With each mile of Davis’s descent from the Ethiopian highlands the mercury rose. By the time he reached the plains of South Sudan it was hotter than anywhere he had ever been deployed – the open window of his car was like the door to a blast furnace and the sweat got in his eyes, impeding the drive. But he dared not use the air conditioning. He had only half a tank left, and there had been nowhere to fill up since the border. And he couldn’t go fast enough to get a breeze through the window because the track was too bad. If you could call it a track, that was. An hour ago it had joined the bed of a long-dead stream, and the wheels jolted from boulder to stone. If he took it too fast he would bust an axle. Then he would be in a pickle.
The country he had left behind straddled two worlds, Africa and the Middle East, and the Ethiopian highlanders possessed a twist of Arabia about their features. But the world’s newest nation was Black Africa proper and the people he passed gawped at him. He found the women very beautiful.
Reeds rose ten feet high on each side of the riverbed. He was driving into an African wilderness and he prayed the car would not break down. Then again, Davis mused, he had almost caught them. His concentration was furious as he picked his way along the obstacle course.
A heavy jolt sent agony through Davis’s broken ribs and dislocated shoulder; his flank was a patchwork of black and greens where the Toyota had struck and he suspected internal bleeding, no matter what the doctors said. Davis’s face became a scowl at the thought of what he’d do to Jenny when he caught up with them. Abruptly the expression melted into a grin.
The dot had stopped moving.
Jenny had parked in a small village a couple of kilometres upstream – it was the middle of butt-fuck nowhere with no ragtag local police to worry about. Perfect. A delicious shiver overcame Davis, the sensation a bull shark must feel as the white membranes roll back over its eyes. After a few minutes he turned off the riverbed and accelerated along a well-used trail. A hut flashed past, then two more, a woman with a basket of dung balanced on her head. There were farmers trying to sell their produce by the side of the track; nothing was on offer but tomatoes and red onions. With rising excitement Frank saw the dots converge on his display. He swept into a clearing between the huts, feeling for his pistol. He frowned – there was no sign of Frobisher’s Toyota. The only vehicle was a petrol tanker, surrounded by a gaggle of villagers pouring fuel into drums. Davis leapt from the car, his pistol in one hand, the scanner in the other. He felt his heartbeat slow.
Condor time, baby.
A girl of about fourteen wearing only a pair of yellow shorts watched open-mouthed as Frank bounded across the ground. He rounded the vehicle. But there was no one to be seen. The scanner was adamant: Jake should be standing right in front of him. Realization flared. How could he have been so stupid?
A bundle of oily rags was wedged between the tank and the chassis. Already knowing what he would find, Davis unravelled the parcel. A metallic pellet gleamed in the sun. He hurled the device across the village, punching the tanker hard enough to cleave the skin from his knuckles. The empty cylinder boomed its reply.
Charlie Waits would not be a happy bunny. The race for the final inscription was on – but as with so much in the modern world, West was playing second fiddle to East.