The hills channeled most of it into the valley where it ran into the rapidly expanding Jubba, but in other places, the heavy, water-soaked earth could no longer support itself and came crashing down the side of the hills. Most of the mudslides were small, yet Jake had seen a few with enough force to bury him alive, but he was undeterred.

Instead of celebrating the holiday in Greece with Athena, he was spending it alone in the hills of Africa, waiting to kill one man before he could kill a million.

The first sign of unusual activity came just as the first hint of morning twilight glowed faintly through the clouds.

Several men trudged past the goat pen and across the camp’s muddy courtyard, led by the man with the bandoliers. He wore no hat or poncho to protect him from the rain, just a few hundred rounds of machine gun ammunition to protect him from everything else.

He pointed into the hills, not far from where Jake was holed up, and two armed patrols departed through the main gate. Fortunately for Jake, they mostly ignored their orders and instead followed the game trails on the valley floor, where the ground was level and the risk of mudslides was lower. Jake spotted them intermittently over the next few hours as they crisscrossed the countryside. Several times they walked to within a hundred yards of his position. Good siting and good luck kept him safely hidden in the tall grasses, but luck was a fickle thing, and Jake didn’t like relying on it when so much was at stake.

Despite the weather, the animals came out again at sunset. Several antelope wandered toward the river and a small jungle cat prowled the fence outside camp, but there was still no sign of Yaxaas or the weapon. The only human activity was the constant patrols. Yet Jake took perverse comfort from the men combing the hillside, rationalizing that they would only guard something of value.

The mission was taking much longer than he’d planned. He’d run out of food and his body was stiff and sore from lying nearly motionless twenty-four hours a day. The constant rain and lack of sunlight had soaked his clothes and robbed his body of heat. His senses were dull.

But Jake waited into the night, with the rifle to his shoulder and his eye to the glass. He was watching the patrols’ flashlights move slowly across the far hillside when something rustled the grass to his right.

It wasn’t the wind.

As slowly as he could, Jake rotated his head a few degrees. There were two men, ten yards from his position, carrying Kalashnikov rifles.

And one was pointing a flashlight at Jake.

SEVENTY-FIVE