Shadow War (3 page)

Thirty-eight minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of a nondescript building in one of the endless office parks near Dulles International Airport. I parked my ancient Mercedes in a long line of similar cars and stared at the man-made pond and the picnic table no one ever used, letting the Verdi wash away my traffic-related stress.

This area was the heart of the mercenary-industrial complex. G4S, a competitor, supplied thousands of security guards to the U.S. military from these buildings, and tens of thousands more to domestic malls. DynCorp pulled down more than three billion a year, although much of that was from military-aircraft maintenance. Blackwater became Xe Services, then Academi, then merged with Triple Canopy, a rival, to beget Constellis Holdings, all in the space of five years. My employer, Apollo Outcomes, had been cleaning latrines on army bases in the 1990s. Now it was a private army with yearly revenues of $3.7 billion, most of it courtesy of Uncle Sam, according to their most recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

The mercenary business, to put it in technical terms, was hot. The industry had exploded during the Iraq War, not just because of contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, although those were massive, of course. Just as important, with every national asset focused on those countries, there was no one left to deal with the other terrible things happening in the world. For the U.S.
military, that was the opportunity cost of waging two simultaneous wars. For the mercenary industry, it was a once-every-three-centuries opportunity.

Now, less than fifteen years after the Third Infantry Division rolled into Baghdad, contractors like me were the forward arm of Western power, fighting in every rat hole, brutal dictatorship, and economic backwater in the world. It was, quite simply, the biggest change in the military since the heyday of the
condottieri,
the infamous contract warriors of the Middle Ages. But you wouldn't know it from these shabby surroundings and nondescript office parks, where Apollo and its competitors abutted low-level consulting firms and industrial printers.

And that was all by design. The lack of media attention, the bland buildings in boring locations, the forgettable corporate names and artless logos—it was a strategy. Because to draw attention in this business, even positive attention, was to fail. That was why Blackwater was a pariah, before being sold and renamed three times. The military performed the covert actions the White House would neither confirm nor deny. We took care of the clandestine ones, those the government disavowed if they were ever spoken aloud. Our only competition was the CIA, but we were cheaper. And, in my opinion, far better, because we were so deep undercover that half the time, even the CIA couldn't find us. If you wanted to be a player in the Deep State—the shadowy coterie of big business, politicos, media, and other elites who ruled behind the headlines, beyond government oversight, and across national borders, regardless of who was formally in power, the world where private armies like Apollo thrived—never let them hear or speak your name.

There was a time, five years ago, when I might have been a power player here, a man who contracted operations instead of performed them. I was invited, groomed,
introduced to soci
ety
. . . whatever you want to call it. But I hated the DC scene: the economy of favors, the double-dealing, the endless scheming in pursuit of a compromised version of a shining ideal, while the shabby duck on the fetid retention pond shed feathers like the plague.

I was a soldier, not a bureaucrat. I chose Africa.

Now I came back three, maybe four weeks a year. Many mercs in the field never came back at all. We were freelancers, hired by the job: cash on delivery, no health insurance or 401(k)s. Old mercs don't retire, they disappear, maybe to some unknown corner of the world, maybe to an unmarked grave. The ones I knew kept busy, taking job after job, so they wouldn't have to face this life, and the people left behind. But I was a mission leader, the point of contact between the men in the field and the suits in the office. My role was to plan the assignments and assemble the teams, so I came here just barely often enough to recognize the frosty attendant at the front desk, the one who never smiled.

“Hello Jane,” I said. It had taken me two years to remember her name. She didn't even pretend to remember mine.

I slid my company ID into the bioscanner and held it for three seconds, waiting for the green light, and then placed my index finger on the fingerprint reader. Jane checked her monitor, confirmed my identity, and waved me to the employee turnstile, the one with the
NO TAILGATING
placard on it. The thick Plexiglas doors swished open. Next to the doors was a metal detector and X-ray machine, with two armed guards. Typical postterrorism precaution, Apollo always said. Only an expert would notice that the guards changed every few days and carried Heckler & Koch MP5SD6s with integrated suppressor barrels.

