The Exile (35 page)

“I do recall the stories in the press,” Kessler said.

“They followed reports that you'd knocked out a small convoy the month before with Hermes four-fifty drones out of Palmachim Air Base, though a little chirping birdie told me you'd moved them to Navatim. My recollection of the February story is that you'd made several passes and used the drones to assess the success of each one—”

“Brynn?”

“Yes?”

“Did that birdie happen to be wearing a yarmulke?”

A sober laugh. “Avi, you're moments from receiving a classified intelligence packet via e-mail. It will tell you about a strike force equipped with two convoys of tanks and support helicopters that is preparing to invade or possibly destroy the northern oil pipeline and refineries. We do not have real-time intel about their current position, but we know they are close to their staging ground and that the siege is imminent.”

Kessler gripped the phone more tightly in his hand. “Who's behind this?”

“An alliance of rebels led by Simon Nusairi,” Fitzgerald said. “I suspect your Mossad has exhaustive dossiers on him, but we'll share all our own information.”

“It doesn't sound like he has your backing.”

“He absolutely does not,” Fitzgerald said. “This attack must be stopped. But given the immediacy of the situation, the United States does not have sufficient resources in place, or time to move those resources to do so. And we are asking a favor of your nation that, if granted, will be something I promise you will not regret.”

Kessler inhaled. “You want us to launch a mission on
behalf
of Omar al-Bashir?”

“It isn't that simple. We are cooperating with Bashir to defuse a situation with dangerous global ramifications. Should you opt to assist us, he will lift the no-fly zone over certain sections of his country to allow your aircraft total operational latitude.” She paused for a good ten seconds. “I will be up front with you, Avi. There may be diplomatic compromises forthcoming between my government and the Sudanese concerning Bashir's status. But you have my assurance we will in no way remain passive if his regime commits further acts of blatant ethnic violence inside its borders…or attempts any aggression beyond them.”

Kessler thought he'd taken another breath, but wasn't sure, and consciously told himself to do it. Then he tapped his computer out of its idle mode, opened his e-mail program, and noted the new message in the queue.

“I see your packet's arrived,” he said.

“Read it and get back to me,” Fitzgerald said. “Don't worry about another round of phone tag, either…. I'll be standing by for your call.”

 

It was shortly before sunset when they took the bridge over the Gash to Sikka Hadiid, having left the east side of town and gone around and past the souq in a motley procession of vehicles. Kealey, Mackenzie, and Abby kept their Cherokee behind Tariq, who was in a battered Outback with several of his fighters. The rest of their group—its head count had grown to two dozen men as they filtered into the mountain camp throughout the day—rode in a dusty Jeep Wrangler, a Volkswagen hatchback, a Hyundai wagon, and an aging Ford sedan.

On the west bank of the river the Hyundai split off from the line and pulled under the trees outside a cultivated patch of farmland. Behind the wheel of the Cherokee, Mackenzie glanced briefly in the rearview mirror.

“Wish we had more men to cover that area,” he said.

Kealey looked at him. Back in the mountains, Mackenzie had walked from camp with him and made good on his promise to expand on his familiarity with Kassala and the Sikka Hadiid. For forty years, he'd explained, fugitives from persecution during the endless civil wars in Eritrea and Ethiopia had crossed the border plateau into Sudan, many entering through treacherous passes in the Taka range. On his assumption of power, Omar al-Bashir had attempted to crack down on the flow of refugees, since many had ancestral ties to antigovernment factions within Kassala's Beja and Rashaida clans.

“Bashir's problem was that he had his hands full with the secessionists in the south and couldn't commit enough forces to keep a tight fist on this area,” Mackenzie had said. “What you should know is that Mirghani hasn't just gotten more tolerance than other opponents because he's from the north and not an avowed separatist. It's racial…. He's Arabic, and the divisions in this country are really between Arabic and black Muslims.”

“Like the refugees that came through the mountains,” Kealey had said.

