PART THREE

21

SWAT VALLEY, PAKISTAN. AUGUST 2008

The white Mitsubishi van bumped through the center of Derai, a dusty farm town in the heart of the Swat Valley, one hundred miles northwest of Islamabad. The road through Derai was wide and potholed, lined with swaybacked two-story buildings that leaned on one another as unwillingly as employees at a team-building exercise.

The streetlights were out, and the stores were closed, their metal gates pulled down. The streets were empty aside from an old man slowly pedaling a bike ahead of the van, his skinny brown calves rising and falling under his robe. The only proof of life came from the televisions playing in the apartments above the stores.

Given what they’d seen on the road into Derai, the lack of activity wasn’t surprising, Dwayne Maggs thought. Maggs sat in the back of the Mitsubishi, massaging his aching right leg, which hadn’t fully recovered from the bullet he had taken two months before. In the front seat were two Delta operatives, both able to pass for local.

A skinny white cat skulked across the road, head low, fur matted by the summer rain that had been pelting down for an hour. The cat ignored the van with the studied nonchalance of a Manhattan jay-walker and disappeared into an alley on the other side of the street, beside a blown-out police station, its windows gone, concrete hanging at odd angles from its walls. The cops had fled across the river, to Mingora, a bigger and marginally safer town. A gray-and-white cat surveyed the street from between two sandbags atop the station. The cat was probably about as effective as the Paki cops had been, Maggs thought.

Outside Derai, the van turned southeast on the narrow road that dead-ended at their ultimate objective, a tiny farming village called Damghar Kalay. Maggs snuck a glimpse at his watch. Ten fifteen. Right on schedule. On the edge of town, a necklace of lights flickered on a minaret, glistening in the rain-streaked sky.

Aside from the minaret, Damghar was dark. A couple miles beyond it, on the opposite bank of the Swat River, the lights of Mingora glowed. Mingora was the regional capital. With one hundred seventy-five thousand residents, it retained hints of vitality that Derai had lost. Mingora, Derai, and the villages around them lay on a belt of flatland that the icy Swat River had carved from the mountains of the Hindu Kush. With hot summers and plenty of water, the southern Swat Valley was surprisingly fertile, an agricultural oasis. The mountains around it were largely uninhabited, a trackless and beautiful wilderness that in happier times had been called “the Switzerland of Pakistan.” Just seventy-five miles north of here, the massive peak called Falaksair topped twenty thousand feet, a stone fist punching through the sky.

Yet the mountains had not buffered the Swat from the upheaval shaking Pakistan. For years, Talib militants had encroached into the valley from their strongholds on the Afghan border, one hundred miles west. By the summer of 2008, their takeover was nearly complete. Police and government officials hunched in their compounds as black-turbaned Talibs patrolled the streets of Mingora, enforcing their own version of sharia — Islamic law — from the backs of their pickups. They taxed store owners, burned girls’ schools, beat anyone they suspected of crimes against Islam. In June 2008, they even destroyed Pakistan’s only ski resort, at Malam Jabba, twenty-five miles west of Mingora. The Talibs didn’t take kindly to frivolities like snow sports. No one would confuse the Swat Valley with Switzerland anymore.

The Taliban’s control of the Swat did not yet extend to the main road into the valley. Traffic to and from Islamabad flowed without roadblocks. Still, driving up here was risky, especially for Maggs. All six of the Deltas on this mission had rough brown skin and long black beards and spoke Arabic, Pashto, or both. On the road, they didn’t stand out. As a black man, Maggs didn’t have that camouflage. The Mitsubishi was a cargo van, no side windows. Maggs had spent much of the trip lying on his seat, invisible to anyone outside.

Behind the van, the other four Deltas followed in George Fezcko’s favorite armored Nissan sedan. Its trunk held AKs, Glocks, and a handful of grenades. In contrast, the van’s cargo area was empty, aside from a three-speed bicycle identical to a million others in Pakistan — and a black bag that held the most important piece of equipment of all.


THE DELTAS HAD COME in from Bagram a week before. They were good soldiers, tough and experienced. But the fact that they were here at all highlighted the problems the CIA was having in the new world. After rotating for six-plus years through Afghanistan, the Delta ops had picked up the language and looks to blend in. To survive.

Meanwhile, in Islamabad, too many of the CIA’s best and brightest were still stuck in the cold war model. They rarely left the Diplomatic Enclave. They told themselves they were cultivating sources inside the ISI and the army. But from what Maggs saw, they got played by their Paki counterparts as often as not. Fezcko, his old deputy chief of station, was the only senior operative who’d gotten outside the wire and put himself in harm’s way on a regular basis.

Maggs had to admit he missed Fezcko. He missed Nawiz Khan, too, wished Khan could have come on this mission. But a month before, in July, Khan had been sent to Lahore, on the India-Pakistan border. He’d called Maggs with the news. He didn’t have to explain the reason. He was being punished for the success of the raid where they’d caught bin Zari and Mohammed.

Khan had nearly managed to avoid the backlash. His team stayed loyal to him, sticking to the story he’d devised. Only four terrorists were in the house, and all were killed during the attack. No one mentioned bin Zari or Mohammed, much less the Americans involved in the raid.

The physical evidence at the house didn’t match the story. But the Islamabad police knew better than to get involved. Truck bombs were the ISI’s turf. But anyone at the ISI who knew that bin Zari had been at the house could hardly say so, since aiding the attack he’d been planning would have been the only way to know. Khan seemed to be on the verge of escaping punishment. Then he was told of the transfer.

“Sounds like you got off okay,” Maggs said.

“Not so much, my friend. I shan’t have my men with me,” Khan said in his British accent. “Down there I can’t trust anyone.”

Maggs heard cars and trucks in the background. He wondered where Khan was. Not his house, certainly. Khan would never call Maggs from his house. “Maybe you ought to take a trip,” Maggs said. “See the States. Visa won’t be a probem.”

“Generous but entirely unnecessary,” Khan said. “How’s your leg?”

“No more marathons, but not bad,” Maggs said. He’d been lucky. The bullet had missed bone and major nerves. His doctor had promised him that if he took his rehab seriously, he could expect a full recovery. Not that Maggs needed an excuse to exercise.

“And how’s George?”

“Good,” Maggs said. “I’ll make sure he knows where you are.”

“And our friends? Have you heard anything yet?”

“Not yet. Roaches go in, but they don’t come out.”

“Roaches?”

