the horizon from north to south.
Gwen guessed the Range Rovers were on the other side of the hill. But she decided not to try to see them. She’d pushed her luck far enough. The sentry wouldn’t let her by, and she’d be in trouble if he spotted her. She’d already stayed longer than she’d intended. She turned back, walked quickly to the latrines. She realized something else, too. Owen’s instinct that the camp faced a serious threat of attack seemed right. Why else post a sentry facing east—toward Somalia, not Kenya?
She didn’t notice the man beside the shed until she was a step away. He wore a torn T-shirt and green cargo pants with a big oil stain down one leg. Gwen hoped it was an oil stain, anyway. He was broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, with meaty hands and thick shoulders. All the weight training in the world couldn’t build muscles like his, but half the men in Africa seemed to have been born with them.
He raised a hand in a gesture that obviously meant stop. Gwen stopped, wished she hadn’t. She waved her hand in front of her nose like she was a nineteenth-century heroine with the vapors. “I couldn’t take the smell, you know, it’s so stinky—” She was jabbering now, hoping to drown him in a stream of English he didn’t understand. “I should probably get back to my hut, I have decorating to do—”
She stepped past him. He reached for her arm, pulled her close. She couldn’t help herself, she screamed—
—
Ten minutes later, she sat cross-legged in a half-built hut on the western edge of the compound. Today’s life lesson: She wasn’t cut out to be a secret agent. Her scream had brought men running. After some shouting and pointing, they’d led her back to the camp and the hut she shared with Owen and Hailey. Then they’d dragged her out again without explanation and dumped her here. This side of the camp was even more run-down than the eastern half. Two scrawny goats nosed at a pile of trash outside her hut. The hut next to this one seemed to have been converted into a repair shop for the dirt bikes these guys liked. At least two bikes were in the hut, and she’d seen a scrawny boy on his back, tinkering with an exhaust pipe. Now an engine turned over, came briefly to life, and stalled out. Even without knowing Swahili, she understood the curses that followed.
The man who’d dragged her here stepped into the hut. He was chewing that stuff the Somalis liked. Khat, or miraa, whatever they called it. It looked like parsley to Gwen, but they couldn’t get enough of it.
“Where’s Wizard? Is Wizard coming?” She knew she sounded pathetic. Begging for him like a first-grader asking for her dad. If her dad were a Somali bandit and murderer. She didn’t know why she was putting so much trust in the guy. Probably because he was in charge. At this moment she feared chaos more than anything. Maybe she just liked saying Wizard, like the word itself was magic.
The Somali twirled his finger. Gwen wasn’t sure whether the motion meant
Gwen opened her eyes. Her captor pulled a rubber-banded packet of leaves and stems from his pants. He removed the bands, stuffed his mouth full of leaves. “Miraa.”
“Everybody loves miraa.”
“Miraa.” He pointed at her, then mimed putting a handful of stems in his mouth.
“You want me to try some.” She pointed at her own mouth. He nodded. “That’s very generous, I always wanted to chew grass out of someone’s pants pocket, but I think I’ll pass—”
He selected a chunk of leaves.
“No, see, I’m saying nada—”
He squatted beside her, smiled. His cheeks bulged like a chipmunk’s. And Gwen decided, screw it. What was she worried about? That she’d wind up hooked? It was a leaf. Not exactly meth. And at this point she’d be happy if she lived long enough to get addicted.
She stuffed the leaves in her mouth between her cheek and her jaw. Back home she’d had a reputation for being a bit of a germophobe. Maybe more than a bit. Once, after she refused to eat at a barbecue at his frat, Scott had told her she had OCD. She hadn’t even known what the letters meant. She looked it up later. Obsessive- compulsive disorder. Maybe a little. The joke was on him, though. He was dead, and she was sitting with a mouthful of addictive parsley, her head buzzing like she’d just had ten cups of the world’s strongest coffee—
“Hey. It works.”
“Dah-duh-duh-dah-dah.” The McDonald’s theme song. “I’m loving it.” She was, too. Uppers were her drugs of choice. Booze and pot bored her. She didn’t see the point of sitting on a couch giggling like an idiot, or getting drunk and weepy and ending the night with the spins. She wanted to stay out all night dancing, see the world in hypercolor. Every few weeks she bought pills from her friends with ADD, which everyone knew was just an excuse to get Ritalin prescriptions. This miraa was a nice solid stimulant, north of nicotine but south of coke. She felt focused, awake, without the crawly feeling Ritalin gave her.
The best part was that the stuff made time hurry by. For an hour, maybe more, she did nothing but track the movements of the tiny lizards running along the creases of the hut. They were fascinating.
When Wizard showed up, she felt she was seeing an old friend. He sat beside her. “You like the miraa? Mostly Somali women don’t do this.”
“Mostly I don’t wear sweats when it’s a hundred degrees.”
He handed her a water bottle. “Drink. Easy to forget when you’re chewing.” She realized as he said the words that she was insufferably hot, her face flushed and sweaty. She drank deep, finished the bottle. He gave her another. “What your name?”
“Gwen. Gwen Murphy. Of the Missoula Murphys.” She spat. “Are you actually a wizard?”
“They call me that because no one can kill me. I was in Mogadishu and they shot me in the belly, and I made the bullet escape without hurting me. Only a little blood.” He lifted his shirt to show her the scar.
“Now you think you can’t die?”
“My men think I can’t die.”
“Cool.”
“I’ll take you back to your friends, but first I must ask, what were you doing out there?”
“Lost. I’m not very smart.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Ask anyone who knows me.”
“Let me tell you again. If I want to punish you, I let you leave. You don’t have to fear anyone here. My men do what I say.”
“Always?”
“Always.” That confidence. “They’ll never touch you. But outside here, if they find you—”
“Okay. I believe.” She did, too. She wanted to ask him about the sentry, Owen’s theory about the threat to the camp, but she couldn’t figure out how.
“Your family wants you to give personal information for them. Something secret, to prove the photo is you.”
“Anything. As long as it’s a secret between you and them.”
“Tell them, tell them when I was little I had a cat named Oscar.”
“Oscar?”
“O-S-C-A-R. He was black and white.”
Wizard grabbed his phone, pecked away on the keypad. “Oscar. Black and white.” Gwen wondered if he was sending a text or just making a note. When he was done, he scrolled through menus, handed her the phone. The screen showed a photo of a white SUV, blurry, like it had been taken with another cell phone.
“Do you know this vehicle?”
“It’s one of WorldCares’s, a Land Cruiser.” She didn’t feel like lying. Anyway, Wizard probably knew already. She noticed that the signal strength showed a single bar, weak but maybe enough for texts. There must be a cell tower somewhere.
Wizard scrolled to another photo of the Land Cruiser, this one closer. A black man sat in the driver’s seat, a white man beside him. The black guy was young, skinny, high-cheekboned, and sly. The white guy was rough, in a
