Shafer shivered, and not just from the air-conditioning.
“So when you told Justin Lerer you were striking a blow for truth and justice—”
“He gave me this fig leaf. Long as we don’t have direct eyes-on confirmation of the hostages, either from Wells himself or from the Reaper, we don’t have to call the White House. It’s still rumors and speculation. The fact that things are moving so fast helps. And the fact that nobody’s ever heard of Wizard. And, yeah, the Reaper’s up, but it’s only bombed trucks.”
“For this you paid eight hundred bucks an hour?”
“Eleven hundred. And worth every penny.”
“I’d have to agree. He tell you how long you’d have to make the call once we do see the hostages?”
“Expeditiously, he said. I asked what that meant and he said—”
“Fast.”
Duto didn’t smile. “He said fifteen minutes. Which will still give your boy some time. He also said that we can’t put our finger on the scales, can’t tell Wells what to say. If Wells tells us he’s seen them, that’s it.”
“So are you hanging around down here? Tell me you have a fund-raiser.”
Duto swung his head like a prizefighter loosening up. “No no no. I’m looking forward to spending some quality time with you, Ellis.” Shafer saw that the DCI was enjoying himself. And why not? The hostages were at risk, and the United States might still wind up sending soldiers to Somalia, but Duto had protected himself neatly. As always. If everything went wrong, Duto would say Wells had insisted on going in. Duto couldn’t stop Wells, so he’d ordered a drone to monitor the situation.
Duto pocketed the bug zapper, turned to the door. “Let’s see if your boy can pull it off.”
Shafer’s phone buzzed. He didn’t need to see the caller ID to know it was Wells. He didn’t want to answer, not with Duto here. But Duto heard the hum. He opened his hands:
What are you waiting for?
And Shafer knew he had no choice.
26
L
OWER
J
UBA
R
EGION
A
fter Wizard dismissed Gwen, she trudged across camp, hoping the storm would wash her clean. She knew Wizard could have punished her far more brutally than he had. Still she hated him for the way he’d made her shame herself.
At the hut, she found Owen leaning against the dirt bike she’d ridden, his thumb against the starter like he wanted to see for himself how she’d messed up. The AK was still strapped across his chest, Yusuf’s blood glinting off its butt. Owen didn’t say a word when Gwen explained what Wizard had said. He fiddled with the rifle, his new favorite toy, flicking the safety. Like he’d known all along that Wizard wouldn’t let them out. She wondered whether he’d sent her out simply to humiliate her, but she was too tired to ask.
She sat against the back wall and ran her hands across the dirt floor, sifting the soft grit through her fingers, a strangely comforting feeling. A few feet away, Yusuf lay under the shredded motorcycle poster. A dribble of blood leaked down his face as he mumbled to himself. Gwen had brought a water bottle from Wizard’s hut. She handed it to Yusuf now. “Drink.”
He looked at her blankly and raised the bottle to his mouth and sipped, his lips working it like a baby’s. The skin on his temple flapped loose, exposing the bright pink flesh underneath, intimate and terrible.
“What are you doing?” Owen said. “He’s the enemy.”
“He’s scared out of his mind. We need to let him go.”
“Then what leverage will we have?”
“Drop it, Owen,” Hailey said. She sat near the doorway, peeking at the men guarding them. The three of them were staying as far from one another as possible, Gwen saw.
“Now you’re on her side,” Owen said.
“Tried your way.”
“If she’d known how to ride like she said, we might be in Kenya by now—”
Gwen stopped listening. She didn’t understand how Owen had turned into a man who wanted to deny this boy water. They were molting, all of them, shedding their skin and finding a rougher underlayer. Though the change had some benefits, at least for her. A week ago she would have been crying at this moment, indulging herself in the pointless luxury of tears. Instead, she wasn’t even bothering to defend herself. She knew she’d done her best with the bike. She didn’t care what Owen thought.
