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seconds at least, however, the wasp made no move toward him. Instead it stayed virtually still, swinging just a little this way and that in the air, its triangular head swiveling so that its multifaceted eyes never left his face.
    Almost, Trey thought, as if it were figuring something out.
    Making up its mind.
    Then it did. Swinging upward, it paused for a moment at its apogee, then swooped down like a dart.
    Trey closed his eyes.
    And heard a crashing sound in the brush behind him.
    He opened his eyes to see the wasp draw back. It swung away, made a big loop around the clearing, and vanished down its tunnel. The others, too, had disappeared. The colobus was clambering through the tangles at the farside of the clearing.
    The crashing got louder. Now Trey could recognize it: the sound of a blade meeting wood. A moment later, he felt the brambles tear away from his hair and clothes.
    A hand grabbed his arm and pulled. Half stumbling, he fought his way out through the brush, then stood there, his legs shaking.
    A slightly built woman in black pants and a ragged, long-sleeved white shirt stood before him, machete hanging by her side. Its blade was stained with thick sap that pooled and dripped from its sharp edge.
    She was looking away, toward the clearing, but when she turned her head Trey knew who it was. Mariama Honso, her eyes wide, her expression filled with alarm mixed with a kind of exultation.
    Before he could say anything, she stepped forward and hugged him. Enveloped him in her arms for a moment before letting go.
    It wasn’t a hug of relief, he knew, or affection, or any emotion he recognized. He didn’t have any idea why she’d done it.
    He said, “What—”
    But Mariama was listening to something else. Trey heard it, too: the humming of wings.
    Her gaze found his.
    â€œYou fool,” she said.
“Flee.”

FIVE
    THE PLAN HAD seemed simple when Mariama hatched it. She’d go after Gilliard, that brave, foolhardy, strange American visitor. Arriving in time, she’d prevent him from getting himself killed, then bring him back. On the way, they’d stop someplace quiet, private.
    Mariama had thought the Etoile Bar in Ziguinchor would serve. There her father, Seydou, would join them. Together, they would explain to Gilliard what it was he’d seen, and what it meant.
    What it meant for the world.
    Soon. If not this month, then next, or the one after. They were sure of this, Mariama and Seydou. It had already begun.
    And then, once he believed, they would tell him what he needed to do.
    And pray that he understood.
    *   *   *
    MARIAMA WAS YOUNG, but already she knew many ways that a seemingly foolproof plan could go wrong.
    This one began to go wrong with the phone call. The call Trey had received after visiting the health clinic and seeing the dead soldier. Mariama and her father, still at work in the clinic, didn’t learn of the phone call for more than two hours. By then Trey was gone, heading on his suicidal mission to the forest.
    Already almost beyond her reach, and very likely doomed.
    Still, she had to try.
    Too much depended on his staying alive.
    *   *   *
    THEN HER CAR, her beloved 1983 Peugeot 305, ran over a sharp stone on the Massou-Djibo Road and had a flat tire. Thirty miles from her destination. Listening to the flapping of the slack rubber against the washboard dirt as she guided the car to the edge of the empty road, she almost despaired.
    In her mind, she saw Trey moving in his strange, catlike way through the forest. She’d followed him once, and thought he was quicker and quieter than anyone she’d ever seen, besides herself.
    She’d even thought he might have spotted her, and
no one
ever saw Mariama if she didn’t want them to.
    She imagined him now, following the hints, the clues he’d picked up these past few days. The dying forest. The dead man on the clinic table. The smell.
    Using his unusual