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.”
9
DADAAB
Wells didn’t like what he was about to do. It felt sneaky and cheap and—for lack
of a more politically correct word—unmanly. With a few days and help from the bright boys at the National Security Agency, he might have found a high-tech way to locate James Thompson’s missing phone. But Wells couldn’t wait. He was stuck with Plan B.
He hoped Thompson liked coffee.
—
The night before, Thompson had been predictably unhappy when Wells explained that he was certain the hostages were in the Ifo 2 camp and that he planned to raid it as soon as possible.
“You haven’t even explained why you think they’re there.”
“That goes to sources and methods, Mr. Thompson.” A rare bit of agency jargon that Wells liked. Especially in this case.
“You’ve been in Dadaab twelve hours. What sources could you possibly have?”
A logical objection, one Wells ignored. “I have a very specific location.”
“That’s my nephew, my volunteers. Your sources and methods are wrong. If they even exist. I’m telling you they’re not in Ifo 2. The police would find them.”
“You said yourself Kenyan cops aren’t exactly brilliant.”
“So you’re planning to what? Drag them out. Without the police backing you up. You think the Somalis are going to stand by and watch while you shoot up the place?”
“I’m not going to shoot up the place. Mr. Thompson, I’m happy to talk this over with you face-to-face. Show you the intel, sat photos, forensic work, et cetera. You’re not convinced, I’ll reconsider. But it has to be tomorrow morning. My men and I are going in at noon.”
“Your men? Where’d they come from?”
“Sources and methods.”
“Please stop saying that. It’s meaningless. Anyway, what kind of commando attacks in broad daylight?”
Another point for Thompson. “Why they’ll never expect it.”
“What if I told you that I’ve just received a credible ransom demand and I’m sure the hostages are nowhere near that camp?”
“I’d say the timing’s awfully convenient. And I’ve got to trust my own intel.”
“Give me Moss.”
Wells handed over the phone. “I told him he was being rash . . . I’m not the one who said he could come, Jim. You did . . . I can tell you he’s not listening to me . . .” She gave the phone back to Wells.
“I want to talk you out of this foolishness, I have to come to Dadaab tomorrow morning,” Thompson said.
“Correct.”
“I’ll take the first plane I can. And I’ll expect you to be on it with me when I go back to Nairobi. And then you’re going home. I don’t care who you are.”
“Moss and I will pick you up.”
“Promise me you won’t do anything before then.”
“Agreed. Over and out.”
—
The next morning, Wells had just finished his dawn prayers when his phone rang. “You still serious about this?” Thompson said without preamble.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be in the air in five minutes. Should be in Dadaab around seven a.m.”
“We’ll be there. With a thermos of hot coffee, plenty of milk and sugar.”
“First smart thing you’ve said since we met.”
Dadaab’s airport was a fenced strip of pockmarked runway, with a one-room concrete building for a terminal. A wind sock at the far end served in place of a control tower. North of the runway, an old Dash-8 listed over its front wheels, paint peeling. Wells doubted it could taxi, much less get airborne. A GSU officer smoked in front of the terminal, his AK tossed over his shoulder.
“No flights today.”
“We have a charter. A friend coming in a few minutes,” Moss said.
“He has permits?”
“Of course.”
“No permits, he can’t stay.”
Wells wondered again why the GSU seemed so much more interested in keeping people out of Dadaab than finding the volunteers. But this officer wasn’t the man to ask. Instead Wells followed Moss around the building as a plane rumbled in the distance. “Right on time,” Moss said.
A boy of six or so ran from a cluster of huts south of the fence. He ducked through a hole in the wire and ran to them, his arms outstretched like wings.
“De plane, boss, de plane,” he yelled when he got close.
“Our very own Tattoo,” Wells said.
“I don’t know who taught him that, but he does it whenever a plane comes in,” Moss said. “Hey, Freddy,” she yelled.
“Hey, hot mama.” The boy wore a blue T-shirt imprinted with the words San Diego Yacht Club. He ran to Wells and said, “My name is Prince Charles, what is your name? My name is Prince Charles, de plane, boss, de plane—” The speech was delivered so fast it was almost a rap. He gave Wells a desperate grin that reminded Wells of the puppies at the North Conway animal shelter, the ones that still believed in human kindness. “Fifty shillings, boss.”
“No fifty shillings, Freddy.”
“Ten shillings, boss.”
