30
F
rom across the field, the blast didn’t look that impressive, a boom that shook the Range Rover’s windows and kicked out a white cloud that was quickly overtaken by a flood of inky smoke. But in the seconds that followed the damage became clear. Fire consumed the four technicals around Awaale. Men’s screams carried to Wells across the muddy flats.
Wizard and his men had flattened themselves before the bomb hit. Now they picked themselves up, their white T-shirts dripping with mud. Wizard grabbed a pistol from one of his soldiers and raised it over his head and fired like a starter at a track meet. His men howled and charged. They had the field to themselves, facing not a single return shot as they ran. The air above them sizzled and two bright streaks torched the air, the Hellfires. The missiles registered more as blurs than physical objects until they connected with the two technicals on Awaale’s right flank. The explosions that followed spun the Toyotas onto their sides and sent up waves of black smoke and flame.
The two undamaged Dita technicals on the left flank opened fire, raking the field. But the White Men were widely scattered and only three went down. Then the White Men’s lone technical fired a long rattling burst that tore open the windshields of the Dita technicals and sent the men in back diving for cover. The Dita machine gunners had made a basic tactical mistake. They should have disabled the White Men’s technical before aiming at the men on the field. Lightly armored vehicles were great on the attack, but nearly useless once they came under sustained fire. Now the White Men’s technical edged forward, firing shorter bursts now at the Dita vehicles, pinning them without wasting ammunition. Textbook.
For the first time since Wizard had walked across the field, Wells thought they might all survive.
—
Wizard and his lead soldiers reached the crater where Awaale had stood. The thick black smoke from the burning technicals screened Wells’s view, but he heard sustained return fire. The Ditas were responding at last. Wizard waved his men forward, into the cloud. The White Men had to keep attacking. The Ditas still had more soldiers, and they had those four technicals that Awaale had kept in reserve. Awaale wasn’t around to order them into the fight, but his lieutenants might be. In open ground like this, a charge could look completely successful until the moment the enemy counterattacked.
The rest of the White Men jumped into their pickups and rolled across the field, shouting as they bumped through the mud. Only the two Range Rovers and four White Men remained. One sat in the Range Rover with the hostages. Another stood beside it. Waaberi and the guard in the backseat had stayed with Wells.
Wells unbuckled his belt, reached for the door handle. Waaberi put a hand on his arm.
“I did what I promised,” Wells said in Arabic. “It’s time for us to go.”
“They go. You stay.”
Wizard planned to hold Wells hostage. One last double-cross. Wizard should have been happy Wells had given him a chance to live. But he couldn’t quit. A trait he and Wells had in common.
So Waaberi and the guard would die.
Wells lifted his armrest, shifted left in his seat. The Rover had a wide console between the two front seats. Driver and passenger could sit side by side without ever touching accidentally, or even acknowledging each other’s existence. Very English. Wells looked over his left shoulder. No surprise, the guard sat in the middle of the backseat, legs splayed wide, the pistol loose in his right hand. Wells waved and the guard shook his head blankly. He nodded the pistol at Wells:
I’m watching you
.
—
Wells wasn’t sure of his next move. He’d hoped to reach down for his knife, come up, put it in the guard’s belly in one quick motion. But squirming from front seat into back was a slow and awkward motion in any vehicle. And these Rovers had generous backseats, plenty of space. By the time Wells came across the console, the guard would have enough time to get the pistol up. Another reason to hate luxury SUVs.
Waaberi leaned over the console, put a hand on Wells’s shoulder, pushed him back. “Enough—”
—
Just that quickly, Wells knew what to do. He leaned into Waaberi for a moment, pushing against him. Intuitively, Waaberi shoved back—
And Wells twisted his body away, and forward, toward the dashboard. As he broke contact with Waaberi, the Somali slipped toward him. In one fluid move, Wells swung his big right arm around Waaberi’s shoulders, used Waaberi’s own momentum to pull him out of the driver’s seat and slide him across the console. Wells was fully out of his seat now, crouched under the windshield, his ass against the dashboard. The guard lifted his pistol, but too late. Wells put his right hand high on Waaberi’s back and shoved him over the console through the space between the front seats. Waaberi’s body shielded Wells from the pistol and blocked the guard from moving his arm any further—
“Stop—” Wells yelled in English, the word simply a diversion. Before the guard or Waaberi could wriggle away, Wells reached down with his left hand, pulled the knife on his right ankle. Waaberi tried to push back, but Wells was braced against the dash and pinned Waaberi against the guard. Then with his left hand he lifted the knife over Waaberi and down onto the guard’s right shoulder. His left hand was his weak hand, but Wells kept stabbing, deepening the wound with each cut. He twisted the knife and the guard screamed and blood spurted onto the Rover’s pristine cream-colored leather seats. Now the guard’s right hand was useless and the pistol wasn’t a threat.
