On Target

by Mark Greaney

  But stage two?

  Stage two was a goddamned masterpiece.

  As the men neared the rear of the vehicle there was another loud bang, then the demonic high-pitched scream of a missile launch. The acetylene tank rocketed out of the back, a jet of fire behind it. Almost faster than the eye could pick up its image it smashed in a downward angle through the windshield of truck four and buried itself into the cargo space of the rear vehicle.

  The big four-ton truck shuddered on its chassis.

  Court spun back towards Walsh, tackled her to the ground once again.

  The truck exploded in a flash of fire, eardrums were assaulted with a deafening thunder, brains were slammed around inside skulls with a concussion like a brickbat to the temple. Court felt the flame envelop his body and then dissipate in an instant. The quick burn sucked the oxygen from the air and starved his lungs. He gasped and grunted, inhaled nothing until new air moved in and he could catch a fresh breath.

  He fought the pain in his chest and the daze in his head, looked up to see that the concussive battering had rendered one Janja dead instantly, while three more were knocked off their horses and stunned. One more fighter, one of the men who had just moved between vehicles three and four, simply ceased to exist. Only his frightened horse running off into the distance gave any proof that he was ever there. Two more Arabs were burned and wounded by projectiles fired out of the exploding vehicle.

  Six seconds after the blast, flaming scraps of debris were still falling and scattering all around them. Horses and camels alike were spooked; they danced and sprinted and wobbled on shaky legs.

  Every single one of the SI crew were dazed at least and concussed at worst, but they’d all been on the ground and therefore were somewhat less affected by the blast. Gentry and Walsh made out the best of everyone because he’d covered both his ears with his upper arms and hers with his hands. Still, he staggered while rising to his knees. He glanced at truck four, looked past men staggering around like drunkards. Its cab was bent and blackened and twisted but intact, its wheels and chassis and gas tanks and flatbed were still in place, but the sides and roof of the cargo container were simply gone, the gas bladders contained there were up in smoke, the other goods that had been housed in the cargo space now all over the road and burning, or even still floating through the air. Court turned now, still a bit unsteady, took a full, awkward step towards the commander, who had somehow managed to remain in the saddle on his monstrous camel. The camel and one other horse were the only animals not to scatter after the detonation. The Janjaweed leader lifted his wire-stocked Kalashnikov up towards Gentry. The white man was the only person from the convoy on his feet now, but the commander himself was slow and disoriented. He just got his muzzle up when Court knocked it to the side with his open left hand. In his right hand Gentry retrieved the instrument he’d kept hidden under his shirt in the small of his back.

  It was the hammer-hatchet combo, wielded to the sharp side, and Gentry windmilled it down from over his head with all the strength in his shoulder and back, sank the hatchet’s blade squarely into the kneecap of the camel-mounted Janjaweed commander.

  There was no scream from the man, but his knee lurched up, and he grabbed at it in agony. The hatchet remained embedded in the bone of the kneecap and deep into the femur, and the handle pulled free from Court’s grip. The man slid off the saddle on the opposite side of his attacker, fell the six feet or so backwards, slamming his neck and back into the dusty earth, his rifle tumbling back with him.

  Court turned away from the now riderless camel and spun towards Ellen Walsh, who was scrambling away from the men and the trucks on her hands and knees. From behind him he heard full automatic fire from a Kalashnikov. Even though he’d covered his ears before the blast of the truck, the gunfire sounded tinny and distant. His eyes next went to the rear vehicle. Fires burned all around it from the massive detonation. He knew the gas tanks could go up at any time, they all were well within the blast radius, and every living thing could be killed if they were this close when it detonated and the chassis and drive train turned to a thousand supersonic slugs of hot metal.

  Another burst of AK fire behind him encouraged Gentry to find himself his own weapon. The Janja commander’s AK would be lying on the other side of the camel. Court began turning around to go after it, but then something huge slammed into his back, as if he had been hit by a bus at speed. He crumpled forward with an incredible weight on him from behind. Gentry fell to the ground face-first with a grunt, his arms askew. Instantly he knew he was pinned down on the hard earth by something massive and unyielding.

