Raven Strike (18 page)

Chapter 6

Washington, D.C.

Z
en sat in the hospital waiting area, tapping his fingers against the arms of his wheelchair. Not since he ran for the Senate had he felt such a combination of anticipation and anxiety. Not that he’d cared about the outcome—he would have been just as content retiring from politics as a two-term congressman and getting a job in the private sector. In some ways he’d have been happier, since few jobs had such a demand on anyone’s time.

The door opened. Dr. Esrang walked in, alone.

“Doc, how are we doin’?” asked Zen.

“Hard to say,” said Esrang. “Brain activity is normal. For him. Physically, no problems. Mood—well, that’s always the question, isn’t it?”

“Once around the block and back inside,” said Zen.

“You’re not actually—”

“Figure of speech, Doc,” said Zen.

“Yes, of course. All right. We’re ready.”

“I think it’s going to work,” said Zen.

Esrang started for the door, then stopped. “Jeff, let me say something, if you don’t mind.”

“Shoot.”

“There may be setbacks.”

“I understand.”

“If you’re serious, we have to keep at it. If this doesn’t go well, then we try something else. All right?”

“Absolutely,” said Zen.

“We keep at it.” Esrang went in then. Pep talks were out of character for the doctor; maybe it was a good omen.

Stoner emerged a few minutes later, flanked by a female nurse who was nearly as big and broad-shouldered as the two male attendants/bodyguards waiting for him. Esrang trailed them, a concerned expression on his face.

Just a damn walk in the sunshine, Zen thought. But it was the first time Stoner would be allowed into the unfenced public area outside.

A baby step, but an important one.

“Hey, Mark,” said Zen. “I was thinking we’d get outside a bit today and walk around. I’m feeling a bit frisky. What do you say?”

Stoner turned toward him but said nothing. His face was blank.

“Good,” said Zen, as enthusiastic as if Stoner had agreed. “Let’s go.”

He began wheeling toward the exit. Stoner and the nurse followed. Dr. Esrang stayed back.

“Did you catch the game last night?” Zen asked. “Nationals took the Mets with a homer in the bottom of the ninth.”

“Good.”

It wasn’t much of a response, but Zen felt vindicated. He rolled slowly down the corridor, pacing himself just ahead of his companion. Jason Black, his aide, was standing there waiting. Jason pushed open the door and held it as the small entourage exited the building. Zen took the lead, rolling along the cement path toward a small picnic area.

“Good view, huh?” Zen wheeled to a stop.

“Of garbage cans,” said Stoner.

It seemed like a non sequitur, just a random comment. Then Zen realized Stoner was looking at the back of a building some hundred yards away.

“Can you see them?” he asked. “How many?”

“Eighteen.”

“What about the flowers?” asked Zen, pointing to the nearby flower bed.

Stoner looked, then turned to him. “Yeah?”

“Bree likes flowers,” said Zen, searching for something to say. “Teri, too. My daughter. Teri. You have to meet her.”

Stoner didn’t reply.

“Good day for baseball,” said Zen.

Stoner remained silent. Zen tried to get a conversation going, talking about baseball and football, and even the cute nurse who passed on an adjacent path. Stoner had apparently decided he wasn’t going to talk anymore, and said nothing else. After they’d been out for about fifteen minutes, Dr. Esrang came over, looking at his watch.

“I’m afraid it’s time for Mr. Stoner’s physical therapy,” he said loudly. “If that’s OK, Senator.”

“It’s OK with me,” said Zen. “Assuming Mark feels like sweating a bit.”

Stoner turned toward the building and began walking. Zen wheeled himself forward to catch up with him.

“Maybe we’ll take in some baseball, huh?” he asked. “If you’re up to it.”

Stoner stopped. “Baseball would be good.”

“Even if it’s the Nats?” joked Zen.

Stoner stared at him.

“Their record is—well, they are in last place,” admitted Zen. “So, it may be a tough game to sit through.”

“Baseball is good,” said Stoner.

“T
hat went very well,” Esrang told Zen after Stoner had returned inside. “Very well.”

“You think so?”

“He talked to you. He said a lot more to you than he’s said to anyone.”

“He said three or four sentences. Then he just shut down.”

“It’s what he didn’t do that’s important,” said Esrang. “No rage, no attempt to run away. I think he’s slowly coming back to his old self.”

“Maybe.”

