“Awaale.” Wizard extended a hand. Awaale looked at it like it was made of dung. “Shake my hand, Awaale. Man to man.”
Back at camp, the American had told him to touch Awaale, nod while he did. Then the people watching with the drone will know they have the right target, he said. They can see that from the drone, Wizard said. They can see that. They can see everything.
Awaale’s lips formed the briefest of smiles, as if to underscore the meaninglessness of the shake to his soldiers. We’re making peace with a man who’s already dead, the smile said. He extended his big right arm. Wizard clasped Awaale’s hand in both of his and nodded to the sky.
“So these you new boys,” Wizard said. “They good for anything but eating?”
“You find out soon enough. You got the wazungu in your Rover?”
“Yes.”
“You tell them they coming with me?”
“Two conditions first.”
Awaale shook his head. All around them men snapped off safeties.
Showy fool. You think you in control, but you backwards as ever. Death up there in the sky, coming for you.
“Just hear me before you say no,” Wizard said.
“Quickly, then.”
“First, you take men of mine who want to come with you.”
“Soldiers leaving you, Wizard? White Men quitting you?”
“Traitors begging to join your rabble. I don’t want them anyway.”
“How many?”
“Twenty, twenty-five maybe.”
Awaale hesitated. Then he seemed to see that Wizard was giving him a cheap way to build his force and that he could always shoot the ones he didn’t like. He grinned. Wizard knew he’d taken the bait. “All right. I show your men mercy, even though they stupid enough to let you lead them.” His smile broadened. “But not you, Little Chicken. I won’t have you.”
“You think I gonna play your slave. Second, you give everyone else one day to break camp, leave the province. We never fight again. You win. Just let us live.”
“You giving up.”
Wizard nodded like it hurt him too much to say yes.
“Say it, then.”
“Yeah. We giving up. I giving up.”
“And I get all you vehicles. You be walking out of this province.”
“Take the pickups.”
“Think I want them pickups? The Rovers.”
“No.”
“Come to me begging for your life and then say no. All balls and no brains, Little Chicken, only you no balls, either.”
“All right.”
“All right, what?”
“All right, you get the Rovers, too. We walk back to camp, take our stuff, leave.”
“Go to Dadaab with the rest of the women.”
Wizard shrugged.
“You know what, Wizard? I in a good mood this morning, now that you roaches not bothering me no more. Gonna let you live. Can’t take anything, though. Can’t go back to camp. Soon as you leave this field you gone to Kenya.”
For a moment, Wizard wondered whether Awaale might mean to keep his word, let him live. Then Awaale looked over his shoulder and nodded at one of his men and Wizard knew he was lying. He and the White Men who didn’t defect would die within the hour.
“Thank you, Awaale. Thank you.” The words stuck in Wizard’s throat. Even knowing they were a lie, he could barely force them out. “I tell my men who want to come to you, split from the rest of us, walk over.”
“No tricks. Or we shoot all everyone.”
“I swear, no tricks. You too much for me.”
“And the wazungu?”
“Told you. In the Rover. You going to hurt them? Sell them to Shabaab?”
“No business of yours, Chicken. They mine now. Like them Rovers.”
“I tell you they much much trouble.”
“Maybe for you.” Awaale patted Wizard on the cheek. “What happened to that magic, Wizard?”
Wizard was thankful he’d left his weapon with Donkey Junior. He had the desperate urge to put it to the big man’s chest, squeeze the trigger. He knew the drone would do its work so soon. Still his fingers itched for the pistol. A bomb was too sudden, too quick. Wizard wanted Awaale to know that Wizard had killed him.
“Go on,” Awaale said. “Wasted too much time. Send me my wazungu.”
Wizard turned, walked back across the field. “Everyone who want to go with Awaale, his no-teeth Ditas, walk now,” he yelled.
Men stepped forward, until two dozen walked across the field toward him, heads down in defeat. The Donkeys led the way. If Awaale had known the White Men, he might have wondered why Wizard’s most loyal soldiers were defecting en masse. For his part, Wizard screamed abuse at his men.
