The world of American TV series: Starting with the L.A. Patrol.

The crowd walked through the bottom of the railway bridge and came to the other side, frowning when they saw the mess of footprints on the ground.

Jubal squatted on the ground, silently identifying the number of footprints, but Hannah went straight to the point, "That's them. There is a small footprint here. It should be left by the 7-year-old boy named Nicholas."

"They came down the hill over there and went west." Detective Pollino drew a line with his hand, pointing in the direction where the footprints disappeared.

"Wait a minute." Old Muto suddenly frowned and stopped the people who were about to move forward, and shouted twice to the back in the dialect that Jack could not understand.

The three militiamen immediately picked up the Type 81 rifles with serious expressions, bent down and searched forward in a formation of one in front and two behind.

"What happened?" Aubrey was a little confused.

Clay pointed to a large bird that was flying up and down in the woods in the distance. "There are other animals competing with the vultures for food. They are probably hyenas or cheetahs."

Everyone present was smart. They quickly figured out what Clay meant by food, and their faces suddenly turned ugly.

Sure enough, ten minutes later, under a big tree far away from the main road, everyone saw a mutilated body.

Old Muto's militiamen had just fired shots and scared away two cheetahs, one big and one small. Before they arrived, the mother and son (daughter) were enjoying the fresh meat while chasing away the annoying vultures.

The corpse's internal organs had been basically hollowed out, and white bones were exposed on the arms and thighs, not to mention the face. The facial features that were easy to eat had been eaten away, leaving only two bloody holes at the eye sockets, and the eyelids and eyeballs had been pecked clean.

"Jacob Bruce." Jack suppressed his nausea and took out a passport from the dead man's trouser pocket. Then he found a branch to pull out his right hand that was pressed under him and took a picture of his fingerprint with his mobile phone.

Because he was pressed under someone else's body, the part below the deceased's right arm was preserved, while his left arm was already incomplete and appeared five or six meters away.

Although there is no internet at the moment, we can send back the fingerprints after we return to further confirm the identity of the deceased.

"He seems to be one of the team leaders?" Jubal flipped through the incomplete list in their hands.

Clay's performance was second only to Jack's. He collected the scraps of red cloth around the body and pieced together half of a red T-shirt, with the remaining half still remaining on the body.

On the front of the T-shirt is a dove of peace holding an olive branch, surrounded by a circle with words such as Brunswick Mission written on it.

"Something is wrong. My boys walked west along the trail for about two kilometers. The footprints there were more orderly, at least in a line. But why did this body appear here alone?"

Old Muto didn't know anything about criminal investigation, but he keenly realized that there was something wrong with the appearance of a dead body here alone.

Jack had just finished a cursory inspection of the body. "I'm sorry, the damage is too severe. I can't tell the exact cause of death unless we call Dr. Temperley Brainerd and her team to take the bones for analysis.

But I can barely judge from the bruises on the remaining skin tissue and the edema under his scalp that he was beaten before his death, and his right arm pressed under his body showed 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 assumed that it is unlikely that he used public display of power to force the other kidnapped people to surrender. There were only footprints of at most four people around, and the path that the others had taken was at least one kilometer away.

It can be assumed that someone deliberately brought him here and then tortured and killed Jacob Bruce without anyone else seeing."

Aubrey, who said this, was standing the farthest away, and from time to time he looked up at the vulture that was still circling and screaming in the air.

"What's the purpose? Just to simply destroy the body? Oh, right, if we were to deal with the body in this way in a place like this, if we were to come a day later, we would only find some broken bones, right?"

Hannah's question was not responded to by others because everyone's attention was drawn to the dispute 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 spoke in a low voice as if he was coaxing an old child, "But everyone knows that this is their territory. I think we should ask them. Maybe the Lion King or his people saw something."

"Who is 'The Lion King'?" Jack asked, also in Swahili.

Both of them were a little surprised that Jack could speak Swahili, and after looking at each other, they decisively ended the little dispute.

Old Muto had a very good impression of Jack. After a slight hesitation, he chose to tell Jack frankly, "There is a rebel group from Somalia taking a rest nearby, but they are very small. I don't think they have the ability to hold 23 Americans hostage."

"Can you take us there? Maybe, as Detective Pollino said, they saw something early yesterday morning?"

Jubal paused for a moment, glanced at Detective Pollino and the militiamen who were searching, and said, "If they really kidnapped those tourists, I will be responsible for the negotiations and understand their demands. Force will not help solve the problem."

"No." The old MUTO shook his head. "Just let the young guy come with me. Simba and his people are a little sensitive."

At first Jack didn't understand why he wouldn't be sensitive when he was with him, until he followed old MUTO up the ridge and saw a flag with a blue background and a red star flying on a hill not far away.

He knew almost nothing about the country of Somalia. He only knew that Somalia and Ethiopia, which had fought each other for the Ogaden region, were once the Soviet Union's little brothers.

There was only the inexplicable battle in Mogadishu in 1993, the year of Black Hawk Down, in which the SEALs, Delta Force, and Rangers were crushed.

There is a ruin on the hill, which looks like a small military facility that has fallen into disrepair. Except for a bunker-like main structure that is still intact, the rest can only be used to block the wind.

"The Somali flag that I remember should be a blue background with white stars," Jack asked tentatively.

Old Muto replied casually, "Because Siad Barre is just an idiot poisoner. He has never really ignited the spark."

This statement contained a lot of information, and it also made Jack roughly understand why old Muto would bring himself, an American who was "suspected of being a communist", to the meeting alone.

Somalia, a small country located in the Horn of Africa and guarding the throat of the Gulf of Aden, was once a small bully in East Africa. It played both sides between the United States and the Soviet Union, and even fought with Ethiopia for the Ogaden region rich in oil and gas resources.

Siad Barre, as mentioned by the elder Muto, was a political strongman who had ruled Somalia for 22 years. Before he was overthrown in 1991, Somalia was a so-called socialist country.

It goes without saying what the current state of Somalia is like. Although the people on this land are called Somalis, years of fighting among warlords belonging to various tribes have turned this once East African bully into a pirate paradise.