The Night Ranger (16 page)

“Go straight. Park over the next rise. Then we leave this and walk.”

“It will take forever. And snakes. There are snakes.”

“We go on foot, no one knows we’re coming.”

“Better to have this.” Wilfred patted the dashboard like a horse’s flank.

“We walk. You don’t like it, stay in the car.”

—

They trudged south through the ugly low scrub. The dirt was soft, almost spongy, swallowing their steps. The refugees walked through hundreds of miles of this to reach Dadaab. No wonder they were starving when they arrived. Wells carried the essentials in his pack: water, a first-aid kit, binoculars, a sat phone and GPS. He’d strapped on a climber’s headlamp, goofy-looking but essential for keeping his hands free if he found himself in a dark hut. The shotgun was slung across his chest, the Glock tucked into his waistband. He’d given Wilfred the Makarov.

“You don’t shoot unless I shoot.”

“Okay, yes.”

The Land Cruiser’s clock had read 14:20 when they left. Wells figured they’d need close to an hour to reach the area directly beneath the vultures. That didn’t give them much time on target if they were going to return to the Cruiser before dark. They walked in silence, Wells a few feet ahead, scanning for smoke, huts, any sign of human habitation.

A high-pitched cackle, an ugly gasping sound, half laugh, half choke, erupted somewhere in front of them. Wells stopped with one foot in the air like Wile E. Coyote. “Hyenas?”

“That’s their song.”

“Pretty.”

“The devil rides them through hell.”

“Save the folk tales for the anthropology professors.”

Wilfred shook his head in perplexity.

“Come on. Unless you want to be out here in the dark.”

Twice more they heard the cackling, and once an answering call behind them. Neither man mentioned it. The vultures floated high overhead, using the thermals, barely flapping their wings.

A half hour later, Wells came over a hill and saw the huts. Four in all. Three small and close to each other. The last larger, maybe fifty meters away from the third. They were mud-brick, hand-built, like a thousand other huts that Wells had seen that day. The big one had a tin roof, angled slightly so the rain would pour off. The other three had traditional branch roofs. No walls or barbed wire separated them from the land around. Hidden in plain sight. No vehicles either. They were gone, or hidden.

Wells dropped to a knee, scanned the compound through his binoculars. In the middle of the compound, he saw a man, or more accurately what was left of him. His arms and legs were chewed to stumps, his belly torn open. Intestines glistened against black skin like stuffing pulled loose from a cheap toy. Two more bodies lay in front of the second hut, similarly dismembered.

“See them?” Wilfred muttered.

He wasn’t talking about the corpses.

The hyenas lay in the shade of the huts, lazing, their bellies swollen. Beards of blood coated their muzzles. Wells counted ten. As he watched, one stood and waddled over to a corpse. The hyena poked and snuffled the body and then clamped its jaws around an arm. It put its paws on the dead man’s chest and lifted its head and grunted and strained, its body shaking, until the arm tore from the shoulder with a gunshot-loud snap. Over the years, Wells had seen human beings destroyed in almost every conceivable way. Even so, the violence done to these corpses tightened his throat.

Wells stood, unslung the shotgun. No need for stealth. Whoever had killed these people had left the camp to the hyenas. “Time to restore our place at the top of the food chain.”

“You want to go down there.”

“When they learn how to shoot, I’ll worry.” Wells strode down the hill. After a few seconds, he heard Wilfred follow. When he reached the base of the hill, fifty yards from the nearest corpse, the animals stood and looked at him. They were motley creatures, with big cupped ears that made him think of fly-eating flowers. Their brown fur was marked with dark spots like an old man’s hands. Their tails angled downward, toward the earth. When dogs put their tails at that angle, they were showing submission. Wells figured hyenas behaved similiarly, but he wasn’t sure. He didn’t know much about them. He’d have to remember to read up before his next trip searching for volunteer aid workers.

A breeze ruffled the hyenas’ fur and brought Wells the sour stench of the torn, bloated corpses. Over millennia, humans had invented rituals to hide the monstrousness of postmortem decay. But here was death in its truest form, destroying not just the spirit but the body itself.