Wells didn’t want to kill these men, they weren’t his enemies, but he didn’t see any other option. He shoved Waaberi aside and raised the knife again and slashed crossways across the guard’s neck. The bright red arterial blood pumped out, and Wells suddenly found himself back on that mountain in Chechnya. The guard shrieked and tried to squirm away and raised a hand to his neck, but the blood kept coming through his fingers, too much blood, fountains of it.
Now Waaberi reached down into the well of the backseat, scrambling for the pistol the guard had dropped on the passenger-side floor. Wells followed him into the second row and switched the knife into his right hand and pushed Waaberi down against the blood-slicked leather with his left. Waaberi lifted the pistol—
And Wells raised the knife and buried the blade in Waaberi’s back, nearly between the shoulder blades, cutting his spinal cord in one vicious stroke. Waaberi didn’t scream. His body twitched and went soft and his bowels and bladder loosened and death filled the car. Wells pushed off him and twisted back to the driver’s seat, and as he did, he heard someone yelling. The guard who’d been outside the other Rover was just a few meters from the passenger-side front door. He lowered his AK—
Wells twisted the key in the ignition and the Rover’s engine rumbled to life. The guard stepped forward and pulled the trigger. He was so close that Wells saw spent cartridges pouring from the rifle. Wells could do nothing except wait for the 7.62-millimeter rounds to tear him up—
He’d forgotten the Rovers were armored. The window cracked into a spiderweb but didn’t break. The door beneath it didn’t even dent. Wells put the Rover in reverse, gunned the engine, spun the wheel left. When he’d turned so that the SUV faced the guard, he stopped and jammed on his seat belt and shifted into drive and floored the gas pedal. The guard fired until he had no rounds left and flung himself out of the way. Wells let him go, didn’t even try to clip him. He wanted the other Rover, which was broadside to him.
He accelerated across the mud. As he closed in, he saw Owen clawing at the second Rover’s driver from the backseat. Wells corrected his course, aiming for the vehicle’s engine block. Then the driver shook free of Owen and the vehicle leapt ahead. Wells leaned back in his seat, held the wheel loose, waiting for contact—
And smashed the other Rover side-on, metal crunching metal, glass tearing. Wells jerked against his seat belt and flew at the steering wheel as the airbag popped to embrace him. The corpses in the second row rolled forward and smacked into the front seats and somehow, a joke of physics, Waaberi’s right arm wound up in the center console like he was reaching out for the radio.
The airbag deflated. Wells took stock. His seat belt had bruised his chest and he’d banged his left arm into the window, but otherwise he was fine. With the armor the Rover weighed more than three tons, and its engine block, its stiffest and heaviest piece, had taken the brunt of the impact. Its hood was crumpled and its grille smashed, but Wells thought it would survive long enough to get them across the Kenyan border.
The other Rover was more seriously damaged. The driver’s door had caved, pinning the driver against the steering wheel. He was moving, feebly, but Wells didn’t think he’d survive without trauma care, which wasn’t available within a thousand miles.
Somewhere in the black smoke on the opposite side of the field, two technicals exploded. The Reaper pilot must have fired his last Hellfires at the Dita technicals back there, rather than the ones that Wizard’s own technical had disabled. Smart. The White Men were winning this fight almost too quickly. Wells and the hostages needed to go before Wizard found out Wells had killed his men and played demolition derby with his precious Range Rovers.
Wells stepped out, ran around the other Rover just as the rear passenger door swung open. A trickle of blood drooped down Gwen’s forehead. Her eyes were dull, concussed.
“Over there. Now.” Wells pointed at the other Rover. She walked unsteadily toward it. Wells reached inside, helped Hailey out.
“Owen’s stuck,” she said. “Really stuck.”
“Get the bodies out of the other Rover. I’ll handle him.” Wells stepped into the backseat. Owen’s left leg was pinched by the rear door. Wells looped Owen’s right arm around his shoulder. They were face-to-face, nearly touching. The kid’s breath stank of ten days without toothpaste. His cheeks were pale, lips set.
“My leg,” Owen said.
“This is gonna sting.”
Wells braced his left foot against the back driver’s-side door and pressed, using Owen’s trapped body as leverage. Owen screamed like a fire alarm in Wells’s ear. The door gave and Wells felt Owen come free. He kicked with every fiber of muscle he had and—
They slid across the seat. Wells lifted Owen out. His left leg from midcalf down looked even worse than Wells had feared, a bloody pulp. An amputation for sure.
