Americans had, their planes and helicopters. Even a few old Kenyan tanks. Instead he had his Rovers.
—
Then he heard about the hostages. An idea crept on him, quiet and deadly as a mamba. He would be taking a big chance. The hostages were across the border. Wizard didn’t know how many men held them. He couldn’t be sure how he’d collect the ransom. He would make himself a target for the Americans. In normal times he would have dismissed the idea.
But these times weren’t normal. He fell asleep every night wondering whether he’d wake to rap blasting from fifty Dita Boys technicals. He needed money. Money to make the villages choose his side. Money for seasoned fighters, not raw recruits. These hostages were young and American. They had to be worth millions of dollars. Enough money to change the balance of power in Lower Juba. Enough for him to destroy Awaale.
So, really, he had no choice. No choice but to hope his magic was even more powerful over the next days than it had been that morning in Mogadishu.
6
From Nairobi to Garissa, the A3 was freshly paved and lightly traveled. Martin drove flat out, slaloming past tanker trucks and matatus—brightly colored minibuses packed with travelers. As the Toyota descended from the central highlands, the giant baobab trees gave way to sisal plantations and open grassland. The morning sun poured in through the windshield, and Wells was glad for his Ray-Bans. Every few miles, troops of baboons ran along the road, cackling over jokes only they understood.
“I see why the settlers thought it was such a beautiful country,” Wells said.
“The most,” Martin said.
“It was settled long before the settlers,” Wilfred said from the backseat. “Kikuyu and a dozen more tribes. Even after World War Two, the British didn’t get the joke. Even then they made us fight for our country. After they put us to work to win their own freedom from Hitler.”
Wells couldn’t handle a lecture about colonialism on two hours’ sleep. Besides, Wilfred was right. A pain in the ass, but right. “All I said was that it’s beautiful. The British colonized America, too, and we fought them just like you did.”
“We have so much in common.” Wilfred put a skinny hand between the front seats. “Fist pump, my brother.”
“I pay extra for the attitude, or is it included?”
“And on that couch yesterday you went digging for your roots.”
“You chicken, Wilfred? Hoping I toss you out of the car so you can hitch your way home? Not happening. You’re in it now. You want out, you quit. My brother.”
“How can I be scared with the great white hunter protecting me?”
Wells supposed he’d just have to put up with the guy. Wilfred was smart enough, anyway. He’d shown up at the Hilton at six a.m. with a permit from the Interior Ministry: two pages, three signatures, and four stamps. “With this you can go anywhere the police do. After that, you’re on your own.”
—
They ran into their first roadblock at Mwingi, halfway to Garissa. A chicane of crude metal spikes forced Martin to pump the brakes. An officer in cheap mirrored sunglasses and a powder blue uniform stood by the road, waving cars through with a scarred wooden baton. When he saw Wells, he chopped the baton at the Toyota like a conductor demanding a surge from his orchestra. Martin pulled over, wheels on gravel. The officer strode up, ignoring the cars still passing through the chicane. Wells lowered his window, handed over the permit. The officer examined it through his shades.
“Passport.”
The cop looked at that, too, shook his head in disgust. Wells expected questions, but the officer handed everything back, waved them on. Wells had questions of his own: Have you been told to look for any specific vehicle? Were you put here before the kidnapping or after? But the cop walked away before Wells could speak.
“If the papers are in order, why was he angry?”
“Because they are in order. And stamped by senior men. No bribe.”
East of Mwingi, the land grew hot and dry. The grass thinned and patches of thorn bush appeared. The hills didn’t disappear, but they shrank, as if the sun’s rays had pounded them down. To the south, sheep nosed through the brush, watched over by unsmiling men with pistols on their hips, protection from lions and rustlers both.
The highway turned to gravel. The villages shrank to rows of concrete shacks along the road selling drinks and fruit and all manner of junk: choking-hazard toys, used batteries, donated clothes. “Tuck Parts,” a sign above one shack proclaimed. Unrecognizable metal bits filled the shelves inside. At every village, the traffic pooled as truckers pulled over for food and less savory refreshment. Martin crept along as skinny men in mud-stained pants stood in the road holding mangoes. “Good, good, good,” one said to Wells, his voice fast, desperate.
“I told you Kenya was poor,” Wilfred said from the backseat.
“You should be a talk-show host. You never quit.”
They hit another roadblock west of Garissa. Again the cop appeared more angry than happy to see Wells’s papers. Garissa itself was a town of ten thousand or so with a slapped-together feel, new buildings with paint already peeling. Barbed wire and concrete barriers ringed the police headquarters. The stink of baked cow dung clotted the air. The place reminded Wells of the less attractive parts of the central Plains, right down to the name. Garissa, Nebraska. Class B football champs three years back.
“Big cattle market here,” Wilfred said. “The herders bring cows and sheep from all over the province. Somalis mostly. Garissa is filled with Somalis.”
“Refugees?”
“No. Kenyan Somalis. Even before the refugees, Kenya had Somalis. They live between here and the border. Also in Eastleigh. That’s in Nairobi, near downtown.”
“A slum?”
“Yes and no. Eastleigh’s crowded, but not cheap to live in. The Somalis in Nairobi have money. Nobody knows where it’s from. Probably they take the profits from kidnapping and smuggling and move it to the banks in Kenya. In the last few years, they bought up Eastleigh. You have an apartment worth one million shillings, they give you one million five hundred thousand for it. Then they move all their family in, twelve or fifteen or them. They stay together. They think they’re better than Kenyans.”
“They’re Kenyan citizens?”
“Some yes, some no. Doesn’t matter. They’re all Somali. You can tell because they have round heads, small ears.”
“Round heads and small ears?”
“Ugly little people.” Wilfred tilted his head at the men walking on the street. “See, he’s Somali, he’s Somali, that whole bunch is Somali—”
Somalis did look different from the Kenyans, though Wells wasn’t sure he’d call them ugly. Northern Somalia was a short boat ride from Yemen and the Arabian peninsula. The Arab influence was clear. Most obviously, Somalis had relatively light skin.
“You’re quite the racial scholar, Wilfred. The National Socialists would be proud.”
“National Socialists?”
“Nazis.” Wells found himself irrationally pleased to have gotten one past the guy.
“Say what you want. Everyone knows the Somalis look different. And Garissa is a Somali town.”
“I give you twenty bucks, will you stop talking until the next roadblock?”
“No.”
An hour past Garissa, they hit another barricade. This one was serious, a five-ton truck blocking the road, a squad of guys in camouflage unis and AKs peering into vehicles.
“The army?” Wells said. “Will they take the permit?”
“They’re General Services Unit. Specially trained police. In America, you would call them paramilitary. They watch the camps.”
“So they’re in charge of investigating the kidnapping?”