  Looking back over his shoulder he saw the gargantuan camel lying on top of him, covering him from his waist down. The hairy beast’s head had flopped around in its death throes and ended up facing Court: vacant eyes with oddly long lashes, flared teeth, and a droopy wet tongue hanging out. The animal had been felled with an assault rifle, and after only a second or two of scratching into the dirt with his fingers and hands did Gentry realize there was no way he would be able to get out from under nearly fifteen hundred pounds of dead weight by himself.

  He reached behind his back, tried to get hold of anything fastened to the saddle of the camel that could help him unpin his legs or, failing that, at least something that would help him fight from where he lay.

  But there was nothing within his awkward reach.

  And the fight continued around him. Five feet from his face an SI driver clambered to his knees, blood trickling down his ears from the concussion of Gentry’s overcooked car bomb. Behind him other men, both Speranza Internazionale and Janjaweed, were all moving in different directions and at different speeds, each man at a unique point in the timeline of recovery from the brutal shock wave. A Janja, also dazed by the explosion, tried and failed to climb back up on his camel. The beast was having none of it, backing up and away from the Arab, who finally gave up. Instead he yanked the rocket-propelled grenade launcher free of the scabbard on the camel’s side. He spun around. Court watched but was helpless to do anything as the man then raised the weapon. He seemed uncertain of a target for a long time. Gentry knew he was surely close enough to his intended victims, the men in the dirt on the side of the road, that he would no doubt blow himself up in trying to destroy them. But the man was out of it, disoriented. He pointed the RPG and pulled the trigger, seeming to forget that the tube on his shoulder possessed an external hammer that must be cocked for the weapon to fire. He looked the launcher over. Court watched him, legs pinned down by the fifteen-hundred-pound carcass, and soon enough the Janja seemed to figure out his mistake. He charged the weapon and resighted it on the crowd of staggering men.

  A burst of rifle fire from the other side of the camel forced Court’s head down into his neck like a turtle escaping to the shelter of his shell. The Janjaweed with the rocket launcher stumbled backwards, fired his weapon into the air, the back blast into the dust and sand of the Saheli track enveloped the man as he fell dead.

  The gray smoke from the rocket-propelled grenade shot upwards into the blue sky but angled off harmlessly towards the south.

  Court looked back over his shoulder again, just as young Bishara vaulted the dead camel, ducked down on Court’s side to cover himself, a smoking AK-47 in his hands.

  A huge white grin on his face greeted Court.

  “Man, you blew up that truck, American!” He rose and fired a short burst over the camel’s brown stomach at a target Gentry could not see, pinned as he was facedown in the dirt. The return fire was sporadic, but Gentry saw dust kick up between his position and the trucks in the road. Rasid, the SI driver from Court’s truck, pulled the AK from the camel of the dead RPG man and returned fire with no real skill for doing so. He held the AK out in front of him, shut his eyes as he pulled the trigger, and the gun leapt all around as 7.62-millimeter bullets snapped through the air just above Gentry’s head. Bishara ducked down from this new threat, turned, and screamed at the older man. Court hoped he was telling
him to watch where he pointed his fucking gun.

  “You gonna fight, American?” Bishara asked Court, still smiling. He seemed to be enjoying this chance to kill the Janjaweed murderers who had destroyed much of his homeland under orders from President Abboud.

  “I’m stuck,” replied Court, still trying to pull himself free. He did not feel pain in his legs, only intense pressure, and he prayed he wouldn’t find anything broken when he finally did get extricated from under the camel.

  Bishara fired another burst over the dead animal. Its long, fat body provided excellent cover, but Court knew the Janjaweed horsemen on the other side could flank his and Bishara’s position at any moment.