Wells lifted the shotgun high and shouted, “Go! Git! Go on, now!”

The hyenas were less than impressed. One yawned, its pink tongue flopping out. Another scratched furiously at the dirt like a drag racer spinning his wheels before the flag dropped. The one closest to Wells went back to tugging on a corpse.

“Get lost! Hubba-hubba!” Wells cocked the shotgun and strode closer. Most of the pack padded away. But four stood their ground. The hyena nearest Wells seemed to be the leader. It raised its tail, bared its teeth, growled low in its throat. Wells felt his adrenaline rise. The creature might not be pointing a pistol at him, but its intent was more than clear. It stared at him with unblinking black eyes. It was enormous, three feet tall. As big as a Great Dane but sturdier. It had to be almost two hundred pounds. It had a thick neck and teeth that looked like they could tear steel.

Wells put the shotgun to his shoulder, angled the muzzle skyward. “GO!” The hyena merely licked its lips. “I thought you were cowards.” He squeezed the trigger. The Mossberg bucked against his shoulder and its blast rattled through his skull. He pumped the shotgun, fired again.

Finally, the hyena stepped away from the corpse and turned aside. It looked over its shoulder at Wells and loped off, its tail between its legs.
You don’t scare me.
The other three holdouts followed, forming a single-file line as they disappeared into the scrub. They moved with an odd precision. The stink of the corpses would lure them back by nightfall, Wells thought. Another reason not to tarry.

Wells topped up the Mossberg with two more shells, slung it over his chest, and turned to the bodies. They looked worse up close, rotting meat covered with quilts of flies. Wells wished for a kerchief to shield his mouth, or even better, some Vicks VapoRub to hide the stench. He squeezed his nose, forced himself to ignore the flies and the stink and look close at the corpses. Their faces had been chewed into unrecognizability, but in their flesh he saw neat punctures. GSWs, as trauma surgeons said. Gunshot wounds.

He didn’t see any rifles or pistols, but brass casings glinted in the red dirt around the bodies. Wells picked up a handful. 7.62-millimeter jackets. AK rounds.

Beside the third hut he saw two more bodies. A piece of torn rubber lay between them. It looked like it had been chewed and then spit out, as if even the hyenas wouldn’t bother with it. A mask. A Joker mask.

Joka-joka-joka call back-back-back.

—

Wells had heard plenty of lies over the years, and told his share. But he couldn’t remember anyone who lied with as much conviction—as much flat-out style—as James Thompson. The man had been close to tears at the press conference in Nairobi. Wells wondered what explanation Thompson would offer for having the Joker’s number programmed into his phone. No doubt it would be a beaut. Wells grabbed the mask, threw it as high and far as he could. Let the vultures have it, if the hyenas wouldn’t.

The first hut held supplies, mostly canned food and water. Cases of peanut butter and jam. Whoever had been here had wanted to be sure he wouldn’t need a fire to cook. At the back, two hot plates with electrical cords and a half-dozen plastic jerricans of gasoline. No generator. Wells wondered if the raiders had taken it.

In the next hut, six cots, their mattresses thin, stained, and lumpy. The dank sour smell of a locker room that hadn’t been cleaned all season. T-shirts and jeans and sneakers and Tusker bottles strewn across the floor. Against the wall, an empty AK magazine, no rifle in sight. Wells imagined the chaos of a surprise night attack, men scrambling for weapons and running outside to die. He rousted the room for notebooks or phones, didn’t find any.

The third hut had only two cots. Wells guessed the leaders had lived here. A wooden chest held shoes and clothes, including a bright yellow polo shirt, size XXL. Wells put it in his pack. Maybe Moss could identify it as belonging to Suggs. Between the cots, a cardboard box held two oversized bottles of off-brand scotch. Nothing else. The whole camp felt temporary to Wells, as though the men who’d lived here hadn’t planned on staying long—evidence for the theory that Thompson and Suggs planned to end the kidnapping quickly, once the media attention peaked.

