The Night Ranger

23

Another new number on the screen of Wizard’s mobile, the longest he’d ever seen. He let the call go. He couldn’t talk to anyone else. Too many men wanted these wazungu. He couldn’t fight them all. He’d pushed his juju too far. He’d forgotten his name. Little Wizard.

Yet he knew, too, that he couldn’t let the wazungu go, not without getting something for them. He would die with them first. Not only because he needed the ransom money to fight the Ditas. Not only because giving them up would cost him the White Men. Because they belonged together. Magic or fate or Allah had brought them here. Wizard was captive as much as captor. And his hostages had a hostage of their own.

He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want his men to die. He didn’t even want the wazungu to die. If he could find a way out, he would. But he wasn’t letting these three leave for nothing while he waited for the Ditas to attack. They were all in it now.

—

The phone rang again. Muhammad’s number. Which meant the American. Wizard wondered what excuse the man might offer for missing the meeting. He half expected the man to lie, say he’d been there.

“Where were you?”

“English, please,” the man said. “You forget I don’t speak your language.”

“Of course you don’t,” Wizard said in English. “Where were you? I sent men for you.”

“Decided to come to you instead. Service with a smile.”

“I told you last time, I don’ tell you where I live.”

“You don’t have to. I found you.”

“Lying.”

“You know where you keep all those pickups and technicals?”

“Talking nonsense.”

“Past the hill where you have the sentry.”

How could this man know the camp’s layout? Not just the trucks, but the watchman, too.

Wizard didn’t reply, waited for what the mzungu would say next.

“Ever heard the term ‘collateral damage,’ Wizard? Make sure nobody’s standing too close to those technicals. You understand?”

“Crazy.”

“You may feel differently in a minute.” The man hung up.

Wizard stepped out of his hut, waved Waaberi over.

“Nothing new,” Waaberi said. “Yusuf groaning in there like he hurt. Some boys mad about Samatar, saying we should go in there and get them wazungu. Say it past time to kill the one and take the others.”

Wizard didn’t have to ask which one they wanted to kill, or what Waaberi meant by “take.” “That don’t happen, Beri. They get hurt, they no good for ransom. Anybody touches them answers to me.”

“You say so.”

Waaberi spoke out of the corner of his mouth, sullen. They both knew he’d told Wizard that the hostages ought to be locked up, or at least handcuffed. Wizard wondered how many more mistakes Waaberi would let him make.

“Omar or anyone walkie-talkie from out east, Beri?”

“Last check an hour ago. They all clicked in fine. Since then, nothing. You think the Ditas moving?”

“Could be.” Wizard turned to look for Shiny Khalid, ask him if anyone could have followed him back from the border—

To the east, an explosion busted open the night. The earth shook. A gust of flame spurted above the hill at the edge of camp. It bloomed high and flared out in the rain. The camp was silent for a second, shocked, the only noise the fire chafing behind the hill. Then a windmill of motion. Boys ran from their huts in underclothes and socks, yelling: The Ditas coming . . . Shabaab found us . . . Got to be the Americans. Saying we terrorists. Gon’ kill us all . . .

Wizard saw his men were close to melting down, disappearing into the scrub. How could they keep their courage when they didn’t even know what they faced? Until tonight Wizard had convinced them to think of themselves as an elite fighting force. His truest magic. That illusion was fading at the worst possible moment.

“Listen! Now!” Wizard raised his hands. First the Donkeys and then the rest formed a loose half-circle. Even now, twenty or more wore white T-shirts that stuck to their skinny bodies in the rain. The sight gave Wizard hope. “You all listening?”

“We listening,” they grumbled.

“Then listen. Thunder and lightning don’t scare White Men.”

“That no thunder and lightning—” Shiny Khalid said. “That a missile.”

Coward. “Whatever it is, we take care of it together. Like always. Ali and me, we going to check this out. Waaberi, watch the wazungu. Everyone else, weapons ready, but into your huts. Nobody goes anywhere until I say. Whether it five minutes, ten minutes, an hour, nobody. Been much much noise tonight, and it stops now. Done?”

