Cross Country

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.
    Then I saw a shovel sitting unattended outside somebody’s hut. I took it and kept moving.
    It was just past sunset, a time when everything looked tinted with blue, and sound carried. Maybe he heard me, because he turned around. I ducked out of sight, or at least I hoped so.
    The huts along the footpath were packed in tightly. I wedged myself into a foot-wide gap between two of them. The walls on either side were crude mud-brick. They grated on my arms as I tried to push my way through and get the Tiger back in sight.
    I had made it about halfway, when one of his young thugs stepped out into the alley.
    He didn’t move. He just shouted something in Yoruban.
    When I looked over my shoulder, Houston Rockets was at the other end of the alley. I could see the white of his grin but not his eyes in the dim half-light.
    “It’s him,” he called out in a high-pitched voice, almost a giggle. “The American cop!”
    Something slammed hard into the wall inside the hut. The entire hut buckled, and large chunks of dried mud fell into the alley.
    “Again!” Houston Rockets yelled.
    I realized what was happening — they meant to crush me in the narrow passageway.
    The whole wall exploded then. Bricks and debris and dirt poured down on my head and shoulders.
    I waded forward, took a hard swing, and struck the nearest punk with my shovel.
    And then — I found myself face-to-face with the Tiger.

Chapter 92
    “NOW YOU WILL die,” he said to me matter-of-factly, as if the deed were a foregone conclusion.
    I didn’t doubt that he