The van moved east with its lights off.
Kin sat in the back with Nia beside him and the lead guard in the front. The road was dark and the driver was good and the tires made almost no sound on the asphalt. Behind them, the second and third vans followed at a distance, and behind those, the fourth and the fifth. Thirty-eight men in five vans, moving through t toward a convoy that did not know they were coming.
Kin looked at the screen in his vision.
The warlord's convoy was about nine minutes ahead. Five SUVs, three armoured trucks, and two motorcycles and were moving fast.
Kin looked at Nia.
Still in the general's face and uniform the mask seemed to move when she breathed and shift when she turned her head, and the general's grey temples caught the light from the passing streetlamps in a way that made Kin want to look somewhere else.
She was looking at him.
"What," Kin said.
"Nothing."
"You are looking at me."
"I am allowed to look at you."
"You are looking at me with the general's face."
"I know."
"It is unsettling."
"I know." She did not look away. "You are still in Kwame's face."
"I have not taken it off yet."
"You should take it off."
"I will take it off when we stop."
"You should take it off now. You look like a palm wine tapper who has been in a fight."
"I am a palm wine tapper who has been in a fight."
She laughed. It came out in the general's voice and Kin flinched and she laughed again, harder, and the lead guard in the front seat turned his head a quarter of an inch and then turned it back.
"You are brave," Nia said.
"Not especially."
"You are. You are the newest one. You have been doing this for less than a month. You have been shot, stabbed with a pen, thrown through a window, blown up, and you have not stopped once. You have gone back into buildings you knew were death traps. You have gone back for me twice."
"You would have done the same."
"I have been doing this for four years and I have never done the same." She looked at him. "I run. That is what I do. When it gets bad, I run. That is why I am still alive. You do not run. You go forward. That is why you are going to die young."
"That is a strange thing to say to someone you are complimenting."
"I am not complimenting you. I am telling you the truth." She paused. "You also have a good body I noticed that in the hospital, when the medical crew was working on you."
Kin looked at her.
"You are a small woman in a general's face and uniform telling me I have a good body."
"Yes."
"It is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me."
"It is not the strangest thing that has ever happened to you. You are an assassin for a twelve hundred year old system."
"That is a good point." Kin shifted in the seat. "Nia, I am not going to do anything with you while you look like the general."
"I did not ask you to do anything."
"You are looking at me like you are about to."
"I am looking at you like I am admiring you. There is a difference." She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. "When this is over, and I am back in my own face, and you are back in yours, I will take you to dinner. A good dinner. Not the kind where we eat on the floor of a warehouse. The kind with a table and a cloth and someone who brings the food to us."
"That sounds expensive."
"I will pay."
"You said you were a runner."
"I am a runner who has been paid very well for four years and has never had anywhere to spend it." She opened one eye and looked at him. "You are going to eat something that is not a dumpling and you are going to like it."
"I like dumplings."
"You will like this more."
Kin almost laughed.
"All right," he said. "Dinner. When this is over. But you have to stay alive until then."
"I will stay alive."
"You have to promise."
"I promise."
The van turned onto the eastern road and the lights of the stadium appeared in the distance, far away, small and white against the dark. The lead guard spoke into his radio and got a reply and said something over his shoulder that Kin did not hear.
Kin looked at the screen.
The warlord's convoy was five minutes ahead.
"Five minutes," he said as Nia opened her eyes.