Steadying his grip on the G28, he took aim at the leftmost man in the group. While it was impossible to discern the highest ranking member, this particular terrorist dirtbag actually held his weapon in both hands—the others had them slung over one shoulder like Davy Crockett—and was therefore the most likely to get a shot off.
Taking a final exhale, Cancer waited for the natural respiratory pause between breaths before taking the slack out of his trigger and squeezing off a shot. It was a clean hit, a through-and-through to the heart, and Cancer transitioned to his second target and delivered a fatal round before the third man processed the sight and began to run.
When he did, however, it was commendable—adrenaline had turned him into a speed demon, and he now loped toward the nearest cavern entrance with surprisingly rapid strides. And while his response was the best one available to him, his estimation of where the shots came from could have used some work. His path took him not into Cancer’s blind spot along the ravine’s southern wall, but instead northward as Cancer tracked his movement, squeezing off another shot that flung the man to the ground but didn’t kill him.
Instead he rolled partially to his side, facing away and in the process of dragging himself to cover when Cancer drilled him through a shoulder blade, the bullet tearing into his chest cavity and probably blowing out a lung in the process.
Cancer swept his sights across the first two casualties, then back to the third, as he scanned for any signs of movement. Then he lifted his eyes from the scope, watching for any more fighters to appear as he listened for sounds of alarm from the valley below. Nothing. He executed a reload without taking his eyes off the ravine floor, then used his non-firing hand to retrieve the Icom radio from his pocket.
Rotating the volume knob just past the click required to turn it on, he set the radio down and listened for transmissions—any remaining enemies would be wise to stay hidden, though they’d likely be calling for reinforcements by now. When the radio remained silent, Cancer transmitted to his team.
“In position at the western edge of the canyon. Four EKIA, no Icom chatter. I only have eyes on the north side—southern edge remains a blind spot.”
The moment he released his transmit switch, the relative silence of his surroundings was shattered by automatic gunfire.
I slipped through the forested hills with all the stealth I could muster without falling behind, secure in the knowledge that my quarry was within reach.
Since following Usman away from Objective Central, I’d managed to strip off my ghillie suit between sightings of the precious few indicators guiding my path. At first great splatters of blood had traced a route for me to follow, though they’d trickled off to a few sporadic droplets. Beyond that point, the majority of my clues were audible—the rustle of brush, the clatter of small rocks underfoot, and on one occasion, a pained grunt as Usman tripped and fell.
But I had yet to actually see the man since my failed ambush attempt, and that struck me as nothing short of ridiculous. This shouldn’t have been hard. Usman was fleeing in a blue prison jumpsuit, for Christ’s sake. The vegetation was thick but not that thick; he’d had a head start, but not that much of one. He was wounded and I wasn’t, and yet he’d been a ghost for the duration of my pursuit—and no matter what was about to unfold, that pursuit was quickly approaching its bitter end.
Any second now, Boko Haram reinforcements would be streaming in from the far reaches of the Mandara Mountains, to say nothing of the terrorist hordes located in the nearby Sambisa Forest. Whether my team managed to interdict Usman or not, we had to get back to the relatively safe confines of Gwoza or we’d be wiped out in these hills.
I scanned the terrain to my front as I moved, hoping for Usman’s next misstep to guide my trajectory. My radio earpieces were invaluable in that regard—in addition to providing communications, they amplified sound until a decibel cutoff kicked in to preserve hearing. They were probably the only reason I’d been able to pursue Usman this far.
But when I found the next evidence of Usman’s passing, it wasn’t a sound at all.
As I bypassed a cluster of low scrub brush beneath the treetops, I entered a small clearing and caught sight of a shoulder-height branch with leaves marked by a dark slick of fresh blood. Orienting my path toward this new clue, I broke into a run. If the majority of my pursuit was any indication, I might not detect another trace of Usman for another twenty meters if at all.
I was halfway to the blood-marked leaves before it occurred to me that this could be a trap; after all, I hadn’t seen his blood in some time, and even then only in small droplets on the ground. The branch was like a billboard by comparison, and I was heading straight for it, entering the middle of a clearing and oblivious to any possibility that Usman was smarter than I was, that he could have planted the sign and was lying in wait.
Already in motion, I feverishly searched for the nearest cover and found a partially exposed boulder rising three feet from the forest floor to my front right—just enough to hide me, provided the attack didn’t come from the left.
But by then I had no other options. I altered course in a desperate sprint to the rock, closing the distance as Cancer transmitted over my earpiece. “In position at the western edge of the canyon. Four EKIA, no Icom chatter. I only have eyes on the north side—southern edge remains a blind spot.”
My final two footfalls propelled me in a lunging leap toward the boulder as I tried to consider from which direction the attack would come.
It was too late.
The burst of automatic gunfire erupted to my right as I dove behind the boulder, a fiery muzzle flash igniting in the periphery of my vision before I landed. By what margin Usman had missed, I couldn’t say, but it wasn’t much, the snap of the bullets shredding through the space overhead so loud that I initially thought he’d hit me.
I rolled to my side, pushing off the boulder with my boots before lying flat on my back with my knees spread wide and the HK416 aimed above the rock to my front. There wasn’t enough cover to rise to a knee, so this was the best defensive position I could manage for now—but it wouldn’t last long.
Usman had selected a remarkably good ambush spot. The boulder was squarely in the center of the small clearing, with no cover for fifteen feet in any direction. There was no place to move without him shooting me first, leaving me in a precarious position that he could easily outflank, using the trees for cover to attain a vantage point to deliver the fatal shot. I couldn’t even call upon my team to save me and stall for time. I wouldn’t last that long.
The plus side of this situation was that I felt reasonably confident Usman only had one magazine—the weapon had probably been handed to him as a largely ceremonial gesture, and it was unlikely they’d expected him to be using it in self-defense minutes after his release.