“Go on. Back to San Diego.” Wells was surprised to see Moss dig into her pocket, hand the boy a coin. She said something in Swahili. The boy ran off with his arms spread. Moss nodded at the huts. “Have to give him something or whoever’s watching over there will take a stick to him when he gets back.”
“What about when five kids show up? Or five hundred?”
“I know. Solve one problem, create dependency and a bigger one. You have a better solution?”
“My first instinct would be to beat the stuffing out of whoever’s hurting that boy.”
“Then you leave, and he gets paid back tenfold.”
Wells had no good answer. They watched as the plane came in low and slow, a stubby-winged four-seat Cessna 172, the Toyota Corolla of aviation. Simple, cheap, reliable.
“So how’s this going to work, John? You tell Jimmy you want his phone and the truth? And he confesses everything because you’ve asked the question just so.”
“That would be the elegant alternative.”
“I sense you’re not the elegant type. You want to tell me, then?”
“Better if you don’t know.”
The Cessna touched down, bumped over the potholed runway, taxied to a halt fifty feet away. The passenger door swung open. Thompson stepped down, his laptop bag strung over his shoulder. He closed the door, walked toward them. His face was tight and angry. “Let’s go,” he said. “Get this over with.”
—
Wells sat in the back of the Land Cruiser and poured himself a mug of coffee.
“I get one?” Thompson said. “Been up since four.” Wells poured another mug and handed it forward. Thompson took a long swallow. “Hits the spot. Best thing about this country, the coffee.” He drank again. “You use something artificial as a sweetener, John?”
“Just sugar.”
“Because it has kind of a funny aftertaste.”
“I’m not getting that.”
“Strange. Guess I’m tired.” Thompson licked his lips, drank for the third time. “I feel, I don’t feel—” He looked over his shoulder at Wells. “You.”
Thompson’s mouth hung open. His eyes drooped closed. His head hung down and his body slumped forward, deadweight against his seat belt. The mug tipped from his nerveless hands and coffee rushed onto his khakis.
Moss pulled over. “What in the name of all that’s holy just happened?”
“Your Irish comes out when you’re stressed.”
“This was your plan? Tell me you didn’t poison him.”
“He’ll be fine. Sleep twelve hours, maybe a little more, wake up with a headache.” Unless he drank too much. Then he might die.
“What is it?”
“Rohypnol.” Wells had packed the pills in his bag of tricks from New Hampshire. He’d ground up twelve, mixed them into the thermos. Coffee and milk masked their bitter taste. “It’s a sedative, like Valium. Puts you to sleep. Just faster.”
“Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining, John. You carry that stuff aroun
d? Isn’t that the date-rape drug?”
“I don’t plan to rape him. Though you’re welcome to.”
“I thought you were going to talk to him.”
“I am, eventually.” Wells lowered the window, dumped out the thermos. “Let’s go.”
“I hope to God you’re right about this.” Moss slipped the Land Cruiser back into gear and they drove in silence for a while. “What are you going to tell him when he wakes up?”
“By then we should know more.”
“But if you don’t.”
“That he passed out suddenly, that we have no idea why. What’s he going to do, ask for a tox screen at the MSF hospital?”
“He’ll know you’re lying.”
“He won’t be able to prove it, and he can’t touch me anyway. If Shabaab really does have these kids deep in Somalia, there’s not much I can do. I’ll switch passports and disappear. And if something else is going on, if he’s involved somehow, I’ll be the least of his problems.”
“I can’t see you as the least of anyone’s problems.”
—
Wells and Wilfred carried Thompson inside Gwen’s trailer. He was bigger than Wells had realized, two hundred pounds of deadweight. They laid him on his back on Gwen’s bed.
“What happened?” Wilfred said.
“Tell you later.”
“You hit him with mzungu magic.” Wilfred mimed beating drums. “A curse from the ancestral spirits.”
“A curse from Roche.” Wells put two fingers to Thompson’s carotid, picked up a slow, steady pulse, fifty beats a minute. He rummaged through Thompson’s windbreaker, found his passport and international phone. In his pants, a wallet and a local phone. Wells recognized the number taped to the back. This was the legitimate phone.
Wells couldn’t believe Thompson had left the third phone in Nairobi. He’d want it close by. In the laptop bag, he found a computer and a half-dozen Cadbury wrappers. So far the only secret he’d discovered was Thompson’s sweet tooth.
He patted Thompson’s legs down. The man didn’t stir. Wells had the unsettling feeling that he was robbing a corpse. He found nothing. He double-checked the windbreaker—
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