Mark Greaney - On target

The entourage of local army and airport workers was between her and the plane, moving purposefully across the hot taxiway, and they commanded her attention for the majority of her walk. She hesitated more than once, weighing the pros and cons of waiting for them to do their business and leave the aircraft versus pushing right on through the gaggle of black men, some uniformed, some in business suits, and some in flowing white tobes, to speak immediately to the flight crew. Neither option looked particularly promising, but she quickly arrived at the conclusion that the latter choice seemed preferable to sitting back and waiting for a plane that might well just take off again into the sky without her.

So she decided to walk right up the lowering rear hatch and take her chances. This decision caused her to look past the men fifty yards in front of her and turn her focus fully to the aircraft another twenty meters beyond them, and only then did her certain gait slow a bit. After a few yards she slowed even more.

And then she stopped dead in her tracks on the blistering tarmac.

With her eyes steady on the plane, she unslung her backpack and put it at her feet, unzipped it quickly, let a couple of sweat-stained blouses fall to the pavement as she pulled out a small black three-ring binder. She knelt on her backpack as she quickly leafed through it; her knees would have blistered had she placed them directly on the ground. Three quick glances back up to the cargo plane, and a few licks of her bone-dry fingertips helped her find the page she was looking for.

Another look down at the page. Another look up at the plane in front of her.

Yes. She muttered an exclamation that was not completely drowned out by the locusts and crickets around her. "Oh my God."

It was an Ilyushin Il-76, and from the look of its sagging disposition on its ten-wheel undercarriage, it was full of cargo. The Il-76 was an extremely common Russian-built transport aircraft, in service with aid agencies and transport services and militaries throughout the hemisphere. But unless Ellen's eyes were deceiving her, this was an Il-76MF, an upgraded version with a longer fuselage.

Slowly she looked away from the plane as she collected her belongings off the tarmac. Slower still she turned and began walking back to the terminal.

Her excitement grew and grew as she sauntered nonchalantly in the afternoon heat, retracing her steps of moments ago. This excitement was tempered by the knowledge that she would not be able to make a phone call inside the building, as there wasn't a single public phone, and she'd been told the administrative line had been down for the past seventy-two hours. The airport administrators were lying, she had no doubt, but the effect was the same. She could not call her office.

The excitement, tempered as it was, helped her think quickly as her mind raced to formulate a hasty plan. The scale of the opportunity before her could not be exaggerated, and she determined to control her emotions and focus on the opportunity at hand.

Certainly in her professional career, and almost certainly in her entire life, Ellen Walsh, special investigator for the International Criminal Court, had never felt so determined.

Nor so alone.

This white woman is going to be a problem.

Court had changed into an extra jumpsuit to match the rest of the flight crew, climbed down the rear ramp of the aircraft with the others, was slapped hard in the face by the heat and the stink of dry earth, and immediately squinted into the low afternoon sunlight, scanning the area to get his bearings. To his left he saw an old white UN aircraft off in the sand, its tail broken off from the fuselage and evidence of a fire on board from the soot-covered windows and the partially melted and completely smoke-stained engines. To his right a row of UN helicopters sat in the haze generated by the heat pouring off the engines of his own plane, the propellers of the choppers dipping low as if melting. Behind them were several airplanes parked wingtip to wingtip. They looked like they could be small UN transport craft. A tiny, new-looking terminal was up ahead several hundred yards. To the right of it was a fence line out in the sand that ran alongside a road, with several more junked and wrecked aircraft deposited nearby.

Bugs were everywhere: flies, mosquitoes, locusts that he could not see but could easily hear out in the thickets alongside the dusty taxiway.

And then he noticed her in the mid distance; it was hard to miss a white female alone on a sunny airport tarmac in western Sudan. From fifty yards away he watched her take note of his plane and drop to her bag, pull out a book, and thumb through it. He watched her pause to read the page, then stand slowly with her hands on her hips. Then she began retreating, slowly but unmistakably, to the terminal, well aware, Gentry had a strong suspicion, that the aircraft behind her was not supposed to be there.

Yep, this white woman was definitely going to be a problem.

Court remained in the background of the conversation and listened to the pilot Gennady speak English with the Sudanese military officials at the foot of the ramp. The trucks coming to off-load the guns were behind schedule; it would be another hour before they reached the airport. Fuel for the Ilyushin was available and would be provided immediately, and an airport official would show the men the way to the washrooms and the restaurant. They had parked alone at the far end of the taxiway. This was to keep the few civilians and foreign aid workers milling about the terminal from getting near enough to the unmarked cargo plane to see something they shouldn't. Still, Gennady and his flight crew were invited by the Sudanese to enjoy the comforts of the terminal while they waited for the plane to be unloaded and refueled.

After the Sudanese had wandered off, Gentry asked Gennady to keep his men on the aircraft. From a security perspective, Court saw no benefit in the Russian men wandering among civilians. But the pilot was in charge, not the stowaway, and he told his men they would be wheels up in three hours and would need to be back to the aircraft in two, but until then they could do as they pleased.

Twenty minutes later Court and the Ilyushin's flight crew stepped out of the oppressive late afternoon heat and into a stairwell at a side entrance to the terminal's concourse. Court almost stayed behind himself, but he wanted to keep his eyes on the Russians to make sure they behaved themselves. He did not have any gear with him at all. His gun remained back on the plane in his pack. He had no idea what security measures he might find here and did not want to run the risk of getting frisked by some local version of the TSA. Only his wallet full of euros, rubles, and Sudanese pounds bulged the lines of his olive-drab flight suit. The stairs led up one level into a nearly empty concourse, smaller than a typical American supermarket. A few locals milled about, and GOS soldiers sat on the floor or strolled around with their assault rifles hanging upside down off their backs. The flight crew, with their secret foreigner hidden in with them, found the bathrooms and used them, then found the tiny restaurant and sat down. A waiter who proclaimed himself Egyptian, as if these Russians cared, energetically greeted the men and passed around menus. None of the Russians spoke Arabic. Court, on the other hand, had spent more than enough time in the Arab-speaking world to order a meal, but he held his tongue. He was not about to differentiate himself from the rest of the flight crew by becoming their translator.

Gennady ordered for the table. He'd been here in Al Fashir many times before, which, Gentry realized, should not have come as a surprise. Flagrant disregard for international sanctions by the government of an African despot was de rigueur, as was the Russians' eagerness to benefit from it, as was the United Nations' shock and outrage each and every single time that they became aware of it.