The Night Ranger

14

LOWER JUBA REGION,

SOUTHWESTERN SOMALIA

Little Wizard wondered what hidden devils these wazungu had brought to his camp.

In his mind the plan had seemed simple enough. Hide them away, arrange a ransom. Use his half brother Bahdoon as a go-between to contact their families. Wizard didn’t want to email the pictures himself. Lower Juba had only a few Internet connections, and he knew the Americans could track these things. Bahdoon lived in Eastleigh, the giant Somali slum in Nairobi. He got by as a small-time miraa dealer. Wizard imagined he’d be glad to make a thousand dollars passing along a few messages. Wizard had decided to ask for one million for each hostage. Waaberi, his lieutenant, had suggested five million dollars, but Wizard didn’t want to be greedy.

The ransom wouldn’t take long to arrange. Once he and the Americans agreed on a price, he would tell them to deliver the money to Abukar, his old clan leader in Mogadishu, a tall man, thin as a stick, with one eye and three wives. Wizard had never been part of a kidnapping before, but he knew how they worked. Everyone in Somalia knew. The payment came in cash, bundles of twenty- and hundred-dollar bills. Sometimes the wazungu brought the money to shore in Mogadishu on boats thick with guns. Sometimes they flew it in on the charter jets that the United Nations ran. Once it arrived, a clan leader took it, and with it the duty of ensuring the hostages would be freed unharmed.

In exchange the leader kept one-third of the money. Of course, everyone involved had to operate on faith. But Wizard trusted Abukar. He’d worked as a middleman before, and anyway, two of Wizard’s cousins still fought for him. After Wizard received his share from Abukar, he would leave the hostages at the border with a phone and a few liters of water. They could figure the rest out themselves. Then he would break his camp, tell his soldiers to head to Dadaab in small groups that wouldn’t arouse suspicion. In a month, everyone would forget the kidnapping and they could come back to Lower Juba. He’d have plenty of money to take on the Dita Boys.

—

Swarming the camp in Kenya had been easy. The men there were amateurs. They’d come running into the open as Wizard’s soldiers crashed down on them from three sides. Not one White Man had been killed or wounded.

But then Wizard found the wazungu. And the devil found him. That stupid white boy spoke to him like he was nothing, nothing at all. Even at the time, Wizard told himself to control his temper. Killing whites caused trouble. But he couldn’t tolerate the boy’s sneer, his disrespect. He gave his pistol its freedom.

The other three came quietly after that. But Wizard knew the Americans would be angry when they learned what had happened. More than angry. They might refuse to pay.

Back in the camp that night, Wizard lay in his cot and traced a finger over the scar in his stomach. He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t sleep. He was awake at dawn when Waaberi came in to tell him that a sentry named Hussein, a runt of a boy, had missed two radio checks. Wizard ordered a search, but his men found nothing, not a body or a scrap of clothing.

“Was the Ditas,” Waaberi said. “Telling us, they know we’re here, can come for us whenever.”

Wizard hated to think that the Ditas had snatched one of his men. He hated even more the possibility that Hussein had defected on his own. Hussein knew how many fighters and weapons the White Men had, what routes their sentries walked, where they’d hidden fighting posts. And he knew about the wazungu. Awaale wouldn’t pass up a chance at that prize. He’d come after the White Men double-quick.

“We going to move the sentries about. And put out the word. Everybody be ready. This serious now.”

“Done.”

“Done and done.” Their lingo for an order given and received.

—

When Waaberi left, Wizard turned to the next step in his plan, calling Bahdoon. But Bahdoon didn’t bite.

“One thousand U.S. to send a few emails and you saying no?”

“You not here. You don’t see. The Kenyans making much much noise on these hostages. Every minute on the radio and TV. GSU in Eastleigh. Patrolling up and down. Asking, anybody know anything. Saying if they catch a man who knows and didn’t tell, they take him and beat him until his legs and arms is broke. Then leave him in Kibera for the poor ones to do in.”

“Words only, man. GSU don’t know nothing. Never heard of the Wizard. You don’t tell them, then they never know. They have no juju on me, Bahdoon.”

“You have such magic, how come you in the desert eating snakes? Get someone else. Leave Bahdoon alone.”

“I tell you what. I give you ten thousand U.S. when the money come. Not one. Ten.”

“How I going to get away with this?”

“You know how. Find a place with nobody watching, make a new account, send the emails, get ten thousand dollars. Double-safe.”

