Fly by Night

by Ward Larsen

  “There is nothing more to it,” Jibril said. “You need only the coordinates and a precise time. With that, the rest is fully programmed. Simplicity itself. But know that once the final command is sent, we will have no control. Everything is autonomous at that point.”

  Khoury nodded, satisfied.

  “Still … there is one thing I don’t understand,” Jibril said hesitantly.

  Khoury remained silent, inviting him to continue.

  “If our target is in Israel, why is the initial point so far to the south?”

  Khoury stood and backed away from the workstation. He clasped his hands behind his back and began a tight pattern of pacing. “It is time for you to know our target, Fadi. Indeed, it is only thanks to your work that we have this opportunity.” He looked intently at the engineer. “We have a chance to strike a blow as never before.”

  Jibril looked fittingly humble.

  Khoury lowered his voice. “We are going right to the top, Fadi. Our target is the Prime Minister of Israel.”

  Jibril nodded slowly, as if this only confirmed what he had long suspected.

  “If it is the will of Allah,” the imam added.

  Minutes later Jibril was alone, working on the guidance console in the DC-3. As he typed on the keyboard, he wished he had a connection to the Internet. This morning he had seen a newspaper, a local rant that was nothing more than a twenty-page editorial affair put together and issued by the government. There were, however, occasional reprints of articles from other papers in the region, straight blurbs of factual material that were permitted either by virtue of being innocuous, or because they supported the local view of world events. Jibril had read an article relating to the upcoming Arab summit in Egypt. At the end of the article was a single paragraph mentioning Israel. The government there was seeking to keep a low profile, apparently not wishing to overshadow their Arab neighbors’ attempt at peace. To that end, the Israeli prime minister was scheduled to leave tomorrow for talks in Washington, D.C., and later continue on a goodwill mission to the Far East.

  He would, according to the report, be abroad for the next ten days.

  Davis covered the twenty miles to the Al Qudayr Aid Station in fifteen minutes. The broiling sun was falling low, almost resting on the western horizon. When he arrived at the barren turnoff, the engine of the truck-slash-breakroom sounded like it had thrown a rod. He skidded to a stop outside the little city of tents, white smoke spewing from under the hood. Davis threw open the door, left it that way, and ran to the tents. He spotted a gathering in one corner, a half dozen people in mismatched scrubs circled around a cot. Davis slowed as he closed in.

  He recognized Antonelli, standing in the group with her back to him. He also recognized the patient on the cot. It was the kid who had been with Antonelli the first time he’d seen her. He was beaten to hell, the right side of his face a meaty mess, his hair matted with blood. There was a wicked slash near one temple with fresh stitches. His right arm was in a sling and his eyes were closed, but he seemed to be breathing well enough as a nurse held a wet cloth to his forehead.

  When Davis approached, everyone turned to look. Antonelli was the last, and when she turned he got a look at her face. There was a big welt on one cheek and blood under her nose. Her hair was bunched in a tangle on one side, like somebody had taken a handful to get a better grip.

  Antonelli didn’t need to say anything.

  Davis looked at the young man on the bed. “Will he be okay?” he asked.

  She cocked her head. “By the grace of God, yes. I think so.”

  He looked her in the eyes and saw a resolute sadness, deep and permeating. But there was also determination, the same tenacity that had been there yesterday. The same tenacity that would be there tomorrow and the next day and fifty years from now.

  Davis knew all too well what was brewing inside him, sensations derived from a distinct physiological response. Adrenaline, increased pulse rate, liberation of nutrients—all the things that kicked in as the body prepared itself for battle. When flight was no longer an option. It was a surge Davis usually controlled. When somebody gave him a cheap shot on the rugby pitch or cut him off on the freeway. Those things he could manage. But right now the impulse was something Davis didn’t want to suppress. He wanted only one thing. One shred of information.

  He looked straight at the doctor, and asked. “Was it the same guys?”

  She gave him a tentative look, knowing the answer but not sure whether to give it. She looked at the medical professionals around the bed, one by one, as if taking some kind of secret ballot. Finally, Antonelli nodded.

