The Night Ranger jw-7

by Alex Berenson

  “I meant no disrespect.”

  “I’m not al-Shabaab. I took you for money. I want to get it and send you back where you belong. But I could sell you to them if you wish. Lots of people want to meet you. Maybe you see all of Somalia. Would you like that?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Tomorrow morning we take pictures. And email addresses and phone numbers to reach your families.” He handed Owen the flashlight, closed the door, a tin sheet with a half-dozen holes punched for air. They sat in silence as his footsteps faded.

  Hailey spoke first. “It makes sense now, the last place.”

  Gwen couldn’t see how anything made sense. She lay down and closed her eyes and exhaled softly, all the sadness in the world in that puff of air. Hailey seemed to understand. She took Gwen’s hand in her own. Her palm was warm and sweaty and sweet.

  “How do you mean?” Owen said.

  “I mean, the Joker’s mask, getting chained up, it felt like overkill. You know, the hoods were awful. But why didn’t they just beat us? It was all this other stuff instead. Like they knew they couldn’t hurt us physically, so they were looking for other ways to scare us. They knew they were going to set us free and they wanted to impress us.”

  Gwen hadn’t felt that way at the time, but she saw the truth of what Hailey said. “Scott wanted us to have a crazy story to tell when we got back to Dadaab,” she said.

  “Whereas this guy is the real thing,” Owen said. “Doesn’t waste time on making threats. Doesn’t need to. We just watched him kill our friend. Somebody he thinks was our friend, anyway.”

  “Our ex-friend,” Hailey said. Gwen felt the jittery laughter rising in her and didn’t fight it, because what better way to describe Scott? Ex-friend, ex-boyfriend, ex-human. Hailey squeezed her hand and the giggles passed.

  “Bet he thought it was a big prank,” Hailey said.

  “A dumb hazing stunt that went too far,” Owen said.

  Then Gwen put the last piece together. “But it wasn’t his idea. James.”

  “What about James?” Owen said.

  “He did this.”

  “You think the CEO of WorldCares set us up to get kidnapped?”

  “She’s right,” Hailey said. “Think it through. Scott wouldn’t have given himself to Suggs without a guarantee he could get out. He wasn’t that crazy. And doesn’t James have that book coming out? We disappear for a couple weeks, come back, we’re all telling this story.”

  “We got kidnapped for his book?” Gwen said.

  They lay in silence, contemplating James Thompson.

  —

  “Before, we were protected, even if we didn’t know it,” Owen said a few minutes later. “No more.”

  “Maybe James set this up, too,” Hailey said.

  “And got his nephew killed? No, they were going to end it. Bring us back to Dadaab. Until this Wizard guy heard about us.”

  “How? If the Kenyan police didn’t?”

  “I’ll bet he knows what’s going on around here better than the cops. Yeah, they heard, came for us, took out Suggs and the Joker, now we’re here.”

  “Now we’re here,” Hailey said.

  “What I’m wondering, he said lots of people are looking for us.”

  “No,” Gwen said. “He said lots of people want to meet us.”

  “You’re right,” Owen said, drawing out the word like he couldn’t believe it. “What I’m wondering, what did he mean by that?”

  “Hopefully, some SEALs who will helicopter in, come get us,” Gwen said. She could almost see them, wraparound sunglasses and tight T-shirts. “That would be ideal. I’d be glad to thank them. However they liked.”

  “Try not to go back to being idiot Gwen,” Hailey said.

  Gwen felt a flush spread up her neck. She was amazed that she had the energy in this place to care about a casual insult. But she did. She didn’t want to go back to being idiot Gwen.

  “Maybe,” Owen said. “Maybe our families have made so much noise that the Army, the CIA, they’re on the hunt. I don’t know how fast that could happen. What I’m worried about is, these guys took us out of Kenya. What if somebody grabs us from them, brings us another hundred miles into Somalia? And what if the next group is Shabaab, and they don’t want to ransom us, they want to hold us forever for the publicity?”

  “That Wizard guy looks like he can handle himself,” Hailey said.

  “Suggs and the Joker thought so, too.”

  “We can’t do anything about it anyway,” Gwen said.

