“No, the guys can take care of that. Show me the house and then we can talk business.”
The intelligence operative led him inside, scarcely clearing the doorway into the whitewashed interior before David asked, “Security?”
Ian waved his finger in a circle. “Pinhole cameras in every direction, remote feeds piped in through the office monitors and backed by motion sensors. We can get by with one guy on guard duty.”
“Good. How are we doing on supplies?”
Ian led him down the hallway. “Full lineup of civilian clothes, formal to informal and everything in between. Backup generator has gotten us through the last two power outages.”
David hooked a thumb toward the kitchen on their left and asked, “Food?”
“Kitchen was fully stocked when we got here. We could hunker down here for the first year of the zombie apocalypse without going hungry.”
Nodding his approval, David said, “Reilly will be glad to hear that. How’s the coffee situation?”
Ian shot a sidelong glare at his team leader.
“Come on, David. Have you ever known me to scrimp on caffeine?” Without waiting for a response, he paused in the hallway and pointed. “Next door on the left is the debriefing room. Four bedrooms down the hall, plus an unfinished storage space for the gear. And the office is this way.”
Stepping into what should have been a living room, Ian paused to allow David to take in the view: tables ringed the space to complete a fully stocked office that included computers, shredders, and a suite of telephones with encrypted lines.
Once David gave a satisfied nod, Ian took a seat before the central monitor and waited for his team leader to pull up a chair beside him. Jostling the mouse, Ian saw the screen come to life with a grainy still frame of a bearded Nigerian man wearing a checkered shemagh over his scalp, the excess scarf draped over one shoulder. He had camouflage fatigues and a tactical vest, and one arm hoisted a machete victoriously skyward.
David frowned.
“So you brought me here to show me more pictures of the wonderchild?”
David’s moniker was fitting, Ian supposed, in its own perverse way—because while Usman Mokhammed was many things, his status as a prodigy of sorts was irrefutable.
If the extraordinarily violent terror organization of Boko Haram was considered a business, then Usman was the equivalent of an employee who started in the mailroom and was on his way to becoming CEO. As of eight months ago, when Ian’s team was deployed to Syria, the young terrorist wasn’t even on the Agency’s radar. But when the Nigerian military captured Hakeem Salafi, a Boko Haram captain, Usman was promoted to take his place and given command of somewhere between 120 and 150 men. No one was sure of the exact number; what they did know was that Usman took the reins with staggering efficiency, elevating the unit under his command from crude terror into a highly sophisticated killing machine.
The first mission he commanded was a daring prison break, raiding a detention facility in Maiduguri and freeing 86 known Boko Haram operatives, along with another 42 inmates who immediately pledged allegiance to their liberator. Having effectively doubled the size of his fighting force overnight, Usman had gone on to target foreign aid workers in Nigeria’s besieged northeast, killing two dozen in the first month and effectively severing the distribution of food and medicine to tens of thousands of civilians already displaced by Boko Haram violence.
Then, he’d turned his attention to income.
Bank robbery was nothing new for Boko Haram—it was one of their main revenue streams. But Usman had taken it to a whole new level, targeting not just small local banks in Borno State but also major financial institutions in government-controlled metropolitan areas like Kano and Zaria. He’d used the proceeds to equip his men with a lethal array of belt-fed machineguns and rocket launchers, and the Agency had since intercepted communications of senior Boko Haram leadership appointing Usman as an emissary to travel to Somalia and establish a strategic partnership with their East African counterparts, Al-Shabaab. What followed was a dedicated intelligence effort to track down Usman to his camp outside Gwoza, and once his location had been pinpointed, Ian’s team was sent in to conduct a surgical strike against the rising terrorist star.
There was just one problem.
“Usman’s gone,” Ian said flatly, minimizing the image of the machete-hoisting leader to pull up a digital map of Nigeria.
Beside him, David released a pained exhale and tapped the knuckle of his fist atop the table three times in quick succession, as if trying to defuse his frustration.
“Where to?” the team leader asked.
Ian pointed to the town of Gwoza in the northeast. “At half past ten last night, Usman’s cell phone trace departed his camp and moved here”—he slid his finger southwest, coming to a stop roughly halfway to the team’s current location before tapping the screen—“to here. A town called Bauchi.”
David sounded relieved. “Oh. You scared me for a second there. So he’s well outside Boko Haram territory and hunkered down, what, six hours or so from here? That means we can hit him tonight, before he moves again.”
The house was now filled with clomping footsteps as his teammates carried gear inside. Ian heard a cry of delirious joy as Reilly discovered the food stockpile.
“It’s not that simple,” Ian said. “Usman’s cell phone went dark on the outskirts of Bauchi, and the Agency doesn’t have an exact location. Based on his pattern of life, he won’t activate his phone again until after nightfall. But there’s a bigger issue at play here.”
“Which is?”
Folding his arms, Ian replied, “Usman has spent nearly a month living in the same Boko Haram camp outside Gwoza. The more success his men have had, the less he’s personally accompanied the raids—makes sense, because his career is on the rise and he’s getting too important to get killed on an operation. But last night, he leaves this terrorist utopia and suddenly travels 350 miles into a government-controlled area. Why?”
David considered the question for a moment.
“Maybe he was tipped off that we were coming. Put his cell phone on a truck to throw us off, then vanished to God-knows-where.”
“And if the Nigerian government were aware of our mission,” Ian responded, “I’d agree with you. But the only people in this country who know exactly what we’re doing here are the US ambassador and his station chief. That’s why I think there’s a major attack in the works. Something important enough for Usman to personally spearhead it.”
David folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “What does the Agency have to say about all this?”