good way. Close-cropped hair, strong chin, big shoulders, Ray-Bans. He looked like a soldier. Nice. Maybe a tiny bit old, but Gwen had no problem imagining him coming for her.
“You know them?”
“Never seen ’em before.”
“Tell the truth.”
“I am. No idea who they are. Neither of them.” The time stamp on the photo showed it was taken only a couple hours before.
Wizard stood, extended a hand, pulled her up. Her head went light and the world spun. She braced herself against the mud wall and he held on to her. For a small guy, he was stronger than he looked.
“Too much miraa,” he said. “Any reason they might be looking for you?”
“I told you. I don’t know them. Are they? Looking for us?”
Wizard looked west, like he could see the men and what was about to happen to them. “If they are, they won’t be much longer.”
11
IJARA DISTRICT,
NEAR THE KENYA/SOMALIA BORDER
Through his binoculars Wells saw the motorcycles pounding along the track, big tires churning up rivulets of red dirt. Two men on each bike. White handkerchiefs hid their faces, but not the AKs strapped to their chests. Wells watched them from the compound’s third hut. Even if the riders were looking directly at him, the shadows would hide him.
The track dipped and they disappeared. Wells figured they were maybe two minutes out. Most likely they would stay on the bikes the whole way in. Untrained fighters habitually underestimated the importance of moving quietly, especially in open country like this. These men were making a particularly obvious approach. Maybe they had a strategy Wells hadn’t figured. More likely they were young and high on miraa and fearless, certain that they could deal with whatever they came across.
Wells assumed these men were part of the raiding party that had attacked the camp and grabbed the hostages. He hoped to capture at least one alive, find out where the hostages were now, why Scott Thompson had been killed. But facing four men with AKs, Wells would settle for survival. His and Wilfred’s. He’d come up with a simple plan. He didn’t want to run for the Land Cruiser, or hide in the scrub and wait for darkness. He preferred to use the raiders’ overconfidence against them. He had explained his plan to Wilfred as they stood in the center of the compound, the stinking corpses around them a reminder of the stakes.
—
“Wait in the first hut. Step out as the first bike passes. Make sure they know you’re there. They’ll stop when they see you. That’s what we want. Even before they stop, yell to them. Doesn’t matter what you say, as long as it gets their attention. Once you start talking, don’t stop. I’m going to give you the shotgun. Carry it by the barrel in one hand so it’s clearly no threat. Don’t point it at them under any circumstances. Don’t give them reason to shoot. The first thing they’ll do is tell you, Put it down. Don’t argue with them. Do what they say.”
“Why do I carry it at all, then?”
“If they disarm you, they’ve dealt with you. You’re no threat. Now, if they ask about me, where I am, who, tell them I work with WorldCares. But say you’re alone, you dropped me off before you got here. I was afraid to come so near Somalia. If they ask why you’re here, tell them that you found this place by accident.”
“They won’t believe me.”
“Doesn’t matter. Point is to confuse them, slow them down.”
“Then what?”
“Take another step or two towards them. The closer you can get, the better. They have AKs and we have pistols. We get in close, we shave their edge. Keep your hands in the air. I’ll be in the third hut, but don’t look for me. Not for any reason. Focus on them, keep them focused on you. Talk. I know you’re good at that. When you hear me shoot, you do the same.”
“But I already put the gun down—”
“Not the shotgun. With the Makarov. It’ll be tucked into your waist at the back, where they can’t see it. When I come out of the hut, I’m going to come out shooting. No warning. When I do, they’ll turn towards me.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“It’s instinct to focus on the active threat. And all this is going to happen fast. At most twenty seconds after you first come out of the hut. They’ll be sitting on the bikes, looking at you. When they hear me step out, they’ll twist towards me. That’s when I’ll shoot them. I’ll take out the two on the bike closer to me. You focus on the bike nearer you. Understand?”
“What if they shoot me as soon as they see me?”
“Most men can’t kill someone that fast. Not unless they’ve already met you, know you’re the enemy. They have to ask questions, get themselves ready. Decide.”
“But that’s not what you’re going to do. You’re just going to kill them.”
“Why I’m still alive, Wilfred. Now we practice.”
—
They did, twice, before the motorcycles got loud and Wilfred ran for the first hut. Now Wells heard the motorcycles slow, drop to idle. Seconds passed. Then one bike moved again. The other stayed where it was. They’d split up to approach the compound from both ends. So much for Wells’s plan.
—
Guy Raviv, Wells’s favorite instructor at the Farm, liked to say,
Raviv reminded Wells of the best noncoms he’d known during Ranger school. Ranger training was famously tough, nine weeks of runs and marches with hundred-pound packs—on four hours’ sleep. The NCOs helped the guys on the bubble while pushing the toughest soldiers even harder. “Everybody suffers,” a master sergeant named Jim Grant said to Wells. “Don’t let me see you smile. I’ll hurt you more.” By the end, Wells understood the strategy. Ultimately, the instructors were sending the message
Raviv treated Wells the same way, a harshness born of respect. The night before the paramilitary survival exercise that the CIA put all its trainees through, he called Wells.
“You awake? Not worried about tomorrow?”
“Should I be?”
“I’ll swing by around ten.”
Wells figured Raviv wanted to run one last countersurveillance exercise. Instead, as midnight approached, Wells found himself in the overheated basement of a backstreet bar in Norfolk playing poker with a table of middle- aged men he’d never seen before. Raviv, who was famously cheap, bought beers for him all night. The game didn’t break until four a.m. Then Raviv insisted on stopping at a Waffle House for breakfast. By the time they reached Camp Peary, the sun was up. So was Wells’s hangover. He reeked of Raviv’s secondhand smoke. He wanted nothing more than to sack out, but he knew he wouldn’t have the chance.
“You did this on purpose.”
“Whining doesn’t suit you. How much did you lose, eighty?”
“I guess.” Actually, Wells had lost a hundred and fifty. He couldn’t figure out how. The game was only quarter-ante. But he wasn’t much of a poker player. After all those Budweisers, the cards and chips floated away like balloons at a state fair. Up and up and gone.
“You gonna be a covert operative, you can’t even play poker?”
“I’m not going to be that kind of operative.”
Raviv pulled to the side of the access road that led to the Farm’s main campus. “You’re a fool.”
