“Almost didn’t make it. You one lucky mzungu. Them green mambas put a bite in you, you get all swelled up, can’t breathe.” Wizard bent his head forward, snapped his jaws together.
“Can we stop talking about the mamba?”
“Pretty, though. What is it you want from me?”
A tickle ran across Wells’s calf. He looked down, half expecting the snake to be curled around his legs. “Any chance we can get inside?”
—
They trudged toward camp, and Wells felt the full weight of the last three days. Even at forty a man could rise to his youthful heights in bursts—forty-year-old point guards and quarterbacks played in the pros—but Wells was past forty now. He was in great shape, but every mission left him more deeply spent. He walked carefully, conserving his strength for this last phase.
As they neared camp, Wells drew on his last reserves to make himself stand up taller, walk faster. He wanted Wizard’s men to think of an emissary from the outside world, here to give them the choice of freedom or death. Not their captive.
He saw dozens of soldiers standing in the rain, waiting around the western huts. They had AKs and RPGs, and most wore their white T-shirts. Wells couldn’t guess what they made of him, though one tall man pointed and laughed. “What’s he saying?”
“That you almost as black as me.”
Wells scraped a line of mud from his face. He was caked in it. His forearms itched, too, thanks to a dozen mosquito bites. The rain had brought them out and he’d been a perfect target lying in the mud.
At the edge of camp, several men watched a hut. “Mind if I say hi to Gwen?” Wells turned toward the men. Wizard grabbed his elbow, marched him along. Wells didn’t argue. He’d found out what he needed to know. The hostages were inside.
Wizard’s hut was clean and spare and most of all dry, with a cot and a wooden chest. Wizard turned on an electric lantern. A man brought in two rough-hewn wooden stools and a plastic bag filled with leaves. Wizard took the bag, offered it to Wells. “Miraa.”
“No, thanks.”
“The girl with the white hair, she takes miraa.” Wizard stuffed his lip with leaves.
“Gwen?”
“Yes. Gwen.” Wizard smiled. He liked her, Wells saw. Was that why he’d refused to sell the hostages to the Arab?
“Is she all right?”
“All three of them, sure, ’til they kill my man. Now we got them pinned up with one more my men.”
“They have a hostage?” No wonder the camp felt so unsettled.
“They not going anywhere unless I say. How you find me, mzungu?”
“The drone tracked your men from the border.”
“Tricky. Then it bomb my trucks.”
“That’s right.”
“It still here?”
“Yes. One for now. More coming.”
“But you alone.”
“The CIA, the Army, they know I’m here. In a few hours, they’ll have helicopters here.” Wells wasn’t sure whether he was lying or not. Duto and Shafer knew, but whether Duto had told anyone outside Langley depended on calculations that Wells didn’t presume to understand.
“And soldiers.”
“Special Forces. Only thing that will stop them is if they’re afraid you’ll kill the hostages. That’s the only reason I didn’t kill you on the hill.”
“Lying, mzungu. Couldn’t even see me.”
Wells handed over the night-vision monocle. “You couldn’t see me, but I saw you.”
Wizard looked through it. “Turn off the lantern,” Wells said.
Wizard flicked it off and the hut was dark. “Neat toy. Mzungu magic.” He flicked the lantern back on, gave the monocle to Wells, pretending he wasn’t impressed.
“I promise you that right now, satellites are photographing this place, analysts are figuring out where the hostages are, planners are thinking up ways to hit you so hard it’ll be over in thirty seconds. Plus, every SEAL and Delta within a thousand miles is raising his hand and begging to get in on this like a kid who doesn’t want to be last pick at recess—”
Wizard spat a long stream into the dirt. “Don’ know what you talking about.”
“What I’m talking about, Wizard, is that this is over. However you expected to get paid, Nairobi, Mogadishu, no one will touch you. Maybe if you had a thousand fighters, big weapons, shoulder-fired missiles, the Pentagon and White House would take you seriously. If you were in Mog and had a million civilians on all sides, you’d have some leverage. But not here. Not this. Every man here is a legitimate target, and the United States will kill them all. In fact, that’s probably the number-one option—hit quick, hit hard, so that you’ll be too busy trying to save your own skin to shoot those three in the hut. It’s what I’d do.”
“Let them try. They don’ scare Wizard.”
Wells coughed, a wet phlegmy rumble that started low in his stomach and took too long to stop. He’d come to a land of drought and wound up drenched and sick. He wanted nothing more than to lie on the dirt, close his eyes. He knew that he’d wake burning from the inside out, skin stretched over his bones, eyes worn dry, throat clotted and chafed, and still he ached to sleep.
“Listen to me. We both know that you can yell out to your men to shoot me and I can’t stop you. Maybe I take a few soldiers out, but not a whole camp. I gave up my chance to escape when I told you where I was.”
“What the point.”
“Point is”—another cough rose in Wells and he fought it down—“point is that if I tried to shoot my way out of here, it would be suicide. Not bravery. You try to fight the Americans, it’ll be the same. Let Gwen and Hailey and Owen go. Keep me if you like—they won’t send an army for me and you can ransom me back in a month when nobody’s paying attention, but let them go. I know you want to get them back to their families anyway—”
“Second time you said that. How you know?”
“I was the Arab who called you,” Wells said in Arabic, then in English.
Wizard grinned. And pulled a half-empty bottle of Johnny Walker Blue from his chest, the amber liquid glowing in the low lantern light.
“Plenty tricks in you, mzungu.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Wizard handed Wells a glass.
“Are we toasting agreement?” Wells said. “You’ll listen.”
Wizard raised his glass. “This to thank you for letting somebody else kill me. You know I can’t let them go.”
At that they both drank. The scotch blistered Wells’s throat and his head swam. Something deeper and darker than fatigue had come for him this night. The bites on his arms itched madly. But he hadn’t been in Kenya nearly long enough for malaria or sleeping sickness to incubate. He wondered if he’d been unlucky enough to be infected with something more obscure, West Nile virus or Rift Valley fever. Whatever it was, he faced more dangerous threats in the next few hours. He forced the headache aside, focused on Wizard.
“You can trust me,” Wells said.
Wizard smirked. “How many times you lie to me already? Kill my men. Now telling me, do what you say. Now, what if I foolish enough to believe you, give up these wazungu? Out there, not ten kilometers away, creeping close and close, Awaale got three hundred Ditas—”
“Ditas? Is that what you call Shabaab?”
Wizard shook his head like he couldn’t believe Wells didn’t know. “Not Shabaab. Dita Boys. Fighters.”
“A local militia.”
“Yeah, militia. Awaale tells me I don’t give over the wazungu by sunrise he gon’ attack me. I got not even seventy soldiers and now one technical left. If Awaale come, half my men go to him straight straight. The rest of
