The Night Ranger (14 page)

9

D
ADAAB

W
ells 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 around? 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—

And finally found a tiny Samsung handset zippered into an inside compartment just above the waistband. No number taped to the back. Wells booted it up, but it demanded a four-digit password. Wells tried 1-1-1-1. No good. Hopefully, Moss would have some ideas. Wells pocketed the phone, turned Thompson on his side so that if he threw up he wouldn’t choke on his vomit.

“Watch him,” Wells told Wilfred. “Call me if he wakes up.”

“And if he stops breathing?”

“Call me then, too.”

Back in Moss’s office, Wells booted up Thompson’s laptop. It was password-protected and the obvious choices failed. The NSA could break it, but Wells couldn’t. He switched on the phone. It demanded a combination, four digits. Wells tried 1-2-3-4, then 4-3-2-1. No good.

“What’s his social?”

“His what?”

“The last four digits of his Social Security number.”

“How would I know?”

“It’s got to be on a record somewhere,” Wells said. She reached for her laptop, but he put a hand on her shoulder. “Forget it. Let’s try his birthday first. Egomaniacs love to use their birthdays for passwords.”

“That’s March 19, I think.” Moss flipped through an old-fashioned planner. “Yes.”

Wells keyed in 0-3-1-9 and the phone unlocked. He scrolled through the menus until he found the phone’s number. It was almost the same as the number Thompson gave Wells, but two digits were transposed. If Wells asked, Thompson could say he’d made a legitimate mistake.

The call registry showed that Thompson had used the phone sparingly, making just a handful of calls to three numbers in the last week, all with Kenyan prefixes. Most calls ran less than two minutes. In the hours after Wells demanded that Thompson come back to Dadaab, Thompson made several late-night calls, none of which were answered.

“Recognize these? Suggs, anyone?”

“No.”

“Let’s call them.”

Moss reached for her phone.

“Use Skype so they can’t trace the call,” Wells said.

Moss pulled up Skype on her laptop. Her first call went to a voice mail without a greeting. So did the second. The third rang three times before it went to voice mail. A man offered a greeting in Swahili and then said in English, “Joka-joka-joka call back-back-back.”

“Is Joka-joka-joka Kenyan slang?”

“Not that I know of. What he says in the Swahili part of the greeting is standard, leave a message and I’ll call back.”

“Is that Suggs?”

“Not sure. Let me hear it again.” She redialed. This time the call went straight to voice mail. “I’m about ninety-five percent sure it’s not Suggs.” She redialed one more time. This time a man answered. He said something, laughed, hung up.

“What’d he say?” Wells said.

“I don’t know. He was speaking Somali. Not Swahili.”

“But the voice mail message was Swahili?”

“Yes.”

“So either the greeting is intentionally misleading or the phone has been taken by someone who speaks Somali.”

“Correct.”

Wells tried to come up with a happy explanation for that particular fact pattern. He couldn’t. He called Shafer. “I got Thompson’s third phone.”

“Want to tell me how?”

“I roofied him and took it.”

“You what-ted him?”

“You heard me. I gave him a cup of coffee with some special sweetener.”

“This is why I love you, John. You’re insane. You’re telling me you drugged James Thompson so you could steal his phone.”

“We both know I’ve done worse.”

“He’s going to want your head when he wakes up.”

“That’s why I’d like you to run the number, Ellis. And three more. All Kenyan country codes, but they’re either in Kenya or Somalia.”

“It’s almost midnight here, John. But I’ll try. Give them to me.”

Wells did. “Names would be nice, but what I really need is an approximate location for the receiving handsets. Anything new on your end?”

“The level of interest here is extreme.”

“Because of the press conference.”

“Because they’re oh so pretty. Because of the wall-to-wall coverage on every network. This thing’s picking up speed. We could wind up invading Somalia.”

“Hard to imagine.”

“Not really. The Kenyans want it. They think we can solve their problem with Shabaab once and for all. Then they’ll say Somalia’s been pacified, close the camps, send the refugees home. They’re talking to the White House.”

Now Wells understood why the Kenyan police weren’t trying to find the volunteers. “But Duto—”