Jake and Pickens drove the beige Daihatsu through the Hamar Weyne district of Mogadishu. Pickens was behind the wheel, navigating down a dusty street where children in ragged clothes lived in the ruins of crumbling buildings. Plastic water bottles lined with yellow glue littered the ground. With no food, the homeless kids sniffed the glue to get high, to sleep at night, and to escape the hell their lives had become. Fights among the street children were common, with even minor injuries occasionally leading to fatalities because of severely compromised immune systems and a lack of medical care.

The Port of Mogadishu came into view as Pickens turned west on London Road. A pair of rusty tramp freighters and a small container ship were tied up at the quay and a few puffy cumulus clouds floated out over the ocean—but they were too light and too distant to bring the life-giving rain the country so desperately needed.

Jake opened the glove compartment and spotted the Glock 19 he’d stashed there when he’d arrived in-country. As they stopped in front of a building with a distinctive, red-tiled roof, Jake removed the pistol and held it low at his side, down between the seats.

Clap and the Ground Branch team pulled in behind them. A blue SUV with tinted windows was waiting across the street.

A man exited the car holding a package of some sort. He crossed the road and held out a brown paper envelope.

“Open it,” Jake said. He visualized putting two quick rounds between the man’s eyes.

The man gave a toothy grin full of perfect white teeth and tore off the top.

“No bomb,” he said.

Inside were a few papers and maybe twenty photographs.

—

THEY VIDEOCONFERENCED GRAVES once they were back at the safe house.

“The Amjad is no more,” Jake said.

“Where is it now?” asked Graves.

Jake held a photograph up to his laptop’s camera. It was taken at night, with a time and date stamp, showing a ship called the Al Marzoqah sinking beneath the waves.

“They changed the name and scuttled it,” said Jake.

“Judging by the date, it looks as if they waited a few days,” Graves said.

“I’m sure they offloaded the oil before they sank it.”

“Excellent,” said Graves.

Jake was about to point out that they’d also sent twenty men to their deaths and put millions of dollars in a warlord’s pocket, but his position on the issue was already well known.

As if reading his mind, Graves said, “Better Yaxaas than the North Koreans. Maybe it will keep him docile for a while—the next mission isn’t going to be so lucrative.”

“What next?” said Jake.

“We’re monitoring a commercial fishing boat, allegedly working the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, but in reality, it’s headed for Sudan to supply the government with Iranian weapons.”