Overall, though, not a bad place to ride things out for a while. He imagined that a stay at this particular Ugandan eco-lodge would cost a significant chunk of the CIA paycheck he no longer officially received. At the moment, though, everything was on the house. Scott Coleman had rented the entire mountaintop facility and replaced most of the staff with loyalists. All at Nicholas Ward’s expense, of course.

Someone had left a duffle on the bed while he was in the shower and he dug through it. Most of his stuff was still at what remained of Ward’s compound and Claudia had sent replacements. Because he was a captive audience, she’d limited herself to all the things she’d bought for him that lurked unworn in the back of his closet. Linen slacks, leather sandals, Italian silk shirts. All meticulously pressed, folded, and separated by sheets of tissue paper.

Once dressed, he crossed his polished wood porch to a boardwalk that undulated through a series of similar cabanas. The main lodge was to the east and he assumed it contained the kitchen, which was all he was interested in at this point. What he needed right now was a few hours kicking back in the sun eating everything he could get his hands on. Achieving his ideal bike-racing weight would have to be put on the back burner for a while.

“Mitch!”

Scott Coleman appeared in the doorway of a cabin similar to the one he’d been put up in. Choppers had been arriving on a regular basis since early that morning, bringing in people and supplies. He’d likely come in on the last of them. Still clad in sweat-stained bloody fatigues, he let out a low whistle as Rapp approached.

“You look amazing! Like a movie star or something. Next time I want the hangar gig.”

“I’m not in the mood, Scott.”

“You’re never in the mood,” his friend responded dismissively.

“Where are we at?”

“Thanks to all the hard work I did while you were here having the wrinkles steamed from your ascot, we’re in good shape. Though I have to admit that the water cannons turned out to be not as good an idea as I thought.”

“How so?” Rapp said, putting on a pair of expensive sunglasses to cut the glare. He’d thought the cannons were one of Coleman’s customary strokes of genius.

“That slope turned so slick we had to set up a winch to get the bodies out.”

“But everything looks convincing?”

“Yeah. The mines made a little bit of a mess, but we managed to piece together enough bodies to make it work. And I mean that literally. We had to use duct tape to put some of them back together. Then we blew a hole in the east wall and laid them out around the compound.”

“And you got it all done before the spy satellites came overhead?”