The watering hole at Buscbusc consisted of four deep wells surrounded by a rock wall to keep animals or children from wandering in. Little Wizard put the pickups against the east wall, where their machine guns would have a clear field of fire. He put one Rover at the break in the wall that served as the watering hole’s vehicle entrance. He stayed in the other Rover, next to the second well. He expected Awaale to bring more than fifteen men and he wanted to be ready.
The meeting was supposed to happen at eleven a.m. The Dita Boys arrived at noon, their pickup trucks blasting rap. When he heard them coming, Wizard stepped out of the Rover and stuffed a wad of miraa leaves—the stimulant that many Somali men chewed—in his mouth. His bodyguard, Ali, followed.
The faintly sour taste of the miraa filled Wizard’s mouth. He felt the leaves lift him, sharpen his focus. His men hid their faces behind their white kerchiefs and tucked in their white T-shirts. Every boy who joined him got three kerchiefs and three T-shirts and had to be sure at least one was always perfectly clean. Wizard was the only fighter not in white. He wore a black shirt and black pants and no kerchief. The White Men might not be the biggest militia in Somalia, but they were the coolest. They didn’t need Pit Bull or T-Pain to prove it.
The Dita pickups rolled up. Wizard counted eight, five with .50-calibers. Forty men, maybe more. Ali put a hand on his shoulder. Wizard brushed it off. He didn’t fear these men. He walked to the Rover that blocked the gap in the wall, jumped on its hood. The diesel engine vibrated underneath his shoes. Three of his men tried to stand beside him. He waved them back, and they got low behind the hood, covering him with their AKs. Good.
His enemy had the numbers but not the tactical advantage. The Ditas were stupid, and they had stupidly lined their pickup trucks along the wall rather than clustering around the Rover. They were piling out of the trucks, but only the ones nearby had a clear shot. Wizard was less exposed than he seemed. But only a little, and not for long. He would have to control the moment.
“Awaale!”
Awaale stepped out of the nearest pickup. He was tall and broad and wore camouflage fatigues with the sleeves rolled up to show his big arms. The Dita Boys liked camo, but only a few had full uniforms. The rest made do with pants or T-shirts in mismatched patterns. Wizard had given his militia simple white shirts precisely to avoid this problem. Awaale’s uniform had four silver stars on the shoulders. With his thick gold necklace and mirrored sunglasses, he could have passed for an old-school African dictator.
“You scared of me, Awaale.” Wizard rested his hand on his 9-millimeter. Awaale raised his palms to the sky:
What, me worry?
Both playing to the fighters around them.
“You not scared, why you bring so many men?”
“Because I have so many. Don’t know even what to do with them. And all them want to see you. The famous Little Chicken. Cluck cluck.”
Wizard edged his pistol halfway from his holster. “Say it again.”
He found himself looking at a forest of AKs. Awaale tapped his chest, his big arms glistening. “I say what I like.”
“You called this parley. I came. You not scared—” Wizard pointed at the Rover. “We take a drive and talk, you and me only. Otherwise, let’s get to it. Three seconds to choose.”
“No need to count.” Awaale raised his hands, gave Wizard two big thumbs-up. “Show me your fine Rover.”
—
Wizard jumped off the Rover as Awaale stepped away from his men. They slid inside the SUV, Wizard driving.
“Nice,” Awaale said. “Still smells new-like.” He took a wad of miraa from his pocket. Wizard touched his arm. “Not inside. Leather seats and all that.”
“Serious.”
“Serious.”
“I like this vehicle, Wizard. You know I do. But it just a car.”
Wizard ignored this heresy. He drove west, toward the border, on a dirt path that even the most optimistic mapmaker wouldn’t have called a road. Both men still wore their sunglasses. One of Awaale’s technicals trailed them. Wizard waited for Awaale to speak.
“You know we got to talk,” Awaale finally said.
“Talk, then.” Wizard hated the way Awaale said “you know” with every sentence.
“Shabaab, you know they’re gone.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Juba open. Me and you come together, it’s ours to take.”
