The Night Ranger (24 page)

“Where you wan to meet?”

“Your camp.”

“Tell me where you are, I come get you.”

“Try again. You know the road that runs north of the camp you raided last night?”

“I know every road in Ijara, mzungu.”

“Congratulations. Let’s meet at the border on that road. I’ll have your money.”

“What time?”

The clock on the Cruiser’s dashboard read 11:45. Wells wanted Wizard to believe he had time to put his own trap in place. Plus Shafer would need as much time as Wells could give him. “I need to get the money from my people. Two-thirty a.m. Two hours, forty-five minutes from now.”

“Two-thirty a.m.”

“Be there or be square.”

18

L
ANGLEY

F
or the second time this day, Shafer faced the dubious honor of a trip to the seventh floor. Getting Duto’s help would require face-to-face pleading. Especially after the hiccup earlier.

He found the director sitting at his desk, hands folded, lips furled. The expression was no doubt meant to look serious-yet-sensitive. It came off as constipated to Shafer. On the couch beneath the Katana sword, a fiftyish man with a drinker’s bulbous nose sketched in charcoal on an oversize pad. The man’s name eluded Shafer, but his face was familiar. It belonged to a New York artist known for tasteful portraits of the powerful. Evidently, Duto had decided that his tenure as director merited a higher-caliber artist than the usual D.C. portraitists. Normally, Shafer would have happily skewered this vanity. With Wells’s life at stake, he contented himself with a mild cough. The painter scurried off.

“Affairs of state,” Shafer said.

“You get three minutes. Wouldn’t even sit down if I were you.”

“Can we get a Reaper over southwestern Somalia in the next hour?”

Now Duto grinned, the leer that was his version of a real smile. Shafer wished the painter were here to see it, though no doubt it would send him through another fifth of scotch.

“Thought you were against unmanned aerial vehicles in no uncertain terms, Ellis. Thought we abused them, the poor terrorist on the other side has every right to an attorney, should he be unable to afford an attorney we’ll provide him with one, preferably a nice Jewish boy whose head said terrorist can cut off at his leisure, et cetera.”

Ouch. Of course Duto remembered Shafer’s complaints about drones. “A place for everything and everything in its place. Anyway, most likely we’d only use it for surveillance.”

“So the Hellfires are just for show?”

“More or less.” Shafer explained Wells’s plan to free the hostages. He glided over the fact that Wells was still trying to set the meeting with Little Wizard.

“So Wells gets there and then what? He talks this guy into letting them go?”

“Even if he’s wrong, he’s doing us a huge favor by finding them. NSA’s shooting blanks.”

“I know. I told them to tell me if they locked it down. Before they told you.”

Duto’s way of making sure Shafer knew where he and Wells stood. “So Wells finds ’em, worst case, you know where they are. You can chopper that SOG team in tomorrow. Avoid a war. That’s what you want, right?”

“Assuming Wizard doesn’t kill the hostages as soon as Wells gets there.”

“He’s not killing them. He wants to sell them. Why else go to the families as soon as he caught them?”

“Ellis. The three-minute rule is off. Take a breath. Sit.” Duto pointed at the couch.

Shafer sat.

“Just so I have this right. Wells is putting together a meet with some Somali warlord none of us have ever heard of who’s probably ready to unload a magazine in him just because. I know he likes to run his own shows, but this feels more like a death wish. And you want me to put up a drone for the only backup he’ll have.”

Shafer feared Duto might be right. But being honest with Duto rarely paid. As in never. “Death wish has nothing to do with it. Sometimes I think he’s half Jack Russell. Once he starts a mission, he can’t stop. Makes him crazy. And this time it’s for his son.”

“We don’t put up the drone, he’s still going in, isn’t he? Try to find them on his own somehow and bang his way out.”

“He’s never lacked for confidence.”

Duto turned away from Shafer, looked out the window. Shafer could almost hear him working through risk and benefit. Finding the hostages would be huge in his run for the Senate, especially since Wells would never try to take credit. But if they died after Duto put up the Reaper, would he be blamed? Did Wells have any chance of pulling off this stunt? Wells’s own life was a tertiary consideration. At most.

Thirty seconds passed in silence before Duto spun back to Shafer and flipped up his laptop. “I’ll call Djibouti.”

The CIA operated Reapers out of bases in Ethiopia and Djibouti, near the tip of the Horn of Africa, halfway between Yemen and Somalia. Drones were built for stealth, not speed. The Reaper topped out at about two hundred sixty knots, just under three hundred miles an hour. On the other hand, it didn’t need many preflight checks. The techs could put one in the air in four minutes.

