The Night Ranger

19

IJARA DISTRICT

Wells reached the T junction that marked the end of the road from Bakafi in good spirits. Despite the ominously loud rattling from the Cruiser’s right front wheel, he’d lengthened his lead over the Kenyans. And Shafer had just assured him that a Reaper would be in position within an hour. Shafer didn’t tell Wells what he’d promised Duto in return for this benediction, and Wells didn’t ask. Some questions were best posed after the close of business.

At the junction Wells turned the Cruiser right, so it faced west, into Kenya. He stopped, grabbed the Mossberg, got out. The night was overcast. A humid breeze weighted the air from the southeast. Rain was coming, and soon. Wells held open the driver’s door and jammed the tip of the shotgun’s barrel against the driver’s seat, its butt against the gas pedal.

Wells planned to send the Cruiser west while he ran east to the dirt bike he and Wilfred had left. He hoped the Kenyans would chase the Cruiser’s taillights the wrong way. He’d pulled a similar stunt years before in the Bekaa Valley. But this time the Cruiser would have a passenger. Even in handcuffs, Mark could pull the shotgun off the gas pedal. Wells needed to knock him out.

Mark was curled up in the cargo hold between the plastic jerricans. Dust coated his gasoline-soaked clothes. Wells had the bizarre thought that he looked like a giant piece of chicken-fried steak. He kicked at Wells, splaying his legs as wildly as an angry four-year-old. Wells grabbed his right calf, flipped him, tugged him closer, reached for the tire iron wedged under a jerrican. Mark spasmed his leg free, twisted into a corner, balled up his knees, shouted in Swahili. Wells didn’t know if the cop was cursing or praying. Yet for all the noise he was making, his eyes were profoundly disconnected. As though he believed that nothing he said or did could reach Wells, since Wells wasn’t human enough to be reached.

Wells had seen that combination of panic and hopelessness before. Not in the jihadis. They seemed as willing to die as to kill. Some truly couldn’t wait to ascend to the heaven they were sure awaited them. Others viewed death almost dispassionately. Any man who’d fought in close combat knew that death came sooner or later. Kill or die was a myth. The truth was kill and die. And, whatever waited on the other side, death came with one unquenchable blessing. It ended the fear of death. Wells hoped he’d remember that truth when his moment came.

But civilians rarely viewed the void so calmly. Mark might be venal and corrupt, but he wasn’t a killer. His panic proved it. A killer wouldn’t panic this way. Wells found he couldn’t lacerate the cop’s body and soul further this night. He dropped the tire iron, grabbed his backpack. He fished in it until he found the hood that he’d carried from New Hampshire. “I’m not going to kill you. But I have to put this on you. Now.”

—

Mark sputtered beneath the hood as Wells turned the Cruiser around and drove east. He glimpsed the headlights of his pursuers to the north. Much closer now. His attack of conscience had cost him half his lead. Or maybe it had saved him. Maybe the Cruiser would have run into a ditch right away and the Kenyans would have caught him before he got to the dirt bike. At least this way he knew he’d reach it, if the wheel didn’t give out first. He had time for one last call. He found his phone, punched in a Montana number.

“Hello.” His son’s cool, assured voice. In the background: basketballs bouncing, sneakers squeaking on hardwood, a coach yelling, “Hands up! Up!”

“Evan. It’s John.”

“Let me get outside—” The noise faded. “We got these emails, pictures of Gwen.”

“I’m close, Evan.”

“You are?”

“You can’t tell the Murphys.”

“Why?”

“Promise you won’t. Not yet.”

“Okay. I promise. Is it the Shabaab who have them?”

“No. Which is good. I can’t tell you much, but I’m hopeful. It’s nighttime here, past midnight, and I’m hoping to get a look at them tonight. They’re in Somalia.”

“Like a raid?”

“Not exactly. I’m going in light—” An epic understatement. “Light and fast.”

“But you have backup—”

Wells smiled. Backup wasn’t exactly top-secret jargon, but he still enjoyed hearing the word from his peacenik son. “All the backup I need. Langley knows what I’m doing. They’re good with having me here. If I can’t get them out tonight, the agency and the FBI will probably reach out to the kidnappers to make a deal. Or they may bring the big guns for a rescue. Either way, at that point the Murphys and the other families will be told.” Wells was keeping Scott Thompson’s death to himself. Evan didn’t need to know about it yet.

