Unlike the greater kudu he’d seen before, the lesser species was maybe 150 pounds and three feet tall at the shoulder, with stripes on its hide and patches on its neck to camouflage it from predators.

It was perfect.

Jake snugged the rifle stock into his shoulder as the antelope approached the near bank. The shot would be heard by everyone in the area as the bullet broke the sound barrier, but Jake had learned many years earlier that pinpointing the source of a single gunshot was exceedingly difficult—especially with a suppressor—but a follow-up shot would give his position away.

Success would depend on a single cold-bore shot, from a rifle he’d never fired, that had been sitting in the rain for days.

Jake pressed his cheek against the stock, exhaled, and disengaged the safety.

The kudu shifted its weight to its rear legs as it prepared to leap out of the water.

Jake fired.

The round caught the antelope just behind the ear. It fell back into the water and disappeared below the riverbank.

The nearest patrol stirred briefly but soon returned to their routine in the absence of any further noise or commotion.

Jake lifted himself onto his elbows, moved forward a few inches, and remained motionless for several seconds. There was no sign that he’d been seen by Yaxaas’s men, and he crawled a few more inches toward his objective. Even in the darkness, it took nearly an hour to cover the one hundred yards to the banks of the Jubba, where a wide bend in the river protected the camp’s western edge like a moat.

The dead kudu was fifty yards downstream, caught in the riverbend.

Jake hauled the downed animal onshore and into a stand of reeds. He pulled the karambit from his vest and skinned the antelope from stern to stem, removing its legs and dumping the innards into the fast-moving water. After rinsing the head and hide, he lashed it to his back and wore it like a helmet and a cape.

Then, with the machine gun nest above him, the camp’s guards in front of him, and the patrols in the hills all around him, Jake started crawling on his hands and knees.

A sharp-eyed lookout with a night scope would have spotted the ruse in a second, but Jake had seen dozens of antelope since arriving in Dujuma and Yaxaas’s men had undoubtedly seen thousands. He was counting on the guards seeing the kudu’s distinctive spiral horns and dismissing it out of habit.

Otherwise, he’d be dead.

Jake moved across the clear-cut zone, briefly lowering his head to mimic nibbling on some grass, and stopped behind the stockade fence, where he was shielded from view.