Duto picked up his secure phone, consulted his laptop, punched in a number. “Hello. Hello? This is Vinny Duto.” He grinned at Shafer. “No, I’m serious. It’s okay. You’re not in trouble. Turn the music down and we’ll run the codes and I’ll tell you what I want.”

Five minutes later, Duto cradled the phone, gave Shafer a thumbs-up.

“So your boy’s luck is improving. They’ve got a Reaper over Mog right now, and they graciously enough are going to switch the link and let us run it from downstairs.” Pilots guided drones from a half-dozen bases worldwide, but Langley had its own link so that senior CIA officials could oversee the highest-priority, highest-risk missions in person.

“It’s good to be king,” Shafer said.

“You’d better get down there, tell the pilot what to look for. And Wells needs to understand that I’m looking over your shoulder on this. My first and only priority is saving those hostages. He’s not an employee, he’s not a contractor, as far as I’m concerned he’s a random armed civilian on site.”

“Not sure I understand what you’re saying, Vinny.” Though Shafer did. He’d understood before Duto even wasted his breath giving the speech.

“What I’m saying is we didn’t get him in there and it’s not our job to get him out—”

“Thanks for your help, Vinny.” Shafer offered the Director of Central Intelligence his twin middle fingers and walked out.

19

I
JARA
D
ISTRICT

W
ells reached the T junction that marked the end of the road from Bakafi in good spirits. Despite the ominously loud rattling from the Cruiser’s right front wheel, he’d lengthened his lead over the Kenyans. And Shafer had just assured him that a Reaper would be in position within an hour. Shafer didn’t tell Wells what he’d promised Duto in return for this benediction, and Wells didn’t ask. Some questions were best posed after the close of business.

At the junction Wells turned the Cruiser right, so it faced west, into Kenya. He stopped, grabbed the Mossberg, got out. The night was overcast. A humid breeze weighted the air from the southeast. Rain was coming, and soon. Wells held open the driver’s door and jammed the tip of the shotgun’s barrel against the driver’s seat, its butt against the gas pedal.

Wells planned to send the Cruiser west while he ran east to the dirt bike he and Wilfred had left. He hoped the Kenyans would chase the Cruiser’s taillights the wrong way. He’d pulled a similar stunt years before in the Bekaa Valley. But this time the Cruiser would have a passenger. Even in handcuffs, Mark could pull the shotgun off the gas pedal. Wells needed to knock him out.

Mark was curled up in the cargo hold between the plastic jerricans. Dust coated his gasoline-soaked clothes. Wells had the bizarre thought that he looked like a giant piece of chicken-fried steak. He kicked at Wells, splaying his legs as wildly as an angry four-year-old. Wells grabbed his right calf, flipped him, tugged him closer, reached for the tire iron wedged under a jerrican. Mark spasmed his leg free, twisted into a corner, balled up his knees, shouted in Swahili. Wells didn’t know if the cop was cursing or praying. Yet for all the noise he was making, his eyes were profoundly disconnected. As though he believed that nothing he said or did could reach Wells, since Wells wasn’t human enough to be reached.

Wells had seen that combination of panic and hopelessness before. Not in the jihadis. They seemed as willing to die as to kill. Some truly couldn’t wait to ascend to the heaven they were sure awaited them. Others viewed death almost dispassionately. Any man who’d fought in close combat knew that death came sooner or later. Kill or die was a myth. The truth was kill and die. And, whatever waited on the other side, death came with one unquenchable blessing. It ended the fear of death. Wells hoped he’d remember that truth when his moment came.

But civilians rarely viewed the void so calmly. Mark might be venal and corrupt, but he wasn’t a killer. His panic proved it. A killer wouldn’t panic this way. Wells found he couldn’t lacerate the cop’s body and soul further this night. He dropped the tire iron, grabbed his backpack. He fished in it until he found the hood that he’d carried from New Hampshire. “I’m not going to kill you. But I have to put this on you. Now.”

—

Mark sputtered beneath the hood as Wells turned the Cruiser around and drove east. He glimpsed the headlights of his pursuers to the north. Much closer now. His attack of conscience had cost him half his lead. Or maybe it had saved him. Maybe the Cruiser would have run into a ditch right away and the Kenyans would have caught him before he got to the dirt bike. At least this way he knew he’d reach it, if the wheel didn’t give out first. He had time for one last call. He found his phone, punched in a Montana number.

“Hello.” His son’s cool, assured voice. In the background: basketballs bouncing, sneakers squeaking on hardwood, a coach yelling, “
Hands up! Up!”

“Evan. It’s John.”

“Let me get outside—” The noise faded. “We got these emails, pictures of Gwen.”

“I’m close, Evan.”

“You
are
?”

“You can’t tell the Murphys.”

“Why?”

“Promise you won’t. Not yet.”