“Traitors! Wizard protected you, looked out for you, now you quit me! Awaale gon’ shoot all you fools!”
Step. Step. Step. Mud caked the bottom of his pants. He wondered if even now Awaale was getting ready to open fire. He didn’t look back. Nothing to do but play the role of the defeated commander. He hoped the Americans would wait long enough to let his men get close but still drop the bomb while they were outside the blast area. He trudged through the mud, shoulders slumped.
Halfway across the field when he passed the first of his men. Of course, it was brave, stupid Donkey Junior. “Junior,” Wizard said quietly.
“Wizard. It okay?”
“Keep walking.”
Then Wizard heard the sound he’d been waiting for, the whistle that meant the drone had let loose its magic egg—
He turned and grabbed Junior and pulled him down and—
30
From across the field, the blast didn’t look that impressive, a boom that shook the Range Rover’s windows and kicked out a white cloud that was quickly overtaken by a flood of inky smoke. But in the seconds that followed the damage became clear. Fire consumed the four technicals around Awaale. Men’s screams carried to Wells across the muddy flats.
Wizard and his men had flattened themselves before the bomb hit. Now they picked themselves up, their white T-shirts dripping with mud. Wizard grabbed a pistol from one of his soldiers and raised it over his head and fired like a starter at a track meet. His men howled and charged. They had the field to themselves, facing not a single return shot as they ran. The air above them sizzled and two bright streaks torched the air, the Hellfires. The missiles registered more as blurs than physical objects until they connected with the two technicals on Awaale’s right flank. The explosions that followed spun the Toyotas onto their sides and sent up waves of black smoke and flame.
The two undamaged Dita technicals on the left flank opened fire, raking the field. But the White Men were widely scattered and only three went down. Then the White Men’s lone technical fired a long rattling burst that tore open the windshields of the Dita technicals and sent the men in back diving for cover. The Dita machine gunners had made a basic tactical mistake. They should have disabled the White Men’s technical before aiming at the men on the field. Lightly armored vehicles were great on the attack, but nearly useless once they came under sustained fire. Now the White Men’s technical edged forward, firing shorter bursts now at the Dita vehicles, pinning them without wasting ammunition. Textbook.
For the first time since Wizard had walked across the field, Wells thought they might all survive.
—
Wizard and his lead soldiers reached the crater where Awaale had stood. The thick black smoke from the burning technicals screened Wells’s view, but he heard sustained return fire. The Ditas were responding at last. Wizard waved his men forward, into the cloud. The White Men had to keep attacking. The Ditas still had more soldiers, and they had those four technicals that Awaale had kept in reserve. Awaale wasn’t around to order them into the fight, but his lieutenants might be. In open ground like this, a charge could look completely successful until the moment the enemy counterattacked.
The rest of the White Men jumped into their pickups and rolled across the field,
shouting as they bumped through the mud. Only the two Range Rovers and four White Men remained. One sat in the Range Rover with the hostages. Another stood beside it. Waaberi and the guard in the backseat had stayed with Wells.
Wells unbuckled his belt, reached for the door handle. Waaberi put a hand on his arm.
“I did what I promised,” Wells said in Arabic. “It’s time for us to go.”
“They go. You stay.”
Wizard planned to hold Wells hostage. One last double-cross. Wizard should have been happy Wells had given him a chance to live. But he couldn’t quit. A trait he and Wells had in common.
So Waaberi and the guard would die.
Wells lifted his armrest, shifted left in his seat. The Rover had a wide console between the two front seats. Driver and passenger could sit side by side without ever touching accidentally, or even acknowledging each other’s existence. Very English. Wells looked over his left shoulder. No surprise, the guard sat in the middle of the backseat, legs splayed wide, the pistol loose in his right hand. Wells waved and the guard shook his head blankly. He nodded the pistol at Wells: I’m watching you.