  “Maybe.”

  “You think—”

  “I think even if there’s a real risk, we see a chance to grab one of those Range Rovers we’ve got to go for it.”

  “Try to escape? From an armed camp in Somalia?”

  “If we see a chance. That’s all I’m saying. Doing nothing isn’t always the safest.”

  “We don’t know the roads,” Gwen said. “We don’t know if there are any roads. These guys will shoot us if we make trouble. Wizard already proved it.”

  “I’ll bet we’re no more than fifty miles from Kenya. Less. We weren’t in the cars that long.” Owen turned the flashlight on both of them and then on himself. He looked tired, worn, his skin stretched tight over his face. Gwen wondered how much weight they’d all lost. “Say I’m wrong, there’s no chance that anyone else is going to take us. We’re still stuck here. We got kidnapped barely a week ago and none of us is holding up that great. You want this to go a month? Six months?”

  “Our families—”

  “They can spend every dime they have, every dime these guys ask for, and there’s no guarantees anybody’s going to let us go. Some of these kidnappings go on for years. Promise me this. When they let us go to the toilet, get food, whatever, we’ll all do some recon.”

  “Recon.”

  “Figure out where they keep their weapons—”

  “I know what it means, Owen.”

  “If phones work here, Kenyan or Somali. Do they have dogs? Motorbikes? Stuff like that.”

  Gwen couldn’t listen anymore. Like they could possibly get out of here on their own. She couldn’t bear the thought of being held for years, either. She closed her eyes, squeezed Hailey’s hand, tried to dream of soldiers in helicopters flying low over the dusty red plains.

  —

  She woke to find Wizard nudging her foot with his own. This morning he wore sunglasses to go with his black T-shirt and boots. “Picture time.” He was so young, yet he spoke with absolute command. She propped herself against the wall. He produced a cell phone and snapped pictures of her and Hailey and Owen. They gave him their email addresses and parents’ phone numbers and he left.

  “You think there’s an Internet connection around here?” Hailey said.

  “Let’s hope,” Owen said. “He emails from this camp, I’ll bet the CIA can trace it in about ten seconds.”

  “He’s too smart for that,” Gwen said.

  “He’s a kid playing at being a soldier. Probably can’t even read.”

  “Scott talked down to him, too,” Hailey said. Owen had no answer for that.

  Gwen’s bladder was uncomfortably full. She didn’t want to leave the hut, but she pulled on the sweat suit. It was cheap and scratchy. She would have sold her soul for a hot shower and a pair of brand-new undies and Lulu yoga pants.

  The guard slumped on the chair outside was maybe seventeen. “Toilet,” Gwen said. “Latrine.” He pointed left. Gwen shielded her eyes, walked into the rising sun. The sky was mostly blue but the air heavy and moist, an unsettling combination. The camp felt dingy and temporary. Gwen didn’t see anyone older than twenty-five. Maybe Owen was right. If the Shabaab attacked, how could these guys defend them?

  Something else bugged her, too. Women. There weren’t any. Maybe they were hiding somewhere, but Gwen didn’t see any high walls and all the huts looked the same. Maybe the ones with wives had sent them to Dadaab. Maybe they raided the local villages when they wanted women. Or maybe they
just did without. And got horny. A couple soldiers stared at her like she was walking around in a bikini, not a sweat suit. Not that they said a word, but she didn’t feel great about being one of two women in a camp filled with armed men. Nothing to do with the fact that they were African, either. At least, she didn’t think so. Black, white, whatever, groups of guys this age could get ugly, sometimes without much warning.

  She wondered again if Owen was right. At least she ought to try to work out the camp layout, like he’d suggested. Recon. It sounded good. A serious word. A professional word. She left the main camp area, walked to the latrines, three sheds of trash wood and burlap.

  Up close, the smell overwhelmed her, sun-baked excrement and urine, eye-burning, throat-gagging. She recognized the odor from the night before. So they’d brought her along this path. Gwen decided to go past the sheds, see if she could find where the vehicles were kept. If anyone caught her, she would say she’d decided not to use the toilets, the smell had been too much. She double-checked to be sure no one was watching her and trotted past the sheds, away from the main camp. The path narrowed and curved around a low hill. A hundred yards on, a man sat on a lawn chair at the top of the hill. A floppy hat protected him from the sun. A rifle and binoculars were slung over the chair. As she watched, the man stood, shielded his eyes, took the binoculars and carefully surveyed the horizon from north to south.