Mackenzie had nodded. “It wasn't so far back historically that the Arabs were making slave raids on the south. And there hasn't been much progress in the way of attitude among the people who rule this country,” he said. “What you need to know is that the majority of refugees are black, and some are aligned with the opposition in Darfur. Over the past decade we—the Agency—did some things to assist their entering the country. That included helping them dig a tunnel between the west side of the river and some of those huts in Sikka Hadiid. They'd take temporary shelter there and get out of the city. For them it was a lifesaver while their own countrymen were burning down their villages. For us it was building another segment of the population that was hostile to Bashir…completely win-win.”

Kealey had taken a long moment to digest all that, standing in the hot sun beating down on the craggy slope. “We're going to have to keep the tunnel's entrance covered tonight,” he'd said. “In case Nusairi and White try using it to make a getaway.”

“Yup.”

“That means you're going to have to let Tariq know about it.”

“If he doesn't already. There isn't much that gets past Mirghani or his headmen.”

“That isn't my point,” Kealey said. “It's one thing for them to be aware the tunnels exist. Another to find out the Agency had a role in digging them. Or that it chose to support a particular group—ethnic, political, whatever—over theirs.”

Mackenzie had shrugged his shoulders. “Them's the breaks,” he'd said. “This is a complicated world. Now we need them, and they need us. A whole new codependency is born. We can't worry about Tariq feeling slighted.”

All of which was true, Kealey thought now as they rolled by the decayed, sun-bleached railway station with its merging of Arabian and British architecture—the simple curve of the entry arch overlooked by Victorian gables with elaborate moldings and the remnants of a high clock tower, its dial and workings long ago removed by thieves or vandals.

With the station and its splintered, torn-up tracks at their rear, they doused their headlamps in the deepening night, then passed the buildings that had housed the British officials and finally saw the long rows of workers' huts ahead of them in the dimness.

“We'll be there in a couple minutes,” Mackenzie said to his passengers. “Better get ready.”

Kealey took three sets of thermal night vision goggles on headsets from a compartment under the dash, passed one back to Abby, and put the other between himself and Mackenzie. A moment later he heard Abby palm a 30-round clip into her Sig 552 5.56mm assault rifle and reached for the 552 in his seat well, setting it across his lap. Seth Holland's knee-jerk admonition to treat the weapons with care back at the embassy had been almost the same as when he'd handed Kealey his Glock 9mm pistol before they headed out to Bahri.

Under very different circumstances, the recollection might have struck Kealey as humorous. But he found nothing remotely amusing about what was about to go down tonight, just as he could find nothing to like about the rapidly shifting political expedients and allegiances around him. On the other hand, he thought, it was worth reminding himself that his own objective was neither complicated nor ambiguous.

He wanted Simon Nusairi; it really couldn't have been simpler, or more serious, than that.

 

“The commander is in the
beyt
there…the last in this line,” Tariq said, pointing. He had braked to a halt in front of the Cherokee, gotten out, and hastened over to speak with Mac through the driver's side window. “There are three or four of his men in the one next to it.”

Mackenzie nodded, gazed out into the night. He could see what appeared to be firelight in the windows. “No chance he could've left the lamps burning to trick us and snuck off while the cats were away?”

Tariq angled his head slightly toward one of the tall, vacant officers' buildings behind them. “My cats have had their eyes on him from the rooftops,” he said. “He and the American remain within.”

Kealey looked across the seat at Tariq. “Okay,” he said. “Let's move in.”

Tariq nodded and hurriedly returned to the Outback.

 

The plan was to hit hard and fast, using the element of surprise to their best advantage, and to keep their targets from scattering into the night.

Tariq sped up to the farthest hut, the one occupied by Nusairi and White, jolting to a halt directly behind it. His wheels spinning up dirt and pebbles, Mackenzie simultaneously sheered up in front so no one could rabbit through the entrance, the Cherokee's doors flying open even as it stopped, Kealey and Abby springing from inside with their night vision goggles down over their eyes, Mackenzie following an instant later.

Behind them, Tariq's fighters in the Wrangler and Volkswagen stuck to the same execution, the Wrangler shooting around back of the second hut, the VW screaming up to its front door, its occupants spilling from both vehicles. The Hyundai wagon took up a rear position, its men doubling as lookouts and backups in case anyone managed to escape from either of the two huts.

