"Good morning, Six, wherever you are. Me and the boys are just finishing our second cup of coffee, then we'll get geared up and head to shore." The sound of a long stretch and a sigh. Obvious dramatic effect. "Damn. Sure as shit is nice working for the man, not running rogue, sitting scared by yourself in the dark somewhere, hoping like hell that rat running up your leg doesn't bite you in the balls because you can't afford to move and give away your position."
Court looked down. There was no rat on his leg. He chastised himself for looking.
"Pretty soon, bro, you'll be back workin' with us. Of course you'll still be the outsider, but I promise I'll let you join us for a cup of joe from time to time."
Gentry nodded. It would be good to be part of a team again, even if there were a few caveats to the relationship.
"First things first, though. Let's get through this morning. One out."
"Roger that," whispered Court to himself; he did not transmit to Hightower. He rose slowly, avoided the shelf above, and crossed the tiny alleyway towards the side entrance to the bank. He picked the lock in under thirty seconds; it was a simple tumbler job that needed just two narrow tools and a few jiggles of the torque wrench to defeat.
Inside it was pitch-black; stale dust wafted in the moonlight shining through circular and arched windows. Court pulled his penlight from his pocket and turned it on, put it in his mouth, and crossed down a small colonnade that ran along the eastern side of the large, open building. This place had been around for hundreds of years, Gentry could tell, but apparently banking was no longer such a big deal in Suakin. Most of the space was open and empty, with a few desks and telephones, wooden filing cabinets, and steps that went down to a basement. Court continued on to the main entrance and found it exactly as drawn up in the diagrams Zack had provided him. There were stairs to the left and the right of the front double doors. The steps went up to a narrow atrium over the doors, where large windows looked out over the square. Gentry took a few minutes to stage his gear, hustling a half dozen times up and down the spiral stone staircases to position equipment where he would need it when Oryx and his security detail came storming through the door, thinking they were saving themselves from an attack in the square.
Court looked out the open windows of the atrium, getting a good look at the square for the first time. It did not look like a square, in the sense that Court knew the word from his travels in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. It was the size of two football fields, completely unpaved, not a blade of grass, just a big, flat expanse of hard earth. On the opposite side of the bank were some rickety looking two-story buildings, whitewashed colonial-style architecture but dingy, their filth obvious even in the moonlight shine. To the northeast, the right side of the square, it was nothing but shacks-handmade driftwood, plywood, tin, and junk hammered together or tied together or, Court imagined with slight exaggeration, simply leaned together with a prayer to Allah and a hope for the best. The shacks stretched down a hill several blocks to the water's edge and the causeway to the island of Old Suakin.
To the left of Court's vantage point, the western side of the square, he saw the finest buildings Suakin had to offer. The hotel was there, the Suakin Palace. Court looked at the third floor and wondered if Sierra Five was watching. Gentry stood in pitch-blackness inside the bank, but he figured Spencer would have night vision gear of some sort. He raised his hand tentatively.
"Sierra Five to Sierra One," the transmission came over the net a second later.
"Go for One," Zack's tinny voice responded.
"Sierra Six is in position."
"Never a doubt in my mind," said Hightower. Court lowered his hand. It felt odd to be watched, especially at a time like this. He continued scanning the rest of the buildings of the square. They were whitewashed limestone and coral, looking as old as Methuselah, Gentry thought, then he wondered if Methuselah was from around here.
He eyed the street from where the SLA trucks should come, assuming they'd come at all. If they did not, then Court assumed he'd leave all his gear here and just scoot on out the side door of the bank. The Sudanese would find a curious array of gadgets lying around the building where their president was set to come if there was a ruckus, but the CIA would not be positively implicated in any sort of attack or potential ambush. All of this gear was available outside of the USA, and all of this gear had been procured outside of the USA.
But the CIA local field office, Sudan Station, had assured everyone involved, in no uncertain terms, that their rebels would come through. Everyone involved had believed them, to the extent that Court's source was discounted as unreliable for providing intel that said otherwise.
Fuck, thought Court. This is not how he operated his solo hits. Everything was so much simpler as a private contract killer.
THIRTY-THREE
The Gray Man had finished his work inside the bank by ten after six. He'd just returned to his perch on the second floor when a transmission from Zack came though. "Whiskey Sierra in position. Three is on a rooftop on the northwest corner of the square; Five is in the third-floor window of the Suakin Palace on the southwest corner. The remainder of us are together and mobile, three blocks northeast of the square. We are in a beige… break… What the hell is this piece of shit? A beige Ford Econoline van. The SLA will hit from the west. They should be getting into position right about now. First one that sees or hears any sign of them, call it in." A staccato pair of "Roger thats" from his men at the square followed the transmission.
Dawn began in the east ten minutes later. The town sloped from the square down to the water, so from his second-floor vantage point Court could see the distant sea glowing with morning light where it met the sky. Oryx would appear on the other side of the square in minutes, yet still no one had seen any sign of the SLA. They should at least have been somewhere staging to move, and the two Whiskey Sierra operators west of the square should have either heard or seen them by now.
But there was nothing.
Gentry saw what Zack meant when he said the town had an Old West feel. Looking out of the window at the dirt, the simple buildings, the hitching posts and water troughs, the donkey carts and wooden awnings, guns at the ready for a shoot-out, Court realized he could be in another world and another time.
Gentry sipped water in his high perch. He checked the layout of items in the pack on his back for the fourth time.
Tension built quickly in his stomach.
"One for Five," Zack said in his mike.
"Go for Five, One," replied Spencer, the muscular black team member who had been an Army Special Forces sergeant before moving into CIA black ops.
"Still nothing in your sector?"
"Don't see anything over here by the hotel."
"Three?"
"Not a peep to the northwest, boss."
Hesitation from Hightower. Court wondered if he was about to abort the mission. "All right. Looks like we're gonna have to go ahead with Bravo."
In the dark atrium of the bank, Court Gentry's eyebrows furrowed almost to the point of touching. What the hell was "Bravo"? If there was a plan B, then Court sure as shit hadn't been read in on it.
"Roger that, boss," said Three. "I've got the RPG ready."
The RPG? Cold sweat formed on the Gray Man's temples.
Court began to reach down to push a button on his sat phone to call Zack to find out what the hell was going on.
But he didn't have to.
"Okay, Six. Let me fill you in before you blow a blood vessel." Zack's disembodied voice sounded somewhat contrite. "Denny and I were worried that the SLA might not be able to come through for us. Sudan Station kept promising… but you saw how their numbers were diminishing before our eyes. Your source, the cop, and his intel that the SLA had been compromised, pretty much sealed the deal.