Terrible thoughts raced through his mind: Clap and his men being ambushed, the Bakaara Market, Masaska, the torture Jake had endured inside the warehouse and then the horror that had taken place when it was set ablaze—but more than all of that, more than anything, the thought of a bioweapon in the hands of men like the warlords convinced Jake that they had to be stopped.

He tried to clear his head. Too many random thoughts were jamming him up, preventing him from thinking straight. He focused on his breathing, inhaling as deeply as his bruised ribs would allow, and relaxing all of his muscles as he exhaled. Inhale, exhale, relax. After thirty or so repetitions, he drifted off to sleep.

“Yo.”

“Yo!” Pickens repeated, his baritone reverberating through the small tiled bathroom. “Your pasty-white skin is turning blue. Get the hell out of there before you die for real.”

Jake had been shivering in his sleep.

Aside from a cut under his eye and a few small burns from Masaska’s cigarettes, Jake almost looked normal after he’d dressed in clothes without bullet holes in them. His bruises were hidden by the long sleeves and long pants.

“I’m calling Graves,” Jake said. “Do you want in on this?”

Pickens fled the room.

“Great work,” Graves said over the video link. “You really showed Yaxaas who’s in charge. Now the U.S. has lost its credibility and this guy thinks he can do whatever he wants.”

“He’s got the weapon, Ted.”

“You saw it?”

“No, but his men saw it. They held me in a warehouse and I overheard some of them talking about it. They told some of the others that they ran into a river to wash away the evil spirits.”

“These aren’t educated people, Jake. Did they say what it was?”

“They called it ‘the Devil’s Box.’”

“That could be a television set.”

“It’s the weapon. They also said there was ‘smoke’ coming off it, which would be consistent with dry ice evaporating, which would have caused the condensation I saw in the photos. We’re one bad decision away from a catastrophe.”

“The only bad decision I’m concerned with is you ignoring my order to keep your distance from him.”

“Ted, Yaxaas has no idea what that weapon will do. Maybe he thinks it’ll kill a few people or maybe a few hundred, but a state-manufactured biowarfare agent could decimate the population of Africa. With healthcare, famine, and living conditions what they are down here, it could kill a million people in Mogadishu alone. He needs to be stopped.”