Ian held his breath as they passed the low green roofs of the classroom buildings, then caught his first glance of the field beyond.
Like the first two, it was barren and flat, the only distinguishing features being a few patches of grass before the field ended at a parallel road. Past that was the mountain vegetation, trees and brush filling the view and sloping sharply upward. No building had been erected since their overhead imagery was constructed, no low-visibility entrance to an underground lair and, therefore, absolutely no way the hostages could be there.
At that moment Ian realized he’d committed the cardinal sin of his profession—he’d fallen in love with his intel, warping the clues around his hopes to locate the hostages. In the never-ending battle between solid facts and informed assessments, he’d seen what he wanted to from the three grids pulled from an office in Maiduguri, and now that his hopes were dashed, he was left bearing the full responsibility of having subjected his team to immeasurable risk in traveling to Gwoza.
But he spoke none of this aloud, and when David posed his next question in the form of four exasperated words—“Ian, what the fuck?”—the intelligence operative struggled to formulate his reply.
“I don’t know, guys,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. “I just don’t get it.”
39
Duchess rubbed her eyes wearily, unable to suppress the urge to yawn.
The OPCEN was at half-capacity, with each staff section rotating their members out on rest cycle. One of the many problems inherent in supporting a ground team on the far side of the world was the time difference; while David and his men were completing their sunrise examination of the Gwoza sites, Duchess and her staff were staring down the barrel of a graveyard shift.
She flicked her eyes to the digital wall clock display with a variety of time zones from East Africa to Greenwich Mean Time, finally settling on Eastern Standard to see that it was quarter after three in the morning.
Closing her eyes, she rolled her head in a full circle clockwise, then counterclockwise, to stretch her neck before blinking and reaching for the mug of lukewarm tea. She’d been on a steady drip of caffeine and sugar for longer than she cared to calculate, while most of the OPCEN staff had consumed enough coffee in the past few days to keep a small Starbucks operating profitably.
Not that it mattered, she thought as she took a sip and replaced her mug on the desk. It wasn’t like the ground team was getting much rest, either. Those five men and their indigenous driver had been on the move almost nonstop since arriving in Nigeria, and Duchess considered that the results of all that near-constant activity were both heartening and dismaying.
On one hand, they’d been in the right place at the right time to serve as the lynchpin for a rescue of seven hostages. And after that, they’d managed to secure a windfall of intelligence, enough to keep her J2 section in a continual cycle of analyzing the content and farming out documents to various regional specialists within the Directorate of Analysis. The combined effort was required to translate the snapshots of drugs, shipment numbers, and destination information spanning multiple continents into a solidified intelligence assessment. Just as that herculean exertion gained traction, David’s team had obtained photographs of the Maiduguri ledger, which was, in terms of intel, if the initial read on its contents proved remotely accurate, something akin to winning the lottery twice in two days.
And now, Duchess waited to see if the team could strike gold a third time.
Her chance to find out came in the form of a burst of static from the speaker box on her desk, followed by David’s voice. “Raptor Nine One, Suicide Actual.”
She lifted her hand mic and keyed it. “This is Raptor Nine One, go ahead.”
“Be advised, we have completed initial reconnaissance of all three locations.”
“And?”
A pause. “There’s nothing there. Not at any of them. All are open clearings, exactly as they appear on the satellite imagery—no visual evidence of spider-hole entrances or the like, although we’d have to go boots-on-the-ground to confirm or deny for sure. We’re still uploading the video footage to transmit, but it looks like we’ve hit a brick wall on those hostages.”
Duchess felt disappointment, but not exactly surprise. Granted, it wasn’t inconceivable that military complicity had allowed the hostages to be relocated inside their security bubble of Gwoza. After all, corruption in Nigeria was practically a competitive sport: the politicians alone drained millions from the national bank every year, and their salaries were substantially better than those of the military leadership.
That raised the question of whether Boko Haram would risk such a partnership with the Nigerian Army. Again, the answer was very conceivably a yes. Doing so would protect the hostages from all but the most comprehensive rescue effort, one that would take a hell of a lot longer to plan than the comparatively simple raid against a single camp in the Sambisa Forest. And the amount of effort such a rescue would take to plan, let alone execute, not only bought Boko Haram substantial time to communicate their terms, but exponentially increased US willingness to negotiate a release, albeit through Nigerian government proxies.
All that notwithstanding, the real reason Duchess expected this outcome wasn’t a matter of facts or logic, but instinct. Upon hearing the outcome of the Maiduguri raid and its intelligence yield, she knew in her gut the hostages weren’t at those grids. But she’d approved the team’s relocation to Gwoza all the same because she didn’t know what the grids did represent, and in lieu of any meaningful purpose for her ground team in the interim, a comparatively low-risk reconnaissance in a protected town was the best means of keeping them in play as the situation continued to develop. After all, they couldn’t exactly hang out around Maiduguri after raiding the Okafor International compound.
Keying her mic, she transmitted, “Copy all. Don’t beat yourselves up too bad—the intel you’ve gathered so far is going to have a significant impact, just not to the hostages. For now I want you to lie low in Gwoza and await further guidance, is that clear?”
“Crystal,” David replied. “Sorry we don’t have better news for you. Suicide Actual, out.”
“Raptor Nine One, out.” She set her mic on the desk, then looked up to see her J2 rise from his desk.
She watched Lucios closely as the intelligence officer moved to the laser printer beside his workstation, then collected a sheaf of documents that he slid into a manila folder before approaching her.
Duchess made eye contact and hooked a thumb toward the empty seat beside her. Jo Ann was on rest cycle, and Lucios reluctantly lowered himself into her chair before speaking.
“Ma’am,” he began, “forensic accounting has returned some preliminary results on the analysis of that politician, Malu.”
“The oil guy?” she asked.