Alex Berenson - The Night Ranger

He had a flashlight but he didn’t bother to use it. He knew each twist of this path. He’d walked the land around here too many times to count. He wondered if the drone was tracking him. He wanted to believe it had dropped its bomb and flown off. But most likely it was circling in the clouds, waiting and watching. Donkey Junior might think that Wizard’s juju could stop a bomb big enough to blow up three technicals at once. Wizard knew better.

Ten minutes. The path rose. Wizard saw the tops of the two poles, the ragged tarp between them. But Hussein, the sentry, was gone. He raised a palm, stopped. He squatted low and crab-walked ahead a few meters and whistled, a single short note. No answer. Again. He heard rustling and grunting from under the tarp. He stepped forward and saw a man who might have been Hussein. The sentry’s body twisted side to side. His arms were tied behind his back, his legs pulled together, his head cut off—

Head cut off? No. Yet Wizard saw it for himself, a body with no head and still moving. No wonder the man had killed Muhammad and the other three so easily. He was a true-born devil. He’d made a zombie of Hussein. Wizard went to his knees, drew his pistol, gripped it in both hands to hide the shaking.

Ali came beside him and Wizard pointed his pistol at the zombie. Ali fell to his knees and mumbled the Shahada, the Muslim creed: There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger . . . About the only Arabic that Wizard knew. He joined with Ali, for all the good the words might do.

Donkey Junior stepped forward. “What you doing?”

“Hush.”

“How come we don’t get him? Get that hood off him.”

Soon as Wizard heard the word, he knew Junior was right. The American had cuffed Hussein’s arms and legs together, thrown a hood on his head, which was on top of his neck where it belonged. Wizard’s imagination had tricked him. Too much had happened this night.

“What you think, he don’t have a head?” Junior said. “How he goin’ move like that with no head?”

“Shut your mouth. You two stay here. Donkey, you cover me. Ali, you watch down the hill.”

He stood, walked to Hussein straight and true. If the American was close enough to pop, Wizard would take his chances. He died, maybe Ali or Donkey Junior would revenge him. Anything would be better than feeling so foolish. This man killing his soldiers, bombing his technicals, now showing up here, playing with him. Had to stop.

Hussein’s wrists and ankles were cuffed with thin strips of plastic. His AK lay beside him, the magazine gone. Wizard sliced Hussein’s legs free, flipped him onto his back, sat him up, pulled off his hood, not too gently. Hussein’s eyes bulged. “Wizard.” His voice was raspy and soft, like it hurt him to talk. “Hamdulillah” —thanks be to God—“it’s you, this man come from nowhere and choke me, I wake up with a hood on me, can’t hardly breathe—”

Wizard squeezed Hussein’s cheeks to shut him up. “Some sentry. Can’t see a white man in the middle of the night.”

“I hear the explosion, look back a second—”

“A second—”

“His hands around my neck and I can’t do nothing. He bigger than Ali, strong, move quick—”

Wizard wanted to pull his pistol, shoot the sky from frustration. He’d only be wasting rounds. He grabbed Hussein’s arms, pulled him up, cut his hands free. “Go on back to camp. Tell Waaberi we over here, we back soon.” He shoved Hussein toward the huts, turned, looked out into the night. The mzungu was out there. Close. Wizard scanned down the hill to the south, left to right, east to west, looking for motion, white skin, anything. He turned, looked back to camp. The mzungu would need big courage to hide there, so close to the enemy. But this American seemed to do what he liked.

Wizard didn’t see him. The rain was too hard, the night too dark.

He wasn’t even surprised when his phone chimed.

—

“You see me, Wizard? ’Cause I see you.”

Wizard would have blown the whole hill up, and himself with it, to make this voice in his ear go away.

“I gon’ find you.”

“Holding your pistol, wearing that black T-shirt. How come you wear black and all your men wear white? That a racial thing?”

“Say all you like, mzungu. Don’ change I got something you want.”

“Let them go. Get back to smuggling sugar, whatever. This is too big for you.”

“You joking. I let them go, that bird drop an egg and no more Wizard.”

“Let them walk, you can disappear. Your men, too. I promise.”

Wizard raised a hand to the sky. “Mzungu promises worth not even one drop of rain.”

“I could have put that bomb in the middle of your camp. I could have killed that sentry. I could open up on you right now. I’m keeping the body count down.”

“Should have, then.”

“I know you want to get them to their families, Wizard. I know they’re not for sale to the highest bidder.”

“How you know that?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I’m your best chance. In twelve hours, this will be nothing but rubble. I can save you, but you have to let them go.”

“You can’t save me, mzungu. You think you see, but you don’t see nothing. They killed one my men.”

Pause. “Who killed who? And how?”

“Tried to run tonight, attacked they guard.”

“You would have done the same.”

“My soldiers see it different.”

“Who’s in charge? You or them?”

Wizard couldn’t figure what to make of this man. “Talking peace now. After you killed four my men?”

“Self-defense.”

“This talk talk talk. I need money. Ransom. No more talk. I want to see you now. Or else I go back to my hut, wait for you to attack. Everybody got to die sometime.”

“If I come out. You won’t shoot me.”

Wizard felt his lips spread into a smile. “Gon’ have to take that chance, mzungu.”

24

Wells lay prone eighty meters from the sentry post, covered in dirt soft and sticky as toffee. Through his night-vision monocle, he saw Wizard peering down the hill. Wells wasn’t worried. Even with a scope, seeing him through the rain and the scrub would be tough. Without it, Wizard had no chance, not as long as Wells stayed still.

His plan had worked. He had judged Wizard as a young, reckless commander who would want to see what had happened to his sentry firsthand instead of staying in camp. Wizard had obliged. And for whatever reason, he’d brought only two men with him. Now, even downslope, Wells had a huge tactical edge. Thanks to the scope, he could take out the three Somalis while they shot blindly into the dark. The men in camp would hear the firefight. But before they could respond, Wells would retrace his steps to the dirt bike a few hundred meters south. In the darkness and confusion, he could easily outflank his pursuers, enter the camp from the northwest.

A perfect plan. Just one problem with it. By the time Wells reached the camp, Gwen and Hailey and Owen would be dead. A few minutes before, after the Reaper dropped its bomb and Wells choked out the sentry, Wells called Shafer for an update. Neither man needed to comment on the irony of the fact that Shafer, halfway across the world, had the better view of the camp and the technicals.

“At first it looked like panic, guys running everywhere. Then they clustered up. I’m guessing your man gave a pep talk. A bomb would have taken most of them out. My pilot figured three-quarters KIA or seriously wounded.”

“Leaving the other quarter to skin Gwen alive.”

“Why we gave peace a chance. What’s your next move?”

“Hunker down, get him to come to me. He’ll see that I’m here, what the Reaper’s done. Now that he knows what he’s up against, he should want a deal.”