“But right now, tonight, you’re going in alone? I mean, no other Americans with you? Not even the Kenyans?”

That’s my boy. Evan had focused on the very fact that Wells was trying to obscure. Wells wished he could explain that he had a member of the Kenyan constabulary with him, hooded and handcuffed and ready to broil.

“I’ll have eyes on me.” Or, technically speaking, optics. “It’ll be fine.”

“But it might not be, right? That’s why you called? In case it’s not. To say good-bye. Tell me again you’re sorry you were gone all those years. Give me a chance to say I’m sorry, too, for frosting you how I did. Oh Dad, I’m so glad we got to talk. Me too, son. Don’t get killed, Dad. I won’t, son. But if I do, I promise you’ll be the last thing I think of. A single tear rolls down both our cheeks. Cut.”

Wells didn’t know whether the irony was real or faux, a cover for deeper feelings that Evan couldn’t talk about yet. He did know that his son had just guaranteed that the word love would be found nowhere in the rest of this conversation. Yet Wells couldn’t blame him. They were strangers to each other. Wells couldn’t make them father and son in a few days, no matter what he did.

“I called to give you a heads-up. Good news coming. And work on that jumper. Your release has a hitch. You can get away with that in high school, not college.” In truth, the kid’s shot had looked smooth as silk the one and only time Wells had seen it.

“Thought you didn’t know anything about basketball.”

“As much as you know about special ops. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“A conquering hero.”

“I see a beautiful friendship coming. I’ll give the Langley tour. Nonclassified areas only, of course.”

“I get it, okay. That you’re only over there because I asked.”

“Wrong again, Evan. I’m not here for you. Or even the volunteers.”

“Why, then?”

“What Hilary said about Everest. Because it’s there.” Because this is all I do. Or ever will. Because if you take more than a few steps, you can never turn back. That’s what they don’t tell you at the Farm. Maybe they know it wouldn’t matter, that anyone ready to walk this path wouldn’t listen. Or maybe they don’t want you to know.

He’d have that conversation with Evan another day. Or never.

“And I’m not saying that so you won’t blame yourself if something happens to me. I’m saying it because it’s the truth. All right?”

“All right.”

Wells saw the dirt bike ahead. “Gotta go, Evan.”

“One last thing. Serious now.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t understand you. Don’t understand the Muslim thing. Or a lot of what you’ve done. But it’s time for me to stop pretending that I don’t want to hear about it.”

“When I get home. We’ll have time.”

“I’d like that. Don’t get killed, John.”

—

A gift Wells hadn’t expected.

He pulled up beside the bike. He closed his eyes and let himself feel nothing but the clean happiness in his heart. It might not sound like much, this irony-laden call. But after what had happened the year before in Missoula, it was a Hallmark card. He had a chance for a relationship with his son.

First he had to stay alive. And bring home the hostages. Evan’s goodwill would be fleeting if he survived and they didn’t. He imagined that conversation: Trust me, son, it happens. Best intentions and all that. Ever heard of the Bay of Pigs? Anyway, still hoping for a chat . . .

—

No. He could die tonight if he got them out safely, but never the reverse. He strapped the shotgun to his chest, his pack to his back. He grabbed a jerrican and slopped gas into the bike’s tank. These dirt bikes held four gallons at most. Even on pavement their full-tank range was under two hundred miles. In this trackless wild, Wells would be lucky to get one-fifty. Which would have to be enough.

With the tank full, Wells heaved the jerrican into the scrub. He grabbed the second can and circled the Cruiser at a radius of about eight feet, pouring out gasoline. When the can grew light in his hand, he poured the last of the gas into a puddle, stepped back, and flicked his lighter to the rainbow pool. A lustrous circle of flames swept into the night as Wells ran for the bike.

The blaze was a diversion, a gaudy trick. It would stop his pursuers temporarily as they focused on the Cruiser and the man inside. Under his hood Mark was shouting now, no doubt panicked by the heat. Wells heard him even through the Toyota’s closed windows. The worst night of the cop’s life. But he’d live.

