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estimate. Ten minutes.
    Davis studied the gun and wondered what to do with it. It had a carrying strap, so he could sling it over his shoulder. That would be one way to walk into the headquarters of FBN Aviation and start his investigation. He still had the machete too, which would fit nicely under his belt. In the end, Davis decided against it. Now wasn’t the time for that trajectory. Not yet. He ejected the magazine from the gun, cleared the round in the chamber, and tossed everything into the bushes. Far and in different directions. He took a firm grip on the machete, pulled his arm back, and heaved the big blade fifty yards through the air, watched it twirl and spin like some kind of misguided javelin.
    Davis then picked up his suitcase, turned toward the airfield, and began to walk.

CHAPTER FIVE
    The helicopter, a Russian-made Mi-24 Hind-D, disappeared in a swirl of dust as it settled onto the uneven surface, a patchwork amalgam of broken concrete and sand. The wheels flexed as weight was transferred from rotor blades to earth, and the whine of the engines fell in both frequency and pitch, more and more until everything came still. There was nothing for a time, nothing except the faint crackle of cooling engines and a curtain of dust drifting on the indifferent breeze. The craft was emblazoned with the markings of the Sudanese Air Force, and a small flag bearing five stars was affixed to one cockpit window. Finally, the helicopter’s side door opened, and two men clambered down to the broken earth.
    They were an odd pair, the general and the imam. On physical appearance alone, as different as two men could be. The general was a strapping specimen, even if the straps had gone a bit loose—the circumference of his barrel chest was more than matched by that of his gut. He moved with a soldier’s bravura, yet took five strides to reach full swagger. His stiffly pressed uniform was pinned with rows of shining brass, and the breast of his jacket was a veritable billboard of ribbons. The general’s features were typically Nubian, the dark eyes wide-set and humorless. Any remains of his bristly hair had long ago been shaved away, and the ring of ebony skin at the base of his wheel hat gleamed in the midday sun. His shoulders carried the weight of five stars—he had once considered six, but not even Idi Amin Dada had taken things that far—and the general walked in front, as generals tended to do, with the firm purpose of a man in control.
    The imam was the general’s somatic counterpoint. He did not so much walk as drift, a long white robe floating on the breeze. His black beard, long and unkempt in the most pious tradition, fell to the top of his chest, and his eyes were obscured by wide wraparound sunglasses. He was small of stature and slightly built, a circumstance aggravated by the general’s bulk. This contrast, a matter of mere chance at the outset of their association, had served both men well in the careful cultivation of their respective images. One commanding, one humble.
    After twenty heavy paces, the general stopped in his tracks and put his hands on his hips. The imam drifted to his side. Both men scanned the horizon all around. There was nothing here to catch the eye. Nothing at all.
    “This is the place?” the general remarked in his gruff baritone.
    “Yes,” the imam replied. “We are only a few miles from the Egyptian border. It is barren, of course, but that is to our advantage.”
    The general nodded.
    There truly was little to take in. Sand dominated the horizon in every direction, an ocean of swales that no doubt shifted as freely as the Red Sea itself. Yet at this snapshot moment, the landscape looked as still as stone. They were situated at the center of a rubble field, perhaps ten acres of concrete falling to dust. Both the general and the imam knew the history of the place. A former airfield, it had been built by the Allies during the Second World War, then abandoned as the Germans were