit!" said Gentry now. He tossed the headset back on the console and turned to leave the cockpit, yanking the map out with him.

Five minutes later he was on his Hughes Thuraya satellite phone, talking with Sidorenko. He'd spent the time waiting for the connection to be established looking over the map. "This is not acceptable! How am I supposed to get out of the airport at Al Fashir, cross a hundred miles of bandit-covered desert, plus another three hundred miles of Sudanese territory? I've got the fucking Nile River now between myself and my objective."

"Yes, Gray, I understand. It is a problem. You must let me think."

"I don't have time for you to think! I need you to get this flight back on track!"

"But that is not possible. My influence is with Moscow, not Khartoum. You will have to land where the Sudanese instruct you to land."

"If you can't fix this, then this operation is dead, you got that?" In fact, Court was concerned about Zack's op, Nocturne Sapphire, and not Sid's contract, but he did not mention this.

"I will do my best." Sid hung up, and Court continued pacing the narrow alley between the wall of the fuselage and the crates of guns.

This snafu was of the "shit happens" variety. It was no one's fault, but Court knew from much experience that no blame need be assigned to an operation for it to fail completely and miserably.

To Sidorenko's credit, he called back much quicker than Gentry had anticipated.

"Mr. Gray, we have a solution. You must fly out again with the plane after it off-loads in Al Fashir. Return to the air base in Belarus. There will be another flight to Khartoum in three days' time. It will be helicopter repair equipment, goods that are not likely to be diverted to Al Fashir. Everything will be fine." Sid seemed satisfied with the new arrangements.