The Shadow Patrol (17 page)

Thousands of names, but nearly all useless for this call. He needed an officer who’d served on the Af-Pak desk in the last decade but hadn’t been a star. The stars had spent their time chasing bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. They wouldn’t have been interested in Daood. Also, he needed somebody gossipy. But not so gossipy that he’d whisper to Kabul that Shafer was poking after an occasional. And he needed somebody who liked him enough to be honest.

Shafer had to get to the
R
s before he found someone who might fit. Mark Ryker had retired five years before. If Shafer recalled correctly, he lived somewhere in southwestern Virginia. A lot of agency guys wound up in that area, far enough from Washington to avoid the dangers they’d spent their lives fighting, close enough to feel like they were still part of the world.

Shafer punched in Ryker’s number. To his mild surprise, the phone was picked up after one ring. “This is Mark.”

“Mark. It’s Ellis Shafer.” He heard a sitcom’s canned laughter in the background.

“Ellis. Ellis Shafer.”

He wasn’t quite slurring his words, but his tone was as bright and artificial as the dye for a kid’s birthday cake. Pharmaceutical enhancement for sure. “I’d like to talk to you about something.” Shafer figured he’d need to draw out Ryker. He was wrong.

“Mr. Ellis Shafer wants to talk to me? About
something
. Must be important. I assume this is a face-to-face business, tête-à-tête, too superclassified for an open line?”

“You are correct.”

“And urgent?”

“Life-and-death.” Shafer vamping now, getting into the spirit.

“Life and death. Death and life. I know about those. All right. Tell you what. Shoot down 81 tonight, and I’ll meet you in Lexington. You know where that
is?”

“I can find
it.”

“I suppose you can. There’s an Applebee’s there, and I promise you nobody’ll bother us. Say, eight.”

“Eatin’ good in the neighborhood.”

“Are you too fancy for Applebee’s, Ellis?” Pause. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question. I want an answer.”

“No. Sorry.”

“See you at eight then.”

* * *

SHAFER CALLED HIS WIFE
and told her he probably wouldn’t be home that night. She didn’t ask why, or where he’d be. One of the virtues of being married as long as he had. He got his usual late start and had to fight through the suburban D.C. traffic, but 81 was as beautiful and open as ever, running southwest through the lush Virginia hills. He pulled into the parking lot at 8:05.

The Applebee’s was bright and three-quarters empty and the server was a purty little bleached-blond thing who greeted him too eagerly. “Table for one, sir?” Shafer ignored her and found Ryker sitting alone in a booth. He was drinking a bright green concoction that Shafer would swear was an appletini. Ryker didn’t look good. He was skinny and weirdly tan and his shirt hung loose. Shafer didn’t get it. He hadn’t known Ryker well at Langley, but he remembered the guy as just another Central Asia desk officer. During the 1990s, Pakistan and Afghanistan hadn’t been glamorous posts. The action was elsewhere.

“Mark. Good to see you. It’s been too long.”

“You,
too.”

“How’s Lois?” Shafer kept the names of wives in his Rolodex, an old trick.

Ryker laughed low and ugly. Everything about him made sense now. Shafer had better update his index cards. People kept dying. Shafer wondered how he’d do as a widower. Probably no better than Ryker. Maybe worse.

“When?”

“Three months
ago.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Why would you? It’s not like we were friends.”

“You want to tell me about
it?”

“No. Instead let me tell you why I agreed to see you, knowing that you’re going to ask me to give up something classified, something I shouldn’t tell you, or why else would you have driven all the way out here on four hours’ notice?”

“Sure.”

“Because who cares?”

Maybe this isn’t the time,
Shafer almost said. But he kept his mouth shut. He needed to know about Daood. Ryker was his best bet. So he flagged a waitress and ordered a Bud Light and popcorn chicken and told Ryker he was looking for a guy who might be an occasional and might have been running drugs,
too.

“A hundred guys fit that profile,” Ryker said. “More. You want to tell me why you need this
one?”

“No.”

