The Night Ranger (22 page)

The boy nodded.

“Tell me so I know you heard.”

The boy repeated Wizard’s words.

“Good. And tell him his other boys best fight better than you. Elseways we gonna have too many bodies for the hyenas to eat.” Wizard shoved the kid away, sent him stumbling. “Put him on the road back,” he said to Omar.

Then he and Waaberi were alone. “It coming,” Wizard said. “Soon enough.”

“Let it come. Long as Awaale keep sending ’em that way, it no problem.”

“Two down. Three hundred to go.”

15

B
AKAFI

W
ells wasn’t sure that he’d been formally arrested, much less what charges he faced or what rights he had. Not that it mattered. Most Americans thought of police officers as honest and reliable, and cops generally repaid that trust. Anne would take a bullet before she took a bribe. But in Kenya, like many places where Wells plied his trade, the police were best avoided at all costs.

The cuff squeezing his wrist was a simple mechanism, a few links of chain connecting two adjustable steel rings. A trained thief could pop a handcuff with a paper clip in seconds. But if there were any paper clips in this room, Wells couldn’t reach them. He spent a few unpleasant minutes squeezing his thumb against his palm and sliding his wrist against the steel to see if he could slip his hand through, but the cop had cuffed him tight and he was no escape artist. He chafed his skin until it bled, but the cuff stayed in place.

Next he went for brute force. Wells faced the wall and wrapped his left hand high around the chain and twisted his right hand so it, too, held the links. He raised his foot to the wall and shoved his boot against it and tugged until the muscles in his arms felt like Silly Putty. But the metal plate holding the chain to the wall didn’t give a fraction of an inch.

The only item within arm’s reach was a stack of paper on the desk. Though the cop had taken Wells’s phones, he’d missed the lighter that Julia had given Wells. But even if Wells managed to start a fire, he’d still be stuck to the wall. At best, the cops would douse the flames and beat him up for causing trouble. At worst, they’d leave the station and let him roast, a mzungu barbecue. Even so, the lighter might come in handy. Wells extracted it from the front right pocket of his jeans and slid it into his back pocket, where he could reach it even with his hands cuffed behind him.

—

Two hours passed. Wells found himself fighting an ache that slashed across his back to his hips. His body had been wounded by bullets and batons, fists and feet. Aside from lots of Advil, Wells dealt with the damage by ignoring it. But tonight his muscles and joints and bones all sang the same sad song,
You’re too old for this nonsense.
The clock on the wall magnified his discomfort, seeming to measure not seconds but weeks with each tick. As if whole worlds were dying while he sat in this room. The relativity of arrest.

Finally, the back door opened. The cop walked out, looked Wells over. His eyes were bloodshot and his belly slipped from his shirt over his jeans.

“You work at Dadaab,” the cop said.

“I’m an aid worker.” Using a loose definition of
aid
. “May I ask your name, sir?” A little deference never hurt.

“Mark.” Though the cop’s Anglo-Kenyan patois made the name sound like
Maahk
. “What you doing here?”

“Wilfred and I drove to see the place where the volunteers were taken.”

“Don’t you know it’s dangerous? Shabaab kidnapping wazungu.”

Suddenly, Mark the cop was his best friend. “We thought we’d be okay. Wilfred had a pistol. But he tripped and it went off, hit him in the thigh. I bandaged him up, brought him back. I’d seen the infirmary when we drove though.” The story didn’t make much sense. Not that Mark cared, Wells thought. He had his own lies to keep straight.

Mark pretended to smile. “Tomorrow we talk to Mr. Wumbugu, sort this out. Let you go to Dadaab, where you belong. You don’t bother with Bakafi anymore. Of course, we keep the evidence.”

“Of course.” A scheme occurred to Wells. He’d need to be careful setting the hook. Not too much at once. “I see why you have to investigate. We come to the hospital, my driver’s been shot, I have nineteen, twenty thousand dollars.”

“Twenty thousand?”

“Whatever I was carrying.”

The cop stepped close. Wells could have reached out with his free left hand, throttled him. But Wells would still be locked to the wall.

“You said twenty thousand. You carrying five thousand.”

“I don’t know. Whatever I had.”

The cop squeezed Wells’s handcuffed arm, like a manager sending a pitcher to the showers, a friendly warning. “Big mistake to lie to police. Even for a mzungu. Where is it, the rest?”

