Davis hit the brakes, glanced left just in time to see the machete coming through the half-open window. He rolled toward the passenger seat, pulling the driver with him as the blade came scything inside. With a thump, it lodged in the driver’s-side headrest and stuck there. An arm was still connected to the handle, struggling to pull the blade free. Davis grabbed it. Once he got a solid arm bar, he reached outside with his free hand, grabbed blindly, and was rewarded with a fistful of hair and part of a turban. He yanked it all in through the half-open window. With his head inside the car and his body outside, the man tried to push away. But he couldn’t, not without losing half his scalp. He released the machete, and when he did, Davis let go of his arm. But not his hair. Davis reached down and cranked the window up, kept going until the guy’s neck was pinned tight with his head inside the cab. Davis gave a vicious twist to break off the window handle and tossed it into the backseat.
He yanked the machete out of the headrest and paused to check the big picture. Three men. Gargling and choking noises on his left from the guy who’d lost his machete and now had his head trapped in a window. To Davis’ right, the driver was still immobilized, stunned. Outside, the man who’d had the rifle was rolling in agony on the dirt shoulder. Davis grabbed the driver by the collar and shoved his head out the passenger-side window, cranked it up and broke off another handle, giving a mirror image of the other side — body in the cab but head jammed outside. He locked the passenger door, brought the machete down to sever the locking knob at its base, then gave the same treatment to the driver’s side. Two down, one to go.
The car was still rolling, so Davis put it in park. He climbed into the backseat, grabbed his bag and, with the machete still in hand, got out. He took a good look at the surrounding desert, but didn’t see anybody aside from the man who was already down. The one who had just shot a taxicab. Davis did see three looted suitcases in the brush, and some clothing and paper scattered in the nearby desert. Which meant that he wasn’t their first victim. He was dealing with bandits, common thieves. The cab was almost certainly stolen. The suitcases in the brush looked like they’d been there a while, so Davis wasn’t going to inquire about the owners. They had either made their police reports or were rotting in the desert. Nothing he could do either way. But it was a vivid welcome. Like the abandoned jetways, another reminder of what he was getting into.
Davis went to the car’s hood and retrieved the gun, which turned out to be a baseline AK. Three minutes later, he had the third man standing outside the cab with his head secured in a rear window. Two outside, one in.
He put the car in gear, and watched as it began to idle ahead down the road. All three men were struggling to get free. The driver with the bad teeth, the one who was mostly inside, was trying to steer with his foot. The pair outside were walking fast to keep the pressure off their bruised windpipes. Trying not to fall and break their necks. The combination of rolling wheels and stumbling feet kicked up a hell of a cloud of dust. The picture reminded Davis of a clown car at the circus. He gave them five minutes like that. Sooner or later, somebody would realize that there was only one way to get out of the predicament — break a window. They’d have to use a fist or an elbow, not an easy thing to do against tempered safety glass on a hot day. The winner of that cranial challenge would rescue the others. Of course, everything would go faster if the guy steering changed direction, if he realized that the thick brush would bring them to a stop. But right now Davis wasn’t seeing thoughtfulness and teamwork. He heard shouting and saw arms flailing — a lot of flailing — so he amended his original estimate. Ten minutes.
Davis studied the gun and wondered what to do with it. It had a carrying strap, so he could sling it over his shoulder. That would be one way to walk into the headquarters of FBN Aviation and start his investigation. He still had the machete too, which would fit nicely under his belt. In the end, Davis decided against it. Now wasn’t the time for that trajectory. Not yet. He ejected the magazine from the gun, cleared the round in the chamber, and tossed everything into the bushes. Far and in different directions. He took a firm grip on the machete, pulled his arm back, and heaved the big blade fifty yards through the air, watched it twirl and spin like some kind of misguided javelin.
Davis then picked up his suitcase, turned toward the airfield, and began to walk.
CHAPTER FIVE
The helicopter, a Russian-made Mi-24 Hind-D, disappeared in a swirl of dust as it settled onto the uneven surface, a patchwork amalgam of broken concrete and sand. The wheels flexed as weight was transferred from rotor blades to earth, and the whine of the engines fell in both frequency and pitch, more and more until everything came still. There was nothing for a time, nothing except the faint crackle of cooling engines and a curtain of dust drifting on the indifferent breeze. The craft was emblazoned with the markings of the Sudanese Air Force, and a small flag bearing five stars was affixed to one cockpit window. Finally, the helicopter’s side door opened, and two men clambered down to the broken earth.
They were an odd pair, the general and the imam. On physical appearance alone, as different as two men could be. The general was a strapping specimen, even if the straps had gone a bit loose — the circumference of his barrel chest was more than matched by that of his gut. He moved with a soldier’s bravura, yet took five strides to reach full swagger. His stiffly pressed uniform was pinned with rows of shining brass, and the breast of his jacket was a veritable billboard of ribbons. The general’s features were typically Nubian, the dark eyes wide-set and humorless. Any remains of his bristly hair had long ago been shaved away, and the ring of ebony skin at the base of his wheel hat gleamed in the midday sun. His shoulders carried the weight of five stars — he had once considered six, but not even Idi Amin Dada had taken things that far — and the general walked in front, as generals tended to do, with the firm purpose of a man in control.
The imam was the general’s somatic counterpoint. He did not so much walk as drift, a long white robe floating on the breeze. His black beard, long and unkempt in the most pious tradition, fell to the top of his chest, and his eyes were obscured by wide wraparound sunglasses. He was small of stature and slightly built, a circumstance aggravated by the general’s bulk. This contrast, a matter of mere chance at the outset of their association, had served both men well in the careful cultivation of their respective images. One commanding, one humble.
After twenty heavy paces, the general stopped in his tracks and put his hands on his hips. The imam drifted to his side. Both men scanned the horizon all around. There was nothing here to catch the eye. Nothing at all.
“This is the place?” the general remarked in his gruff baritone.
“Yes,” the imam replied. “We are only a few miles from the Egyptian border. It is barren, of course, but that is to our advantage.”
The general nodded.
There truly was little to take in. Sand dominated the horizon in every direction, an ocean of swales that no doubt shifted as freely as the Red Sea itself. Yet at this snapshot moment, the landscape looked as still as stone. They were situated at the center of a rubble field, perhaps ten acres of concrete falling to dust. Both the general and the imam knew the history of the place. A former airfield, it had been built by the Allies during the Second World War, then abandoned as the Germans were pushed northward. Thousands of such makeshift air bases had been constructed in haste all over the world, only to be orphaned with equal alacrity in the wake of frontal advances. For a time after the outbreak of peace, the government had made halfhearted attempts to revive the place, but inevitably it had fallen to disrepair, doomed to rot by forces more destructive than any military campaign — lack of funds, cronyism, bureaucratic indifference. Whatever strategic design had existed in 1944 to build this place had long ceased to be relevant. Without a populace, without backing from the Sudanese Air Force or commercial interests, all that remained was a triangle of beaten concrete waiting to be reclaimed by the desert — time taking man’s work back from whence it came. But this very isolation, together with the geographic location, was what suited their needs so perfectly.