“Okay. I promise. Is it the Shabaab who have them?”

“No. Which is good. I can’t tell you much, but I’m hopeful. It’s nighttime here, past midnight, and I’m hoping to get a look at them tonight. They’re in Somalia.”

“Like a raid?”

“Not exactly. I’m going in light—” An epic understatement. “Light and fast.”

“But you have backup—”

Wells smiled. Backup wasn’t exactly top-secret jargon, but he still enjoyed hearing the word from his peacenik son. “All the backup I need. Langley knows what I’m doing. They’re good with having me here. If I can’t get them out tonight, the agency and the FBI will probably reach out to the kidnappers to make a deal. Or they may bring the big guns for a rescue. Either way, at that point the Murphys and the other families will be told.” Wells was keeping Scott Thompson’s death to himself. Evan didn’t need to know about it yet.

“But right now, tonight, you’re going in alone? I mean, no other Americans with you? Not even the Kenyans?”

That’s my boy. Evan had focused on the very fact that Wells was trying to obscure. Wells wished he could explain that he had a member of the Kenyan constabulary with him, hooded and handcuffed and ready to broil.

“I’ll have eyes on me.” Or, technically speaking, optics. “It’ll be fine.”

“But it might not be, right? That’s why you called? In case it’s not. To say good-bye. Tell me again you’re sorry you were gone all those years. Give me a chance to say I’m sorry, too, for frosting you how I did. Oh Dad, I’m so glad we got to talk. Me too, son. Don’t get killed, Dad. I won’t, son. But if I do, I promise you’ll be the last thing I think of. A single tear rolls down both our cheeks. Cut.”

Wells didn’t know whether the irony was real or faux, a cover for deeper feelings that Evan couldn’t talk about yet. He did know that his son had just guaranteed that the word
love
would be found nowhere in the rest of this conversation. Yet Wells couldn’t blame him. They were strangers to each other. Wells couldn’t make them father and son in a few days, no matter what he did.

“I called to give you a heads-up. Good news coming. And work on that jumper. Your release has a hitch. You can get away with that in high school, not college.” In truth, the kid’s shot had looked smooth as silk the one and only time Wells had seen it.

“Thought you didn’t know anything about basketball.”

“As much as you know about special ops. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“A conquering hero.”

“I see a beautiful friendship coming. I’ll give the Langley tour. Nonclassified areas only, of course.”

“I get it, okay. That you’re only over there because I asked.”

“Wrong again, Evan. I’m not here for you. Or even the volunteers.”

“Why, then?”

“What Hilary said about Everest. Because it’s there.”
Because this is all I
do. Or ever will. Because if you take more than a few steps, you can never turn back. That’s what they don’t tell you at the Farm. Maybe they know it wouldn’t matter, that anyone ready to walk this path wouldn’t listen. Or maybe they don’t want you to know.

He’d have that conversation with Evan another day. Or never.

“And I’m not saying that so you won’t blame yourself if something happens to me. I’m saying it because it’s the truth. All right?”

“All right.”

Wells saw the dirt bike ahead. “Gotta go, Evan.”

“One last thing. Serious now.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t understand you. Don’t understand the Muslim thing. Or a lot of what you’ve done. But it’s time for me to stop pretending that I don’t want to hear about it.”

“When I get home. We’ll have time.”

“I’d like that. Don’t get killed, John.”

—

A gift Wells hadn’t expected.

He pulled up beside the bike. He closed his eyes and let himself feel nothing but the clean happiness in his heart. It might not sound like much, this irony-laden call. But after what had happened the year before in Missoula, it was a Hallmark card. He had a chance for a relationship with his son.

First he had to stay alive. And bring home the hostages. Evan’s goodwill would be fleeting if he survived and they didn’t. He imagined that conversation:
Trust me, son, it happens. Best intentions and all that. Ever heard of the Bay of Pigs? Anyway, still hoping for a chat . . .

—

No. He could die tonight if he got them out safely, but never the reverse. He strapped the shotgun to his chest, his pack to his back. He grabbed a jerrican and slopped gas into the bike’s tank. These dirt bikes held four gallons at most. Even on pavement their full-tank range was under two hundred miles. In this trackless wild, Wells would be lucky to get one-fifty. Which would have to be enough.

With the tank full, Wells heaved the jerrican into the scrub. He grabbed the second can and circled the Cruiser at a radius of about eight feet, pouring out gasoline. When the can grew light in his hand, he poured the last of the gas into a puddle, stepped back, and flicked his lighter to the rainbow pool. A lustrous circle of flames swept into the night as Wells ran for the bike.

