A little after half-past midday on a sunny Saturday a disturbing call came through to Mark and John at the Nairobi offices of the oil company for which they work.
Gunshots had been heard minutes earlier at Nairobi's plushest shopping center, the Westgate Mall, and it was suspected that an armed robbery was in progress. The security consultants, one an ex-SAS (British special forces) officer and the other a former Irish Ranger (an infantry regiment of the British Army), immediately began work on the assumption that it was a terrorist attack.
Within 10 minutes they had contacted all the firm's staff and ascertained that two were inside the mall. They phoned them, to find they were hiding in Westgate's second-floor sushi restaurant, Onami.