The Shadow Patrol (30 page)

“You think you’re any different than me, John? That what you think?”

Yeah, somewhere on the way, you stopped caring who you killed.
Wells heard American voices in the distance. When they got here, they’d see the Dragunov and the AK and three guys dressed like locals. They’d open up long before Wells could explain he was American, much less the truth of what had happened. Weston would understand, of course, but Weston was no friend. Wells had to get off this ridge now. Ride Francesca’s bike back down the hill and go from there.

“Finish it off,” Francesca said. “Don’t be a bitch.”

“Last time. What’s his name? You call him Stan, I know that, but what’s his name?”

“Wrong question, John. The right question is why? And the answer is, Why
not
? Why
not
, why
not
, why
not
.” A breath between each repetition, as if the two words held Francesca’s whole being.

Wells reached down for his knife. Then stopped himself. He wouldn’t give Francesca the pleasure.

“Do
it.”

“Not without the name.”

Wells stood, stepped away. Francesca went silent. Then spoke one last time.

“Lautner.”

Wells turned back.

“Pete Lautner is Stan. Now
do
it
.”

They locked eyes. Francesca nodded and Wells knew he’d spoken true. Wells pulled his knife and knelt in the dirt and lifted the blade high.

The voices on the hill were louder now. Wells wanted to offer some final words. But none came. He couldn’t wait. Francesca closed his eyes. And Wells grabbed his hair and pulled back his head and plunged down the knife.

EPILOGUE

DOD IDENTIFIES ARMY CASUALTIES

The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Chief Warrant Officer One William F. Alders, 34, of Linwood, W. Va., and Chief Warrant Officer One Daniel L. Francesca, 33, of Orlando, Fl., died in Zabul province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when their unit was attacked with small arms fire. They were assigned to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg,
N.C.

The release was standard, though a careful reader might notice that it used the passive voice to describe the incident:
“their unit was attacked,”
not
“insurgents attacked their unit.”
The families of Francesca and Alders were told only that they died in hand-to-hand combat after their position was overrun, a story that was true as far as it went.

Of course, the Deltas who helicoptered from Kandahar to retrieve the bodies knew that Francesca and Alders had been killed close to fifteen miles from their assigned position and weren’t carrying their Barrett. But the Deltas didn’t have to be told to keep their mouths shut. The less said the better. Some questions were best left unasked.

Wells crashed in a KBR trailer at Kandahar the night after he killed Francesca and Alders. The next morning he shaved his beard, the thick black clumps piling in the sink, nearly clogging the drain. He put on his cleanest shirt and borrowed a Hyundai from the KBR lot. When he gave his name to the gate guards at the Delta compound, he half expected that they’d put him on the ground and cuff him. The frontline guys might not have figured out exactly what had happened. But the major who commanded the unit knew of Shafer’s call to Cunningham. He had to suspect Wells was responsible for killing his guys.

Instead, the guards waved him in and asked him almost politely to wait in his car. A few minutes later, a black man about Wells’s age strode toward the gates. He had a square jaw and shoulders that hardly fit under his uniform. He slid into the front passenger seat and nodded to Wells.

“Steven Penn. I run this unit.”

“Major.”

“Let’s take a drive.”

Wells rolled through the gate and into the endless airfield traffic.

“You came here to tell me what happened?”

“As much as I
can.”

“I want you to feel you can be straight with
me.”

“I always get nervous when somebody says that.”

“I’ll put it this way, then. I’m not taping this. Why do you think we’re talking in your car and not my office?”

Wells decided Penn deserved the truth. “Francesca had a Dragunov. I don’t know where he got it, but it was practically new. They were set up on that ridge targeting a Stryker platoon. I found them, came up on them, killed them.”

“You killed them? Just like that.”

“Just like that.”

“Then you called your boss Shafer and told him to tell me where to find the bodies.”

“I didn’t want them to rot and I knew the Strykers would leave them.”

Penn squeezed his hands together. “Why would my men do that? Engage American soldiers?” Whatever anger or regret Penn felt, his voice was perfectly controlled, barely a whisper. Wells explained what Francesca and the Strykers had been doing. Penn listened in silence until Wells finished.

“You’re sure?”

“It’s why they were up there. One of the Stryker soldiers was talking to me. They were planning to take him out.”

“Any more of my men involved?”

“I don’t think so. It looks like a CIA officer was running them, running the ring.”

“Which is why you’re in on this. Why Shafer called Cunningham. Setting the hook.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just tell
us?”

“All we had was one enlisted man’s word and a couple pieces of circumstantial evidence.”

“And you didn’t think we’d want to hear about it anyway.”

