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The road he was on was little more than a tracked-up strip in an endless plain of sunbaked dirt. His GPS said he was headed in the right direction and kept counting down to his arrival, but he wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
He despised South Sudan. When he’d been an army sniper, he’d spent a lot of time fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that had been different. Sure, both countries were dry, dusty shitholes, but at least he’d had backup and a few geographic features to hide behind. The empty landscape he was penetrating into had a hazy, overexposed-photograph feel that Black found disorienting. Undoubtedly why Kariem had chosen it as the location for their meeting.
Arms dealing had never been high on his list of careers, but what choice did he have? His lucrative job as a five-thousand-dollar-suit-wearing, supermodel-dating contract killer had recently run into an impassable roadblock named Mitch Rapp. Their business together had ended with Rapp agreeing not to kill him but making it clear that, the next time they met, the outcome would be different.
So Black had grabbed a map and searched for corners of the world that were both remote and in need of a man of his talents. South Sudan, which was teetering in and out of civil war, seemed to fit the bill. He figured he’d do a little mercenary work for the government while Rapp forgot about him. Unfortunately, the government proved to be only slightly less crazy than the rebel forces it was fighting. In the end, supplying both sides from way behind battle lines turned out to be not only more lucrative but a hell of a lot safer.
Until now.
Kariem was the most psychotic of the rebel leaders he dealt with—a guy who would set a man on fire for putting too much cream in his coffee. If human history taught any consistent lesson, though, it was that the biggest psycho usually came out on top. So while their relationship had a lot of potential upside, it was also extremely precarious. Which was why Black always had one of his lackeys make the physical deliveries.
Again, until now. Yesterday, Kariem had requested that Black be personally involved in their transaction—a shipment of surplus AKs and a few RPGs that were as likely to blow up the person using them as the people they were aimed at.
The question was why. To reward him for his service to the cause? Probably not. To cut him up with a chain saw? A better bet. It wouldn’t be the first time one of the rebel leader’s suppliers ended up in pieces.
A line of military vehicles—all supplied at a tidy profit by him—appeared on the horizon. He accelerated to a more confident pace, finally skidding to a stop in front of the rebel contingent and throwing open the door.
“General!” he said, using the title the man had given himself. “It’s great to see you! How’s the war going?”
Kariem was a disconcertingly large man with deep-black skin setting off eyes that had turned a bit yellow. One tracked reasonably well while the other wandered a bit. The result of a childhood head injury, apparently.
“Have you brought the weapons?”
“Of course.”
“They’re good?”
“They’re okay.”
Kariem nodded. He’d never been all that concerned with a few guns failing or exploding in his soldiers’ faces. Men were cheap. Weapons were expensive.
Black scanned the faces of the rebels surrounding him with an easy smile. Some were sitting on the burning hot hoods of their vehicles, while others milled around eyeing him. There were around twenty in all. Probably a third were either drunk or on something. All were armed.
If things went south, he was definitely going to be killed by a bullet that he’d overcharged these assholes for. Before that happened, though, he’d punch a few holes in General Douchebag’s head. While close-contact fighting wasn’t Black’s specialty, it didn’t have to be. All he had to do was draw and pull the trigger before one of Kariem’s inebriated minions could figure out how to get his rifle off his shoulder.
“It’s my understanding that you’re selling weapons to my enemies,” Kariem said. His face was a lifeless mask—like one of those Old West bandits propped up in his coffin. It was fucking unnerving.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Black lied. “Who told you that?”
“One of my men. He used to fight for Abdo and he says you are providing him with equipment.”
“Wait a minute, now. You and Abdo are allies,” Black said.
It had been true up until about a month ago, but that alliance had fallen apart over something even his troops didn’t fully have a handle on. No one could blame an American new to the area for not being able to keep up with the ever-shifting landscape of African rebellion. At least, that’s what Black hoped.
Kariem stared at him for a few seconds and then began reaching for his waistband. Black swatted at an imaginary fly in order to get his hand next to the Beretta he had stuffed in his waistband. It turned out to be unnecessary. The African just pulled out a small leather pouch containing a diamond nearly the size of a golf ball.
Two minutes later Black was standing in a cloud of dust with that stone safely in his pocket. He leaned against the jeep he’d been left, watching the truck full of weapons struggle to keep up with the general’s motorcade. The cold sweat of fear turned into the hot sweat of being stuck in the desert with nothing but a piece-of-shit jeep and a pair of flip-flops for transportation.
Fucking Mitch Rapp.
* * *
The rebel jeep was still holding together as Black crossed the White Nile and headed into Juba. After hours of nothing but dust and rock, the landscape turned green, with majestic trees and tended fields dotting the landscape. Not that any of those things were easy to make out. The on-again, off-again civil war had done a job on the city’s power infrastructure, leaving it in a permanent gloom.
He had to rely on his one working headlight to navigate the roads, weaving through pedestrians, bicycles, and the occasional farm animal. Finally he turned onto a quiet street that dead-ended into an old church. Its faded yellow walls were still structurally sound, as was most of the roof, but that was about it. The windows were boarded up, the steeple was listing badly, and the cross that had once topped the bell tower was lying broken by the perimeter wall.
It wasn’t much, but it was home.
