Fifteen feet high and fifteen feet wide, the two metal doors screeched as they buckled and tumbled into the parking lot. A dozen tactical lights swept across the warehouse like miniature searchlights.

A beam illuminated the Darood militiaman who’d been snoring on a cot twenty feet from Jake. He sat up when he heard the noise and saw the lights—and instinctively reached for his rifle, but a burst of gunfire changed his mind.

Into a bloody pulp.

Six more Darood who’d been sleeping elsewhere scrambled to the front of the warehouse but raised their hands in surrender when they saw the superior firepower arrayed against them.

Badeed’s men disarmed them and held them at gunpoint on the ground, their faces pressed against the dusty warehouse floor. There was shouting from outside, and two of the warlord’s men manhandled another Darood thug into the warehouse.

“We caught him out back, trying to escape.”

Badeed shined a flashlight in the prisoner’s face and nodded once.

A soldier kicked the prisoner in the back of the legs and forced him to kneel. Another soldier tied his hands.

“You are Masaska?” said the warlord, but it was a rhetorical question. The hole in his face left by the snake venom was unmistakable. “You destroyed my clinic?”

“I—”

Badeed pulled the top off his cane, revealing a nine-inch stiletto. He grabbed Masaska’s hair and plunged the blade into his chest, where it skewered the diaphragm that allowed him to breathe.

It wasn’t a fatal wound, but it was a painful one.

Excruciatingly painful.

Masaska tumbled to the floor, struggling for breath while surrounded by more air than he could breathe in a lifetime.

Badeed signaled his men with a flick of his chin.

It was time for the next phase of the plan.

The Hawiye goons rolled large barrels into the warehouse. Jake could smell the diesel fuel as they poured it across the warehouse floor. It puddled around the Darood prisoners who’d been tied up in the middle.

“Boss!” said one of Badeed’s men.

He’d found Jake, far in the back, tied to the rack.

The warlord approached and his henchman shined a flashlight in Jake’s face.

Badeed recognized him from their encounter in Kitadra.

“Trouble follows you like a shadow,” said the warlord.

“Yaxaas doesn’t like me very much.”

Badeed raised the stiletto and pressed the tip against Jake’s throat. The blade was still warm and wet from Masaska’s blood.

“And why is that?” said Badeed.

“I tried to kill him.”

The warlord jerked the blade up and back, slicing the rope around Jake’s neck. Badeed cut the ties from his ankles and wrists and two of the warlord’s men dragged Jake outside.

Once all the Hawiye were outside, Badeed nodded to one of his men. The man shouldered his weapon, lined up on one of the empty barrels of diesel fuel, and pulled the trigger.