Nairobi Heat (17 page)

And with that we were onto the next item on our agenda – getting me to the airport. We made it back to O’s place just in time for a late lunch, after which I called Muddy and told her where we were. She, in turn, called a cab while I packed quickly, and as soon as she arrived we were on our way to the airport.

O was driving, I was sitting in the passenger seat and Muddy was sitting between us. Anyone seeing us would probably have thought we were old college friends off to a reunion, especially as once again Kenny Rogers was blasting through the squeaky speakers, Muddy and O singing along happily. We were happy with ourselves and with life. For the first time it looked like we might not only survive the case but also break it. All I needed was to get Joshua a little rattled. My phone rang. It was a Nairobi number that I didn’t know. I answered. It was Abu Jamal, and even before I heard what he had to say I knew it was going to be bad news.

‘Listen, man, you are in hot soup, as you Americans say,’ he began.

In spite of his convoluted way of speaking there was an urgency in his voice and I immediately turned down the Kenny Rogers so that I could hear him properly. O and Muddy started to protest but the look on my face silenced them.

‘What are you saying, Jamal?’ I asked. ‘I’m on my way
out?’

‘Look behind you.’

I looked at the traffic behind us in the wing mirror but could see nothing out of the ordinary.

‘You see a beautiful Alfa Romeo five or so cars behind you?’ Jamal asked. ‘That is me.’

‘Very nice, but why the fuck are you following us?’

‘Business makes strange bedfellows, as you Americans say. Do you see the red Peugeot two cars behind you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you see the Range Rover behind it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Those are the bad guys, okay … the really bad guys,’ he said.

‘And who are the really bad guys?’ I asked, trying to match his calmness.

‘You have become a man of many enemies. If we are both alive in a few hours we can sit down, have a beer and exchange notes, but for now, do as I say: pull over at the next opportunity.’ He hung up.

‘Not sure how Jamal got my number but he says we are being tailed … Red Peugeot and Range Rover,’ I reported. But even as I finished speaking I remembered that Abu Jamal had had my wallet and cellphone for several hours after his giant had knocked me out.

There was a service station just ahead of us. We slowed down to pull in and the two cars, each containing four men, whizzed by. As they passed us I tried to make out their faces, but all I could really see was that the occupants were almost all white – only the Peugeot had a black man in the back, his
Rasta hat clearly visible through the back window. Seconds later Jamal’s Alfa Romeo, containing the man himself and three bodyguards, also whizzed by without him even as much as looking at us. I started to call the Nairobi number that had registered in my cell to tell him he was wrong – the men in the Range Rover and the Peugeot were probably white tourists; they had not even slowed down or looked in our direction – but O stopped me. ‘If they are following us they are not stupid,’ he said. ‘Let’s get back on the road and see what happens.’

‘It could be Jamal setting us up,’ I suggested.

‘No, he would not have announced himself. Let’s play it out,’ O countered.

I suggested we leave Muddy behind but she wouldn’t hear of it. If they were following us then they probably knew we were going to the airport, she argued. And they would know we knew something was up if we left her in the middle of nowhere.

While we decided what to do we filled the tank and O rummaged through the trunk until, from beneath the spare wheel, he produced a vest. He gave it to Muddy who expertly strapped it over her sweater. Earlier, while I was busy packing, I had given my vest to O to replace his ruined one – I was leaving for the US and I hadn’t thought I’d need it again.

‘Ah, the king and queen have to the protected,’ O joked, slapping his hand against my vest and laughing at the situation.

I couldn’t very well take my vest back. Besides, I literally owed him my life – twice.

After thirty minutes or so back on the road the same two cars were behind us again. They must have pulled over
somewhere and waited for us.

‘My friends, let us not wait for the fat lady to sing, eh,’ Jamal said when he called again. ‘Would you rather have a Range Rover or a Peugeot?’ Somewhere along the way he had changed cars and he was now tailing us in a black Mercedes-Benz.

