The downside, of course, was that he needed only one bullet to turn my wife into a widow.
I considered all the information at my disposal in a few panic-stricken seconds. Usman was ruthless and smart, and had laid a brilliant trap to kill me before escaping to the canyon. Why? Cancer said he’d smoked four bad guys there, which meant Usman presumed he’d soon be protected by an element that would defend his escape into the caverns. That meant he didn’t have to kill me at all—he was doing this out of sheer rage, a deep, unrelenting anger at having been bested upon his release.
And that rage was his only Achilles’ heel at present; it certainly wasn’t lack of intelligence. Any second now he’d begin a simple flanking maneuver to get me in his sights, and the only defense I had was not to keep him at bay, but to taunt him closer—at least that way I’d know where he was.
I called out, “Your other two leaders are dead.”
There was no telling if he would answer me or not; a coldly rational opponent would slip into the trees, stealthily crossing a semicircle in one direction or the other to kill me before I could react. Then again, I thought, a coldly rational opponent wouldn’t have risked stopping on the way to the canyon.
Usman replied in a low, heavily accented voice, “As you will be.”
He sounded perhaps twenty feet distant, probably just within the trees to my front.
“Maybe,” I said, “maybe not. You’re running out of bullets.”
“And my people will be here any moment, so you are out of time. Tell me, which is the greater asset?”
He had me there, I thought, forcing confidence into my tone as I replied.
“It was my men, you know. The attack on the highway, finding your camp in the Sambisa Forest. Allowing the hostage exchange just so we could ambush you on your way out. We’ve had so much fun stacking Boko Haram bodies that I’m starting to wish there were more of you to kill.”
“You will get your wish any moment now. But the pleasure of killing will be ours.”
He was closer now, edging nearer my lone piece of cover, confident that he could best a prostrate opponent. He wasn’t wrong; in the battle between my training and his wildly advantageous position, he held the upper hand by a long shot. And each step he advanced removed critical distance where my marksmanship could make a difference.
I looked left and right, searching for any way to turn the tables and finding nothing but leaf litter and brambles, save a fist-sized rock on the ground beside me.
If only it were a grenade, I thought bitterly.
The boulder I hid behind was in the middle of the clearing, open ground that I couldn’t negotiate without getting shot—and then I realized that if I was exposed in the clearing, then so was Usman.
Picking up the rock at my side, I called out, “You know what? You’re probably right. Here, have a grenade.”
Then I whipped the rock over the top of the boulder, a low, fast arc to present a blur of motion that, combined with my words, I hoped would cause him to run for cover.
No sooner had the rock left my hand than I heard him scrambling on the forest floor, and I curled one leg beneath the other to rise into a seated shooting position.
My view cleared the boulder top to reveal a flash of blue disappearing into the trees, and I opened fire as fast as I could pull the trigger.
But Usman was gone, having cut his losses in a race toward the canyon’s southern edge, directly into Cancer’s blind spot. If he made it into one of the many caverns, then our mission in Nigeria was a failure. It was a miracle this area wasn’t already crawling with Boko Haram reinforcements, and their arrival was fast approaching.
I pushed myself upright, darting after Usman as I transmitted.
“Usman is headed for the southern edge of the canyon—Doc, Angel, need you to get there now to cut him off. Cancer, relocate to get a vantage point.”
I was plowing northward through the trees when Reilly responded, “We’re still a hundred meters out. Going as fast as we can.”
Then Cancer added, “Moving, but it’s going to take me a few minutes to get an angle on the south side.”
Shit, I thought, it was up to me now. I ran as fast as my feet could negotiate the terrain, suppressing my fears of a second ambush. If Usman so much as ducked behind a tree and waited for me to pass, I was done for; but if he reached the canyon before I did, he’d get away forever. With no further US appetite for action in Nigeria after the final hostages were recovered, it was now or never to claim the life of the man we’d been sent here to kill.
I could tell I was approaching the canyon, could see the trees thinning out ahead. But not until I’d passed through a dense swath of leafy bushes did I catch sight of Usman’s blue prison jumpsuit.
He was running toward the precipice, about to disappear into the void of Cancer’s blind spot as well as my own. I skidded to a halt, raising my rifle in the final second and flicking my selector lever to fully automatic as I shouted a single word.
“Usman!”
The cry caused him to make the slightest half-stutter of a footfall, his head cutting partially left to look over his shoulder as my sights aligned with him and I squeezed a long burst.
My rifle spat the subsonic bullets without fanfare, a quiet twirp twirp twirp of suppressed gunfire until my magazine went empty.
Usman was gone.
Reilly increased his speed as the vegetation became more sparse, the ground beneath his boots increasingly composed of stone rather than dirt.
As the trees cleared out he could see the rocky slopes of ravine walls rising to his left and right, their craggy faces dotted with dark cavern entrances. No wonder Usman was running here, he thought—a man could hide from all but the most determined and exhaustive search, much less the ten minutes or so before the hordes of his Boko Haram compatriots came tearing down from the high ground.
The medic advanced quickly, almost recklessly; any one of the caverns ahead could hold unseen enemies, and with only Ian trailing him and Cancer still in the process of relocating, Reilly couldn’t possibly be more vulnerable than he was now.
He raced into the low ground without so much as confirming that Ian had kept pace, sweeping his HK417 left and right as he moved. A cluster of bodies was visible ahead—three of Cancer’s kills, none moving—and he was scanning the ravine’s southern wall when he heard the clatter of rockfall overhead.
Then he registered a sight that was equal parts miraculous and absurd: a body in a blue jumpsuit tumbling down the slope, limbs careening wildly as an AK-74 fell from his grasp. Reilly tried to aim but the body was moving too fast, one dull pop of a bone snapping followed by another. Throughout the rolling fall, the man didn’t make a sound. He must have been dead already, Reilly thought.