“Do you think it's Jennifer?”
Brooke scanned the green. She didn't see anyone.
DeMoss whispered, “We should wait for the others.”
“I'm not going to wait if that's Jennifer and she's hurt.”
“Akbar could be hiding in the trees watching us, waiting to shoot you.”
“I'm not waiting.”
Brooke began moving toward the body on the green. She was more afraid about what she might find than Akbar lurking in the shadows taking aim.
Was it Jennifer? Was she alive? Why would he leave her here?
With her left hand, she fished her cell phone from her pocket and hit its flashlight app, turning herself into an even more obvious target.
Brooke was close enough now to recognize that there was a black hood over the figure's head. Duct tape had been wrapped around the wrists and legs. Tucking her pistol into the waistband of her denim pants, Brooke leaned over the cloaked figure.
“Jennifer,” she said softly as she reached down to remove the hood. “Honey, it's me.”
There was no response.
“It could be a booby trap!” DeMoss called to her. He had remained several yards back. But Brooke had already gently lifted the figure's head off the brown turf and was working to remove the tape. When it was loose, she removed the hood and gasped.
It was Aludra. Her throat had been slit. Now Brooke understood.
It had been Akbar texting her. He'd gotten her private cell number from Aludra after he'd realized that she had betrayed him. He had put a bomb in the trawler rigged to explode when the cabin door was opened and then had driven here and murdered his wife. The sound of the explosion across the river at the marina had been his cue to send Brooke the second text drawing her to the golf course and Aludra's corpse.
Brooke stood and used her phone as a spotlight as she slowly turned in a 360-degree circle shining it around the perimeter of the green. She suspected that Akbar was watching them, getting a sick thrill, but there was no sign of him or Jennifer. Only blackness and silence.
Near the border city of El Wak
Northeastern Kenya desert
A
s was his custom, the goat herder rose before sunrise to pray and tend to his herd before prodding his animals toward the grazing spot outside the walls of billionaire Umoja Owiti's estate. He had been warned that today would be the last that he could graze them near the compound because a visitor was arriving there the following day. The herder wanted to take full advantage of that prime location while he could.
Walks Many Miles did not go with him. He'd stayed behind to accompany Hani to El Wak where she could place a phone call to Langley. He needed her to tell Washington that he had survived the helicopter crash and the Falcon was coming to Owiti's compound tomorrow.
After breakfast, Miles left Hani cleaning utensils near the fire while he slipped into the hut to change into the baggy clothes that served as his disguise and wrap a scarf around his head to conceal everything except his eyes.
The old man had wanted to take the AK-47 assault rifle with him when he'd left with his goats, but Miles had convinced him to leave it hidden in the hut. Owiti's private security guards might become alarmed if they spotted the herder suddenly armed the day before the Falcon and his entourage was scheduled to arrive.
How would he explain it?
Miles had just finished tightening the headscarf and tucking one pistol in the front of his pants and the other behind his back when he heard the sounds of an approaching vehicle.
He peeked through the narrow slit between the hut's doorway and its flap covering and saw a Toyota pickup drive past the goat pen toward Hani, who was standing near the campfire. He counted two men in its cab and three riding in the truck bed. From their dress and weapons, he assumed they were Al-Shabaab fighters.
Hani picked up a baseball batâsized stick that she had gathered for the fire and readied herself. She was standing about five yards outside the hut's doorway. If she called for help, the men would know that she was not alone. She gripped the wood with both hands and raised it back over her shoulder ready to swing.
As soon as the truck stopped, three terrorists leaped from the truck bed. They began chanting her name, taunting her. The driver and front seat passenger joined them. Hani was now surrounded by five men who had formed a circle around her and the fire. Four of them were armed with assault rifles, but only one had unslung his gun. The other three rifles were strapped over the men's shoulders. The fifth intruder had a pistol tucked in his pants.