The blaze was a diversion, a gaudy trick. It would stop his pursuers temporarily as they focused on the Cruiser and the man inside. Under his hood Mark was shouting now, no doubt panicked by the heat. Wells heard him even through the Toyota’s closed windows. The worst night of the cop’s life. But he’d live.

Wells heard an engine rumbling behind the hill to the west. At least one vehicle had passed the T junction. Fortunately, the hill kept Wells hidden for now. He mounted the bike, started up. The engine rumbled to life. Wells turned away from the road and double-toed the bike into third gear to keep the noise down. He bumped along the faint track that followed a dry streambed south to the camp.

He planned to ride to the camp and steal an AK and all the magazines he could carry. Then he’d hole up. If he heard the Kenyans getting close, he’d take off again, dare them to chase him through the scrub into Somalia. Otherwise, he’d sit tight. Silence was his ultimate ally. The camp was only three miles from the road, but without the vultures as signposts it was invisible to anyone who wasn’t on top of it.

With the Somali border so close, Wells hoped the cop and his other pursuers might give up the chase when they got to Mark, bring him back to Bakafi instead. The Kenyan police didn’t have the equipment to track him at night. The closest major GSU station was in Garissa, well over a hundred miles away. Instead of trying to catch a crazy mzungu in the dark, the cops could bring reinforcements in the morning to sweep the area. They might even ask the army for help.

Wells had landed at Jomo Kenyatta International in Nairobi less than three days before. He couldn’t remember a mission turning upside down as quickly as this one. But if he rescued the hostages, no one would care about the trouble he’d caused. He hadn’t killed Mark, and he’d uncovered enough evidence against James Thompson that Thompson’s own problems would trump any revenge he might want. The story would have a happy ending, Scott Thompson’s demise notwithstanding. And everyone loved happy endings, Duto most of all.

As the late and unlamented Al Davis liked to say,
Just win, baby.

Five minutes later, Wells reached the little rise that overlooked the camp. He didn’t know why he was surprised to see the hyenas. He’d been so focused on escaping the Kenyans, he’d forgotten them somehow. They hadn’t forgotten him, though. They were awake. Maybe they were nocturnal as a rule. Maybe the bike had roused them. They looked at him with their heads cocked. Wells felt almost that they were annoyed with him, like he was a delivery guy who’d accidentally shown up at the wrong house, crashed a party. He knew he was projecting, but he couldn’t help himself. A half-dozen of the beasts lay beside the third hut. Another group rested near the fourth hut, at the far end of the camp. The big one, the two-hundred-pound alpha, stood in the center of the camp, where he’d been when Wells had arrived that afternoon. The corpse he’d been eating at the time was almost gone. A long white bone, probably a femur, lay beside his front paws. A few feet away was a half-eaten rib cage, crunched like chicken wings at a sports bar. The bodies of the White Men whom Wells and Wilfred had shot had been pawed at and torn open. Their AKs, the reason Wells had come, lay atop the corpses. The hyenas had torn the rifles’ straps but left the AKs themselves alone. Wells felt a sort of shame for the corpses, for what would happen when the hyenas grew hungry again. Even from a hundred meters away, the stench seeped over him.

The lion was nowhere in sight. Wells figured the hyenas had run him off. Whatever their reputation as weaklings, they seemed firmly in control tonight. He wanted to put the bike into gear, ride a hundred miles from this mess. But he needed an AK and a couple hundred rounds to have any chance against Little Wizard. The Glock was useless past thirty or forty meters. With an assault rifle that could give him a couple hundred meters of space and the right firing hole and plenty of ammo, and with the Reaper watching his back, he could play one-against-fifty long enough to make Wizard pay attention. A lot of ifs, but he’d have the advantage of surprise. And drone strikes unnerved even the boldest fighters.

“Tell you what, boys,” Wells yelled down the hill. “I’ll take what I need and go. Toodeloo and all that. Won’t even know I was here. What do you say?”

As an answer, the big guy spread his jaws wide, picked up the femur. He crunched it in half as casually as Wells breaking a stick over his knee. He chewed noisily for a few seconds, tilted his big ugly head, dropped what was left of the bone from his mouth. Pieces of femur fell out. He bent his head and ran his tongue over the biggest shred like a kid licking an ice cream cone. Wells understood now why Africans hated these beasts. They seemed almost intentionally disrespectful.

Wells feared giving away his position to the Kenyans up the track, but he had to try to rattle the hyenas. He revved the dirt bike’s engine for a few seconds. The alpha male took a half-step back, but no more. Two others stood up. Wells wondered if they would be bold enough to attack the bike. Animals naturally feared objects they didn’t know. And even in packs, smaller predators rarely attacked larger beasts. They knew instinctively that the bigger animal would kill several of them even if they succeeded in taking him down.