The Night Ranger jw-7

by Alex Berenson

  Wizard looked west, like he could see the men and what was about to happen to them. “If they are, they won’t be much longer.”

  11

  IJARA DISTRICT,

  NEAR THE KENYA/SOMALIA BORDER

  Through his binoculars Wells saw the motorcycles pounding along the track, big tires churning up rivulets of red dirt. Two men on each bike. White handkerchiefs hid their faces, but not the AKs strapped to their chests. Wells watched them from the compound’s third hut. Even if the riders were looking directly at him, the shadows would hide him.

  The track dipped and they disappeared. Wells figured they were maybe two minutes out. Most likely they would stay on the bikes the whole way in. Untrained fighters habitually underestimated the importance of moving quietly, especially in open country like this. These men were making a particularly obvious approach. Maybe they had a strategy Wells hadn’t figured. More likely they were young and high on miraa and fearless, certain that they could deal with whatever they came across.

  Wells assumed these men were part of the raiding party that had attacked the camp and grabbed the hostages. He hoped to capture at least one alive, find out where the hostages were now, why Scott Thompson had been killed. But facing four men with AKs, Wells would settle for survival. His and Wilfred’s. He’d come up with a simple plan. He didn’t want to run for the Land Cruiser, or hide in the scrub and wait for darkness. He preferred to use the raiders’ overconfidence against them. He had explained his plan to Wilfred as they stood in the center of the compound, the stinking corpses around them a reminder of the stakes.

  —

  “Wait in the first hut. Step out as the first bike passes. Make sure they know you’re there. They’ll stop when they see you. That’s what we want. Even before they stop, yell to them. Doesn’t matter what you say, as long as it gets their attention. Once you start talking, don’t stop. I’m going to give you the shotgun. Carry it by the barrel in one hand so it’s clearly no threat. Don’t point it at them under any circumstances. Don’t give them reason to shoot. The first thing they’ll do is tell you, Put it down. Don’t argue with them. Do what they say.”

  “Why do I carry it at all, then?”

  “If they disarm you, they’ve dealt with you. You’re no threat. Now, if they ask about me, where I am, who, tell them I work with WorldCares. But say you’re alone, you dropped me off before you got here. I was afraid to come so near Somalia. If they ask why you’re here, tell them that you found this place by accident.”

  “They won’t believe me.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Point is to confuse them, slow them down.”

  “Then what?”

  “Take another step or two towards them. The closer you can get, the better. They have AKs and we have pistols. We get in close, we shave their edge. Keep your hands in the air. I’ll be in the third hut, but don’t look for me. Not for any reason. Focus on them, keep them focused on you. Talk. I know you’re good at that. When you hear me shoot, you do the same.”

  “But I already put the gun down—”

  “Not the shotgun. With the Makarov. It’ll be tucked into your waist at the back, where they can’t see it. When I come out of the hut, I’m going to come out shooting. No warning. When I do, they’ll turn towards me.”

  “You can’t be sure.”

  “It’s instinct to focus on the active threat. And all this is going to happen fast. At most twenty seconds after you first come out of the hut. They’ll be sitting on the bikes, looking at you. When they hear me step out, they’ll twist towards me. That’s when I’ll shoot them. I’ll take out the two on the bike closer to me. You focus on the bike nearer you. Understand?”

  “What if they shoot me as soon as they see me?”

  “Most men can’t kill someone that fast. Not unless they’ve already met you, know you’re the enemy. They have to ask questions, get themselves ready. Decide.”

  “But that’s not what you’re going to do. You’re just going to kill them.”

  “Why I’m still alive, Wilfred. Now we practice.”

  —

  They did, twice, before the motorcycles got loud and Wilfred ran for the first hut. Now Wells heard the motorcycles slow, drop to idle. Seconds passed. Then one bike moved again. The other stayed where it was. They’d split up to approach the compound from both ends. So much for Wells’s plan.

  —

  Guy Raviv, Wells’s favorite instructor at the Farm, liked to say, Never forget. The enemy gets a vote, too. No matter how great your strategy looks on paper, when the battle starts, nothing works exactly how you drew it up.

