Blood gushed from a wound in her abdomen and ran out from her nose and mouth. She must have caught a round from one of mercenaries or a piece of shrapnel from one of the explosions. It was bad. He could see another dark liquid mixed with the blood. He stroked her golden hair and said, “Wake up, my love. Wake up. You’re going to be fine.”

Her eyes fluttered open, and she reached up and touched his cheek.

“There you go. You’re a fighter. You’ve been hurt worse than this before.”

His massive hand tried to put pressure on her wound, but he felt the blood flowing out around his fingers. His mind raced for a solution, some emergency medical treatment he could perform.

Zarina shook her head and smiled up at him. The light from the fire illuminated her face and hair, accentuating her pale skin and blonde mane, giving her whole body an ethereal radiance. She looked like an angel. She mouthed the word “Go.”

“Never. I will never leave you. I wouldn’t leave you to the lions, and I won’t leave you now. I will never abandon you. I am yours, and you are mine. My golden beauty.”

Tears flowed down her cheeks. He stroked her hair. He felt her hand touching his back, but he didn’t know what she was doing until it was too late.

She pulled the bone-handled knife from the hidden sheath, and with a swiftness he wouldn’t have thought possible in her condition, she slashed the blade across her own throat.

“No, no, no.” He tried to hold one hand over her neck and one over her abdomen. The blood was everywhere now, flowing out in torrents onto the rocky sand. “Please, no. Please.”

He didn’t know what he was anymore, who he was, but none of that mattered now. Kruger wept. Idris wept. Both sides of himself, darkness and light, they each cried out in a pain like he had never known. He wanted to tear off his own skin and claw out his own eyes. He was wild with fury and sorrow and fear. Even as he had listened to his mother’s screams as the lions slowly devoured her, he had never felt this afraid, this alone.

Looking back at the burning structure, now several hundred yards behind him, he remembered the bomb that had been placed in the crate beneath Yoshida’s prize. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small device resembling a key fob, and pressed the button to ignite the final fire.

The explosion decimated the building, sending chunks of metal and wood high into the night sky. He heard the sirens in the distance, but he didn’t want to move. He wanted to pick up Zarina’s body and walk back into the flames. He wanted this pain to end.

But then he thought of Kianga, his daughter, his sunshine. He had to make it home to her. Some part of him needed to survive this, not for Kruger, not for money or the mission, but for Idris, for his daughter.