The Shadow Patrol (10 page)

“What?”

“Enough. Three tours.”

“I’m starting to think it’s too much.”

Francesca laughed, for real this time.

* * *

BACK AT THE PICKUP,
Alders slid under the back bumper, opened the hidden compartment, came out with the dope and a thick plastic bag that held their uniforms and toiletries. “Showers?”

“I don’t know,” Francesca said. “I think I smell pretty good.”

“You smell like a wild animal.”

Francesca had gotten into the habit of taking the hottest showers he could. Today, he turned the handle left until the water scalded his skin. He closed his eyes and smiled. Two minutes later, he stepped out, feeling almost human.

He brushed his teeth and ran his hands through his black hair and looked himself over in the mirror. He was an okay-looking guy. His nose was a little bit of a bulb and his ears stuck out. Growing up in Orlando, fifteen minutes from Disney World, he’d inevitably been nicknamed “Mickey” in elementary school. He pulled on his camouflage, laced his boots. The pants and blouse looked clean and crisp. And even if they hadn’t . . . the tag on his left
arm was all he needed:
Special Forces.
Anyone who had one of those didn’t have to wear a name tag or rank insignia.

He packed the bricks of heroin into his pack and headed over to the airfield, a giant gravel square where the helicopters landed. Moqor was the next big base past FOB Jackson, more or less halfway between Kandahar and Kabul. But only a few helicopters were permanently stationed there. The Chinooks and other big passenger birds were mostly based at Bagram and Kandahar.

Francesca stepped into the oversize wooden shack that housed the soldiers who ran the airfield. Inside, hundreds of heavily thumbed paperbacks testified to the countless hours of waiting for flights. When the wind and dust kicked up, helo rides got canceled.
Slide it to the right,
guys said. Meaning, block off another day on the calendar, because this one’s gone.

“Got anything heading east today?” he said to the private behind the counter. The kid was so young he still had teenage acne, the pimply, oily kind.

“There’s a Presidential”—a contractor helicopter—“to Kabul at seventeen hundred. Also the Canadians are running a Chinook to Kabul and then Bagram at 2030. Guessing you don’t have an AMR.” The letters stood for “air mobility request.” Having one meant a confirmed seat.

“You are correct. Flying Space-A.” Space-A meant “space available,” the military equivalent of standby. Flying Space-A sometimes meant waiting for days. But Francesca much preferred it, because it left no record. Space-A requests were logged by hand on a paper chart. Once a flight landed safely, the records were tossed. He had flown all over Afghanistan on a Space-A basis and left no trail. Which made him feel more confident about the thirty-plus pounds of heroin in his pack.

“They’re stuffed,” the private said. “Chinook looks a little better.”

“I can wait for the Chinook. Long as I get out tonight.”

“I’ll jump you to the top of the list. But I still can’t guarantee
it.”

Francesca put his elbows on the counter and leaned forward. “Can I trust you?” The kid’s breath was terrible. “I don’t want to say too much, but I have got to get to Bagram tonight. I got something in RC-East and it can’t wait. Way east. You see what I’m saying.” Francesca knew he was laying it on thick, implying he had a mission in Pakistan. He also knew he looked seriously high-speed with his beard and tags. He thought the private, who probably had never gotten outside the wire, would bite.

The private’s eyes widened. He nodded once and backed away like a kid who’d walked in on his parents going at it. And Francesca got on the 2030, the last man on, when a half dozen guys got dumped. As he walked toward the Chinook, ducking the gravel caught in the backwash from its double rotors, Francesca smirked to himself. Too easy. He pressed his way into the Chinook, took the last seat on the bench, tucked his million-dollar bag between his legs. Better make sure it didn’t slide out the back.

The engines whined and the chopper’s front end rose and then its rear end lurched up into the night. The Chinooks were so big that sometimes they gave the illusion that they were moving in pieces, like accordion buses, instead of all at once. Francesca couldn’t see much, but he didn’t need to. He’d killed people all over this damn country.

He untied his boots and put in his earplugs and closed his eyes and let the Chinook’s vibrations put him to sleep. Strange but true, these rides were the only place he truly relaxed anymore.