  Raviv reminded Wells of the best noncoms he’d known during Ranger school. Ranger training was famously tough, nine weeks of runs and marches with hundred-pound packs—on four hours’ sleep. The NCOs helped the guys on the bubble while pushing the toughest soldiers even harder. “Everybody suffers,” a master sergeant named Jim Grant said to Wells. “Don’t let me see you smile. I’ll hurt you more.” By the end, Wells understood the strategy. Ultimately, the instructors were sending the message Don’t worry about anyone else’s limits. Find your own. Then beat them. Because no matter how good you are, when you wind up in combat, you’ll discover that the hell we’ve put you through is nothing at all.

  Raviv treated Wells the same way, a harshness born of respect. The night before the paramilitary survival exercise that the CIA put all its trainees through, he called Wells.

  “You awake? Not worried about tomorrow?”

  “Should I be?”

  “I’ll swing by around ten.”

  Wells figured Raviv wanted to run one last countersurveillance exercise. Instead, as midnight approached, Wells found himself in the overheated basement of a backstreet bar in Norfolk playing poker with a table of middle-aged men he’d never seen before. Raviv, who was famously cheap, bought beers for him all night. The game didn’t break until four a.m. Then Raviv insisted on stopping at a Waffle House for breakfast. By the time they reached Camp Peary, the sun was up. So was Wells’s hangover. He reeked of Raviv’s secondhand smoke. He wanted nothing more than to sack out, but he knew he wouldn’t have the chance.

  “You did this on purpose.”

  “Whining doesn’t suit you. How much did you lose, eighty?”

  “I guess.” Actually, Wells had lost a hundred and fifty. He couldn’t figure out how. The game was only quarter-ante. But he wasn’t much of a poker player. After all those Budweisers, the cards and chips floated away like balloons at a state fair. Up and up and gone.

  “You gonna be a covert operative, you can’t even play poker?”

  “I’m not going to be that kind of operative.”

  Raviv pulled to the side of the access road that led to the Farm’s main campus. “You’re a fool.”

  Wells felt like he’d stumbled into someone else’s life. “What are we talking about, Guy?”

  “Why’d I bring you to that game?”

  “I don’t know, so I’d have trouble with the exercise?”

  “Idiot. It’s glorified Capture the Flag. Nobody fails. You’re a Ranger. I could cut off your legs, you’d still make it. I made you play poker because I wanted to watch you play poker. And let me clue you in. You have the worst tells I’ve ever seen.”

  “Tells.”

  “You give away your hands. Raise your eyebrows when you have a winner. Always look left when you’re bluffing.”

  “Guy. Gotta be honest. Maybe I’m still drunk, but I’m not getting it.”

  Raviv twisted toward Wells in the seat and—a moment Wells knew he’d never forget—slapped Wells across the cheek. Wells suddenly knew that Raviv loved him. Not sexually, maybe, but the desperate feeling here was love all the same.

  “You don’t get to pick what kind of operative you are,” Raviv said. “It picks you. You want to go non-official, you’re going to have to lie so deep it’s in your bones. No tells. I promise you one day someone’s going to ask you to do something that’s going to destroy you.
Something you can’t even imagine right now, in this pretty place. With its nice high fences so nobody gets hurt. Farm? It ought to be called a nursery. It’s like you’re in strollers in here. And when it happens, that thing, whatever it is, you’re going to have to nod and say, yes, like it was your idea all along. Or you’re going to die. And maybe get some agents killed, too. All this training”—he spat the word like a curse—“they never say a word about that. You understand me? You copy? Over?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, you don’t. But you will.” Raviv reached across Wells, opened the door. “Get out.”

  “Guy—”

  “I said out.”

  Wells stood in the cool early-morning Virginia air trying to understand what had just happened, what he’d done wrong. Raviv drove off without saying good-bye. Wells didn’t see him for the rest of training. In fact, Wells never saw Raviv again. He died of lung cancer while Wells was living as a jihadi in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier, the deepest cover of all. Wells found out only after he returned to the United States.

  But he never forgot that speech. He learned its ugly truth even earlier than Raviv might have expected, in the miserable civil war in the Russian province of Chechnya. The conflict attracted a few hundred Afghan fighters, the true crazies, guys who hadn’t killed enough Russians in the 1980s. Wells joined up, figuring a few months in Chechnya would be the fastest way to prove his devotion to the cause.

