The Night Ranger (28 page)

23

A
nother new number on the screen of Wizard’s mobile, the longest he’d ever seen. He let the call go. He couldn’t talk to anyone else. Too many men wanted these wazungu. He couldn’t fight them all. He’d pushed his juju too far. He’d forgotten his name.
Little
Wizard.

Yet he knew, too, that he couldn’t let the wazungu go, not without getting something for them. He would die with them first. Not only because he needed the ransom money to fight the Ditas. Not only because giving them up would cost him the White Men. Because they belonged together. Magic or fate or Allah had brought them here. Wizard was captive as much as captor. And his hostages had a hostage of their own.

He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want his men to die. He didn’t even want the wazungu to die. If he could find a way out, he would. But he wasn’t letting these three leave for nothing while he waited for the Ditas to attack. They were all in it now.

—

The phone rang again. Muhammad’s number. Which meant the American. Wizard wondered what excuse the man might offer for missing the meeting. He half expected the man to lie, say he’d been there.

“Where were you?”

“English, please,” the man said. “You forget I don’t speak your language.”

“Of course you don’t,” Wizard said in English. “Where were you? I sent men for you.”

“Decided to come to you instead. Service with a smile.”

“I told you last time, I don’ tell you where I live.”

“You don’t have to. I found you.”

“Lying.”

“You know where you keep all those pickups and technicals?”

“Talking nonsense.”

“Past the hill where you have the sentry.”

How could this man know the camp’s layout? Not just the trucks, but the watchman, too.

Wizard didn’t reply, waited for what the mzungu would say next.

“Ever heard the term ‘collateral damage,’ Wizard? Make sure nobody’s standing too close to those technicals. You understand?”

“Crazy.”

“You may feel differently in a minute.” The man hung up.

Wizard stepped out of his hut, waved Waaberi over.

“Nothing new,” Waaberi said. “Yusuf groaning in there like he hurt. Some boys mad about Samatar, saying we should go in there and get them wazungu. Say it past time to kill the one and take the others.”

Wizard didn’t have to ask which one they wanted to kill, or what Waaberi meant by “take.” “That don’t happen, Beri. They get hurt, they no good for ransom. Anybody touches them answers to me.”

“You say so.”

Waaberi spoke out of the corner of his mouth, sullen. They both knew he’d told Wizard that the hostages ought to be locked up, or at least handcuffed. Wizard wondered how many more mistakes Waaberi would let him make.

“Omar or anyone walkie-talkie from out east, Beri?”

“Last check an hour ago. They all clicked in fine. Since then, nothing. You think the Ditas moving?”

“Could be.” Wizard turned to look for Shiny Khalid, ask him if anyone could have followed him back from the border—

To the east, an explosion busted open the night. The earth shook. A gust of flame spurted above the hill at the edge of camp. It bloomed high and flared out in the rain. The camp was silent for a second, shocked, the only noise the fire chafing behind the hill. Then a windmill of motion. Boys ran from their huts in underclothes and socks, yelling:
The Ditas coming . . . Shabaab found us . . . Got to be the Americans. Saying we terrorists. Gon’
kill us all . . .

Wizard saw his men were close to melting down, disappearing into the scrub. How could they keep their courage when they didn’t even know what they faced? Until tonight Wizard had convinced them to think of themselves as an elite fighting force. His truest magic. That illusion was fading at the worst possible moment.

“Listen! Now!” Wizard raised his hands. First the Donkeys and then the rest formed a loose half-circle. Even now, twenty or more wore white T-shirts that stuck to their skinny bodies in the rain. The sight gave Wizard hope. “You all listening?”

“We listening,” they grumbled.

“Then listen. Thunder and lightning don’t scare White Men.”

“That no thunder and lightning—” Shiny Khalid said. “That a missile.”

Coward.
“Whatever it is, we take care of it together. Like always. Ali and me, we going to check this out. Waaberi, watch the wazungu. Everyone else, weapons ready, but into your huts. Nobody goes anywhere until I say. Whether it five minutes, ten minutes, an hour, nobody. Been much much noise tonight, and it stops now. Done?”

“Done and done,” they said. Some more loudly than others.