  Gwen guessed the Range Rovers were on the other side of the hill. But she decided not to try to see them. She’d pushed her luck far enough. The sentry wouldn’t let her by, and she’d be in trouble if he spotted her. She’d already stayed longer than she’d intended. She turned back, walked quickly to the latrines. She realized something else, too. Owen’s instinct that the camp faced a serious threat of attack seemed right. Why else post a sentry facing east—toward Somalia, not Kenya?

  She didn’t notice the man beside the shed until she was a step away. He wore a torn T-shirt and green cargo pants with a big oil stain down one leg. Gwen hoped it was an oil stain, anyway. He was broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, with meaty hands and thick shoulders. All the weight training in the world couldn’t build muscles like his, but half the men in Africa seemed to have been born with them.

  He raised a hand in a gesture that obviously meant stop. Gwen stopped, wished she hadn’t. She waved her hand in front of her nose like she was a nineteenth-century heroine with the vapors. “I couldn’t take the smell, you know, it’s so stinky—” She was jabbering now, hoping to drown him in a stream of English he didn’t understand. “I should probably get back to my hut, I have decorating to do—”

  She stepped past him. He reached for her arm, pulled her close. She couldn’t help herself, she screamed—

  —

  Ten minutes later, she sat cross-legged in a half-built hut on the western edge of the compound. Today’s life lesson: She wasn’t cut out to be a secret agent. Her scream had brought men running. After some shouting and pointing, they’d led her back to the camp and the hut she shared with Owen and Hailey. Then they’d dragged her out again without explanation and dumped her here. This side of the camp was even more run-down than the eastern half. Two scrawny goats nosed at a pile of trash outside her hut. The hut next to this one seemed to have been converted into a repair shop for the dirt bikes these guys liked. At least two bikes were in the hut, and she’d seen a scrawny boy on his back, tinkering with an exhaust pipe. Now an engine turned over, came briefly to life, and stalled out. Even without knowing Swahili, she understood the curses that followed.

  The man who’d dragged her here stepped into the hut. He was chewing that stuff the Somalis liked. Khat, or miraa, whatever they called it. It looked like parsley to Gwen, but they couldn’t get enough of it.

  “Where’s Wizard? Is Wizard coming?” She knew she sounded pathetic. Begging for him like a first-grader asking for her dad. If her dad were a Somali bandit and murderer. She didn’t know why she was putting so much trust in the guy. Probably because he was in charge. At this moment she feared chaos more than anything. Maybe she just liked saying Wizard, like the word itself was magic.

  The Somali twirled his finger. Gwen wasn’t sure whether the motion meant he’s not in camp or he’s busy or something else. She leaned against the wall, closed her eyes. A few minutes later, she felt her foot being nudged. Somali men seemed to like foot-nudging as a way to avoid more substantial contact with women.

  Gwen opened her eyes. Her captor pulled a rubber-banded packet of leaves and stems from his pants. He removed the bands, stuffed his mouth full of leaves. “Miraa.”

  “Everybody loves miraa.”

  “Miraa.” He pointed at her, then mimed putting a handful of stems in his mouth.

  “You want me to try some.” She pointed at her own mouth. He nodded. “That’s very generous, I always wanted to chew grass out of someone’s pants pocket, but I think I’ll pass—”

  He selected a chunk of leaves.

  “No, see, I’m saying nada—”

  He squatted beside her, smiled. His cheeks bulged like a chipmunk’s. And Gwen decided, screw it. What was she worried about? That she’d wind up hooked? It was a leaf. Not exactly meth. And at this point she’d be happy if she lived long enough to get addicted.