  The young Zaghawa tribesman slung the AK around his neck, took Gentry by both arms, and, while still crouched low behind the camel, pulled with all his might. Court did not budge. One of the other SI men crawled over and shared duty with Bishara, each taking an arm, and this time Court felt his body becoming unwedged. Gentry tried to dig his knees into the dirt to help pry him out from the punishing weight of the massive animal carcass above him. More AK bursts from the Janjaweed by truck one sent both Sudanese men to the dirt next to Gentry, but they scrambled back up after a moment for another heave of the sweaty white man pinned under the camel. Their third try was successful; Court felt his legs and then his feet break free. They tingled and ached, but he could move them. Nothing was obviously broken, so he kept his head down low and clambered to his knees.

  Gentry looked up to see the driver who had pulled him free keeping his own head low to the ground, but Bishara was in a half crouch, pulling his Kalashnikov back up to the firing position, his eyes fixed on a threat on the other side of the camel and a determined look on his face.

  A burst of automatic fire from behind Court and, just like that, young Bishara spun around, cried out in surprise, and crumpled to the dirt, dead in an instant.

  But in the next instant Court yanked the bloody, dirt-covered AK off of the hard packed dirt road and spun around on his knees. He peered over the camel, and saw six Janjaweed fleeing on horseback. They were crossing behind truck one in the distance, leaving his sight line. He managed to fire one aimed round, striking the low back of the last horseman. The Janja man tumbled out of his saddle and into the sand.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Men moaned and cried out. Vehicles and debris smoked and burned. The smell of cordite, diesel fuel, and charred paper, rubber, and plastic filled the hot air. Court looked for Ellen Walsh among the heaps of humanity lying in lumps around him. Some of the piles were moving, injured; others were still, dead. He finally saw her through the billowing smoke and hanging dust. She was on her feet, fifty yards away, heading towards the distant body of Mario Bianchi at the foot of a fattrunked baobab tree. She appeared unhurt. Next he looked down at Bishara. His dead body lay in a ball, like a pile of dirty shop rags ready for the washing machine, blood rivulets running in the dry earth around him. He’d been dead under a minute, and already flies swarmed his neck wound, buzzed around him, crazed by the boon of fresh wet blood, a bonanza for them to suck to their filthy hearts’ content.

  Another SI man was dead, facedown, a few yards away. The remaining six had survived, though a couple of them bled from the ears thanks to Court’s truck bomb. They’d have some degree of hearing issues for the rest of their lives, he guessed, but at least they had lives. A couple more had bloody arms or legs, either shrapnel thanks to Gentry or bullet or rifle-butt injuries thanks to the Janjaweed. Horses and the one camel still alive milled about. They’d scattered no more than fifty yards from the trucks; these animals were well accustomed to gunfire and explosions, to mayhem that would make uninitiated creatures run in panic until they dropped from exhaustion or dehydration. Fires still burned all over the road, and truck four was totally engulfed in flames now. Its tank would explode in moments.

  What a fucking mess.

  Court grabbed the closest man. “Move the first two trucks. Get everyone and all the animals up the road. The gas tank is going to blow in the last truck. It will probably set truck three off as well.”

  A minute later Court arrived behind Ellen Walsh. She knelt by the body of the Italian relief worker, lying alone in the dirt a hundred meters from the road. His clothes were torn, his face shredded by hard earth and harder stone. The thick rope was still wrapped around his neck.

  Walsh cried in shallow sobs.

  “You hurt?” Gentry asked. He was not going to be gentle with this woman. If she had followed his instructions, none of this would have happened.

  “I’m fine,” she said, just noticing the American. “But Mario is dead.”

  “Fuck him,” Court said, looking down at the unnaturally contorted body. “He brought this shit down on himself.”

  Ellen said nothing, just looked up at him with a mixture of shock and disdain.

  After a few seconds standing there, there was an incredibly loud boom. The gas tank of truck four ignited and exploded in a roar. Gentry felt the heat even at one hundred yards. The flame scorched the air; churning black smoke rose into the blue sky like a hot air balloon taking flight. Ellen just watched it alongside Court. After a moment of silence truck three went up in a ball of fire as well, an equally impressive sight.

