The Night Ranger

shouting came from everywhere at once. Gwen felt rounds slam the hut as if someone were kicking its brick walls. Then an explosion. A man screamed. The Joker yelled to their guard and they both ran outside.

Outside, a man yelled in Swahili, high pleading tones, until a fusillade cut him off.

“I wonder if it’s the cops,” Owen said.

“That doesn’t sound like the cops,” Gwen said. For the first time since their capture, she thought they might die.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Hailey said.

The firing slowed. The men outside no longer shouted. They spoke in measured tones. Their feet crunched on the dirt. They were close.

—

Four men walked in. They were all black. Three carried AKs and wore white kerchiefs over their mouths and white T-shirts. The fourth was lean and wiry and wore a black T-shirt, no kerchief, and a pistol on his hip. He carried a key ring that until very recently had been the property of the Joker.

“Who are you?” Scott said.

“You can call me Wizard.”

Joker, Wizard. All these guys thought they belonged in comic books. The man knelt beside Gwen and riffled through the key ring. Up close his face was smooth and unlined. Gwen realized he was even younger than she was.

“Will you behave?” he said in English. “I have fifteen men outside.”

Gwen nodded. He opened the lock and she stood. “Put your hands behind your back.” She did, and he cuffed her.

“Are you with Suggs?” Scott said.

“I don’t know anyone named Suggs.”

“Then who are you and what are you doing here?”

“You speak to me this way.”

“I speak to you how I like. You’re smart, you’ll run back to whatever hole you crawled out of before the United States Army smokes your ass—”

The man crossed the hut and stood before Scott. “Be careful now.” He made a gun with his index finger and pointed at Scott’s chest. “Three times. Twice in the heart and once in the head. Then I leave you for the hyenas.” He spoke unemotionally, as if he were threatening to send a spoiled child to his room.

“You think you scare me?”

“Scott—” Gwen said.

“He’s not killing me, dummy. He can shoot all the Africans he wants. He knows the score. How’s he going to ransom a corpse?” Scott leaned forward and with his free left hand reached out and patted the cheek of the man who called himself Wizard. “Make nice and I’ll make sure you get paid.”

The man put a hand on the butt of his pistol. Then he shook his head and gathered himself, his effort at self- control obvious to Gwen.

He balled his fists, stepped away from Scott.

“That’s right,” Scott said. “Walk away, little man.”

He nodded at Gwen. “Told you.”

The man turned back, pulled his pistol. No hesitation now. The gun was as black as everything else he wore. “All right,” he said, and Scott must have realized he’d gone too far. His mouth came open and he pulled himself away from the man.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey now—”

The last words that Scott Thompson ever spoke, Hey now, because Wizard pulled the trigger twice. The shots broke thunder-loud inside the hut. Scott slumped backward against the wall and raised his free arm like he meant to pull out the bullets. His hand became a claw and he touched his chest with his fingertips. Then his arm dropped away. He gurgled a mouthful of blood and slid to the floor.

Hailey put her hand to her mouth and the tip of her tongue poked through her fingers. Gwen screamed once, once only. She watched death leave the hut through the ceiling and knew that she and Hailey and Owen would live tonight. She felt strangely serene.

The Wizard pointed his pistol at Scott’s head for a finishing shot. “Don’t,” Gwen said. “You already killed him.”

He tilted his head to her. She saw he was surprised that she’d spoken. So was she. He didn’t answer. But he holstered the pistol. He unlocked Hailey and Owen and handcuffed them beside Gwen and his men led them outside, where more men in white kerchiefs waited. The Wizard spoke in a language Gwen had never heard before and his men melted into the night, back to Somalia or wherever.

For the first time Gwen saw the compound where they’d been kept. It wasn’t much. Three mud-brick huts stood a distance from theirs. Three bodies lay in the center of the compound, and two more beside a hut. Suggs and the Joker. They lay side by side. She’d been right. Suggs had been here all along. He hadn’t been a hostage. He’d died defending this place. He’d set them up for sure. But why had Scott kept asking for him?

Had he been in on the kidnapping from the beginning? But he’d suffered along with Gwen and Hailey and Owen. He’d been chained up, too. And why? Were he and Suggs planning to split the ransom? Gwen didn’t get it.

But she understood this much: Even if she and Owen and Hailey were still in Kenya now, they wouldn’t be much longer. The guards in white shirts ushered them out of the compound along a dry streambed. After a week- plus of disuse, Gwen’s legs felt rubbery. Still, she was glad to be out of the stink and desperation of the hut. The air felt humid but clean, with a slight breeze. Half the sky was covered with thick clouds. Gwen sensed rain was coming.

Aside from the compound, the plains and low hills around them were empty. Not a house or car or streetlamp in sight. The stars shone even more brightly than they did in Montana. No one spoke. Five minutes later, they reached a pair of Range Rovers, glowing white and beautiful under the night sky. The man in black turned to them.

“You understand,” he said. “Those Kenyan fools don’t have you anymore. You’re mine now.”

9

DADAAB

Wells 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