Her mind raced through the fallout that would ensue, speaking the ramifications aloud as Lucios came to a stop beside her.
“Malu is going to run—now, today. He knows there will be reprisals from Weisz. Contact the ISA, let them know Malu is going to make arrangements—”
“Ma’am,” Lucios interrupted, angling his tablet screen to read the contents, “the ISA just sent us the transcript of his calls. Malu has already scheduled a private jet, leaving the Abuja charter terminal at 1800 tonight. Stated destination is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, but it’s safe to say the pilots will change course once they’re wheels-up. Malu also contacted Gradsek and asked for an armed transport to pick him up in three hours for transit to the airport. And he’s traveling with diplomatic immunity, so even if we knew where he was ultimately headed, we can’t legally interdict.”
Pausing to clear his throat, he asked, “What do you want to do?”
The anger faded in one fell swoop, replaced by a sense of crushing despair as Duchess replied, “Right now, Lucios, what I want to do and what I can do are two very different things.”
With a resigned sigh, she concluded, “Continue to monitor the situation. At this point that’s the only option we’ve got left.”
Lucios turned to depart as Duchess fell back in her seat, pinching her eyes shut.
Jo Ann sounded inexplicably optimistic as she asked, “What do you think?”
Duchess left her eyes closed, trying to blot out the news report playing out on the massive flat-screen before her.
She said, “I think tonight will be a drinking night. After letting Malu escape, I’m going to need it.”
“The ground team is a few miles away in Abuja.”
Duchess’s eyes flew open, then narrowed as she spoke. “If I so much as suggested action against a foreign politician, the Agency would have me on the street before I had time to blink.”
“But Malu holds the link to Weisz, and Weisz orchestrated the July 4th attack.”
Turning her head slowly to face Jo Ann, Duchess muttered, “No shit. What’s your point?”
“My point is,” Jo Ann said quickly, “that Malu’s dead whether he knows it or not. If we don’t find him, then Weisz will.”
“Concur. So what?”
“So if he’s dead anyway, and no one can prove it was us”—she turned up her palms suggestively—“why not act?”
Duchess lowered her voice and said, “Even if I, you know...every method of communication with the team is monitored, every contact with them scrutinized for the purposes of legal oversight.”
This detail didn’t appear to concern Jo Ann in the least.
The Navy officer leaned forward and whispered, “If you’re serious about this, I might know a way.”
43
Ian stepped out the back door of the safehouse, shielding his eyes from the blazing afternoon sunshine as he felt his body get pummeled by the stifling heat.
He scanned left and right, knowing that no man in his right mind would be sitting in the open right now given the selection of shaded spots in the heavily planted yard; and sure enough, he located a single figure to his left, seated with his back propped against the rounded trunk of a corkwood tree.
Tolu didn’t appear to notice Ian’s approach, instead drawing smoke from the stump of a cigar whose scent the intelligence operative could detect right away. It was a sweet, aromatic pepper smell, free of any trace of marijuana, and right now that latter point served not as a relief, but a point of concern.
The driver had barely spoken a word since the team’s departure from Gwoza with full military escort two days earlier. Even after the convoy reached Maiduguri and turned west toward Abuja, the normally boisterous driver remained quiet and brooding, and once they’d left Boko Haram territory, Cancer actually had to request he turn on the rap music they were normally asking him to turn off. Throughout the remaining journey to the safehouse, Tolu had maintained an oddly detached focus on his driving, and Ian suspected his mood had more to do with David being in the passenger seat than anything else.
Ian entered the pool of shade beneath the corkwood tree, grateful for a reprieve from the heat, however subtle.
Tolu nodded toward him and asked, “You need me, Mr. Ian?”
“No.”
By way of response to the lack of urgent business at hand, Tolu reached into his breast pocket and procured a second cigar, holding it out as an offering. Ian shook his head, and Tolu replaced it.
Scanning the ground, Ian selected a patch to Tolu’s right and sat cross-legged beside him, leaning against the tree trunk so they sat almost shoulder to shoulder. It was an intimate and non-confrontational posture, one that allowed the participants to speak or remain silent without the potential awkwardness of eye contact when discussing sensitive topics. Ian had enough experience setting up interrogation room seatings to understand that facing Tolu head-on could be a dealbreaker right now.
Ian lifted a long, thin stick from the ground beneath him and began snapping sections off the end in quarter-inch increments, tossing the first aside as he asked, “What’s on your mind, Tolu?”
He heard the driver blow another cloud of smoke, the cigar’s scent renewed in his nostrils.
“Nothing, sir.”
“Listen,” Ian began, “I’m the closest thing my team’s got to being a touchy-feely guy. David shouldn’t have executed that man in front of you.”
Tolu responded hotly, “He should not have executed him at all. You heard his story—he was kidnapped. Brainwashed. This was the truth, abi?”
Ian knew he could contest that point on any number of grounds, starting with the not-unreasonable counterpoint that professional terrorists weren’t the most honest brokers.
But to do so would be to lie—Ian didn’t doubt the captive’s story, and was in fact almost certain the same circumstances applied to others among the ISWAP fighters killed that day. The simple truth was that this was a dirty business, a fight not between good and evil but between combatants with various shades of brutality. The terrorists were undoubtedly at the extreme end, but Ian’s team took their place on the same spectrum. Targeted killing had a nicer ring to it than words like torture and execution, but the team had at various points done the latter two acts in order to achieve the former.
Instead Ian snapped off another length of the stick and said, “You’re right. He wasn’t lying.”
This acknowledgement seemed to relax Tolu somewhat, his voice quiet and vulnerable as he replied, “Then why did he die?”
Ian didn’t answer at first, considering his words as he watched a lizard scamper between bushes to his front. Its head and tail were blaze orange, the body a dull blue-gray, and upon reaching the far bush, it leapt to a perch on one of the branches, then scrambled into the leaves with impossible quickness.
Snapping another section off the branch, Ian said, “You’ve been driving for some time now. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot.”
“Yes,” Tolu agreed, “but nothing like your team. I must say, it has been...not so good.”