When she turned and saw him, she said, “I cannot believe you’re kowtowing to the State Department. I’m thirty-two years old. You’d think I would have the freedom to go where I want to go in the world.”

He crossed his arms and enjoyed the shade the overhang of her roof provided. “Ma’am, I don’t kowtow. But I did raise my hand and swear an oath to protect and defend. Now that your cover is blown, so to speak, this is the protect part. I’ll get you to the embassy and you can handle your own freedom from there.”

She went to the washbasin, grabbed her toothbrush and toothpaste, and shoved them into the bag. “Oh, I will handle it.”

The sound of a truck engine caused him to turn just as Tadeas pulled to a stop by the clinic door. Rick walked across the street. “I appreciate your loaning this to me.”

Tadeas got out and patted the truck’s roof. “I inherited it from an old fisherman here. We use it for medical emergencies. I’ll call this that.”

Rick shook his hand and said, “Thanks, brother.”

“Do you need a hand?”

“My men have this. Chukuwereije is bound to have men show up.”

Tadeas’s mouth formed a hard line. “There is evil in this world,” he said. “But I know you have been working a few weeks trying to eradicate what you can.”

“Won’t do any good until we can get the head of the snake.”

Tadeas nodded. “He has great power here.”

Rick gave a closed-lip smile. “So do we.”

A sharp whistle sounded from the tree line. The rest of his team emerged from the jungle. He whistled back and watched as they carried gear across the clearing.

He met them at the truck. What they couldn’t carry for seventy kilometers went into the bed, leaving room for a pallet for Sanders. Fisher and McBride lifted the CRRC, which the team universally referred to as the cricket, into the bed. When they loaded the inflatable watercraft, the ancient, rusted leaf springs on the truck rocked and complained under the weight of its outboard engine.

“Should we leave it?” Peña asked.

Rick opened the map and looked at it again. “If the road is blocked, we can go by river.”

Peña ran his finger along the river. “That’s a long, exposed journey.”

“So’s the road.” He folded the map back up and slipped it into his shirt pocket, then made a hand gesture. “Let’s roll.”

Doctor Myers supervised loading Sanders onto a stretcher. Fisher and McBride carried him out and lifted him onto the pallet they’d prepared for him.

Rick hooked his boot onto the rear tire. “How’s it going, buddy?”

Perspiration beaded Sanders’s forehead. His skin had an ashen color. “Maybe I shoulda died.”

Rick’s heart twisted. “God’s in charge of that.”