Wizard didn’t run. He wanted his men to feel his confidence. He walked. Past the latrines and up the hill. He found disaster. Three of his four technicals were destroyed, blown apart, fires greasing their steel bodies. The stench of burning gasoline hung over the hill. The flames were cooking machine-gun rounds, sending them sizzling and popping into the night. The Rovers were parked apart from the other vehicles and hadn’t been damaged. Yet Wizard hardly cared. He loved the Rovers, sure, but his men couldn’t fight the Ditas without the technicals and their heavy machine guns.

He turned to the sentry on the hill, Donkey Junior. “Anybody hurt?”

“No. All out there.” He pointed east, beyond the flames.

“What you see?”

“Didn’t see nothing. No rocket trail. Just a—” Junior whistled. “Then boom, and the technicals go sideways.” Junior grinned. He was young enough and dumb enough to think of this attack as cool.

“Only one whistle? One explosion?”

“Only one. A big one. Whole hill shake.”

So a bomb, not a missile. A missile could come from anywhere. Even Shabaab had a few. But a bomb had to be dropped from a plane. Which meant the Americans had a drone or a jet overhead. Probably a drone. Wizard would have heard a jet. He could no longer doubt that the Americans had found him. He wondered how. Maybe all the phone calls.

As if the American could read his mind, his phone rang again. This devil. Wizard stepped away from Junior and Ali. He knew the drone might be watching, ready to blast him. He answered anyway.

“You see.”

“I’ll kill you. Coward.”

“You’re hurting my feelings, Wizard.”

“Hiding in Kenya. Come here, I show you how to fight. Cut you up.”

“I told you I’m here.”

“I don’ believe you.”

“Then get yourself to the other side of the camp. The southwest corner. Sentry there will tell you different.”

The man hung up, leaving Wizard cursing. He snapped his phone away. “Come on. Going to Two-Finger Hussein.”

Ali turned to walk back down the hill toward camp.

“No.” Wizard couldn’t face more questions from Waaberi. The best alternative to walking through was a footpath three-quarters of a kilometer south that paralleled the camp for its entire length.

“Ditas out there, Wizard.”

“Now, Ali.” Wizard tapped Donkey Junior’s shoulder.

“Me, too?”

“You got nothing left to watch.”

—

They marched single-file through low scrub, Wizard leading, moving as fast as he could without running. The rain had picked up again and his feet sank into the mud. Water sopped through Wizard’s T-shirt and khakis and even snuck into his black leather boots. He’d bought them in a market in Garissa months before after a successful smuggling run, winding up with a packet of thousand-shilling notes too thick to fit in his pocket. Everything had seemed easy that day. Now he was slogging through a storm, his technicals burning. He couldn’t even imagine what he’d find ahead. He kept his hand on the butt of his pistol.

He had a flashlight but he didn’t bother to use it. He knew each twist of this path. He’d walked the land around here too many times to count. He wondered if the drone was tracking him. He wanted to believe it had dropped its bomb and flown off. But most likely it was circling in the clouds, waiting and watching. Donkey Junior might think that Wizard’s juju could stop a bomb big enough to blow up three technicals at once. Wizard knew better.

Ten minutes. The path rose. Wizard saw the tops of the two poles, the ragged tarp between them. But Hussein, the sentry, was gone. He raised a palm, stopped. He squatted low and crab-walked ahead a few meters and whistled, a single short note. No answer. Again. He heard rustling and grunting from under the tarp. He stepped forward and saw a man who might have been Hussein. The sentry’s body twisted side to side. His arms were tied behind his back, his legs pulled together, his head cut off—

Head cut off? No. Yet Wizard saw it for himself, a body with no head and still moving. No wonder the man had killed Muhammad and the other three so easily. He was a true-born devil. He’d made a zombie of Hussein. Wizard went to his knees, drew his pistol, gripped it in both hands to hide the shaking.

Ali came beside him and Wizard pointed his pistol at the zombie. Ali fell to his knees and mumbled the Shahada, the Muslim creed:
There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger . . .
About the only Arabic that Wizard knew. He joined with Ali, for all the good the words might do.

Donkey Junior stepped forward. “What you doing?”

“Hush.”

“How come we don’t get him? Get that hood off him.”