When Hani yelled at them to go away, the man holding his rifle pointed it into the air and fired a burst of rounds to frighten her. While she was watching him, one of the others darted up from behind her and slapped her hard on her buttocks. His buddies cheered as he pranced proudly back to his position in their circle. Hani turned her head to glare at him and when she did, a fighter who was standing in front of her bolted forward and grabbed the neckline of her dress, ripping it as he passed her so that it exposed one of her breasts. This prompted more jeers as Hani was now forced to clutch her stick with only her right hand, since she needed her left to hold up her top.
It was obvious to Miles what was about to happen unless he intervened. It would be five of them against him, and he knew that he would need to kill all of them. If anyone escaped, they would return with dozens more fighters.
For a moment, he considered not reacting. Perhaps it would be better for everyone if he simply averted his eyes. What if he were wounded? Taken prisoner? He had been sent to do recon, not prevent an Al-Shabaab rape. If he was successful in killing the men, other Al-Shabaab fighters would come looking for them. How safe would Hani and the goat herder be when that happened? Still, could he not act?
He considered grabbing the AK-47, but he'd not fired that weapon since he'd taken it from the Al-Shabaab sentry at the helicopter crash site. Shooting an unfamiliar rapid-fire weapon into a circle of men surrounding Hani would be imprecise.
Another terrorist ran at Hani, only this time she had anticipated him coming and smacked his shoulder hard with her stick. He nearly toppled over, but caught himself and retaliated by lunging at her. He threw a fist at her face but she ducked, and he fell forward clumsily toward the campfire, almost diving into it. His buddies roared with laughter.
Wait
, Miles told himself. He drew the pistol from the front of his pants.
Not yet.
The humiliated fighter righted himself, turned to face Hani again, and this time when she swung at him, he dodged her club and smacked her with his fist in her chest, knocking her backward onto the ground. Rushing forward, he kicked her hand, causing her to release her stick, before he plopped onto her abdomen, straddling her. With his hands, he forced her wrists above her head. She bucked but was not strong enough to throw him off her. Two of his partners knelt down and took hold of her wrists so the terrorist sitting on top of her could rip the rest of her blouse open with his hands. Another fighter grabbed her feet and jerked them apart.
Miles was done waiting. He ducked through the hut flap into the morning air with his pistol raised.
He'd waited until this moment because he knew the terrorists would be watching Hani. The attacker sitting on her, the two men grasping Hani's wrists and the fourth, who was holding her ankles apart, would not be able to use their weapons. Miles did not run at them like some wild banshee. He stepped deliberately from the hut and began firing.
Pop. Pop.
His first target was the only terrorist who was not involved in pinning down Hani. He was standing about three feet from them and was cradling his AK-47 assault rifle, which he had fired in the air earlier, in his arms. Both rounds hit his chest and he collapsed as the remaining four attackers looked up from Hani, stunned that a gunman was now firing at them.
Pop. Pop.
Two more rounds. Deliberate. Well aimed. Just like target practice. His target was the terrorist sitting on Hani's chest, who had a pistol tucked in his trousers; he slumped off of her.
The attacker who was holding Hani's feet leaped up and ran toward the truck without unslinging the assault rifle on his back. He was not an immediate threat because he was running away, so Miles focused on the two men who had been holding Hani's wrists. He fired at the man closest to him, who had risen to his feet and was in the process of grabbing his AK-47. Despite the close range, both shots missed when his target twisted his body sideways. Miles fired another two-round burst and then another before the man collapsed.
By this point, the fourth jihadist had sprung to his feet, unslung his AK-47, and aimed it at Miles's chest. Miles turned his gun so it was now pointed at the jihadist, and in that moment Miles realized the terrorist had beaten him to the draw. He was about to be shot.
Still prone on the ground, Hani snatched up her stick and jabbed it upward between the jihadist's legs, smacking him as hard as she could in his groin. He fired a round from his rifle, but he had flinched when stabbed in his privates, and the bullet missed Miles. He returned fire. One shot hit, but the second missed. Ducking to his left, Miles fired a second two-round burst while the terrorist was still recovering from Hani's blow. Both slugs hit their mark and the jihadist fell forward onto the ground.