One hut left, the big one. Process of elimination said it was the place where Gwen and the others had been kept. Up close, Wells heard grunting and snuffling and scratching, horror-movie sounds. He reached for his pistol, flicked on his headlamp, stepped inside—

The room was airless and dark and painfully hot. In the headlamp’s stark white light, Wells saw a hyena tugging at a corpse against the far wall. The animal turned to Wells and screeched and Wells stepped backward. He knew instantly he’d made a mistake. The hyena bared its teeth and raised its tail like a battle standard and charged, pouncing across the hut, angling toward Wells. Wells raised the Glock, a classic shooter’s two-handed stance, and pulled the trigger. The Glock had more kick than the Makarov, more than Wells expected. The pistol pulled sideways and the round caught the hyena in its hindquarters. The hyena screamed now, but kept moving. Wells pulled the trigger again—

This second shot caught the beast farther up. Wells expected the hyena to go down. Still it came. Ten feet away now. It opened its jaw wide, its teeth white and vicious under the headlamp’s single eye. Wells knew he had time for only one last shot. He raised the Glock high and, as the hyena leapt, he pointed the pistol into the beast’s open maw and pulled the trigger—

The hyena’s head exploded and its body convulsed sideways. It flopped against the hut’s dirt floor. When it stopped moving, Wells poked it gingerly with his foot. He knew he had killed it well and truly. Yet he half expected it to rise. The devil’s pet indeed. Those fierce slavering jaws. And the stink. A stomach filled with carrion, the meat twice dead now. Wells found himself murmuring the Shahada, the Muslim creed,
La ilaha illa Allah . . . There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger.

“Holy shit,” Wilfred said behind him. “Score one for the great white hunter.”

The stench of decaying tissue clotted Wells’s throat. He pressed his forearm against his nose and forced himself to walk deeper into the hut. And realized something about the body at the far end. It was white. The face was still largely intact. A man. His mouth open, and his eyes. Wells had never met him, but from photos he knew the frat-boy chin. Gwen’s sometime boyfriend. James’s nephew.

Scott Thompson. Resting in nothing like peace. Wells would have to leave him here. Before he did, he leaned close, examined the body. Two shots in the chest, close range. They didn’t look like AK rounds to Wells, though he couldn’t be sure. He looked away, saw a glint in the wall. A metal ring. A chain hung from it.

He clamped down on the acid rising in his throat and checked the rest of the hut. Three more empty rings in the walls. The other hostages, gone. Why had Scott been killed and left? Had he fought the kidnappers? Was his death a message to James Thompson? Wells wished he had a forensic team helping him. Instead he had a headlamp and Wilfred. Who called to him now, urgently.

“John.”

Wells stepped outside. The sun hit him, and before he could stop himself his stomach clenched viciously. Bile coursed through his throat and into his mouth, and he vomited a thin brown muck that the dirt swallowed instantly.

He groped in his pack for a bottle of water. He gulped until his cheeks were full, swished, spat. And again. Rinse and repeat. Anything to hide the angry sour taste. He poured a second bottle over his face and hands, hoping the lukewarm liquid would wash away the stink. As he tilted up his head, he couldn’t help but see the vultures dirtying the sky. Death and its minions were everywhere in this camp.

“Listen,” Wilfred said.

In the distance, to the north: The hive-of-bees buzz of a dirt bike engine revving high. And a second, meshing with the first.

“Coming this way,” Wilfred said. “If we had the Cruiser—”

“We don’t.”

“What then?”

“We kill them.”

“Mzungu. That some sickness. Don’t even know them, what they want—”

“We kill them. Unless you’d rather they kill us.”

10

S
OUTHWESTERN
S
OMALIA

A
fter the man in the black T-shirt made his three-word speech—
You’re mine now
—Gwen and Hailey and Owen were led into the Range Rover and blindfolded and driven through the silent African night. Gwen felt like she was in a plane that had suddenly spiraled into a dive. She was terrified, but also helpless, and that helplessness distanced her from the insanity that her reality had become. She felt almost as if she were starring in a movie of her life:
Taken 2: Africa
. Or would that be
Taken 2 Africa
? Anyway, she wished someone could tell her whether it would have a Lifetime-style happy ending or be more of a downer.

