The Night Ranger (13 page)

“Does Wells think he’s involved?”

“If he does, he hasn’t told me. What does the station think?”

“The last few years they’ve focused on the relationship with the Kenyan police and Interior Ministry.”

“Meaning they don’t run any decent agents on their own in Kenya and are stuck with what the Kenyan government tells them.”

Duto didn’t disagree.

“And the Kenyans are saying privately what they’re saying publicly? That they’re sure it’s Shabaab.”

“Yeah. But when we ask them for details, to tell us where they think the hostages are so we can put a rescue plan together, they say they don’t know yet, they’re still working. And by the way, so far they’ve made clear that they don’t want us to run our own investigation. More or less insisted we stay in Nairobi. I’m starting to think we may have to go around them.”

—

As always, Duto had figured out how to play both sides. By using Wells as a back-channel investigator instead of the agency’s officers in Nairobi, he would avoid any blowback in case the Kenyans were telling the truth and Shabaab was holding the hostages. In that case, the Kenyans would be furious if the CIA interfered. They’d complain to the White House, and Duto would leave Langley on a less than triumphant note. Using Wells would let Duto skip that trap. He’d look like a hero if the Kenyans were wrong about Shabaab, and lose nothing if they were right.

“What do you want from me, Vinny?”

“Wells gets a lead, you let me know ASAP. Whether it’s Shabaab or not.”

“And you’ll put something together to save the hostages. Something that doesn’t involve SEAL Team Six.”

“That’ll be a White House decision. They want to use Special Forces, no problem. But realistically, it’ll depend on the size of the opposing force and on timing.”

“Long as you get full credit for finding them.”

“It’s not about credit, Ellis.” Duto almost sounded sincere. “Point is, Wells needs our help—”

“How’s that again?”

“He wanted NSA to run those numbers, didn’t he? He wants our help, he’s got to give to get. And if he understands the stakes, he’s more likely to agree. So make sure he understands them.”

“This mythical invasion.”

“You don’t believe me, call your friends in the five-sided building.”

But Shafer knew what they’d say. The story rang true. He could already imagine the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs beating the drums on the weekend’s talk shows, the Secretary of State’s op-ed in the
Post
this Sunday.
Sending soldiers to war is never an easy decision. But the United States has no choice but to intervene in Somalia. Let me be clear. We are not invading merely to rescue these four aid workers, though their kidnapping has thrown a spotlight on the collapse of the Somali state . . .

Finding the hostages quickly was the only way to make certain a war wouldn’t happen.

“What if Shabaab has them, Vinny? You know that’s possible.”

“Then I guess we’ll go to war. But at least we’ll know what we’re doing.”

“Fine. I’ll tell him.” Duto had steered him as effortlessly as a jockey on the homestretch. “But you know no matter what I say, he’ll do what he thinks is right.”

“I’m counting on it.” Duto sat back in his seat, reached for his phone. Then he reconsidered. “You know, Ellis, don’t you think it’s time for you to admit you belong to the agency as much as me? Maybe more. I’m the one who’s leaving. Your little idiosyncrasies, the ugly clothes, all the rest, they’re just part of the shtick.”

“I speak truth to power, Vinny. I don’t kiss its ass.”

“Sure you do.” Duto’s voice was smooth. Soothing. He sounded like an oncologist delivering bad news.
You’re going to need to come in for some more tests . . .
“Every big company has somebody like you. Somebody to wave his tiny fists in the air so we can all pretend to listen before we go do whatever it is we were going to do anyway.”

“You know, Vinny, towards the end of the thing in Kabul”—Wells’s last mission, where he’d gone to Afghanistan to look for a traitor inside the CIA station—“I thought you might be human after all. Humbled by what had happened. It made you harder to hate. I should have known it wasn’t real. And, I have to admit the truth, I’m glad it wasn’t. I’m glad you’re back, Vinny.”

“I sleep fine.”

The convoy rolled up to Shafer’s house, clogging his gentle street.