“I promise, I hear anything, I’ll let you know. It was a wild night, wasn’t it?”

“It most certainly was.”

“Be safe down there, Nawiz. You need help, you send a flag up the pole, I’ll rustle up the cavalry, come get your ass. International incident or no.”

“I believe you would. Salaam alekeim, my friend.”

“Alekeim salaam.”


FOR THE NEXT MONTH, Maggs waded through boring assignments, managing security for a congressional delegation, overseeing the installation of new cameras inside the CIA’s floor of the embassy, bringing in two new guards. And, of course, rehabbing his leg.

Then, in mid-August, Nick Ulrich, the chief of station, was called to Kuwait for an urgent meeting. Maggs wasn’t invited, but he heard through the grapevine that the other guests were the chiefs of station from Delhi and Kabul and two lieutenant generals from Centcom. An all-star cast.

Ulrich was gone a day. When he got back, their operational pace picked up markedly. For two days in a row, Bagram ran up Predators to take out weapons caches hidden in the North-West Frontier. On the third day, Indian security forces arrested four members of Ansar Muhammad, Jawaruddin bin Zari’s old group, at a house in Delhi. And Maggs wondered if bin Zari had been broken.

The answer came the next morning, just as he was settling at his desk for his second cup of coffee. Ulrich’s secretary buzzed him.

“COS wants to see you.”

“Of course.”

Ulrich could have called, himself, but he wasn’t the type. Maggs walked down the hall, and Ulrich’s secretary waved him. Without getting up, Ulrich handed him a sheet of the blue paper used only for the most urgent messages.

“Came in this morning.”

TOP SECRET/SCI/CHARLIE BRAVO RED/COS C1 EYES ONLY

LAPTOP BURIED IN KITCHEN OF HOUSE IN DAMGHAR KALAY, SWAT VALLEY. PROVES SENIOR ISI OFFICIALS HAVE DIRECT LINKS TO PAK TERRORIST ATTACKS. ISI UNAWARE. TARGET BELIEVED UNGUARDED. CIVILIANS ONLY. LOC/ADDINTEL TO FOLLOW.

SOURCE: HUMINT (D)

R/C: 2/5

IAR

“LOC/ADDINTEL” stood for location/additional intelligence.

“HUMINT (D)” meant that the information had come from a human source, rather than an electronic intercept or another spy agency. “D” meant that the informant was a detainee.

“R” stood for the reliability of the source, “C” for corroboration. Both were scored on a scale of 1 to 5. In this case, the information was considered likely to be accurate even without independent confirmation.

And “IAR” meant immediate action required.

* * *

MAGGS HANDED BACK the cable. He had lots of questions. Why were the interrogators sure the laptop existed without independent corroboration? Had this come from bin Zari, or someone else? And why did the coding have a “Charlie Bravo” handle? Charlie Bravo meant that the note had come from Centcom through Bagram. But information from bin Zari should have run through Langley, not the military. After all, he and Fezcko were the ones who’d caught the guy.

“They broke Jawaruddin.”

“Maybe,” Ulrich said. He was in his early fifties, with a full head of thick, brown hair, a bulbous nose, and a broad, almost stately, chin. He looked like he belonged on an English estate circa 1925, chasing foxes and shooting grouse. He was far from dumb, and Maggs figured he was good in meetings with the ISI and the Pak generals. But Maggs didn’t like him, and the feeling seemed to be mutual.

“You want me to put a team together—”

Ulrich raised a hand to cut him off. “Squad’s coming from Bagram tomorrow,” he said. “Deltas.”

“Deltas?” Ulrich was notoriously turf-conscious. Yet losing this assignment didn’t seem to bother him. Maybe he knew that the Deltas had a better shot at pulling off the job than his own agents. Maybe he didn’t think the laptop was important. Or maybe he’d been told the score and decided not to fight. Maggs couldn’t ask. Whatever he was thinking, Ulrich wasn’t the type to share.

“Deltas,” Ulrich said. “Six. But they’ll be detached to us for the assignment.”

“Right.” Maggs saw now. Technically, neither the Deltas nor any American military forces could operate in Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government. After all, the United States was at peace with Pakistan. Legally, anyway. But getting the approval of the Pakistani authorities for this job might be tough. We need to go up into the Swat and steal a laptop that proves you’re all terrorists. Not a problem, right?

To get around the legalities, the Deltas would be “TR”—temporarily reassigned — and handed over to the CIA, which didn’t have to follow the military’s rules, for the operation. Maggs understood the logic. But he didn’t like it. He would be running six guys he didn’t know on a job that was based on intel he couldn’t verify.

“Got it,” Maggs said. “And I’ll be in charge.”

“Correct. We’re always talking about improving cooperation with the Pentagon. Now’s your chance.”

“Thanks, boss.”


THE DELTAS ARRIVED the next day. The good news was that they were every bit as professional as Maggs expected. They understood that they wouldn’t have the usual military backup for this assignment. No air support or Black Hawks to come for them if things got messy. They would get in and out quietly, or not at all.

The bad news was that they didn’t have any better read on the intel than Maggs did. They’d gotten their orders the same day as Ulrich and Maggs. Major James Armstrong, the squad’s leader, said the source wasn’t being held at Bagram.

“You’d know,” Maggs said.

“We’d know.”

More proof that this tip had come from bin Zari, Maggs thought. But why were his interrogators so sure they could trust him? Maggs wished he could talk through his concerns with Armstrong. But bin Zari’s capture remained a closely held secret. Even in Islamabad, Maggs and Ulrich were the only CIA officers who knew. So Maggs shut his mouth and went ahead trying to figure a way into that house. He would have had an easier time if the agency had decent informers in Damghar. Or anywhere in the Swat. But the CIA’s only halfway trustworthy source in the entire valley, the deputy mayor of Mingora, had fled six months before. The Taliban had set a truck tire on fire outside his house and promised him that the next time his head would be inside it. The Talibs didn’t know the mayor was an informer. If they had, there would have been no warning at all. They just didn’t like him.

As usual, Maggs and the Deltas were relying on technology to fill in the gaps. The NSA sent along a series of fifteen-centimeter-resolution satellite photos of Damghar Kalay, the target village, that showed the exact location of the house, as confirmed by the anonymous detainee. The building was squat, a single story high, forty feet long and thirty feet wide. Construction was typical for rural Pakistan, bricks poorly aligned and the rear wall bulging under the weight of the roof. A medium quake would take the whole house down. A small tractor sat in front, along with the remains of a pickup truck. A second satellite pass picked up a teenage boy and an older man standing beside the tractor, apparently trying to start it up.

