He offered me the one he just lit, then sparked a new one for himself. I took a pull off the cigarette, then exhaled with an appreciative nod.
After a beat of silence between us, he asked, “Laila know you’re smoking?”
“You tell Laila and I’ll fucking kill you.” He shot me a skeptical glance, and I nodded in affirmation. “Try me and see.”
“Now you’re talking crazy. Remember: ‘Beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young.’”
“I’ll second that,” I said.
We took a drag off our cigarettes in unison, then blew our smoke upward at the brightening sky. Today was going to be a hot one, I thought. In Nigeria, they all were.
“So what do you think?” I asked.
“About what?”
“Any of it.”
He drew another lungful of smoke and said, “We’ve had a good run this trip. Everyone’s performed, and for a team that’s not designed to collect intel, we’ve uncovered one hell of a lot of it.”
“Three hostages are still out there.”
“And seven are back with their families,” he pointed out. “You gotta take the good with the bad, boss. We can only do so much. Those grids were the best shot we had, but nothing’s guaranteed in this business. You of all people understand that.”
Shaking my head absently, I said, “It’s just that—I mean, after China, I thought we were on the brink of something big. Erik Weisz and all that. Everything we’ve found in Nigeria is well and good for stopping an economic conspiracy, but it’s not exactly counterterrorism.”
“All we can do is feed the beast. Who knows what the Agency is working on as a result? Remember, they gotta earn their pay too.”
My earpiece crackled to life at the end of his sentence.
“Suicide Actual, this is Raptor Nine One.”
Keying my mic to respond, I transmitted, “Suicide Actual, what have you got?”
Duchess sounded like she was smiling. “The answer to all your questions.”
“Wait one,” I replied, pointing a hand toward the doorway and telling Cancer, “Get the guys.”
He was off in a flash, leaving me to pinch my cigarette filter between my lips as I knelt, pulling the radio from my pocket and using both thumbs to program it in speaker output mode. Whatever Duchess was about to say, I wanted us all to hear it together.
Cancer appeared with Reilly, Worthy, and Ian in tow, and they formed a tight circle around me as I laid my radio on the ground between us and transmitted, “Raptor Nine One, go ahead.”
Duchess’s words were tinny but discernible over the radio speaker, and I fiddled with the volume as she spoke.
“You can stop beating yourselves up now. You didn’t find anything at those grids because there was nothing to find.”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“Meaning they weren’t hostage locations at all,” she said, “they were helicopter landing zones. Three simultaneous hostage exchanges, one for each of the Boko Haram leaders to be released.”
I tossed my cigarette to the side and yanked the phone from my pocket to pan across the imagery of Gwoza, locating the three marked grid locations before zooming in on each one.
Duchess continued, “The exchange will occur in 23 hours and 46 minutes, at 0800 West Africa Time tomorrow. Thus far Boko Haram has only confirmed the exchanges will be in Gwoza. They’ll provide the exact grids thirty minutes prior to the exchange time, but everyone here agrees that this explains the open clearings you reconnoitered earlier today.”
It seemed so obvious now that we had the answer. Three clearings, all on the east side of Gwoza... and, shifting the image right to see why they’d chosen that cardinal direction, I found my answer in what lay beyond.
The Mandara Mountains began as a wrinkled mass of foothills on my screen, rising toward a seemingly impassable ramble of trees, rocks, and slopes, with only narrow trails penetrating all the way to town.
My mind flashed back to Tolu’s assurance to me as we approached the vigilante checkpoint: Boko Haram uses motorcycles, and that is why the government has banned them in the northeast.
“Of course,” I transmitted back, “they’re going to come out of the mountains on motorcycles. Provided the exchange goes off without a hitch, Boko Haram is safe as soon as they hit the high ground—with all the caves and caverns in the Mandara Mountains, they’ll be able to hide from airstrikes. And given the number of people they’ll be bringing to cover the exchange, the Nigerian military isn’t going to risk pursuing them.”
“I’d say that’s more or less the size of it, yes.”
“So what’s our play?”
“That’s the Catch-22. There have been some leaks that the US will play ball to exchange the hostages, and the administration isn’t happy with that kind of press. But the safe return of those hostages outweighs the PR risk, and with them likely being held at three unknown locations in the mountains, there’s no way for us to find and rescue them in time to stop the exchange. The prisoner swap is being greenlighted as we speak, and I’ll have to pull you out of Nigeria immediately afterward—there’s no more political appetite for bad news. I regret to say there’s nothing we can do to stop it now nor, I would think, anything we should do.”
I keyed my mic. “So Usman goes free, along with two other key leaders.”
“What can I say?” she answered unapologetically. “That kidnapping changed everything. At this point, getting the hostages back safely is the lesser of two evils.”
“Tell that to the Nigerians who will suffer as a result. And once he’s out, Usman won’t return to his previous camp—he knew someone had a bead on him the second we had our close call with him on the highway. He’s going to disappear; they all will.”
“But the hostages will be safe, and your team will live to fight another day. In the scheme of things, this is a win.”
I didn’t know how to respond, instead turning my attention to my teammates.
Ian looked like he’d had an ice cream cone smacked out of his hand, his expression a mixture of shock and anguish that he hadn’t surmised the true significance of those three grids before Duchess told us. Cancer’s jaw was set—anger, as per usual with him. Reilly was placid, seeming resigned to this turn of events.
Only Worthy’s reaction stood out among the rest.
He leaned forward, flashing a wolfish smile as he nodded slowly and fixed me with a predatory gaze.
“What?” I asked.
“We can do it,” he replied. “We can still take Usman.”
For once, it wasn’t me trying to pitch a suicidally ludicrous plan. But Worthy was nothing if not a tactician, and a pragmatic one at that. I thought he’d redact his statement after a moment of consideration, and when he didn’t, I pointed out, “Boko Haram is going to bring an army of terrorists out of those hills. We’re five guys with peashooters by comparison, and I’m not going to risk—”
“Not peashooters,” he cut me off.
“Compared to what they’ll bring to support the exchange, yes, Worthy. Fucking peashooters.”