The colonel waved his cigar like a wand that could erase Peña’s words. “I get that, son. I’ve heard from you and from Captain Norton. I’d like to hear it from the entire team. You guys are the best we’ve got, so I need to get a sense of the entire picture.”

McBride spoke up. “The only issue we had was the fact that we were in a jungle and we needed extraction by helicopter. There’s only so many places a helicopter can land in the jungle, sir.”

Fisher nodded. “Ozzy was hurt bad, Sanders was hurt. With only half a team, we felt the loss of those two. Add the complexities of the terrain and the threat factor—suffice it to say our movements were restricted to the extreme.”

“And we didn’t know who to trust,” Swanson added. “The bad guys aren’t wearing uniforms.”

“We had Chukuwereije, sir,” Rick said. “He was boxed in. Katangela soldiers were coming at him from the city, and we were closing in on him in the jungle. His losses were massive. We confirmed the kill of his son. But as soon as we had to pull back because we had two injured, they scattered like cockroaches. It’s like we lost an entire month of work and he threw off our operational tempo.”

Colonel Jenkins shook his head. “It’s a chess game. You lost your rook.” He tossed his legal pad on the little table in front of the couch and stood, slipping his unlit cigar into his breast pocket. “Intel claims Chuckie is back in the city now.” He had never been able to pronounce the warlord’s name and had nicknamed him Chuckie in their first briefing. “There are all sorts of rumors on the streets. Langley can’t pin down any real information about location, but general area is a certainty.”

Rick paced to stand behind the couch where McBride, Fisher, and Swanson sat. “I do not want to get into a fight with that man inside the city. The kind of collateral damage that could happen here is too much to risk. Thoughts?”

“I don’t think that is how this will go down. But it isn’t up to us.” Colonel Jenkins waved his hand toward the window. “That’s up to people much higher than us. Our mission was to end Chuckie’s reign of terror. I doubt that the powers that be here in Katangela want CNN putting an urban firefight up as their lead story.”

McBride surged to his feet. “Let them. Give us an embedded reporter, and we can show them the holes people dig in their huts to hide their sons, the women Chuckie butchered so that they can’t feed their babies, the villages he burned to the ground, and everyone in them who died because that’s how he exercises power.”