As far as I was concerned we were screwed either way. I asked O what he thought. We were in an old Land Rover and would never outrun the Range Rover, he confirmed. But even though the smaller car was much faster than us we could probably bully it off the road.

‘And we will be firing down on it,’ Muddy added.

‘Peugeot,’ I said to Jamal, feeling a familiar tightness coming over my chest.

‘Follow my lead then,’ Jamal said. ‘And, my friend, good luck.’

Things are different when you have more than your own life to lose, and not just any life but that of someone you care about deeply. I found myself silently praying for Muddy’s safety. I reached out for her hand.

‘I am not a little girl, you fucking idiot,’ she said fiercely, pushing my hand away. ‘Give me a weapon.’

Fuck it, she’s right, I thought. Chances were that she had seen more violence than either O or I ever would.

‘Now I really like her,’ O said to no one in particular as he reached underneath his seat and produced a 9mm that I immediately recognised as belonging to one of the hoodlums from Mathare.

Muddy removed the magazine, checked it and slapped it back in, then she took the safety off and casually advised me
to do the same. Sound advice for no sooner had I prepared my weapon than we heard a loud bang followed by AK-47 fire. Jamal had pounced, and we looked back to see him and his bodyguards firing into the Range Rover. Immediately the Peugeot lurched forward and hurtled towards us, expertly weaving past the cars separating us.

I hate the moments before the action, but once it starts I am okay, I can think and act fast – sometimes. I fired through the back window so that it shattered, spraying the Peugeot with glass, then I fired again, making two neat holes through their windscreen, but despite my best efforts it stayed on our tail as we dodged in and out of traffic.

Muddy shouted for me to cover her, and I emptied my Glock into the Peugeot as she slipped through the divider into the back of the Land Rover. The Peugeot veered dangerously across the road to try and avoid the hail of bullets, but as soon as Muddy had pulled up the spare tyre to use as cover the driver steadied the car, sped up and moved alongside us. AK-47 fire tore into the Land Rover as one of the men in the back tried to shoot the tyres on the driver’s side. It wasn’t long before they gave way to the rims, pulling the Land Rover into the Peugeot and driving them off the road. O tried to keep going, but we all knew that there was no way we were going to make it – the Peugeot was back on the road and rapidly gaining on us.

With nothing left to lose O sped up and just at the moment when it looked like he was going to lose control, he spun the Land Rover so that it stopped with its length blocking the road. Jumping out, we took cover behind it: Muddy on one side and me on the other, with O behind the body of the Land
Rover. The Peugeot stopped. If they stepped out of the car, to make it four against three, we stood a chance. Instead it revved up before furiously shooting forward, gaining speed as it approached us. They were going to ram the Land Rover, forcing us to scatter into the open. We fired rapidly at the Peugeot but it doggedly sped towards us.

As I quickly reloaded I saw Muddy step out from behind the Land Rover, take one step forward, so that her right foot was slightly in front of her left, and lower the 9mm. I panicked, thinking she was trying to sacrifice herself to give O and me a chance, but then I saw her lift the weapon again and take aim. She stood very still for what seemed like an eternity – the bullets striking the ground around her – then, finally, I saw her hand kick up. Inside the Peugeot the driver’s head snapped backwards and the car immediately went into a slide, ramming into the Land Rover. I dived out of the way, rolling to my knees, but even as I did so I saw Muddy flying backwards into the air. She had been hit.

I crept towards the car that was now a mixture of mangled metal, broken glass and blood. Both the driver and the front passenger were dead, but the white and black gunmen in the back seat were both still alive. I shot the white gunman because he was closest to me and as far as I could tell the least badly injured. Immediately, the black gunman started yelling at me not to kill him, but I wasn’t planning to – I needed some information. I ordered him out of the car, and, yelling in pain, he tried to comply before he fell heavily to the ground. Instinct told me that he was pretending, but I still started to rush around the car, diving to the ground at the last minute – if he had a weapon I knew he would be aiming high. He tried
to adjust but he was too slow. I fired once, hitting him in the stomach, and he slammed against the car.