  The first few weeks were quiet. Wells lived with sixty Afghan and Chechen fighters in the mountains outside Grozny, the Chechen capital. The Russians fired artillery at them, but the shells never did much more than send rock slides down the slopes around their camp. Wells was almost ready to discount the stories he’d heard about the war’s brutality. Then the fighters heard of a Russian convoy that had the bad luck to be traveling at night without helicopter support. They trapped the Russians on a hairpin curve a few kilometers from camp and blew up four BTRs, Russian armored personnel carriers. Wells’s first battle. Everything happened at once. Waves of heat from the carriers as their ammunition and fuel exploded. Desperate Russian soldiers jumping from the hatches, falling down, picking themselves up, running for the forests beside the road as the guerrillas opened up on them. The seven surviving BTRs firing blindly left and right. Wells knew that he ought to be afraid. Yet he was exhilarated. Time slowed to quarter-speed. The relativity of war.

  The real hell started when the battle ended. The jihadis took five Russians alive. Back at camp, the rebel leader—a pouch-faced unsmiling Chechen who called himself Abu Khalifa—decided to kill the prisoners. The murders would be taped, the videos sent to television stations in Moscow and Grozny, a warning to every Russian soldier in Chechnya: Don’t expect to be held for ransom if we catch you. Or traded home in a prisoner swap. Expect to die.

  Abu Khalifa gave five fighters the honor of slitting Russian throats. He chose Wells to be fifth. Wells wasn’t sure whether he’d been picked at random or as a test because he was American. He only knew he couldn’t refuse. Backing out wouldn’t save the Russian’s life, but it would end Wells’s own. Yet how could he kill an unarmed prisoner? Wells cursed Abu Khalifa and Raviv both. Somehow he felt that if Raviv hadn’t warned him, this choice wouldn’t have been forced on him.

  The prisoners were lined up, the camera set. Like the other executioners, Wells pulled on gloves and a mask. A faceless killer. Abu Khalifa made a long speech that Wells didn’t understand. Then the slaughter began. Wells waited for the fighters to turn away in disgust. Instead a hum went through the men around him. They edged closer so they wouldn’t miss the show. Wells was glad for his hood. Not supposed to go like this, he thought. Cavalry’s over the hill. They’ll be here any minute.

  When his turn came, he took the knife—a scimitar, really, a curved steel blade with an edge sharper than any razor. The oaken handle was wet under his fingers, slick with the blood and gristle of the soldier who’d just been slaughtered. Wells dried the knife on a piece of cloth and took his place behind the sacrifice chosen for him. Two men flanked him, grappling the Russian’s arms, holding him steady.

  No angel appeared with horn or ram. No cavalry, either. Wells knelt, wrapped his hand around the Russian’s forehead. And heard a single word whispered—

  Don’t.

  Wells wondered if the soldier was speaking. But the Russian wouldn’t know English, and anyway his mouth was gagged tight.

  Don’t don’t don’t. Louder now. His conscience. His soul, pleading its case. Let this crime belong to someone else. You don’t even know his name. But his name didn’t matter. Whoever this Russian was, he would die tonight for the crime of surrendering to an enemy that took no prisoners. Nothing could save him. Not Wells or anyone else.

  “Ready?” Abu Khalifa said.

  Wells felt the blade heavy and full in his hand as he pulled the man’s head back. The first four soldiers had accepted their fate. This one moaned under the gag, fought the rope that held him, twisted his head under Wells’s gloved fingers. If he hoped for mercy, he was mistaken. His fear fed the bloodlust. The jihadis jeered in four languages, the angry shouts tumbling over one another. A rock gashed the soldier’s cheek. Cutting his throat would be a mercy, Wells saw. Else he’d be stoned, stomped, torn limb from limb. Wells dug the tip of the scythe into the man’s throat and twisted the curved blade deep and sliced. As his blood gushed, the soldier screamed. The moan tore at Wells, maddened him. To stop it, he tore at the soldier’s neck until finally the man was quiet. Even then Wells didn’t stop cutting, not until blood sopped his hands and the soldier’s head flopped loose on its neck. The other jihadis gathered around him and cheered. Abu Khalifa himself took Wells by the wrist and raised his arm high like Wells had just won a prizefight. The blood dripped down from the knife. Wells thought he might go mad.