Soon as Wizard heard the word, he knew Junior was right. The American had cuffed Hussein’s arms and legs together, thrown a hood on his head, which was on top of his neck where it belonged. Wizard’s imagination had tricked him. Too much had happened this night.

“What you think, he don’t have a head?” Junior said. “How he goin’ move like that with no head?”

“Shut your mouth. You two stay here. Donkey, you cover me. Ali, you watch down the hill.”

He stood, walked to Hussein straight and true. If the American was close enough to pop, Wizard would take his chances. He died, maybe Ali or Donkey Junior would revenge him. Anything would be better than feeling so foolish. This man killing his soldiers, bombing his technicals, now showing up here, playing with him. Had to stop.

Hussein’s wrists and ankles were cuffed with thin strips of plastic. His AK lay beside him, the magazine gone. Wizard sliced Hussein’s legs free, flipped him onto his back, sat him up, pulled off his hood, not too gently. Hussein’s eyes bulged. “Wizard.” His voice was raspy and soft, like it hurt him to talk.
“Hamdulillah”
—thanks be to God—“it’s you, this man come from nowhere and choke me, I wake up with a hood on me, can’t hardly breathe—”

Wizard squeezed Hussein’s cheeks to shut him up. “Some sentry. Can’t see a white man in the middle of the night.”

“I hear the explosion, look back a second—”

“A second—”

“His hands around my neck and I can’t do nothing. He bigger than Ali, strong, move quick—”

Wizard wanted to pull his pistol, shoot the sky from frustration. He’d only be wasting rounds. He grabbed Hussein’s arms, pulled him up, cut his hands free. “Go on back to camp. Tell Waaberi we over here, we back soon.” He shoved Hussein toward the huts, turned, looked out into the night. The mzungu was out there. Close. Wizard scanned down the hill to the south, left to right, east to west, looking for motion, white skin, anything. He turned, looked back to camp. The mzungu would need big courage to hide there, so close to the enemy. But this American seemed to do what he liked.

Wizard didn’t see him. The rain was too hard, the night too dark.

He wasn’t even surprised when his phone chimed.

—

“You see me, Wizard? ’Cause I see you.”

Wizard would have blown the whole hill up, and himself with it, to make this voice in his ear go away.

“I gon’ find you.”

“Holding your pistol, wearing that black T-shirt. How come you wear black and all your men wear white? That a racial thing?”

“Say all you like, mzungu. Don’ change I got something you want.”

“Let them go. Get back to smuggling sugar, whatever. This is too big for you.”

“You joking. I let them go, that bird drop an egg and no more Wizard.”

“Let them walk, you can disappear. Your men, too. I promise.”

Wizard raised a hand to the sky. “Mzungu promises worth not even one drop of rain.”

“I could have put that bomb in the middle of your camp. I could have killed that sentry. I could open up on you right now. I’m keeping the body count down.”

“Should have, then.”

“I know you want to get them to their families, Wizard. I know they’re not for sale to the highest bidder.”

“How you know that?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m your best chance. In twelve hours, this will be nothing but rubble. I can save you, but you have to let them go.”

“You can’t save me, mzungu. You think you see, but you don’t see nothing. They killed one my men.”

Pause. “Who killed who? And how?”

“Tried to run tonight, attacked they guard.”

“You would have done the same.”

“My soldiers see it different.”

“Who’s in charge? You or them?”

Wizard couldn’t figure what to make of this man. “Talking peace now. After you killed four my men?”

“Self-defense.”

“This talk talk talk. I need money. Ransom. No more talk. I want to see you now. Or else I go back to my hut, wait for you to attack. Everybody got to die sometime.”

“If I come out. You won’t shoot me.”

Wizard felt his lips spread into a smile. “Gon’ have to take that chance, mzungu.”

24

W
ells lay prone eighty meters from the sentry post, covered in dirt soft and sticky as toffee. Through his night-vision monocle, he saw Wizard peering down the hill. Wells wasn’t worried. Even with a scope, seeing him through the rain and the scrub would be tough. Without it, Wizard had no chance, not as long as Wells stayed still.