“It’s fine. Just don’t look.” Wells carried Owen to the other Rover. The bodies of the Somalis lay on the ground.
“Get in,” Wells said to Gwen and Hailey. He half expected them to argue. The backseat of the Rover was bloody as a slaughterhouse. But they stepped inside without complaint. Wells set Owen in the front seat.
“Lucky me,” Owen said. “Shotgun.”
The keys were still in the ignition. Wells reached for them. The Rover’s engine grumbled, hesitated.
“Oh, come on,” Hailey said.
“Please,” Gwen said. “Please.”
Wells killed the ignition, tried again with the briefest flutter of gas. The engine kicked into life. Wells put the Rover in reverse. Metal screamed and tore.
Then they were free.
EPILOGUE
W
ells knew the media storm they would face when they came back to the places that called themselves civilized. As he bounced the Rover toward the border, he helped the hostages unkink the story of the past twenty-four hours. Of course, they were welcome to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he told them.
But as far as he was concerned, no one needed to know Owen had killed a guard. Or that Wells had made a deal to help their kidnappers attack another militia in return for their release. Simpler was better. The United States had found where they were being held and bombed their camp as a CIA team helped them escape. Simple. And almost true. Not entirely false, anyway.
“A team,” Gwen said.
“A small team.”
“You’re sure about this.”
“Reporters don’t need the details. You’re heroes. Let the world see you that way.”
“Reporters? People are paying attention to this?” Hailey said.
Wells glanced at her, wondering if she was joking. But, of course, she didn’t know. “It’s the biggest story in the world. I’m not exaggerating. Pays to be pretty.”
“What about you?” Gwen said. “What will you tell the reporters?”
Wells rubbed his thumb against his fingertips, flaking off dried blood. “Better if they don’t see me at all.”
He checked the rearview mirror, wondered whether Wizard would give chase. For now, anyway, the mirror was empty. He edged down on the gas. The Rover’s engine churned and bits of metal and glass shook loose from the grille. Even so, Wells thought they would reach the border.
“There’s still one problem—” Owen said.
“Only one?”
Owen didn’t smile. “You know who set us up?”
—
So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that James Thompson had slipped Wells’s mind. “Moss Laughton’s good buddy Jimbo. And the driver.” Wells fought fever and exhaustion for the name. “Suggs.”
“Scott, too,” Hailey said.
Scott. Wells hadn’t put that piece together. “You sure.”
“He was yelling for Suggs when Wizard attacked the camp,” Owen said. “He knew Suggs was there even though none of us had seen him.”
“But we all think James sold Scott on the idea,” Gwen said.
“He has to pay,” Owen said.
A couple years back, Wells had tried to rescue another hostage. The man ultimately responsible for that kidnapping was still free. He lived in Saudi Arabia, protected, cosseted, unimaginably wealthy. Unless he made the mistake of leaving the kingdom without his bodyguards, Wells couldn’t touch him.
This time Wells would have justice. “A Kenyan jail would do for him nicely,” Wells said. “He’d be lucky to last a year.”
“That works,” Hailey said.
“What if the Kenyans decide they don’t want to go near it?” Owen said. “What evidence do we have for them?”
“Not much,” Wells said.
“We can’t take that chance,” Owen said. “Will you take care of him? Let him get back to Houston, let it all die down, and in a few months stuff him in a swamp somewhere?”
“Down on the Cancer Coast? Awful quiet resting place for a man who likes to talk as much as Jimmy.” Wells imagined what he’d do in nursery-rhyme form:
Grab him, hood him, toss him in the trunk
Drive him down the highway to the bayou stunk
Stab him, shoot him, wrap him in concrete
Dump the body in the water for the gators to eat
And that’s how we commit murder one, boys and girls! Assassination was a line Wells had never crossed, but he supposed Gwen and Hailey and Owen had earned the right to ask. James had killed his nephew as sure as if he’d put the pistol to Scott’s chest.
“You sure about this? All three of you?”
“No,” Gwen said. “I won’t.”
“Won’t what?” Owen said.
“No more eye-for-an-eye. He goes to prison.” Her voice quiet but firm. “Mr. Wells said we had to agree. And I don’t.”
“All right,” Wells said. “That’s out, then.” He felt an unexpected relief.
“How do you propose we make sure he goes to jail?” Owen said.
“We make him confess—”
“Brilliant, Gwennie.
“Let me finish,” Gwen said. “We
know
he did this, right? Whatever the evidence, we have no doubt. So what we’ll do is we’ll go to him—he’s at the camp, right?”