  “Yes, the very same.”

  “You said they had a warehouse?”

  She nodded. “A mile north of the airport on the main road.”

  That was all he needed. Davis turned on a heel and headed for his smoking truck.

  By the time he hit the main road, the engine was running rough. But it was running. Davis turned off the Mack truck air conditioner to ease the load on the V-8, made five miles, then ten. The airport slid by his right window. Davis kept going, the truck’s headlights drilling into a new black night. One kilometer north, just as Antonelli had said, he found what he was looking for. Davis pulled over to the shoulder, left the engine running. Darkness had arrived in full, so he watched through a cloud of steam, the truck’s high beams playing the mist to create a surreal scene.

  Jammer Davis was nobody’s savior, no keeper of right or honor. But certain things crossed his line. Things like hitting women and beating up kids. It might have been because Davis had a daughter of his own. Somewhere, Regina Antonelli had a father, and Davis understood how he’d feel right know if he knew what had happened. So there was no quandary. No internal strife or gnashing through moral dilemmas. Davis knew what had to be done. The only question was how, the cold execution of a tactical decision matrix like he’d done a hundred times in his military career.

  Rage is not necessarily a bad thing. The blind variety can get you killed, but properly focused and trained with precision, it can be quite effective. Right now, Jammer Davis was focused. His breathing was slow and rhythmic, his muscles relaxed as he stared through the windshield and counted.

  There were five.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Davis looked up and down the road to Khartoum. He could see for miles in either direction, and there wasn’t another set of headlights in sight. The road was probably never busy. A surge of traffic now and again, an hour before and thirty minutes after any of the ten or twelve daily flights was processed. But at this hour on a Friday evening, he was completely alone. As were the men he was watching.

  Davis had parked next to a guard station, a shack with twin railroad-type crossing gates that were both pointed straight up. The gates looked like they hadn’t moved in years. The barriers were here, Davis supposed, so the military could govern access to the airport in the event of a crisis. But today the control point was unmanned because there was no crisis. Hadn’t been one yesterday. Doubtful there would be one tomorrow. Which led to the larger problem—a contingent of armed men with nothing to do. In a disciplined fighting force, not an issue. Here it was trouble.

  Their modest compound was two hundred yards off the main road, central on a patch of desert where the scrub had been bulldozed away to leave a bare scar on the earth. The main structure was well lit, an office no bigger than a double-wide trailer. This was fronted by a heavy canvas awning that formed a makeshift patio, thirty feet of shade for lounging and recreating—where the soldiers were now. Next to this headquarters complex was a rectangular building with corrugated metal sides and a flat roof. A warehouse, apparently, because parked in front was a mid-size truck, the same vehicle he’d seen drive away from the airport two days ago with a load of Regina Antonelli’s supplies. Presently, the cargo bed was covered by a tarp, and underneath a load jutted up at points along the length like so many lumps in a python.

  Davis counted one last time, got the same a
nswer. Still five men under the awning. He looked close, but saw no evidence of soldiers in any of the other buildings. At this time of night, any more than five would be overkill for a remote outpost like this. One man was leaning against a pole that held up the awning. The other four soldiers—if you could call them that—sat playing cards. Having served in the military, Davis knew all about guard duty. He knew that playing cards was a good way to cut the boredom. Just like personal phone calls or watching a game on TV. All soldiers did that. But never the entire detail at the same time. That was dumb, even dangerous. It told Davis that this unit wasn’t expecting enemy action any time soon. Told him there was no chance of a snap inspection from headquarters.

  He watched the loner stab a needle into his arm and shoot up—something. The man went limp, to the point that Davis thought somebody ought to lash him to the pole. His buddies didn’t seem to notice. They were the other extreme, raucous and lively.

