The Night Ranger (18 page)

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-shirts 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.

He peeked through the doorway. The fighter on the right had taken a bullet to the right shoulder, his gun arm. His AK dangled low. As Wells watched, he jammed his right elbow into his stomach to brace the rifle and fired a wild burst aimed half at Wells and half at Wilfred. Lottery shooting. A round slapped the corner of the hut behind Wilfred, but nothing more.

The fighter on the left was more dangerous. He dropped to one knee and focused on Wilfred, his left elbow propped on his left knee, the butt of the rifle hard against his right shoulder, his head tilted as he squinted over the AK’s crude but effective sight. The classic shooter’s position. He was looking into the sun, which made the shot tougher. But less than a football field separated him and Wilfred. Trained shooters were plenty accurate with an AK at that range. Wells saw all this in a fraction of a second, those years of close combat experience, knew Wilfred was in trouble—

“Down—” he yelled. Spent cartridges flared from the AK, glinting in the sun. Wilfred grunted in Swahili. Even without looking at him, Wells knew he’d been hit. Bad. Wells took his own shooter’s stance, knowing that if he didn’t take the guy down, he and Wilfred were done. Wilfred would be wounded on open ground, Wells pinned in the hut. The two bandits would kill Wilfred without too much trouble, then focus on Wells. So, really, now or never. Wells reminded himself that the Glock would kick harder than the Makarov and—

From behind the huts came a low growl that grew until it split the air, a wall of sound as overwhelming as a jet engine. Only one animal dared announce its presence in so lordly a fashion. The hyenas knew, too, the enemy they hated even more than man had come to steal their feast. As the roar wound down, Wells heard them gobbling and cackling in dismay—

But Wells forced the lion and the hyenas out of his mind, made himself focus on the man with the rifle.
When they learn to shoot, I’ll
worry about them.
Hurry, but slowly.
He squinted over the Glock like a pool player looking for just the right angle on a tricky bank shot. Pulled the trigger, controlled the recoil, pulled it again. And missed. Two jets of red dirt spurted up left of the shooter. Who had also been distracted by the lion. Now he shifted his eyes back to Wells, fired a burst—

That drilled bricks two feet to Wells’s right. Wells didn’t duck or dive. No point. He had as clear a chance as he could hope. He would make good with this pistol at long-gun range or die trying. Arms steady. Don’t overgrip. Let the weapon do the work. He moved the Glock a fraction of an inch to the right, fired. Didn’t wait to see whether the shot was true but fired again—

The fighter must have fired back just as he was hit. An AK round swept over Wells’s right shoulder close enough for him to feel the punctured air it left behind. Another tore through the mud brick beside the doorway. Across the field Wells saw the Somali stumble, hands fumbling over his belly like if he just pressed down hard enough he’d straighten himself out, put the skin and muscle back together—

But now the other shooter, the one Wilfred had hit in the shoulder, was running at Wells, legs pumping, AK on auto, locked and closing. Wells had no choice but to dive out of the doorway, hope the kid shot himself out of bullets before he got too close.

He rolled down onto the hard-packed dirt inside the hut and twisted himself against the wall as AK rounds gashed through the rough bricks. Then Wilfred’s Makarov popped three times and a body thumped down.

Wells stood, walked out. The fourth shooter was face-planted in the dirt, his AK sprawled over his head. Wells didn’t know where Wilfred’s shots had caught him, but they’d done the trick.

“Saved you,” Wilfred said, his voice fluttery. He lay on his back, unmoving. No wonder the fourth shooter had ignored Wilfred. From across the compound he probably looked dead. Wells ran for him. His jeans were two different shades now, light blue for his left leg, blue-black for the right. Wells knelt beside Wilfred’s right leg, found the denim soaked through with blood.

“I got you here and I’m getting you home.”

Wilfred cleared his throat.

“Yes.” Wells had a sat phone, but calling the agency wouldn’t do any good. Even if Shafer got through to Nairobi right away and convinced the station chief to spend thousands of dollars to medevac a Kenyan it didn’t know, the station wouldn’t have a chopper ready to go. It would have to find one willing to fly at night to the Somali border. Plus they were more than three hundred miles east of Nairobi, which meant the helicopter would have to refuel at least once on the way out, twice more on the return. It wouldn’t get Wilfred back to Nairobi for close to twelve hours, long past midnight.

Better to get to the Land Cruiser and then drive for the Saudi-financed infirmary in Bakafi, the village they had passed on the way down. With luck, the clinic would have a bush doctor who could stabilize Wilfred enough to keep him alive overnight. If not, they’d have to drive for the hospital that Médecins Sans Frontières ran in Dadaab.

—

From behind the huts, the lion bellowed again. Wells scrambled for the shotgun. He didn’t think the lion would attack, not until it scattered the hyenas, but the thing sounded like it was six feet tall. Wells had been on bloodier battlefields, but nowhere closer to a true state of nature. No reinforcements were coming for either side, no medevacs, no police, not even any curious locals. Only the lion and the hyenas, pacing and watching and waiting for darkness.