“That’s right.” Though now that he’d met Penn, Wells thought he and Shafer had made a mistake. The Delta officer seemed like a problem solver, not a blame dodger. If Wells had come directly to him, they could have found a less dangerous way to smoke out Francesca and Alders.

“Was this about taking down Detachment 71? Some Langley power grab?”

“I don’t play those games.”
Though Vinny Duto does.
“This was, is, about a problem in the CIA. A mole working with the Talibs. The director asked me to find him and the investigation ran this way. To drug smuggling and then to your guys. Honestly, I didn’t expect that.”

“And have you found the mole?”

Wells nodded.

“Care to share?”

“I expect you’ll find out soon enough, but I’d rather not.”

They drove in silence toward the cluttered junkyards in the southwest corner of the base. The wind had turned southerly, bringing with it the stench of human waste. The tons of feces that Kandahar’s inhabitants generated every day had to go somewhere. Before being pumped into the fields outside the base, it was chemically treated at an artificial lagoon on the airfield’s west side.

“Had to take us this way,” Penn said.

“It always this
bad?”

“During the summer, guys wake up thinking they’ve crapped themselves.”

“A big thinker might wonder if that smell isn’t a metaphor for the war, the waste we’re leaving behind.”

“He might. I just leave the windows up and breathe through my mouth.”

“A wise man.” Wells turned back toward the center of the base.

“Thank
you.”

“For turning?”

“For what you
did.”

The words were so unexpected that for a moment Wells wondered if he’d misheard.

“If my guys were doing what you said . . . and you’re right, why else would they be up there . . . then they were cancers. And I failed as a leader. Failed them and myself. It was happening right in front of me. I didn’t see it. I let them get out of control.”

“You’re not a mind reader. And wars do strange things to the men who fight them.” At the end, when he’d closed his eyes and offered his neck to the knife, Francesca had smiled. He’d been relieved. Wells would swear to it.
War is endless grief.
“What will you tell your men, Major?”

“As little as I can.” Penn paused. “And are you planning to deal with the Strykers,
too?”

“Yes.”

Penn seemed to want to ask Wells how, but he didn’t. Neither man spoke again until Wells stopped outside the Delta compound. Penn extended a hand. “Wish we could have met under different circumstances.”

“Me, too, Major. Maybe one day stateside we’ll have the chance.”

Penn opened his door, hesitated. “Do you think we can win over here?”

I don’t even know what that word means anymore.
“I think you, me, everybody else, we’ll all do our jobs until somebody has a better idea.”

At that, Penn saluted and left.

* * *

“I TRIED TO CALL YOU,
tell you where they’d be,” Young told him a few hours later. “But they shut down the coms that morning.” He explained that when a soldier was killed in action, the Army cut cell service as well as the sat phones at the Morale and Welfare rooms. The Pentagon didn’t want wives or parents hearing about casualties through the military grapevine before they were officially notified. A soldier in the brigade had stepped on an IED on the morning that Francesca and Alders had gone to the ridge, and so the phones had been
cut.

“I have to ask, Coleman, how come you rode up there anyway, knowing I might not be there?”

“May as well lie on my back and spread my legs if I’m gonna stay home. That what you would do, Mr. Wells?”

“Death before dishonor.”

“I figured it would work out and it did. Saw Mickey Mouse up there with his throat cut. Still the lieutenant and the sergeant and Roman, though.”

“I’ll handle them.”

“Like that?”

“Not like that.”

“What then?”

“Roman’s the weakest of the three of them, I have that right?”

“Stupidest for sure. Spends most of his time on his PSP and he’s not even good at that.”

Stupid didn’t necessarily mean weak. Still, Wells figured Roman was his best bet. That night, as Roman walked back to his bunk from the showers, Wells stepped out from between two trailers, tapped him on the shoulder.

“Walk with me, Kevin.”

Roman’s eyes darted like tadpoles in a muddy pond. “Sir?”

“Walk with me. Now.” Roman’s shoulders slumped and he fell in beside Wells, who led him to the same maintenance lot where Rodriguez and Young had faced off. The maintenance guys were gone for the night. Wells walked Roman to a narrow aisle between a Stryker and a blast wall.

“You know who I am, Kevin?”

“The guy who talked to us last week. John Wells.”

“That’s right. Know why I’m here?”

“No,
sir.”

Wells hit Roman, low and hard in the solar plexus, pivoting into it, getting all of his two hundred and ten pounds behind the punch. Roman’s stomach was a little bit soft and Wells connected solidly, more solidly than he’d intended. If he’d been holding a knife, he would have buried it to the hilt. As it was, he felt the contact up his arm and into his shoulder. Roman doubled over on his fist like a folding chair. Wells pulled his arm back and Roman put his hands on his knees and gasped.

