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There was no shooting in town, and the helicopter was gone. Sirens whined, and a thin pillar of dark smoke drifted over the harbor and lagoon to the east.

It looked like a battle had been fought here, and it looked like the battle was over.

Gentry parked the car on an open dirt soccer pitch four blocks west of the square. Immediately he was approached by men trying to sell turnips, even with the local equivalent of the Battle of the Bulge just a few blocks away less than an hour earlier. He wondered who the fuck would be thinking about buying a turnip for that evening's soup at a time like this, and he brushed them away with a wave of his hand, trying to keep his beard and his shades and his turban covering as much of his face and head as possible while he moved. He purchased a long white thobe robe from a vendor in a shallow stall a block from the soccer pitch, and stepped into an alley to don his new garment.

There were cops everywhere now. Gentry figured most of them must have come down from Port Sudan, forty miles to the north. If so, then they would have just arrived, run face-first into the chaos and confusion of the scene, they would be trying to glean intel, and would be unsure about jurisdiction and jostling for real estate with the local cops and the military and the NSS. Now would be the last possible time to accomplish anything in Suakin for the rest of the day, and Court knew he needed to hustle. Up ahead he spied a disorganized police checkpoint next to a long wood and corrugated tin lean-to structure that covered hundreds of wooden cages, each cage housing an individual chicken or rooster. Dozens of locals were milling about. Only a few were going about their business; most were standing around and talking, trying to pick up gossip about what was going on. A few of them were getting hassled by the cops at the checkpoint, so Court looked for a different route.

The dust kicked up by the vehicles on the streets all but obscured the road, like a miniature haboob. Gentry could barely see fifty feet, and he hoped the cops and the other curious eyes in the streets were having the same problem so he could move closer to his objective with a bit more confidence.

To avoid the checkpoint, he made a left down an alley. In seconds he was lost. There were so few main roads in this town, it was easy to feel like you were caught in a maze of arbitrary passageways between shacks that went on for miles. But the town was set on a gentle slope towards the harbor, and Gentry's objective lay at the harbor, so Court just kept moving downhill and away from people, and soon enough this led him into the square.

In daylight the square seemed smaller, even more dirty and congested. It was full of men and beasts and machines. Camels and goats and donkeys mixed in with military vehicles and government sedans and "technicals," Toyota pickups with machine guns mounted in the back and filled with men. Two transport helicopters sat idle in the square, their troops already out hunting for the kidnappers of their president. Ambulance sirens blared from all ends of the open area, and men shouted and screamed at one another. A half dozen dead soldiers had been dumped in a pile by their fellow brothers-in-arms, and the wounded were everywhere. Court saw a makeshift clinic for injured civilians. Even from a distance some of the wounds looked serious, and he quickly turned away from them, worried there would be hurt children, and he could not bear to witness their suffering.

"We had to destroy the village to save it," he muttered under his breath and inside his hot turban.

His Thuraya buzzed on his hip under his clothing, and the call came through his covert headset. He answered with an explanation. "Almost to you, One. Need about five more minutes."

"That's good. We've been waiting on your ass so long the landlord is hitting us up for first and last month's rent. How's the town?"

"It's getting stuffy, a lot of jurisdictional issues all these organizations have to iron out. Plus the dead and wounded everywhere adding to the confusion. We need to take advantage of this disorder. The time to move is right now."

"Negative, we can't exfil just yet."

Court stopped in his tracks. "Why not?"

"Sierra Five is MIA. I need to know what happened to him."

"Copy that. I'll find us some wheels and get set. Six out."

Zack had his three men ready to move seconds after Court hung up. They had spent the last half hour on the roof at the northern tip of Mall Bravo, not forty meters east of where the Hip crashed in the souk between the two malls. Their rooftop position did not give them any view, however. They'd found a ripped and rotting green tarpaulin held up by driftwood and wire, under which someone had stored firewood and empty water tanks, and Whiskey Sierra had ducked into the deepest recesses of the structure for maximum concealment. There they sat and waited, bled and perspired, thumped scorpions off of each other with gloved fingertips.

The four men had patched themselves up as well as possible. Zack had bandaged his forearm and effectively stopped the bleeding, consumed water and salts from his rations to replace that lost in his profuse sweating, and consolidated all his partial magazines of ammunition into one thirty-round mag in his gun, plus a partially loaded mag in his canvas chest rig. Brad now wielded a fully loaded Type 81. He'd hurt his back and knee while crashing the van. He thought he might have cracked a rib or two on his right side but had not reported himself as a casualty to Sierra One. Dan carried a scavenged Type 81 as well. Dan was the sole uninjured member of the team.

Milo was stabilized for the time being. Dan had used massive amounts of duct tape to secure Brad's F1 to his leg like a stiff-legged splint, and he'd rebandaged the young Croatian American's shattered leg. But Sierra Four was without a rifle; he only carried a 9 mm H amp;K pistol, and all of his armor and gear had been left behind or passed around the team so that he could continue to move. He vigorously protested everything done for him, insisted he was good to go, but his bluster just annoyed the shit out of the older, more experienced operators. They understood his condition better than he did, and they treated him professionally, even if they continually berated him for trying to tell them he was fine.

The four men left the roof in a tactical train, descended two floors in a tiny and darkened metal stairwell, and ended up in an east-west alley. Milo stumbled twice on the stairs. Zack then ordered him to keep his pistol in his right hand and Dan's shoulder in his left. This helped his balance.

The alleyway ran towards the harbor, and the team took it slowly. Men's voices were heard on the other side of a wooden door, and Whiskey Sierra formed around it, but the voices faded. Sirens in the distance mixed with the guttural roars and cries of camels. The team did their best to shut out all the noises that were not tactically significant. Soon they made it to the mouth of the alleyway, and here they warily stepped into sight of the harbor.

Dan was first out of the alley, into the open street in front of the water. The others moved close behind him.

Dan stopped dead in his tracks. "Contact front!"

FORTY

Fifty yards in front of the mouth of the alley, atop the crystal green water in front of the island of Old Suakin, sat a Sudanese Navy coastal patrol boat. It was one hundred feet in length; men stood on the deck behind a 12.7-mm machine gun. Quickly they turned the barrel of the big weapon towards the white men appearing in front of them.

Zack ground to a halt next to Dan. "Disperse!" shouted Zack, and his men broke left and right. Hightower himself grabbed the injured Sierra Four and pushed him back to the right, fell with him into a shop that wove and sold fishing nets.

The time for well-coordinated movements was gone. No more covering fields of fire, leapfrogging from one piece of concealment to the next. The four men began running, crawling, and leaping over obstacles as fast as possible.