Mark Greaney - On target

Gentry drew his gun like a phantom's blur, pointed it at the threat on the ground, and then scanned the area for more attackers.

Ellen stood ten feet away, her face white with horror.

Five minutes later all was neither forgiven nor forgotten, but the sixty-year-old Italian had been hauled back to his feet, brushed off, and his hat had been returned to his head. He needed a minute to compose himself, so he sat on the running board of one of the trucks, drinking a cold orange soda and smoking a cigarette. Ellen Walsh sat with him and spewed apologies, more like a diplomat than the lawyer she was, or the journalist she claimed to be. Court stood off the side of the road by himself, a pariah to all, for what he saw as simply having the temerity to carry a fucking pistol in the middle of a fucking war.

"No guns! No guns!" One of the African aid drivers, a middle-aged man with silver hair, stood ten yards away from the American and waved his hand in a no-no gesture over and over as he chastised.

"You aren't getting my gun," Court said, definitively.

"No guns. No guns!" Court listened to what was, apparently, the only two English words this man knew, over and over and over, and watched him wag his finger back and forth.

"Say that one more time, dickhead," Court snapped. The man did just that-twice more, actually-before he stopped and stepped to the side to allow his boss and the white woman access. From their gait and fixed expressions, Court could see that Ellen and Signor Bianchi were still mad.

Court looked to Ellen. "You don't put your hand on someone else's weapon," he said.

"You mentioned that already, Six," she responded angrily. "Look. I'm riding to Dirra with them. They will still take you along, as a personal favor to me, if and only if you give Signor Bianchi the pistol."

"What's he going to do with it?"

Mario Bianchi spoke for himself. He was still rubbing the back of his neck. He wondered aloud if there was a physical therapist or a chiropractor at his Dirra clinic doing volunteer work today. Then said, "I will throw the gun out in the desert. What were you going to do with a gun?"

Court rolled his eyes. "I might have come up with something."

"We don't need guns in our convoy. We aren't looking for trouble."

Court eyed the older Italian for a long time. Finally he said, "That's the funny thing about trouble. Sometimes it comes looking for you."

Bianchi's stare was every bit as intense as Gentry's; it conveyed the same measure of loathing for the man in front of him. "You do not get in one of my trucks with that gun."

This was a dangerous waste of time, and Court knew it. No other car had passed in the ten minutes they had been in the road with the Speranza Internazionale convoy. If he wanted to get out of here before either brigands, the GOS Army, or the secret police happened by, he was going to have to play along. With an exasperated sigh he drew his weapon. Bianchi reached out for it, but Gentry turned away from him, back towards a shallow dry streambed on the south side of the road. He dropped the magazine from the pistol and thumbed the bullets out onto the ground, kicked them down the indentation. Some fell into the cracks of the dry earth, some remained visible. Then he ejected the round from the chamber and disassembled the weapon, pulling off the slide, popping out the slide spring, the barrel. He threw these items as far as he could in the distance.

Ellen stepped up to him. Her voice was softer; she wanted to put the matter behind them. "Now then. Was that so hard?"

Court looked out at the vast landscape and scratched a fresh sand flea bite on his left wrist.

"I'll let you know in a couple of hours."

Ten minutes later Court was in the center seat of the third truck of four in the convoy. He could see little out the windshield ahead save for the dust of the two vehicles in front of them. Ellen was with Mario in the lead vehicle. The Italian had segregated the two, probably, thought Court, so that the geezer could hit on the dust-covered but still attractive Canadian. In the cab with Gentry was Rasid, the white-haired driver, and Bishara, a young loader for SI. Bishara spoke surprisingly good English, even if his geography wasn't quite as practiced. He asked Court if he was from the same town as David Beckham. Court said no, ignored him mostly, and kept his eyes peeled out the windows. He knew they weren't free of the NSS just yet. It would be another couple of hours to Dirra, Mario had told them. They should arrive just about midday. Once there, he would get Ellen to safety in the Speranza Internazionale camp for internally displaced people. She would have access to communications there and could arrange some way out of here either via air with a helicopter or overland with an escort of UNAMID troops. Court, on the other hand, planned to hire a car and driver to take him right back to Al Fashir. In the city he would find someone who could sell him a black market mobile phone, and he would call Sid, put as much blame for his missing the Ilyushin flight on the Russian flight crew, the pilot's canoodling with the girl from the ICC, and he would get Sid to find him some other way out of Al Fashir. If he could do all this in a day and a half, he would still just be able to make it to Suakin in time for the operation there.

He'd be cutting it close as it was, and he just hoped there were no more snags along the way.

Court sipped a bottle of tepid water that Bishara had passed him. He'd checked it carefully before opening it to make sure it was not a refilled container. The two SI Darfuris were listening to awful music on a poorly tuned transistor radio that hung right behind Gentry's head on the latch to the sliding access port to the cargo hold of the truck. The radio coms between the trucks were all but drowned out by the wailing away of some woman. Bishara sang alone for a moment until the older Rasid laughed and joined in.

The men continued singing into the next song, then the next. Court wished, momentarily, that he still had his gun on his hip and was still waiting in the heat by the side of the road for a ride.

Bishara only stopped his singing to question Court about various American hip-hop artists, a subject on which the Gray Man was not terribly well versed. He continued ignoring the kid, who finally went back to his music.

From time to time the convoy radio would crackle to life with the Italian-accented English of Signor Mario Bianchi up in the lead vehicle, usually reporting one thing or another to those in the convoy behind him. A large outcropping of bundled roots from the remains of a dead baobab had broken free from the hard pack alongside the road and needed to be negotiated, a dry wadi that crossed the highway required downshifting to safely cross, a hobbled camel had decided to stop in front of them, so there would be a short delay.

Court would have felt a lot better if this convoy had an armed escort. "Why don't you have UNAMID soldiers with you out here?" he asked Bishara.

The young man just shrugged while he moved to the lousy music. Then he said, "Darfur is as big as Texas in your America, and there are only ten thousand UNAMID soldiers. Most of them are at the camps. Not enough left for every little convoy." He smiled again. "It's no problem. The Janjas don't attack SI. Everybody knows that."

Court looked down at the young man, surprised. "And why is that?"

"Mr. Mario is a friend to the Janjas."

Court just looked out the window at the dust. "Perfect."

Court had not noticed that Bianchi had not transmitted in some time. He could barely hear anyway with the music and the sing-along in the stuffy cab. But when the Italian's singsong voice finally did come back on the radio, Court immediately sat up straight. Something in the man's tone was different. His cadence and sudden protocol caught the American's attention, and he reached out and turned the dial up quickly.