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.
—
Wilfred lay on his side, his eyes closed. Wells picked up the bike, put it in neutral, dropped the kickstand, sparked it. Wilfred opened his eyes, tracked the chains. “Mzungu. You dirty man.”
“I’ll cinch them around us. You hold me and I’ll hold you.”
“Sound like a song.”
Wells knelt behind Wilfred, reached under his arms, pulled him up. Wilfred grunted and his body shook, but he didn’t complain. He leaned against Wells and held his bad leg off the ground. Wells halfthrew him over the bike and wrapped the chains around his back and slid in front of him. Wilfred put his arms around Wells’s waist, but he had no strength. Without the chains supporting him, he couldn’t stay on the bike. Wells needed his right hand for the throttle, which meant he would have to hold the chains in his left hand. But he couldn’t get the bike going unless he pulled in the clutch, put the bike in gear—a move that required that same left hand. He tried twice. Both times he lost his grip on the clutch handle and stalled the engine as he struggled to hold the chains. After the second try, he sat in silence and listened to the hyenas gibbering. The animals had moved closer. It wouldn’t be long before the bold one, the big one, returned.
“Let me,” Wilfred said.
“You know how?”
“Come on.”
Wells leaned forward until his chest nearly touched the bike’s gas tank. He pulled the chains tight to keep Wilfred close. Wilfred snaked his left arm under Wells’s shoulder and pulled in the clutch. Wells twisted the throttle a fraction, giving the engine a taste of gas. Twenty-plus years of riding had made these moves as intuitive as inhaling and exhaling. But today he was on a respirator, trusting Wilfred to help. Wells tapped down his left foot, put the bike into first. “Let go—”
Wilfred eased off the clutch and Wells rolled his right hand a half inch on the throttle. Dirt bikes were twitchier than street bikes, and the bike jumped ahead. Wells thought Wilfred would drop the clutch too quickly and stall them. But he let the handle out smoothly. Wells added gas and then they were moving, bouncing along. Wilfred jabbered in Swahili, no doubt cursing Wells for this mess, but Wells held the chain tight, and with every turn of the tires, they left the corpses and vultures and hyenas behind and rode toward the Cruiser. And life.
12
LANGLEY
In his golden years—oh, my, how he hated that phrase—Shafer had unaccountably developed a liking for sugar cereal. He had a boy’s taste buds and an old man’s colon. So it was that he sat down to a lunchtime bowl of Frosted Flakes and Lactaid as he watched a White House press conference livestreaming on CNN.com.
The question-and-answer period had started a few minutes before, with every question so far about the hostages. Now Josh Galper, the White House spokesman, pointed at a dark-haired woman in the front row. Galper wasn’t afraid to smack down dumb questions. Shafer appreciated him. The reporters didn’t.
“Emily. I’m sure
“Can you tell us if the President has been in touch with the families of the missing volunteers?”
“The President has spoken privately to family members to express his concern.”
