Mark Greaney - On target

The president's thick eyebrows rose. "What if I do not agree to help you?"

"I will kill you."

Court could see the gears turning in Abboud's brain. The crafty man knew his kidnapper needed something from him. He was now trying to find a way to play it to his advantage.

"What will you do for me if I do help?"

"I won't kill you. Yet."

That slowed the gears down a bit.

"What do I have to do?"

"I am going to lie on the ground, facedown. I need you to put your foot in the center of my back, grab the arrow just behind the head, and pull it out of the bone."

There was a flicker of fresh light in the president's eyes, and Court Gentry knew exactly what he was thinking. "You will want to drive the arrow into my back or neck when you pull it out. If you do this, you better find the place on my neck that will kill me instantly, because I am going to roll over and shoot you sixteen times if you don't."

"Why sixteen?"

"Because my gun only has sixteen bullets. Remember, I gave you a lot of dope back there in Suakin. You are slower than you think, you are weaker than you think, and right now, you are not half as smart as you think you are. You need to consider your actions very carefully before trying anything stupid, because I swear I will blow off your fucking nuts and watch you flip around till you bleed out if you don't succeed."

Silence hung in the air like the cloying heat. Oryx's face showed the unpleasant mental image dancing in his head.

Finally, Court asked, "Are you ready to try this?"

President Abboud paused a long time. Finally he said, "This will be extremely painful for you."

"And that's a problem for you, why?"

"You may think I am trying to kill you when I am only trying to help."

"I will expect pain in my back, where the arrow is. If I feel pain anywhere else, then the president of Sudan will lose his balls. That means no more little baby despots for you. You understand?"

Abboud nodded. Court drew his pistol and worked his way slowly to his knees, then onto his stomach. The arrow was into his scapula. It would not come out easily, and when it did, Court knew he would bleed considerably. He had a small trauma kit with him but no real way to dress a wound he could neither see nor reach, and having the president of Sudan bandage him just seemed too damn weird to bear.

And while Oryx's drug-induced lethargy and diminished capacity worked to Court's advantage as a kidnapper, it certainly did not benefit him as a patient. For all he knew, big Bakri Abboud was going to fall on top of the arrow instead of pull it out, and thereby pin Court to the floor of this shit hole shack like a butterfly in a bug collection.

Any way he looked at it, the Gray Man knew this was going to suck. He wanted to pop some pills, but he was smack-dab in the middle of a massive operation. That the thought of narcotics even entered his brain at this moment was disappointing to him.

Court fingered the Glock in his right hand. For a while he heard or felt nothing. He wondered if Oryx was trying to sneak out the door. Finally the booming African's voice called out from above. "Can you release my hands? It will make it easier for me to-"

"Hell no. Just grab it and pull."

He felt the pressure of the large sole of a big shoe between his shoulder blades, the painful adjusting of the arrow in his muscle and bone as it was grabbed hold of, and then an excruciating yank that caused Gentry's eyes to fill with tears and his throat to emit a cracking scream. The burning and tearing did not stop. Instinctively, Court flipped onto his back, raised his Glock at the attacker above him, and ran his finger tip from the trigger guard down to the trigger.

He sighted on his target, just a couple of feet from the tip of the gun's barrel.

Oryx stood above him, his hands bound together and shielding his eyes. The bloody arrow fell from his fingers onto Gentry's chest.

He'd done it. Oryx had not tried anything and, Court realized, he'd come incredibly close to shooting him between the eyes nonetheless.

The pain in his shoulder did not subside, but still he rose to his feet, found himself more mobile if only because he no longer had to move carefully to avoid bumping the long projectile.

"Good."

"What is your name?"

"Call me Six."

"Mr. Six. Fine. And you may call me President-"

"I'll call you whatever the fuck I want. Now, shithead, I need to make a phone call, so I need you to sit in the corner and be a good boy. Can you do that?"

Zack and three of his men had made it out of the last kill zone. After the chopper went down, the GOS seemed to back off both in fear and in an attempt to regroup. Hightower and company followed the second-floor hallway of Mall Alpha through laundries and rug shops and bakeries and storage rooms. They'd engaged two GOS men who were surprised to see them and certainly sorry they did in those last few seconds before they were silently killed with daggers. Brad and Dan scavenged the Type 81 rifles from the men's bodies, since both of their own weapons were down to the last magazine. Brad passed his FAMAS to Milo to use as a makeshift crutch, and it had increased the mobility of Whiskey Sierra significantly. At the end of the mall they'd gone back downstairs, where they saw the GOS infantry on the street pulling back a couple of blocks, so Zack gave the order for the men to break cover and head through the souk, one block closer to the water, to the other concrete row of buildings he'd dubbed Mall Bravo.

The crash of the big helicopter had started a fire in the souk, and the black smoke from fuel and fabric and rubber and wood had helped obscure the depleted team as they crossed the open ground. They received no return fire from the retreating GOS, and it seemed likely their repositioning had gone undetected. It was almost too much to hope for, but so far, he'd seen no evidence that the opposition knew where they were.

Hightower had seen enough combat in his life to recognize that the main thing they'd had going for them was the confusion on the part of their enemy. He was certain the Sudanese Army had no idea they were only up against five men, and these five men were not holding their president hostage as a human shield. If they did know the only threat was right here in these buildings by the souk near the water, they would simply concentrate all their forces here, blast the hell out of the malls, and kill everything that moved inside.

Five men, no matter how good their training, could do nothing against that sort of assault.

And it was starting to look like five men had become four. Spencer had not transmitted since disappearing out the window to divert the attention of the helicopter ten minutes earlier. It was possible he'd lost his radio or the signal between the buildings was broken, but Sierra One thought it likely that Sierra Five had made it across the souk, only to stumble into a superior force of GOS infantry on the other side.

Still, Zack and his men were heading carefully through mall Bravo now in an attempt to find their comrade.

Hightower's sat phone vibrated. He pressed the answer button, which put the call through to his tactical headset.

"Hey, Six. You chillaxing on the beach with a mai tai?"

Gentry's voice came through the line. "We're secure. You?"

"Knee-deep in it. About fifty yards from the water, three blocks north of the causeway. Still in sporadic contact. Haven't been able to shake the GOS long enough to slip away. How's your back? Run into any more Comanches out on the trail?"

"I'll live. You need me there?"

"Sure you can put Oryx on ice?"

"Affirmative. I'll tie him up and drug him. He's not going anywhere."

"Alright, then get on your horse and get over here ASAP. We need you to bring us some wheels, get us some kind of sitrep as to the concentration of OPFOR in the streets. I was thinking you might be able to come in low-pro from the west, score us a ride, and then move close enough to lead our exfil back to it."