“That is the Western translation, but diya is paid in livestock, not currency. However, given that you are foreigners, I will permit your debt to be paid in cash. Ten thousand U.S. dollars per dead man, forty thousand in total, to be distributed to the surviving family members two weeks from today.”

“Forty thousand is a lot—”

“Your employer will understand. Diya is often used to settle debts.”

Jake and Pickens were untied and led outside. One of the gunmen had driven their car up from the checkpoint. He put the Americans’ weapons in the trunk and closed it.

“You have two weeks,” said the man with the cane. He held up the men’s identification and put them in his pocket. “Do not make me look for you again.”

“How will we find you?” Jake asked.

The man smiled.

“You can ask anyone in Kitadra. My name is Badeed.”

EIGHTEEN

JAKE HAD COLLECTED $50,000 from the local CIA station when he’d first arrived in Mogadishu. It was supposed to be used for developing sources, facilitation payments, and unexpected events—like paying off warlords so they wouldn’t kill you. The cash was locked inside the gun safe in Pickens’s basement, but the two men had decided on the drive home from Kitadra that they weren’t going to pay Badeed. It was increasingly apparent that he was the target of their operation, and why give $40,000 to a dead man?

It gave them two weeks to confirm that Badeed was the pirate leader and bring the proof to Ted Graves.

Jake opened his laptop once they were back inside the safe house. The SIGINT analytics team at headquarters had run the queries he’d requested before their trip to Kitadra. He’d asked the team to search for voice intercepts that had been flagged based on the callers’ numbers, keywords, or voiceprints. Additionally, he’d requested that the team review the entire universe of Somali mobile phone records a second time, but select for aggregate behaviors such as common times, telephone numbers, or locations that might lead to the identification of the rest of the pirates and hopefully tie them to Badeed.

The results were waiting in Jake’s inbox.

The pirate gang of eight had made dozens of calls to common numbers, but further analysis showed them to be prepaid mobile numbers: burner phones with no ownership information, and most had gone quiet after a few weeks of use. The intercepts were nonproductive as well, with no positive voice recognition and only ambiguous, coded texts.

Dead ends.

“The technology failed us,” said Pickens. “I guess we’re going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

“Round up a posse and ride at dawn?”

“First of all, fuck off,” said Pickens. “Now let’s find one of these degenerates that we can develop.”