“I know it. Try not to choke on a pig in a blanket at your fund-raising fellatio tonight.”

“That’s sweet, but you know I can’t fund-raise yet, Ellis. Call John.”

Shafer popped open the armored door with his bony old man’s shoulder like he was escaping a four-wheeled tomb. “Aye aye, captain.” He saluted, slammed the door hard as he could, and watched the Suburban roll away with his mouth twisted into a powerless scowl.

8

N
EAR
THE
K
ENYA
/S
OMALIA
BORDER

G
wen crawled across the dusty African plain, trying to ignore the thorns digging into her belly, the big black caterpillars teasing her legs. She didn’t need to look back to know the man in the Joker’s mask was chasing her. Ahead she saw Dadaab and the acacia tree where she read to the boys. Safety. But as she crawled closer, she realized she wasn’t in Kenya. The refugees wore threadbare striped uniforms. They had mouse heads and human bodies and they waved merrily to her.
Join us! Join us!
She tried to turn, crawl away. But she couldn’t, something was holding her, chafing her—

She woke in the darkness.

—

Fortunately, she was no longer hooded. The Joker had punished them for only a day before removing their hoods. He didn’t bother with another warning. He’d made his point. For the next two days not much happened, but they did get more food. Canned fruit for breakfast, boiled eggs for dinner. Not a great long-term diet, but it satisfied their basic caloric needs, and the food could be prepared easily. Even the eggs could be boiled over a hot plate, no open flame required.

Gwen was convinced now that Suggs had set them up. Otherwise, how could the kidnappers have known they’d be on that road? Either they’d been trailed as soon as they left Dadaab, or someone from WorldCares had given them a heads-up. And Suggs was the one who’d changed their route. He was probably hiding in a hut nearby, working out a deal with James Thompson. Gwen wondered if being forced to sit in silence was good for her. Without YouTube or Netflix or texts from her girlfriends to distract her, she was relying on her own mind for the first time in years. Maybe ever.

Not that she planned to thank the Joker.

—

Late on the eighth night of captivity, the Joker returned. He held a camera in one hand and a page of
The Nation
, an English-language Kenyan daily, in the other. “From today’s paper,” he said. “Each of you holds it while I take your picture. It’s called proof of life. Your families will be glad to see it.”

Gwen wanted as much as she’d ever wanted anything to walk up to the Joker, put her hand on his arm, lock eyes with him, smile. Then knee him in the balls hard enough to make him piss blood. She’d done it before, to a Sigma Chi who’d raped one of her sorority sisters.

When the Joker gave her the paper, she held it beside her face with her free left hand and glared at the camera. She raised her middle finger a fraction of an inch, silently cursing the Joker, his proof of life, his ransom demands, and most of all his mask. “Smile,” the Joker said.

She lifted her finger another fraction. He didn’t seem to care, or even notice.

“Good. Very pretty.” He took back the paper, turned to Hailey—

And gunfire punctured the night. A man shouted and another took up the cry and then the shooting and shouting came from everywhere at once. Gwen felt rounds slam the hut as if someone were kicking its brick walls. Then an explosion. A man screamed. The Joker yelled to their guard and they both ran outside.

Outside, a man yelled in Swahili, high pleading tones, until a fusillade cut him off.

“I wonder if it’s the cops,” Owen said.

“That doesn’t sound like the cops,” Gwen said. For the first time since their capture, she thought they might die.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Hailey said.

The firing slowed. The men outside no longer shouted. They spoke in measured tones. Their feet crunched on the dirt. They were close.

—

Four men walked in. They were all black. Three carried AKs and wore white kerchiefs over their mouths and white T-shirts. The fourth was lean and wiry and wore a black T-shirt, no kerchief, and a pistol on his hip. He carried a key ring that until very recently had been the property of the Joker.

“Who are you?” Scott said.

“You can call me Wizard.”

Joker, Wizard. All these guys thought they belonged in comic books. The man knelt beside Gwen and riffled through the key ring. Up close his face was smooth and unlined. Gwen realized he was even younger than she was.