It was as I was getting up to finish him off that I realised that he looked vaguely familiar. He must have picked up on my reaction because he reached up weakly and removed the Rasta hat. His dreadlocks unravelled. It was the musician; Muddy’s guitarist. I was seized by rage, and I started to squeeze the trigger, but then I heard Muddy’s voice shouting at me to stop.

When I got to her Muddy was on her knees, doubled over in pain by the side of the road. It was a good thing she had been wearing O’s vest, otherwise she would almost certainly not have made it. It was also a good thing she had talked me out of leaving her back at the service station, I thought as I helped her to her feet, otherwise O and I would definitely not have made it. O! Looking around I saw that he was also getting slowly getting to his feet.

‘Why are you here?’ Muddy asked the guitarist as soon as we made it back to the Peugeot. ‘Who sent you? It’s too late … just speak.’

‘Joshua. It was Joshua,’ the musician sobbed. ‘Why are you trying to destroy him? Only the American was supposed to die.’

He must have been very stupid or have thought we were – AK-47s are not for targeted assassinations, and it was obvious to everyone that Muddy, O and I were all supposed to die.

‘How did they know where to find us?’ I asked, then suddenly remembered having met him earlier that morning at the gate to Muddy’s house.

‘I told him … I trusted him,’ Muddy said, looking down
at him.

The guitarist looked away, wiping the sweat from his face with a bloodied hand.

‘Either you or him, Muddy. We put him in jail and he will be back on the streets in no time,’ O said to Muddy as he hobbled up to us. It was as if he was giving a golfing partner a tip. ‘End it now.’

‘It was just for the money. Let me go, you have to let me go,’ the guitarist pleaded with us even as he struggled for breath. ‘I have a life … songs … I have many songs. Muddy, please, tell them, I have many songs.’

‘You had no business being here,’ Muddy told him coldly. ‘I trusted you like no one else in my life.’

‘How do you know it was Joshua?’ I asked him.

‘Look, look at this … I will testify.’ He handed me a bloody MoneyGram receipt from his shirt pocket. It was for one hundred thousand Kenyan shillings. The sender’s name was Joshua Hakizimana and the money had been sent from Chicago, a mere two-and-half hour drive from Madison. But what would that prove? Chicago was a big city and no one in those kinds of cheque-cashing places ever asked for ID. The money could have come from anyone – the musician had nothing.

‘Do you know anything about the girl?’ I asked him, hoping for his own sake that he had something tangible. My rage had dissipated, but Muddy’s anger was palpable.

‘Look, man, you can get him with that, can’t you?’ the guitarist asked, half in hope and half in doubt. ‘I swear you can get him with that. His bank account, you can trace it … That is a lot of money, isn’t it?’

Looking over at Muddy I shook my head, wanting to ask her to let him go but not knowing how to begin. ‘You were willing to kill us for two thousand dollars, that is all this means,’ I said sadly, rolling up the MoneyGram receipt into a little ball and throwing it back at him.

As if in response Muddy lifted her 9mm and pointed it at the guitarist’s head. Trembling, he put his hands together as if he wanted to say a prayer, then, as Muddy hesitated, he started to sing softly. ‘Well, I wish I was a catfish, swimmin’ in an oh, deep, blue sea,’ he sang, looking first at O and then at me. ‘I would have all you good-lookin’ women fishin’, fishin’ after …’

But just as I thought something would give, or that we would at least see something worth saving in the guitarist or in ourselves, Muddy shot him in the head. She did not even let him finish the verse.

Surely we could have let him live – threatened him with death if we ever saw him again, whatever. I sank to the ground and covered my face in my hands, tired and hopeless. People had just died and there was no reason why we were alive other than the fact that we had more experience and better training than the four we had just killed. I lifted up my face, expecting to find a different woman in front of me than the Muddy I knew. I expected to find her transformed into something ugly, a cold killer with cold eyes, but she was still the same beautiful woman and I still loved her. Nothing made sense.