Mark Greaney - On target

"Three days from now?"

"Correct."

"One day before Abboud goes to Suakin? That's not enough time to get there and prepare." It would have been, thought Court, if Sidordenko's operation was the actual plan he intended on carrying out. It was not enough time, in Gentry's estimation, to adequately recon the area to increase the chances for success in Zack's operation. Again, he could not very well explain this to the man on the far end of the satellite connection.

Sid shouted back across the line, his stress getting the best of him. "I can't help it! I had no way to foresee this. The Russian government did not foresee this. Just stay with the flight crew and come back. We will try again in three days."

Court hung up the phone and continued pacing the narrow corridor of the aircraft next to the weapons. "Son of a bitch."

He next used his phone to call Zack. Hightower took the call on the first ring. He was clearly surprised to hear from Gentry. "You're about twenty-four hours ahead of schedule, Six."

"I'm about to fall behind schedule." Court told Sierra One what was going on. When he was finished he asked, "You know anything about this airport? Any way I can get out of here and over to Suakin?"

"You might as well be on the dark side of the moon. It's a war zone all around Al Fashir. The Red Cross, private NGO relief agencies, and African Union troops working for UNAMID, the United Nations Mission in Darfur, are about the only foreigners in the area. You might be able to buy a ride to the east from some local ballsy enough to brave the Janjaweed militia and the government of Sudan troops patrolling the badlands, but I wouldn't recommend it. Stick with Sid's change to the op orders, retrograde out of the Sudan with the aircrew, and reinsert in three days. It's the best we can do at this point. We'll just have to rush things when you get there. I'll let Carmichael know what's up."

"Roger that, Six out."

"Wait one," Zack said, "Just a piece of advice. Don't know what your turnaround time is in Al Fashir, but stay the hell inside the airport grounds. If you get popped by the authorities over there, they'll take you to the Ghost House."

"That sounds charming," Court said over the whine of the Ilyushin's engines changing pitch. They had just begun a turn to the south and a slight descent.

"It's anything but charming. It's the name the locals give to the government's secret prisons across the country, but the one in Al Fashir is extra special. You go in the Al Fashir Ghost House, you don't come out, and you don't die quick. It is legendarily miserable."

"Understood. I'll avoid the local tour, then. Six out."

Ellen Walsh's low spirits rose instantly when she saw a ray of the late afternoon sun glint off metal in the distant sky. It was an airplane, big and lumbering, turning onto its final approach, a thousand meters above the brown highland plain of north Darfur. An aircraft landing here at Al Fashir airport meant a potential way out of this miserable place.

Ellen had been stuck here since arriving on a UN transport plane ferrying in aid workers. There had been a problem with Walsh's documents; her UNAMID travel authorization was missing the requisite stamp that would have allowed her entry into the UN camp for internally displaced people in Zam Zam. This oversight meant she was not allowed to leave the airport, unless it was on a plane out of Al Fashir.

So for three days she'd waited for a flight that would take her back to her office. UN aircraft had arrived, but they remained parked on the hot tarmac awaiting a resupply of UN jet fuel from a UN tanker. Chinese state-owned oil company planes had come and gone, but they'd returned to Beijing and not Khartoum, and they'd made it clear she could not go with them. Sudanese military flights had arrived and departed, as well, but they weren't providing taxi service for some white woman.

But this new aircraft, this mysterious arrival floating in the hazy mirage to the north and lining up on the runway, could be her ticket out of here. It wasn't military, it wasn't painted in UN white, and it did not have the same shape as the Chinese planes she'd seen. Ellen knew aircraft, and normally she could ID a cargo plane in a second, but this craft in the distance was now banking across the late afternoon sun and was therefore impossible for her to identify. But she did not care. Whatever type of plane it was, whoever was flying it, and wherever it was headed next, she determined to do everything in her power to see that she was on it when it left.

Ellen was neither vain nor any sort of slave to fashion, but even before the lumbering aircraft touched down at the far end of the runway, she hurried back into the terminal to the restroom. She passed a pair of local Darfuri tribeswomen on their way out, dressed head to toe in colorful orange drapings, ushering three small children on ahead of them. The ladies' head wrappings were high and wide and, Ellen Walsh now realized, served as an effective foil for all the dust in the air. As she stepped up to the mirror for a look at herself, she nearly recoiled in horror. Her auburn hair looked ashen from the gray dust floating about, the faint creases around her eyes on her thirty-five-year-old face were exaggerated by the dust and grime and salt from the sweat that had dried there.

Quickly she untied the white T-shirt from the outside of her backpack and drenched it in the dingy water flowing from the tap. She wiped her face with the makeshift washcloth. She had used the same shirt for the same task so many times in the past seventy-two hours that it was streaked and dulled from the filth scratched off her skin. She turned away from the tap, dipped her head forward towards the begrimed floor of the bathroom, and used her fingers to comb through her hair as she leaned over, pulling a dust cloud out of her shoulder-length locks. She rose, blew the bangs out of her eyes, and replaced her hair band.

One more look in the mirror didn't fill her with relief, but it was an improvement. She retied the wet T-shirt to her backpack and hoisted it over a shoulder, then left the bathroom to return to the tarmac.

She heard the huge engines long before she saw the aircraft. It taxied to a parking spot on the other side of the ramp from the four UN planes, some four hundred meters from the door Ellen stepped through. In the dusty afternoon distance she could not identify the four-engine plane, but she did see there were no airline markings or country designation. Still, from its shape she could tell it was a cargo ship. She was momentarily caught up in the bevy of traffic as she began walking towards it. Several customs men and airport ground crewmen passed her on foot, as did two dozen soldiers hanging off the sides of a pickup and two dilapidated flatbed trucks. She thought about letting all the activity approaching the new arrival die down before making her approach, but she decided to keep going. She had no idea how long this flight would be on the ground. Days were doubtful; everyone who'd landed heretofore had gotten out of Al Fashir as soon as possible if they had the fuel to do so. Hours would be likely if they were going to be offloading cargo. Minutes only if they were just here to take on fuel.

She was not going to miss her chance.

As Ellen walked towards the aircraft at the distant end of the ramp, it was partially obscured in the haze of a heat mirage pouring up from the cracked tarmac, the late afternoon air dimming just slightly but not yet cooling. The air above the plane's hulking form quivered as vapors poured from the idling engines.

After a moment, the pilot shut his engines down. The whine of the four big turbojets was replaced by the voices of the soldiers in the distance and the ceaseless sound of insects in the sandy scrub brush that ran along either side of the taxiway.