The group crossed under the railway bridge and reached the other side, frowning at the chaotic mess of footprints.
Jubal squatted on the ground, silently counting the footprints, while Hannah went straight to the point. "That's them. There's a small footprint here. It must have been left by the seven-year-old boy named Nicholas."
"They came down the hillside over there and went west." Detective Pollino drew a line with his hand, pointing to the direction where the footprints disappeared.
"Wait a minute." Old Muto suddenly frowned and stopped the group from advancing, shouting twice behind them in a dialect that even Jack couldn't understand.
The three militiamen immediately raised their Type 81 rifles with serious expressions and bent forward in a formation of one in front and two behind, searching.
"What happened?" Aubrey was puzzled.
Clay pointed to a large bird constantly flying up and down at the edge of the distant woods. "There are other animals competing with the vultures for food, probably hyenas or cheetahs."
Everyone present was intelligent and quickly realized what Clay meant by food, their faces suddenly darkening. Sure enough
, ten minutes later, beneath a large tree, away from the main road, they found a mutilated corpse.
Old Muto's militia had just scared away two cheetahs, one large and one small, with their gunshots. Before they arrived, the mother and child were fending off the annoying vultures while enjoying their fresh meal.
The corpse's internal organs had been nearly eviscerated, and the arms and thighs were covered in white bones. The face, even more so, had been completely gnawed away, leaving only two bloody holes where the eye sockets should be. The eyelids and eyeballs had been pecked clean.
"Jacob Bruce," Jack said, swallowing his nausea, he fished out a passport from the dead man's trouser pocket. He then found a branch to free his right hand from where it was pinned, and took a fingerprint with his phone.
Because he was pinned down, the body below the right arm was preserved, while his left arm, incomplete, appeared five or six meters away.
Although there was no internet connection at the moment, fingerprints could be sent back after returning to further confirm the deceased's identity.
"He seems to be one of the leaders?" Jubal flipped through the incomplete list they had.
Clay's performance was second only to Jack's. He gathered the red scraps of cloth around the body and pieced together half a red T-shirt, the remaining half still remaining on the body.
The front of the T-shirt featured a dove of peace holding an olive branch, surrounded by a circle with something like "Brunswick Mission" written on it.
"Something's wrong. My boys walked about two kilometers west along the path, where the footprints were more regular, at least in a line. But why is this body here alone?"
Old Muto, though not familiar with criminal investigation, keenly sensed something was wrong with the presence of a single body.
By this time, Jack had also roughly examined the body. "I'm sorry, the damage is too severe. I can't tell the specific cause of death unless I call Dr. Temperley Brainerd and her team to take bone analysis directly.
But I can barely judge from the bruises on some remaining skin tissue and the edema under the scalp that he was beaten before his death. The right arm pressed under his body shows defensive injuries."
"Beating to death? Can I assume that the murderer deliberately targeted him and had a certain purpose?" Jubal held his chin and fell into deep thought.
"It can be said that it is unlikely that he forced the other kidnapped people to surrender by showing off his authority in public. There are only footprints of at most four people around, and it is at least one kilometer away from the path that others have passed.
It can be assumed that someone deliberately brought him here and then tortured Jacob Bruce without anyone else seeing."
Aubrey, who spoke this, stood furthest away, occasionally glancing up at the vultures still circling and screaming overhead.
"What's the purpose? Just to simply destroy the body? Oh, and if they'd disposed of it that way in a place like this, if we'd arrived a day later, we'd only have found some broken bones, right?"
Hannah's question went unanswered, as everyone's attention was drawn to the argument between Detective Pollino and Old Muto.
"This is a clear frame-up. I don't believe you can't see it," Old Muto said angrily.
Detective Pollino, in a humble tone, as if coaxing an old child, "But everyone knows this is their territory. I think we should ask them. Maybe 'Lion King' or one of his men saw something."
"Who is 'Lion King'?" Jack asked, also in Swahili.
Both men were a little surprised that Jack could speak Swahili, and after a glance, they decisively ended the little argument.
Old Muto had a fairly good impression of Jack. After a brief hesitation, he chose to speak frankly. "There's a Somali rebel group resting nearby, but they're very small. I don't think they're capable of holding 23 Americans hostage."
"Can you take us there? Perhaps, as Detective Pollino said, they saw something early yesterday morning?"
Jubal paused, glancing at Detective Pollino and the militiamen searching. "If they really did kidnap those tourists, I'll negotiate and understand their demands. Force won't solve the problem."
"No," Old Muto shook his head. "Just let the young man come with me. Simba and his people are a bit sensitive."
Jack didn't understand why being with him wouldn't be so sensitive, until he followed Old Muto up the ridge and saw a blue flag with a red star flying on a hill not far away.
He knew little about Somalia, only that Somalia and Ethiopia, who had fought so fiercely over the Ogaden region, had once been Soviet allies.
Besides that, there was only the inexplicable battle in Mogadishu in 1993, the year Black Hawk Down struck, crushing the SEALs, Delta Force, and Rangers.
Atop a hilltop stood a ruined structure, resembling the remains of a small military facility that had fallen into disrepair. Aside from a relatively intact bunker-like structure, the rest barely served to block the wind.
"My memory of the Somali flag is a blue flag with white stars," Jack asked tentatively.
Old MUTO replied casually, "Because Siad Barre is just an idiot and a poisoner. He never truly ignited a spark."
This statement was quite revealing, and it gave Jack a glimpse into why Old MUTO had brought an American, a "suspected communist," to the meeting.
Somalia, a small country located in the Horn of Africa and straddling the Gulf of Aden, was once a minor power in East Africa, playing both sides of the US and the Soviet Union, even engaging in a fierce battle with Ethiopia over the oil and gas-rich Ogaden region.
The Siad Barre mentioned by the elder Muto was a political strongman who ruled Somalia for 22 years. Until his overthrow in 1991, Somalia was a so-called socialist state.
It goes without saying what Somalia is like today. Although the people of this land are called Somalis, the constant fighting between warlords from various tribes has turned this once-dominant East African nation into a pirate paradise.
(End of this chapter)