“That’s all you have? You have a name?”

“A first name. Daood. Though I’m not sure how to spell
it.”

Ryker sucked down his appletini and licked his lips. “I am. D-A-O-O-D. Last name Maktani. Daood Maktani. Though he prefers to call himself David Miller.” Just that quick, something woke up in Ryker’s face. For the first time all night, he looked to Shafer like a case officer instead of a man waiting for the clock to run out. “Half the desk knew his name. No OPSEC on an asshat like him. One of those guys. Running drugs out of Pakistan the whole damn time. Didn’t even try to hide it, really. The DEA bitched at us for using him, but they used him, too. He was a smart guy and he gave us just enough that we kept him around, but nobody liked
him.”

“Tell me about
it.”

So Ryker
did.

15

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, AFGHANISTAN

T
he Drone Home, aka the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Center, occupied a couple acres on the south side of the Kandahar runway. A high-security fence backed with green netting hid hangars and concrete workshops from prying eyes. Inside, Air Force mechanics and CIA engineers and General Dynamics contractors worked on the drones so crucial to the Afghan war. The Predators and Reapers were well-known. Less so the agency’s newest baby, the “Beast of Kandahar.”

The Beast was a miniature single-wing plane that looked like a hobbyist’s model of a B-2 stealth bomber. It didn’t carry weapons. It was designed solely for surveillance, the stealthiest plane ever built. It was invisible to radar or the naked eye from more than a couple hundred yards away. It carried ground-penetrating radar and color cameras sensitive enough to distinguish eye color from a thousand feet up. It had spent hundreds of hours in the air above Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. Neither bin Laden nor the Pakistani military had ever guessed at its presence.

Now the agency was trying to add microphones to the Beast. Picking up voices from an aircraft circling hundreds or thousands of feet in the air was a monumental technical challenge. But the payoff would be just as big. The CIA would hear the other side’s plans in real time. And it would make fewer targeting errors, a euphemism for
civilian deaths
.

Francesca, who was waiting for his buddy Stan in the parking lot outside the Drone Home, knew all about the Beast. He and Alders did most of their work in the border areas where the drones were busiest. To reduce the chance that he’d be mistaken for a Talib, Francesca carried a transponder. When on, it emitted an electronic signature identifying him as American. He’d been briefed on what to do if the transponder failed. The advice basically boiled down to,
Get out of the hot zone as quickly as you can, because you don’t want to be on the incoming end of a Hellfire.

The briefings had come from an Air Force colonel. Francesca had never met any of the guys who actually piloted the drones. He wondered about them. From what he’d heard, they were mostly contractors in their twenties and thirties, some ex-military, some civilian. Were they normals, or Shadows like him? Did they see the red mist when they closed their eyes?

Probably not. Probably they pushed a button when their bosses gave them the okay. A few seconds later, they watched a house disappear on-screen in a little puff of smoke. Like a video game. Shift work. When they were done, they drove home from Nellis AFB to their families in the Vegas suburbs. Without their toys and their satellite links, they were nothing. They hadn’t earned any of the power they’d been given, hadn’t paid for it in any way. Did they think they were tough? They were nothing, and he’d gladly show them—

The front gate opened, pulling him out of his homicidal reverie. Stan walked out and slid into the pickup’s passenger seat and they rolled off. No rush. The roads at KAF were dirt and gravel, and traffic was heavy. Francesca had no idea what all these inside-the-wire dudes did, but driving around the base seemed to be a big part of
it.

“My man. My man Afghani-stan.” Of course, Francesca knew Stan’s real name. But he liked the alias. It was pretty funny.

“Danny. Long time no see.” They bumped fists. Neither was the hugging type.

“What’s going on in there?”

“At the home of the drones? The usual. GD promises that for just a few hundred million more they can give the Beast ass-wiping functionality. They did a PowerPoint and everything.”

“If technology could win guerrilla wars, we would have ended this nonsense a long time
ago.”

