“The Oregon’s tied to the dock in Swakopmund. Max will meet us at the airport with a flatbed truck carrying an empty shipping container. We load the wounded in and hop aboard ourselves. Max will then drive down to the wharf, where a Customs inspector with a pocket bulging with baksheesh will sign off on the bill of lading and we get hoisted onto the ship.”

“And Mafana’s men are going to drive through to Windhoek,” Juan concluded, “where they can fly out to wherever we can find Ndebele a safe haven.” His tone soured. “All well and good, except we didn’t rescue Geoffrey Merrick and have lost any chance to find him again. I’m sure his kidnappers left the Devil’s Oasis five seconds after the guards.”

“Ye of so little faith,” Linc said for the second time with a sad shake of his head.

NINA Visser was sitting in the shade of a tarp anchored to the bed of their truck when she heard a buzzing sound. She had been writing in her journal, a habit she’d kept up since her early teens. She’d filled volumes of notebooks over the years, knowing someday it would be an important resource for her biographer. That she would be important enough to need a book written about her life was something she’d never doubted. She was going to be one of the great champions of the environmental movement, like Robert Hunter and Paul Watson, Greenpeace’s cofounders.

Of course the current operation wouldn’t be included. This was one blow she would strike from the shadows. She was only writing out of habit and knew she would have to destroy this journal and any others that mentioned her involvement with Dan Singer’s scheme.

She closed the notebook and slid her pen into the spiral binding. Crawling out from under the tarp was like opening the door of an oven. The afternoon sun beat down mercilessly. She stood, dusted off the seat of her pants, and shielded her eyes from the sun, searching the sky for the plane Danny had promised. Even with dark sunglasses it took her a few seconds to spot the little jewel glinting in the sky. A couple of her friends crawled out from the tarp to join her, including Susan. They were all tired from the drive, and thirsty because they hadn’t packed enough water.

Merrick was faring the worst since he was bound and gagged and left leaning against the side of the truck, where there was only a sliver of shadow. He hadn’t gained consciousness since being injected with the heroin and his sunburned face was rimmed with dried sweat. Flies buzzed around his wound.