His plan had worked. He had judged Wizard as a young, reckless commander who would want to see what had happened to his sentry firsthand instead of staying in camp. Wizard had obliged. And for whatever reason, he’d brought only two men with him. Now, even downslope, Wells had a huge tactical edge. Thanks to the scope, he could take out the three Somalis while they shot blindly into the dark. The men in camp would hear the firefight. But before they could respond, Wells would retrace his steps to the dirt bike a few hundred meters south. In the darkness and confusion, he could easily outflank his pursuers, enter the camp from the northwest.

A perfect plan. Just one problem with it. By the time Wells reached the camp, Gwen and Hailey and Owen would be dead. A few minutes before, after the Reaper dropped its bomb and Wells choked out the sentry, Wells called Shafer for an update. Neither man needed to comment on the irony of the fact that Shafer, halfway across the world, had the better view of the camp and the technicals.

“At first it looked like panic, guys running everywhere. Then they clustered up. I’m guessing your man gave a pep talk. A bomb would have taken most of them out. My pilot figured three-quarters KIA or seriously wounded.”

“Leaving the other quarter to skin Gwen alive.”

“Why we gave peace a chance. What’s your next move?”

“Hunker down, get him to come to me. He’ll see that I’m here, what the Reaper’s done. Now that he knows what he’s up against, he should want a deal.”

“And if not?”

“And if not, I’ll take him out.”

—

Wells had been half right. Wizard found the sentry right on schedule. But he wasn’t ready to bargain. Not at all. And Wells feared that the camp was close to anarchy. The attempted escape had changed the mood of Wizard’s men. They were furious that these wazungu had killed one of their own. If Wells killed Wizard, they might tear the hostages apart.

Wells saw only one option. To give up his ideal tactical position. To come to his feet, throw down his weapon, and put himself in the tender hands of a Somali warlord whom he’d been taunting most of the night. Shafer and Anne would tell him he was mad to surrender voluntarily. They’d tell him to back off, wait for the Deltas or Duto’s team to show.

But Wells didn’t think he could afford to wait. The situation was too unstable. Plus Wizard had already demonstrated a kind of good faith. He’d refused to sell the hostages to the Arab, made sure his men didn’t punish them for killing their guard. Now he sounded under his bluster like a man looking for a way out. A face-to-face meeting might convince him. Wells hit redial on his phone. Through the scope he saw Wizard shake his head, a
what now
gesture. Wells thought he might not answer. Then he did.

“I’m downhill from you. Almost straight south. Less than a hundred meters.”

Wells saw Wizard’s head tilt as he tried to see in the dark.

“I’m going to stand and put my hands in the air. Do me a favor, don’t shoot me.”

Wells clicked off, reached out to push himself up. Then stopped.

In his night-vision viewfinder, a stick was twisting across the hill above him, maybe seventy feet up. It hadn’t been there a few seconds before. It pulled itself into an S-curved shape, turned toward Wells.

Not a stick. A snake.

Wells kept still as it slithered his way, expecting that it would turn, change course. He couldn’t tell if it had any idea he was there, if it smelled him or sensed the heat of his body or saw him with its beady little eyes, but it headed directly for him, sliding under the bushes and along the muddy earth, long and sinuous and moving faster than he expected. When it was about twenty feet away, Wells saw it with his uncovered eye. Six feet long, not much thicker than a rope, with a narrow head and brilliant bright green scales, nearly neon in their intensity. Wells didn’t understand the coloring, it seemed impractical, but he had bigger problems at the moment. He knew nothing about African snakes, had no idea whether this one was poisonous. Best to assume it was.

His phone buzzed. Wizard. No doubt wondering why Wells hadn’t stood. Wells didn’t want to answer, but he feared if he didn’t, Wizard would shoot blindly down the hill and upset the snake. Wells brought the phone to his ear an inch at a time. The snake seemed to sense the motion. It stopped, shifted its green head side to side. It was no more than ten feet from Wells now, close enough for him to see that scales on its belly were lighter, a washed-out greenish white.

“No more tricks, mzungu. Get up.”

“There’s a snake.” Wells barely breathing the words. Before him, the snake spread its jaws, displaying two stubby fangs.

“Snake?”

“Bright green.”

Wizard said something in Swahili. Then, in English: “That a mamba. Bad poison. Don’ move, man.” He hung up.