Awaale slipped off his glasses. Wizard followed. Down to it now.
“Plenty much room,” Wizard said. “We do our business, you do yours.”
“What I’m telling you, you know it can’t be that way no more. With you, without you, I’m taking over. Bring your men in, you can be my number-one commander.”
“You mean I give you my men and you tell me what to do?”
“I mean you my big lieutenant.”
“Too much miraa, Awaale. Make you crazy.”
“How many men you have? Sixty? Seventy? I have two hundred, and more every day.”
Awaale was lying. He didn’t have but 140 fighters, and they weren’t nearly as good as Wizard’s. But Wizard knew better than to argue. Arguing showed weakness. He contented himself with saying, “One of my men is worth five of yours.”
“Two hundred. It’s true. I got backing now.”
“From who.”
“People in Eastleigh. They see this chance. You don’t believe me, come to my camp, count my men yourself.”
Wizard stopped the Rover. “I come to your camp, I’ll leave a hole in your head.”
Awaale slipped on his sunglasses. “Then nothing else to say.”
They didn’t speak on the way back. Wizard wondered if Awaale might try to ambush him and his men when they returned. But he found that during the drive, Ali had moved the other Rover and the technicals outside the watering hole, making an attack impossible. Smart man. Wizard stopped the Rover beside Ali.
“Out.”
“You won’t drive me back to my men? Thought you were a wizard. No one touch you. Your men may believe that nonsense, but I don’t, and I see you don’t either.”
“Out. Now.”
Awaale offered Wizard a mock salute. “See you soon, Wizard.”
—
Back at camp, Wizard told his men to be ready, that Awaale could attack at any time. But he knew that in Awaale’s position, he’d wait. He’d add more fighters while letting the White Men exhaust themselves with overnight watches.
That night Wizard ordered a feast. He told his men the meal was a reward for their hard work. In fact, he wanted an excuse to slaughter the camp’s animals. The herd wasn’t much, a few bad-tempered goats and a dozen stringy hens. But if the White Men had to flee, they would leave the animals behind, and Wizard didn’t plan to let the Dita Boys have them. A handful of younger boys protested. Wizard realized too late that they liked taking care of the goats and especially the chickens. He let them keep three hens and two goats. He wondered if he should put off the culling entirely, but reversing the order would seem strange to his men.
So they ate well that night, too well, and it was with a full belly that Wizard called Waaberi into his hut for a meeting. From the footlocker by his bed, he unearthed the bottle of Johnny Walker Blue he had bought after his first successful smuggling run. Muslims weren’t supposed to drink, but Wizard didn’t much care. He poured them both a glass. Not too much. They needed clear heads tonight. Somewhere in the vast emptiness to the west, a hyena howled. A few seconds later, another answered. Then a third. The hyenas roamed all over East Africa, and they weren’t afraid of war. They liked it. War left them meals.
“Take a drink and I tell you about the meet,” Wizard said. He handed Waaberi a glass. Waaberi sipped carefully and listened. He knew his place. He didn’t interrupt.
“You told him no,” he said when Wizard finished.
“Of course no. Wants our men. We link with him, won’t be a month before he slit my throat, and yours, too. You know he don’t want a wizard around.”
“You think he told true, about having two hundred? No brag?”
“I think. He had swagger, like he only needs one leg to walk. Told me to come by his camp if I didn’t believe.”
“Must have happened sudden or we would have heard.”
“Said he getting money from Eastleigh. Someone fronting cash to pay new boys, give them guns, feed them. Even so, we can hold off two hundred. Those Dita Boys can’t fight.”
“But in three months, what if he have three hundred, four hundred?”
“What I’m thinking too, Waaberi. Plenty boys out there.”
“So we bring in new boys, too.”