Ideally, the house would have been isolated, several hundred yards from the next building. They hadn’t been that lucky. The house lay on the southern side of a one-lane cart track that dead-ended at the open fields east of the village. Homes were scattered along the track, divided by low walls. The target was about one hundred twenty feet from its nearest neighbor, far enough that they could approach without being immediately noticed but close enough that a gunshot or even a shout would attract the attention of the neighbors, and eventually of the Taliban.

To get a glimpse inside the house, the agency sent up a Predator equipped with thermal scopes. The scan — taken just before dawn, when the air was coolest and the heat gradients greatest — revealed at least five people asleep in the house, including three children. An exact count was impossible, because the house’s interior walls deflected heat in ways that couldn’t be precisely modeled.

The next day, two Deltas took a Jeep to Mingora and then Derai and Damghar for visual recon. They came back that night with mixed news. The house itself was easy enough to find. But as part of their creeping takeover, the Talibs had just imposed a midnight-to-dawn curfew on the roads around Mingora.

The curfew further limited their options. They knew they might need as much as an hour of quiet in the house to find the laptop. They’d planned an early-morning raid, figuring on catching the family in its deepest sleep, getting into the house and silencing them before they could react. Even without the curfew, the play was dicey. Anyone awake would see their vehicles. Now it seemed impossible.

They turned Maggs’s office into a war room, satellite photographs and thermal imagery on every wall. They spent a day and most of a night puzzling over the photos, considering and rejecting various plans. They debated buying Toyota pickups and black turbans and going in dressed as Taliban before deciding that the risk they’d run into real Talibs was too high. Besides, they had no way of knowing whether the family in the house was sympathetic to the Talibs, the government, or neither.

They considered taking rafts up the river, or driving up and rafting down. Aside from the fact that rafts were obvious, slow, and couldn’t be defended, the plan was foolproof. “Let’s bring a keg and make it a picnic,” Armstrong said.

At one point Armstrong suggested, more than half seriously, that they helicopter in a couple of platoons of Rangers, take over the house, shoot anyone who got close, and helicopter out when they were done.

“Great idea. What do we tell the Pak army when they discover we started a war in the Swat? ” Maggs said.

“Assuming they notice? We don’t tell them jack.”

“And when they bring in their own jets to chase us down?”

“They won’t even fight the Talibs. You think they’re going to mess with us?”

Maggs had to admit the plan had a certain simplicity. “Too bad we’re not at war with them,” he said. “It would make things so much easier.”


BUT THEY WEREN’T, and they didn’t want to go in hot, not into a house that had kids and women and most likely no Talibs at all inside. For a while, Maggs thought the mission might be impossible under the parameters they’d set.

Then he had an idea. It made him queasy. It could easily backfire. But it was the best hope, maybe the only hope, of getting inside the house without civilian casualties.

So he told Armstrong.

“That stuff works? For real?”

“Honestly, I’ve never used it myself,” Maggs said. “But I know we’ve tested it, and we say it works. And the Russians used it.”

Armstrong nodded. “That’s right. I remember. Killed a bunch of folks with it, too.”

“That they did.”

“It’s illegal.”

“Sure is. Unethical. Possibly immoral, too. Got a better idea?”

* * *

WHEN MAGGS WENT TO ULRICH, Ulrich shook his head. “This is what you have for me? After four days?”

“Sir. I’ll be glad to walk you through the options we considered and rejected.” And if you’d ever been on a mission, you might have some idea what I’m talking about.

“You believe this is your best bet.”

“Yes.”

“And Major Armstrong agrees.”

“You’re welcome to ask him yourself.”

Ulrich ran a hand through his thick black hair. “Nothing in writing,” he said finally. “If I have to sign for the stuff, I will, but nothing about what it’s for. And if it goes wrong up there, you don’t hang around. No matter what. Civ casualties, whatever.”

“Chivalrous, sir.”

“Don’t piss me off, Maggs.”

The equipment arrived the next day. Via diplomatic courier, naturally. No FedEx for this package. The questions they’d gotten from the engineers and scientists at Langley were entirely technical, about the size and layout of the target. The hypothetical and nonexistent target. Maggs had the distinct feeling nobody back home wanted to know what they were doing.

Meanwhile, the Deltas flew in a workstation from Bagram that used satellite photos to create a three-dimensional model of Damghar, the target village. The building images were schematic, but they were accurately placed and sized, giving the team a chance to practice driving through intersections that otherwise would be nothing more than lines on a map. Chris Snyder, who as team medic had the unpleasant job of using the equipment from Langley, ran through a half-dozen dry runs with it, the last three in complete darkness, before pronouncing himself satisfied.

“We really gonna do this?” Armstrong said on their second day of practice.

“Guess so,” Maggs said.

“It’s crazy, you know that, right,” Armstrong said. It wasn’t a question. “There’s tough and there’s dumb, and we’re on the wrong side of that line.”

“We don’t have to. We can tell Ulrich no.”

“The civvy risk is too high.”

“We don’t even know what’s on the laptop. If there is a laptop.”

Armstrong shook his head. “We’re going, aren’t we?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Then we best go sooner, not later. Only getting worse up there. Matter of time before they start blocking roads.”

“I was thinking the same,” Maggs said. “We go tonight. Supposed to be overcast, medium rain. Good for us. It’ll keep people inside, off the roofs.”

“It doesn’t look good when we get there, I reserve the right to pull out.”

“That’s the smartest thing anybody’s said this week.”


TWO HOURS LATER, they loaded the AKs and grenades and Glocks in the trunk of the Nissan. They put the special equipment into the black bag and the bag and the bicycle into the van. Then they rolled.

By air, only eighty miles separated Islamabad and Mingora. But the drive between the cities was a four-hour dogleg through a wall of mountains, west toward Peshawar and then northeast on the grandly named N-95, a winding two-lane road cut from mountain walls.

On the way up, they got stuck behind an old school bus whose white-and-green paint couldn’t quite conceal the yellow underneath. Farmers and villagers crowded four abreast on the seats, as children stood on their laps, poking their faces out of the windows. Every inch of the roof was covered with battered trunks and green plastic buckets and tiny wire cages filled with squawking chickens. The bus edged up the side of the mountain, pouring diesel smoke, and the more Armstrong honked, the slower it went.

