The Night Ranger

16

LOWER JUBA REGION,

SOUTHWESTERN SOMALIA

Gwen wanted more miraa.

She and Owen and Hailey were waiting for dinner when the shots echoed in the night and the camp dissolved into chaos. Three of Wizard’s men dragged them back to their one-room prison. With the door closed, the room was black. Gwen clicked on the flashlight and she and Hailey sat side by side against the wall. Owen stood by the door, peeking out through the ventilation holes punched in the tin. Gwen chewed the inside of her lip, pressing her teeth into her own tender flesh, as she waited for the firefight to start, for grenades exploding and soldiers shouting in a language she couldn’t understand. Then the shots stopped and the night was quiet.

Seconds later, she heard a low sob, almost a moan. She was almost surprised to realize that she hadn’t made the sound. Hailey seemed to be having a full-on panic attack. She was curled against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees.

“It’s gonna be okay—”

“I wish they’d just shoot us—”

“Don’t say that, Heartbreaker.” Gwen hugged Hailey, the only comfort she could offer. Hailey tried to break free but she held on. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” After a few seconds, Hailey’s sobs dissolved into something like laughter and she stopped rocking.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, Gwen, I’m sure I’m exactly the same, but you smell terrible. I mean—” Hailey waved her hand in front of her nose.

The sudden mood shift didn’t surprise Gwen. She’d taken the same roller-coaster ride herself dozens of times. “You know what I’d like more than anything? A long, hot bath. Bubble bath.” Gwen could almost feel herself sliding into the tub until she couldn’t even see her body, shedding dirt, sweat, smoke, fear, emerging clean and new.

“You know what I’d like? To be alone for a few minutes. Totally alone.”

“Hailey—”

“Shh—” Owen hissed. “I hate to break this pity party up, but something big is going on.” His tone silenced them. After a few minutes, Owen stepped away from the door, sat next to them. “We have to get out of here. Tonight. I just watched them bring in two kids, when I say kids I mean like twelve years old. Arms tied behind their backs. To Wizard’s hut. Then, a few minutes later, the big guy who’s always with Wizard, he came out with one boy slung over his shoulder. He was dead. I’d bet on it.”

“Doesn’t mean they killed him—” Gwen said.

“No? Just now they brought the other one out. And they’re slinging their AKs around and a couple of them are carrying these big long tubes that I think are rocket launchers. They are loaded for bear, and I know you think Wizard’s your best friend, Gwen—”

“That’s—”

“But that kid was alive when he went into that hut and dead when they brought him out. These guys aren’t nice. And the worst part is, I’m telling you, they are scared right now. Maybe ‘scared’ is the wrong word, maybe they don’t get scared, but they are on edge. Amped. Strutting around, swinging their guns. I’m surprised nobody’s gotten shot by accident.”

“They’re protecting us. That’s what Wizard told me, he told me his men wouldn’t hurt me, us, that we were safe here—”

“Gwen, if they wanted to let us go, they had their chance,” Hailey said. “Last night. After they killed Suggs and the Joker, they could have left us there. Even driven us back to Dadaab.”

Gwen wanted to argue, but Hailey was right. “Fine. You win. They’re just waiting for the right moment to heat up the pot, make mzungu stew. What do you want us to do about it? Hope our guard falls asleep tonight so we can run for it?”

“My thought is, everything that’s happened so far came from the east. Whoever’s out there, Shabaab, I assume, they’re totally focused on it. We get out of camp, head west, maybe they won’t realize for a while.”

“They won’t realize? Please, Owen, imagine what you’d think if I just said that—”

“She’s right,” Hailey said. “How can we outrun them? They have those Range Rovers and who knows what else.”

Gwen hated to bring up the motorcycles, but the other two deserved to know. “When they put me in that hut this morning, I saw two motorcycles, dirt bikes, in the hut next to it. I’m not sure they work, but someone was in there trying to fix them.”

“I can ride,” Owen said. “Can either of you?”

“I can,” Gwen said.

“You can?” Hailey couldn’t have sounded more surprised if Gwen had said she was a virgin.

“My high school boyfriend showed me. He always had this plan that we’d ride cross-country together. But I shouldn’t have even brought it up. There’s no way this is gonna work. What, Owen? You think we run to the hut, spark the bikes, take off, and nobody notices?”

“In a few hours, two or three a.m., it’s gonna look different out there. If we don’t get attacked tonight, these guys’ll have to get some sleep. Half of them were up late last night attacking the Joker’s camp. And the sentries they post will be on the edges of camp, not the middle. We can get to that hut, grab a bike, take off, catch them facing the wrong way.”

“We don’t know what’s out there,” Gwen said. “We don’t even know where we are. And what about the guard?”

Owen pressed his palms together. “I’m not going to try it alone, okay? I’ll stay with you to the end. But here’s how I see it. We sit here, wait, nothing good is gonna happen. I think best case, Wizard decides he can’t stay alive long enough to get paid by our families. So he sells us to Shabaab and God only knows what they’ll do with us. Another possibility, this place gets attacked straight up and we either get taken, kidnapped again, or maybe get shot in the cross fire. If we run, hopefully we make it. If not, they’re not going to hurt us. They need us. Wizard said this wasn’t about some holy war for him, and I believe him. He wants money. If we’re dead, he doesn’t get any. Worst case, they catch us, smack us around, lock us up. We’re no worse off than we are right now.”

“Unless Wizard gets mad and shoots us like he shot Scott,” Gwen said.

“Thought he was your buddy.”