In Kabul, only a couple guys got off, so the copter stayed stuffed. Fifteen minutes later, the Chinook touched down at Zebra Ramp in Bagram. Francesca’s job was almost finished. Though this last bit was the trickiest.

* * *

THE CHINOOK HAD LANDED
north of the airport runway. The passenger and cargo jet terminals were on the south side. The runway was supposed to be impassible. Anyone connecting from a helicopter to a jet was supposed to leave the tarmac and reenter through the passenger terminal.

But Francesca didn’t have that option. Bags at Bagram were examined before they were allowed on the tarmac. The screeners were mainly looking for explosives, but the plastic-wrapped bundles of heroin in his pack bore an uncanny resemblance to bricks of C-4. Francesca couldn’t put the bag through an X-ray machine. Fortunately, he was on the tarmac already. He just needed to cross the runway to get to the passenger side.

Francesca stepped out of the helicopter, looked around. Unlike civilian airports, Bagram never slept. Planes took off and landed twenty-four hours a day. Even now, close to midnight, the air was thick with jet fuel. As he watched, an F-18 pulled off the runway almost vertically and disappeared into the night. A minute later, a Reaper drone took its place on the runway, slowly gaining speed, finally rising from the earth. Compared to the F-18, the Reaper looked like a hobbyist’s creation, spindly wings and a long, narrow nose. Yet the Reaper was a far cheaper and more effective weapon.

Around Francesca, the Chinook emptied like a clown car, passengers pouring out the back, glad to leave the noisy bird behind. They grabbed their bags and made their way toward the gate that separated the helicopter landing area from the rest of the base. Francesca lit up a cigarette, an excuse to wait on the tarmac.

“You need a ride somewhere?” a white-haired guy in a General Dynamics jacket said.

“Thanks. I’m good.” Francesca smoked until he was the last guy by the bird. When the cigarette was finished, he edged toward the gate. After a few steps, he bent over and tied his boots. The pilots were finishing their final postlanding checks. All the passengers were close to the gate. No one was within a hundred feet of him. No one was looking at him. Chinooks weren’t exactly loaded with classified technology. They’d been around forty years. And nobody cared too much where passengers went after a helicopter touched down.

Francesca turned, walked purposefully away from the gate. Sure, somebody could have run back to ask him whether he was lost. But folks had rides waiting and didn’t want to be late. The Special Forces tags helped. He ducked behind a hangar and waited. A few minutes later, he heard the pilots joking with each other as they left. He waited fifteen minutes more. Now he was alone for sure.

He headed for the gate, which had been closed and locked. An all-terrain vehicle was parked beside it. The mechanics rode them around the airfield. A lucky break. Even better, the key was in the ignition. Francesca rolled east along the outer taxiway, leaving the Chinook behind. He passed an enormous hangar filled with fighter jets. Mechanics stood by an A-10 Warthog, the ugliest and arguably most useful plane the Air Force had. The Warthogs flew low and slow and fired rounds the size of Coke cans. They could slice through tank armor or reduce a house to rubble. The mechanics looked over as if wondering who he was. He nodded, didn’t say anything, kept driving.

Finally, Francesca reached the northeastern edge of the runway, where dozens of old Russian Mi-8 helicopters slept in a fenced-off pen, as if to prevent them from contaminating American choppers and jets. Contractors flew the Mi-8s, which were rickety and slow but famously indestructible. The finicky turbines that powered American helicopters needed clean fuel or they seized up in midair. Mi-8s ran on practically anything.

At the edge of the tarmac, Francesca turned south and steered the ATV to the end of the runway. “No Trespassing. Emergency Vehicles Only,” a sign warned. To his east, a fence blocked the end of the runway from the perimeter road that circled the base. This far over, planes would be hundreds of feet above him on takeoff. A C-130 lumbered overhead, giving him some cover, as he headed across the runway to the southern taxiway.

Now he just needed to find the big jet to Frankfurt. One left every night, usually around two a.m., filled with soldiers heading home for their leaves. The departure time seemed lousy, but it got guys to Frankfurt in time for morning connections to the United States.