Wells gave him a few seconds and then put his right hand under Roman’s shoulder and tugged him up and stepped close. Roman was still struggling for breath. His eyes jumped wildly before settling on Wells. “Tonight. You’re going to call CID, tell them about you and Rodriguez and Weston.”

“I don’t—”

“Don’t tell me you don’t. And don’t tell me you can’t.”

“They’ll kill me. I swear they will.”

Wells put a hand under Roman’s chin and squeezed his throat. “Tyler and Nick won’t kill you. But I will. Here or back in the States. Like I killed Francesca. I’ll do you just like that.”

Francesca’s name did the trick. Wells had figured as much. Francesca was a Delta. A sniper. The baddest of the bad. And Wells had nearly taken his head off his neck. Roman pushed out his lips, though actual speech seemed beyond
him.

“You don’t have to tell them what Tyler did to Ricky Fowler”—Wells figured the murder would come out quickly once the Army opened the investigation—“but you need to tell them about the drugs. CID’s got that twenty-four-hour hotline. You call it tonight, tell them you want to come in tomorrow to Kandahar. Tell them you had an attack of conscience. You know what that is, Roman?”

Roman shook his head.

“Didn’t think so. Now you tell me what you’re going to
do.”

“I’ll call them tonight.”

Wells stepped back and hit Roman again in the stomach. Not as hard this time. Wells didn’t want to kill him. Even so, Roman doubled over and coughed, quick faint breaths, an old dog panting after a game of fetch. Wells flexed his knees to get low and hit him once more, a rising right that connected with the tip of Roman’s jaw, bone on bone. Wells grunted with the impact. A sweet pain filled his hand. Roman’s eyes rolled back. His head snapped up. Then gravity took over and he crashed to the hard-packed dirt. Wells watched for a couple seconds to be sure Roman was still breathing, hadn’t swallowed his tongue. Then Wells walked away, shaking out his hand. Truly he hadn’t felt so good in months.

* * *

AS SOON AS
Wells passed Peter Lautner’s name to Shafer, a team of techs at Langley began checking every e-mail in their servers, every phone call, every trip, every expense report. They hoped to find evidence of a connection between Lautner and Francesca or Alders, or even better between Lautner and Amadullah. At first, they came up empty. In the two-plus years since his wife’s death, Lautner had been very careful, unusually careful, to keep his official CIA account free of anything personal.

But within twenty-four hours, even before Wells went to FOB Jackson, the techs scored a hit. Stored on the agency’s computers at Langley was an e-mail four years before to Lautner from [email protected]. A few days later, Lautner had written Francesca back. He’d sent the e-mail not to Francesca’s military account but to another address, [email protected]. It didn’t take much imagination to realize the account probably belonged to Francesca. With the NSA’s help, the CIA cracked the Gmail address and found three suspicious messages. Two were nothing more than short strings of numbers, possibly phone numbers, though they didn’t match any numbers in the NSA’s worldwide database. The third was yet another Gmail account, with the password attached. Shafer checked it, found it empty. Probably Francesca and Lautner had used it to send messages to each other. One man wrote a message, saved it as a draft e-mail. Once the other read it, he deleted the draft. That way, the message was never permanently stored anywhere, and never left a trail for the NSA to trace.

Shafer and Wells believed that Lautner and Francesca had met face-to-face or used burner phones for all their important conversations. In truth, Francesca’s last words were the only real proof that Wells had of Lautner’s involvement. Wells thought he understood now why Gabe Yergin, the station’s operations officer, had acted so oddly during that first interview at the Ariana Hotel. Yergin had suspected Lautner, but he’d had no real evidence. So he’d done everything possible to raise Wells’s hackles without openly voicing his suspicions.

Lautner himself had added to the confusion. Because he’d been so overtly hostile, Wells had imagined he couldn’t have anything to hide. In fact, Lautner had outplayed Wells. He’d guessed how Wells would read his anger and then used that knowledge to his advantage. He was very tricky and very good and he had left only the faintest footprints on this operation. As far as Wells could see, Francesca, Daood Maktani, and maybe Amadullah Thuwani were the only three men who could connect him directly to the trafficking. The first two were dead, and now that he’d left his compound in Balochistan, Thuwani was impossible to find. Anyway, he would have less than no interest in helping the
CIA.

And so, two days after he shot Francesca, Wells found himself standing on the roof of the German embassy, waiting for Shafer to call. He’d flown to Kabul from FOB Jackson the night before and decided that the Germans would probably be better hosts than his friends at the Ariana. Duto and the agency’s congressional paymasters were scheduled to fly to Kabul in hours. Wells still didn’t know how Duto planned to deal with Lautner, or whether he’d be involved.