A big fire the night before had made personnel scarce, and we were told to wait at the main administrative tent until we could be processed.
“Let’s go,” I said to Adanne after we’d waited nearly an hour and a half.
She had to run to catch up with me. I was already headed up a row of what looked like shelters. Abu Shouk was much more uniform and dismal than Kalma. Nearly all of the buildings were of the same mud-brick construction.
“Go where?” Adanne said when she came up even with me.
“Where the people are.”
“All right, Alex. I’ll be a detective with you today.”
Three hours later, Adanne and I had managed half a dozen almost completely unproductive conversations, with Adanne attempting to serve as translator. The residents were at first as friendly as those in Kalma, but as soon as I mentioned the Tiger, they shut down or just walked away from us. He had been here before, but that was all the people would tell us.
We finally came to an edge of the camp, where the sand plain continued on toward a range of low tan mountains in the distance, and probably bands of Janjaweed.
“Alex, we need to go back,” Adanne said. She had the tone of a person putting her foot down. “Unfortunately, this has been unproductive, don’t you think? We’re nearly dehydrated, and we don’t even know where we’re sleeping tonight. We’ll be lucky to get a ride into town”—she stopped and looked around—“if we can even find our way back to the admin tent before dark.”
The place was like an impossible maze, with rows of identical huts wherever we looked. And so many displaced people, thousands and thousands, many of them sick and dying.
I took a deep breath, fighting off the day’s frustration. “All right. Let’s go. You’re right.”
We started picking our way back and had just come around a corner, when I stopped again. I put a hand out to keep Adanne from taking another step. “Hold up. Don’t move,” I said quietly.
I had spotted a large man ducking out of one of the shelters. He was wearing what I’d call street clothes anywhere else. Here, they marked him as an outsider.
He was huge, both tall and broad, with dark trousers, a long white dashiki, and sunglasses under a heavy brow and shaved head.
I took a step back, just out of sight.
It was him. I was sure it was the same bastard I’d seen at Chantilly. The Tiger—the one I was chasing.
“Alex—”
“Shh. That’s him, Adanne.”
“Oh, my God, you’re right!”
The man gestured to someone out of sight, and then two young boys walked out of the shelter behind him. One was nobody to me. The other wore a red-and-white Houston Rockets jersey. I recognized him instantly from Sierra Leone.
Adanne gripped my arm tightly and she whispered, “What are you going to do?”
They were walking away but were still in plain sight.
“I want you to wait five minutes and then find your way back. I’ll meet you.”
“Alex!” She opened her mouth to say more but stopped. It was probably my eyes that told her how serious I was. Because I had realized that everything I’d been told was true. The rules I knew just didn’t apply here.
There was no taking him in—no transporting him back to Washington.
I was going to have to kill the Tiger, possibly right here in the Abu Shouk camp.
I had few qualms about it either. The Tiger was a murderer.
And I had finally caught up with him.
Chapter 91
I HUNG BACK, following the killer at a distance. It sure wasn’t hard to keep him in sight. I had no specific plan. Not yet.