Wells heard an engine rumbling behind the hill to the west. At least one vehicle had passed the T junction. Fortunately, the hill kept Wells hidden for now. He mounted the bike, started up. The engine rumbled to life. Wells turned away from the road and double-toed the bike into third gear to keep the noise down. He bumped along the faint track that followed a dry streambed south to the camp.

He planned to ride to the camp and steal an AK and all the magazines he could carry. Then he’d hole up. If he heard the Kenyans getting close, he’d take off again, dare them to chase him through the scrub into Somalia. Otherwise, he’d sit tight. Silence was his ultimate ally. The camp was only three miles from the road, but without the vultures as signposts it was invisible to anyone who wasn’t on top of it.

With the Somali border so close, Wells hoped the cop and his other pursuers might give up the chase when they got to Mark, bring him back to Bakafi instead. The Kenyan police didn’t have the equipment to track him at night. The closest major GSU station was in Garissa, well over a hundred miles away. Instead of trying to catch a crazy mzungu in the dark, the cops could bring reinforcements in the morning to sweep the area. They might even ask the army for help.

Wells had landed at Jomo Kenyatta International in Nairobi less than three days before. He couldn’t remember a mission turning upside down as quickly as this one. But if he rescued the hostages, no one would care about the trouble he’d caused. He hadn’t killed Mark, and he’d uncovered enough evidence against James Thompson that Thompson’s own problems would trump any revenge he might want. The story would have a happy ending, Scott Thompson’s demise notwithstanding. And everyone loved happy endings, Duto most of all.

As the late and unlamented Al Davis liked to say, Just win, baby.

Five minutes later, Wells reached the little rise that overlooked the camp. He didn’t know why he was surprised to see the hyenas. He’d been so focused on escaping the Kenyans, he’d forgotten them somehow. They hadn’t forgotten him, though. They were awake. Maybe they were nocturnal as a rule. Maybe the bike had roused them. They looked at him with their heads cocked. Wells felt almost that they were annoyed with him, like he was a delivery guy who’d accidentally shown up at the wrong house, crashed a party. He knew he was projecting, but he couldn’t help himself. A half-dozen of the beasts lay beside the third hut. Another group rested near the fourth hut, at the far end of the camp. The big one, the two-hundred-pound alpha, stood in the center of the camp, where he’d been when Wells had arrived that afternoon. The corpse he’d been eating at the time was almost gone. A long white bone, probably a femur, lay beside his front paws. A few feet away was a half-eaten rib cage, crunched like chicken wings at a sports bar. The bodies of the White Men whom Wells and Wilfred had shot had been pawed at and torn open. Their AKs, the reason Wells had come, lay atop the corpses. The hyenas had torn the rifles’ straps but left the AKs themselves alone. Wells felt a sort of shame for the corpses, for what would happen when the hyenas grew hungry again. Even from a hundred meters away, the stench seeped over him.

The lion was nowhere in sight. Wells figured the hyenas had run him off. Whatever their reputation as weaklings, they seemed firmly in control tonight. He wanted to put the bike into gear, ride a hundred miles from this mess. But he needed an AK and a couple hundred rounds to have any chance against Little Wizard. The Glock was useless past thirty or forty meters. With an assault rifle that could give him a couple hundred meters of space and the right firing hole and plenty of ammo, and with the Reaper watching his back, he could play one-against-fifty long enough to make Wizard pay attention. A lot of ifs, but he’d have the advantage of surprise. And drone strikes unnerved even the boldest fighters.

“Tell you what, boys,” Wells yelled down the hill. “I’ll take what I need and go. Toodeloo and all that. Won’t even know I was here. What do you say?”

As an answer, the big guy spread his jaws wide, picked up the femur. He crunched it in half as casually as Wells breaking a stick over his knee. He chewed noisily for a few seconds, tilted his big ugly head, dropped what was left of the bone from his mouth. Pieces of femur fell out. He bent his head and ran his tongue over the biggest shred like a kid licking an ice cream cone. Wells understood now why Africans hated these beasts. They seemed almost intentionally disrespectful.