“He wants fresh meat,” Wilfred said. “That’s me.”

“With a side of fries.” Wells laid down the shotgun and ran for the third hut, where he had stowed his pack before the shooting started. On his way back, he detoured for four bottles of water from the first hut. He handed one to Wilfred.

“Drink.” Wilfred dropped the bottle, trying to unscrew the cap. Wells picked it up, opened it, shoved it back into his hand. He clasped his fingers around Wilfred’s and lifted the bottle to Wilfred’s mouth. Most of the water went down Wilfred’s chin, but he swallowed a few sips.

“Good.” Wells reached for the scissors in the first-aid kit, snipped off Wilfred’s jeans high on the thigh. The bullet hole was four inches above the knee. Blood was seeping out, not a gusher but heavy and steady. Wells thought the round had cracked the femur and nicked the popliteal artery, the main artery down the leg. He’d seen a man die from a similar wound years before in Afghanistan.

Wells raised Wilfred’s leg as gently as he could to feel for an exit wound. Nothing. “Listen to me. I have to do things you won’t like.” Wells tapped Wilfred’s cheek to make him focus. “Get a tourniquet on your leg, tie it off so you don’t lose more blood. That’s going to hurt bad, because the bullet probably broke a bone in there. Then we have to get to the Cruiser. Either I leave you or we ride. I don’t want to leave you. I’m afraid you’ll pass out. Even though the lion might like it.”

Wilfred sipped his water, nodded. He was relaxed now, no wasted motion, no panic. “We ride.”

“That’s right. You on the back with that broken leg. I’ll tie you to me and you hold on and we’ll get there. But I promise you it’ll hurt more than anything in your life.”

“One question, mzungu.”

Wells hoped that Wilfred wouldn’t ask if he was going to lose the leg. Wells didn’t know, didn’t want to guess.

“I get a bonus for this?”

This kid. Cooler than the other side of the pillow. Wells squeezed his big hand around Wilfred’s skinny arm. “Five bucks. Only if you live.”

—

The bare-bones first-aid kit had rubber tubing that might have worked for Wilfred’s forearm. Not his thigh. A T-shirt or pant leg wouldn’t do the trick either. Wells thought of the hot plates in the first hut. He cut loose their electrical cords, twin four-foot lengths of thick black plastic. He grabbed a whiskey bottle from the second hut, a crude way to sterilize the wound, an even cruder painkiller. Not the ideal choice, since alcohol slowed clotting, but Wilfred needed a distraction. “Take a drink. Not a big one—”

Wilfred nearly gagged but choked down a sip.

Wells pulled off his T-shirt, balled it up. “Put this in your mouth and bite down, hard as you can.”

Wilfred stuffed the shirt in his mouth. It stuck out like a limp flag. Wells raised the cord.

“I’m going to tie this around your leg. It’s going to hurt. The shirt’s in your mouth so you don’t bite off your tongue. Ready?”

Wilfred nodded. Wells chose a spot two inches above the bullet hole, wrapped the cord around Wilfred’s leg. He crossed the ends and pulled, tight as he could and then tighter. Wilfred keened, a high strangled sound the hyenas might have recognized. He banged his hands against the earth and his eyes bulged wide. But he didn’t move his leg. Not an inch. Wells pulled until the cord dug into the meat of Wilfred’s thigh and then knotted the plastic.

He wiped away Wilfred’s leg with his shirt, watched the bullet hole for fresh blood. It still leaked, a trickle but steady, too much. Wells grabbed the second cord. This time he pulled until he thought the plastic might break. Silent tears lit Wilfred’s eyes as Wells tied off the cord. Wells wiped away the hole again and watched as the trickle slowed to a dribble. It would have to do. Wells poured whiskey over Wilfred’s leg and wiped off the wound with the little tube of antibiotic from the first-aid kit and taped gauze over his thigh. He pulled the T-shirt from Wilfred’s mouth, offered him a water bottle. Wilfred sipped a few drops and let it drop. He wiped the spit from his lips, the tears from his cheeks.

“That all you got. Too easy.”

“Easy.” Now Wells needed a way to keep Wilfred on the bike. A rope. He hadn’t seen any ropes. But he had seen chains. In the fourth hut. He picked up the shotgun and walked the hundred-meter battlefield, stopping beside the men Wilfred had killed, turning out their pockets. He found no identification, but one man did have a cell phone. Wells grabbed it.

Outside the hut he took a lungful of air, like a man trying to see how long he could stay underwater. He stepped into the stinking swollen darkness, Scott Thompson’s eternal home. He walked over the hyena—it had stayed dead, at least—and found a chain. A reminder that three hostages were still missing, probably alive, with any luck close to here. Wells needed to bring Wilfred to safety so he could return to finding them. He put the tip of the shotgun to the post in the wall and pulled the trigger. The chain clanked down to the floor, a strangely playful sound. Wells liberated a second chain and jogged out, still holding his breath. He wondered whether any Scott Thompson would be left by the time the Kenyan police found this place. Probably not. Though maybe the hyenas and the lion would be so busy outside that they wouldn’t bother with the hut for a while.