Hailey came over, sat beside her. “Truth is, he just doesn’t want to admit how stupid his idea was.”
“The truth is I wanted to get us out of here before—”
An explosion tore through the night to the east. The hut’s walls shook. Owen grinned at her like a scientist who’d predicted the end of the world for years and finally had the thrill of seeing the cataclysmic asteroid coming.
We’re all going to die, but at least I was right.
Gwen felt nearly serene, nothing like the panic that had come when Wizard raised his knife. Getting blown to bits would be quick and painless. So she hoped.
“Before something like that happened.” Owen hopped off the dirt bike and looked out the doorway before striding back to her. He reeked of sweat and testosterone and mud and blood. Gwen felt a wholly inappropriate warmth between her legs. Now that he was a grade-A jerk, she wanted him? She and her libido needed to have a serious talk.
“Looks like a third-grade fire drill out there,” Owen said.
“What was that?” Hailey said.
“I think it was a bomb. And I think it was one of ours. Felt too big to be anything else.”
“They found us here in a day when they couldn’t in Kenya for a week?”
“Maybe they’ve been looking for us here all along,” Hailey said. “Maybe they didn’t look in Kenya, they figured we had to be in Somalia.”
“Which would mean Wizard did us a favor after all,” Owen said.
“So why just one bomb?” Gwen said. “A warning?”
“Or they were trying to calibrate it or something,” Owen said. “Either way, if the SEALs or whoever did it, they have to know we’re here. And they’ve got to be close.” He stood, put his hand over his heart. “God bless America, land that I love—”
Gwen couldn’t decide if he was terrified or high on hormones and sleeplessness. “If they line us up and shoot us, how will you feel about spending your last few minutes in full jackassery?”
“They line us up and shoot us, Ah don’t suspect Ah’ll care.” In a mock southern accent. “Let me tell you something about Wizard, Gwen. He’s a moron. He thought if he got us to Somalia nobody would come for him. How’s that working out?”
“You know, with Scott gone, you could have gotten some if you played your cards right,” she said. “A pity lay for all those hours you spent mooning over me. From the way Scott described your equipment, it really would have been pitiful.”
The cheapest of cheap shots, especially since Scott hadn’t said anything of the sort. But Owen looked down at his crotch like it had betrayed him. Forget the very real risk they wouldn’t see the dawn. He had a bigger worry now. Did his junk measure up?
Men.
—
Outside, Wizard was yelling. After he stopped, Gwen snuck to the doorway. Wizard was gone, but Waaberi and his men watched the hut from three angles. They weren’t smiling. One of them, the tall one who had caught her by the latrine, saw her looking. He nodded and then slowly, distinctly, passed his fingers across his throat.
She wanted to scramble away. Hide in the corner. Last week she would have. Not now. They would do what they would do, but she wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they frightened her. She stared right back.
She could hear the hens clucking and the goats scraping at the mud in their pen. They’d had as long a night as everyone else. She felt the most profound fatigue she could imagine. But when she closed her eyes, they fluttered open on their own, as though her mind knew it couldn’t risk sleep. So she sat against the wall, waited, as the rain lightened and the clouds thinned.
But she did sleep, she must have, because time leapt forward without her realizing, and when she opened her eyes she saw Wizard coming out of the darkness, and beside him a tall man covered in a coat of mud so thick that at first she couldn’t tell if he was white or black. As he got closer she recognized him, not from his face but from the size of his shoulders and his arms. He was the white man Wizard had shown her on the cell phone the day before, in the Land Cruiser with the black guy. Gwen had asked if they were looking for her, and he’d said,
If they are, they won’t be much longer.
In his cool Wizard way. But he’d been wrong about that, along with everything else.
The man didn’t seem to be a prisoner. His hands were free. He wasn’t hooded. Owen and Hailey stood beside her and watched as Wizard led the man to his hut. “Maybe he’s here with the ransom,” Hailey said. “Maybe that pack is filled with money.”
