“Not bad. Ward already had a well-equipped infirmary up here and a doc on staff. Ricci’s in rough shape, but they say he’s going to pull through. Chism and Liu are a little malnourished, but otherwise barely a scratch. What happened in Kampala?”

Rapp had been in Uganda’s capital debriefing Jeremiah Grant and making sure his injured men got treatment. The silence from the US government had been deafening enough that Nicholas Ward was paying for their care and planning to fly them back stateside in one of his jets. Rapp had considered getting Danny Lombard at Africa Command involved, but then decided it would be better to keep his old friend as far from this train wreck as possible.

“Grant’s guys are going to be fine. Full recovery. What about the bodies they had to leave behind?”

“The news isn’t good. We went looking where he said they’d been killed and came up empty. Not to put too fine a point on it, but word is that Auma eats his enemies. He thinks it gives him their power.”

“Shit,” Rapp said.

“Yeah,” Coleman agreed. “What did Grant have to say?”

“Basically, that we were right. He was sent out to wander around with no backup and pretty much no intel. Orders came through his CO and originated from somewhere higher up. He doesn’t know where. His only contact was a voice on the other end of a phone. They’d been set up with a guide, but he disappeared when things started getting hot. Grant thinks they were being watched from the first day they walked into the jungle.”

“Auma probably thought they knew something and was hoping they’d lead his men to Chism.”

“That was Grant’s take on it, too.”

“Weird,” Coleman said. “More like theater than an op. But theater for whose benefit?”

Rapp just shrugged and his old friend pointed to a stone path leading to the other side of the compound.

“Ward’s house is up that way. He said he wanted to see you when you got here.”