“Could be.” Wizard had enough extra weapons for another fifty men, and he could buy more. But recruiting might be tricky. Awaale’s camp was closer to the main refugee routes, and Wizard guessed he was paying bonuses to anyone who joined. Plus adding men too fast had its own risks. Wizard knew the names of every one of his fighters. Every one of them had heard his story, seen his scars up close. They believed in him. He didn’t want to risk that bond for a bunch of half-trained boys who might run if the Ditas attacked. “We can add ten or fifteen quick, but after that I don’t know.”
Again the hyenas howled, closer now. Wizard drank his Johnny Walker in one gulp and felt it glow inside him. He refilled his glass. He’d never had more than a single drink before.
“What about we talk to the villages? Everyone know we fairer than Awaale or anyone. They help us, we have plenty power.”
Wizard wasn’t so sure the villages would take sides. No doubt Awaale had spread the word that any village that supported the White Men would face payback after the Dita Boys won. The local elders didn’t like Awaale. But they feared him even more.
“This my fault, Waaberi.”
“Not so.”
“Just so. Should have seen it, built us up. Should have known Shabaab gets weak, someone else going to try to get strong. How it is. Any weakness and the hyenas jump.”
“You fix it, Wizard.”
“I will. Always. Sentries posted?”
“You know it.”
“In the morning, I’ll talk to the villages.”
—
But the elders put him off everywhere he went. They were polite. Some even friendly. They agreed when he told them they’d be sorry if Awaale took control. But not one would pledge support, not even weapons. Such important decisions had to be made carefully, they said. They had to talk over the situation. Like they ran provinces instead of villages with fifty families. Like they couldn’t gather around and choose a side in five minutes. He knew what they were doing, but he couldn’t argue.
The days ticked by. The sun rose at six a.m. and set at six p.m., as it always did on the fattest part of the globe. Twelve hours of day, twelve hours of night. The White Men added a few soldiers and buried their weapons reserve south of their main camp. Wizard knew he had to do more. The scouts he sent to the Dita Boys camp told him that Awaale was adding soldiers every day. In a month he’d have an overwhelming advantage. Then the White Men would have to run. Or die.
Yet Wizard felt paralyzed. He couldn’t imagine crossing to the camps in Dadaab. Giving up his home and his Rovers and his men. For how would their faith in him survive such cowardice? He thought of attacking the Dita Boys, trying to catch them in the night. Spiking into their camp and killing Awaale and his top men. But the White Men would be hitting a force more than three times their size. They would need perfect surprise to win. And Wizard’s scouts said that Awaale had his own sentries outside his camp. Wizard wished for the weapons the Americans had, their planes and helicopters. Even a few old Kenyan tanks. Instead he had his Rovers.
—
Then he heard about the hostages. An idea crept on him, quiet and deadly as a mamba. He would be taking a big chance. The hostages were across the border. Wizard didn’t know how many men held them. He couldn’t be sure how he’d collect the ransom. He would make himself a target for the Americans. In normal times he would have dismissed the idea.
But these times weren’t normal. He fell asleep every night wondering whether he’d wake to rap blasting from fifty Dita Boys technicals. He needed money. Money to make the villages choose his side. Money for seasoned fighters, not raw recruits. These hostages were young and American. They had to be worth millions of dollars. Enough money to change the balance of power in Lower Juba. Enough for him to destroy Awaale.
So, really, he had no choice. No choice but to hope his magic was even more powerful over the next days than it had been that morning in Mogadishu.
6
F
rom Nairobi to Garissa, the A3 was freshly paved and lightly traveled. Martin drove flat out, slaloming past tanker trucks and matatus—brightly colored minibuses packed with travelers. As the Toyota descended from the central highlands, the giant baobab trees gave way to sisal plantations and open grassland. The morning sun poured in through the windshield, and Wells was glad for his Ray-Bans. Every few miles, troops of baboons ran along the road, cackling over jokes only they understood.
“I see why the settlers thought it was such a beautiful country,” Wells said.
“The most,” Martin said.
“It was settled long before the settlers,” Wilfred said from the backseat. “Kikuyu and a dozen more tribes. Even after World War Two, the British didn’t get the joke. Even then they made us fight for our country. After they put us to work to win their own freedom from Hitler.”
