“Hey listen,” she told her daughter when she caught up to her in the bedroom. “I’m sorry I couldn’t go to the hospital for you. Dad said he could.”
“You had to talk to the President.”
“That’s right.”
Teri frowned.
Part of her thought she was making too much of this, but another part of her was just angry and didn’t care. “Listen, Teri, what I do is very important for a lot of people.”
“I know that.”
“Well…good.”
Breanna couldn’t help thinking back to her own childhood. Her mother had been on her own, and had to work full-time. They were not poor—her mother had just become a doctor—but there were many, many nights when Breanna tucked herself into bed…after having come home, made dinner, studied, and cleaned up, all without having anyone home or telling her what to do.
She didn’t want Teri to repeat that childhood, but at the same time, Breanna wanted her daughter to realize how good she had things.
There seemed to be no magic formula to make that happen.
“All right,” said Breanna. “Good night, then.”
“Good night.”
Breanna leaned down and kissed her.
“Send dad in,” said Teri sharply as Breanna turned off the light.
“OH, SHE’S FINE,” ZEN TOLD BREANNA AFTER TUCKING TERI in. “Just a little spoiled.”
“Are you saying I spoil her?”
“Hell, no—I spoil her.” Zen rolled his wheelchair to the refrigerator and got out a beer. “But it’s not fatal. She’ll get over it.”
“I don’t think she’s spoiled,” said Breanna.
“And I don’t think you have to be there for her every second of every day,” said Zen.
“She does.”
“She’ll get over it.” He wheeled over to the cabinet for a bottle opener. “Believe me. Another couple of years, she’ll be saying we never leave her alone.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Me, neither.”
35
Al-Quazi
EVEN THE DIRT IN AFRICA WAS DIFFERENT THAN IN AMERICA.
It had the texture of pulverized rocks, even in a light rain. It didn’t so much meld together in the rain as dissipate; the mud was more slimy than sticky. If you were crawling through it, as Danny Freah was, you noticed how it slipped into your clothes, and how it seemed to swim onto your face. You felt the rocks curl around you as you moved across the minefield, and the sting of blotches of mud as the drops splashed.
The ground had a specific smell to it, too, a scent unlike others you’d ever crawled through, either as a child or a soldier. Many times, dirt smelled like death, or the precursor to death, hot sulfur and electrified metal. Sometimes it smelled of chemicals, and other times of rot and refuse. This dirt smelled like impervious stone, absorbing nothing, and obscuring the senses, just as the rain made it difficult for the night glasses to work properly.
“Turn twenty degrees to the right and proceed forward ten yards,” said the Voice.
Danny altered his course. Flash, Hera, and McGowan were behind in the minefield, moving forward slowly, not so much because they were afraid of the mines—though a healthy fear was always in order—but because they didn’t want to do anything to attract the attention of the guards in the post about forty yards away. The guard was sitting in the machine-gun nest under a poncho, trying to keep dry, and not paying particular attention to the minefield alongside him. Still, the four Whiplashers were in an extremely vulnerable position, surrounded by mines on both sides, with their guns tucked up over their shoulders and secured by Velcro straps against their rucksacks. If for some reason the guard decided to get up from his post and take a walk around in the rain, he might easily see them.
The mines around the Sudanese army post where Tarid and the other prisoners were kept had been laid in a complicated pattern. They’d also been placed very close together. Most soldiers would have found it impenetrable; indeed, at least two would-be saboteurs and a smuggler had been blown up in the fields over the past twelve months.
But the Whiplash team had an advantage other infiltrators did not—the Voice had mapped the mines by looking at infrared satellite images from the past few nights. The mines were all slightly warmer than the surrounding ground when the sun went down, making them easy for the computer to spot. By watching Danny and the others move through the field with the help of an Owl, it gave him precise directions, warning him when he or one of his people was getting too close to a mine.
“Turn now,” said the Voice.
Danny dug his elbow into the dirt, marking the turn so it would be easy for Flash to find. As long as they all stayed in line, they’d be fine.
“We’re in position,” said Nuri over the radio circuit.
“Roger that. We’ve still got a ways to go.”
“The guard change is in ten minutes.”
“Roger. Ten minutes. We’ll be ready.”
Danny looked up. He was a good thirty yards from the perimeter fence, and they need to be inside it when Nuri began the “attack.” He started moving faster.
The prisoners were being kept in an open pen about thirty yards from the perimeter fence. Tarid was there. So was Tilia.
She’d been shot twice in the leg, but it wasn’t until she ran out of ammunition and passed out from the blood loss that the soldiers had captured her. They threw her in the back of a captured rebel pickup and drove her to the compound, unconscious; her leg was bound but otherwise left untreated. In a way, she was lucky—if she hadn’t been recognized as one of Uncle Dpap’s lieutenants, she would have been killed on the battlefield.
After being raped. So far, she had been spared that as well.
When Danny reached the fence, he pulled himself up into a crouch and looked back. To his horror, he saw that McGowan was off course by several feet.
“McGowan, stop,” he hissed. “Stop!”
Everyone stopped, not just McGowan.
“What’s wrong?”
“You went off course. Don’t move.”
Danny pulled out the control unit for the Voice and told the computer to plot the mines near McGowan.
“You went right between two mines,” he told him after studying the image. “You’re about six inches from the next mine. And there’s one right behind you.”
“You sure?”
“No asshole, he’s just trying to scare the crap out of you,” snapped Hera.
“All right. Let’s all relax. Flash, come on forward. Follow the lines I made.”
“It’s getting hard to see with the rain,” said Flash.
“Yeah, I know. Do it, though.”
Danny waited until Flash reached the fence before signaling Hera to continue. She crawled through the dirt and mud quickly, sliding her body through the markings he had left as if she were swimming an obstacle course.
“All right. You two get working on the fence,” Danny told them. “We’ll be right with you.”
He took off his rucksack, leaving it and his rifle on the ground near the edge of the minefield. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and started back for McGowan. The rain was becoming heavier, washing away the markings he and the others had left. The water also started to soak the field, making it more slippery. Even with the Voice to guide him, he had a difficult time staying on course.
“This isn’t good, huh?” asked McGowan when he finally got close.
“There’s a mine right here,” said Danny, pointing. “And one about six inches behind your right foot.”
“Can I go right?”
“No.” Danny pulled out the MY-PID head unit and stared at the screen. “Your best bet is to move to your left slightly.”
“How slightly?”
“Hold on.”
The cloud cover was making it harder and harder for the system to see McGowan from the Owl. Danny, on the other hand, was tracked by the satellites using his biomarker. He nudged right toward McGowan.