as it pulls in alongside. It is big, blocky and angular - a Humvee. Its doors open and three men emerge. Veronica squints. The headlights are aimed away, and the diffuse light isn't enough to recognize faces, but one of the men is small but built hugely, like a bodybuilder. Veronica shudders. It's him, she can't recognize his face but she's sure of it; there, only fifty feet away, stands the Al-Qaeda terrorist who beheaded Derek.
The two groups of men engage in a brief and businesslike discussion. Veronica does not understand their language. She wonders if Rukungu does. If so he makes no obvious sign of it, just watches patiently.
Veronica is suddenly aware of someone on her other side. She twitches, turns her head, and is relieved to see Jacob kneeling next to her, holding his camera with zoom lens attached. He rests it cautiously on the edge of the outcrop, aims it down at the two vehicles and seven men, and pushes the button. Veronica stiffens, but no sound or light emerges from the camera, Jacob must have switched it to some kind of stalker mode.
The smokers below carefully crush their cigarettes beneath their feet. Then the short, wide man who killed Derek opens the back of the Humvee, revealing a forest of yellow jerrycans. All seven men begin to move the jerrycans out onto the road. Veronica can smell gasoline.
Jacob leans over to whisper gently into her ear. "I read about this. Gasoline smuggling. That gas actually got trucked in through Uganda in the first place, but there's no government in Congo, so no taxes, so the price there is so much lower it's cheaper to bring it back in from the Congo than to buy it in Ugandan gas stations."
Veronica doesn't care and wishes Jacob didn't either. She wants to snap at him to focus. This isn't a time to be interested in the economics of smuggling. This is exactly the kind of knife-edge dangerous situation he promised they wouldn't get into.
Below them, the rear doors of the matatu are opened. Veronica breathes in deeply as she sees the two coffin-sized metal boxes within, the same boxes she saw on the pickup last night. She sees something written on them, stencilled letters she can't quite make out. Jacob returns to his camera. The metal boxes are heavy, it takes four men to carry each from the matatu into the Humvee. Once they are loaded, the bodybuilder and two other men get back into their vehicle and drive away, heading west again, towards the Congo. Veronica watches their taillights disappear. She feels relieved but also disappointed. They are safe, but they haven't learned anything new. She was expecting something more important, more decisive.
The four men from the matatu load the vehicle with jerrycans. Jacob reaches out to adjust the zoom. The camera lens extends outwards –and knocks loose a pebble that rattles loudly down the rock outcropping.
Veronica freezes as one of the men below turns around to stare at the unexpected noise. Her skin tingles with acid electricity, her heart fills her throat. The man stares into the darkness for a second, then says something and points, directly at them. The others stop working and follow his lead. She feels like they're staring straight at her. She couldn't breathe even if she dared.
Then Rukungu opens his mouth and an inhuman sound emerges, a warbling, high-pitched animal noise, some kind of mammalian chitter. The men below visibly relax, and one chuckles. Veronica starts to breathe again, shallowly and silently. The man who pointed at them is the last to turn away. He goes to the matatu's passenger-side door and gets into the vehicle. The last few jerrycans are loaded, the rear doors are slammed shut.
The passenger door opens again and the man emerges with a flashlight in his hand. Veronica's heart convulses again as he shines it into the darkness. She crouches lower, as do Jacob and Rukungu crouch lower, all three are fully obscured by the rock outcrop.
But Jacob's camera is still perched the rock, its lens aimed straight at the man with the flashlight.
Veronica closes her eyes. They won't see it, she tells herself. It's too dark.
Then she hears a surprised and outraged shout, and an icy fist clenches at her gut.
"Run!" Rukungu orders.
Jacob grabs the camera and sprints noisily back up the trail. More shouting erupts below. Veronica stays where she is, hunched over, she feels paralyzed, like a rabbit caught in headlights, until Rukungu shoves