“Yeah, but it’s the pattern. Whenever Juba needs to make contact with whoever, he sends Jared out to buy a disposable. One call, then into the river. But Jared sneaks in an email or a call to his pal, to reach his mom, and we’re on that. See, if we can nail the area, get our reaction team in place, ready to chopper to the site, we can nail him. That’s how we’ve got to do it.”

“So we’ve got to anticipate where he’ll be,” said Bob. “We get the area tight enough, everything falls into place.”

“He’ll do it again. He misses Mom. He’ll always miss Mom. So you’ll work with the computers to come up with a filter to pinpoint the area, we’ll scour the wires for reports, and also look at it from the weapons acquisition point of view, all of which will point us to an area. The kid is the key to the whole thing.”

26

On the road in Iowa, maybe Kansas

The dream again. Now, after so long.

In this version, he is trapped. He is unarmed. He cannot move his arms. The American sniper smiles, fiddles, takes his time, locks himself into the weapon skillfully, slowly. He peeks up from the scope just for the pleasure of seeing it all laid out before him.

The flash.

Juba awoke. Where was he? It was dark, someone was near to him, he felt the closeness, the movement in and out of the other’s lungs, their limbs tangled, the sourness, the vibration, the motion, they couldn’t move, they were oppressed under some kind of lid. The coffin’s?

“You are awake?” asked the boy.

“I am. We are still in the truck?”

“It’s been so long, I hardly remember. I’m numb. I’m also very hungry.”

“I’ll tell them to stop for more French frieds,” said Juba.

“French fries,” the boy corrected.

At that point, at last, the lid above them raised.

Three men peered down at them, the silhouettes of their cowboy hats showing against the highway illumination.

“All right, my friends,” said one in Arabic, “it’s time to come out.”

Slowly, hands helped Juba unwrap himself from the boy, supported him as he searched for power in his legs and arms, hoisted him clear so that he could almost stand, though his legs were soft and weak, and one momentarily gave out.

“Where are we?” he said.

The vehicle sped through the night. Outside, an occasional light slid by, nothing prominent, merely a sign of human habitation. He looked forward, saw nothing but the cone of headlights illuminating a road with a pair of lines down the middle of it. The lines flashed by like tracers. The beat of the engine came through to him, concealed under every surface he touched.