“I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

The cop stepped away, reached under his desk, came up with a black metal tube the size of a flashlight. He pushed a button on the side and the cylinder quadrupled in length. An expandable baton. American cops loved them, and apparently they weren’t alone.

The cop stood before Wells. He raised his right hand high, waggled the baton like a tour guide, brought it down on Wells’s left biceps.

“Come on,” Wells said. As an answer Mark raised the baton again.

“In the Cruiser. In the Cruiser, okay?”

The cop laid the baton against the desk where Wells couldn’t reach it, then walked out the front door. Ten minutes later, he returned, carrying the Mossberg and the Glock. Wells didn’t know where the Makarov had gone.

“These in your car. No money. What kind of aid worker you are?”

“You said yourself, it’s dangerous.”

“Where’s the money?”

“It’s in a trap compartment in the back, hard to find.”

“You show me.”

“You promise to let me go tomorrow.”

“Yes. But this a secret, between you and me. Not—” He pointed at the back door.

Just as Wells had hoped. The cop didn’t want to share this new windfall with anyone. Not even his partner.

“We go get the money, come back. Try to run, I shoot you. Understand?” Wells nodded. Mark unlocked him, cuffed his hands behind his back, marched him out the door and into the night. Only the hoteli, the police station, and the infirmary had generators. The rest of Bakafi was dark, families huddled for the night. The Cruiser was parked where Wells had left it outside the infirmary. Not a great spot for his purposes. He’d have to disable Mark fast, before the guy shouted for help.

At the Cruiser, Wells expected Mark to uncuff him. Instead the cop swung the back gate open. The bulb inside threw dim light on the toolbox and two-by-fours and plastic jerricans in the back compartment. “Where is it?”

“Easier for me to show you.”

“You think I’m stupid? Keep them handcuffs on, tell me where.” He leaned forward, legs spread, and reached inside. With his arms free, Wells would have had plenty of options. Now he was down to one.

“Right there, next to the toolbox—”

Wells sidestepped until he was directly behind the cop. He leaned slightly forward and pulled his arms off his back for balance. He swung his right leg back, then drove it forward, like a field-goal kicker, aiming for a spot just below Mark’s butt. He swung through and felt the soft center of Mark’s crotch collapse beneath his boot. Mark moaned, a sound that under other circumstances could have been mistaken for ecstasy. His knees buckled and he sagged against a jerrican.

Wells turned so that his back was to the Cruiser. He tucked his hands into the waistband of Mark’s jeans and slung him to the ground. The cop was panting now like a dog that had run too long, his tongue looping meaningless circles over his lips. He would be frozen for a minute or more. With his cuffed hands, Wells grabbed a fuel jerrican, flipped it on its side, edged his fingers around the cap, and twisted. Gasoline slopped out. Wells steered the can so the fuel sloshed onto Mark’s shirt.

When Mark was soaked, Wells flipped the jerrican upright. Mark feebly edged his arm toward the pistol holstered at his waist. Wells pulled the lighter from his back pocket. He squatted on Mark’s chest, facing Mark’s legs, so the cop was looking at his back. Wells splayed his own legs, stamped his boots down on Mark’s forearms. The cop’s breath came fast. He smelled like a charcoal grill about to be lit. Wells lifted his cuffed hands. The lighter was simple and plastic, the Kenyan equivalent of a Bic. Wells flicked its flint. “Do as I say or burn. Understand?”

“Yes.”

A light popped on inside the infirmary. The doctor yelled,
“Jambo!”

“Tell him, no jambo. Keep him inside.”

Mark coughed, shouted back in Swahili. His voice was halting, but whatever he said seemed to work. The light flicked off.

“Where are the handcuff keys?”

“Right pocket.”

Wells lifted his boot from Mark’s right forearm. “Get them. Slowly.” Mark inched his right hand forward, plucked the keys from his pocket. “Uncuff me.”

“Man—”

Again Wells flicked the flint.

“Okay.” Mark reached his hand higher until it was behind Wells, a dangerous moment. If Mark went for the lighter, Wells had already decided that he would toss it aside. He wasn’t setting this man on fire. He just had to hope Mark wouldn’t take the chance.

The key scraped into the hole with the faint click of metal on metal. Then Mark turned the key, and the steel bracelet came loose from Wells’s wrist. Freedom. Wells lifted his right elbow, reversed it into the cop’s temple, getting his shoulder into the strike. The elbow was underrated as a weapon. Wells couldn’t see what he’d done, but he felt the shiver of contact run up his arm. Mark’s head snapped sideways and a tiny wheeze escaped his throat. Wells grabbed Mark’s pistol, rolled forward into the dirt. He came up and turned around, the pistol in his right hand in case Mark tried to come back at him. But the cop stayed flat on his back. He twisted sideways and vomited a stew of beer and rice.