Wells feared giving away his position to the Kenyans up the track, but he had to try to rattle the hyenas. He revved the dirt bike’s engine for a few seconds. The alpha male took a half-step back, but no more. Two others stood up. Wells wondered if they would be bold enough to attack the bike. Animals naturally feared objects they didn’t know. And even in packs, smaller predators rarely attacked larger beasts. They knew instinctively that the bigger animal would kill several of them even if they succeeded in taking him down.

But Wells wasn’t sure these hyenas were thinking of him as predator anymore. In their minds, they’d driven him off once already. They’d spent the day developing a taste for human flesh that under normal circumstances they never would have known. They’d learned that these strange two-legged creatures were filled with delicious meat and marrow like every other animal. They were holding off only because they weren’t sure how much damage he could do to them. If they decided he wasn’t a threat, they would come at him. Wells wasn’t at all sure that he could ride fast enough in the dark to escape them.

Two more hyenas stood.

“Tried to play nice. You wouldn’t listen. Some hyenas you just can’t reach.” Wells spread his arms wide and howled at the black clouds above with the gusto of a D-list actor desperate for the role of Werewolf #2. Without waiting to see how the hyenas reacted, he grabbed the handlebars and poured on the gas as he came down the hill.

The hyenas stood now. They chirped and cackled at one another, curious, almost alien sounds that grew more intense as Wells closed in. The alpha stood apart from the rest, his tail unfurled straight behind him, his eyes on this legless man-beast coming at him. The ground was hard-packed dirt, and Wells rode confidently. He twisted his handlebars and came straight at the big guy. Who tilted his head high and opened his bloody muzzle and screamed—no other word would do—screamed his frustration at the dark heavens above. He loped sideways toward the third hut, the rest of the pack, tracking Wells with his eyes. This isn’t over, and don’t think it is . . . For a creature that couldn’t speak, the hyena communicated clearly enough.

Wells stopped beside one of the White Men he’d killed that afternoon. Up close the corpse was deeply compromised, pink grooves carved into its black skin, one eye gone, its guts open and stinking of ordure and covered with flies. Another hyena took up the alpha’s cry now, and another. Step away. That meat is ours . . . Wells closed his mouth against the flies, leaned over, reached down, wishing for gloves and a kerchief, wishing for a Biosafety Level IV protective suit. He pulled the rifle away from the corpse—

The alpha’s keening scream rose another octave and he lowered his head and charged—

Wells raised the AK, slipped his left hand under the barrel, found the trigger guard, slid his right index finger inside—

The hyena bounded at him, a low black streak in the night. Another followed, and another—

Wells tucked in his elbow to brace the rifle and squeezed the trigger, knowing that the safety had to be off, he’d seen the kid about to fire this afternoon. He was in a terrible firing position, bent over the bike, aiming with his off hand, no time to set himself. The rifle danced in his hands, but Wells kept his finger on the trigger and the hyena was so close that he almost couldn’t miss. The hyena staggered and kept coming, and then the whole top of its head exploded and it took one more step and collapsed. Wells laid off the trigger just long enough to make sure the AK didn’t jam and shifted to the next hyena, this one smaller but coming faster. He missed, shooting behind the animal. The hyena was only three steps away now, its mouth open, lips drawn back, ready to pounce. Wells twisted the rifle to the right, kept shooting. Chunks of flesh spurted out of the beast’s belly, eruptions of blood and sinew and muscle. The animal took another half-step and tumbled and lay on its side gasping and dying. Wells was already focused on the next hyena. He was catching up with their speed. This one he took out twenty feet away, blowing open its jaw so it flopped down onto its back in agony. Wells shot it until it stopped moving. No mercy in these rounds, hate only. Two more hyenas moved toward him but turned away when they saw what had happened to their betters. They ran now, howling in fear. The rest of the pack followed, disappearing into the darkness.

Wells would have killed them all if he could, shot them down nobly or not. These corpse-devouring beasts filled him with an ugly fury. But they would be dangerous to men no more. They would skulk the scrub in fear and leave the two-legged animals to invent their own terrors. Now Wells, too, had to flee. The shots and screams had surely reached the road. He didn’t know if the Kenyans would chase him, but he couldn’t chance staying here. He liberated the corpses of their ammunition, trying not to hear the laughing voice in his head calling hyenaman hyenaman, and rode over the trackless scrub. East. To Somalia.