  “Allahu Akbar,” Wells said. Though he had never felt more distant from God. The jihadis never did put out the video of that killing—upon further review it was too messy even for them—but Wells saw it. Once. He couldn’t believe how little time the whole episode had taken. Nine seconds. Nine seconds to make a living man dead. Nine seconds and a knife.

  The Russian was the first man Wells had killed. An unarmed prisoner. Wells tried to forget what he’d done. He’d never told anyone about it, not Anne, not Shafer, not even Exley. He thought he’d buried it. And for years he had. But in the last few months the memory had crept up on him, distracted him at crucial moments. Like this one.

  —

  The thrum of the motorcycles brought him to reality. Think: He and Wilfred faced split targets who could cover each other at a distance they couldn’t match. Nor could Wells change the plan he’d already set. No more than a hundred feet separated him and Wilfred, but they didn’t have phones or radios. Their only advantage was surprise, and if they shouted they’d lose it. Wells would have to hope Wilfred decided to follow what was left of the plan. In other words, take out the two guys closer to them. Hope the two at the other end of the camp weren’t great shots even with the advantage of AKs.

  Wells flattened himself against the wall of the hut, a step from the doorway. He pulled the Glock from his waistband, made sure he had a round chambered. Outside, one bike drew close. The other circled around the compound.

  Suddenly, Wilfred shouted in Swahili. The bike stopped and someone yelled back. Wilfred yelled, in English, “Okay! I put it down!” Smart. Letting Wells know. The second bike sounded like it was at the far end of the compound, by the fourth hut. But were its riders dismounted? How quickly would they answer when Wells opened up?

  More shouting from the first bike. A word leapt at Wells. Mzungu.

  Time to move.

  —

  Wells slide-stepped to the edge of the doorway, peeked out. He saw Wilfred, on his knees, hands raised, a half-dozen steps from the first hut. The shotgun’s black barrel glinted on the dirt behind him. The bike was eight meters from Wilfred, fifteen from Wells. Its riders wore jeans and white T-shir
ts and those white handkerchiefs. A kind of uniform, Wells supposed. The rider looked awkwardly over his shoulder at Wilfred. The passenger sat crossways, both legs on the near side of the bike. Now he was yelling something, bringing his AK around—

  Wells stepped into the doorway, raised the pistol, fired. No warning, no hesitation. Two shots. Aiming center mass. Nothing fancy. Wells was ready for the Glock’s kick this time. The shots caught the kid high in the chest, pushed him backward. He sprawled off the back of the bike and thudded to the earth, already dead. The rider reached for his AK, tried to unstrap it, but then seemed to realize he wouldn’t have time and let go of the gun and grabbed for the handlebars—

  Wells pulled the trigger of the Glock three more times. The pistol jerked. Blood painted the rider’s shirt. He sagged forward over the handlebars. His head sank and his hands reached down like he was trying to make peace with the earth. For a second the bike stayed upright, the kid’s weight balanced fifty-fifty even in death. Then his left leg sagged and the bike tipped with him—

  Wells knew he was no longer a threat, forgot him, turned for the second bike. Hoping that the men on it would make the fatal mistake of riding forward to help their buddies. Or just take off for reinforcement. He’d settle for that. He and Wilfred could grab the first bike, ride back to the Land Cruiser. Instead the men at the other end had jumped off their bike. They hoisted their AKs, their faces half hidden under their kerchiefs, their rifles swinging toward Wells—

  Wells spun away, knowing he had no time to return fire, that he could only go to ground, get inside the hut. Though he wasn’t sure if these mud bricks would do much against AK rounds.

  Then he heard the Makarov behind him, three quick shots, its bark lovely and familiar even if Wells wasn’t pulling the trigger. Wilfred joining the action, coming up with his hidden pistol. On the far side of the compound, someone yelped in pain. Wells turned back toward the door and fired two quick shots, not aiming for anything, just trying to get the enemy fighters wavering between him and Wilfred instead of focusing on a single target and unloading with the AKs. Two and three and two. Seven shots fired now, plus the three at the hyena. Wells was thankful for the Glock’s nineteen rounds. With the Makarov, he’d be reloading right now.