Wells couldn’t handle a lecture about colonialism on two hours’ sleep. Besides, Wilfred was right. A pain in the ass, but right. “All I said was that it’s beautiful. The British colonized America, too, and we fought them just like you did.”
“We have so much in common.” Wilfred put a skinny hand between the front seats. “Fist pump, my brother.”
“I pay extra for the attitude, or is it included?”
“And on that couch yesterday you went digging for your roots.”
“You chicken, Wilfred? Hoping I toss you out of the car so you can hitch your way home? Not happening. You’re in it now. You want out, you quit. My brother.”
“How can I be scared with the great white hunter protecting me?”
Wells supposed he’d just have to put up with the guy. Wilfred was smart enough, anyway. He’d shown up at the Hilton at six a.m. with a permit from the Interior Ministry: two pages, three signatures, and four stamps. “With this you can go anywhere the police do. After that, you’re on your own.”
—
They ran into their first roadblock at Mwingi, halfway to Garissa. A chicane of crude metal spikes forced Martin to pump the brakes. An officer in cheap mirrored sunglasses and a powder blue uniform stood by the road, waving cars through with a scarred wooden baton. When he saw Wells, he chopped the baton at the Toyota like a conductor demanding a surge from his orchestra. Martin pulled over, wheels on gravel. The officer strode up, ignoring the cars still passing through the chicane. Wells lowered his window, handed over the permit. The officer examined it through his shades.
“Passport.”
The cop looked at that, too, shook his head in disgust. Wells expected questions, but the officer handed everything back, waved them on. Wells had questions of his own: Have you been told to look for any specific vehicle? Were you put here before the kidnapping or after? But the cop walked away before Wells could speak.
“If the papers are in order, why was he angry?”
“Because they are in order. And stamped by senior men. No bribe.”
East of Mwingi, the land grew hot and dry. The grass thinned and patches of thorn bush appeared. The hills didn’t disappear, but they shrank, as if the sun’s rays had pounded them down. To the south, sheep nosed through the brush, watched over by unsmiling men with pistols on their hips, protection from lions and rustlers both.
The highway turned to gravel. The villages shrank to rows of concrete shacks along the road selling drinks and fruit and all manner of junk: choking-hazard toys, used batteries, donated clothes. “Tuck Parts,” a sign above one shack proclaimed. Unrecognizable metal bits filled the shelves inside. At every village, the traffic pooled as truckers pulled over for food and less savory refreshment. Martin crept along as skinny men in mud-stained pants stood in the road holding mangoes. “Good, good, good,” one said to Wells, his voice fast, desperate.
“I told you Kenya was poor,” Wilfred said from the backseat.
“You should be a talk-show host. You never quit.”
They hit another roadblock west of Garissa. Again the cop appeared more angry than happy to see Wells’s papers. Garissa itself was a town of ten thousand or so with a slapped-together feel, new buildings with paint already peeling. Barbed wire and concrete barriers ringed the police headquarters. The stink of baked cow dung clotted the air. The place reminded Wells of the less attractive parts of the central Plains, right down to the name. Garissa, Nebraska. Class B football champs three years back.
“Big cattle market here,” Wilfred said. “The herders bring cows and sheep from all over the province. Somalis mostly. Garissa is filled with Somalis.”
“Refugees?”
“No. Kenyan Somalis. Even before the refugees, Kenya had Somalis. They live between here and the border. Also in Eastleigh. That’s in Nairobi, near downtown.”
“A slum?”
“Yes and no. Eastleigh’s crowded, but not cheap to live in. The Somalis in Nairobi have money. Nobody knows where it’s from. Probably they take the profits from kidnapping and smuggling and move it to the banks in Kenya. In the last few years, they bought up Eastleigh. You have an apartment worth one million shillings, they give you one million five hundred thousand for it. Then they move all their family in, twelve or fifteen or them. They stay together. They think they’re better than Kenyans.”
