Raven Strike (13 page)

Chapter 26

Duka

N
uri gave Gerard a big wave as he walked through the large pavilion. The African was more animated today than he’d been the day before; he actually nodded back.

“I just dropped off the medicines you asked for at your clinic,” Nuri told him, setting down his rucksack and pulling over a camp chair. “They are very happy.”

Gerard frowned. “You should have given them to me first.”

“Those were just aspirins and bandages,” said Nuri. “Little things that anyone could bring.”

He pulled up his backpack and started to open it. One of the bodyguards lurched forward as if to stop him.

Gerard raised his hand and the man froze.

“This is ampicillin,” said Nuri, taking out a bottle of pills. “
This
is important medicine that only an important person can deliver.”

Pretending he wasn’t flattered, Gerard feigned a frown and put out his hand. He took the bottle of antibiotics and opened it, pouring a few pills into his palm.

“Each of those is worth several dollars,” said Nuri.

“Hmph.”
Gerard held them up to his nose, sniffing them.

“They only work if you’re sick,” said Nuri, worried that Gerard was going to eat them. He didn’t know how they would affect him.

Gerard poured them back into the bottle.

“Six bottles,” Nuri told him. “And there are some other medicines as well. They’re labeled. Your doctor will be very impressed.”

Gerard handed the bottle back. “Let us have something to drink. Coke?”

D
anny sensed trouble as soon as the white Range Rover turned the corner. Dirt and dust flew in every direction as the nose of the vehicle swung hard to the left and then back to the right. He took a step forward, closing the distance between himself and Nuri, who was sitting on one of the camp chairs in front of Gerard.

The Rover skidded to a stop. A man jumped out from the rear, raising his arm.

“Down!” yelled Danny. He threw himself forward, pushing Nuri to the ground as the man near the car began firing.

Gerard joined them as his bodyguards began returning fire.

“Go! Come on, let’s go!” hissed Danny, grabbing Nuri and pulling him in the direction of the building next to the pavilion where they’d gone to meet Gerard. Someone got out of the Range Rover and began firing a machine gun; the bullets chewed through the tables at the front and the canvas overhead. There was more gunfire up the street, screams and curses.

“What is it? What is it?” demanded Nuri, as if Danny had an answer.

“The building—come on,” Danny told him, pulling him to the back of the building where they had some hope of getting out of the cross fire. But a splatter of bullets from the machine gun cut them off. Danny spun back, ready to fire. But when he raised his head, the Range Rover was speeding down the street.

One of Gerard’s bodyguards continued to shoot. The man’s gun clicked empty; he dropped the magazine and reached for another, firing through that. He didn’t stop until he had no more magazines.

A half-dozen people lay on the ground. Two or three moaned; the others were already dead. Blood and splinters were everywhere. One of the picnic tables had been shot in half, its two ends reaching up like a pair of hands praying to the heavens.

Gerard sputtered in rapid French.

“Stay down,” Danny told Nuri, crouching next to him. “There were people firing from up the street.”

“They were with Gerard.”

“What’s he saying?”

“He’s asking who did this,” said Nuri, who’d drawn his pistol. “Dumb question. Has to be Sudan First.”

Nuri got to his knees, listening as Gerard continued to yell.

“He says it was Girma’s truck. That’s Sudan First.”

“Time for us to get out of here,” said Danny.

“We’re going to have to help clean this up,” said Nuri.

“What?”

“We have a car. We have to take the victims to the clinic.”

This wasn’t a particularly good time to be playing good Samaritan, thought Danny, but Nuri made sense. A half-dozen armed men had appeared from other parts of the square. They formed a perimeter around the battered pavilion. Gerard stood a few feet away, railing in French against whoever had done this. He’d taken a pistol out and was waving it around.

“Go get the car,” Nuri told Danny. “I’ll explain.”

By the time Danny retrieved the Mercedes, two of Gerard’s men were waiting with one of the wounded, a gray-haired old man whose face was covered with blood. Danny guessed that the man was already dead, but didn’t argue; he helped three other people into the front seat, and took another into the rear.

“I’ll stay,” said Nuri, running up to him. “Gerard will help us now.”

“Be careful,” said Danny.

“I’ve been in much worse situations. Speak as little as possible,” added Nuri. “Very little. They’re going to be suspicious. The cover will be that you’re a mercenary from Australia, probably a wanted criminal. They might accept that.”

“I don’t sound Australian.”

“They won’t know.”

The two bodyguards climbed on the trunk; Danny rolled the windows down so they could hold on, then backed into a U-turn to get to the clinic.

M
arie Bloom was not the naive do-gooder that Melissa had taken her for at first. On the contrary, Bloom was a steely and wily woman who started questioning her as soon as Nuri and Danny had left.

“What spy agency do you work for?” she asked, getting straight to the point.