  Ellen gasped. “Where are they going?” The surviving SI men had climbed into the two remaining trucks, ostensibly to pull them forward out of the blast radius. The first vehicle kept on moving up the road, a cloud of dust behind it as it accelerated into the distance. “Where are they going?” she cried out again.

  “Most likely to Dirra,” Court said. Truck two idled in the road. All the remaining men were inside. They looked like they were waiting for Ellen and Court, but Gentry imagined a heated argument ensuing right now inside that cab about whether or not to leave the kawagas behind to die in the sun. Court was neither surprised nor horrified by the thought of being left behind by the vehicle. He just began walking back to the road. “Calm down; everything is okay,” he said to her, but he was nowhere as certain as his strong voice portrayed.

  “Dammit,” Court knelt down beside Bishara a minute later. The gas explosion had singed his body and burned off most of his clothing. One more unnecessary assault on the young man who had helped him so much. Court hoped that the flies that had been feasting on Bishara’s mortal neck wound had been incinerated in the blast.

  “What?” asked Ellen.

  “He was one hell of a kid.”

  “You knew him for an hour,” she said. She wasn’t arguing with him; she truly just didn’t understand this sudden emotion for one man out of all who had just died, especially considering the way he had regarded Bianchi minutes before. She counted eight bodies lying in the dirt, not including the one Six knelt beside.

  “He saved us both. He was the most dialed-in son of a bitch I’ve had the honor of working with in a long time.”

  The one remaining truck lurched into gear and made a wide U-turn off the road, passing the white people in the dust. Ellen began running towards it, waving her arms frantically. It passed her by and raced back to the west.

  “No!” she screamed.

  Court surmised now that any argument inside the cab had not been whether or not to leave them; they were probably all in favor of that. It was whether they should head east to Dirra or west to Al Fashir. They had obviously decided on the latter.

  “What are we going to do?” Ellen cried out to Gentry. He walked up the road a few meters, dropped to his knees, began picking over the body of the dead Janjaweed commander. He pulled a small bladder of water on a chain and looped it over his back. He dug a full mag for a Kalashnikov out of a black canvas chest rig. He lifted up an ornate knife in a scabbard, drew it to inspect the blade, and then pushed it back into its scabbard and dropped it back on the dead man.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked again, sobbing this time, as she watched him use his boot to flip the dead SI driver onto his back. He knelt down and pulled sunglasses out of the breast pocket o
f the man’s bloody shirt. He slipped them over his eyes and looked at the animals milling about.

  “Can you ride a horse?”

  “I . . . I guess so. But how far?”

  He glanced at his watch. There was a GPS on it, but it wasn’t working at the moment. Perfect. He guessed. “Twenty-five to thirty miles.” Now he pulled a second AK out of the dirt. He folded the wire stock underneath the rifle, significantly shortening its length. “Thirty miles is doable,” he declared. He hung the gun off his shoulder and down his back, the muzzle facing down. He poked another Janja fighter with his boot, looking for something useful to scavenge. The man groaned. He was injured but alive. “Unless we run into more of these fuckers.”

  She just stood there while he worked. “If the radio in one of these trucks is still intact, we can call for help.”

  “Yeah.” Court looked up at her. “That worked so well the last time, why the fuck not do it again?” He softened, but only a little. “How do you think these Janjas knew we were in this convoy? The NSS was listening in. This wasn’t random. They sent the Janjaweed out here to kill us. Ordered them to butcher everyone so that it wouldn’t look like a government-sanctioned assassination. Trust me, we’re better off not broadcasting. With a little luck they’ll think we’re dead. When those trucks get to civilization, you can be damn sure the SI employees won’t admit to knowingly leaving us out here alive. We’re dead to the world, and we can use that to our advantage.”

  Now Gentry kneeled over another wounded Janjaweed horseman. The Arab was flat on his back, breathing shallowly in soft wheezes. Court pulled a water flask from around his neck, a long knife from his belt. He inspected the weapon. This blade passed muster, and he took the belt and the scabbard and the knife and strapped it all to his own body.

  “What about them?” Ellen asked as Court returned to his feet.

  “What about who?”

  “Those two men. They are injured.”