“Let’s vote,” Hailey said. “All those in favor of Owen’s plan, trying to get to the bikes, raise your hands.”

“Is that even a plan?” Gwen said.

“All those in favor of doing nothing, keep them down,” Owen said.

Owen raised his hand. Gwen kept hers in her lap. They both looked at Hailey.

Hailey slowly lifted her hand. “Sorry, Gwennie.”

—

They spent a while whispering over ideas. In the dark, because Owen insisted that they turn off the flashlight to save the batteries. The camp outside slowly quieted, seemingly going back to normal, whatever that meant here. Finally, the guard brought them three plates of rice and three bottles of water. The rice was mushy and lukewarm, but they ate every bite, a silent acknowledgment that they might be lost in the scrub for days with nothing to eat or drink.

When they were done eating, they talked a little more, worked through the plan. Even Owen admitted that once they escaped, if they escaped, they would just have to ride west and hope.

The conversation ran down. Gwen wasn’t sure of the hour. Her body and mind were spent. But sleep wouldn’t be an option tonight. She needed to stay awake. She needed more miraa. Lucky for her, getting some was part of the scheme.

—

She opened the door, stepped out. Their guard sat against the hut’s outside wall, his legs splayed loosely, working a mouthful of stems. The sight made her own mouth water. For the first time, he was armed, an AK strapped across his chest. Gwen hadn’t calculated on the rifle, but she decided it didn’t matter. If their scheme worked, they could take the AK. If not, the guard wouldn’t shoot them without asking Wizard’s permission. Probably.

The guard looked up idly. She pointed at her belly and then at the latrines. He raised a hand, three fingers spread, a gesture she took to mean three minutes. Owen’s guess that the camp would settle down for the night had been right. Most soldiers had disappeared. Still, two men were hanging around outside Wizard’s hut, two more near the cook hut. Not her problem, at least for now. She hurried to the latrine, held her nose as she did her business, hustled back.

Now the hard part. She squatted beside the guard. “Miraa.” She pointed at herself. He reached into his pocket, but she pointed at the hut. “Not just me. Owen, too.” She opened the tin door. “Owen—”

On cue, Owen stepped into the doorway. Now the guard stood, waved Owen back into the hut with the AK. Owen backed away. Gwen stood in the doorway, holding the door open. Still the guard hesitated. Gwen hadn’t expected the language barrier to cause so much trouble. Plus, back home she could rely on a move as simple as touching a guy’s arm to get what she wanted. She couldn’t take that chance here. Injecting sex into the situation could blow it up.

She could still use her voice, though. “Didn’t mean to freak you out.” She kept her tone low and smoky. “Miraa, we just want some miraa. Whyn’t you come in and show us?” She gave him a come-hither wave with her fingers.

He pointed at the flashlight, which was next to the door. She handed it over. She stepped inside and waited by the door as he waved the beam around, seemingly checking for a trap. Finally, he walked in. He sat next to her and handed over the miraa. She took a handful. He waved his finger at her, apparently saying, too much, too much, and she put a few sprigs back and stuffed the rest in her mouth and handed the packet to Owen, who put a bunch in his mouth and coughed and gagged. The guard laughed, physical comedy apparently playing as well in the Somali bush as it did everywhere else. Then Hailey stood.

“I have to pee.” She pointed at herself as Gwen had, and the guard nodded and held up three fingers as he had for Gwen. Hailey walked out. And Gwen felt her blood surge, not just the miraa kicking in, but Hailey’s clean exit, the point of the entire exercise.

—

Nobody said much until Hailey returned, sat back beside Owen. “Much better,” she said. The guard nodded and stood and left.

“So?” Owen said.

Hailey hadn’t gone to the bathroom. She’d checked out the hut with the dirt bikes. They’d needed the guard inside the hut so he wouldn’t see where she was headed. None of them had any idea how to hotwire a motorcycle. Even Owen admitted that they needed the keys to have any chance of success. He said the keys would be close by the bikes. But Gwen had insisted they find out for certain before they did anything irreversible.

“Good news and bad news. And a bonus. Good news is there’s two bikes and they don’t look messed up, I mean, I didn’t see any parts on the ground. And Owen was right, the keys are there. On nails hammered into the wall.”

“What’s the bad news?” Gwen said.

“Bad news is somebody’s sleeping in there. He didn’t see me, he was out cold, but there’s no way he’s going to sleep through an engine starting up.”

“And the bonus?” Owen said.

Hailey reached into her sweatpants and pulled out a wrench. “I knew I was taking a chance, but I figured we’d be glad to have it.”

The wrench was greasy, rusted, about a foot long. Owen’s whole body came to attention as he looked at it. He reminded Gwen of a dog that had just found a sixteen-ounce sirloin unwatched on the dinner table. His eyes had a liquid shine. Gwen realized he saw this situation very differently than she did. She couldn’t help herself. She thought of their captors as kids. They were mostly younger than she was. And they didn’t seem like bad guys. She felt sorry for them, playing at being soldiers in the scrub. Maybe her experience reading to Joseph and the boys in Dadaab had affected her more than she realized.

But Owen was angry. Furious. He didn’t care why these Somalis had ended up here. To him they were the enemy, kidnappers and murderers. If he had to kill them all to escape, he would. Every last one. Probably he was right. Probably she was being soft and stupid. These soldiers might be boys, but boys could kill and these boys had. Wizard had shot Scott for no real reason. She ought to take comfort in Owen’s coiled wrath. But she couldn’t. His eyes frightened her as much as anything that had happened so far.

Owen reached for the wrench. “We can do something with this,” he said. “Oh yes, we can.”