“Which part?” Cancer asked. “Killing terrorists, or helping to rescue hostages? Both sound pretty solid to me.”
“Equipping the Taliban against the Soviets sounded pretty solid to the Agency back in the eighties, too. Can you look me in the eye and say there’s no chance we’ll find out something about our missions five or ten years down the road?”
Cancer gave a short laugh. “I wouldn’t say that. But as long as it doesn’t involve us justifying our actions in a secret court, I’ll look you in the eye and say that I don’t really give a shit.”
“Well,” I said, “let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Besides, we have to survive long enough to worry about the possibility.”
Then I turned back to face the road ahead, and the van fell silent once more.
For nearly three hours we’d been traveling along Highway A4 under the constant risk of enemy contact, with every mile south of Maiduguri stretching through wild territory that was controlled by Boko Haram, if it was controlled at all.
Now that the sun was rising, that risk increased exponentially. Fighting with the benefit of night vision was one thing, but when every dickhead with a gun could see just as well as we could, the playing field was considerably more level.
Which was ludicrous, in a way, because the terrain around us was anything but.
To our right, the ground sloped off in a rocky expanse stretching to the fringes of the Sambisa Forest. To the left were tree-covered hills rising to astonishing heights, the greenery lusher than anything we’d seen since departing the mangroves on infil. These were the Mandara Mountains, a volcanic range that extended over a hundred miles.
Cancer stuck his head into the cab to take in the landscape with a low whistle.
“Jesus,” he muttered, “look at those mountains.”
Ian spoke up behind him.
“When Boko Haram took over Gwoza, a lot of residents took to the hills. Now that the military is in control of the town—more or less—those mountains belong to the terrorists as much as the Sambisa Forest on the opposite side of the highway. Probably more so; the high ground has miles of caves and caverns, and they extend all the way into Cameroon.”
Cancer moved back to his seat, commenting, “Sounds like the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.”
“It sounds,” Ian corrected him, “like a lot of insurgent-infested areas. Inaccessible terrain combined with porous borders are a nightmare for any government and a dream come true for any bad guy.”
“After our last mission,” Cancer said, referencing China, “I really, really don’t want to climb any more mountains.”
Chuckling in agreement, I said, “Then be glad the hostages are in Gwoza. If we can support another rescue, the hostages could be recovered without Usman—or his predecessor—going free in exchange.”
Cancer sounded ambivalent about the prospect.
“So? We still wouldn’t get to kill him.”
I shrugged. “At least he’d remain in custody.”
“Sure, until the next time Boko Haram nabs any civilians considered important enough for the Nigerian government to trade for.”
Worthy dealt himself into the exchange then, speaking with a cynicism that I’d rarely witnessed from the normally pragmatic Georgian.
“You guys are missing the point. Or severely overestimating our impact on global events.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
He said, “Meaning that even if we smoked Usman, someone else would step up and the terror would continue in one new flavor or another. Just look at how many groups have spun up since Boko Haram got started in, what, 2001?”
Ian corrected him, “2002. And there’s only been two spinoffs, technically. One faction—Ansaru—broke off and pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, while the main group became loyal to ISIS and flagged themselves as Islamic State West Africa Province. After Baghdadi demoted their leader, he split from ISWAP and became Boko Haram again. Now we’ve got three terrorist groups with the same origin: Ansaru, ISWAP, and Boko Haram, with various links to Al Qaeda, ISIS, and”—he heaved a dreary sigh—“God knows who else.”
I shook my head. “That’s nothing new, though, just the usual terrorist bullshit. ISIS came from Al Qaeda, right?”
“Not quite that simple.” Ian leapt at the opportunity to recount his encyclopedic knowledge of terrorism. “Al Qaeda was founded in 1988. But Zarqawi founded Al Qaeda in Iraq in ’04, shortly after the second US invasion. Two years later, Zarqawi was killed in an airstrike. Abu Ayyub al-Masri took the reins, and was killed in 2010. Then Baghdadi took it over, reflagged the organization as ISIS, and took over a swath of the Middle East bigger than the state of Indiana. They recruited 40,000 fighters from over a hundred countries, and started making somewhere around a million dollars a day through the sale of black-market oil. After Delta killed Baghdadi, a new leader emerged and the organization restructured along the lines of Al Qaeda, which it came from in the first place.”
“Exactly my point,” Worthy said. “As long as there are disaffected and poverty-stricken populations ripe for extremist ideology, there’s going to be an endless succession of terrorist groups. And as for our team? We’re just one small cog in a very large machine that’s got to keep running 24/7, 365, to keep these assholes from getting too powerful—or too effective.”
I pointed out, “That doesn’t mean we can’t make a difference.”
“No,” Cancer agreed, “but it doesn’t mean we get to pick and choose what we accomplish, either. Selecting the targets is up to them, but killing those targets is up to us. I gotta say, I won’t be thrilled if Usman gets a free pass.”
I considered my next contribution to this meandering disaster of a conversation. Ian’s facts were correct, of course, and Worthy’s sentiments not entirely unjustified—nor were Cancer’s. But just because global terror was more cancer than pneumonia didn’t mean that our involvement in the Agency’s targeted killing program was without merit. After all, we existed to target the next generation of terrorist leadership before they became a bin Laden or Zarqawi or Baghdadi—and with every tier-one counterterror unit overtasked with more targets than time, I felt confident that my five-man team served a noble if humble purpose in the grand scheme of things.
At that moment, Tolu spoke up for the first time since we left Maiduguri.
“There is a difference,” he said dryly, “between killing terrorist leaders and executing the ones they prey upon.”
I spun my head to face him—Tolu was practically a different person after our raid against the ISWAP fighters. No more rap, no more casual Pidgin English phrases, and while his latest comment was in reference to the previous conversation, he may as well have been reading my mind.
But before I could voice a response to his sudden outburst, our van rounded a corner in the road and I was staring at a sight that was somehow equal parts peaceful and intimidating: the town of Gwoza.