  She stuffed the leaves in her mouth between her cheek and her jaw. Back home she’d had a reputation for being a bit of a germophobe. Maybe more than a bit. Once, after she refused to eat at a barbecue at his frat, Scott had told her she had OCD. She hadn’t even known what the letters meant. She looked it up later. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Maybe a little. The joke was on him, though. He was dead, and she was sitting with a mouthful of addictive parsley, her head buzzing like she’d just had ten cups of the world’s strongest coffee—

  “Hey. It works.”

  “Miraa.”

  “Dah-duh-duh-dah-dah.” The McDonald’s theme song. “I’m loving it.” She was, too. Uppers were her drugs of choice. Booze and pot bored her. She didn’t see the point of sitting on a couch giggling like an idiot, or getting drunk and weepy and ending the night with the spins. She wanted to stay out all night dancing, see the world in hypercolor. Every few weeks she bought pills from her friends with ADD, which everyone knew was just an excuse to get Ritalin prescriptions. This miraa was a nice solid stimulant, north of nicotine but south of coke. She felt focused, awake, without the crawly feeling Ritalin gave her.

  The best part was that the stuff made time hurry by. For an hour, maybe more, she did nothing but track the movements of the tiny lizards running along the creases of the hut. They were fascinating.

  When Wizard showed up, she felt she was seeing an old friend. He sat beside her. “You like the miraa? Mostly Somali women don’t do this.”

  “Mostly I don’t wear sweats when it’s a hundred degrees.”

  He handed her a water bottle. “Drink. Easy to forget when you’re chewing.” She realized as he said the words that she was insufferably hot, her face flushed and sweaty. She drank deep, finished the bottle. He gave her another. “What your name?”

  “Gwen. Gwen Murphy. Of the Missoula Murphys.” She spat. “Are you actually a wizard?”

  “They call me that because no one can kill me. I was in Mogadishu and they shot me in the belly, and I made the bullet escape without hurting me. Only a little blood.” He lifted his shirt to show her the scar.

  “Now you think you can’t die?”

  “My men think I can’t die.”

  “Cool.”

  “I’ll take you back to your friends, but first I must ask, what were you doing out there?”

  “Lost. I’m not very smart.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Ask anyone who knows me.”

  “Let me tell you again. If I want to punish you, I let you leave. You don’t have to fear anyone here. My men do what I say.”

  “Always?”

  “Always.” That confidence. “They’ll never touch you. But outside here, if they find you—”
>
  “Okay. I believe.” She did, too. She wanted to ask him about the sentry, Owen’s theory about the threat to the camp, but she couldn’t figure out how.

  “Your family wants you to give personal information for them. Something secret, to prove the photo is you.”

  My family. He’s emailed them. They know I’m alive. “Like what?”

  “Anything. As long as it’s a secret between you and them.”

  “Tell them, tell them when I was little I had a cat named Oscar.”

  “Oscar?”

  “O-S-C-A-R. He was black and white.”

  Wizard grabbed his phone, pecked away on the keypad. “Oscar. Black and white.” Gwen wondered if he was sending a text or just making a note. When he was done, he scrolled through menus, handed her the phone. The screen showed a photo of a white SUV, blurry, like it had been taken with another cell phone.

  “Do you know this vehicle?”

  “It’s one of WorldCares’s, a Land Cruiser.” She didn’t feel like lying. Anyway, Wizard probably knew already. She noticed that the signal strength showed a single bar, weak but maybe enough for texts. There must be a cell tower somewhere.

  Wizard scrolled to another photo of the Land Cruiser, this one closer. A black man sat in the driver’s seat, a white man beside him. The black guy was young, skinny, high-cheekboned, and sly. The white guy was rough, in a good way. Close-cropped hair, strong chin, big shoulders, Ray-Bans. He looked like a soldier. Nice. Maybe a tiny bit old, but Gwen had no problem imagining him coming for her.

  “You know them?”

  “Never seen ’em before.”

  “Tell the truth.”

  “I am. No idea who they are. Neither of them.” The time stamp on the photo showed it was taken only a couple hours before.

  Wizard stood, extended a hand, pulled her up. Her head went light and the world spun. She braced herself against the mud wall and he held on to her. For a small guy, he was stronger than he looked.

  “Too much miraa,” he said. “Any reason they might be looking for you?”

  “I told you. I don’t know them. Are they? Looking for us?”