“I do it for fifty.”

“My brother.”

“Americans promising one hundred thousand if somebody help them out, tell them where the hostages are.”

“One hundred thousand shillings?”

“One hundred thousand dollars. You didn’t hear?”

Wizard hadn’t heard. He wondered what else he hadn’t heard. “They lying.”

“I want fifty from you. You asking one million each. Fifty is nothing.”

Wizard didn’t have a choice. Bahdoon was the only one he could trust to do this job, who wouldn’t take the pictures to the Americans and give him up for a reward. “Fifty, then. You rascal.”

“Too easy, Wizard. I should have said one hundred. Send me them snaps.”

So Wizard woke up the wazungu, took their pictures, sent them mobile-to-mobile. Back into his hut, he closed his eyes, tried to catch a few minutes of the sleep he’d missed. Maybe he could dream the devil away.

—

His phone woke him. It was Muhammad, a good soldier and one he trusted. Days before, when Wizard heard where the hostages were, he’d sent Muhammad and three others to watch the road from Dadaab to Ijara for police or anyone who might make trouble. They slept in the bush, hung around Bakafi during the day.

But the road stayed quiet. The Kenyan police had an outpost, but they left it only to drink Tusker and pick up whores at the hoteli. Wizard didn’t know why the Kenyans weren’t looking harder. Whatever the reason, their laziness was one reason he’d decided attacking the camp was a safe bet.

Now someone must have showed up. Muhammad wouldn’t call in daytime otherwise.

“Muhammad.”

“Wizard. A mzungu and his driver come through.”

“American?”

“Don’t know.”

“What kind of car?”

“Cruiser.”

“Just one?”

“Yah. They stop, talk awhile. Now they driving again.”

“Back to Dadaab.”

“No, man. South. Toward the camp.”

“You got pics.”

“Yah.”

“Send them.”

“You want me to watch them?”

Wizard figured the man was driving to the spot where the Americans had first been taken. No way could he find the camp the White Men had hit. It was just four buildings, and hidden in a little valley miles from any road. But if he did find it somehow, he couldn’t be allowed to tell anyone.

“Give them space. Lest they find the camp. Then get them.”

“Kill them?”

“Catch them, kill them, either one.”

“Done and done.”

—

Finally, Bahdoon called with good news. “Cousin. They hit me back. All three. They say, please let them go, don’t hurt them, don’t shoot them, they didn’t do nothing, they good wazungu, came to Africa to help, please please, all that.”

The appeals might have meant more to Wizard if his own mother and father hadn’t been killed by a stray shell fired by African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu when he was ten. “All that. What about paying?”

“They want proof the pictures real. The wazungu got to give you a secret. Like, what they favorite color? What they favorite food to eat?”

“Favorite food?”

“It what they want.”

So Wizard asked the three for a secret and sent the answers to Bahdoon. Next email he’d tell about the one million dollars. He knew he ought to make sure Abukar would take the ransom for him first. But Wizard wasn’t ready to make that call, not until he felt his luck changing, caught the devil looking the other way.

Meantime he waited for Muhammad. But the call didn’t come. At first Wizard wasn’t worried. Maybe Muhammad’s phone had died. He and his men wouldn’t have trouble with one mzungu. But the afternoon stretched on and finally the sun disappeared. Wizard’s hopes sank as the sky darkened. He wanted to send more men into Kenya to find out what had happened, but he couldn’t risk losing them. Not with the Ditas lurking. He was down five soldiers already today. Too many.

He wondered if he should pull up camp, take his men south into the mangrove swamps. They could live with the crocodiles and snakes while they waited out the Ditas. But the swamps had no phone service. Wizard would have to leave to arrange the ransom. Anyway, he hated the place. The ground itself was rotten. A man who stepped the wrong way found the earth kissing his feet, caressing his legs, pulling him under with a lover’s embrace. The mosquitoes never stopped biting, and they came with malaria that could kill a man in a week. The swamps were the last resort. Had to be.

Ali stepped into his hut. “You want dinner, Wizard?”

He joined the line outside the hut where two of his youngest soldiers stirred pots of rice and meal over a low smoky fire. No meat, of course. Wizard still regretted slaughtering his herd on the night he met Awaale. But they had the hostages now and the hostages would pay for all the goats in Somalia. “Smells good tonight,” he said to Ali, loudly, so the men around him heard. They stood straighter when they saw him. The soldiers at the front of the line waved him forward. But Wizard shook his head, stayed where he was. A good leader ate last.