Wells grabbed the handcuff key, unlocked the left cuff so the handcuffs came free. He tucked Mark’s pistol into the back of his waistband. Mark tried to sit, but Wells flipped him onto his stomach, put a knee in his back, cuffed him tight.

“You no aid worker.”

“You’re not much of a cop.”

He pulled Mark up as someone shouted from down the road. Wells saw a man outside the hoteli. Time to go. Wells grabbed the pistol by the butt and swung it against Mark’s head. The cop went limp.

The man from the hoteli was walking toward him now. Wells wondered if he had time to go back to the police station, get his guns and his phones. He decided he had no choice. He could make do with Mark’s Makarov, proof that fate had a sense of humor. But without the phones he’d have no way to reach Shafer or anyone else. He grabbed the Cruiser’s keys from Mark’s pocket and threw his unconscious body in the back of the Cruiser. He slammed the gate shut, ran for the driver’s door. Two more men had come out from the hoteli now and were walking up the road. Wells drove to the police station. Inside, the front room was empty. He shoved the phones in his pockets, scooped up the shotgun. As he did, the handle of the back door twisted. He pointed the Mossberg at the anticorruption poster, fired. The devil’s thunder echoed off the concrete walls and the poster turned into confetti. So much for a quiet exit. Wells ran outside, fired the Glock wildly at the police pickup truck outside the station. The front left tire burst open. He wasn’t sure how much other damage he’d done, but the tire alone ought to buy him a few minutes.

He slid back in the Cruiser and rolled off. A dozen men stood in the road. Wells clicked on his brights, hunched low in his seat, floored the gas. The Cruiser’s engine roared. It accelerated madly down the street, bouncing over ruts like an ATV on steroids. Wells saw two bullet holes appear in the windshield and then the hoteli flashed past and he was clear of Bakafi.

He wasn’t expecting a warm welcome if he came through town again.

16

L
OWER
J
UBA
R
EGION
,
SOUTHWESTERN
S
OMALIA

G
wen wanted more miraa.

She and Owen and Hailey were waiting for dinner when the shots echoed in the night and the camp dissolved into chaos. Three of Wizard’s men dragged them back to their one-room prison. With the door closed, the room was black. Gwen clicked on the flashlight and she and Hailey sat side by side against the wall. Owen stood by the door, peeking out through the ventilation holes punched in the tin. Gwen chewed the inside of her lip, pressing her teeth into her own tender flesh, as she waited for the firefight to start, for grenades exploding and soldiers shouting in a language she couldn’t understand. Then the shots stopped and the night was quiet.

Seconds later, she heard a low sob, almost a moan. She was almost surprised to realize that she hadn’t made the sound. Hailey seemed to be having a full-on panic attack. She was curled against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees.

“It’s gonna be okay—”

“I wish they’d just shoot us—”

“Don’t say that, Heartbreaker.” Gwen hugged Hailey, the only comfort she could offer. Hailey tried to break free but she held on. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” After a few seconds, Hailey’s sobs dissolved into something like laughter and she stopped rocking.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Gwen, I’m sure I’m exactly the same, but you smell terrible. I mean—” Hailey waved her hand in front of her nose.

The sudden mood shift didn’t surprise Gwen. She’d taken the same roller-coaster ride herself dozens of times. “You know what I’d like more than anything? A long, hot bath. Bubble bath.” Gwen could almost feel herself sliding into the tub until she couldn’t even see her body, shedding dirt, sweat, smoke, fear, emerging clean and new.

“You know what I’d like? To be alone for a few minutes. Totally alone.”

“Hailey—”

“Shh—” Owen hissed. “I hate to break this pity party up, but something big is going on.” His tone silenced them. After a few minutes, Owen stepped away from the door, sat next to them. “We have to get out of here. Tonight. I just watched them bring in two kids, when I say kids I mean like twelve years old. Arms tied behind their backs. To Wizard’s hut. Then, a few minutes later, the big guy who’s always with Wizard, he came out with one boy slung over his shoulder. He was dead. I’d bet on it.”

“Doesn’t mean they killed him—” Gwen said.