It had been a downer for Scott, for sure. She didn’t want to believe he’d been in on the kidnapping. Maybe he’d had another reason to ask about Suggs. Maybe he was confused, or scared to have a gun pointed at him.

But he hadn’t sounded scared to Gwen. He’d sounded pissed.

Then he’d died.

Gwen had never seen anyone die before. She’d hardly been to any funerals even. Her parents and grandparents were still alive. Two of her mom’s friends had died of cancer, which seemed nasty. You looked bad, then you looked better and everybody got excited and took you out to dinner. Then it came back and your hair fell out and you went into the hospital and turned yellow and died. That was two funerals. And one of her high school classmates had died in a drunk-driving accident. So Gwen wasn’t unfamiliar with the
concept
of mortality. But she had always had a difficult time believing that death would ever come to her or her immediate family. Especially not since her sister pulled through that car accident. Death was something that happened to other people. People who weren’t as lucky or beautiful or American as she was.

She wanted to believe Scott would be waiting at the next hut. But she couldn’t escape the reality of what she’d seen, the
You shot me
shock in Scott’s eyes before they glazed over like a shower door closing. No, Scott wouldn’t be apologizing. He had seen his plan, whatever it was, going bad, and he had lost his temper and spouted off. Just like he had a hundred times at frat parties and football games and wherever else he thought he was cool enough to get away with being a jerk. Which was everywhere. Only this time he hadn’t gotten a beer poured over his head. He hadn’t gotten into a slappy sloppy fight that stopped before anybody got hurt. He’d gotten himself killed. He’d learned the hard way that in Africa death wasn’t shy around the young. It didn’t just hang out at nursing homes. It slipped the bouncer a twenty and came to dance at the club.

Yep, Scott was finally the tough guy he’d always pretended to be. Part of Gwen wanted to congratulate him. And ask, by the way, what have you gotten us into? But he wouldn’t be around to answer that question either.

—

They drove awhile. At least an hour. At one point, a prop plane passed overhead. The Range Rover abruptly stopped. They waited in silence for several minutes, then drove on. No explanation.

When they stopped again, Gwen heard men nearby. Her door opened. She was shouldered out of the truck and guided along a rough path. She was still blindfolded and cuffed, and once she stumbled and nearly fell, but a firm hand held her. The path flattened. For a few seconds, Gwen caught the rank odor of raw sewage. Then the stink was gone. Not much later she felt a squeeze on her shoulder. She stopped walking and someone uncuffed her hands and lifted off her blindfold. She found herself with Hailey and Owen in the center of a bush settlement, fifteen or twenty mud-brick huts. No lights. If the place had a generator, it wasn’t running.

Wizard and another man led them to a hut nearby, shined a flashlight inside. Three blankets lay on the ground, along with two pairs of sweat suits. No chains or handcuffs.

“A guard will be outside,” Wizard said. “You need the toilet, you tell him. You go one at a time. You two”—he waved the flashlight at Gwen and Hailey—“wear those”—he pointed at the sweat suits—“when you’re outside. My men are Muslim, and some will be happier if you stay covered. As for food, whatever we eat you’ll eat.”

“We’re not locked in?” Owen said.

“This is Somalia. Believe me, you’re safer with me than anywhere else. We’ll protect you.”

Like you protected Scott,
Gwen wanted to say. But she couldn’t see any upside in making this man mad.

“Sir?” Hailey said. “Mr. Wizard? Can we ask you one more question?”

“If it’s not trouble.”

“Are you from the Shabaab?”

Wizard said something to the man with him and they both laughed. “You would like me to be Shabaab? You would feel better?”

“I meant no disrespect.”

“I’m not al-Shabaab. I took you for money. I want to get it and send you back where you belong. But I could sell you to them if you wish. Lots of people want to meet you. Maybe you see all of Somalia. Would you like that?”

“No, sir.”

“Tomorrow morning we take pictures. And email addresses and phone numbers to reach your families.” He handed Owen the flashlight, closed the door, a tin sheet with a half-dozen holes punched for air. They sat in silence as his footsteps faded.

Hailey spoke first. “It makes sense now, the last place.”

