“All right,” said Melissa. “Half a dose.”
“They took the aircraft to an old warehouse building near a train line,” Nuri told Danny outside. MY-PID superimposed the locator signal on a satellite image of Duka and the surrounding area, projecting it onto a large slate computer Nuri had tied into the system. “The train line was built about a decade ago for some mining operation, but it hasn’t run in years. Most of the locals live in huts on the south and western ends of town, but people will squat in empty buildings all the time. We can’t really be sure what the hell’s going on there without having a look from the ground.”
He moved his finger over the screen, increasing the magnification.
“There were at least two different rebel groups in Duka when I was here,” Nuri went on. “They sometimes work together, at least to the extent that they don’t kill each other. Which is saying something out here.”
“MY-PID have anything new?”
“Nothing more than I’ve said. They’re really small bands.”
“What about this Raven project? Is it related to the place, Duka?”
“I don’t think so. There’s no connection with Li Han and the town. He may have been in the area, but he’s been working with the Sudan Brotherhood. They’re much farther south.”
“So he’s out of the picture?”
“Probably ran off,” said Nuri.
“Anything new on Raven?”
“Totally black,” said Nuri, with more than a hint of I-told-you-so. “Not available in any system MY-PID has access to either. I thought of telling it to go over the wall.”
“Don’t,” said Danny sharply.
“I didn’t.”
Going over the wall meant telling the system to break into Agency computers and other systems that were supposed to be off-limits to it. Theoretically, the safety precautions built into the computer system — meant to prevent it from ever being used against the U.S. — would prevent this. But MY-PID had enormous resources, and Nuri was sure the system could get in if asked.
Which he still might do. He just wouldn’t tell Danny about it.
“What’s Duka like?” asked Danny.
“Typical shit hole. Little city. Used to be about ten times the size but shrunk with the fighting over the past two years. Relatively peaceful now. Two rebel factions share control. One’s religious. The other’s just crazy.”
Nuri had been in Duka twice. He’d had dealings with a man named Gerard, who was the unofficial head of a band of rebels from a tribe whose name — phonetically, “Meur-tse Meur-tskk”—was bastardized by Western intelligence services into Meurtre Musique—“murder music” in French.
The group was actually a subgroup of the Kababish tribe, with a historical connection to French colonists or explorers who had apparently intermarried with some of the tribe during the eighteenth or nineteenth century. It was now more a loose association of outcasts and their families than an extended family, too small to have any influence outside the area where they lived.
The other group — Sudan the Almighty First Liberation in the Name of Allah, to use the English name — was larger, with informal and family ties connecting them loosely to other groups around the region. Like Meurtre Musique, the members were Islamic, but somewhat more observant. Despite their name, they were not affiliated with the powerful radical Islamic Sudan Brotherhood, which was a dominant rebel force in the south.
Meurtre Musique and First Liberation ran the city; the only government presence was a police station “staffed” by a sixty-year-old man who spent most of his time in Khartoum, the capital well to the west.
“You think we can get into the city with the Osprey?” Danny asked.
“Attract a hell of a lot of attention,” said Nuri. “We’d be better off going in low-key, or maybe waiting until night and scouting around.”
There was a short, loud scream from inside the hut. A string of curses followed.
“Sounds like Sugar fixed the princess’s shoulder,” said Nuri.
“What’s her story, you figure?” Danny asked.
“Besides the obvious fact that she’s a bitch?” Nuri shook his head. “Women officers are all one of two kinds — either they use sex to get what they want, or they play hard-ass bitch. She’s the second. We should get rid of her. Shoot her up with morphine and pack her off. The shoulder’s the perfect excuse.”
“This is her operation.”
“No, it’s our operation,” said Nuri. “Her operation ended when the aircraft crashed and we were called in to clean up. I don’t like the fact that it’s walled off, Danny. There is a huge amount here that they’re not telling us.”
“I know.”
Sugar came out of the building. She was smiling.
“Done,” she told Danny. “She didn’t want to wait for the aspirin to take.”
“She gonna be all right?”
“Phhhh. That attitude tells me she wasn’t all right to begin with. I’m gonna get some chow and get some rest, Colonel, all right?”
“Sure. You setting up your own tent?”
“You got that right. I’m not sleeping with those pervs. No way, Colonel.” She thrust her finger at Nuri in mock warning. “And you watch yourself, too, Mr. Lupo.”
Sugar exploded with laughter and sauntered away.
Danny picked up the small touch screen and looked at the satellite image. The warehouse where the UAV was located could be attacked easily enough, but he’d prefer to make the assault at night for a host of reasons, starting with operational security. The question was whether they could wait that long.
“How likely are they to move the UAV, you think?” he asked Nuri.
“I have no idea. We don’t even know who has it. If it’s one of these groups, they won’t bother. They have no place to go with it. If it’s just someone moving through — which I doubt — they’ll probably wait until nightfall and start out again. In that case, they’ll be easy to take on the road. Shoot out the driver, grab the bird, and go home.”
“What about Li Han?”
“It could be him,” said Nuri. “This isn’t a Brother village, though. He’d be a fish out of water.”
“Isn’t he already? Being Chinese?”
“True. Maybe we should go in and nose around a bit.”
“Just walk in?”
“Drive in,” said Nuri. “I’ve been here before. I’ll use my old cover. We can plant some bugs for MY-PID to use. Augment the feeds from the Tigershark.”
“OK.”
“Hell, I may be able to buy the damn thing,” added Nuri. “Save us a lot of trouble.”
“Buy it?”
“We’re in Africa, remember? Everything’s for sale.”
“Not to us.”
Nuri laughed. “I’m a gun dealer. I had some dealings with a man named Gerard, trying to sell him some guns. If he’s involved, it’ll be for sale. And if he’s not, he’ll tell us who is.”
“That’s safe?”
Nuri laughed again, this time much harder.
“Of course it’s not safe,” he said when he regained control.
Chapter 2
With the UAV located and the CIA officer recovered, Turk’s job settled into a sustained fugue of monotony. He had to orbit above Duka, watching to make sure that the rebels or whoever had grabbed the UAV remained in the warehouse building with it. He had two problems: conserving fuel and staying awake.
The second was by far the hardest. Turk had a small vial of what were euphemistically known as “go pills” in the pocket of his flight suit, but he preferred not to take them. So he ran through his other, nonprescription bag of tricks — listening to rap music tracks and playing mental games. He tried to trace perfect ellipses in the air without the aid of the flight computer, mentally timing his circuits against the actual clock.