Semiautomatic gunfire tore from inside the huts at once, the staccato bursts shattering their windowpanes amid explosive sprays of glass. Kealey rushed over to the first hut in a crouch, flattened his back against it to one side of a broken window, peered inside. And then he saw them in shades of gray through the lenses of his NVGs—Cullen White and Simon Nusairi. White held what appeared to be a Kalashnikov in his hands and had ducked behind a table with an oil lamp on it. Nusairi was scrambling through a door on the far side of the room, an identical weapon in his fist spitting bullets ahead of his path.

Kealey pivoted on the ball of his foot and returned fire, the Sig 552 quivering in his hand. Then he went flat alongside the window again. He heard guns answering Nusairi's volley out back—Tariq and his men. Abby, meanwhile, had shuffled up next to him even as Mackenzie backed against the opposite side of the window frame and triggered a salvo of his own into the hut.

A dozen yards away the second hut was also caught in a storm of semiauto fire, the salvos blowing out its windows, bullets pecking splinters from its wooden door. Kealey heard an extended peal from one of the guns inside the hut and then saw one of Tariq's fighters go down to the ground with a howl of pain, clutching his stomach as he curled into a semifetal position.

He zoned in on his goal, looked across at MacKenzie and Abby.

“
Cover me!
” he called, motioning toward the door.

A brisk nod from Mackenzie, then Abby. Mackenzie edged from the window to the door along the outer wall of the house, stayed there to the right of the entrance. Abby, head tucked low, raced around the Cherokee, using it as a shield as she put herself to the left of the door.

Kealey looked over at Mackenzie, held up three fingers, ticked off a visual countdown.
Three, two, one…

And then Mackenzie backed up a step, directed his fire at the lock plate, almost tearing it free of the door itself. He released the AK's trigger, sent the door crashing inward with a high leg kick to the twisted remnants of the flimsy metal plate, and poured more rounds into the hut, Abby joining him now with a rippling burst from her rifle.

“
Now!
” Kealey shouted, and they momentarily ceased fire as he went in low, the stock of his weapon against his arm, his fist around the grip, finger squeezing the trigger.

Bullets streamed from his gun into the hut as he laid out a side-to-side firing pattern, sweeping the room, his eyes seeking out White through the goggles.

He was still kneeling behind the table, having shuffled behind a chair. Incredibly, the oil lamp on the tabletop remained unbroken, throwing its pallid orange light around the room. Not wanting to be a stationary target, Kealey dove to one side, swung the rifle in White's direction, prepared to fire—and suddenly the chair was thrown across the room at him, flying through the air, nearly hitting him smack in the chest. He managed to avoid it on reflex and had some vague, marginal awareness of it hitting the wall directly behind where he'd stood as he arced the snout of his gun toward the oil lamp and blew it to bits and pieces.

Oil spilled from the disintegrated lamp onto the table and chairs, igniting instantly, bathing them in fire. Burning puddles formed on the floor. White was caught in a shower of burning droplets, snaps of flame erupting on his sleeves and trousers. As he stood, trying to slap them out with his hands, Kealey ran across the room and tackled him across the waist, the momentum of his lunge sending both men down amid the spreading blaze.

His clothes on fire, White hit the floor on his back, grunting out an expulsion of breath, Kealey landing atop him, his weapon over his shoulder on its strap. He saw White's hand come chopping up at his throat, blocked it with a muscular forearm, and then brought his elbow down on White's neck and punched him squarely in the middle of his face. Blood gushing from his broken nose, White somehow wrapped his fingers around Kealey's throat, his thumbs pressing up under his chin even as his shirt and trousers continued burning.

Kealey hit him again in the face, felt his fingers loosen around his windpipe, and tore them free. Suddenly, then, a gun muzzle came down against White's temple, pushing it sideways.

“Don't move, fucker!”
Mackenzie, his legs planted wide, stood just to one side of the two men, the bore of his rifle steady against White's head. “I ought to goddamn let you lay here and burn!”