  He hadn’t drawn their attention yet, so Davis kept studying. The men at the table were sitting on plastic chairs, white and cheap, the kind you bought at Wal-Mart for $4.99 and could stack in a nest on your porch when you weren’t using them. He spotted four guns, probably AKs, all leaning on one another, barrels up and butts in the sand. They made a neat little tree, all right there in one place. If there were any other weapons, Davis didn’t see them. Everything else under the tarp fell in the category of junk. A jerry can marked PETROL, a bicycle leaning on a crate, its front wheel removed and lying on the ground. To one side, some construction equipment—a shovel, a few bags of cement, a small pneumatic jackhammer. A bath towel and a Sudanese flag were strung side by side on a support wire, flapping in the breeze with equal indifference.

  There was a moment of truth at the table. A smiling winner raked in the pot while the investors sulked and wrist-flicked their cards spinning to the middle of the table. From where he was, Davis couldn’t see anybody’s rank. It didn’t matter. If you watched a group of soldiers long enough—even a feral group like this—you could figure out who was in charge. Dominant mannerisms, command presence. And Davis didn’t even need that, because he noticed the way one man held his head at an angle. Scarface. The long pole in a flimsy organizational tent.

  From the highway checkpoint, a dirt path led to the little outpost. Davis put the truck into gear and crawled forward at idle. They still hadn’t noticed him, so he flicked on his high beams. Like anybody would to navigate a raw desert trail at night. He’d covered half the ground when one of the soldiers pointed and said something. Scarface turned and stared.

  The old truck’s twin white beams jarred up and down, strobing everything in their path. Vapor belched from under the hood, a steady white cloud spewing into the hot evening air. The engine was running rough, coughing and sputtering, and Davis thought, Good. The men rose from their chairs but didn’t look alarmed. Curious was more like it.

  Davis estimated the tree of rifles to be twelve, maybe fifteen steps from the card table. He remembered that Scarface had carried a sidearm, a Heckler & Koch 9-mm, if he wasn’t mistaken. He searched and found it, a belted holster hanging on a hook near the gun stack. So there was a good chance that all the firepower was right there in one place. Three or four seconds from anybody’s hands. Six or seven seconds from being used. That was a lot of time when you counted it out, which was exactly what Davis rehearsed in his mind. One … strike. Two, three … strike. All the way to seven. He worked everything out, a nice tight blueprint in his head. Of course, plans like that had a way of going wrong—seven seconds left a lot of room for error—but you had to start somewhere. Davis figured he was solid until about three. After that, he’d go with the flow—or against it, actually.

  With fifty feet to go, Davis spotted a bottle of whiskey on the table, along with three tiny glasses. Three glasses, four men. So one of them might be sober, maybe a devout Muslim. Or perhaps they were playing by frat-house rules, losers having to drink after each hand. Whatever. He was dealing with five men, most of whom had been drinking. And with his target set full, Jammer Davis began to sort.

  In air-to-air combat, before merging with an opposing force, you always perform a radar sort with your wingman. This short-term tactical plan dictates which of the bad guys you will each take out—right shoots right, lead shoots high, a preplanned sequence of death that is as cold and clinical as it is optimistic. Right now, Davis didn’t have a wingman or Sidewinders on his rails. But going in he at least wanted a plan.

  He decided that the man on the left, a small guy with a beret, would be first. He was closest to the weapons. The addict leaning on the pole was last—no doubt about that—which meant that his gray area involved the three in the middle. Scarface was the boss, so he was high on the list. A tall, rangy man looked like a pushover. The one Davis didn’t like was in the middle. He was short and burly, with a flattened nose on a squashed face. There was a toughness about him. On looks alone the guy could get work tossing steamer trunks on a wharf. Yet what bothered Davis most about the man was right there in front of him on the table. The largest chip stack.

  Davis pulled the truck to an easy stop twenty feet from the awning. Steam swirled from under the hood and spread in a mist of white. He got out of the truck slowly and muttered a few expletives, like anybody would after blowing a radiator on the edge of the Sahara Desert.

  By virtue of physical size, Davis was not a man easily forgotten, so he was sure that some of these soldiers—the ones who’d been at the airport two days ago—would recognize him. Scarface certainly. Davis gave a subtle wave, as if he recognized them too.

