“Well that’s interesting,” David shot back, “because I’m chasing after him now and he has a beard.”
Worthy shifted right around the mound of earth to his front, no sooner taking aim in the search for targets than incoming fire kicked up great sprays of dirt not five feet down the slope.
He rolled back behind cover, waiting for Cancer to arrive in position as Reilly transmitted, “I thought Salafi had the beard, not Usman.”
“No,” David replied hotly, “it was fucking Usman!”
Worthy heard a scream from the trail below, followed by renewed shouting from the convoy of survivors a moment before Cancer came over the net.
“Racegun, you’re clear to move.”
With the sniper providing effective fire against the entrenched Boko Haram fighters, Worthy took one more look to verify the route behind him before pushing himself upright and running across the partially wooded slope.
David was transmitting in panted gasps, the voice of a man running as fast as humanly possible.
“I’m in pursuit of Usman, following a blood trail down the mountain fifty meters west of Objective Central. Fuck the linkup—I need everyone to start moving this way.”
Ian plunged through the forested hills in pursuit of Reilly, who seemed to have gained a superhuman burst of energy after throwing the entire operation into disarray. His determination was completely understandable—if Usman got away now, Reilly would be entirely at fault.
They’d shed their ghillie suits, which made rapid foot movement exponentially easier, but the combination of rugged terrain and thick vegetation kept them from proceeding at anything more than a partial jog. Meanwhile, Ian’s frustration at the medic’s utter failure to positively identify Usman prior to engaging fell second only to his desire to see the terrorist leader slain before his team had to flee the mountains. Because whatever Boko Haram’s reaction to the death of two major leaders and a whole lot of foot soldiers in the past few minutes, it was going to be significant and arriving sooner rather than later.
David transmitted, “Usman is headed for Gwoza, moving west-southwest from Objective Central. Need everyone to set up a picket line to intercept my direction of movement.”
“Got it,” Reilly replied. “Heading due south.”
But Ian felt a twinge of doubt at this course of action, not because his teammates couldn’t improvise a tactical plan in the most fluid of situations, but because he doubted David’s assessment in the first place.
He transmitted, “Suicide, you’re sure Usman is running downhill?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” David almost growled, furious at the unnecessary distraction from his single-minded pursuit.
Ian didn’t reply, instead considering the obvious contradiction—to him, at least—inherent in this course of action by a seasoned terrorist leader. Those three Boko Haram convoys had a limited number of bad guys, many of whom had been obliterated by the team’s near-simultaneous ambushes.
But the Mandara Mountains had a hell of a lot more enemy fighters, and the Sambisa Forest had more still. All had total freedom of movement outside the town, and all would be converging on the ambush sites as surely as a swarm of yellowjackets reacted to the pheromone from one member of the colony being crushed. Usman needed only to survive annihilation until they arrived; yet he was running downhill, toward the only military-controlled town in the area. Why?
Nigerian Army corruption was one possible explanation, but Ian brushed that aside. No one in their right mind would risk a panicked flight into Gwoza without some prior coordination. The risks of being shot by some trigger-happy private were simply too great, and Usman would be much better off hunkering down during the minimal time remaining until his organization reacted.
That’s when Ian realized that Usman had a destination in mind, someplace he could hide until the cavalry arrived to save him.
“Hold up,” Ian said to Reilly, “I need to check something.”
The medic responded angrily, “Do it later. Usman’s getting away.”
“It doesn’t matter where he is, it matters where he’s going.”
“We don’t have time.”
Ian raced up to Reilly and grabbed his sleeve, yanking the huge medic to a stop as he spoke in an urgent whisper.
“Listen, fucker—you were wrong about identifying Usman, and you’re wrong about this. So believe me or not, but I’m stopping.”
Then Ian knelt beside a tree trunk, pulling out his phone and grappling to manipulate the screen as he zoomed in on the satellite imagery between David’s ambush site and Gwoza. Reilly reluctantly took up security to cover him with the muttered admonition, “Make it fast.”
Ian said nothing, instead searching his phone screen for a needle in the haystack of mountain terrain.
He knew innumerable caves and miles of caverns ran throughout the Mandara Mountains—they were a key element to Boko Haram’s survival strategy here. Now he just had to try and identify some in the direction of Usman’s movement.
Ian found his answer in a dark crease of tree-lined shadow paralleling one of the trails to Gwoza. It appeared to be a sharp linear depression in the terrain, a small canyon of sorts, almost directly in line with the movement of David’s icon. Ian tapped his screen to drop a marker there, an inverted teardrop shape with the default title of X1 that would be visible to the others on their shared mission software, before zooming out to see which of the team’s three elements would be first to arrive.
Based on current proximity and the terrain between the team members and the canyon, Ian and Reilly would likely be last. They’d arrive shortly after David, which meant Usman had a better-than-passing shot of making it into a cavern and disappearing before he was interdicted.
But the canyon paralleled the trail leading to Objective South, which meant Worthy and Cancer stood a chance of getting there before Usman could.
Putting his phone away, Ian rose and extended an arm southwest. “Take us this way.”
Reilly objected, “David said to set up a picket line—we need to go due south, not southwest.”
“David’s following a blood trail that will vanish any second now. He doesn’t have time to gain situational awareness—that’s why he needs us. Trust me.”
There was a split second of hesitation as Reilly tried to assess who to believe, and whether because he trusted Ian or doubted David, he turned to face Ian’s pointed instruction before moving out.
Ian resumed the grip on his rifle and followed, giving a rearward glance to scan for threats before transmitting at a jog.
“Racegun, I need you to head for the X1 marker I just dropped on the phone.”
Cancer replied, “I sent Racegun to get the van in case Usman beats us down the mountain. It’s just me—what’s at X1?”