Then, from the northeast, guns popped. A round, another, then a yell and a long, rattling burst of AK fire. The line dissolved as men ran for their weapons. But the shots stopped as abruptly as they’d started. Waaberi’s walkie-talkie crackled. He put it to his ear, listened, strode to Wizard. “Omar say they killed one, caught two more.”

“Ditas?”

“He don’t know.”

“Bring them here.”

—

The boys were small and ragged and bleeding into their camouflage T-shirts. Wizard’s men had tied their hands behind their backs. One couldn’t walk without help, but the other one seemed okay. Wizard waved them into his hut and ordered his men out, all but Ali and Waaberi and Omar, the sentry who’d spotted them.

Wizard looked them over. One had a scar across his forehead big as a squashed bug. The other, the weaker of the two, had only one eye. The left socket was empty, not even a patch, just a sunken space where his eye should have been. They were thirteen, fourteen at most. They barely looked big enough to hold AKs. Wizard would have rejected them if they’d tried to join the White Men. Told them to go to Dadaab where they belonged. He didn’t understand why Awaale had sent them to him to be slaughtered. He wanted to put a knife to Awaale’s thick neck and make him tell.

“Which way they come?” he said to Omar.

“Down from the road that go to Giara El. They walk straight straight toward the old post.” The sentry position that Wizard had ordered abandoned after Hussein defected.

“Have AKs?”

Omar held up three little pistols that looked like .22s to Wizard. “These popguns.”

“They just walk to you.”

“Yeah, we saw them, got ready, made sure they was the only ones, when they got close we blasted them. Kill one there, hit these two.”

“No others.”

“None we saw.”

The boy with one eye was bleeding from his stomach. Hard. Wizard lifted the boy’s shirt, saw two neat holes. “No good for this one. Get me water. Too fast.” He knelt beside the boy, pulled his knife. The boy shirked away, but Wizard twisted him around, cut the plastic cord binding his hands. “What your name?”

“Yusuf, sir.” His voice was a whisper.

“This my land. Why you come to my land?”

“Awaale say—” The words faded into a cough. The boy was losing his way. In another minute, he would be past speaking. Wizard pinched his ear. “He tell you you going to die?”

Ali returned with a cup of water, and Wizard took it and tipped it to Yusuf’s throat. The boy drank a little and then the water came back out of his mouth and he grunted and tipped sideways and he was dead. “No magic for this one,” Wizard said. He looked at Ali. Ali picked up the body, swung it over his shoulder like a sack of rice, walked out. They’d put the corpse in an empty hut and come morning bury it a few hundred meters away, hope to dig a hole deep enough that the hyenas didn’t get it. All they could do.

“Other two dead. You the last one left,” Wizard said to the third boy, the one with the scar. “Tell me why you come here like this.” This one had been shot in his left shoulder, but he wasn’t whimpering. He looked cold and straight at Wizard.

“Awaale send us. Tell us to give you a message.”

“Give it, then.”

“He want the wazungu. He say you have one night to give them over or he coming here to put all your magic and all your blood in the dirt. He say you better give him the answer ’fore the sun comes up. He say the time to play is over.”

Wizard saw that Awaale had sent two messages. The words, and the boys themselves. I have so many men that I can throw away these three. Toss them to you. The only reason the Ditas hadn’t attacked already was that Awaale was worried that the hostages might be killed in the confusion. He knew their worth.

“Anything else?”

The boy shook his head. Wizard didn’t want to kill him. Two useless dead boys was enough for the night. But the White Men couldn’t keep him either. Wizard stood, pulled the boy up by his bad shoulder, punishment for his sass.

“You going back to Awaale. You tell him, he wants the wazungu, it cost him three million U.S. That the price. He don’t want to pay, he can come get them his own self. You understand?”

The boy nodded.

“Tell me so I know you heard.”

The boy repeated Wizard’s words.

“Good. And tell him his other boys best fight better than you. Elseways we gonna have too many bodies for the hyenas to eat.” Wizard shoved the kid away, sent him stumbling. “Put him on the road back,” he said to Omar.

Then he and Waaberi were alone. “It coming,” Wizard said. “Soon enough.”

“Let it come. Long as Awaale keep sending ’em that way, it no problem.”

“Two down. Three hundred to go.”