“I would say he might be able to go to a ball game, as long you’re under escort,” said Esrang.

Zen was surprised, but he wasn’t about to disagree. “I’ll set something up. You coming?”

“Absolutely . . . The Nationals will win, right?”

Zen laughed. He’d started to wheel into the building when he heard Jason Black clearing his throat behind him.

“Excuse me, Doc. We’ll find our own way out.” Zen turned back to his aide. “What’s up?”

“Steph needs to talk to you,” said Jason. “Like as soon as you can.”

Zen pulled his BlackBerry from his pocket. There were half a dozen text messages, including two from Stephanie Delanie—Steph—his chief legislative aide. The Senate Intelligence Committee had scheduled an emergency session for eleven o’clock—they’d just make it if they left right now.

“Grab the van, Jay,” said Zen. “I’ll meet you out front.”

“What’s up?”

“Just the usual Senate bs,” said Zen.

Chapter 7

Southern Sudan

T
wice Amara came to checkpoints manned by government soldiers, and twice he drove through them, slowing then gunning the engine, keeping his head down. He’d learned long ago that most times the soldiers wouldn’t risk trying to actually stop a pickup, knowing they faced the worst consequences if they succeeded in killing the driver: whatever band he belonged to would seek vengeance immediately. The Brothers were especially vicious, killing not only the soldiers but any relatives they could find. It was an effective policy.

Besides, the soldiers were more interested in bribes than checking for contraband. Their army salary, low to begin with, was routinely siphoned off by higher-ups, leaving the privates and corporals in the field to supplement it or starve. Amara knew this from his older cousin, who had been conscripted at twelve and gone on to a varied career in the service until dying in a shoot-out with the Brothers at sixteen. By then his cousin was a sergeant, battle-tested and the most cynical man Amara knew, a hollow-eyed killer who hated the army and admired the Brothers, though eventually they would be the death of him. He had urged Amara to avoid the army, and warned him twice when bands were coming to “recruit” boys from his village—“recruit” being the government word for kidnap.

His cousin’s influence had led him to the Brothers. Amara lacked the deep religious conviction many of the Brothers and especially their leaders held. He joined for survival, and during his first action against a rival group, found he liked the adventure. His intelligence had been recognized and he was sent to a number of schools, not just for fighting, but for math and languages as well.

He liked math, geometry especially. His teachers told how it had been invented by followers of the one true God as a method of appreciating God’s handiwork in the world. To Amara, the beauty was in the interlocking theorems and proofs, the way one formula fed to another and then another, lines and angles connecting in a grid work that explained the entire world. He sensed that computer language held some of the same attractions, and his one regret in killing Li Han was that the Asian had not taught him more about how it worked before he died.

Amara’s promise was so great that he had won the ultimate prize: an education in America. Handed documents, he was sent to a U.S. college in the Midwest to study engineering. He was in well over his head, simply unprepared for the culture shock of the Western country. He was not a failure—with effort and struggle he had managed C’s in most of his classes, after dropping those he knew he would fail. But within two years the Brothers recalled him, saying they had other jobs. Someday, he told himself, he would return, only this time better prepared.

The black finger of an oil-drilling rig poked over the horizon, telling Amara he was nearing his destination. He slowed, scanning both sides of the road. Here the checkpoints had to be taken more seriously; they would be manned by the Brothers rather than soldiers, and anyone who didn’t stop would be targeted by an RPG.

He found the turnoff to the hills, then lowered his speed to a crawl as he went up the twisted road. Moving too fast was an invitation to be shot: the guards had standing orders to fire on anything suspicious, and they were far more likely to be praised for caution than scolded for killing a Brother who had imprudently alarmed them.

Amara spotted a man moving by the side of the trail. He slowed to a stop, and shouted,
“As-Salamu Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu.”

The shadow moved toward him. Two others appeared on the other side of the trail. Then two more behind him. Amara was surrounded by sentries, all of them four or five years younger than himself. They were jumpy and nervous; he put both his hands on the open window of the car, trying with his body language to put them at ease.

“I am Amara of Yujst,” he said in Arabic, naming the town he had taken as his battle name. “I have completed my mission.”

“What mission was that?” snapped the tall man he’d first seen. He was not necessarily the oldest of the group—he had only the outlines of a beard—but he was clearly in charge.

“The mission that I have been appointed. It is of no concern to you.”

