Bomber hangs back while I poke my head around the corner, checking for the guard. He’s standing at one of the windows looking outward, his rifle set butt-down on the stone floor next to him, the barrel resting against the wall.

Sloppy. These men have no training. They’re ferocious enough against unarmed civilians, against women and children, but their sense of invincibility is unearned.

I creep up behind him and wrap my arm around his throat, covering his mouth with my hand and choking him out. I wait until he goes limp in my arms, then I drop him gently to the floor.

I strip off the man’s clothes. He’s wearing desert camouflage, with a green turban and face wrap to show his devotion. He’s a much smaller man than me, but luckily the top and pants are baggy, probably pulled at random out of a stack of uniforms.

I put his clothes on over my own, grateful for the turban because I can use it to hide my face. When I’m ready, Bomber covers me as I approach Nur’s door.

Two guards bookend the door. These two know better than to set down their rifles, or show any indication of boredom. If Nur caught them slacking, he’d shoot them himself. Or order one of his more creative and disgusting tortures.

The last time his insurgents took hostages outside of Taraba, he ordered all their hands be cut off, and hung by a string around their necks. Half the hostages died of infection or blood loss. Nur didn’t seem to care.

Looking down at the floor to hide my face, I stride purposefully toward the guards.

“Message for Nur,” I mumble, in Kanuri.

The guard on the right holds out his hand for the message, thinking I’ve brought a note or a letter.

Instead, I cut his throat with my Ka-Bar knife.

He gasps soundlessly, bringing his hands up to his neck, more surprised than anything else.

The guard on the left opens his mouth to shout, swinging his rifle around at me.

I block the rifle with my arm, clamping my hand over his mouth. Then I stab him six times in the chest.

Both men drop at almost the same time. There’s no muffling the sound of their bodies falling, or the gurgling of the man on the right.

So I expect Nur to be waiting for me.

I haul up the man on the left and hold his body in front of me as I push my way through Nur’s door.

Sure enough, Nur fires three bullets in my direction. Two hit the body of his hapless guard. The third splinters the wooden doorframe next to my ear.

Running straight at Nur, I throw the guard’s body in his face. He stumbles backward, tripping over a footstool and landing hard on the luxurious Moroccan carpet spread across his stone floor.

I kick the gun out of his hand, then step aside so Bomber can shoot him. Bomber is right behind me, with a silencer screwed on to his SIG Sauer. He shoots Nur twice in the chest and once in the head.

Nur wasn’t wearing a vest. Just a loose white linen top, on which the bloodstains bloom like flowers. I can hear his last breath of air whistle out through a hole in his lung.

I’m always surprised how very human these warlords are. Nur is about six feet tall, soft shouldered with a 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 and stiff from however long they were trapped in that room. They probably haven’t eaten, either.