“No? Just now they brought the other one out. And they’re slinging their AKs around and a couple of them are carrying these big long tubes that I think are rocket launchers. They are loaded for bear, and I know you think Wizard’s your best friend, Gwen—”

“That’s—”

“But that kid was alive when he went into that hut and dead when they brought him out. These guys aren’t nice. And the worst part is, I’m telling you, they are scared right now. Maybe ‘scared’ is the wrong word, maybe they don’t get scared, but they are on edge. Amped. Strutting around, swinging their guns. I’m surprised nobody’s gotten shot by accident.”

“They’re protecting us. That’s what Wizard told me, he told me his men wouldn’t hurt me, us, that we were safe here—”

“Gwen, if they wanted to let us go, they had their chance,” Hailey said. “Last night. After they killed Suggs and the Joker, they could have left us there. Even driven us back to Dadaab.”

Gwen wanted to argue, but Hailey was right. “Fine. You win. They’re just waiting for the right moment to heat up the pot, make mzungu stew. What do you want us to do about it? Hope our guard falls asleep tonight so we can run for it?”

“My thought is, everything that’s happened so far came from the east. Whoever’s out there, Shabaab, I assume, they’re totally focused on it. We get out of camp, head west, maybe they won’t realize for a while.”

“They won’t realize? Please, Owen, imagine what you’d think if I just said that—”

“She’s right,” Hailey said. “How can we outrun them? They have those Range Rovers and who knows what else.”

Gwen hated to bring up the motorcycles, but the other two deserved to know. “When they put me in that hut this morning, I saw two motorcycles, dirt bikes, in the hut next to it. I’m not sure they work, but someone was in there trying to fix them.”

“I can ride,” Owen said. “Can either of you?”

“I can,” Gwen said.

“You can?” Hailey couldn’t have sounded more surprised if Gwen had said she was a virgin.

“My high school boyfriend showed me. He always had this plan that we’d ride cross-country together. But I shouldn’t have even brought it up. There’s no way this is gonna work. What, Owen? You think we run to the hut, spark the bikes, take off, and nobody notices?”

“In a few hours, two or three a.m., it’s gonna look different out there. If we don’t get attacked tonight, these guys’ll have to get some sleep. Half of them were up late last night attacking the Joker’s camp. And the sentries they post will be on the edges of camp, not the middle. We can get to that hut, grab a bike, take off, catch them facing the wrong way.”

“We don’t know what’s out there,” Gwen said. “We don’t even know where we are. And what about the guard?”

Owen pressed his palms together. “I’m not going to try it alone, okay? I’ll stay with you to the end. But here’s how I see it. We sit here, wait, nothing good is gonna happen. I think best case, Wizard decides he can’t stay alive long enough to get paid by our families. So he sells us to Shabaab and God only knows what they’ll do with us. Another possibility, this place gets attacked straight up and we either get taken, kidnapped again, or maybe get shot in the cross fire. If we run, hopefully we make it. If not, they’re not going to hurt us. They need us. Wizard said this wasn’t about some holy war for him, and I believe him. He wants money. If we’re dead, he doesn’t get any. Worst case, they catch us, smack us around, lock us up. We’re no worse off than we are right now.”

“Unless Wizard gets mad and shoots us like he shot Scott,” Gwen said.

“Thought he was your buddy.”

“Let’s vote,” Hailey said. “All those in favor of Owen’s plan, trying to get to the bikes, raise your hands.”

“Is that even a plan?” Gwen said.

“All those in favor of doing nothing, keep them down,” Owen said.

Owen raised his hand. Gwen kept hers in her lap. They both looked at Hailey.

Hailey slowly lifted her hand. “Sorry, Gwennie.”

—

They spent a while whispering over ideas. In the dark, because Owen insisted that they turn off the flashlight to save the batteries. The camp outside slowly quieted, seemingly going back to normal, whatever that meant here. Finally, the guard brought them three plates of rice and three bottles of water. The rice was mushy and lukewarm, but they ate every bite, a silent acknowledgment that they might be lost in the scrub for days with nothing to eat or drink.

When they were done eating, they talked a little more, worked through the plan. Even Owen admitted that once they escaped, if they escaped, they would just have to ride west and hope.

The conversation ran down. Gwen wasn’t sure of the hour. Her body and mind were spent. But sleep wouldn’t be an option tonight. She needed to stay awake. She needed more miraa. Lucky for her, getting some was part of the scheme.