—
Wells wasn’t sure of his next move. He’d hoped to reach down for his knife, come up, put it in the guard’s belly in one quick motion. But squirming from front seat into back was a slow and awkward motion in any vehicle. And these Rovers had generous backseats, plenty of space. By the time Wells came across the console, the guard would have enough time to get the pistol up. Another reason to hate luxury SUVs.
Waaberi leaned over the console, put a hand on Wells’s shoulder, pushed him back. “Enough—”
—
Just that quickly, Wells knew what to do. He leaned into Waaberi for a moment, pushing against him. Intuitively, Waaberi shoved back—
And Wells twisted his body away, and forward, toward the dashboard. As he broke contact with Waaberi, the Somali slipped toward him. In one fluid move, Wells swung his big right arm around Waaberi’s shoulders, used Waaberi’s own momentum to pull him out of the driver’s seat and slide him across the console. Wells was fully out of his seat now, crouched under the windshield, his ass against the dashboard. The guard lifted his pistol, but too late. Wells put his right hand high on Waaberi’s back and shoved him over the console through the space between the front seats. Waaberi’s body shielded Wells from the pistol and blocked the guard from moving his arm any further—
“Stop—” Wells yelled in English, the word simply a diversion. Before the guard or Waaberi could wriggle away, Wells reached down with his left hand, pulled the knife on his right ankle. Waaberi tried to push back, but Wells was braced against the dash and pinned Waaberi against the guard. Then with his left hand he lifted the knife over Waaberi and down onto the guard’s right shoulder. His left hand was his weak hand, but Wells kept stabbing, deepening the wound with each cut. He twisted the knife and the guard screamed and blood spurted onto the Rover’s pristine cream-colored leather seats. Now the guard’s right hand was useless and the pistol wasn’t a threat.
Wells didn’t want to kill these men, they weren’t his enemies, but he didn’t see any other option. He shoved Waaberi aside and raised the knife again and slashed crossways across the guard’s neck. The bright red arterial blood pumped out, and Wells suddenly found himself back on that mountain in Chechnya. The guard shrieked and tried to squirm away and raised a hand to his neck, but the blood kept coming through his fingers, too much blood, fountains of it.
Now Waaberi reached down into the well of the backseat, scrambling for the pistol the guard had dropped on the passenger-side floor. Wells followed him into the second row and switched the knife into his right hand and pushed Waaberi down against the blood-slicked leather with his left. Waaberi lifted the pistol—
And Wells raised the knife and buried the blade in Waaberi’s back, nearly between the shoulder blades, cutting his spinal cord in one vicious stroke. Waaberi didn’t scream. His body twitched and went soft and his bowels and bladder loosened and death filled the car. Wells pushed off him and twisted back to the driver’s seat, and as he did, he heard someone yelling. The guard who’d been outside the other Rover was just a few meters from the passenger-side front door. He lowered his AK—
Wells twisted the key in the ignition and the Rover’s engine rumbled to life. The guard stepped forward and pulled the trigger. He was so close that Wells saw spent cartridges pouring from the rifle. Wells could do nothing except wait for the 7.62-millimeter rounds to tear him up—
He’d forgotten the Rovers were armored. The window cracked into a spiderweb but didn’t break. The door beneath it didn’t even dent. Wells put the Rover in reverse, gunned the engine, spun the wheel left. When he’d turned so that the SUV faced the guard, he stopped and jammed on his seat belt and shifted into drive and floored the gas pedal. The guard fired until he had no rounds left and flung himself out of the way. Wells let him go, didn’t even try to clip him. He wanted the other Rover, which was broadside to him.
He accelerated across the mud. As he closed in, he saw Owen clawing at the second Rover’s driver from the backseat. Wells corrected his course, aiming for the vehicle’s engine block. Then the driver shook free of Owen and the vehicle leapt ahead. Wells leaned back in his seat, held the wheel loose, waiting for contact—
And smashed the other Rover side-on, metal crunching metal, glass tearing. Wells jerked against his seat belt and flew at the steering wheel as the airbag popped to embrace him. The corpses in the second row rolled forward and smacked into the front seats and somehow, a joke of physics, Waaberi’s right arm wound up in the center console like he was reaching out for the radio.