“Yeah, I suspect you’re not going out of business anytime soon. Bang, bang, you’re dead.” Stan sighed. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the last two. His hair had gone from jet-black to mostly gray. He’d lost weight, too. Of course, he had good reason.

“You look good, my friend,” Francesca said.

“That’s a
lie.”

“Come on. Let me buy you a cup of coffee. The Brits have a new girl working the counter.” KAF had a half dozen privately staffed coffeehouses. By common agreement, the British had the best-tasting drinks, and the best-looking staff.

“Wish I could, but I have to meet the J-2”—the intelligence chief for all military operations in Kandahar—“at noon. And I ought to be there on time.”

“Aren’t you fancy?”

“You tell me to come down and see you, I need an excuse. Meeting the J-2’s a pretty good excuse. So no crap. Let’s just take a spin around the perimeter, put the windows down, breathe our fill of that Kandahar dust. ’Cause I’m glad you called. I have something to tell you,
too.”

* * *

UNTIL NOW,
Francesca
had kept Ricky Fowler’s killing to himself. He figured Weston and Rodriguez had their platoon under control. Stan had enough to worry about. But with this douche Coleman Young making trouble, he figured he had to tell.

“My Strykers may have a problem,” Francesca explained.

“Wish you’d told me before,” Stan said, when he was finished.

“Didn’t want to bother
you.”

“Didn’t want to mess up the gravy train, you mean. This guy Fowler, anybody actively looking into his death?”

“Weston says
no.”

“You believe
him.”

“I do. Weston even called Fowler’s mom and dad, talked to them for a while, told them what a great guy their son was. Checking to see if he would get any vibe from them that they were making noise, calling the battalion to complain that they didn’t understand what had happened. Because Fowler was real close with his folks. But Weston said when he was done, he was sure they weren’t doing anything like that.”

“I’m glad he checked.”

“Didn’t really surprise me.” In Francesca’s experience, the families of the dead went one way or the other. Some wanted to know every last detail, to
understand
, whatever that meant, get
closure
, whatever that meant. But most, especially the Southerners and Texans and the ones from small towns, they didn’t want to know. They figured that all the questions in the world weren’t going to bring their kids or husbands back. They accepted whatever story the military told them.

“So the family’s no problem. And the sergeant, Young, hasn’t gone to CID or the battalion chaplain or anybody else?”

“Not as far as Weston knows, and I think he’d hear. Either formally or somebody would tap him on the shoulder and tell him, ‘Watch out.’”

“So it’s just these letters Coleman sent, or claims he sent. Protecting himself.”

“Correct. After it happened, I told Weston to make Young a deal, send him here for the rest of the tour. But Young said no. Fowler was his buddy. It’s like he’s too scared to do anything about it, but he can’t let it go either.”

“I can see that.”

“But since then, Weston called me, asked me if I’d take care of
it.”

“Not very sporting of them.”

Every so often, Stan got on with that kind of nonsense, like he was the second coming of James Bond. “They think I can do it, no muss, no fuss.”

“Can
you?”

“Obviously I can’t use my rifle. Would look a little strange if an American soldier got taken down with a .50 cal. I’ll have to get a Dragunov from somewhere—”

“I can handle that.” The Dragunov was a long-range Russian rifle that Taliban snipers favored.

“You
can?”

“I think
so.”

“That would be handy. Sooner you set it up, the better. No way will I be as accurate on it as on the Barrett. But it would help to have a couple chances to practice. Plus Young’s going to be wearing Kevlar and a helmet every time he goes outside the wire. Inside, too, for all I know. Weston said he’s being real careful. And I’m only gonna get one shot. I miss, he goes running to his battalion commander, CID, whoever. They’ll pay more attention to him if he’s got a round stuck in his Kevlar. Even best case, it’s a clean kill, it looks weird, he’s telling people his own guys are threatening him. Then he gets
hit.”

“Is there any way that he could know your name?”

“Not unless Weston or Rodriguez told him. And they wouldn’t. They know better.”

