Prologue

Six months ago

Kim

The sound of tires on gravel rouses me. Engines rumbling, filling the air with the smell of unfiltered diesel fuel make me open my eyes. Machine gun fire makes me jump out of bed and lie flat against the wooden floorboards of the hut I’m staying in. My heart is racing, sweat is beading on my forehead. This is a raid, the kind I've read about happening at villages and settlements like this one in the desert of Nigeria. The kind I hoped never to write about, the kind I might not survive. My stomach's clenching so hard I want to throw up, but I'm afraid to even lift my head.

A man is yelling for everyone to come outside, speaking English, which is the official language in this country. I can hear doors slamming open, men and women yelling, the girls screaming and crying. The door of my hut slams open too, and two tall men holding machine guns burst inside. One of them yanks me off the floor, sticks the machine gun in my side and hisses at me to be still as I fight to break free. I stop fighting. Rule number one when on assignments in dangerous places is, "Don't be brave". Go along, cause no trouble, do as you're told, and hope that your PRESS ID will save you.

I didn't think I was in a dangerous place here. This is an orphanage for Christian and Muslim girls who have lost their families in the never-ending hostilities plaguing the region. I'm on assignment for The Guardian, writing an article on how well Nigeria is handling the terrorist threat to their country, and this part of it—the part about the Christian and Muslim orphans living and learning together and hopefully heralding a brighter future for this poor, religion-torn country—was supposed to be the happy part of it.

But the terrorist group, Boko Haram, has been very active in this region lately. They warned me and my photographer to leave days ago. But I wanted to stay a little longer to get a better feel for the place.

Outside, the man standing in the open back of the truck is still yelling for everyone to assemble, still shooting his gun in the air in between giving commands. All I see is his gun and the whites of his eyes. He pauses when he sees me brought out. I'm only wearing the short t-shirt I slept in. His gaze slithers across my bare legs like a snake. He must not see many white women here, especially ones with waist-length thick red hair and skin white as milk. Right now, he's thinking he might as well make the most of me while he has me. I can read that clearly in his expression.

The orphan girls, all twenty of them, are being herded toward the truck by five armed men in fatigues. Their uniforms look state-issued, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. It doesn't mean the government is in on this, whatever this is. But it could.

A man is still clutching my arm tightly, but I try to jerk out of his grasp when one of the girls is hit viciously for stopping.

"What are you doing?" I scream as the man pulls me back and jabs the gun into my side again.

The man addressing the crowd jumps off the truck and approaches.

"This is the American journalist, no?" he asks the principal of the orphanage, a man in his sixties kneeling in the sand to my left.

The principal gives me an apologetic, scared look before nodding.

The feeling of being touched by a snake intensifies as the man sets his gaze back on me and walks closer.

"You will write that we took these girls to a better place," he says, standing so close I can smell the alcohol on his breath. "This is no place for girls. They will go to a nice place."

I know he's lying, we all know he's lying. But if I don't get out of this alive, I'll never be able to tell the world what happened here, never be able to describe this man to the authorities, so they can track him down and free the girls that are now being forced onto the truck he vacated.

"You will write this?" he asks pointedly and I nod, despite the knot in my throat, despite everything inside me telling me I should spit in his face. Telling me to fight him right here and now, because if that truck with the girls leaves, no one will ever see them again. But I have no chance of freeing them right now. And if I try, I'll get a belly full of bullets and they'll lose their best chance of getting freed.

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