“Do you think any of your sources might know who bought them?” Jake asked.

“The guns are gone, Jake. Don’t waste time chasing ghosts.”

“It’s not the guns and rockets that I’m worried about,” Jake said. “There was something else on that ship.”

“Something worse than guns and rockets?” asked Clap.

Jake nodded.

“This is like a bad dream,” said Pickens.

“If that ship was carrying what I think it was,” Jake said, “then it’s about to turn into a nightmare.”

FIFTY

ASIDE FROM THE buzz of the insects and songs of the birds, the only sound in the picturesque valley was the hum of a diesel generator. It reverberated softly through the hills, muffled by the grasses and trees of southern Somalia. Down on the valley floor, next to a bend in the Jubba River, clusters of work lights illuminated a fortified camp.

Inside the thick stockade walls were rough-hewn buildings and even rougher men—irregular fighters with rifles slung across their chests and over their shoulders. Several of them were clustered around three off-road trucks that had parked under a canopy of camouflage netting.

Half a dozen men were unloading the trucks, using rope handles to lower heavy wooden crates down from the truck beds and into the waiting hands of their comrades, who then carried them inside the largest of the buildings. Other men opened the crates and unpacked them, stacking the stolen rockets and machine guns against the wall.

But it was in a smaller structure on the other side of camp that Yaxaas and his son sat in hardwood chairs, smoking cigarettes and drinking a blend of cardamom and cinnamon teas. The camp was just a few miles north of the equator and far inland from the coast. The smoke hung in the hot and stuffy air.

“Badeed has stung us hard,” said Nacay.

“A few more defeats and inertia will overtake us,” Yaxaas said. “I’ve wondered more than once if we don’t have a leak inside our organization.”

Nacay nodded. “He has been unusually well informed. I hesitate to say it, but—”

The warlord stared at his son, encouraging him to continue.

“Do you think your old friend Cawar might be playing the Hawiye and the Darood against each other?” Nacay said eventually. “Alternately favoring one side, then the other, to drive his sales?”

Yaxaas laughed.

“He’s been doing it for years. Peace would put him out of business.”

“Then why do you let him manipulate us?”

“Because like every skilled liar, he adds enough truth to the lies to make them believable. Ignoring him completely could put us out of business.”

“But he doesn’t know about the weapons we’ve liberated from the Americans.”

The warlord threw his cigarette on the dirt floor.

“No, but a few rifles and rockets will not change the course of the war.”

The man with the bandoliers entered the room and stood in the doorway.