CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
10:15 p.m. West Africa Time (4:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)
Deep Inside Sambisa Forest
Borno State, Nigeria
The night was dark and deep.
It was a slow go. They had ditched the jeep more than an hour ago. They had barely spoken since then, communicating instead with taps, hand gestures, and eye movements.
They moved in single file, Dunn in the lead, Ed next, Luke in the rear, each man wearing night vision goggles, the forest around them glowing green. They encountered trails and pathways from time to time, but Dunn ignored them—the trails were booby-trapped. Instead they pushed through dense bush, obstacles slowing them to a crawl.
At one point, Dunn stopped.
He stood completely still for what seemed like a long time. Too long.
Luke and Ed moved forward until
