heard the Kenyans getting close, he’d take off again, dare them to chase him through the scrub into Somalia. Otherwise, he’d sit tight. Silence was his ultimate ally. The camp was only three miles from the road, but without the vultures as signposts it was invisible to anyone who wasn’t on top of it.
With the Somali border so close, Wells hoped the cop and his other pursuers might give up the chase when they got to Mark, bring him back to Bakafi instead. The Kenyan police didn’t have the equipment to track him at night. The closest major GSU station was in Garissa, well over a hundred miles away. Instead of trying to catch a crazy mzungu in the dark, the cops could bring reinforcements in the morning to sweep the area. They might even ask the army for help.
Wells had landed at Jomo Kenyatta International in Nairobi less than three days before. He couldn’t remember a mission turning upside down as quickly as this one. But if he rescued the hostages, no one would care about the trouble he’d caused. He hadn’t killed Mark, and he’d uncovered enough evidence against James Thompson that Thompson’s own problems would trump any revenge he might want. The story would have a happy ending, Scott Thompson’s demise notwithstanding. And everyone loved happy endings, Duto most of all.
As the late and unlamented Al Davis liked to say,
Five minutes later, Wells reached the little rise that overlooked the camp. He didn’t know why he was surprised to see the hyenas. He’d been so focused on escaping the Kenyans, he’d forgotten them somehow. They hadn’t forgotten him, though. They were awake. Maybe they were nocturnal as a rule. Maybe the bike had roused them. They looked at him with their heads cocked. Wells felt almost that they were annoyed with him, like he was a delivery guy who’d accidentally shown up at the wrong house, crashed a party. He knew he was projecting, but he couldn’t help himself. A half-dozen of the beasts lay beside the third hut. Another group rested near the fourth hut, at the far end of the camp. The big one, the two-hundred-pound alpha, stood in the center of the camp, where he’d been when Wells had arrived that afternoon. The corpse he’d been eating at the time was almost gone. A long white bone, probably a femur, lay beside his front paws. A few feet away was a half-eaten rib cage, crunched like chicken wings at a sports bar. The bodies of the White Men whom Wells and Wilfred had shot had been pawed at and torn open. Their AKs, the reason Wells had come, lay atop the corpses. The hyenas had torn the rifles’ straps but left the AKs themselves alone. Wells felt a sort of shame for the corpses, for what would happen when the hyenas grew hungry again. Even from a hundred meters away, the stench seeped over him.
The lion was nowhere in sight. Wells figured the hyenas had run him off. Whatever their reputation as weaklings, they seemed firmly in control tonight. He wanted to put the bike into gear, ride a hundred miles from this mess. But he needed an AK and a couple hundred rounds to have any chance against Little Wizard. The Glock was useless past thirty or forty meters. With an assault rifle that could give him a couple hundred meters of space and the right firing hole and plenty of ammo, and with the Reaper watching his back, he could play one-against-fifty long enough to make Wizard pay attention. A lot of ifs, but he’d have the advantage of surprise. And drone strikes unnerved even the boldest fighters.
“Tell you what, boys,” Wells yelled down the hill. “I’ll take what I need and go. Toodeloo and all that. Won’t even know I was here. What do you say?”
As an answer, the big guy spread his jaws wide, picked up the femur. He crunched it in half as casually as Wells breaking a stick over his knee. He chewed noisily for a few seconds, tilted his big ugly head, dropped what was left of the bone from his mouth. Pieces of femur fell out. He bent his head and ran his tongue over the biggest shred like a kid licking an ice cream cone. Wells understood now why Africans hated these beasts. They seemed almost intentionally disrespectful.
Wells feared giving away his position to the Kenyans up the track, but he had to try to rattle the hyenas. He revved the dirt bike’s engine for a few seconds. The alpha male took a half-step back, but no more. Two others stood up. Wells wondered if they would be bold enough to attack the bike. Animals naturally feared objects they didn’t know. And even in packs, smaller predators rarely attacked larger beasts. They knew instinctively that the bigger animal would kill several of them even if they succeeded in taking him down.