Finally Armstrong gunned the van’s engine and swerved around the bus, which promptly accelerated. As the van reached the bus’s midpoint, a pickup truck rounded the blind curve in front of them. In the backseat, Maggs’s stomach churned. Watching the pickup come at them was like seeing a bullet in slow motion, the road’s geography shrinking second by second.

“Armstrong.”

Armstrong laid into the horn.

The pickup truck slowed but didn’t stop. The bus inched left. And somehow they fit three abreast on the two-lane road. As the pickup disappeared behind them they came around the corner — and saw that the road widened, creating a perfect passing lane.

“Wasn’t even close,” Armstrong said.

“Try to save some luck for the mission.”


THE SUN DISAPPEARED BEHIND the dusty brown mountains as they made their way down the pass. In the distance they heard the evening calls to prayer being called, mournful sighs that came from everywhere and nowhere at once.

As night descended, the rain started. They passed a pickup truck of Talib militants, who looked at them curiously but didn’t try to stop them. An hour later, they reached the concrete bridge that ran across the Swat and connected Mingora with Derai. They were halfway across when Armstrong slowed the van.

“Is that—” he said. “Yeah, it is.”

“Oh, man,” said the Delta in the passenger seat, Snyder.

At the north end of the bridge, a headless body dangled upside down from a steel pole. Rain dripped off the corpse’s arms and shoulders. Its brown skin had been torn to ribbons. Its stomach was distended, swollen like a balloon in the summer heat. Above it, a sign proclaimed “Infidel Whoremonger Thief”in Arabic and Pashto.

“They really are in charge up here, aren’t they?” Maggs said.

“And they don’t like thieves much,” Armstrong said.

“They do that to a thief, wonder what they’d have in store for us,” Snyder said.

“Probably best not to find out.”


THEY PASSED THROUGH TOWN, passed the old man and the white cat and the bombed-out police station. They made the turn onto the road that dead-ended in Damghar Kalay. Halfway down, the Mitsubishi cut its lights and pulled over. The Nissan followed.

Maggs pulled the bike and the black bag from the back of the van and tucked the bag into the wire basket attached to the bike’s handlebars. Snyder slipped a Glock with a silencer onto a specially made holster attached to his thigh, under his dark blue salwar kameez. He tucked in an earpiece and strapped a battery-sized transmitter to his chest, then taped a pea-sized microphone to his shoulder. “Copy?” he whispered.

“Copy,” Armstrong said.

Then, without even a “good luck” or a “vaya con Dios,” Snyder hopped onto the bike and rode toward the village a mile away.

22

GAITHERSBURG, MARYLAND

One wood. Two iron. Pitching wedge. The totems of a civilization dedicated first and foremost to its own entertainment. The clubs rattled in the blue Callaway bag, protective covers atop their precious heads, as Jim D’Angelo walked down his driveway toward his Cadillac Escalade. D’Angelo was a golfer in the John Daly mode, a meaty man with a jiggly stomach and giant haunches.

“You know, that’s a hybrid,” Shafer said. “He’s a real environmentalist.”

“Hope it’s got a reinforced chassis,” Wells said. He and Shafer were watching the Escalade from a Pepco — Potomac Electric Power Company — van down the street.

D’Angelo got into the Cadillac, put the clubs beside him in the passenger seat.

“Cute,” Shafer said. “They get to ride up front.”

“That’s a man who loves his golf clubs. We doing this here or fo llowing him?”

“Here.”

Wells rolled up, turned into D’Angelo’s driveway just as the Cadillac’s rear lights flickered on. D’Angelo honked, at first a quick beep and then a longer blast, as Wells and Shafer stepped out. D’Angelo lowered his window. “You guys got the wrong house—”

As they neared the back of the Escalade, D’Angelo reached into his jacket for what Wells assumed was a phone. Retired NSA guys didn’t carry. At least Wells didn’t think they did. But D’Angelo wasn’t going into his jacket pocket. He was reaching higher across his body—

“Jim!”he yelled. “We’re agency! CIA!”

D’Angelo stepped out of the Cadillac, holding what looked to be a Glock.40. A lot of pistol. D’Angelo’s hands were shaking, but he was so close he could hardly miss.

“Lemme see the other guy, too,” D’Angelo said. “The shrimp.” Shafer was on the other side of the Escalade.

“Least I’m not an elephant,” Shafer muttered. He moved beside Wells, hands high.

“You have a weapon?”

Wells: “Yes.”

Shafer: “No.”

“Take it out, put it down, slowly.”

Wells did.

“Now lie down, both of you.”

“We were hoping to do this without making a scene,” Shafer said.

“Little late.” D’Angelo hesitated, tucked his pistol into the waistband of his green golf pants. The Glock dented his tummy notably. “Shrimp, reach into your pocket, toss me your wallet.”

Shafer did. D’Angelo flipped through it, dropped it on the driveway.

“Ellis Shafer. What about you?”

“John Wells.”

“Lemme see.”

Wells tossed his wallet to D’Angelo, who poked through it without comment and tossed it back. Wells was reminded of what Whitby had said about his reputation. Not so long ago, Wells was treated with respect, even deference, on those rare occasions when he used his real name outside the agency.

But the shooting in Times Square had happened four years before, and — as Wells had asked — the agency had tried to keep his photos off the Internet and refused any and all interview requests. For the first few months, he’d received thousands. These days, he got only a few each month. His career hadn’t ended after Times Square, of course, but only a handful of senior officials at Langley and the White House knew what he’d done more recently. And the wheel of celebrity spun so fast these days that a couple of years out of the spotlight made a notable difference in name recognition. A subset of women — and a few men — viewed him almost as a purely imaginary figure, a living James Bond, a perfect projection for their fantasies. Anne had suffered from a mild version of that syndrome, though she’d shaken it quickly.

“Hey, sport,” D’Angelo said. “Kick it over.” He nodded at Wells’s pistol. Wells nudged the pistol toward him. D’Angelo tossed it in the Cadillac.

“We need to talk to you,” Shafer said.

“You need to go. I got a one o’clock tee.”

Shafer walked toward D’Angelo. “Jim. It’s my duty to remind you you’re a database engineer. You never killed anything in your life more dangerous than bad code. John could have taken your head off if he chose. He was polite and didn’t. But don’t tempt him. Even without his pistol, he’s more than a match for you. Now, please stop wasting time and invite us in.”

The speech froze D’Angelo. He stood, hands on hips, as Shafer stepped closer. “Come on,” Shafer said. “Chop, chop. Quicker we get in, quicker we get out.”