Unlike big civilian airports, Bagram didn’t have jetways. To board, guys walked out a fenced area at the back of the terminal and across the tarmac and up a mobile staircase and into the jet. Francesca planned to park the ATV near the terminal. When the guys left the terminal to board, he’d join the line. In the darkness, he would be just another soldier. No one would notice him or question his presence.

Before he got to the stairs, he’d find a cargo handler and ask whether he could stow his bag in the hold, because it was so big and heavy. The handler, most likely a contractor, would take the bag and give him a gate check. Francesca would put it in his pocket and walk back into the terminal and disappear. Tomorrow he’d catch a Space-A back to Moqor. No one would ever know he’d been here. What happened to the bag in Frankfurt wasn’t his concern. He had never asked, but he imagined someone on ramp duty there would pick it
up.

* * *

HE DIDN’T REGISTER
the headlights until they were almost on him. An SUV had edged onto the taxiway, blocked his path. Now he saw the black letters on the side:
Military Police.
He wondered whether he’d popped up on the ground radar the controllers used to track the taxiway, or if the stop was just bad luck.

No matter. The military police at Bagram were basically crossing guards. He’d make sure they saw he was Delta, be on his way. The cop on the passenger side got out, put a flashlight on him. Francesca raised a hand to shield himself from the glare and started to stand. The cop put a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t move. What’s your name?”

“Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Francesca.”

“You come over the runway just
now?”

“The far edge over there, Officer. I thought I was okay. I’m sorry.”

“Bet you are. Did you see the sign?”

“Sign?”

“The
big
sign that says emergency vehicles only. No trespassing. That sign. Did you see
it?”

This guy was a real hard-ass. Francesca felt his anger rising. Another jet soared into the night. He cooled himself down, waited until it passed.

“Like I said, I’m sorry. Even us bug-eaters make mistakes. I’m supposed to be going to Frankfurt tonight, start my leave, and my ride was delayed and I didn’t think I would make
it.”

The cop moved his flashlight to Francesca’s backpack. “What’s in the
bag?”

“The usual.”

“I’m going to need to see
it.”

“You don’t want to do that.”

The cop’s hand was on his holster now. “What did you
say?”

“I said, sure, Officer.”

Francesca knew what was going to happen. He should have been looking for a way out, but he wasn’t. The knife on his leg would do fine. He’d never killed anyone with a knife. He was looking forward to it. Military, civilian, friend, enemy, he didn’t care anymore.
Let’s do this.
He felt his pulse beating down to his fingertips. He had the sensation whenever he put a target in his sights.

He tossed the bag on the ground. The cop bent down for it. Francesca dropped his hand toward his knife—

* * *

AND THE TAHOE HONKED,
long and loud.

The officer wagged a finger at Francesca,
Don’t move,
and hurried back to the Tahoe. The two cops had a short conversation, and then the first walked back to him. “Your lucky day. A Gator”—an armored vehicle—“just pancaked two joggers. Even stupider than you, running at night. We got called to find witnesses. I told my partner you’re full of it, you don’t belong out here and I want to take you in, but I got outvoted. So good-bye and get lost.”

The cop hustled back to the Tahoe. It rolled off, lights flashing. Francesca watched it disappear. He touched the gas, headed the four-wheeler toward the passenger terminal. The cop was right.
His lucky day.
Even if he had killed both officers cleanly and ditched the bag, he’d have left a trail. His fellow passengers on the Chinook would have remembered that he hadn’t left with them. The mechanics had seen him on the cart. The military investigators would have pulled the Space-A files at Moqor from the trash and his name would jump
out.

So, as he steered along the south taxiway, Francesca knew he should have been relieved. Instead, as his pulse slowed and the electricity in his fingertips faded, he felt nothing but disappointment.