—

She opened the door, stepped out. Their guard sat against the hut’s outside wall, his legs splayed loosely, working a mouthful of stems. The sight made her own mouth water. For the first time, he was armed, an AK strapped across his chest. Gwen hadn’t calculated on the rifle, but she decided it didn’t matter. If their scheme worked, they could take the AK. If not, the guard wouldn’t shoot them without asking Wizard’s permission. Probably.

The guard looked up idly. She pointed at her belly and then at the latrines. He raised a hand, three fingers spread, a gesture she took to mean three minutes. Owen’s guess that the camp would settle down for the night had been right. Most soldiers had disappeared. Still, two men were hanging around outside Wizard’s hut, two more near the cook hut. Not her problem, at least for now. She hurried to the latrine, held her nose as she did her business, hustled back.

Now the hard part. She squatted beside the guard. “Miraa.” She pointed at herself. He reached into his pocket, but she pointed at the hut. “Not just me. Owen, too.” She opened the tin door. “Owen—”

On cue, Owen stepped into the doorway. Now the guard stood, waved Owen back into the hut with the AK. Owen backed away. Gwen stood in the doorway, holding the door open. Still the guard hesitated. Gwen hadn’t expected the language barrier to cause so much trouble. Plus, back home she could rely on a move as simple as touching a guy’s arm to get what she wanted. She couldn’t take that chance here. Injecting sex into the situation could blow it up.

She could still use her voice, though. “Didn’t mean to freak you out.” She kept her tone low and smoky. “Miraa, we just want some miraa. Whyn’t you come in and show us?” She gave him a come-hither wave with her fingers.

He pointed at the flashlight, which was next to the door. She handed it over. She stepped inside and waited by the door as he waved the beam around, seemingly checking for a trap. Finally, he walked in. He sat next to her and handed over the miraa. She took a handful. He waved his finger at her, apparently saying,
too much, too much,
and she put a few sprigs back and stuffed the rest in her mouth and handed the packet to Owen, who put a bunch in his mouth and coughed and gagged. The guard laughed, physical comedy apparently playing as well in the Somali bush as it did everywhere else. Then Hailey stood.

“I have to pee.” She pointed at herself as Gwen had, and the guard nodded and held up three fingers as he had for Gwen. Hailey walked out. And Gwen felt her blood surge, not just the miraa kicking in, but Hailey’s clean exit, the point of the entire exercise.

—

Nobody said much until Hailey returned, sat back beside Owen. “Much better,” she said. The guard nodded and stood and left.

“So?” Owen said.

Hailey hadn’t gone to the bathroom. She’d checked out the hut with the dirt bikes. They’d needed the guard inside the hut so he wouldn’t see where she was headed. None of them had any idea how to hotwire a motorcycle. Even Owen admitted that they needed the keys to have any chance of success. He said the keys would be close by the bikes. But Gwen had insisted they find out for certain before they did anything irreversible.

“Good news and bad news. And a bonus. Good news is there’s two bikes and they don’t look messed up, I mean, I didn’t see any parts on the ground. And Owen was right, the keys are there. On nails hammered into the wall.”

“What’s the bad news?” Gwen said.

“Bad news is somebody’s sleeping in there. He didn’t see me, he was out cold, but there’s no way he’s going to sleep through an engine starting up.”

“And the bonus?” Owen said.

Hailey reached into her sweatpants and pulled out a wrench. “I knew I was taking a chance, but I figured we’d be glad to have it.”

The wrench was greasy, rusted, about a foot long. Owen’s whole body came to attention as he looked at it. He reminded Gwen of a dog that had just found a sixteen-ounce sirloin unwatched on the dinner table. His eyes had a liquid shine. Gwen realized he saw this situation very differently than she did. She couldn’t help herself. She thought of their captors as kids. They were mostly younger than she was. And they didn’t seem like bad guys. She felt sorry for them, playing at being soldiers in the scrub. Maybe her experience reading to Joseph and the boys in Dadaab had affected her more than she realized.

But Owen was angry. Furious. He didn’t care why these Somalis had ended up here. To him they were the enemy, kidnappers and murderers. If he had to kill them all to escape, he would. Every last one. Probably he was right. Probably she was being soft and stupid. These soldiers might be boys, but boys could kill and these boys had. Wizard had shot Scott for no real reason. She ought to take comfort in Owen’s coiled wrath. But she couldn’t. His eyes frightened her as much as anything that had happened so far.

Owen reached for the wrench. “We can do something with this,” he said. “Oh yes, we can.”