* * *

WELLS AND SHAFER SAT on D’Angelo’s couch, a black leather sectional, in a living room filled with photos of D’Angelo and his wife, who was nearly as big as he was, and their two sons, who were even bigger. Everything in the house was oversized: the photo frames, the television, the furniture, even the black Lab that sloppily greeted them.

D’Angelo sat across from them, pistol in his lap. “What do you want?”

“You worked for the NSA.”

“I can’t confirm or deny—”

Shafer pulled a file from his jacket, handed it to D’Angelo. A copy of his personnel record. “Like I said. Quicker in, quicker out.”

“Sure. I retired last year. As you already know.”

“You were there twenty-five years. Degree from Carnegie Mellon in operations research, went straight to Uncle Sam.”

“Sounds right.”

“Why’d you leave?”

“Always wanted to start my own business.”

“Consult. Work an hour, get paid for a day, isn’t that what they say about consultants?”

“They do.”

“And it’s going good? Even with the economy?”

“So far.”

“Good enough that you can play golf on a Tuesday afternoon.”

“Listen, whatever you’re fishing for, I really do have a tee time. And unless they’ve changed the rules, you can’t operate on American soil, anyway. Which makes this conversation either informal or illegal or both.”

“I’ll get to it, then.”

“And you’re not taping this, correct—”

“We are not. Informal. Like you said. So, at NSA, before you retired, you ran the consolidated prisoner registry.”

“I wouldn’t say I ran it alone. But yes.”

“Complicated job,” Wells said.

“Sure. Multiple layers of security, levels of access, sites all over the world.”

“And comprehensive. Every prisoner anywhere.”

“Yes. We were asked to put together one database where the agency and DoD could track everybody.”

“Ever hear of an interrogation squad called TF 673?”Shafer said.

“No.”

“A black site called the Midnight House? In Poland?”

“No.”

“You sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“Now, see, if you’re going to lie to us, you got to be smarter than that,” Shafer said. “Of course you know about 673. Their prisoners were in the database, and you managed the database, yes?”

D’Angelo puffed air through his cheeks like a three-hundred-pound chipmunk. “Just get to it.”

“Six-seventy-three had ten members,” Shafer said. “Now it has three. The others are dead. Know anything about that?”

D’Angelo hesitated. Then: “I heard a rumor.”

“That why you freaked out when we got here?” Wells said. “Went for your gun?”

“I didn’t know who you were, and you weren’t wearing uniforms. It had nothing to do with that unit, 673.”

“Maybe you thought somebody was coming for you because of those two detainees you deleted from the system.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” D’Angelo pushed himself up. “And you need to leave.”

“Another stupid lie,” Shafer said. “Six-seventy-three had twelve detainees. But the registry only shows ten. Two of them are gone. And Sam Arbegan, your old boss at Fort Meade, he told me that only four engineers at NSA had systems-level access to the database. You were one.”

“So, what?”

“So Arbegan said that the database had perfect integrity. That’s what you guys call it, right? He said that it couldn’t be changed without leaving tracks. Names could never be eliminated. Told me all about the spider, how it worked. But I guess if you run the thing, you don’t need to worry about the rules. That night the database and the spider went down in 2008, you were on duty, right?”

“No idea.”

“You were. I checked the records.”

“For an informal investigation, you’ve been working awful hard.” D’Angelo raised the pistol. “You’re in my house. And I am asking you to leave.”

Wells edged away from Shafer. D’Angelo flicked the pistol between the two men, as if he couldn’t decide who might be more dangerous. “Back off, Ellis—” Wells said.

“Oh, I will—”

“I’m not playing good cop/bad cop here, I’m telling you to back off. He’s scared, and guys like him get dumb when they’re scared. He’s big and slow, but it doesn’t take long to a pull a trigger. We’re going.”

“Okay.”

Wells stood and Shafer followed.

“You’re really leaving?”D’Angelo said.

“We can,” Wells said. “Or I can tell you what we know, how we know it. And believe me, you’ll be interested. Maybe enough to help us out.”

D’Angelo looked at the pistol in his hand as if it might have the answer. “And if I don’t? You’ll go?”

“You think we want to hang out with you? Watch you play golf?”

“All right. Two minutes.”

Wells sat on the chair next to the couch, away from Shafer, perpendicular to D’Angelo. “You haven’t been read in for any of this, so I’m breaking the law just telling you,” Wells said. “But fair’s fair. Somebody wrote our IG about 673 and the detainees. Basically said they’d been tortured. This was before the murders started. The IG tried to investigate and got stuffed. Now the FBI’s investigating the murders, right? But they don’t know about the letter. Or the missing detainees. And we’re pretty sure you’re the one made those names disappear. But you didn’t come up with it on your own. All we want from you is a name. Who told you to do it. Fred Whitby? Vinny Duto? Somebody else? Even further up the chain?”

“I don’t understand why you think I know anything about this.”

“You were there the day the spider crashed,” Shafer said. “Then there’s that no-bid contract. If you’d been smarter, you would have set up a real company, done some work, but you got lazy. Anybody decides to poke at that shell of yours, it’ll come right down. The Caddy, that apartment in Virginia, I’m guessing you got close to a million. Real money to make a couple of names disappear.”

In one smooth motion, Wells uncoiled and sprang across the six feet of living room between him and D’Angelo. He raised his right arm and chopped D’Angelo in the temple with his elbow, snapping D’Angelo’s head sideways. With his left hand, Wells grabbed the gun. He kept moving until he was on the other side of the room and only then turned to see the results of his work. D’Angelo slumped in the chair, huffing. He raised a hand to his temple, feeling for blood.

“You hit me,” he said, the shocked, aggrieved tone of a third-grader who couldn’t understand why the other kids picked on him.

“We’re all safer this way. Including you.” Wells popped the clip from the Glock and tossed it under the couch.

Slowly, D’Angelo’s breathing returned to normal. “That’s assault,” he said.

Shafer waved his phone. “You want to call the cops, go ahead.”

D’Angelo shook his head.

“We are the only ones who have this,” Shafer said. “Like John said, the Feds, they don’t know about the missing detainees. What happened to the registry. Your contract. And we don’t care if they ever find out.”

“All we want is to figure out who’s killing our guys,” Wells said.

“So, be a sport,” Shafer said. “Tell us who bought you. Let us get out of here and maybe you still make your tee time.”

“And you don’t tell the FBI. Or your IG. Or anybody.”