“Done and done,” they said. Some more loudly than others.

Wizard didn’t run. He wanted his men to feel his confidence. He walked. Past the latrines and up the hill. He found disaster. Three of his four technicals were destroyed, blown apart, fires greasing their steel bodies. The stench of burning gasoline hung over the hill. The flames were cooking machine-gun rounds, sending them sizzling and popping into the night. The Rovers were parked apart from the other vehicles and hadn’t been damaged. Yet Wizard hardly cared. He loved the Rovers, sure, but his men couldn’t fight the Ditas without the technicals and their heavy machine guns.

He turned to the sentry on the hill, Donkey Junior. “Anybody hurt?”

“No. All out there.” He pointed east, beyond the flames.

“What you see?”

“Didn’t see nothing. No rocket trail. Just a—” Junior whistled. “Then boom, and the technicals go sideways.” Junior grinned. He was young enough and dumb enough to think of this attack as cool.

“Only one whistle? One explosion?”

“Only one. A big one. Whole hill shake.”

So a bomb, not a missile. A missile could come from anywhere. Even Shabaab had a few. But a bomb had to be dropped from a plane. Which meant the Americans had a drone or a jet overhead. Probably a drone. Wizard would have heard a jet. He could no longer doubt that the Americans had found him. He wondered how. Maybe all the phone calls.

As if the American could read his mind, his phone rang again. This devil. Wizard stepped away from Junior and Ali. He knew the drone might be watching, ready to blast him. He answered anyway.

“You see.”

“I’ll kill you. Coward.”

“You’re hurting my feelings, Wizard.”

“Hiding in Kenya. Come here, I show you how to fight. Cut you up.”

“I told you I’m here.”

“I don’ believe you.”

“Then get yourself to the other side of the camp. The southwest corner. Sentry there will tell you different.”

The man hung up, leaving Wizard cursing. He snapped his phone away. “Come on. Going to Two-Finger Hussein.”

Ali turned to walk back down the hill toward camp.

“No.” Wizard couldn’t face more questions from Waaberi. The best alternative to walking through was a footpath three-quarters of a kilometer south that paralleled the camp for its entire length.

“Ditas out there, Wizard.”

“Now, Ali.” Wizard tapped Donkey Junior’s shoulder.

“Me, too?”

“You got nothing left to watch.”

—

They marched single-file through low scrub, Wizard leading, moving as fast as he could without running. The rain had picked up again and his feet sank into the mud. Water sopped through Wizard’s T-shirt and khakis and even snuck into his black leather boots. He’d bought them in a market in Garissa months before after a successful smuggling run, winding up with a packet of thousand-shilling notes too thick to fit in his pocket. Everything had seemed easy that day. Now he was slogging through a storm, his technicals burning. He couldn’t even imagine what he’d find ahead. He kept his hand on the butt of his pistol.

He had a flashlight but he didn’t bother to use it. He knew each twist of this path. He’d walked the land around here too many times to count. He wondered if the drone was tracking him. He wanted to believe it had dropped its bomb and flown off. But most likely it was circling in the clouds, waiting and watching. Donkey Junior might think that Wizard’s juju could stop a bomb big enough to blow up three technicals at once. Wizard knew better.

Ten minutes. The path rose. Wizard saw the tops of the two poles, the ragged tarp between them. But Hussein, the sentry, was gone. He raised a palm, stopped. He squatted low and crab-walked ahead a few meters and whistled, a single short note. No answer. Again. He heard rustling and grunting from under the tarp. He stepped forward and saw a man who might have been Hussein. The sentry’s body twisted side to side. His arms were tied behind his back, his legs pulled together, his head cut off—

Head cut off? No. Yet Wizard saw it for himself, a body with no head and still moving. No wonder the man had killed Muhammad and the other three so easily. He was a true-born devil. He’d made a zombie of Hussein. Wizard went to his knees, drew his pistol, gripped it in both hands to hide the shaking.