“I’m not a spy,” Melissa told her.

“Lupo didn’t just find you on the street,” she said. “You’re an American. You’re with the CIA.”

“I am an American,” Melissa said. She fidgeted in the office chair. It was a small room; if she held out her arms, she could almost touch both walls. “I was in Kruk last week. There were problems in one of the camps. I had . . . trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?” asked Bloom. Her voice was borderline derisive. She leaned against the bare table she used as a desk; it doubled as an examining table for infants.

“There were problems with one of the supervisors,” said Melissa. “He tried . . . let’s say he pushed me around.”

“And then what happened?”

“I took care of it.”

Bloom frowned, and reached for Melissa’s shoulder. She jerked back instinctively.

“I know it’s hurt. Let me see it,” said Bloom.

Melissa leaned forward reluctantly.

“Take off your shirt,” directed Bloom.

Wincing, Melissa unbuttoned her blouse and slipped it back on her shoulders, exposing the massive bruise.

“You dislocated it,” said Bloom, probing gently at the edges.

“I put it back in place.”

“Yourself?”

“I had help.”

“He pulled it from the socket?”

Melissa didn’t answer.

“I would bet there’s tearing,” said Bloom. “The rotator cuff—”

“I’ll be fine,” said Melissa. “Someone is going to meet me. We’ll go to the capital and I’ll go home.”

She pulled her shirt back into place. She didn’t think Bloom fully believed her story, but the injury was certainly authentic, and it made everything else at least somewhat plausible. In general, that was all people needed—an excuse to find something believable.

“What are you taking for it?” asked Bloom.

“Aspirin.” She shook her head. “I’m OK.”

“We have hydrocodone.”

“No. You’ll need them for real patients.”

“As if you’re not hurt? You think you’re more stoic than the next person?”

“I saw a hell of a lot worse at Kruk.”

Bloom gathered a stethoscope, a thermometer, and gloves from a basket at the left side of the desk. “How do you know Gerard?”

“I have no idea who he is.”

“Lupo?”

Melissa shook her head. “He was a convenient ride. I needed to go. It sounded like a good solution.”

“You travel with people you don’t know?” said Bloom, her voice once more harsh. “That’s very dangerous.”

“One of my supervisors said he could be trusted. He’s a criminal, I know,” added Melissa. “But he didn’t try to hurt me.”

“How much did you pay him?”

“When my friend comes, I’ll give him a hundred dollars.”

“You have it?”

“My friend will have it. I don’t.”

“I hope your friend has a gun,” said Bloom. “Several.”

Melissa rose and started to follow Bloom out of the office. As she opened the door, they heard gunfire in the distance. Bloom tensed.

“What’s going on?” asked Melissa.

“I don’t know.” She turned around and went to the cabinet behind Melissa. Reaching inside, she took out a pistol—an older Walther automatic. She put it in her belt under her lab coat. “Get ready for anything.”

D
anny drove the car to the clinic’s front door, scattering a flock of birds pecking at the dirt. A thin man in a white T-shirt coming out of the building jumped back, fear in his eyes as Danny slammed on the brakes. The two men on the back leaped down and pulled open the doors, helping the wounded out of the car.

Except for the soft purr of the engine, it was eerily silent. Danny picked up a woman who had been shot in the arm and carried her inside. She was a limp rag, passed out from the loss of blood but at least breathing.

That was more than he could say for the man they’d lain across the backseat. Danny stopped the two guards as they picked him up and moved him out of the car. He put his finger on the man’s pulse and shook his head.

They carried him in anyway.

The last person in the car was a young boy, unconscious but with a good pulse and steady breathing. Six or seven large splinters of wood were stuck in his face; small trickles of blood ran down across his chin and neck to his clothes. There was a stain on his pants where he’d wet himself, and another—this one caked blood, near his knee.

Danny picked him up, cradling him in his arms as he walked him inside the clinic. The reception room had become an emergency triage unit, with the patients spread out in the center of the floor. The people who’d been inside already stood at the far end, occasionally stealing glances at the wounded, but mostly trying to look anywhere else. Danny wanted to talk to Melissa, but she was tending one of the wounded, and he worried that going to her now would blow her cover, or his.

One of the men he’d come with tapped his shoulder, indicating that they should go back. Danny followed him silently. He glanced at the little boy as he left, hoping to give him some sign of encouragement. But the boy’s eyes were still closed. Danny wondered if the kid would ever overcome the real wounds of the day.

“T
he Chinese man put him up to this,” Nuri told Gerard as they surveyed the ruined pavilion. “Where is he?”

“I’ll kill him,” said Gerard. His glassy stare had been replaced by one even more frightening; his eyes were almost literally bulging from his sockets. Two veins pulsed in his neck.

“I’ll pay good money for him,” said Nuri calmly. “I know people who will pay us if we give him to them alive.”