“If we wanted to get the FBI involved, we would have already. You know how they play. Or maybe you don’t. They come here for an interview. They show you their badges and you talk to them for five minutes. Maybe ten. You tell them the same lie you told us, that you never heard of the Midnight House. Something dumb and obvious. And before you know it they have you on an obstruction charge, or a one thousand and one, even worse.”

“One thousand and one?”D’Angelo said.

“You know what that is? Lying to a federal agent. Carries a sentence of up to five years. Even if they don’t put you under oath, they can get you for it. And since they don’t tape, it’s your word against theirs, what you really said. Ask Martha Stewart about the one thousand and one. And she had plenty of money for lawyers.” Shafer paused. “So, now you’re thinking, Okay, I’ll just keep quiet. Not say a word. But that’s not gonna work, either. There’s too big a trail here. Too many connections. Trust me, you don’t want the FBI looking at this.”

D’Angelo put both hands to his face, rubbed his cheeks. Wells wondered what it would be like to be so big. He imagined he’d be tempted to prod his body constantly, remind himself of its reality, credit himself for adding a few extra inches of padding between his soul and the uncertain world beyond. The true consolation of the flesh.

“I tell you what I know, you’ll leave,” D’Angelo said.

“Scout’s honor,” Shafer said. Wells nodded.

“It’s simple. The fall of 2008, I was in charge of the registry, like you said. Managing this thing, making sure the prisoners were logged accurately. We had high-level encryption on it. We did not want people playing with names or identification numbers. Once you were in, you were supposed to stay in.”

“Whose decision was that?”

“My bosses. They wanted the registry to stay clean. For precisely this reason. Anyway, in September, I got a call, somebody asking me, could I make a couple changes to the registry.”

“Changes.”

“Deletions. And I said, ‘No, anything like that has to come from the director of NSA. In writing.’ And my guy, he says to me, ‘This is a matter of the national interest.’ I said, ‘Get it in writing, then.’ He said, ‘Okay, look, if you do this, I promise we’ll make it worth your while.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you’d have to pay me like a million bucks to mess with that thing.’ I was joking. But he said sure.” D’Angelo’s eyes widened, as if he still couldn’t believe that he’d asked for money, or that his request had been granted.

“Careful what you wish for,” Shafer said.

“A million dollars. For ten minutes’ work. Less. Look, I was already planning on retiring from the NSA. With my crappy pension. You know, I graduated Carnegie practically the top of the class. I got a job offer from this little company called Microsoft. But I wanted to serve my country. I sure did, too. I served it by sitting in an office writing code for twenty-five years. I didn’t realize ’til too late, code is code no matter where you write it. If I’d gone to Microsoft. Anyway. I figured this was God’s way of evening things out. Only ever since I did it, I realized it wasn’t God giving me that money.”

“An attack of conscience,” Shafer said. “It didn’t extend to your turning yourself in.”

“No. But I’ve been waiting, all this time, for somebody to ask.”

“Lucky us for being first,” Shafer said. “You remember the names of the guys you deleted?”

D’Angelo shook his head. “But they were both Paki, I’m sure of that. One was in his early thirties and the other was like seventeen. I think they were caught in Islamabad. And both booked the same day, and it wasn’t that long ago. I mean, not that long before I erased them. Summer ’08, maybe.”

“And did your guy tell you what had happened to them?”

“He said they weren’t around. Which could have meant rendition, but I didn’t think so. Because then why go to all this trouble?”

“You figured they were dead.”

D’Angelo nodded.

“But your guy, how did you know you could trust him, he wasn’t setting you up?”

“I knew he was real. Partly because it was such a weird request,” D’Angelo said. “Too weird to be anything but real. I mean, who would come up with a sting like that? The FBI? The NSA IG? Didn’t make sense. And I knew the guy was a real op. I mean, I’d met him before. In Kuwait.”

“So, what’s his name? ”

D’Angelo shook his head.

“Come on, Jim. You’ve been calling him somebody, that guy. No more. We need his name.”

D’Angelo was still. Wells wondered if they’d have to come at him again. But then he nodded. “He worked for you guys,” D’Angelo said. “I think he still does. His name’s Brant Murphy.”

Wells and Shafer looked at each other. “We know him,” Shafer said. “Who was he working for?”

“He never said,” D’Angelo said.

“You’re lying.”

“It’s true. Why would I lie? I didn’t ask, didn’t want to push.”

“But the money, when you got paid, came from CNF. Which gets most of its money from the DNI.”

“Honestly, I was surprised to find out it was a DNI contract. Fact is, I always assumed it was Langley that wanted the names gone.”

Duto and Whitby. Whitby and Duto. Two scorpions in a jar, Wells thought. Playing a game only they understood.

“Why’d you go through such an elaborate scheme?” Wells said. “Why not just take the cash?”

“When he agreed to the million, I told him to give me a hundred thou in cash up front, the rest through a shell. I wanted the money to look legal. I knew they could do it that way. He said fine. But I was stupid. Should have gone with the cash. Instead, I left this trail.”

“Without which you wouldn’t have the chance to unburden yourself to us,” Shafer said. “Lucky you.”

D’Angelo didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm. “Anyway, I got the first hundred. I went in, cleaned out the registry. And about six months after I retired, Murphy called, told me there’d be a no-bid contract coming my way. Theoretically, I’m doing database analysis for the DNI.”

“So, the money is from Fred Whitby?”

“Yes, but I’m telling you I don’t know whether he was in on it. For that, you’re going to have to ask Murphy.”

“I guess we will.”

23

The road into Damghar was muddy but passable, hard-packed by tractors bringing wheat to market. The rain fell steadily, dampening Snyder’s robe, cooling his hands. Overhead, the clouds had thickened and the sky was black. He hit a pothole, and the bike dropped under him and nearly skidded out. He slowed, lowered his eyes to the road, tried not to think of the odds they faced, of the thousands of militants holed up in this valley. He’d decided already that if they got pinned down here, he was saving the last bullet in his Glock for himself. He wasn’t leaving himself to the tender mercies of the Talibs.

He passed one house, another, and then he was in Damghar proper. The village’s buildings were a muddle of crumbling brick and concrete. He swerved around a rusted-out motorcycle engine to find his front tire in a pile of something soft and fetid. The silence was absolute. The place felt more like a half-unearthed ruin than a living village. Even the dogs were quiet. The Talibs had decreed that any dog on the streets could be shot on sight. Like many devout Muslims, they considered dogs haram, forbidden. The strays that had survived the first culling had hidden themselves away.