“Why they dropped the bomb, a carrot-and-stick thing,” Owen said. “Luca Brasi making an offer even Wizard isn’t dumb enough to refuse.”
Gwen wondered what he was talking about and decided she didn’t care. Behind them, Yusuf groaned. She turned just in time to see him pull himself onto all fours and vomit a stream of clear liquid.
She went to him, tucked herself under his bony left arm, straightened him up. His skin was sticky and feverish, his eyes unfocused. He stank of grease and sickness. The top of his head barely reached her chin when she pulled him to his feet. He couldn’t have weighed much more than she did, which was lucky, because when she edged him from the wall, he sagged onto her.
“Hailey—”
Hailey came over, put a thumb under his chin to lift his head.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I’m more at the holding hands while the nurse gives you an ouchie level of medical expertise.”
“We’re getting him out of here.”
“Nobody out there can do anything for him, either,” Owen said.
“It’s too hot in here and he’s scared. We’re taking him out.”
Owen put a hand under his rifle. He wasn’t exactly aiming it at them, but he wasn’t exactly pointing it away, either.
“Planning on shooting us?” Hailey said. She came under Yusuf’s right side and lifted him. Together she and Gwen walked him past Owen. He took his hand off the rifle. His mouth was notched open, like he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just done.
Gwen and Hailey reached the doorway and stood with Yusuf between them. The rain had stopped now, and the clouds were lifting. A few stars shone weakly. Gwen sensed that the sun was close by, ready to banish the night.
Three White Men trotted over and took Yusuf, squawking at him in Somali. “What you do to him?” one said in English. He spat at her feet. Gwen wondered if she’d made a mistake, if Owen had been right that without Yusuf they were defenseless.
While she tried to figure out what to say, Wizard and the white man came out of Wizard’s hut. Wizard shouted at his men, and they backed away from Gwen unwillingly, like dogs that didn’t want to listen to their master. Owen put down the AK and stepped forward. The three of them stood side by side, a welcoming committee, as Wizard and the white man walked up to them.
“I’m John Wells. Nice to meet you.” He’d washed his face, though mud still caked his clothes.
He had a low laconic voice, easy and confident. She wanted to put her arms around him and not let go. As she looked closer, she saw he was sick, shivering under his muddy clothes in the cool night air, his eyes red-rimmed. Still, she’d gladly take her chances with him.
“This man come to take you home,” Wizard said.
Before Gwen could exhale, before she could exult over that word and everything it meant, Wells raised his hand. “It may not be quite that easy.”
27
T
hey looked okay, under the circumstances. About what Wells had expected. Gwen was drenched and filthy, her hair streaked with mud. Hailey’s cheeks were hollow, her lips painfully chapped. They’d both lost weight. Owen seemed healthy enough, but his eyes were dark and angry, rising to meet a challenge Wells hadn’t offered. Wells wondered whether Owen was remorseful for killing the guard . . . or confused because he wasn’t remorseful for killing the guard. Either way, his return to civilian life would be tough.
First Wells had to get him there. Wells didn’t hug any of the three, or even shake their hands. He didn’t want to rile the soldiers. The volunteers might not realize, but they were lucky for the rain. Under a baking sun the Somalis wouldn’t have been so patient with wazungu who’d killed one of their own.
“Come with me.” Wells led them east as Wizard walked back to the center of the compound, yelling to his soldiers, directing them into a loose circle near his hut. No one stood too close. They’d realized big groups made ripe bomb targets. Wizard ducked into his hut, came out with the bag of cash from Wells. The White Men cheered when they saw the bag, and Wizard shouted as enthusiastically as a presidential candidate in a swing state. Talking to Wells in the hut a few minutes before, Wizard had seemed exhausted, almost ready to quit. He’d made a remarkable transformation, one that made Wells nervous. A man who could swap his emotions so easily might betray the promises he made just as fast.