Wells held himself just so, willing his breath to slow. The mamba lowered its head and slithered toward Wells, so close now that he could hear it rustling over the mud. It moved with a surprising elegance, a single sleek motion, no wasted energy from arms and legs. Wells seemed to remember that snakes were naturally frightened of humans and preferred smaller prey. But what if it saw him too late, or rubbed against him, and felt threatened?

He closed his eyes, hoping the darkness might relax him, quiet his breathing. It didn’t. He needed to see where the mamba was going, what it was doing. When he opened his eyes, it was hardly a foot from him, a green jewel in the night, so close he could make out each scale on its head. Its forked black tongue slid from the tight slit of its mouth and flicked up and down, like a judge about to pronounce a guilty verdict.

Wells’s pulse thudded through his neck. Yet some part of him couldn’t help but be impressed with this unfathomable, beautiful creature. Such a tiny brain, and yet it survived. A purely instinctual beast. It felt hunger, thirst, pain. Possibly fear. But no pity or anger, no joy or love. What could it make of him? It had to know he was here. This close it would sense the warmth of his body.

The mamba flicked its tongue one last time and zipped to his left, under his arm. Wells thought it might touch him, brush his cheek. He feared his control would break if it rubbed his face. But it slithered by—

Then turned and slid across his back, over his shirt, a living rope pulsing over him, only his thin wet cotton shirt between its scales and his skin. He imagined a bad gangster movie:
Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt.
What if the snake decided it liked the warmth of his body and coiled up on his back? The ultimate nightmare. Instead the snake slid off, rustled into the night.

Wells waited a few seconds and then turned himself carefully onto his left side and watched the mamba slither away through the viewfinder. When it disappeared, he pushed himself up, pulled on his pack. He unstrapped his AK and held it over his head as he walked up the hill. He tried not to wonder whether the mamba had friends in the vicinity.

Above him, Wizard yelled in Somali. The other two men stood and put their rifles on him as Wizard walked to meet him. “Put the AK down in the mud, we got plenty more.”

Wells did. Wizard stopped a few steps away. He was short, with wary eyes and the lithe muscles of a gymnast. He had a pistol strapped to his hip, a knife sheathed to his calf.

“The pack, too. Take it off, I carry it.” Again Wells complied. “You the American.”

“Name’s John. You’re Wizard.”

“That is so. Little Wizard.”

“Came a long way to see you, Little Wizard.”

“Almost didn’t make it. You one lucky mzungu. Them green mambas put a bite in you, you get all swelled up, can’t breathe.” Wizard bent his head forward, snapped his jaws together.

“Can we stop talking about the mamba?”

“Pretty, though. What is it you want from me?”

A tickle ran across Wells’s calf. He looked down, half expecting the snake to be curled around his legs. “Any chance we can get inside?”

—

They trudged toward camp, and Wells felt the full weight of the last three days. Even at forty a man could rise to his youthful heights in bursts—forty-year-old point guards and quarterbacks played in the pros—but Wells was past forty now. He was in great shape, but every mission left him more deeply spent. He walked carefully, conserving his strength for this last phase.

As they neared camp, Wells drew on his last reserves to make himself stand up taller, walk faster. He wanted Wizard’s men to think of an emissary from the outside world, here to give them the choice of freedom or death. Not their captive.

He saw dozens of soldiers standing in the rain, waiting around the western huts. They had AKs and RPGs, and most wore their white T-shirts. Wells couldn’t guess what they made of him, though one tall man pointed and laughed. “What’s he saying?”

“That you almost as black as me.”

Wells scraped a line of mud from his face. He was caked in it. His forearms itched, too, thanks to a dozen mosquito bites. The rain had brought them out and he’d been a perfect target lying in the mud.

At the edge of camp, several men watched a hut. “Mind if I say hi to Gwen?” Wells turned toward the men. Wizard grabbed his elbow, marched him along. Wells didn’t argue. He’d found out what he needed to know. The hostages were inside.

Wizard’s hut was clean and spare and most of all dry, with a cot and a wooden chest. Wizard turned on an electric lantern. A man brought in two rough-hewn wooden stools and a plastic bag filled with leaves. Wizard took the bag, offered it to Wells. “Miraa.”

“No, thanks.”

“The girl with the white hair, she takes miraa.” Wizard stuffed his lip with leaves.