Thanks to the practice on the simulator, the streets felt familiar to Snyder. Without slowing, he turned left, around the mosque in the center of the village, and then left, again, onto the cart track that led to the target house.

Two minutes later, Snyder reached the house. He slowed as he rode by, listening for a television, a baby’s cry, a man’s footsteps. Any sign of life. But he heard only the hum of rain against the road, the faint squeak of the bike’s tires.

He rode another hundred yards before turning back. He’d reached what pilots called V1, the last chance to abort takeoff. He could still go back to the squad. No one would question him. They would go back to Islamabad, try again another night. But once he got off the bike, they’d be committed. If anything happened to him, the rest of the squad would come for him. Then they’d have to fight their way out, and that would be little more than suicide.

He stopped in front of the house, counted backward from five. To the south, thunder boomed. He breathed his fear in deep, exhaled it into the rain. And he went. He set down the bike, grabbed the black bag from the basket. He ran low along the edge of the property, protected by a wall that was a four-foot-high jumble of mud and stone. At the front left corner of the house, he ducked around the tractor, flattened himself against the wall.

He waited five seconds, and five more, listening for movement inside. The house was still. Before his fear could rise, he moved again, creeping along the wall, feeling the the brick against his back. A window was cut halfway into the wall, really just a hole in the concrete. Snyder ducked low and kept moving. As he did, the rain picked up and another thunderclap broke the night, closer this time, though still miles away.

Two nights before, the agency had repeated its thermal scan with the Predator. The people in the house showed up in the same places they’d been the first time around. Two in the back-left corner of the house, three close together in the middle. They couldn’t be sure, but the best bet was that Mommy and Daddy were in one room, the kids in another. What really mattered, though, was that they knew which rooms were occupied.

Snyder inched around the corner of the house and dropped to his hands and knees. Behind the house, the wheat stretched high in carefully cultivated rows. The village was a mess, but the fields were immaculate. The rain hissed down, and the river burbled a mile off. A dog barked in the distance. Snyder froze, waited. But he didn’t hear it again.

He edged to the window, peeked inside. In the darkness he saw the outlines of a mattress on the floor, a thin sheet covering two pairs of legs. Now, at last, he heard breathing, steady and ragged.

He leaned against the wall, unzipped his bag, pulled out a canister, as big around as a dinner plate, three inches high. A long rubber tube extended from a nozzle on the side of the canister, ending in what looked like a bicycle needle. The needle was the problem. If he threw the tube inside the house, the needle would clatter against the floor. Then Snyder saw the jagged hole in the wall, a foot above the ground, where a brick had crumbled into dust. He knelt down, poked a finger into the hole. It ran the width of the brick. He pushed the needle into the hole inch by inch, as carefully as a surgeon making the morning’s first cut, until he’d threaded the tip through. Then he pressed down the panel on top of the canister.

The canister didn’t look like much, but its simplicity was deceptive. It had cost the CIA seven million dollars to develop. It held tubes of compressed nitrogen, an electronic flow meter, and two vials. The vials contained a mixture of propofol and fentanyl, two potent anesthetics that were normally given intravenously. Making the propofol inhalable had been the project’s most significant scientific hurdle. Propofol was liquid at room temperature, a chalky white fluid that anesthesiologists called “milk of amnesia.” Doctors had used it for decades to knock out patients for minor surgeries. A twentieth of a gram of propofol would put a man to sleep in seconds. Normally, it could only be given intravenously, but by attaching it to a chlorofluorocarbon compound, the agency’s scientists produced a chemical that was a gas at room temperature but retained propofol’s anesthetic qualities.

Fentanyl, the other compound in the mix, worked more slowly than propofol but had a wider safety margin. Three agency scientists, all Ph.D.s in toxicology, had experimented with different combinations of the two drugs, seeking a safe mix that would work in less than five seconds. At first they’d tested the gas on dogs and monkeys. But eventually they needed to find out if the gas was safe for human use. Outsiders weren’t an option, since trying it on humans, even if they were volunteers and informed of the risks, would be unethical. The scientists organized a do-it-yourself study in their lab in the basement of the Old Headquarters Building, testing it on themselves a dozen or so times, with an agency doctor standing by. Aside from one minor incident — a three-hour coma — the stuff had worked. They’d declared it ready for battle.

As Armstrong had pointed out to Maggs, the idea of knockout gases wasn’t new. In 2002, Chechen terrorists took eight hundred fifty hostages in an opera house in Moscow, promising to blow up the building if they were attacked. After negotiations failed, Russian special forces poured fentanyl and halothane, an older anesthetic, into the building’s ventilation system. The good news was that the soldiers retook the building without having to fire a shot. The bad news was that the gas killed at least 129 of the hostages.

To reduce the risk of overdoses, Maggs and Armstrong had agreed to use the lowest possible dose, just enough to knock the family out for fifteen minutes. After that the people in the house would have to be, in the dry language of the mission, “mechanically restrained.” Bound and gagged.


THE CANISTER HISSED SOFTLY as Snyder pressed the top panel. The engineers at the Directorate of Science and Technology had built it to work without mechanical parts, on the assumption that it would be used in places where silence was essential. The compressed nitrogen mixed with the fentanyl and propofol in a cylinder about the size of a small spark plug. Then the gas poured through the tube and into the needle, which was another marvel of engineering, designed to disperse the gas as widely and quickly as possible. After consulting with aerospace engineers from Boeing, the Langley engineers had designed a series of superfine titanium mesh sheets at the tip of the needle. The propofol and fentanyl molecules bounced wildly off the mesh, careening in every direction as they entered the open air. They filled a one-hundred-cubic-foot room — twelve feet by ten feet by eight feet three inches — in less than a minute.

The hiss faded. A thumbnail-sized LCD on the side of the canister flashed yellow and then turned green, indicating that the gas was flowing freely, no blockages inside the canister or at the tip. Snyder peeked in the window, but nothing inside had changed. He was faintly surprised. He realized that he had expected to see or smell the gas, though he knew it was both odorless and invisible. Then the man in the bed kicked his legs convulsively. Seconds later his breathing changed, slowing and settling, and Snyder knew that the gas had hit him.

He scuttled along the wall to the next window. He peeked inside, saw three pairs of skinny legs. Based on their size, two were children, one was a teenager. And at least one was awake.