8

KABUL

W
ells rode in the front passenger seat of a crew-cab pickup in the shark-tooth mountains east of Jalalabad. The man beside him had a long black beard, a Talib beard. Wells had a beard, too, dyed blue. He wondered whether he was a prisoner. But the other man ignored him. In the distance explosions thumped hollowly. The pickup came over a rise and Wells saw an M1 tank blocking the road. Its turret swung toward them. The pickup’s driver grinned at Wells.
Are you ready?
He gunned the engine—

And Wells opened his eyes and found himself at the Ariana. The explosions were knocks on his door. “John? It’s Gabe Yergin.” The station’s operations chief, its third in command. “Wondered if you wanted lunch.”

Wells dragged himself up, saw a bloodshot-eyed zombie in the mirror.
Getting too old for this.
That thought came to him more and more. “I’ll come by your office.”

“Sure.”

The station’s senior officers worked on the second floor. A thick-necked guard buzzed Wells into a corridor whose walls were lined with high-res satellite maps of Kabul and Kandahar—as well as the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Peshawar. Proof, not that any was needed, that this war didn’t stop at the border.

“Here.” Yergin poked his head from a doorway like a groundhog checking for his shadow. He was thirty-five going on fifty, a small man with a deep widow’s peak and puffy black circles under his eyes. Even after he sat beside Wells on the couch, he seemed to be in motion. He rocked forward, drumming his fingers against his jeans. He produced a pack of Marlboros from his jacket, lit up, dragged deep. The nicotine worked its magic immediately. Yergin relaxed, sat back against the cushions.

“Let me guess,” Wells said. “You didn’t smoke until you got here.”

“Been smoking since college. Every six months or so I quit, but it never takes. Hasn’t anyone ever told you? There’s something very satisfying in meeting an addiction over and over. You like the posters?” Posters for
Transformers
and
The Godfather
hung behind Yergin’s desk.

“Sure.”

“
The Godfather
, best movie ever made.”

“And
Transformers
?”

“I could tell you it’s a metaphor for the way we can never trust the Afghans, they’re always changing. Truth is, it’s an excuse to put up a picture of Megan
Fox.”

“I’m sure the women in the office love that.”

“You’d be surprised. So Vinny sent
you.”

“So much for small talk,
huh?”

“My ADD can’t tolerate
it.”

“The director wants my take on how it’s going.”

“We must be doing a terrible
job.”

“Finger-pointing isn’t my style. I’m trying to help. But I promise you this about Duto: If he thinks you guys are in trouble and that the problems could come back at him, he’ll make sure he’s insulated. If that means ending your career in the ugliest possible way, he will. So if there’s an issue, it’s talk to me now or talk to somebody else later. Maybe under oath.”

The speech left plenty of questions unanswered, but it seemed to satisfy Yergin. “First off, understand the strategic situation’s a mess. We’re playing Whac-A-Mole here. First we had our guys in the east, and the south went to hell. Now we’ve moved everybody south, and the east is going to hell. And by the way, the south isn’t great either. This quote-unquote government we’re working with, it’s beyond corrupt. Everything’s for sale. You want to be a cop? That’s a bribe. Five to ten grand, depending on the district.”

“Ten thousand Afghanis?” That was four hundred dollars.

“Ten thousand American dollars.
To become a
patrolman
. You want to be a district-level police chief? Twenty, thirty thousand. At the national level, the cabinet jobs are a quarter million and
up.”

“That seems crazy.”

“You have to remember, this country has African-level poverty. Average income is six hundred dollars a year. Total economy, maybe twenty billion. We come in, we’re spending a hundred billion a year. Think about that. Five times the Afghan GDP. And the locals make sure they get their share.”

“How
so?”

“Three main buckets. The military spends billions on base construction, supply convoys, local guards. Second, we fund reconstruction projects, roads, dams, schools, et cetera. Third, we give direct subsidies to the Afghan government to pay for their army, police, judges, toilet paper for all I know. Combine the buckets, probably close to twenty billion.”

“The money we funnel in is equal to the rest of their economy put together.”

“Correct. So the Afghans, they can keep living on two dollars a day, or they can get onto our gravy train. If they have to pay bribes to do it, they will. And lots of this money sneaks back into the Taliban’s pockets. The contractors we hire to deliver fuel, they bribe the Taliban not to attack them.”

“We’re paying for both sides of the
war.”

“More or less.”

“You don’t sound optimistic.”

