Kealey stopped the Cherokee and exited it in a heartbeat, rushing across the square to the Ford as Nusairi pushed himself out of its scraped and beaten driver’s door. Blood trickling from under his eye, cuts on his cheeks and forehead, Nusairi looked at him, turned away, and started to make a break for the shadows.
On him now, right behind him, Kealey took a running leap at Nusairi that almost knocked both men to the cobblestones, wrapping his arms around his back to try and catch hold of him. But Nusairi, staggering, managed to stay on his feet. He twisted around to face Kealey, locking eyes with him, his features distorted with rage and malice-the rage showing above all else, completely overtaking him, his eyes flaring, his lips peeled back from his tightly clenched teeth in an almost bestial grimace.
And then he dove at Kealey, literally dove, giving Kealey little time to realize that the bottom of his shirt had pulled out from the waistband of his cargo pants and bunched up to reveal the handle of his combat knife.
Nusairi snatched hold of the knife, pulling it from its sheath, the blade flashing in his right hand as it came up. He took a vicious swipe at Kealey, barely missed carving a deep gash across his abdomen, and might have done so if Kealey hadn’t feinted backward at the last instant. As Nusairi came charging at him with the blade again, Kealey recovered his balance, pivoted on the forward part of his left foot, and shot both hands out in front of him, his right clenching Nusairi’s knife hand, his left grabbing the same elbow, twisting it around, yanking it up and back toward Nusairi.
They grappled like that for an endless minute, strength against strength, their faces inches apart. Kealey could feel Nusairi’s breath, see his cheeks puffing with exertion, the blade suspended between them.
And then he felt something in Nusairi’s grip give way, just for a split second. He moved forward into him, knowing it might be his one opportunity, bending the knife back toward Nusairi’s chest, back so its point was directly under his rib cage…and, mustering everything he had, gave it a hard upward shove to bury it inside him to the handle.
Still on his feet, Nusairi produced a feral sound that was something between a grunt and a moan, his hands going to his chest, his blood pouring over them in crimson sheets. At last, after what seemed another long while, his legs began to sag.
Kealey pulled out the knife before Nusairi could fall, stepped back, and stood looking at him, looking into his eyes…
Looking into his eyes, his gaze calm and unwavering as the life faded out of them.
“That was for Lily Durant,” he said before the last spark was extinguished. Then, waiting for Nusairi’s body to finally hit the ground, he bent over him to add something that had struck him almost as an afterthought. “And by the way, all your tanks and choppers are about to get blown to kingdom come.”
True to Brynn Fitzgerald’s “chirping birdie,” the Israelis did indeed launch the Hermes “Ziq” 450s out of Navatim for their strikes at Sudan. Although the unmanned aerial vehicles were indeed a component of the 166th Squadron at Palmachim Air Base near Tel Aviv, moving them to the base outside Be’er Sheva in the southeastern part of the country-and closer to the Red Sea route to the Sudanese border-extended their tactical range both in terms of fuel usage and data communications.
Another tactical advantage to having the drones take off from Navatim, alternately known as Air Base 28, was that it put them at the same spot as the 116th “Defenders of the South” Squadron and the 140th “Golden Eagle” Squadron, both of which were home to the F-16 fighter jets that would be essential to destroying tanks and helicopters. The UAVs, with their respective payloads of two Rafael missiles, were formidable weapons against convoys bearing arms and missile launchers. But when it came to destroying thirty-three tanks and over a dozen choppers, they were best used in a support role, sending the Israelis real-time pictures, taking out a secondary target or two, and perhaps doing some cleanup.
Having Sudanese air space unrestricted to them, however, the F-16s left little to be cleaned up. Their massive array of air-to-ground missiles and laser-guided bombs took care of the convoy quite neatly in just three runs-the third precautionary.
It was not always the size of the strike force, but how it was used, that counted. Simon Nusairi’s purchase barely got out of the box, however, rendering even that observation moot.
CHAPTER 22
SUDAN,WASHINGTON, D.C.
As the Cairo-bound Gulfstream 550 charter jet taxied left onto the runway at Khartoum International, Ryan Kealey looked out his window and saw the Sudan People’s Armed Forces troops that had escorted his group through the airport break into spontaneous applause, standing there ranked alongside the tarmac.
Abby Liu sat beside him, Mackenzie in the seat facing her. Cullen White, in wrist and ankle cuffs, was next to Mackenzie and opposite Kealey. The rest of the charter jet’s cabin was occupied by a contingent of 6 dark-suited Agency men who had flown in from Egypt the day before.
“Well, Kealey, it seems you’re a local hero,” White said in a quiet voice. His eyes had fixed on him through his wire-frame glasses. “The man who saved the compassionate and lawful regime of Omar al-Bashir from scheming rebels…and their infidel coconspirator.”
Stone-faced, Kealey ignored him and stared out at the clapping soldiers in their dress regalia. He was glad when the plane angled off so they were out of sight.
“You should be proud,” White said. “You even bagged the Western devil alive. Here I sit, flying back to America in shackles. Shame on me, right?”
“Shut up,” Mackenzie said.
White glanced over at him. “What?”
“You heard me.” Mackenzie met White’s gaze with his own. “I don’t want to hear your fucking mouth.”
“Are you going to gag me?” White said with a small acid smile. “Or maybe just shoot me in my seat. If you’re careful, there’s very little risk of puncturing the side of the cabin. Though I know you all want me back in Washington so I can sing from my cage.”
Mackenzie just looked at him for a long moment, then slowly turned his head away.
“You’d might as well have killed me back in Kassala,” White said, facing Kealey again. “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Kealey stared out at the runway without response.
“I’ve no stories to share,” White said. “Nothing to tell anyone. I was just a freelancer for Simon Nusairi. Hired help. Kind of like you were for a while, Kealey. Was it Blackwater…or Xe, as it calls itself now? I hear the company wanted to clean up its gunslinger image after your little exploit in South Africa.”
Kealey turned from the window without speaking a word, not so much looking at White as past him. Abby, meanwhile, had shifted around in her seat.
“We have more than one bird in hand,” she said. “I think you know that, Mr. White.”
“Hassan Saduq? An arms peddler? Who’d tell you anything to save his neck? Is he going to be believed?” White said.
“Don’t pretend to be naive,” she said. “There is a money trail.”
“You might want to mention Walter Reynolds, the senior diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Khartoum,” Mackenzie said. “Plus embassy staffers confirming this guy’s visits there, security videos…”
“Thank you, Mac.” Her almond-shaped brown eyes had settled on White again. “You see, no one needs to hear your song. There are others, enough for an opus. And your name and Nusairi’s will be in every refrain.”
“Your personal savior’s too,” Kealey said, breakng his silence. “We wouldn’t want to forget the man who’s as responsible for Lily Durant’s death as Nusairi.”
White’s eyes narrowed on him. “I don’t know who you mean.”
“Sure, you don’t,” Kealey said. “Keep on saying it. But your time’s running out and so is your line of bullshit.”