Wizard raised the cash over his head and his soldiers cheered again. Wells wondered if he was promising that the money was merely the first down payment on a future ransom. He pointed northeast, toward the Dita Boys.
Wells led the hostages far enough from Wizard that he wouldn’t be heard. “It’s good to see you three. I’m sorry about Scott, but with any luck within a couple of hours we’ll be back in Kenya.”
“Who are you?” Owen said.
“I used to be CIA. Gwen’s family sent me. I tracked you to the camp in Kenya and then here.”
“What’s going on here? Who dropped the bomb?”
Wells wanted to explain the situation his own way, but he had to calm Owen. “The bomb came off a CIA-controlled drone called a Reaper that’s circling the camp. We were trying to convince Wizard to let you go. He’s agreed, if we’ll help him with another militia leader named Awaale.”
“Help? Like how?”
“Awaale has said he’ll attack if he doesn’t get you by the time the sun comes up. Wizard says he’s got three hundred soldiers. They’re called the Ditas.”
“So Wizard is giving us to this guy Awaale?”
“Owen. No one’s giving you to anyone. Wizard just set a meeting with Awaale. Close by. He promised to hand you over, but it’s a trick to get Awaale and his men into the open so the Reaper can take them out.”
“One drone can kill three hundred men?”
“Besides a bomb it’s got four missiles called Hellfires. The Ditas will be clustered up and the bomb is big enough to take a lot of them out. Each Hellfire can blow up a technical—that’s one of those pickup trucks with the machine guns. Wizard says Awaale’s men aren’t well-trained. Once they see him get splattered, they won’t hang around. And Wizard’s going to attack as soon as we drop the bomb. That’s what he’s telling his men now.”
Owen stepped close to Wells, almost chest to chest. “You obviously know he killed Scott?”
Wells nodded.
“Left his body chained to the wall to rot. We watched him do it. Then he took us. Now you’re
helping
him?”
“To set you free.”
“If the CIA knows we’re here, why doesn’t it just rescue us, make these guys lunch meat?”
“This all happened in the last few hours. The Reaper and I are all we’ve got right now. But my read is that trying a full-on rescue would be a mistake anyway. Wizard’s men would kill you before anyone could reach you.”
“Your read?”
Wells hadn’t anticipated this particular difficulty, a hostage ungrateful for his rescue. He shivered, felt the sweat on his back. Fever and chills. No worries. Once they reached Kenya, he could be as sick as he liked. “I have a little bit of expertise.”
Behind Wells, Wizard’s shouts reached a new pitch. Someone yelled, “Wizard!” and other voices took up the cry, “Wizard! Wiz-ARD! WIZARD!”
“What about right now,” Owen said, “with them all standing around yelling? I’ll bet the Deltas or whoever could rescue us right now.”
Suddenly, you’re an expert on close combat.
Wells wanted to flatten Owen, end this nonsense. Or at least point out that if Owen hadn’t killed the guard, Wizard might have agreed to let them go already. Wells made himself relax. Owen was exhausted and scared. Getting angry with him wouldn’t help.
“I’ll say it again. There’s no team in the air right now. And if you look around, you’ll see at least five guys have AKs on us. Two by Wizard”—Wells nodded over his shoulder—“two behind us. One over to your right. All close enough to kill us all with one magazine. Maybe the Air Force could bring in three or four Reapers for multiple simultaneous Hellfire strikes to take all those guys out. But the timing would have to be perfect. Then at least two Special Ops squads would have to land quick enough to kill everyone else before they got to you.”
“Would that be riskier than this plan you’ve cooked up?”
“Having your captor let you walk is always the best alternative. I know you’re mad about what happened to Scott, but I’m not interested in the highest possible body count. I want to get you out alive.”