“It is what it
is.”

“What would you do if you were in charge?”

“I’d pull out. But barring that, I don’t have a good answer.”

“So the war’s a mess,” Wells said. “What about the station? Marburg knocked you guys down for a while.”

“Knocked us down? Marburg lit us on fire and threw us off a cliff. Seeing those coffins at Bagram was as bad as watching my parents get buried. Nine dead. And it was so avoidable. Marci and Manny wanted al-Zawahiri so bad they didn’t pat Marburg down. Basic blocking and tackling. Not that we talk about
it.”

“Because of Peter?”

Yergin’s eyebrows lifted so high they nearly fused with his widow’s peak. “I didn’t say that. But yes. Hard to believe, but our deputy chief doesn’t want to hear about how his wife got herself and his brother killed. And since then, you know the history.”

“The outlines, sure.”

“Jim Wultse turned out to be a grade-A boozer. I remember walking into his office once around noon, seeing him spike his coffee. Nice silver flask, had a dragon inscribed on it. His hand shook when he saw me, and whatever he was pouring wound up on his desk. He looked down like, ‘Sweet manna of heaven, I’ve lost you.’ If I wasn’t there, I swear he would have started licking the wood.”

“That
bad?”

“No joke. I thought I was watching an after-school special on the dangers of alcoholism. And when Wultse left, Gordie King came and we were excited for about two minutes. Thought he was going to kick ass and take names. But he just didn’t have the stones anymore. He hated Kabul. Refused to live here. This is where the war is. It’s not moving to Switzerland.”

“You lost more than a year.”

“It was brutal. We covered for it. Getting bin Laden took a lot of heat off. We didn’t have much to do with that—it came out of Pakistan and then the CTC took over. But it had a halo effect, made everybody look good. Plus we kept running the drones, and that’s basically a military op. Runs off tactical intel. So we blasted lots of low- and midlevel guys. A lot of the intel for those hits comes direct from the insurgents, by the way. They use the drones to settle scores with one another, and we let them.”

“What about civilian casualties?”

“We’re careful. We see kids around, anything like that, we won’t shoot. And the optics these things carry are amazing. You ever seen them?”

“Not really.”

“You should. You know how in the movies they show the bad guys’ faces and you see every pore crystal clear? It’s even better than that.”

“Too bad you can’t read their minds.”

“Too bad. So yeah, even in the worst days, we blew up a bunch of guys carrying guns over the border, that kind of thing. But they’re totally replaceable. There’s an infinite supply of them.”

“We kill their drones with our drones.”

Yergin laughed wheezily. He sounded like a flooded lawn mower engine trying to start. “More or less. And that’s not what we’re here
for.”

“What are you here
for?”

“You know full well.”

“I want to know how you see the
job.”

“If we’re doing it right, we’re getting into the top of the government, assessing who’s trustworthy. Figuring out which Talib commanders we can buy off and which we can’t. Offering an independent view of how the war is going, so the White House isn’t relying only on the military.”

“And finding al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar.”

“Ron and Pete haven’t emphasized that as a goal. And I agree. The logic is that (a) they’re probably in Pakistan and it’s Islamabad’s job, and (b) al-Qaeda doesn’t have much to do with the insurgency here.”

“Makes sense.”

“Glad you approve. Can I have my promotion
now?”

Wells smiled. More and more, Yergin reminded Wells of Shafer. He probably wasn’t as cynical, not yet. Give him thirty years.

“So how many officers do you have?”

“We’re close to full strength now. Six hundred in country.”

“Six hundred?”

“But you have to remember, only a few are case officers. More than two hundred handle security. Then we have the coms and IT guys, logistics and administrative—just keeping this hotel running is a massive job—and the guys at the airfields, handling the drones. Fewer than forty ever get outside the wire to talk to the locals. Of those, most are working with Afghan security and intelligence forces. If you’re looking at guys recruiting sources on the ground, it’s maybe a dozen.”

“The few and the proud.”

“But unavoidable. The security situation is impossible. Only the very best officers can work outside the wire without getting popped, and even then only for short stretches.”

