“Focus. I want that enemy truck spinning so hard that everyone inside is in a coma by the time we get around to blowing their heads off.”
Reilly heard the tinny click of Ian putting on his seatbelt and answered, “Don’t worry, boss. They’ll be brain-dead by the time I’m done with them.”
His team leader didn’t respond, instead flicking his gaze from the phone in his palm to the road ahead. Then he said, “Should be within a klick—”
“There they are.” Reilly nodded to the twin sets of headlights coming toward them, both careening from one side of the road to the other.
David transmitted, “Racegun, Cancer, hold your fire—we have eyes-on.”
Reilly decelerated his 4Runner from the upper limits of its speed in anticipation of the coming impact. Every second counted now as they proceeded within five hundred meters of the oncoming Range Rover, then four hundred meters, and Reilly gauged the distance by the spread of oncoming headlights before finally braking hard and swinging his truck across the lane divider.
The Range Rover swerved too late to avoid the strike, and the bumper of Reilly’s 4Runner smashed into its rear quarter panel as the medic maintained acceleration, causing the enemy vehicle’s rear tires to lose traction and sending it into a skidding flat spin.
Then it was gone from view, reduced to a circling blare of headlights in his rearview as Reilly spun his steering wheel hard left to miss a patch of trees beside the highway. Hitting the gas, he steered his 4Runner back toward the highway to see the outcome of his impact—the Range Rover was now stationary and facing the opposite direction. He accelerated up to its rear bumper before slamming on the brakes and coming to a full halt so the enemy vehicle couldn’t reverse.
David was scrambling out of the passenger side by the time Reilly detached his seatbelt and, with the enemy vehicle blocking his door, clambered over the console. He was halfway through the maneuver when he felt the thud of Worthy and Cancer’s vehicle slamming into the Range Rover’s front end, boxing the enemy vehicle in for the coup de grace.
I leapt out of the 4Runner, rounding the hood to assume a perpendicular angle on the stationary Range Rover. Ordinarily I’d have preferred to take cover behind an engine block, but the danger now was friendly fire more than enemy contact—the enemy wasn’t shooting at present, their disorientation evidenced by the slow, groggy movement of human silhouettes dimly lit by the ambient headlights.
Coming to a stop between the driver and passenger doors, I heard men skidding to shooting positions beside me—Ian and Reilly to my left, Cancer and Worthy to my right—and by the time I activated the red laser on my weapon, it was one of five gleaming across the Range Rover’s interior.
My team opened fire in unison, blasting subsonic bullets into the enemy vehicle from front to rear and rear to front, our lasers crossing over one another. I let the melee continue for a few seconds longer than necessary before shouting, “Cease fire!”
We descended upon the Range Rover, ripping the doors open and pulling bodies onto the highway. Any minute now we’d have civilian traffic bearing down on us, and the hasty search consisted of little more than confiscating cell phones as Ian photographed faces of the dead in the hopes that one could be confirmed as a high-ranking Boko Haram official, if not Usman himself.
That latter hope was dashed when Ian announced, “He’s not here.”
The emotion that ran through me at that point was somewhere between exhilaration that everyone on my team had survived the encounter and crushing defeat that we’d failed our tactical mission. But Cancer and Worthy had survived a potentially fatal engagement, and that counted for something.
At that moment, Cancer approached me and said, “Boss, one of our run flats got shot out.”
“Make it as far back to Abuja as we can before changing it,” I replied, scanning his vehicle to see the cluster of bullet holes on the glass. “And take care of that windshield.”
Cancer and Worthy did the latter remarkably fast, using their rifle butts to smash the pane of laminated safety glass and tossing the excess in the back of their truck. In Nigeria, having no windshield at all was far less conspicuous than one shattered by bullets. We left the enemy weapons in place—the last thing we needed was for anyone to think we shot up a carful of civilians—and my team was back aboard their respective trucks within seconds of my exfil order.
I slid back into the passenger seat, transmitting my update to Duchess as Reilly pulled away from the wreckage of the enemy truck.
“Raptor Nine One, engagement complete with four EKIA, no friendly casualties. We’re headed westbound on Highway A3 at this time, moving to pick up the tail on Usman and determine the make and model of a vehicle in the convoy for interdiction by Nigerian authorities. How copy?”
I expected Duchess’s reply to be conciliatory if not elated—despite the unexpected development, my team was still in the fight, and if we couldn’t kill Usman, then the Nigerian government could, at a minimum, capture him on their own turf.
But her response sounded disappointed, forgoing the radio protocol of callsigns.
She said, “Negative, return to your safehouse as soon as possible. You must not be looking at your phone.”
“I’m pulling away from a murder scene on the other side of the world, so no, I haven’t checked,” I responded, fumbling for my Android.
My effort was halted when Duchess replied, “The enemy you killed didn’t just block your attempt; they reported your interference.”
Before I could pull up the map on my phone, she continued, “Usman is in the wind. His cell phone signal went dark.”
6
Morning sunlight streamed through the safehouse windows as Ian sipped his coffee, watching the team leader seated at the desk beside him.
David looked pensive, uncertain—and though neither man said it, he had good reason to be. As the minutes ticked down to eight a.m., both men alternated between watching the silent desk phone and engaging in sporadic bouts of conjecture.
Sensing Ian’s eyes upon him, David looked up and asked, “You’re sure about Usman?”
“Yes,” Ian said, “I am. Think about it: if you’re a terrorist leader traveling in a convoy, the rear security says they’re taking fire and then goes off the grid, what would you do?”
David’s shoulders sank. “Assume my cell phone is compromised, kill it, and continue the mission.”
“And that’s exactly what Usman did. The question now is, what’s going to happen when Duchess calls?”
The team leader drew a long breath. “Well, since it’s Duchess we’re talking about here, I’m assuming she’s going to be pissed.”
Ian set down his mug and conceded, “That’s a good assumption, but don’t place all the blame on her. She’s got her own oversight to worry about, and from their optic we had a lethal confrontation with a few foot soldiers at the cost of one Agency vehicle and a very near compromise of the entire mission.”