Taye said, “Hakeem left for the Ukraine a couple of days ago. He’s leading the security detail for a delivery of art to some Ukranian businessman.” He raised his fingers in air quotes on the last word. “Not sure when he’s due back.”
“Shiloh is wrapping up a personal trip in South Africa, but won’t be back until tomorrow night,” Zale said.
“Going to hurt not having Hakeem and Shiloh here, but we’ll have to make do without them,” Sunny said, a look of concern crossing her face. “What’s the chatter on Tubeec’s latest mayhem?”
“Not surprising, he’s already spread the word about his attack on the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions’ databases and servers, destroying critical evidence against several criminals awaiting trials. No direct mention of the evidence against Rono that was destroyed, but he was most likely responsible for that, too. It’s all over the dark web and spreading like wildfire through the militant groups in East Africa,” Glaze explained.
Simon added, “We also have good intel that suggests Tubeec is still in the area of northeastern Kenya or southern Ethiopia. He’s staying close for some reason, which helps us narrow the search.”
“Any word on Mena?” Julian asked, stepping toward the dark wood table. He pressed his palms on the surface, willing himself to stay calm. Mena needed him at his best, gathering information, paying attention to every detail, so he could find her and bring her home.
“Radio silent on that one, which is odd,” Glaze said. “Tubeec is not one to hide his exploits. If he was trying to make an example out of Mena, we’d know by now.”
“What could that mean?” Simon asked.
“Fuck if I know. Tubeec is crazy as shit and unpredictable,” Enzo said.
“Sunny,” Julian said, a heavy knot weighting in his stomach. “What does it mean?”
The TIDES team stared at Julian, confusion crossing their faces, then turned to look at their leader.
Sunny ran her fingers through her dark curly hair, gripping the tresses tightly in her hands as she leaned back in the chair. Her expression worried Julian.
“Good news and bad,” Sunny said, after several seconds.
“Start with the good. We need that,” Taye said.
“We don’t know what happened to Mena Nix because Tubeec doesn’t want us to. He’s keeping her … alive, for some reason.”
“Well, that gives me something to work with,” Glaze said, reaching to the console resting in the center of the table. He tapped on the screen, and the screensaver dancing across the monitors lining the room disappeared. “I’ll start with the satellite imagery we have from the time when Julian and Mena were ambushed at the house in Giriftu. From there, I can triangulate the most likely routes taken.”
“Yeah, but taken to where?” Enzo blurted out. “How the hell are we supposed to know where that crazy fuck would take Mena?”
“Remote rebel compounds and rural airstrips,” Julian said. “Find the most obscure ones near Wajir County. Tubeec needs to hide again and this time, he’ll be sure to pick a location that’s even harder to be discovered.”
“I’ll pull up the drone photos Sunny took of northeastern Kenya. We can cycle through those to see if there are places with the infrastructure that his team would need to hideout,” Zale said.
Taye, Zale, Simon, and Glaze turned their attention to developing a search and rescue strategy for the team.
“Wait a minute. What’s the bad news, Sunny?” Enzo asked, pacing back and forth. He was the least tech-savvy, making him useless for this part of the work, but he was the best on the ground, hand-to-hand combat, member of the team.
“Tubeec lost a lot of men because of us. He’s probably paid al-Harakat to provide extra protection to his team from another surprise attack. We were outnumbered before, but now the difference is going to be staggering,” Sunny said.
“We’ll have to work smarter, not harder.” Julian walked over to Sunny and leaned against the edge of the table next to her. His hand dropped next to hers, touching it slightly. “Is there anything else?”
“The reason Tubeec could be keeping Mena alive might be personal,” Sunny said, her voice barely above a whisper. “He may have grown fond of her and wants her to stick around.”
Sunny had never told him the details of what she’d gone through that year Tubeec had her. But Julian had heard about what happened to women Tubeec staked his claim on. His obsessive determination to capture a woman, and force her to be his mistress, lasted until he grew bored or found another woman to obsess over.
Being Tubeec’s forced concubine would inflict a pain he wasn’t sure Mena could ever overcome. He would not let that happen to her.
Julian would kill Tubeec Hirad first.
“I need to get her away from him,” Julian said, a sickening dread washing over him.
An hour later, Julian huddled around the monitors with the TIDES team and analyzed the likely routes taken by Tubeec’s men. Four glowing red circles emerged on the map, all within northeast Kenya.
“Four possible locations where they could be hiding,” Glaze said, then pointed at two of them. “Based on everything we know about Tubeec and factoring in his penchant for unpredictable and wild whims, I’m fairly certain these two are the most likely locations where Mena is being kept. I’m waiting on more recent satellite images to confirm recent movements in the area.