Gwen couldn’t see how anything made sense. She lay down and closed her eyes and exhaled softly, all the sadness in the world in that puff of air. Hailey seemed to understand. She took Gwen’s hand in her own. Her palm was warm and sweaty and sweet.

“How do you mean?” Owen said.

“I mean, the Joker’s mask, getting chained up, it felt like overkill. You know, the hoods were awful. But why didn’t they just beat us? It was all this other stuff instead. Like they knew they couldn’t hurt us physically, so they were looking for other ways to scare us. They knew they were going to set us free and they wanted to impress us.”

Gwen hadn’t felt that way at the time, but she saw the truth of what Hailey said. “Scott wanted us to have a crazy story to tell when we got back to Dadaab,” she said.

“Whereas this guy is the real thing,” Owen said. “Doesn’t waste time on making threats. Doesn’t need to. We just watched him kill our friend. Somebody he thinks was our friend, anyway.”

“Our ex-friend,” Hailey said. Gwen felt the jittery laughter rising in her and didn’t fight it, because what better way to describe Scott? Ex-friend, ex-boyfriend, ex-human. Hailey squeezed her hand and the giggles passed.

“Bet he thought it was a big prank,” Hailey said.

“A dumb hazing stunt that went too far,” Owen said.

Then Gwen put the last piece together. “But it wasn’t his idea. James.”

“What about James?” Owen said.

“He did this.”

“You think the CEO of WorldCares set us up to get kidnapped?”

“She’s right,” Hailey said. “Think it through. Scott wouldn’t have given himself to Suggs without a guarantee he could get out. He wasn’t that crazy. And doesn’t James have that book coming out? We disappear for a couple weeks, come back, we’re all telling this story.”

“We got kidnapped for his
book
?” Gwen said.

They lay in silence, contemplating James Thompson.

—

“Before, we were protected, even if we didn’t know it,” Owen said a few minutes later. “No more.”

“Maybe James set this up, too,” Hailey said.

“And got his nephew killed? No, they were going to end it. Bring us back to Dadaab. Until this Wizard guy heard about us.”

“How? If the Kenyan police didn’t?”

“I’ll bet he knows what’s going on around here better than the cops. Yeah, they heard, came for us, took out Suggs and the Joker, now we’re here.”

“Now we’re here,” Hailey said.

“What I’m wondering, he said lots of people are looking for us.”

“No,” Gwen said. “He said lots of people want to meet us.”

“You’re right,” Owen said, drawing out the word like he couldn’t believe it. “What I’m wondering, what did he mean by that?”

“Hopefully, some SEALs who will helicopter in, come get us,” Gwen said. She could almost see them, wraparound sunglasses and tight T-shirts. “That would be ideal. I’d be glad to thank them. However they liked.”

“Try not to go back to being idiot Gwen,” Hailey said.

Gwen felt a flush spread up her neck. She was amazed that she had the energy in this place to care about a casual insult. But she did. She didn’t want to go back to being idiot Gwen.

“Maybe,” Owen said. “Maybe our families have made so much noise that the Army, the CIA, they’re on the hunt. I don’t know how fast that could happen. What I’m worried about is, these guys took us out of Kenya. What if somebody grabs us from them, brings us another hundred miles into Somalia? And what if the next group is Shabaab, and they don’t want to ransom us, they want to hold us forever for the publicity?”

“That Wizard guy looks like he can handle himself,” Hailey said.

“Suggs and the Joker thought so, too.”

“We can’t do anything about it anyway,” Gwen said.

“Maybe.”

“You think—”

“I think even if there’s a real risk, we see a chance to grab one of those Range Rovers we’ve got to go for it.”

“Try to escape? From an armed camp in Somalia?”

“If we see a chance. That’s all I’m saying. Doing nothing isn’t always the safest.”

“We don’t know the roads,” Gwen said. “We don’t know if there
are
any roads. These guys will shoot us if we make trouble. Wizard already proved it.”

“I’ll bet we’re no more than fifty miles from Kenya. Less. We weren’t in the cars that long.” Owen turned the flashlight on both of them and then on himself. He looked tired, worn, his skin stretched tight over his face. Gwen wondered how much weight they’d all lost. “Say I’m wrong, there’s no chance that anyone else is going to take us. We’re still stuck here. We got kidnapped barely a week ago and none of us is holding up that great. You want this to go a month? Six months?”

