During the video call, Rossi's face wore a gaunt look. "I can try to communicate with the Tanzanian leadership and try to buy some more time.
But given the positions on both sides, it's best not to get too high hopes."
Jubal glanced at the time. It was already 10 p.m. local time, and his brows had already knitted into a frown. "So, according to the most pessimistic estimate, we have less than 12 hours left?"
Rossi nodded. The two old men stared at the screen in silence for a long time, finally sighing together. Jubal said goodbye with a resigned sigh and closed the computer screen.
They were now in the local police station office. He and Jack were the only ones in the room. The others were in the adjacent interrogation room, watching Detective Pollino interrogate Tumo Makanni.
Aubrey had a theory: Elijah had used a local backdoor listing to steal the "pastor's" followers.
Could he have used the same method to establish his own "Garden of Eden" in a village or near a camp that had embraced Tummer Makanni's teachings, thereby facilitating the transportation of supplies?
So, a group of people gathered in the interrogation room, hoping to extract the best possible conclusion from this man and his two men.
Mosquito coils were burning in the office, but still, unknown flying insects, attracted by the light, kept hitting the incandescent light bulbs, making crisp crackling sounds. Soon, a dense circle of bodies lay on the ground.
Jubal stared blankly at the tireless little flies, perhaps recalling something before sighing again.
"Alright, stop sighing. There's always a way," Jack said casually.
He was also feeling annoyed. Back home, he'd always had a smooth career, not to mention the lack of major cases at the LAPD. After joining the FBI and becoming a member of the BAU, he'd rarely been bothered by anything other than casework.
Sure enough, the "world police" thing was just empty talk. It was nothing against a beacon that didn't care.
Aubrey excitedly flung open the door, sending a gust of air scattering the insect carcasses all over the floor. "Found it."
"Where is it?" Jubal snapped his pencil.
"There's a camp at Olduvai Gorge. One-third of Tumo Makani's rebellious men came from that area, just east of Lake Victoria,"
Aubrey explained, drawing a circle on the map on his desk. "In the African theory of human origins, Olduvai Gorge is considered the cradle of humanity. Elijah likely wanted to rebuild his 'Garden of Eden' there."
Old Muto followed closely behind him, patting his chest. "I know a shortcut that will definitely get us there before dawn."
Olduvai
Gorge is an east-west gorge in the famous East African Great Rift Valley, 50 kilometers long and 900 meters deep. However, its floor is not the barren cliffs and jagged rocks you might imagine, but a vast, vibrant plain.
Rather than a cultist's "Garden of Eden," it's a sacred place for archaeologists, paleontologists, and anthropologists.
Scientists have discovered footprints left by hominids dating back 3.6 million years, fossils of Australopithecus bonito from 1.75 million years ago, and fossils of Homo habilis, considered a human ancestor.
The last point on the sighting map drawn by Jack and Hannah was less than 60 kilometers from here.
But without Tumo Makani's confession and the guidance of Old Muto, who was familiar with the local conditions, even an army would likely have been unable to reach this point for a while.
Passing through a dense green curtain, Jack turned off his flashlight and crouched beside Old Muto.
"Try this, it's sweet," the old man casually broke off a long pole and handed it to him.
Jack looked at it in the dim moonlight. It looked familiar. Long and thin, it resembled sugarcane, yet it wasn't. He seemed to have eaten it often as a child. In the south, it was called sorghum, while in the north, people called it sweet stalks or second-generation sugarcane.
The dense green tent before him was covered in it.
Jack didn't know that its real name was sweet sorghum, native to Africa.
When fully grown, sweet sorghum was just as sweet as sugarcane, yet much less greasy to eat. It was one of Jack's fondest childhood memories.
Unfortunately, he wasn't in the mood for it right now. He nibbled on two sections, just to rehydrate. Soon, the green tent swayed again, and a nimble black figure flashed before the two of them.
Old Muto's black boy bared his teeth at the two of them, then began to report quietly.
Jack struggled to listen, but MUTO finally translated. "They found the yellow bus, parked next to the camp.
There's a small church inside, but no other buildings. The church is surrounded by a circle of tents. Because someone was keeping vigil by a campfire, the scouts didn't get too close.
Your men secretly sabotaged the bus's starter and stayed nearby, saying they'd wait for you to arrive."
Fearing alerting the enemy, and lacking a team communicator, the group split into three groups.
Clay volunteered to lead MUTO's scouts, while Jack and MUTO provided support and relayed messages. Jubal and the others stayed behind.
After a brief discussion, Jack followed a white mote to find Clay, while MUTO, familiar with the terrain, returned to organize his forces.
The wanted criminal squad consisted of five people: Detective Pollino brought two skilled men, and with MUTO and his militia, their total number was less than 20.
The camp across the way, including the 22 American tourists and the local followers Elijah had tricked into joining, numbered nearly twice their number.
A frontal assault was a surefire way out. It wasn't that they couldn't defeat them; charging in now would be a surprise attack, and Old Muto and the militia he'd personally trained were undoubtedly formidable.
It was just that the camp was overcrowded, and if the situation wasn't brought under control immediately, chaos would easily erupt.
While most of the cult members deserved their deaths, at least the 10 abducted women and seven-year-old Nicholas were innocent.
After a short while inside the green gauze tent, Jack caught a glimpse of a fire. Clay, his face smeared with jet-black camouflage, crouched behind a large rock, watching over two dark-skinned men dozing by the campfire.
A simple circle of barricades surrounded the camp, surrounded by a wooden fence less than a meter tall. It looked newly constructed, with no gates even installed.
The small chapel in the center was a serious concrete structure, with air conditioner units visible beneath the windowsills of two rooms.
It's obviously impossible for a place like this to have a proper power supply, but there's no sound of a generator running nearby, so it's probably either not turned on or hasn't been installed yet.
(End of this chapter)