Ali came beside him and Wizard pointed his pistol at the zombie. Ali fell to his knees and mumbled the Shahada, the Muslim creed: There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger . . . About the only Arabic that Wizard knew. He joined with Ali, for all the good the words might do.

Donkey Junior stepped forward. “What you doing?”

“Hush.”

“How come we don’t get him? Get that hood off him.”

Soon as Wizard heard the word, he knew Junior was right. The American had cuffed Hussein’s arms and legs together, thrown a hood on his head, which was on top of his neck where it belonged. Wizard’s imagination had tricked him. Too much had happened this night.

“What you think, he don’t have a head?” Junior said. “How he goin’ move like that with no head?”

“Shut your mouth. You two stay here. Donkey, you cover me. Ali, you watch down the hill.”

He stood, walked to Hussein straight and true. If the American was close enough to pop, Wizard would take his chances. He died, maybe Ali or Donkey Junior would revenge him. Anything would be better than feeling so foolish. This man killing his soldiers, bombing his technicals, now showing up here, playing with him. Had to stop.

Hussein’s wrists and ankles were cuffed with thin strips of plastic. His AK lay beside him, the magazine gone. Wizard sliced Hussein’s legs free, flipped him onto his back, sat him up, pulled off his hood, not too gently. Hussein’s eyes bulged. “Wizard.” His voice was raspy and soft, like it hurt him to talk. “Hamdulillah”—thanks be to God—“it’s you, this man come from nowhere and choke me, I wake up with a hood on me, can’t hardly breathe—”

Wizard squeezed Hussein’s cheeks to shut him up. “Some sentry. Can’t see a white man in the middle of the night.”

“I hear the explosion, look back a second—”

“A second—”

“His hands around my neck and I can’t do nothing. He bigger than Ali, strong, move quick—”

Wizard wanted to pull his pistol, shoot the sky from frustration. He’d only be wasting rounds. He grabbed Hussein’s arms, pulled him up, cut his hands free. “Go on back to camp. Tell Waaberi we over here, we back soon.” He shoved Hussein toward the huts, turned, looked out into the night. The mzungu was out there. Close. Wizard scanned down the hill to the south, left to right, east to west, looking for motion, white skin, anything. He turned, looked back to camp. The mzungu would need big courage to hide there, so close to the enemy. But this American seemed to do what he liked.

Wizard didn’t see him. The rain was too hard, the night too dark.

He wasn’t even surprised when his phone chimed.

—

“You see me, Wizard? ’Cause I see you.”

Wizard would have blown the whole hill up, and himself with it, to make this voice in his ear go away.

“I gon’ find you.”

“Holding your pistol, wearing that black T-shirt. How come you wear black and all your men wear white? That a racial thing?”

“Say all you like, mzungu. Don’ change I got something you want.”

“Let them go. Get back to smuggling sugar, whatever. This is too big for you.”

“You joking. I let them go, that bird drop an egg and no more Wizard.”

“Let them walk, you can disappear. Your men, too. I promise.”

Wizard raised a hand to the sky. “Mzungu promises worth not even one drop of rain.”

“I could have put that bomb in the middle of your camp. I could have killed that sentry. I could open up on you right now. I’m keeping the body count down.”

“Should have, then.”

“I know you want to get them to their families, Wizard. I know they’re not for sale to the highest bidder.”

“How you know that?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m your best chance. In twelve hours, this will be nothing but rubble. I can save you, but you have to let them go.”

“You can’t save me, mzungu. You think you see, but you don’t see nothing. They killed one my men.”

Pause. “Who killed who? And how?”

“Tried to run tonight, attacked they guard.”

“You would have done the same.”

“My soldiers see it different.”

“Who’s in charge? You or them?”

Wizard couldn’t figure what to make of this man. “Talking peace now. After you killed four my men?”

“Self-defense.”

“This talk talk talk. I need money. Ransom. No more talk. I want to see you now. Or else I go back to my hut, wait for you to attack. Everybody got to die sometime.”

“If I come out. You won’t shoot me.”

Wizard felt his lips spread into a smile. “Gon’ have to take that chance, mzungu.”