“As of yesterday,” Wells said.
“And tell him that Scott confessed before he got shot, that we all three heard it. And he’s got two choices. Either he gives himself up to the FBI—here, not in Houston—and goes back home in their custody, or we make sure the Kenyans arrest him.”
Silence, as they worked through the plan.
“What do you think?” Hailey said to Wells.
“You better get the story straight before you see him. But I think if you stick to it, all three of you, he’ll believe you. Since he knows the truth, too.”
“Owen,” Gwen said.
Owen shifted in his seat to look at her. Pain slanted his face but it couldn’t hide the surprise underneath. “Who are you, and what have you done with Gwen Murphy?”
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“All right. You win.”
And that was that.
—
“One other thing,” Gwen said.
“What’s that?”
“About Wizard and the deal you made. He promised to set us free if you helped him with the attack.”
“Yes.”
“So did he lie? Was he planning to keep us?”
Wells wanted to lie, but she deserved the truth. He couldn’t doubt the bond that she and Wizard had formed in the last twenty-four hours, however strange it might seem.
“I think he meant to set you free. He was double-crossing me, planning to hold me hostage.”
He caught her gorgeous ice-blue eyes in the rearview mirror. He couldn’t tell if she was disappointed in him, Wizard, or the world.
“It never ends, does it?” she said.
“It hasn’t yet.”
—
Considering what had happened to his leg, it only seemed fair that Owen would get to speak to his parents first. Gwen and Hailey played rock-paper-scissors to see who would be next. Hailey won. Gwen waited.
She closed her eyes and imagined what she’d say to her mother and father and sister, the shock in their voices. Until finally she heard Hailey say, “Mom. We only have one phone and it’s Gwen’s turn . . . Okay. I love you. I love you so much.”
The phone was slick with Hailey’s tears. Gwen took it, laid it carefully on her lap. Her fingers trembled as she punched in the numbers and heard the ring—
—
At Langley, Tomaso had focused on the main battle area until he launched the last two Hellfires. By the time he turned the cameras to the field’s west edge, Wells was speeding off in the Rover, leaving two corpses in the dirt. Shafer had always known what Wells could do. Seeing it, even on a monitor seven thousand miles away, was another matter. One Somali’s throat had been hacked nearly in half. The other had a knife so deep in his back that it seemed to be part of his body.
“It’s almost a miracle that he hasn’t gone insane,” Shafer said.
“You think he’s not insane.”
“You’re lucky he likes you, Vinny.”
“He likes me?”
“No.”
“Looks like he has all three hostages with him. Should I follow them or go back to the battlefield?” Tomaso said.
“Follow them,” Shafer said. “I’m worried Wizard will come after him.”
“Makes no difference.”
“I don’t know if you’ve gotten entirely senile, Ellis, but we’ve got no Hellfires left. No way to stop that technical.”
“Don’t need a Hellfire. We’ve got the Reaper.”
Tomaso understood first. “Dive-bomb it into the technical. I like it.”
But the White Men didn’t chase the Rover. Maybe Wizard didn’t want to challenge the Reaper. So they had nothing to do but watch as the big SUV bounced west toward the border. No need for a compass or GPS. Just keep the sun in the rearview mirror. Every few minutes Tomaso updated the distance to Kenya . . . twenty-five kilometers . . . twenty . . . fifteen . . .
“Time to tell the White House to call off the dogs.” Duto said when the Rover was ten kilometers out.
“Let the Kenyans know, too, so they don’t shoot anybody.”
At the door, Duto stopped. “Thank your boy for me. This has got to be worth at least ten points with the undecideds, don’t you think?”
“If God exists, you’ll have a stroke.”
“I’m glad you’re an atheist, Ellis.” Duto left.
When the Rover was three kilometers from the border, Shafer tapped Tomaso. “One last thing.” Shafer explained what he wanted.
“You sure it won’t freak them out.”
“They’ll get it.”
“Okay,” Tomaso said. He adjusted the Reaper’s flaps and throttle and the drone suddenly went into something close to a dive. In two minutes, it pulled in front of the Rover even as its altitude dropped from fifteen hundred meters to five hundred.
“I’m going to bring our speed down, and then I’ll bring it up here as he comes across.”
So it was that the Reaper buzzed the Rover low and slow just as Wells and the hostages reached the border. On screen, Shafer saw Wells lean forward as the Reaper drew close. Wells frowned—this close, the Rover’s optics were so good that they could see not just his nose but each nostril—and then he seemed to understand the message:
Welcome home.
He nodded, waved.
Shafer found himself foolishly, joyously, waving back.
—
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