Davis counted one last time, got the same answer. 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.