Beyond the metal detector was a wall—reinforced steel under plaster—with a huge company logo. I walked through a curved white tunnel called a waveguide, a security measure that
emptied into a windowless cubicle farm. Cable trays and monitors hung from the ceiling, as kids in their twenties took phone calls in foreign languages. I had no idea what they did, but they seemed younger every year. When I started here in 2002, the cube dwellers were retired older men from the military and intelligence community, whose pants refused to acknowledge their extra pounds. They were refugees from the great defense layoffs of the 1990s, out here by the airport, playing out the string.

Now the cube ranchers were mostly women, because they make better intelligence analysts, and mostly younger than the Cold War–era coffee stains on the old guys' shirts. I assumed that meant they were going somewhere in life, besides the suburbs.

“Tom Locke. Good to see you. How was the flight?”

The speaker was David Wolcott, my handler for the last five years, lurking as always. Wolcott had the look of those old middle managers, right down to the bald spot and the belt that went underneath his belly instead of around. I figured he had a wife and kids somewhere in the suburbs, a barbecue grill, baseball equipment, and one of those fences with the support poles on the outside so the homeowner can sit in a lounger and look at the pretty side.

“It was first class,” I said. As always.

Wolcott had called me home, but that was not something we would discuss. He was a middle manager, and this wasn't a business with postmortem meetings or after-action reviews. If Libya still bothered me a few months from now, I might try to figure out what had happened on my own. Otherwise, I left the past alone.

“Coffee?” Wolcott asked.

“No thanks.”

“I don't blame you, Tom. It's garbage. No one has cleaned the pot in a year.”

We passed the cube farm and turned down a hallway, where I left my cell phone on a table with twenty others, as required. The next door was steel, with a large combo lock, keypad, and camera. Inside was the Tactical Operations Center, or TOC, a large, windowless room of computer monitors running mission status updates, live team feeds, satellite imagery of areas of interest, and video conferencing with company managers around the world. The TOC was a 24/7 war room, complete with top secret government clearance and immediate access to every operative in the world, and it was the worst job at Apollo: cramped, dark, underventilated and underpaid.

Ten paces further, Wolcott stopped in front of an office suite, opened the door, and motioned me through without a word.

“Brad Winters,” I said, as Wolcott closed the door and stayed outside, leaving me alone with my former boss. It wasn't often I was caught by surprise, but this was one of those times.

“Good to see you, Thomas,” Winters said, rising from his chair.

I had instinctively straightened and brought my arms to my sides, a military sign of respect, but Winters came around the table to shake hands. This man had recruited me into Apollo Outcomes; we had worked closely together for six years; he had taught me, molded me, broken and invested in me, and then he'd invited me to join him, as his right hand, in Apollo's executive suite.

But I'd gone back to Africa instead, and I hadn't heard from him since.

That was the last anyone had heard from him, really. Brad Winters had transformed Apollo during the gold rush of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, when the Department of Defense was handing out $300 billion a year to companies with any sort of link to military logistics or firepower. He had almost made a name for himself. And then he had disappeared.

I knew that meant he'd either fallen out of power, or ascended into the realm where only a hundred or so people needed to know your name. Clearly, it was the latter, and I wasn't surprised. Brad Winters was a dinosaur; he would always be around, even if it was just as an oil slick.

And I wasn't surprised that he looked exactly as I remembered him. That was the man's greatest asset: a manner so bland, he could disappear into any crowd. Winters had gotten his start in the 82nd Airborne—that was a big part of our connection, because I'd earned my jumpmaster wings there, too—and had come and gone from Wall Street before coming to Apollo. His grip had gotten firm in his time upstairs, but the only other change I noticed was the stitching on the lapel of his blue suit.

“I have a tailor, from Panama,” Winters winked, following my gaze. “I see you're still shopping Jermyn Street.”

My first trip with Brad Winters had been to Brussels to brief NATO officials on a security situation in Africa. When we met at Dulles airport, he had eyed my Brooks Brothers suit and tasseled loafers and finally said, “That won't do.”