“Will you behave?” he said in English. “I have fifteen men outside.”

Gwen nodded. He opened the lock and she stood. “Put your hands behind your back.” She did, and he cuffed her.

“Are you with Suggs?” Scott said.

“I don’t know anyone named Suggs.”

“Then who are you and what are you doing here?”

“You speak to me this way.”

“I speak to you how I like. You’re smart, you’ll run back to whatever hole you crawled out of before the United States Army smokes your ass—”

The man crossed the hut and stood before Scott. “Be careful now.” He made a gun with his index finger and pointed at Scott’s chest. “Three times. Twice in the heart and once in the head. Then I leave you for the hyenas.” He spoke unemotionally, as if he were threatening to send a spoiled child to his room.

“You think you scare me?”

“Scott—” Gwen said.

“He’s not killing me, dummy. He can shoot all the Africans he wants. He knows the score. How’s he going to ransom a corpse?” Scott leaned forward and with his free left hand reached out and patted the cheek of the man who called himself Wizard. “Make nice and I’ll make sure you get paid.”

The man put a hand on the butt of his pistol. Then he shook his head and gathered himself, his effort at self-control obvious to Gwen.

He balled his fists, stepped away from Scott.

“That’s right,” Scott said. “Walk away, little man.”

He nodded at Gwen. “Told you.”

The man turned back, pulled his pistol. No hesitation now. The gun was as black as everything else he wore. “All right,” he said, and Scott must have realized he’d gone too far. His mouth came open and he pulled himself away from the man.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey now—”

The last words that Scott Thompson ever spoke,
Hey now,
because Wizard pulled the trigger twice. The shots broke thunder-loud inside the hut. Scott slumped backward against the wall and raised his free arm like he meant to pull out the bullets. His hand became a claw and he touched his chest with his fingertips. Then his arm dropped away. He gurgled a mouthful of blood and slid to the floor.

Hailey put her hand to her mouth and the tip of her tongue poked through her fingers. Gwen screamed once, once only. She watched death leave the hut through the ceiling and knew that she and Hailey and Owen would live tonight. She felt strangely serene.

The Wizard pointed his pistol at Scott’s head for a finishing shot. “Don’t,” Gwen said. “You already killed him.”

He tilted his head to her. She saw he was surprised that she’d spoken. So was she. He didn’t answer. But he holstered the pistol. He unlocked Hailey and Owen and handcuffed them beside Gwen and his men led them outside, where more men in white kerchiefs waited. The Wizard spoke in a language Gwen had never heard before and his men melted into the night, back to Somalia or wherever.

For the first time Gwen saw the compound where they’d been kept. It wasn’t much. Three mud-brick huts stood a distance from theirs. Three bodies lay in the center of the compound, and two more beside a hut. Suggs and the Joker. They lay side by side. She’d been right. Suggs had been here all along. He hadn’t been a hostage. He’d died defending this place. He’d set them up for sure. But why had Scott kept asking for him?

Had he been in on the kidnapping from the beginning? But he’d suffered along with Gwen and Hailey and Owen. He’d been chained up, too. And why? Were he and Suggs planning to split the ransom? Gwen didn’t get it.

But she understood this much: Even if she and Owen and Hailey were still in Kenya now, they wouldn’t be much longer. The guards in white shirts ushered them out of the compound along a dry streambed. After a week-plus of disuse, Gwen’s legs felt rubbery. Still, she was glad to be out of the stink and desperation of the hut. The air felt humid but clean, with a slight breeze. Half the sky was covered with thick clouds. Gwen sensed rain was coming.

Aside from the compound, the plains and low hills around them were empty. Not a house or car or streetlamp in sight. The stars shone even more brightly than they did in Montana. No one spoke. Five minutes later, they reached a pair of Range Rovers, glowing white and beautiful under the night sky. The man in black turned to them.

“You understand,” he said. “Those Kenyan fools don’t have you anymore. You’re mine now.”