“Then here’s what I think. Forget Young, unless he seems to know you. Sit tight. Those Stryker units will be home in two, two and a half months. After that, Young can squawk all he likes. He’s got no evidence. Not even enough for CID to open an investigation. And if Weston and Rodriguez get brought in somehow, they just have to keep their mouths shut. They smart enough to do that?”

“No doubt.”

“That’s it then. And Young must have figured that, too, because if he thought he could get an investigation opened, he’d
try.”

“All right. I’ll tell them.”

“And tell them not to freelance, in case they have any ideas.”

Francesca nodded. “Something else I wanted to ask. We gonna keep this going after those guys leave?”

Stan grunted, like he hadn’t given the question much thought. Which surprised Francesca. Stan was making more money than anyone. “Your tour’s up, too,” he said after a few seconds.

“Sniping, yeah, but I can stay in if I like.”

“Didn’t know you were thinking that
way.”

“The money’s right. And it’s not like I got anything waiting at home.”

“Then maybe we will.”

They made their way around the northern perimeter and now turned left, to the west side of the base. Dirt fields stretched for miles. In the distance, a farmer grazed goats on scrub and garbage. The airfield didn’t have blast walls here, only barbed wire and a few warning signs. The apparent lack of security was deceptive. Plastic alarm wires snaked through the fence, and a blimp overhead watched the fields. Anyone who tried to sneak close would be seen long before he reached the perimeter. Cutting the fence would trigger an immediate alarm from the quick-reaction force at the northwest corner of the base, a platoon of Humvees armed with .50 cal machine guns. Even suicide bombers needed better odds than that.

“Fortress Kandahar,” Francesca said.

“We should just spread the perimeter mile by mile until it goes all the way to the borders, kick all the Afghans out. You know a guy named John Wells?”

“The name, sure.” Wells was legendary in the Special Forces. He’d been involved in a couple ops so highly classified that they were rumor even among the Tier One guys. Word was that one involved a nuclear weapon.

“Wells is sniffing around our thing.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he came to Kabul asking about it. He freelances now, thinks he’s some kind of do-gooder, and he got interested in this.”

Francesca didn’t get why John Wells would care about a few kilos of heroin. He suspected Stan wasn’t giving him the full story, but he didn’t want to push. “So what do we do about
it?”

“For now, nothing. I think he’s been chasing the source, but that won’t do him any good. Guy’s never met me. I’ve used a cutout. You’re the only one who knows my real name.”

“I’m honored. What about the cutout?”

“I’ll worry about him. But I wanted to let you know about Wells. If you hear his name, see him sniffing around, assume it’s not a coincidence.”

“But why would I see him around? How could he get to
me?”

“I don’t think he can. But if he does.”

They had circled back to the southern side of the base, just a couple hundred feet from the heavily fortified headquarters of Regional Command South, which oversaw the war in Kandahar province. “I’ll hop here,” Stan said.

“Good to see you. Next time I’m going to make you have that coffee, okay?”

“Okay.”

Francesca pulled over. “You know what we are, Stan? Shadows. Come and go as we like, do what we like, and the normals can’t touch
us.”

“Be safe, Danny.”

“You, too, my man.” They bumped fists and Stan walked away.

John Wells,
Francesca thought. Ever since Alders had made fun of him at lunch, he’d been keeping his high-pitched giggle under control. Now he let it loose.
John Wells.
This whole deal had just gotten a lot more interesting. Enough Talibs in manjamas. Finally, Francesca would have the chance to play against a man worthy of his respect.

* * *

STAN MADE SURE
that Francesca’s pickup truck had disappeared before he headed to the RC South headquarters gate. He’d almost blown it. He should have known Francesca would ask whether he wanted to keep smuggling after the Strykers left. Francesca was making a lot of money. Plus he liked the game. He was getting weird, all that talk about shadows and normals.

So no more mistakes. Stan had worked too hard, come too far. He’d convinced Amadullah of his sincerity. In a few days, he would cement that trust. Then he’d be only one step away from his true and final goal, the one that he’d told nobody else, not even Francesca. The revenge that belonged to him, and him alone.