We got off during a stopover at Heathrow and took a cab to Jermyn Street, off Saint James Square, the ground zero of gentlemen's clothing. We walked into several modest-looking shops, where the staff greeted him by name.

Several hours later, I had four bespoke suits on order, nine tailored shirts, an overcoat with a velvet collar, two pairs of John Lobb shoes, a breast pocket wallet, and some Hermès ties and sterling silver cufflinks. It cost me two months' salary, including danger pay, but at least Apollo paid for the connecting flight we'd missed.

Now Winters laughed, and I realized I'd glanced down at his shoes. Most men skimped on footwear, because it was expensive. The shoes I had on this morning cost more than what a Wash
ington bureaucrat takes home in a month. Winters's shoes cost even more.

“I'm glad you haven't turned your back on everything I taught you,” Winters said.

I let the remark slide, made a mental note to be more careful with my gaze, and took a seat. If Winters had come down from the mountain, this was important. But I didn't expect to find out a damn thing about it here. In the army, it had been two-hour mission briefings, with a thick PowerPoint presentation and six outside experts. It was death by detail.

At Apollo, it was eight minutes if you were lucky. And no note taking. The company's unofficial motto was: “Figure it out.”

“That was solid fieldwork in Libya,” Winters said. “I'm sorry it didn't pan out. I know your other recent missions have been . . . less than satisfactory.”

It had been a rough few years of muscle work, the kind of cheap intimidation and sudden violence that was beneath a man of my skills. I had started to wonder if I'd been forgotten, or taken for granted. Winters was telling me, straight off, that I hadn't.

“I recently talked to State,” he said, tipping his chair back in a show of disdain for that august department. “There's an opportunity in Ukraine. Short term. Creative. Off the books. Your kind of mission, Thomas.”

“Why me?”

I had operated in the Balkans during the '90s as a soldier in U.S. Special Operations Forces, and later transacted arms deals in Eastern Europe for Apollo, but my area of expertise was a thousand miles and a continent away.

“You're the best man for the job,” Winters said, like it was a simple statement of fact, which of course it was. “The U.S. and its allies are getting run over by Putin”—
That's an understate
ment,
I thought,
the man just straight out stole Crimea
—“and clients are being dragged down. This conflict is bad for business.”

We must be in a new business,
I thought, but I said, “I'm no Putin man, Brad.” First name. Power move. You don't intimidate me, old mentor. “Surely you have someone in-country.” Vladimir Putin was a field of study. There had to be a dozen company operatives, at least, whose careers were built on him and his cronies. And if I knew Brad Winters, he probably already had a half a hundred Tier One operators in the combat zone.

“This is improvisation, Thomas. I need a military artist. The last thing I want is a Putin man.”

I thought of the first time I'd talked to Brad Winters. I was walking across Harvard Yard in the fall of 2001, a year out of special operations forces and a month into my first term as a graduate student at the Kennedy School of Government. “The Army's no place for a young man like you,” my commanding officer had advised me. “It's all peacekeeping and politics now. You'll be wasting your career. Go to school. Spend a few years studying. There's a position at State waiting for you.” By State, he meant CIA.

A week in, I was bored to tears. I wanted to be where the action was, not doing problem sets for my econometrics class. Then the planes hit the Twin Towers, and all my plans came crashing down. I was outside the Widener library when I received the call.

“You don't know us,” Winters said, “but we know you. How would you like to save the world?”

What is this, a joke?
I thought.

Two days later, I was drinking cognac in the presidential palace of the Central African country of Burundi. Hutu extremists were massing along the border. They were planning to assassinate the president, the small prim man sitting quietly across from me,
and reignite the Hutu-Tutsi conflict that had ravaged neighboring Rwanda years before. I had six weeks, at most, to prevent a genocide, and nobody trusted the Burundian army. Nobody trusted the presidential guard. Nobody, even the U.S. ambassador, thought it could be done. That was why the CIA had turned down the job.