Mark Greaney - On target

His phone rang.

Seventy meters to go.

He answered it. He hoped it was Ellen with details that would cause his mood to improve. "Yeah?"

"S'up, Court? How's life treating you?"

Fuck. It was Zack, and a conversation with Zack right now would do nothing good for Gentry's disposition.

Still, Court thought, maybe he could glean some intel from Sierra One. If Zack was calling, that meant Zack was not sneaking up behind him at that very moment. "Things just could not possibly be any better, Hightower. Thanks for asking."

Sixty meters.

"Yeah? You come to your senses and draw a knife across your boyfriend's throat yet?"

"Sure did."

"How come I don't believe you?"

"' Cause there just isn't enough trust in the world."

"Yeah. That is a shame, isn't it? Look, bro, I just wanted to give you a bit of good news because, despite your bullshit, I think you could probably use it."

Abboud turned around as he walked, tried to ask Court who was on the phone, but Gentry just stiff-armed him forward again.

"Good news? Well, okay, I guess I'll take it."

"Figured as much. Here it is. Today, buddy, is your lucky day."

Fifty meters.

"Okay. I'll bite. Why is today my lucky day, Zack?"

There was a long pause. Court thought he could hear Zack's face rubbing his mouthpiece, his stubbled beard scratching the microphone. Finally, Sierra One answered. "Today is your lucky day, because you are my secondary target, and I am pretty sure I'm only going to have time to get one shot off."

Forty met-Huh?

Court stopped in his tracks. Jacked his head to the south. To the buildings some seven hundred meters distant. A flicker of light in a deep morning shadow flashed from the roof of the highest building on the plateau.

In less than one half second, Gentry turned his head back to president Abboud, propelled his body forward towards the walking man, reached out both arms, and dropped the sat phone. At the same moment he also screamed a single word.

"Down!"

President Bakri Ali Abboud's shoulders raised in surprise of the scream from behind. Then the right side of his neck seemed to quiver, as if slapped hard. The left side of his neck blew apart, blood and tissue flung towards the sand dunes to the north side of the road, leaving Oryx instantly decapitated save for some skin and muscle that remained. His head spun around on its axis and flopped backwards as his torso went limp and dropped straight to the sandy driveway.

Court landed on top of him as blood gushed about, recognized the man was dead in another instant, and then rolled off of Abboud to flatten himself on the driveway.

"No!" He shouted out to the air, just as the report from a sniper rifle rolled across the dunes. His collision with the president's body and his impact with the ground created excruciating agony in his shoulder blade. Still, the anguish he felt at the loss of the president, the loss of his mission objective, the loss of his opportunity to stop the civil war and the impending invasion, was paramount in his mind.

Flat on the ground now, he looked up towards the buildings. The roof where the sniper's bullet came from was behind the tip of a peaked dune just off the side of the road, but Court knew Zack would reposition after that shot, and if he managed to get any higher on the hill, he could get line of sight on Gentry's position on the drive. So Court clambered to his knees and shot forward, scooped up the Thuraya on his way to the dunes. He dove into a tiny gully off the drive, rolled to his right, to the east, back towards the car, and flattened out again.

He punched a blood-drenched fist again and again and again into the sand in utter frustration, the morning heat cloying against his clothes and sticky sand and dust coating his skin where Abboud's blood had smeared.

"Sweet!" It was Zack's voice over the phone in Court's hand. Quickly Gentry brought it to his ear. "Six hundred ninety meters, low light in a half-value eight-mile-per-hour crosswind. That was a Sierra Six quality shot, you gotta admit it!"

Court pressed his forehead in the dirt and sand. All his exhaustion, his infection, everything just sucked the life out of him right now. He began to sob and shake.

Hightower's booming voice continued to pour forth from the little speaker. "You are one quick son of a bitch. If you weren't so sick with that festering back, I bet you could have gotten in the way of my.308 boat tail and caught that round instead of your lover boy. How cool is this, Court? Last Christmastime you capped the ex-president of Nigeria, and I just bagged me the sitting president of the Sudan. Give us time, and you and me just might clean up this shit-assed continent, whaddya say? Wait a sec. Scratch that. You aren't going to live long enough to whack anybody else. Either the infection is going to get you, the thousands of GOS chuckleheads on your tail are going to get you, or I'm going to get you."

Court continued to lie there and shake, as if from extreme cold, a near complete physical and mental breakdown. His body and clothing were caked with matted bloodred sand. He gulped air for a long moment before saying, "You had… one chance to stop me from killing you. I was in your sights, and you made your choice. You chose badly, Zack."

There was a pause on the line. Court sensed concern on the other end. "Whatever, dude. You just need to stay in that hole and die. I'll be out of the country before you can pick Abboud's brain matter out of your teeth. And if you do make it out of the Sudan, Denny has already told me I'll be leading the task force set up to hunt you down."

"I'll save you some time. Come on down here right now. I'll be waiting."

"Love to, brother, but I think I'll get out of here before Johnny Law shows up to see about that dead president smeared all over your shirt like pizza sauce. But I won't be far. Milo and Dan and the rest of the guys on the Hannah have already hitched a ride out of the theater. It's just me and you now." He chuckled. "Oh yeah, plus the five hundred thousand members of the Sudanese Armed Forces."

"And I will burn through each and every one of them to get to you, Zack. Six out."

Hightower spoke up as Gentry made to end the call. "Court, Sierra Six was one of us, and you are no longer one of us. Your code name is no longer Sierra Six, it has reverted to Violator. You're the enemy again. Just in case you're keeping score. One out." Zack hung up the phone.

Court was sick as a dog, half-dead in a ditch, out-manned, outgunned, and outplayed. He had failed. He lay in the sand as the full sphere of the sun appeared between the bungalows on the water. Slowly he made it to his knees and began crawling towards the resort, head low in case Zack was still peering through a rifle scope up on the plateau.

The moon had gone for the month; the Red Sea caught and amplified the light of a million stars, but it was not enough illumination for Gentry to see the Hannah in the distance. He squinted to the southeast, following the direction indicator of the GPS beacon locator in his hand. He was less than a mile out, so he cut the engine of the four-man rigid inflatable boat.

His GPS also told him he was four miles offshore now, but he could not see the land in the dark. With the engine off there was all-encompassing nothingness, dark in all directions but up, and up was untouchable infinity.

The ocean was not still. It rose and lowered silently, no breakers or whitecaps out here, just gentle surges that lifted the Gray Man and his boat a few stories into the air and then let him back down again. It was more felt than seen in the darkness, but an occasional reflection off the water's surface showed him hills and valleys all around, hills and valleys of black water that undulated with the undercurrents of the Red Sea.