  “Hi,” he said, adding in his best helpless-foreigner shrug.

  Scarface gave an almost imperceptible nod. Not one of the men under the tent looked worried. Their initial curiosity had graduated to amusement. They were completely confident, an outlook derived by some equation involving their superior numbers and the whiskey on the table.

  Davis went to the hood, opened it very, very slowly, and then stood with his hands on his hips. He turned to the soldiers, and said, “You guys got any water?”

  It was the man on the right, the rangy one, who came forward. Not Davis’ first pick, but at times like this you didn’t get to choose. The guy covered most of the twenty-foot gap in six lanky strides, stopping a couple of paces shy to peer hesitantly into the steaming engine compartment. He opened his mouth but didn’t say anything, probably because he didn’t speak any English. Or maybe because the mechanical issue involved was obvious enough—a cracked hose near the top of the radiator spewed superheated water like a miniature volcano. Davis could smell alcohol on the man’s breath, something cheap and harsh. Even in a fundamentalist Muslim country, soldiers found their rotgut.

  The rangy soldier was roughly four feet away from the open hood, a reasonably safe distance. About where Davis would have stopped. He figured that soldiers in Sudan knew all about overheated engines. There was probably a whole course on it in basic training. Davis took one last look at the others. He saw Scarface glance away momentarily at his drug-addled fifth.

  Right then, Davis began to count.

  The windmill is an underrated strike.

  Davis rotated his right arm up and then arced down, his fist falling like a wrecking ball. The blow struck between the man’s neck and collarbone, and his head snapped forward. Before his knees could even buckle, Davis grabbed him by the collar and drove the soldier head-first into the engine compartment, slamming his face squarely onto the steaming radiator hose. His screams were cut short when Davis slammed the hood down on the back of his head. The long, rangy limbs went soft like slack rope.

  One down. His internal clock was running.

  Three …

  After a stunned moment, the others at the poker table started shouting. Davis didn’t understand a word, but he didn’t need to. The cadence was enough, explosive and breathless. A plan of action, maybe some profanity mixed in. Let’s kick his ass, Hussein! Something like that.

  The man with t
he beret lunged in from the left, and took a wild swing with the whiskey bottle in his hand. He was the smallest of the lot, a full foot shorter than Davis, built out of matchsticks. His impulse to grab the bottle wasn’t bad. His execution was. Davis raised an arm to deflect the blow, rotated his opposite elbow to the guy’s jaw. The strike didn’t put him down, but stunned him to immobility. Davis’ next swing was big and full, a roundhouse that caught the man squarely in the solar plexus, a good target because it has nerve bundles and vital arterial junctions. Even more importantly, the solar plexus lies very close to an opponent’s center of gravity. If the guy had been any smaller, the blow would have sent him into orbit. As it was, he went airborne in the direction of Davis’ follow-through, sailed five feet through the air, and hit the dirt like a sack of wet gravel. Two down.

  Six …

  The odds were improving, but the first two had taken three blows, six seconds. Davis was over budget. And so, just like he’d figured, things started to go to hell. The squashed-faced guy was moving for the guns, which was what he should have done. Scarface was going the other way, which was what he should have done.

  There was no choice. Davis lunged for the gun stack, got there just as the squat soldier was swinging a Kalashnikov in his direction. Flying through the air, Davis hit the man shoulder first and everything went flying—the soldier, his rifle, the whole tree of rifles. The squat guy was quick to his feet, and the fighter’s nature Davis had expected took over. He started swinging, a storm of short, compact punches that caught Davis in the body and face as he was rising. Davis, however, became a bigger storm, a category five maelstrom of fists and elbows, blocking and striking, backed by over two hundred pounds of follow-through. In close quarters combat, you hit hard and often, overwhelm your opponent. That’s what Davis did. The squat guy doubled over after a knee to the gut, then crumpled like his bones had disconnected after a hammer fist to the back of the neck. Three down.