belly. He’s bald on top, the patches of hair around his ears streaked with gray. The whites of his eyes are yellowed, and so are his teeth. I can smell his oniony sweat.
There’s nothing special or majestic about this man. He’s murdered thousands of people, and terrorized many more. But right now he’s dying in a dull way, without any last words. Without even putting up much of a fight.
Bomber and I wait until he’s fully dead. I check for a pulse with my fingers, even though I can already see from his glassy eyes that he’s gone.
Then Bomber and I latch on to the window ledge and rappel down the side of the building.
We’re planning to go out through the drainage chute, where the kitchen staff dumps the dirty water and other refuse.
It wasn’t my first choice of exit, but Bomber and I have had all our shots, so hopefully we won’t catch anything too nasty.
As we creep through the dark yard, the guards are beginning to swap shifts. In about ten minutes, they’ll find Nur’s body. They’re sure to check in on their boss.
Bomber and I are passing through a narrow stone hallway to the kitchen when he hisses, “Long Shot, take a look.”
I scowl back at him, annoyed that he’s slowed down. There’s no time to look at whatever caught his attention.
Still, I backtrack to the locked door. Peering through the tiny window, I see five small girls huddled on a bare floor. They’re still wearing their school uniforms of plaid jumpers and white cotton socks and blouses. Their clothing is remarkably clean — they can’t have been here long.
“Shit,” I murmur.
“What do we do?” Bomber says.
“We better get them out.”
Bomber is about to shoot the lock, but I stop him. I can feel something weighing down the pocket of the pants I stole from the guard upstairs. Fishing around, I find a set of keys.
I try each one in the lock, succeeding with the third. The door screeches open. The girls look up, terrified.
“Stay quiet, please!” I tell them, in English.
I don’t speak Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, or any of the other Nigerian languages. I only memorized a few words of Kanuri for this job. So I’m just praying these girls learned English at school.
I can’t tell if they understand, or if they’re just scared into silence. They stare at Bomber and me, wide-eyed and trembling.
I try the keys on the shackles around their ankles, but none seems to fit. Instead, I wriggle a rock out of the wall and lay their chain over top. Bomber smashes it with his rifle butt until the links part. The girls still have a metal manacle around their ankles, but we can slip the chain out at least.
Putting my finger to my lips to remind the girls to stay quiet, we hustle them down the hall to the kitchen. Bomber peeks his head in first. He sneaks up behind the cook and hits him over the head with a serving platter, knocking the man onto one of the rice sacks Kambar brought just that afternoon.
I drop the girls down the refuse chute, one at a time. It smells fucking horrible.
Bomber wrinkles his nose.
“I don’t want to go in there.”
I hear shouting up on the upper floor of the building. I think someone just found Nur’s body.
“Stay here and take your chances, then,” I tell him.
Holding up my rifle to keep it out of the muck, I drop down into the chute.
I slide down the dark, foul passageway, hoping against hope that it doesn’t narrow at any point. I can’t imagine anything worse than being trapped like a cork in a bottle in this disgusting place. Luckily I slide all the way through.
“Look out!” I call ahead to the girls, not wanting to plow into any of them.
Now their clothes are filthy, streaked with grease and rotten food. I grab the hand of the smallest one, saying to the others, “Go!”
Bomber grabs two more by the hands and we run away across the barren ground, praying that the dark and the sparse scrub will conceal us. It’s good that the girls got so dirty — it helps mute the bright white of their socks and blouses.
I can hear the commotion back in the compound. The insurgents are running and shouting, searching the building for us, but lacking organization now that their boss is dead.
I’m trying to run as fast as I can, but the girls are slow. They’re limping along, barefoot