That left only the terrorist who'd run for the truck. Its tires sprayed sand from the rear tires as he fled forward.
Miles had only one round remaining in his Sig Sauer 226 handgun so he cast it down and reached for his second pistol hidden behind his back. He had to kill that driver.
He emptied the entire fifteen-shot magazine into the fleeing vehicle. Bullets shattered the Toyota's rear window and punched holes into the driver's side of the cab. As Miles watched, the truck continued moving but gradually slowed. The engine stuttered and stopped. Next came the sound of the truck's horn, a sign that the driver had slumped forward against the steering wheel.
Miles reloaded both pistols and tucked one in his pants as Hani stood, still clutching her stick in one hand, and grasping her torn top in the other in an attempt to cover her chest. Their eyes met, but neither spoke as he slipped by her and began running toward the truck. He popped open the door with one hand while using the other to aim his handgun inside. Miles found himself looking at a man with half his face missing from the pistol rounds that had cut through the cab's wall and penetrated the driver's skull. Shoving the corpse into the passenger seat, Miles climbed behind the wheel, pushed in the clutch, restarted the truck, and put it into reverse.
When he glanced over his shoulder through the shattered rear window so he could guide the vehicle back to the campfire, he saw Hani swinging her club down onto the face of one of the terrorists. In her fury, she had forgotten about her tattered dress as she swung half-naked at him to ensure that he was dead before moving to the next attacker with her club. By the time Miles reached her, Hani had finished clubbing each man. He noticed her hands were splattered with blood. He did not ask if she was okay. She hurried into the hut to change her torn clothing and when she returned, he said, “Please help me load these bodies into the truck. We need to hurry.”
The corpses were heavy and Miles and Hani were both covered with sweat when they finished.
“I'll be back as soon as I can,” he said. “Do your best to get rid of any tire tracks.”
He drove southwest in the direction of where he'd first encountered the goat herder, and after traveling for about twenty minutes, he stopped on a barren patch of hardened desert. Miles dragged three of the dead men from the truck and positioned them around the vehicle. He staged a fourth corpse just outside the passenger door, which he left open. When he had tugged the driver back behind the wheel, he was done. Beside each of the four bodies outside the truck, he placed an AK-47. Pausing, he walked several feet away and surveyed the grisly scene. He wanted it to appear that the men had been slaughtered during an ambush. Satisfied, he fired a single round from his pistol into the vehicle's gas tank. Miles did not expect the truck to explode, as they always did in movies. He was simply puncturing its tank.
He ripped a piece of fabric from one of the men's clothing, dabbed it in gasoline spilling from the truck, and walked fifty paces away. When a trickle of the escaping fuel reached his feet on the hard ground, he lit the fabric in his hand with matches that he'd taken from the crashed helicopter's emergency kit and tossed the burning rag onto the gas.
Miles ran in the opposite direction and was safely away when the remaining fuel in the truck's tank exploded into a large fireball.
By the time he made his way on foot back to the hut, Hani had washed off the blood splatters and swept the area of any telltale tire tracks. She greeted him with a clay cup of warm milk.
“We need to go into El Wak,” he said.
“They will come looking for the men you killed.”
“I left their bodies at least three kilometers from here. I'm hoping Al-Shabaab will assume it was either me or an American rescue party. I don't believe they will suspect you.”
“But they will come here again,” she said. “They will come again and again until someone stops them.” Her voice did not sound angry, only sad, resigned.
“I couldn't let them rape you,” he said.
She looked at his eyes and Miles saw that she had tears in hers. “Thank you,” she whispered. “But now what?”
“Now, we go to El Wak. You make the call,” he replied. But he knew that she was not asking him about his immediate plans. She was asking him about her future.