But Wells wasn’t sure these hyenas were thinking of him as predator anymore. In their minds, they’d driven him off once already. They’d spent the day developing a taste for human flesh that under normal circumstances they never would have known. They’d learned that these strange two-legged creatures were filled with delicious meat and marrow like every other animal. They were holding off only because they weren’t sure how much damage he could do to them. If they decided he wasn’t a threat, they would come at him. Wells wasn’t at all sure that he could ride fast enough in the dark to escape them.
Two more hyenas stood.
“Tried to play nice. You wouldn’t listen. Some hyenas you just can’t reach.” Wells spread his arms wide and howled at the black clouds above with the gusto of a D-list actor desperate for the role of Werewolf #2. Without waiting to see how the hyenas reacted, he grabbed the handlebars and poured on the gas as he came down the hill.
The hyenas stood now. They chirped and cackled at one another, curious, almost alien sounds that grew more intense as Wells closed in. The alpha stood apart from the rest, his tail unfurled straight behind him, his eyes on this legless man-beast coming at him. The ground was hard-packed dirt, and Wells rode confidently. He twisted his handlebars and came straight at the big guy. Who tilted his head high and opened his bloody muzzle and screamed—no other word would do—screamed his frustration at the dark heavens above. He loped sideways toward the third hut, the rest of the pack, tracking Wells with his eyes.
Wells stopped beside one of the White Men he’d killed that afternoon. Up close the corpse was deeply compromised, pink grooves carved into its black skin, one eye gone, its guts open and stinking of ordure and covered with flies. Another hyena took up the alpha’s cry now, and another.
The alpha’s keening scream rose another octave and he lowered his head and charged—
Wells raised the AK, slipped his left hand under the barrel, found the trigger guard, slid his right index finger inside—
The hyena bounded at him, a low black streak in the night. Another followed, and another—
Wells tucked in his elbow to brace the rifle and squeezed the trigger, knowing that the safety had to be off, he’d seen the kid about to fire this afternoon. He was in a terrible firing position, bent over the bike, aiming with his off hand, no time to set himself. The rifle danced in his hands, but Wells kept his finger on the trigger and the hyena was so close that he almost couldn’t miss. The hyena staggered and kept coming, and then the whole top of its head exploded and it took one more step and collapsed. Wells laid off the trigger just long enough to make sure the AK didn’t jam and shifted to the next hyena, this one smaller but coming faster. He missed, shooting behind the animal. The hyena was only three steps away now, its mouth open, lips drawn back, ready to pounce. Wells twisted the rifle to the right, kept shooting. Chunks of flesh spurted out of the beast’s belly, eruptions of blood and sinew and muscle. The animal took another half-step and tumbled and lay on its side gasping and dying. Wells was already focused on the next hyena. He was catching up with their speed. This one he took out twenty feet away, blowing open its jaw so it flopped down onto its back in agony. Wells shot it until it stopped moving. No mercy in these rounds, hate only. Two more hyenas moved toward him but turned away when they saw what had happened to their betters. They ran now, howling in fear. The rest of the pack followed, disappearing into the darkness.
Wells would have killed them all if he could, shot them down nobly or not. These corpse-devouring beasts filled him with an ugly fury. But they would be dangerous to men no more. They would skulk the scrub in fear and leave the two-legged animals to invent their own terrors. Now Wells, too, had to flee. The shots and screams had surely reached the road. He didn’t know if the Kenyans would chase him, but he couldn’t chance staying here. He liberated the corpses of their ammunition, trying not to hear the laughing voice in his head calling
20
LOWER JUBA REGION
Wizard wished for quiet tonight, time to think. But quiet was hard to find. Everyone in the world wanted these hostages. After the Dita Boys came the phone calls. When Waaberi hung up with the Arab, he