“They’re Kenyan citizens?”
“Some yes, some no. Doesn’t matter. They’re all Somali. You can tell because they have round heads, small ears.”
“Round heads and small ears?”
“Ugly little people.” Wilfred tilted his head at the men walking on the street. “See, he’s Somali, he’s Somali, that whole bunch is Somali—”
Somalis did look different from the Kenyans, though Wells wasn’t sure he’d call them ugly. Northern Somalia was a short boat ride from Yemen and the Arabian peninsula. The Arab influence was clear. Most obviously, Somalis had relatively light skin.
“You’re quite the racial scholar, Wilfred. The National Socialists would be proud.”
“National Socialists?”
“Nazis.” Wells found himself irrationally pleased to have gotten one past the guy.
“Say what you want. Everyone knows the Somalis look different. And Garissa is a Somali town.”
“I give you twenty bucks, will you stop talking until the next roadblock?”
“No.”
An hour past Garissa, they hit another barricade. This one was serious, a five-ton truck blocking the road, a squad of guys in camouflage unis and AKs peering into vehicles.
“The army?” Wells said. “Will they take the permit?”
“They’re General Services Unit. Specially trained police. In America, you would call them paramilitary. They watch the camps.”
“So they’re in charge of investigating the kidnapping?”
“I think so, yes.”
But paramilitary guys were usually door-kickers. Wells wondered if they’d have any interest in the detective work required to solve a kidnapping. Another reason why the Kenyan police investigation seemed to be moving so slowly.
Martin stopped near the pickup. Two officers walked over. Special training or no, their weapons discipline was unimpressive. One guy held his AK loosely by the barrel, like a hitter heading back to the dugout after a strikeout. Even Afghans took gun safety more seriously.
The first officer leaned into the car. “Turn around. No foreigners.”
Wells handed over both permits and his passport. The officer barely looked at the papers before handing them back. He pointed down the road the way they’d come:
Go home.
Wells reached for the door, but Wilfred moved first. He snatched the permits from Wells and nearly jumped out of the backseat. He stepped up to the officer, yelling in Swahili. The commotion attracted the rest of the squad. The officers fanned out around Wilfred.
Wells stepped out, grabbed Wilfred by the arm, pulled him away, around the back of the Toyota. “I’m telling him, the permits are good, you’re allowed—” Wilfred said.
“You’re blowing this up on purpose—”
“It’s my country. Let me.”
The police had circled the Toyota now, rifles at their sides, muttering to each other. “He sends us back to Nairobi, you’re riding in the trunk,” Wells said. He let go of Wilfred, who walked back to the officer. The shouting match started again. Wilfred reached into his pocket and Wells heard the distinct click of a safety being dropped—
Before Wells could move, Wilfred came out with a phone. “Call Nairobi if you want, you donkey,” Wilfred said in English to the officer. “Tell Commander Embu you’re rejecting us. That or let us go. Enough.”
—
The final miles to Dadaab passed quickly. The road was deserted aside from a slow-moving food convoy, a dozen trailers with a four-truck police escort. The land around them was inhospitable, arid plain patched with scrub. They reached the WorldCares compound around noon and found that James Thompson had kept his word. When Wells showed his passport, the guards waved the Toyota through. The compound immediately impressed Wells as simple and functional, not overly fancy. Residential trailers filled one corner, the food and supply warehouse another, the kitchen and headquarters a third, and parking and mechanicals like generators the fourth. A neatly tended rose garden outside the headquarters building provided the only color.
But the place seemed to be running at half-speed. Four Land Cruisers sat under a metal sunscreen, their windshields covered in red dust. A black cat with a white blaze emerged from the roses, meowed at Wells, strolled off. The place reminded Wells of a military base set to close:
Why bother?
was practically skywritten overhead. He imagined the kidnapping had stunned everyone. Still, he was surprised not to see Kenyan cops around.
“You and Martin go talk to the local staff and the guards,” Wells told Wilfred. “Anyone you can find. Ask them about this guy Suggs. Who he knew in the camps, his relationship with the volunteers, if he had money problems—”
“It’s Kenya. Everyone has money problems.”