“I kill him.”

“He’s worth more to me. To us. More alive.”

“Why would you save a murderer?”

The Mercedes rounded the corner, Gerard’s men hanging out the windows. Nuri went over to help the last of the wounded get in. Gerard stopped him as he bent to an old man.

“He’s not hurt,” said Gerard gruffly.

“He’s holding his side.” The man wasn’t bleeding but seemed in obvious pain. “We have to get him in the car and take them to your clinic.”

“No, they will find their own way,” said Gerard. “You must take me to my house in the hills.”

“I have other places to go.”

“Take me,” demanded Gerard.

The bodyguards bristled.

“What about the wounded?” asked Nuri.

“If you are my friend,” said Gerard, “you will help me, not them.”

“Get in the car,” said Nuri, deciding it was the wisest thing to do.

Chapter 27

Duka

I
t had gone to hell so quickly that Kimko couldn’t process all that had happened. But the basics were clear enough: Girma had shot up the center of town, killing or wounding at least a half-dozen people, all allied with Meur-tse Meur-tskk. There was certain to be a lot more fighting.

Kimko might have viewed the conflict as good for business if he hadn’t been mixed up in the middle of it.

His best plan, he thought, was to get away as quickly as possible. But Girma didn’t look ready to let him leave.

“You will see our great victory,” Girma told him as the Range Rover sped across the desert to the foothills where Sudan the Almighty First Liberation had a fortress. “We will crush our enemies.”

“You will need more ammunition. I can fetch it.”

“We are fine. After the battle.”

“Not before? Are you sure?”

“You will admire our mortars in action.”

“What are you going to do with mortars?”

“We will fight. We will destroy our enemy.”

“You can’t attack them in the city.”

“Don’t tell me how to fight!” screamed Girma. He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out more khat leaves, thrusting them into his mouth.

L
i Han studied the laptop screen, looking at the coding he had retrieved from the UAV’s brain. With the proper connection—and power from the batteries—getting in was easy.

Relatively.

The control interface was written in a variation C++. If he’d been back in his lab in Shanghai, accessing the underlying code would be trivial; he’d have any number of tools and a large number of computers to help him. But here, all he had was a laptop with less memory than the UAV’s brain.

The interface was designed to be easily accessed. Li Han managed to get a full dump of the program despite the fact that he couldn’t get past the encrypted password, preventing access to the interface itself. He could see the logic of how it worked, though he couldn’t yet access the commands. Until he managed that, he wouldn’t be able to fully understand what he was looking at.

He might be able to replace the encrypted code section with his own revision, recompile and run the program. The problem was, he didn’t have the tools. His Toshiba laptop, upgraded with the latest processor and a trunkload of memory, was state of the art and could easily run a suite of debuggers and other tools. But he didn’t have them.

He could get the tools from any number of places online—Shanghai University would be his top choice, as he had a full set of broken passwords and knew the system intimately. But he assumed the Americans were tracking his satellite phone, so tethering the laptop to it would be as good as telling them where he was.

He noticed Amara staring at him.

“You’re interested in what I’m doing?” asked Li Han, amused.

Amara shrugged.

“Do you know how to work these?” Li Han pointed at the laptop.

“I can work a computer.”

At best, you can handle e-mail and Web surfing, thought Li Han. But the boy had potential. He could be trained.

At least to a degree.

“The UAV has a brain. I’m trying to tap into it,” said Li Han. “The program is written in a fairly common language. I think that’s only the interface. They encrypted part of the underlying assembly language, but it uses this chip.” He pointed at the encryption circuitry on the circuit board. “See, they were worried about someone breaking through the transmission, not physical security. So I can use what I know about the chip myself. I emulate it. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”

“Your program breaks the code.”

“Something like that,” said Li Han. Amara had missed a few steps, but that was the gist. “I need an Internet connection. I need to access some documents. Technical documents—I don’t remember how some of these things work.”

Lying slightly made the explanation simple.

“I don’t know if there are Internets here,” said Amara.

“If I had a sat phone, I could make my own connection,” said Li Han. “But it would have to be one that the Americans couldn’t trace to me. Or to you. You know how they are watching.”

There was a commotion upstairs. One of the brothers called down to Amara and told him that a small boy had run up to the house and was knocking furiously on the door.

Li Han went upstairs. When they let the boy in, he collapsed just across the threshold, tears streaming from his face as he unleashed a long paragraph of words.

“There has been fighting,” explained Amara. “The two groups.”

“That’s inconvenient.”

“People have been killed,” said Amara. “We should be ready to leave.”

“Where do you suggest we go?”

Amara didn’t answer.

“We stay here for now,” answered Li Han. “Ask the boy if he knows what a satellite phone is. Tell him I’ll pay for one—twice as much as I did for the wire.”