The men around Wizard cheered, a long joyous
oooh
. Wizard pointed his pistol high over his head.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The shots echoed through the empty sky, the stars gone now, the clouds, so heavy an hour before, now wisps. The sun was still invisible, but it wouldn’t be much longer. “What about justice?”
“What about Samatar, Owen?” Gwen said.
“That was an emergency—”
“I need to know that you’ll do what I say,” Wells said. “If not, you want to wait for your own rescue, tell me now.”
“What kind of choice is that?”
“Yes or no.” Like most of life’s big decisions.
“Yes,” Gwen said.
“Sure,” Hailey said.
“Fine,” Owen muttered, like the word was ash in his mouth.
—
The White Men, the volunteers, Wizard, and Wells walked east, past the latrines, up the hill, into the pall of smoke and gasoline from the smoldering technicals. At the top of the path, Wizard shouted. His soldiers ran for the undamaged pickups, whooping and hollering.
“You got them going,” Wells said.
“Tol’ them the truth. We got the secret weapon on our side, we gon’ smoke Awaale once and for all. Make this whole province ours.” Wizard led Wells and the hostages to the Range Rovers, hidden under a tin sunshade that was camouflaged with sticks. They were beautiful vehicles, their white paint nearly glowing. They looked like they belonged at a country club that the Somalis would be strongly discouraged from joining. Wells remembered an old British joke about Range Rovers, courtesy of none other than Guy Raviv: What’s the difference between Range Rovers and porcupines? Porcupines have pricks on the outside.
Wizard clicked the key fob. The Rover’s locks popped up and its alarm chirped off, an absurd and satisfying sound in the Somali badlands. When Wells pulled open the door, its weight tipped him. “Armored.”
“Doors and windows.” Wizard slipped into the driver’s seat, Ali beside him. Wells went to the back door, but Wizard raised his hand. “Them three go with us. You in the other one.”
“We stay together.”
“Awaale see four wazungu, he get worried. This way you hidden. That Rover got the tints. You be right behind me. Beri driving.”
“Beri?”
“Waaberi.” Wizard nodded at a hard-eyed man a few steps behind them. “Been with me all the time from Mog. Trust me, trust him.”
Exactly the problem. But Wells feared that if he insisted on sticking with the hostages, Wizard might call the deal off. Anyway, if he had to, he should be able to handle Waaberi.
“He knows I’ll be using my phone.”
“Yah.”
“And you know that drone will be watching us the whole way.”
“Counting on it. That magic mzungu bird. It gon’ be fine, John Wells.” Wizard spoke the name like it was one word,
Johnwells
.
“Drive carefully.” Wells closed the armored door with a heavy
thock
. Waaberi waved him into the front passenger seat of the second Rover. Behind them sat a tall man, heavily muscled, with a scar that girdled his neck. Wells wished for his Makarov or Glock or even the AK he’d taken from the other camp, though rifles were tough to maneuver inside a vehicle. At least he had his knife, strapped to his leg. Wizard had taken his guns but never properly searched him. Sloppy.
—
The Rovers rolled out, mustered up with the five pickups and lone technical that had survived the Reaper’s bomb. Wizard had left only a couple stragglers as camp guards. The other sixty or so men sat or stood in the pickup beds, AKs slung across their chests. They wore pristine white T-shirts and white bandannas across their faces. They poked and yammered at one another, as high-spirited as seniors tailgating on a sunny fall Saturday.
Rangers or Talibs or Somalis, men readied themselves for battle the same way. They pushed fear from their minds until the fight was so close that the frank risk of death could be ignored no longer. Then they grew grim and settled. Until the shooting started. At that moment adrenaline and fear brought them to a place that no drug could, an extraordinary 360-degree awareness that only extreme athletes like free climbers glimpsed in civilian life. They went from high to low to the ultimate high. Then crashed as the battle ended and they were left to tally wounds and deaths. No wonder some soldiers turned into junkies, for war itself and afterward for cheap chemical highs.