“Just do it. You hear anything I should know, find me.”
“Yes, great white hunter.”
As Wells walked toward the headquarters, one of the homeliest women he’d ever seen emerged. “Mr. Wells. I’m Moss Laughton.” She led him to her office, a simple square room with white-painted concrete walls, their only decoration maps of Hagadera. She had short hair and black glasses and sat on her couch with her legs folded. She reached out a hand and offered Wells a snaggle-toothed smile.
“Thanks for having us.”
“Jimmy’s orders.”
“People call him Jimmy?” James Thompson didn’t strike Wells as a Jimmy.
“I call him Jimmy. Whenever possible. It irritates him, but he can’t fire me, because he sure doesn’t want to be in Dadaab eleven months a year. Anyway, I’m thinking about quitting, so I do what I like.”
Thirty seconds in and this conversation was shaping up to be as odd as his encounter at Castle House. Wells wondered if Moss was trying to say
You’ll get the truth from me if you ask the right
questions
or if she was simply half crazy from the heat and dust.
“So what do you think happened?” Wells said.
“No idea. Gwen’s family hired you?”
“Yes. I used to work for the CIA.”
“Of course. I remembered your name, but it took me a bit of Googling to figure out why.”
“That’s me.”
“And now you’re here.”
“Now I’m here.”
“Any progress so far?”
Wells shook his head. “Do you remember when they planned the trip? James wasn’t sure.”
“I don’t know exactly, but Gwen mentioned Lamu to me maybe three days before they went. She was nervous, poor thing, but the others convinced her.”
“And off they went in a WorldCares Land Cruiser.”
“Correct.”
“Which had no sat phone.”
She smiled. He saw she was pleased, that he’d passed a test he hadn’t known he was taking. “We have seven Cruisers. Four have phones. Not this one. A coincidence, no doubt. Anyway, off they went. You know the rest.”
“When did you report the kidnapping?”
“To the police? Or the embassy?”
“Either.”
“I didn’t report anything. I think Jasper—”
“The head of security—”
“Yes. He made the call. But it might have been Jimmy himself. In any case, it wasn’t until the next morning. I wanted to do it right away, but Jimmy thought we should wait.”
“Why?”
“He said the Kenyan police were useless and corrupt. He’s right about that. He said that if the kids were okay, we’d hear in the morning and there was no need to panic everyone. If they weren’t, there was nothing anyone could do until the sun came up, and we might as well wait.”
“You didn’t agree.”
“I thought the risks were the other way. Let the cops throw up a roadblock, no harm. See if anybody in Nairobi would pay attention. I thought at the time he was worried about bad publicity. Although he’s turned out to be wrong about that. From what the staff in Houston tell me, this has been pure gold. Millions of dollars in donations. Biggest week in WorldCares history.”
“He didn’t mention that last night.”
“Of course, we’re taking every dime. We have to—”
“Because your insurance company won’t cover this. And the ransom could be several million dollars. That much he did tell me.” Wells realized something else, a connection he wished he’d made before. “No insurance company paying—”
“Means no hostage negotiators on site and no pesky insurance investigation into what happened.”
Moss Laughton was throwing out some big hints. “You don’t trust your boss much.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Does Jasper feel the same?”
“You ought to ask him. Too bad you can’t. He’s in Nairobi with Jimmy.”
“The head of security isn’t here?”
“‘Head of security’ is a fancy way to describe him. Basically he makes the schedules, makes sure we have guards out front. Nobody says it, but we like having one white guy with a gun around. So we call him head of security.”
“Whatever you call him, I’m surprised he’s not here.”
“He doesn’t speak Swahili, so I’m not sure what he’d do.”
“How about the police? They must have come by.”
“The GSU, sure. They poked through the trailer that Gwen and Hailey shared. I think they were more interested in Gwen’s underwear than anything else. If they found anything, they didn’t tell me.”