“And to be certain that everyone understands I’m serious…” Auma continued in his oddly elegant accent. Kennedy knew what was coming but still tensed when he turned and fired a round into Chism’s chest. The young man collapsed out of frame as his killer turned his attention back to the camera.

“When I have received payment, I will provide instructions on where you can collect Nicholas Ward.”

Anthony Cook used a remote to pause the video and then swiveled his chair toward his two guests.

“What do we know?” he asked, meeting Nash’s eye and then letting his gaze wander to Kennedy. “Has he provided instructions yet?”

“No, sir,” Kennedy responded. “Under the direction of the FBI, Nick’s assistant has tried to contact his satellite phone, but it appears to be turned off and isn’t currently trackable.”

“So, we have no idea where Auma is or where Ward is being held?”

“Based on the foliage visible in the background, we’re reasonably sure he’s still in Ugand—”

“You’re telling me you managed to narrow it down to the country where he was kidnapped?” Cook said sarcastically.

“The framing is pretty tight,” Nash interjected. “Auma’s psychotic, but he’s smart and well educated. He hasn’t kept himself and his army hidden for this long by making careless mistakes.”

“Have you gotten people into Ward’s camp to see if there’s anything we can learn?”

“No, sir,” Kennedy said. “We’re working on it, but every time we get someone close, they’re fired on. We have managed to go through the hangar where we believe Ward was taken but didn’t find anything that could lead us to him.”

Cook didn’t seem any happier than she was, but likely for different reasons. She was sitting in the Oval Office spinning a web of lies that she wasn’t sure she could control. Without fully understanding what kind of access their mole had, contacting Rapp was too dangerous. And now he seemed to have gone off script. The plan was for this operation to have been carried out in a much quieter manner. The story fed to the news agencies was to have been that Auma was killed in an attempt to kidnap Nicholas Ward. Rapp would question him, get whatever information he had, and the African would disappear forever. Clean, undisruptive, and completely plausible. A far cry from the story being plastered over every news site in the world and putting Ward’s stock prices into free fall.