“Okay.” Mark reached his hand higher until it was behind Wells, a dangerous moment. If Mark went for the lighter, Wells had already decided that he would toss it aside. He wasn’t setting this man on fire. He just had to hope Mark wouldn’t take the chance.
The key scraped into the hole with the faint click of metal on metal. Then Mark turned the key, and the steel bracelet came loose from Wells’s wrist. Freedom. Wells lifted his right elbow, reversed it into the cop’s temple, getting his shoulder into the strike. The elbow was underrated as a weapon. Wells couldn’t see what he’d done, but he felt the shiver of contact run up his arm. Mark’s head snapped sideways and a tiny wheeze escaped his throat. Wells grabbed Mark’s pistol, rolled forward into the dirt. He came up and turned around, the pistol in his right hand in case Mark tried to come back at him. But the cop stayed flat on his back. He twisted sideways and vomited a stew of beer and rice.
Wells grabbed the handcuff key, unlocked the left cuff so the handcuffs came free. He tucked Mark’s pistol into the back of his waistband. Mark tried to sit, but Wells flipped him onto his stomach, put a knee in his back, cuffed him tight.
“You no aid worker.”
“You’re not much of a cop.”
He pulled Mark up as someone shouted from down the road. Wells saw a man outside the hoteli. Time to go. Wells grabbed the pistol by the butt and swung it against Mark’s head. The cop went limp.
The man from the hoteli was walking toward him now. Wells wondered if he had time to go back to the police station, get his guns and his phones. He decided he had no choice. He could make do with Mark’s Makarov, proof that fate had a sense of humor. But without the phones he’d have no way to reach Shafer or anyone else. He grabbed the Cruiser’s keys from Mark’s pocket and threw his unconscious body in the back of the Cruiser. He slammed the gate shut, ran for the driver’s door. Two more men had come out from the hoteli now and were walking up the road. Wells drove to the police station. Inside, the front room was empty. He shoved the phones in his pockets, scooped up the shotgun. As he did, the handle of the back door twisted. He pointed the Mossberg at the anticorruption poster, fired. The devil’s thunder echoed off the concrete walls and the poster turned into confetti. So much for a quiet exit. Wells ran outside, fired the Glock wildly at the police pickup truck outside the station. The front left tire burst open. He wasn’t sure how much other damage he’d done, but the tire alone ought to buy him a few minutes.
He slid back in the Cruiser and rolled off. A dozen men stood in the road. Wells clicked on his brights, hunched low in his seat, floored the gas. The Cruiser’s engine roared. It accelerated madly down the street, bouncing over ruts like an ATV on steroids. Wells saw two bullet holes appear in the windshield and then the hoteli flashed past and he was clear of Bakafi.
He wasn’t expecting a warm welcome if he came through town again.
16
LOWER JUBA REGION,
SOUTHWESTERN SOMALIA
Gwen wanted more miraa.
She and Owen and Hailey were waiting for dinner when the shots echoed in the night and the camp dissolved into chaos. Three of Wizard’s men dragged them back to their one-room prison. With the door closed, the room was black. Gwen clicked on the flashlight and she and Hailey sat side by side against the wall. Owen stood by the door, peeking out through the ventilation holes punched in the tin. Gwen chewed the inside of her lip, pressing her teeth into her own tender flesh, as she waited for the firefight to start, for grenades exploding and soldiers shouting in a language she couldn’t understand. Then the shots stopped and the night was quiet.
Seconds later, she heard a low sob, almost a moan. She was almost surprised to realize that she hadn’t made the sound. Hailey seemed to be having a full-on panic attack. She was curled against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees.
“It’s gonna be okay—”
“I wish they’d just shoot us—”
“Don’t say that, Heartbreaker.” Gwen hugged Hailey, the only comfort she could offer. Hailey tried to break free but she held on. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.” After a few seconds, Hailey’s sobs dissolved into something like laughter and she stopped rocking.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Gwen, I’m sure I’m exactly the same, but you smell terrible. I mean—” Hailey waved her hand in front of her nose.
The sudden mood shift didn’t surprise Gwen. She’d taken the same roller-coaster ride herself dozens of times. “You know what I’d like more than anything? A long, hot bath. Bubble bath.” Gwen could almost feel herself sliding into the tub until she couldn’t even see her body, shedding dirt, sweat, smoke, fear, emerging clean and new.
“You know what I’d like? To be alone for a few minutes. Totally alone.”
“Hailey—”
“Shh—” Owen hissed. “I hate to break this pity party up, but something big is going on.” His tone silenced them. After a few minutes, Owen stepped away from the door, sat next to them. “We have to get out of here. Tonight. I just watched them bring in two kids, when I say kids I mean like twelve years old. Arms tied behind their backs. To Wizard’s hut. Then, a few minutes later, the big guy who’s always with Wizard, he came out with one boy slung over his shoulder. He was dead. I’d bet on it.”
“Doesn’t mean they killed him—” Gwen said.
“No? Just now they brought the other one out. And they’re slinging their AKs around and a couple of them are carrying these big long tubes that I think are rocket launchers. They are loaded for bear, and I know you think Wizard’s your best friend, Gwen—”
“That’s—”
“But that kid was alive when he went into that hut and dead when they brought him out. These guys aren’t nice. And the worst part is, I’m telling you, they are scared right now. Maybe ‘scared’ is the wrong word, maybe they don’t get scared, but they are on edge. Amped. Strutting around, swinging their guns. I’m surprised nobody’s gotten shot by accident.”
“They’re protecting us. That’s what Wizard told me, he told me his men wouldn’t hurt me, us, that we were safe here—”
“Gwen, if they wanted to let us go, they had their chance,” Hailey said. “Last night. After they killed Suggs and the Joker, they could have left us there. Even driven us back to Dadaab.”
Gwen wanted to argue, but Hailey was right. “Fine. You win. They’re just waiting for the right moment to heat up the pot, make mzungu stew. What do you want us to do about it? Hope our guard falls asleep tonight so we can run for it?”
“My thought is, everything that’s happened so far came from the east. Whoever’s out there, Shabaab, I assume, they’re totally focused on it. We get out of camp, head west, maybe they won’t realize for a while.”
“They won’t realize? Please, Owen, imagine what you’d think if I just said that—”
“She’s right,” Hailey said. “How can we outrun them? They have those Range Rovers and who knows what else.”
Gwen hated to bring up the motorcycles, but the other two deserved to know. “When they put me in that hut this morning, I saw two motorcycles, dirt bikes, in the hut next to it. I’m not sure they work, but someone was in there trying to fix them.”
“I can ride,” Owen said. “Can either of you?”
“I can,” Gwen said.
“You can?” Hailey couldn’t have sounded more surprised if Gwen had said she was a virgin.
“My high school boyfriend showed me. He always had this plan that we’d ride cross-country together. But I shouldn’t have even brought it up. There’s no way this is gonna work. What, Owen? You think we run to the hut, spark the bikes, take off, and nobody notices?”
“In a few hours, two or three a.m., it’s gonna look different out there. If we don’t get attacked tonight, these