“Our families—”

“They can spend every dime they have, every dime these guys ask for, and there’s no guarantees anybody’s going to let us go. Some of these kidnappings go on for years. Promise me this. When they let us go to the toilet, get food, whatever, we’ll all do some recon.”

“Recon.”

“Figure out where they keep their weapons—”

“I know what it
means
, Owen.”

“If phones work here, Kenyan or Somali. Do they have dogs? Motorbikes? Stuff like that.”

Gwen couldn’t listen anymore. Like they could possibly get out of here on their own. She couldn’t bear the thought of being held for years, either. She closed her eyes, squeezed Hailey’s hand, tried to dream of soldiers in helicopters flying low over the dusty red plains.

—

She woke to find Wizard nudging her foot with his own. This morning he wore sunglasses to go with his black T-shirt and boots. “Picture time.” He was so young, yet he spoke with absolute command. She propped herself against the wall. He produced a cell phone and snapped pictures of her and Hailey and Owen. They gave him their email addresses and parents’ phone numbers and he left.

“You think there’s an Internet connection around here?” Hailey said.

“Let’s hope,” Owen said. “He emails from this camp, I’ll bet the CIA can trace it in about ten seconds.”

“He’s too smart for that,” Gwen said.

“He’s a kid playing at being a soldier. Probably can’t even read.”

“Scott talked down to him, too,” Hailey said. Owen had no answer for that.

Gwen’s bladder was uncomfortably full. She didn’t want to leave the hut, but she pulled on the sweat suit. It was cheap and scratchy. She would have sold her soul for a hot shower and a pair of brand-new undies and Lulu yoga pants.

The guard slumped on the chair outside was maybe seventeen. “Toilet,” Gwen said. “Latrine.” He pointed left. Gwen shielded her eyes, walked into the rising sun. The sky was mostly blue but the air heavy and moist, an unsettling combination. The camp felt dingy and temporary. Gwen didn’t see anyone older than twenty-five. Maybe Owen was right. If the Shabaab attacked, how could these guys defend them?

Something else bugged her, too. Women. There weren’t any. Maybe they were hiding somewhere, but Gwen didn’t see any high walls and all the huts looked the same. Maybe the ones with wives had sent them to Dadaab. Maybe they raided the local villages when they wanted women. Or maybe they just did without. And got horny. A couple soldiers stared at her like she was walking around in a bikini, not a sweat suit. Not that they said a word, but she didn’t feel great about being one of two women in a camp filled with armed men. Nothing to do with the fact that they were African, either. At least, she didn’t think so. Black, white, whatever, groups of guys this age could get ugly, sometimes without much warning.

She wondered again if Owen was right. At least she ought to try to work out the camp layout, like he’d suggested. Recon. It sounded good. A serious word. A professional word. She left the main camp area, walked to the latrines, three sheds of trash wood and burlap.

Up close, the smell overwhelmed her, sun-baked excrement and urine, eye-burning, throat-gagging. She recognized the odor from the night before. So they’d brought her along this path. Gwen decided to go past the sheds, see if she could find where the vehicles were kept. If anyone caught her, she would say she’d decided not to use the toilets, the smell had been too much. She double-checked to be sure no one was watching her and trotted past the sheds, away from the main camp. The path narrowed and curved around a low hill. A hundred yards on, a man sat on a lawn chair at the top of the hill. A floppy hat protected him from the sun. A rifle and binoculars were slung over the chair. As she watched, the man stood, shielded his eyes, took the binoculars and carefully surveyed the horizon from north to south.

Gwen guessed the Range Rovers were on the other side of the hill. But she decided not to try to see them. She’d pushed her luck far enough. The sentry wouldn’t let her by, and she’d be in trouble if he spotted her. She’d already stayed longer than she’d intended. She turned back, walked quickly to the latrines. She realized something else, too. Owen’s instinct that the camp faced a serious threat of attack seemed right. Why else post a sentry facing east—toward Somalia, not Kenya?