“Where are you going?” yelled Girma. “Are you trying to betray us?” He grabbed the pistol at his belt.

“Don’t be a fool,” said Kimko. “My country wants the aircraft. I have to meet the Chinaman. It’s almost dusk.”

Girma pointed the pistol. Kimko, his own weapon holstered, felt the strength drain from his arms. But he knew that the best way to deal with Girma was to remain defiant and bold; these Africans hated weakness.

“Shoot me and you’ll never get another bullet,” he told him Girma. “My employers will come and wipe you out.”

Girma frowned. Slowly, he put his thumb on the hammer of the pistol and released it.

“You are lucky I like you,” he said.

Chapter 14

Duka

Danny folded the umbilical cord against the edge of his combat knife and pushed hard, slicing clean through. The baby seemed pale but breathing.

The shelling had stopped, but there was still plenty of gunfire in the distance. A black swirl of smoke rose from the center of the city.

“They’re fighting on both ends of town,” said Nuri. “Sudan First has some men and trucks moving up the road in that direction. The last of the Meurtre Musique men will be down there in a few minutes. Our best bet is that way,” he added, pointing northeast.

“Any action where Li Han is?” asked Danny.

“Not even a guard posted,” said Nuri. “Two brothers are in a building about a quarter mile closer to the village.”

“What are they doing?”

“They’re inside. Maybe they’re sleeping.”

“They sleep through this shit?” said Boston.

“They’ve probably slept through worse,” said Nuri. “They’re two miles out of town,” he added. “As far as they’re concerned, the fighting might as well be in L.A.”

“What about the building where he was yesterday?” asked Danny.

“The two brothers that went back are still inside. The trucks are around back.”

Danny rubbed his chin.

“Whatcha thinkin’?” asked Boston.

“I’m thinking we hit that building first,” said Danny. “It’s close enough to the fighting that they’ll be distracted. We take out the trucks, get in there, see what’s what. Then we go and get Li Han.”

“When are we doing this?” Nuri asked.

“It’ll be dark in an hour,” said Boston.

“You think we should wait?” asked Nuri.

“That’s not what I’m saying,” said Boston. “But the Osprey is an easy target in the day—if it comes down now, they can hit it with RPGs, let alone a missile.”

“We’ll take the women someplace safer,” said Danny. “We’ll have the Osprey come in when it’s dark, if we can wait that long. They pick us up, and we’ll go directly to the raid.”

“What do we do about the women?” asked Nuri.

“We’ll take them with us. Evac them as soon as we get a chance.”

“All right,” said Nuri. “Fighting’s going to stoke up in a few minutes. The two sides are just about close enough to see each other.”

“Come on,” Danny told Melissa.

“What are we doing?”

“We’re going to get out of this mess—the forces are moving together across the way in a field about a half mile from here. One or both of them will probably try flanking in this direction. We want to be out of here.”

“Then what?”

“My Osprey will come in and pick us up. Depending on the circumstances, we’ll have it evac the civilians as well. I just don’t know where to put them.”

“All right.”

Danny smirked at her.

“What?” she said.

“You’re approving my decision.”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“Colonel, I keep telling you—this is my operation. You’re just helping.”

“Keep telling yourself that. Sooner or later you’ll believe it.”

Boston eyed the woman who’d just given birth.

“I don’t know, Colonel. Moving her. I don’t know.”

“We don’t have a stretcher,” said Danny, “and we’re not leaving her.”

“I can carry her, that’s not the problem,” Boston told him. “But I don’t know about moving her. She’s lost a ton of blood.”

“She’ll lose a hell of a lot more if they put a bullet through her,” snapped Nuri.

That settled it for Boston. “Boost her on my back and tell her to hang on.”

Nuri and Danny helped her onto Boston’s back as gently as they could. The woman was exhausted and barely conscious. Boston grabbed her forearms to hold her in place.

Flash, meanwhile, had doffed his armored vest and pulled off his shirt to wrap the child. Bloom put the baby into the shirt and tied off the bottom, swaddling it, then snugging it against her chest. She folded her torso over the infant, protecting it as much as possible.

The baby boy’s round eyes looked at the world with unabashed inquisitiveness, undoubtedly wondering what the hell he had just descended into.

Flash started to put his armored vest on Bloom.

“No,” Danny told him. “You have a point. You need the vest.”

“She’s got the kid.”

“They won’t be in the line of fire. Don’t be a hero.”

Slowly, the small group began moving through the field, Flash at the front, Danny at the rear, Boston, Nuri, and the women in the middle. Melissa had the toddler in her arms; the two other patients who’d been in the clinic flanked her, each holding onto the back of her shirt.

As they crossed the road, they heard grenades and gunfire from the direction they’d come from.

“Keep moving,” said Nuri. He repeated it in Arabic and then the local language, helped by MY-PID. “Get across the road and move west.”

Chapter 15

Washington, D.C.

When Christine Mary Todd was elected President, the pundits and chattering class had declared that her main attention would be on domestic affairs, issues like unemployment, health care, and education. She’d expected as much herself. Having spent years focusing on the world’s problems, the time seemed ripe for the U.S. to turn its attention homeward. There was an enormous amount of work to be done in the country. America was recovering from a deep recession, and while the war on terror seemed never-ending, it had been wrestled into a manageable if still tricky state—or so it appeared from a distance.

But since she’d been in office, Todd had found that more than sixty percent of her time and an outsized amount of her energy were spent on international affairs. China and Iran were openly hostile, North Korea threatened war with the U.S. as well as South Korea, the Germans were making noises about rearming in the face of a rising Russian defense budget, and the war on terror grew more intricate every day.

At the same time, the tools Todd had to deal with these problems were unwieldy. They also came with complications of their own, the latest being the CIA and its clandestine Raven program.

It wasn’t clear when rumors of the program’s existence had first begun circulating, much less where they originated. But literally within hours of her ordering Edmund to tell her everything he knew about it, word of its existence seemed to have reached every corner of the D.C. establishment.

That word, of course, was wildly inflated and focused on the sensational; the rumors had the U.S. attempting to assassinate world leaders and even using the program domestically. The lack of hard data encouraged the wildest speculation and attracted the most diverse political agendas possible. The fact that the computer software at the heart of the program wasn’t mentioned was hardly reassuring. It wasn’t surprising that as soon as word reached the Senate Intelligence Committee, they voted to call Edmund in.