Wizard ordered the technical to lead the convoy, then three pickups and the two Rovers. Two more pickups brought up the rear. They rolled out slow and steady. Waaberi drove with two fingers on the wheel. The Rover was in showroom condition inside, too, its leather polished, its air-conditioning strong. It made Wells want a bath.
The sun breached the horizon, its equatorial rays turning night into day with all the subtlety of a nickel slot that had just hit triple sevens. In the light the land was flat and empty, aside from the low hills where Wizard had set his camp. The rain had left pools of muddy water that were already disappearing, shrinking into the dirt.
The convoy moved east-northeast, almost straight into the sun. Wells raised a hand to shield his eyes, wishing for his Ray-Bans. But they were in his backpack, which he’d foolishly left in Wizard’s hut. He wondered if he’d ever see those glasses again. He missed them, and the woman who’d given them to him.
He reached for his sat phone, dialed Shafer. The call went to voice mail. Wells counted to ten, redialed. One ring . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . Finally, Shafer picked up. “Sorry. My internist says I have a generous prostate.”
“Tell me you’re joking, you left the room to hide from Duto or whatever—”
“Get to my age, you’ll see. I would literally have pissed myself—”
“Enough. Are you back?”
“I’m running back now. Just a sec.” Shafer sounded winded. He was old, Wells realized. Somehow in the last year Shafer had gone from late middle-aged to flat-out old. “I’m back.”
“You see us.”
“Yes. Count eight vehicles in your convoy.”
“I’m in the second Range Rover, sixth overall. Front passenger seat.” Wells leaned forward, waved.
“You’re waving. It’s a little lame, but yes. Hi, John!” This last in a mock-girlish tone.
“I guess the optics are as good as advertised.”
“Better. I can pick out every finger. The volunteers are in the other Rover?”
“Correct. Wizard’s driving that one.”
“You’re separated.”
“We’ll see if it’s a problem. But he knows he needs the Reaper to have a chance. Speaking of, how big’s the welcoming committee?”
“Last pass was ten minutes ago. We counted two hundred–plus armed men. AKs mainly, some RPGs. Twelve technicals.”
“Twelve technicals.”
“Correct.”
Too many. The heavy machine guns the technicals carried could tear up Wizard’s men in one burst. Even the armor on the Rovers could stop those rounds for only a few seconds.
“Give me the setup.”
“Main element has four techs side by side. At least one hundred men in that area. Two more techs spread wide to left and right. Four behind, a reserve element and also guarding against any flanking move by your side. Those four will need to be moved up to have an open field of fire. Pilot thinks he can disable the main element with the GBU, take out all four techs and maybe fifty percent of the men. More or less simultaneously he can fire Hellfires at two of the spread technicals, but then he’ll have to circle around to hit the other two.”
“So absolute best case, he takes six techs out right away, but at least two will survive that first round of fire.”
“Yes.”
“Then he’ll come around, take out the other two technicals that have an open field of fire. But after that he’s got no Hellfires left. So those last four technicals, the ones in reserve, Wizard’s going to have to deal with those on his own.”
“Any chance you can bring in additional Reapers? Or even the Pentagon?” Wells knew that asking for help ran contrary to everything he’d done in the previous twenty-four hours.
A profound silence followed. Wells wondered if Shafer had hung up. “Is that what you want now, John? Because that’s a little different strategy than we’ve been discussing.”
Now a new voice spoke. “We’ve informed the White House that you’ve found the hostages.” Duto. “They’re looking at putting a SEAL team in the air. And the Air Force is launching at least four MQ-9s”—Reapers. “But the minimum ETA is five hours.”
Too late, as they all knew.
“If we’d had a little more time. If you’d given us a little more time.”
“Miss you too, Vinny,” Wells said.
“Last thing,” Shafer said. “We’re considering ourselves cleared to drop soon as Wizard gives us a PID”—positive identification—“on Awaale. He knows what to do, right?”