“Gwen?”

“Yes. Gwen.” Wizard smiled. He liked her, Wells saw. Was that why he’d refused to sell the hostages to the Arab?

“Is she all right?”

“All three of them, sure, ’til they kill my man. Now we got them pinned up with one more my men.”

“They have a hostage?” No wonder the camp felt so unsettled.

“They not going anywhere unless I say. How you find me, mzungu?”

“The drone tracked your men from the border.”

“Tricky. Then it bomb my trucks.”

“That’s right.”

“It still here?”

“Yes. One for now. More coming.”

“But you alone.”

“The CIA, the Army, they know I’m here. In a few hours, they’ll have helicopters here.” Wells wasn’t sure whether he was lying or not. Duto and Shafer knew, but whether Duto had told anyone outside Langley depended on calculations that Wells didn’t presume to understand.

“And soldiers.”

“Special Forces. Only thing that will stop them is if they’re afraid you’ll kill the hostages. That’s the only reason I didn’t kill you on the hill.”

“Lying, mzungu. Couldn’t even see me.”

Wells handed over the night-vision monocle. “You couldn’t see me, but I saw you.”

Wizard looked through it. “Turn off the lantern,” Wells said.

Wizard flicked it off and the hut was dark. “Neat toy. Mzungu magic.” He flicked the lantern back on, gave the monocle to Wells, pretending he wasn’t impressed.

“I promise you that right now, satellites are photographing this place, analysts are figuring out where the hostages are, planners are thinking up ways to hit you so hard it’ll be over in thirty seconds. Plus, every SEAL and Delta within a thousand miles is raising his hand and begging to get in on this like a kid who doesn’t want to be last pick at recess—”

Wizard spat a long stream into the dirt. “Don’ know what you talking about.”

“What I’m talking about, Wizard, is that this is over. However you expected to get paid, Nairobi, Mogadishu, no one will touch you. Maybe if you had a thousand fighters, big weapons, shoulder-fired missiles, the Pentagon and White House would take you seriously. If you were in Mog and had a million civilians on all sides, you’d have some leverage. But not here. Not this. Every man here is a legitimate target, and the United States will kill them all. In fact, that’s probably the number-one option—hit quick, hit hard, so that you’ll be too busy trying to save your own skin to shoot those three in the hut. It’s what I’d do.”

“Let them try. They don’ scare Wizard.”

Wells coughed, a wet phlegmy rumble that started low in his stomach and took too long to stop. He’d come to a land of drought and wound up drenched and sick. He wanted nothing more than to lie on the dirt, close his eyes. He knew that he’d wake burning from the inside out, skin stretched over his bones, eyes worn dry, throat clotted and chafed, and still he ached to sleep.

“Listen to me. We both know that you can yell out to your men to shoot me and I can’t stop you. Maybe I take a few soldiers out, but not a whole camp. I gave up my chance to escape when I told you where I was.”

“What the point.”

“Point is”—another cough rose in Wells and he fought it down—“point is that if I tried to shoot my way out of here, it would be suicide. Not bravery. You try to fight the Americans, it’ll be the same. Let Gwen and Hailey and Owen go. Keep me if you like—they won’t send an army for me and you can ransom me back in a month when nobody’s paying attention, but let them go. I know you want to get them back to their families anyway—”

“Second time you said that. How you know?”

“I was the Arab who called you,” Wells said in Arabic, then in English.

Wizard grinned. And pulled a half-empty bottle of Johnny Walker Blue from his chest, the amber liquid glowing in the low lantern light.

“Plenty tricks in you, mzungu.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Wizard handed Wells a glass.

“Are we toasting agreement?” Wells said. “You’ll listen.”

Wizard raised his glass. “This to thank you for letting somebody else kill me. You know I can’t let them go.”

At that they both drank. The scotch blistered Wells’s throat and his head swam. Something deeper and darker than fatigue had come for him this night. The bites on his arms itched madly. But he hadn’t been in Kenya nearly long enough for malaria or sleeping sickness to incubate. He wondered if he’d been unlucky enough to be infected with something more obscure, West Nile virus or Rift Valley fever. Whatever it was, he faced more dangerous threats in the next few hours. He forced the headache aside, focused on Wizard.