Like nearly everyone who’d gotten off the ferry, Danny was black. But his fresh, Western-style clothes and confident manner stood out from the others as sharply as if his skin had been green. One of the customs officers waved at him, calling him around the press of the line. He had Danny walk to a chained gate at the far end of the pier. One of the soldiers accompanied him, glancing backward every few seconds to make sure none of the other passengers followed.
They didn’t. While a few were jealous that a foreigner would be allowed to cut in line, they also knew the reason. The foreigner represented money, to both the customs agent who would expect a “fee” for the convenience, and to the country, which collected for an instant visa whether he had one already or not.
The natives watching, on the other hand, were merely a nuisance.
“Papers,” said the customs officer.
Danny reached into his pocket for his passport. He’d been well-schooled on the procedure; inside the passport was a crisp hundred dollar bill.
The bill disappeared into the agent’s palm so quickly Danny thought it had been vacuumed up his sleeve.
“What is your purpose here?” asked the man in English.
“I am on a dig,” said Danny. “We’re looking for dinosaurs.”
“Hmph.” The customs agent could not have been less interested. “That bag is all you have?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Open it, please.”
He gestured toward a table nearby. Danny had been told that once he gave the official the bribe, he would be waved through. Now he started to feel apprehensive. He had no money for a second bribe.
The customs agent stood over him as he unzipped the small black case. He was not looking for additional money, but rather, doing his job. In his mind, the hundred dollar bill was a tip from a beneficent westerner, accepted custom rather than corruption. It would not influence him one way or another. If he found any contraband—literature against the regime, a gun, drugs of any sort, including prescription medicine—he would arrest the American.
The bag contained a change of clothes, extra socks, and two pairs of sunglasses. Nothing illegal.
“You are listening to an iPod?” asked the official, pointing to the headphone.
“It’s off.” Danny showed him the control unit. He worried for a second that the officer would take it, but he merely frowned at the device.
“Go,” the man said, dismissing him with a wave.
Danny made his way off the pier, ducking his eyes from the glare of the lights. The rotten fish smell of the seaside gave way to the scent of rotting meat. Crates of goats were stacked along the path that ran from the pier into the start of the city. The animals bleated and moaned, hoping they might convince someone to let them roam the port. Peddlers huddled near the end of the fence, selling various wares. Anything that wasn’t on display, said a crude sign in Arabic, could be obtained.
A stocky black man in a long Arab robe approached Danny from the cluster of people milling near the entrance. Danny saw him from the corner of his eye and tensed.
“Welcome to the hell-hole capital of the world,” said Ben “Boston” Rockland as he took Danny’s elbow. “Our ride’s this way.”
“How you doing, Boston?”
“Good. I was beginning to think you’d never get here.”
“Me, too.”
“Don’t use too much English around here. The natives are pretty restless as it is.”
Boston had been in Port Sudan for several hours, more than enough time to form an impression of the place. He had seen two muggings in that time, one by a police officer. There surely would have been more, but most of the people in the city were too poor to bother robbing.
“The thing is, this is the good part of the Sudan,” he told Danny, leading him toward the bus they had leased.
DANNY AND BOSTON HAD FIRST MET AT DREAMLAND SOME fifteen years ago, when Boston replaced one of the original members of Whiplash who’d been killed during an operation. Though the sergeant had an impressive record, he also had what some of his superiors politely termed “issues with authority.” He’d seen action in the first Iraq war, where he served as a pararescuer. He’d also done time as a combat air controller and was “loaned” to the Marines under a special program that put combat veterans on the front lines with other services. But Boston had also nearly come to blows with at least two officers in the past three years, one of whom pressed but then dropped formal charges against him.
“A misunderstanding,” said the captain on the record. Off the record, the captain called Boston a hothead but said he’d also saved three men in combat the day after the incident, and so the captain decided to forget the matter out of gratitude.
Serving with Danny and Colonel Bastian had changed Boston’s perspective considerably. He still thought most officers were jerks. But he also knew that there was an important minority who weren’t. That knowledge had helped Boston advance after Whiplash was disbanded. He was now a chief master sergeant, a veritable capo di capo in the military’s chain of command.
It hadn’t been easy wresting Boston away from his assignment, a cushy job as senior Air Force enlisted man in Germany. Not because he didn’t want to go—he started packing as soon as Danny gave him the outlines of what he was up to. Boston’s commanding officer, however, put a premium on his chiefs, especially those whose extensive combat experience made them instant father figures for the “kids” in the unit. Danny had to get General Magnus involved; fortunately, Magnus had been responsible for one of the CO’s early promotions, and eased Boston’s transfer as a personal favor.
After the briefest introduction possible to the new Whiplash concept, Boston had shipped out to the Sudan to scout out locations for a base. Danny remained in the States, recruiting more members and arranging for their gear.
“You’re going to love this bus,” said Boston. “Got a port-a-john and everything.”
“As long as it runs.”
“Walks more than runs. But it’ll get us there. When’s the rest of the team showing up?”
“Couple of days.”
“Nuri’s waiting for us. Interesting fellow.”
“Why’s that?” asked Danny.
“Just interesting. Knows a bunch of stuff. Pretty good cook.”
“Yeah?”
“You should taste what he does with goat and garlic.”
“Can’t wait,” said Danny.
“You’re also going to need this.”
Boston held out a pistol. It was a large Dessert Eagle, more than twenty years old.
“Got it in town,” he said. “Everything else I saw was just peashooters, .22s and revolvers, pretty useless to stop anyone. I figured it would do until we’re settled. No spare ammo, though.”
Danny took the weapon in his hand. The pistol had a heft to it that made it a clearly serious weapon. Chambered for .44 Magnum, it held eight rounds and could stop anything lighter than an elephant in its tracks.
He slid the gun under his belt, tucking it beneath his jacket.
The bus was an old French municipal bus, converted to private service. It came with a driver, Amid Abul, an Arab who had lived in Derudeb for ten years, occasionally hiring himself out to the CIA as a driver and local “consultant.” Nuri had hired him to provide transportation to their base in the hills to the south, and to help in whatever capacity seemed practical.
Nuri had dealt with Abul before, but even he didn’t fully trust him; it would have been foolish to do so. Though as the owner of a bus, he was relatively well off, the inhabitants of the war-torn country were so poor that most would gladly give up a relative to a sworn enemy for a year’s supply of food and water. Nuri had given Abul a cover story, telling him that his friends were paleontologists. Abul, who knew Nuri was CIA, was smart enough not to ask any questions.