Alex Berenson - The Night Ranger

Wells stepped out, ran around the other Rover just as the rear passenger door swung open. A trickle of blood drooped down Gwen’s forehead. Her eyes were dull, concussed.

“Over there. Now.” Wells pointed at the other Rover. She walked unsteadily toward it. Wells reached inside, helped Hailey out.

“Owen’s stuck,” she said. “Really stuck.”

“Get the bodies out of the other Rover. I’ll handle him.” Wells stepped into the backseat. Owen’s left leg was pinched by the rear door. Wells looped Owen’s right arm around his shoulder. They were face-to-face, nearly touching. The kid’s breath stank of ten days without toothpaste. His cheeks were pale, lips set.

“My leg,” Owen said.

“This is gonna sting.”

Wells braced his left foot against the back driver’s-side door and pressed, using Owen’s trapped body as leverage. Owen screamed like a fire alarm in Wells’s ear. The door gave and Wells felt Owen come free. He kicked with every fiber of muscle he had and—

They slid across the seat. Wells lifted Owen out. His left leg from midcalf down looked even worse than Wells had feared, a bloody pulp. An amputation for sure.

“It’s fine. Just don’t look.” Wells carried Owen to the other Rover. The bodies of the Somalis lay on the ground.

“Get in,” Wells said to Gwen and Hailey. He half expected them to argue. The backseat of the Rover was bloody as a slaughterhouse. But they stepped inside without complaint. Wells set Owen in the front seat.

“Lucky me,” Owen said. “Shotgun.”

The keys were still in the ignition. Wells reached for them. The Rover’s engine grumbled, hesitated.

“Oh, come on,” Hailey said.

“Please,” Gwen said. “Please.”

Wells killed the ignition, tried again with the briefest flutter of gas. The engine kicked into life. Wells put the Rover in reverse. Metal screamed and tore.

Then they were free.

EPILOGUE

Wells knew the media storm they would face when they came back to the places that called themselves civilized. As he bounced the Rover toward the border, he helped the hostages unkink the story of the past twenty-four hours. Of course, they were welcome to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, he told them.

But as far as he was concerned, no one needed to know Owen had killed a guard. Or that Wells had made a deal to help their kidnappers attack another militia in return for their release. Simpler was better. The United States had found where they were being held and bombed their camp as a CIA team helped them escape. Simple. And almost true. Not entirely false, anyway.

“A team,” Gwen said.

“A small team.”

“You’re sure about this.”

“Reporters don’t need the details. You’re heroes. Let the world see you that way.”

“Reporters? People are paying attention to this?” Hailey said.

Wells glanced at her, wondering if she was joking. But, of course, she didn’t know. “It’s the biggest story in the world. I’m not exaggerating. Pays to be pretty.”

“What about you?” Gwen said. “What will you tell the reporters?”

Wells rubbed his thumb against his fingertips, flaking off dried blood. “Better if they don’t see me at all.”

He checked the rearview mirror, wondered whether Wizard would give chase. For now, anyway, the mirror was empty. He edged down on the gas. The Rover’s engine churned and bits of metal and glass shook loose from the grille. Even so, Wells thought they would reach the border.

“There’s still one problem—” Owen said.

“Only one?”

Owen didn’t smile. “You know who set us up?”

—

So much had happened in the last twenty-four hours that James Thompson had slipped Wells’s mind. “Moss Laughton’s good buddy Jimbo. And the driver.” Wells fought fever and exhaustion for the name. “Suggs.”

“Scott, too,” Hailey said.

Scott. Wells hadn’t put that piece together. “You sure.”

“He was yelling for Suggs when Wizard attacked the camp,” Owen said. “He knew Suggs was there even though none of us had seen him.”

“But we all think James sold Scott on the idea,” Gwen said.

“He has to pay,” Owen said.

A couple years back, Wells had tried to rescue another hostage. The man ultimately responsible for that kidnapping was still free. He lived in Saudi Arabia, protected, cosseted, unimaginably wealthy. Unless he made the mistake of leaving the kingdom without his bodyguards, Wells couldn’t touch him.

This time Wells would have justice. “A Kenyan jail would do for him nicely,” Wells said. “He’d be lucky to last a year.”

“That works,” Hailey said.

“What if the Kenyans decide they don’t want to go near it?” Owen said. “What evidence do we have for them?”

“Not much,” Wells said.

“We can’t take that chance,” Owen said. “Will you take care of him? Let him get back to Houston, let it all die down, and in a few months stuff him in a swamp somewhere?”

“Down on the Cancer Coast? Awful quiet resting place for a man who likes to talk as much as Jimmy.” Wells imagined what he’d do in nursery-rhyme form:

Grab him, hood him, toss him in the trunk

Drive him down the highway to the bayou stunk

Stab him, shoot him, wrap him in concrete

Dump the body in the water for the gators to eat

And that’s how we commit murder one, boys and girls! Assassination was a line Wells had never crossed, but he supposed Gwen and Hailey and Owen had earned the right to ask. James had killed his nephew as sure as if he’d put the pistol to Scott’s chest.

“You sure about this? All three of you?”

“No,” Gwen said. “I won’t.”

“Won’t what?” Owen said.

“No more eye-for-an-eye. He goes to prison.” Her voice quiet but firm. “Mr. Wells said we had to agree. And I don’t.”

“All right,” Wells said. “That’s out, then.” He felt an unexpected relief.

“How do you propose we make sure he goes to jail?” Owen said.

“We make him confess—”

“Brilliant, Gwennie.

“Let me finish,” Gwen said. “We know he did this, right? Whatever the evidence, we have no doubt. So what we’ll do is we’ll go to him—he’s at the camp, right?”

“As of yesterday,” Wells said.

“And tell him that Scott confessed before he got shot, that we all three heard it. And he’s got two choices. Either he gives himself up to the FBI—here, not in Houston—and goes back home in their custody, or we make sure the Kenyans arrest him.”

Silence, as they worked through the plan.

“What do you think?” Hailey said to Wells.

“You better get the story straight before you see him. But I think if you stick to it, all three of you, he’ll believe you. Since he knows the truth, too.”

“Owen,” Gwen said.

Owen shifted in his seat to look at her. Pain slanted his face but it couldn’t hide the surprise underneath. “Who are you, and what have you done with Gwen Murphy?”

“Is that a yes or a no?”

“All right. You win.”

And that was that.

—

“One other thing,” Gwen said.

“What’s that?”

“About Wizard and the deal you made. He promised to set us free if you helped him with the attack.”

“Yes.”

“So did he lie? Was he planning to keep us?”

Wells wanted to lie, but she deserved the truth. He couldn’t doubt the bond that she and Wizard had formed in the last twenty-four hours, however strange it might seem.

“I think he meant to set you free. He was double-crossing me, planning to hold me hostage.”

He caught her gorgeous ice-blue eyes in the rearview mirror. He couldn’t tell if she was disappointed in him, Wizard, or the world.