At a few minutes before nine o'clock, the evening bus from Maun pulled up to the front gate of the tourist center. Seronga asked for the binoculars. Pavant reached into the small equipment locker on the back of his bike. He removed the case and handed the binoculars to Seronga. The leader of the Brush Vipers peered across the dark, still floodplain.
There were several things odd about the group. The size, for one. There were about twenty-five new arrivals. That was a large number for this time of year. Most of the large tour groups came when the weather was cooler. Seronga watched carefully. They were all carrying duffel bags as well as having suitcases stored below. The bags had a sameness to them, as if the tourists had packed an identical amount of clothes, the same number of personal items. Individuals on a trip did not do that. Seronga also noticed that no one had .plastft bags or
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souvenir caps, the kinds of things one typically picked up in airports or local gift shops.
And one thing more struck Seronga as very unusual. Most of the tourists were men.
'It looks as if a lot of people came in,' Pavant remarked.
'Too many,' Seronga remarked.
As Seronga watched, there were other things that made him uneasy.
Genet and Dhamballa had set out very strict guidelines for Seronga and his Brush Vipers to follow. Clergymen were to be captured as nonviolently as possible. None was to be martyred, even if it meant aborting a mission. Care was to be taken so that parishioners were never harmed.
Military or police action taken against Dhamballa or the Brush Vipers was to be met with deadly force. Dhamballa did not like killing. It angered the gods. But Seronga did not have enough soldiers that he could afford to lose any of them. He argued that self-defense was not an evil act. He also did not want his people captured. A prisoner who had been tortured, his brain rewired, could be made to say just about anything. A show trial could be used to discredit Dhamballa.
Reluctantly, Dhamballa had agreed to killing under those conditions. But neither man had expected things to reach that stage this early.
Seronga continued to study the group. The truth was, he had no way of knowing whether these were tourists or soldiers traveling incognito. He could not see if they were black or white. They might have come from Gaborone. Perhaps the United States sent them from the embassy to look after their cleric. The Americans had soldiers stationed there. These could have been selected from their ranks. Perhaps they would go touring when the deacons went to Maun to meet the American cleric. Perhaps the tourists would be watching for any attempts to abduct the new arrival. The bishop could not be allowed to reach the church and resume Father Bradbury's work. If he did, priests and field missionaries might be encouraged to stay. Dhamballa could not afford to let that happen.
'How is their posture?' Pavant asked.
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'Excellent,' Seronga said.
'Then they can't be tourists,' Pavant said. 'They always slump.'
'Yes, and when these people got out, several did stretches,' Seronga said. 'They seem accustomed to traveling great distances.' He handed his companion the binoculars. 'And look at how they're moving.'
Pavant studied the group for a moment. 'They're passing each other bags as they unload them.'
'Like troops,' Seronga said. 'Let's give them a while to settle in, and then we'll go over.'
Seronga took the binoculars back. He continued to watch the bus until it pulled away. The more he saw of the dark figures, the more convinced he became that something was afoot.
He would soon know if that were true. And if it was, he would know what to do about it.
TWENTY-ONE
Washington, D.C. Thursday, 11:47 A.M.
Darrell McCaskey left Mike Rodgers chatting with David Battat and Aideen Marley at DiMaggio's Joe. Within a half hour, the general had the two operatives revved up and ready to die for him. Rodgers's sense of purpose, and the quiet intensity with which he stated it, made people want to work with him. The genius of Mike Rodgers was that he was standoffish without being cold. He did not welcome new friendships. If others wanted to be with him, service was all they could give him. Colonel Brett August was the only one who had ever gotten close to Rodgers. And that had taken him a lifetime.
Darrell McCaskey was not like that. When he was with the FBI and out in the field, he had been ice. That was the only way to deal with the terrorists and drug dealers and kidnappers. He had to forget they were people with parents and siblings and children. His job was to uphold the law. If that meant arresting a single mother who was pushing heroin to support her kids, he did it.
When he was at the office or went home, McCaskey always did a one eighty. He let himself get close to people. He had to. He needed to keep his armor from becoming permanent. He opened himself up to superiors, subordinates, custodians, neighbors, shopkeepers, women he dated.
Inevitably, with that kind of emotional exposure came trust. Equally as inevitable, with trust came disappointment. And right now, McCaskey was disappointed in a man he had trusted.
Bob Herbert's call to Maria had gnawed at him during the drive from Georgetown to Andrews Air Force Base. Herbert
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