The airbag deflated. Wells took stock. His seat belt had bruised his chest and he’d banged his left arm into the window, but otherwise he was fine. With the armor the Rover weighed more than three tons, and its engine block, its stiffest and heaviest piece, had taken the brunt of the impact. Its hood was crumpled and its grille smashed, but Wells thought it would survive long enough to get them across the Kenyan border.
The other Rover was more seriously damaged. The driver’s door had caved, pinning the driver against the steering wheel. He was moving, feebly, but Wells didn’t think he’d survive without trauma care, which wasn’t available within a thousand miles.
Somewhere in the black smoke on the opposite side of the field, two technicals exploded. The Reaper pilot must have fired his last Hellfires at the Dita technicals back there, rather than the ones that Wizard’s own technical had disabled. Smart. The White Men were winning this fight almost too quickly. Wells and the hostages needed to go before Wizard found out Wells had killed his men and played demolition derby with his precious Range Rovers.
Wells stepped out, ran around the other Rover just as the rear passenger door swung open. A trickle of blood drooped down Gwen’s forehead. Her eyes were dull, concussed.
“Over there. Now.” Wells pointed at the other Rover. She walked unsteadily toward it. Wells reached inside, helped Hailey out.
“Owen’s stuck,” she said. “Really stuck.”
“Get the bodies out of the other Rover. I’ll handle him.” Wells stepped into the backseat. Owen’s left leg was pinched by the rear door. Wells looped Owen’s right arm around his shoulder. They were face-to-face, nearly touching. The kid’s breath stank of ten days without toothpaste. His cheeks were pale, lips set.
“My leg,” Owen said.
“This is gonna sting.”
Wells braced his left foot against the back driver’s-side door and pressed, using Owen’s trapped body as leverage. Owen screamed like a fire alarm in Wells’s ear. The door gave and Wells felt Owen come free. He kicked with every fiber of muscle he had and—
They slid across the seat. Wells lifted Owen out. His left leg from midcalf down looked even worse than Wells had feared, a bloody pulp. An amputation for sure.
“It’s fine. Just don’t look.” Wells carried Owen to the other Rover. The bodies of the Somali
s lay on the ground.
“Get in,” Wells said to Gwen and Hailey. He half expected them to argue. The backseat of the Rover was bloody as a slaughterhouse. But they stepped inside without complaint. Wells set Owen in the front seat.
“Lucky me,” Owen said. “Shotgun.”
The keys were still in the ignition. Wells reached for them. The Rover’s engine grumbled, hesitated.
“Oh, come on,” Hailey said.
“Please,” Gwen said. “Please.”
Wells killed the ignition, tried again with the briefest flutter of gas. The engine kicked into life. Wells put the Rover in reverse. Metal screamed and tore.
Then they were free.
EPILOGUE
Wells knew the media storm they would face when they came back to the places that called themselves civilized. As he bounced the Rover toward the border, he helped the hostages unkink the story of the past twenty-four hours. Of course, they were welcome to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he told them.
But as far as he was concerned, no one needed to know Owen had killed a guard. Or that Wells had made a deal to help their kidnappers attack another militia in return for their release. Simpler was better. The United States had found where they were being held and bombed their camp as a CIA team helped them escape. Simple. And almost true. Not entirely false, anyway.
“A team,” Gwen said.
“A small team.”
“You’re sure about this.”
“Reporters don’t need the details. You’re heroes. Let the world see you that way.”
“Reporters? People are paying attention to this?” Hailey said.
Wells glanced at her, wondering if she was joking. But, of course, she didn’t know. “It’s the biggest story in the world. I’m not exaggerating. Pays to be pretty.”
“What about you?” Gwen said. “What will you tell the reporters?”
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