“You will tell me or you will not pass.”

“Are you ready for Paradise, Brother?” said Amara.

The question caught the tall one by surprise, and he was silent for a moment.

“One of you will ride with me,” Amara continued. “You will come into camp. The rest will stay here and guard the pass.”

“What gives you the right to make orders?” said the tall one, finding his voice.

“I told you who I am, and why I am here. I need nothing else.”

“Two of us will come,” said the tall one, trying to save face with the others.

Amara might have challenged this, but decided he didn’t want to waste time. “Move, then.”

The tall one got into the cab; another man climbed into the truck bed, squatting on the tarp. They drove through two more switchbacks, watched by guards crouching near the rocks. As Amara turned the corner of the last curve, he spotted a small fire flickering in a barrel ahead. Men were gathered around it, warming themselves. The stripped shell of a bus stood behind them, crossway across the path. Amara slowed even further, easing toward the roadblock in an almost dead crawl.

The man in the back of the truck yelled at the sentries near the fire, telling them to move quickly because an important Brother had arrived on a mission. Even so, they moved in slow motion over to the bus. The vehicle had been stripped of its engine and much of its interior, its only function now to slow a determined enemy. The men put their shoulders and backs to the front and pushed, working the bus backward into a slot in the rocks. They held it there as Amara went past, then slowly eased it back in place.

Amara pulled the truck to the side of a small parking area just inside the perimeter. Vehicles were not allowed any farther; the way was blocked by large boulders, protection against vehicle bombs. He took the laptop from beneath the seat and got out of the truck.

“You will guard the contents below the canvas with your life,” he told the two men who’d accompanied him. “If they are even touched, you will be hanged, then fed to the jackals.”

Even the tall sentry had no answer for that.

Amara turned and held his hands out.

“You will search me, then take me to Brother Assad,” he told the approaching guards. “And be quick.”

Chapter 8

Duka

L
ess than three minutes after Melissa ran back inside the clinic, bullets crashed through the windows. By then she and Bloom had barricaded themselves inside one of the examining rooms with the patients who’d been inside.

Melissa hunkered down behind the desk they’d pushed against the door as a truck drove past outside. There were shouts and a fresh hail of bullets. She reached down and rolled up her pant leg, retrieving her 9mm Glock from its holster.

“That’s not going to do much,” said Bloom, a few feet away. Two patients, a mother and four-year-old daughter, were huddled next to her. The other patients, both teenage women, both pregnant, were at the far end of the room, crouched down behind the overturned examining table.

“It’s better than nothing,” said Melissa.

She took out her sat phone, forgotten in the rush for cover. There were two missed calls. Before she could page into the directory, the phone rang. She answered quickly.

“What the hell are you doing in that building?” demanded Danny. “Why wasn’t your phone on?”

“It was on,” she told him. “The volume on the ringer was down. I couldn’t hear.”

A round of bullets blew through the building. Two or three whipped overhead. One of the women screamed. Another was crying.

“What’s your situation?” asked Danny.

“We have four patients in here, three women and a child. What’s going on outside?”

“They’re shooting up the town,” said Danny. “Where in the building are you? I can’t get a good read.”

“The back examining room.”

“Stay there. One of the trucks is coming back.”

There was fresh gunfire at front. This time, though, none of the bullets was directed at the clinic. The Sudan First gunmen were driving through the area, firing indiscriminately.

“All right,” said Danny. “They’re moving south. Are you all right?”

“So far.”

“We’re coming for you. Is there a basement?”

“No.” She’d already decided this was the safest room in the building.

“Don’t do anything until you hear my voice.”

“Sure,” she told him.

D
anny closed the connection.

“She’s nothing but trouble,” said Nuri. “I told you. And this Bloom. If she’s really a washed out MI6 agent—”

“Not now, Nuri,” snapped Danny. “Boston, Flash, you’re with me.”

Danny left the tent, trying to control his anger as he strode toward the Mercedes. The truth was, Nuri was right—even if he should’ve kept his mouth shut about it.

Boston and Flash hustled behind him, humping two ammo-laden rucks apiece. Beside their SCAR assault rifles, Boston had an M-48 squad-level machine gun.

They piled into the car. Danny started the engine and was about to pull away when Nuri grabbed the back door.

“I thought you were staying,” Danny said.

“We better hurry—there are two dozen men coming by foot from the Sudan First camp.”