“You oversee them.”

“Correct. There’re few enough of them that they can all report directly to
me.”

“Do you report to Lautner or Arango or both?”

“Mainly Peter. Arango’s more of an administrator.”

“And Peter? What’s he like?”

“He’s—”

* * *

A KNOCK INTERRUPTED HIM.
Lautner walked
in.

“Like I was about to tell you, Peter’s the best boss anyone could have.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Lautner said to Wells. “I think a Predator just went down outside Jalalabad.”

Wells didn’t want to get paranoid, but he wondered why Lautner had shown up at the very moment Wells asked about him. Was he sending Wells a message:
I’m watching you
? Probably not. Probably Lautner’s appearance was pure coincidence. Wells hated coincidence. “Drones go down a lot?” Wells said.

“Not too often,” Yergin said. “Main thing is to blow it up before the Afghans can get their hands on
it.”

“I can come back,” Wells said.

“No, it’s okay. I’ll finish up with you fast, and then if you have more questions, find
me.”

“Another day in paradise,” Lautner said. “Carry on, Captain.” He saluted Wells and turned and walked
out.

“I get the feeling he doesn’t like me much,” Wells said.

“He doesn’t like the fact you’re looking over our shoulders. Neither do I. I hide it better.”

“So you and he and Arango took over a little more than a year
ago.”

“About that. For a while, things went really well. Recently, not so much.”

“Vinny said you’ve lost some of your best agents.”

“Did he tell you what happened?”

“No.” Technically, Wells wasn’t lying. Duto hadn’t told him. Wells had read the reports himself, in the files.

“One of our best sources got hit by a truck
bomb. Trust me when I tell you it was an occupational hazard. Not necessarily because anyone knew he was ours. Another source, he told us a Talib commander was ready to defect. It was pure smoke. And now he’s gone. Either he got caught and he’s about to get his head chopped off, or he was playing us all along.”

“So that’s two of your best sources gone.”

“Listen, we know the rumor, John.”

“What rumor?”

“You insist on acting like some jarhead with more muscle than brains and I’m not sure why. Rumor is, somebody back home thinks we’ve been penetrated.”

So much for keeping the mission secret.
Wells was surprised that Yergin had revealed so soon that he knew the real reason Wells had come. Forcing the issue into the open put Wells on the defensive.

“Nobody seriously thinks that’s possible,” Wells said.

“Then why are you here?”

“Let me rephrase. I
don’t seriously think that’s possible. How could the Taliban turn one of you? What could they offer?”

“Devil’s advocate, maybe they bought somebody. Money knows no ideology.”

“Suppose they came to you, Gabe. Would you trust them to pay? And the truth is, money’s not a good motivator for treason. Money is the icing on the cake.”

“And the cake
is—”

“Ideology or blackmail.”

“What about Aldrich Ames?” The worst traitor in the CIA’s history. “He did it for money.”

“Money as ideology. Ames convinced himself it was nothing but a game on both sides and he should get paid while he could.”

“So there’s no mole, John? You’re just here for your health.”

“Is there something you want to tell
me?”

Yergin lit a fresh cigarette with his silver-plated Zippo. He flicked the lighter into the air and snapped it shut one-handed. “What if there is?” He sucked down on the cigarette, obviously enjoying the moment. But when he exhaled, he said only, “Course not. We were dealt a bad hand, but all in all I think we’ve played it pretty good. Duto should leave us alone, let us do our jobs. Anything you want to ask
me?”

Wells decided to press. “Suppose you’re wrong. Suppose we’re both wrong. Any obvious candidates? Anybody acting strange?”

“Everybody’s acting strange. We’re all stressed beyond belief.” As if to punctuate his words, the hollow drum of an IED sounded somewhere beyond the blast walls.

“Anybody find excuses to get outside the wire without backup?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean much. Somebody senior like me could easily get to Kandahar or a big FOB and then go from there.”

Wells felt Yergin was almost winking at him, hinting he was guilty. “I’d like to look over your entry and exit logs.”

“Sure.” Yergin looked at his watch. “I have to figure out this drone that went down. Talk to anybody you like.”