“Faisal? Faisal?” a boy said in Pashto, his voice small, querulous. “Do you hear it? Faisal?”

An older boy answered grumpily. “Hush, Wadel. It’s thunder only. Don’t be a woman.”

Snyder couldn’t find a crack in the wall. He pulled the second canister from the bag. He flicked a switch on the canister to set the pressure at high and pressed the panel and tossed the tube in the window.

The tube slapped against the cement floor and the gas leaked out with a loud hiss. Inside, one of the kids rolled to his feet. “See it, Wadel?”Steps came toward the window. “There. The snake.”

The tube went taut. Snyder imagined the boy must have grabbed it. He held tight, hoping the tube wouldn’t tear. The tube stretched—

And then went slack as the boy collapsed, banging against the concrete as lifelessly as a sack of potatoes.

“Faisal?” the second boy, Wadel, said. He stepped toward the window. “Faisal?” He wasn’t yelling, not yet, but his voice was rising. “Fath—”

His voice ended. It didn’t trail off. It fell dead as suddenly as a radio being unplugged. A fraction of a second later, Snyder heard Wadel’s body thump against the floor beside his brother’s.

“Guess it works,” Snyder whispered. He backed away from the house to be sure he wouldn’t get more than a whiff of the gas. He pressed the send button on his transmitter.

“Echo One,” he said into his microphone. “This is Echo Five. Target is secure.”

“Roger that,” Armstrong said.

* * *

THREE MINUTES LATER, the Nissan and Mitsubishi rolled up. The Deltas stepped out, popped the trunk of the Nissan, pulled two bags of gear. Two operatives hid themselves inside the Mitsubishi, their silenced Glocks at the ready. If a Talib patrol happened down the cart track and decided to investigate, they had orders to shoot on sight. The other three Deltas and Maggs ran around the house and joined Snyder.

“Nice job, Chris,” Armstrong said.

Snyder nodded. Nothing more needed to be said. The five of them pulled on specially made gas masks that had penlights embedded in the rubber above their eyes — enabling them to see without having to carry flashlights — and stepped through the window into the corner bedroom. It was unadorned, not even a rug, just a couple of faded blankets on the mattress. Neither husband nor wife stirred. They were breathing, but slowly, irregularly. Snyder was sure he could smell the gas, though he knew it was odorless. He was glad for his mask. Do androids dream of electric sheep?

“Let’s get them out before they OD,” he said.

They cuffed the man’s hands and feet together and taped his mouth shut and his eyes closed and carried him to the room that ran along the front of the house. They repeated the procedure with the woman and then moved into the boys’ room.

“Damn it,” Snyder said.

Faisal, the smallest boy and the one who’d gotten the biggest hit of gas, seemed to have overdosed. His lips were faintly blue and his chest wasn’t moving. Snyder pushed back the boy’s eyelids and saw only white. He felt for a pulse and couldn’t find one. Finally he picked up a slow thump, barely thirty beats a minute.

He picked up the boy and carried him out of the bedroom and set him next to his parents on a threadbare rug in front of a poster of the hajj, the great pilgrimage to Mecca, and began CPR, five chest pumps and three quick breaths, five and three, five and three, harder and harder. A rib cracked under him, but he didn’t stop. Come on, come on. He hadn’t killed this kid. He couldn’t have.

Then Faisal coughed. His chest rose an inch, two inches, higher, his heart awakening even as his brain slept. His mouth opened and air leaked out, not a last breath but a first. Snyder pulled away and watched the boy breathe. Armstrong walked in.

“He okay?” Armstrong said.

“I broke his rib, but yeah.”

“Then cuff him and tape his mouth.”

Snyder wanted to argue, but Armstrong was right. They couldn’t let him scream. He laid duct tape over the boy’s mouth.

“You watch ’em while we find this laptop,” Armstrong said.

“Yessir.”

Snyder closed his eyes and wobbled. He sat heavily on the couch and wondered if he’d somehow gotten a lungful of gas.

“You might want to draw your weapon, Snyder.”

Snyder reached for his pistol as Armstrong walked out.


THE KITCHEN HAD A TABLE and six chairs, a wooden cabinet full of chipped plates and cups, a propane-fired stove, and—

“Concrete,” Maggs said. “They had to have a concrete floor.”

Compared to the rest of the house, the kitchen floor was magnificently built, a single solid slab. Henry Task, who at twenty-nine was the youngest member of the Delta team, grabbed pickaxes and hammers and chisels from his bag of gear. Armstrong pulled a metal detector from the second bag. Maggs wondered if a laptop held enough metal to trigger a detector under six inches of concrete. He checked his watch. Ten forty-five already, and they would need at least a few minutes to get through the concrete. They were cutting it close. They had to be over the bridge and out of Mingora by midnight.

Armstrong made a sweep, stopped by the base of the cabinet. “Getting something.” Maggs and Task pushed the cabinet sideways. Armstrong waved the detector over the spot where it had stood. “Not much, but it’s there,” he said. “I hope.”

Maggs and Task grabbed pickaxes and started swinging.


IN THE FRONT ROOM, Dad woke up first. Not surprising, as he was the biggest and had gotten the smallest dose relative to his weight. He nodded his head sideways, the first hint of voluntary motion. A few seconds later, he turned on his side. Snyder tried to imagine the panic he must feel. He’d fallen asleep in his bed and woken up somewhere else, his hands and legs cuffed, blind and unable to speak, hearing men grunting in a language that wasn’t his. As Snyder watched, he flipped onto his back and thrashed, swinging his legs up and down, looking for any purchase.

“Stop,” Snyder said.

Armstrong ran into the room. He straddled the father and smacked him across the temple with the butt of his pistol, twice. The dull sound of metal cracking bone echoed off the concrete. The man groaned through his duct tape and his bound legs swung down.

“Snyder,” Armstrong said. “Are you out of your mind?”

“I’m sorry, Major.”

Snyder didn’t know if he had taken a hit of the gas or was simply exhausted. He’d never failed on a mission before. Then again, he’d never been on a mission like this before.

“Go into the kitchen and stay there.”

“Yessir.”


MAGGS AND TASK and Bruce Irwin, the fourth Delta in the house, were chipping steadily into the concrete, their pickaxes rising and falling as steadily as the arm of an oil pump. Then Task stopped. “Sir,” he said. “I think I felt something.”

Maggs knelt down and saw the corner of a black plastic bundle peeking out of the edge of the hole they’d made.

“No more axes. Be a damn shame to put a hole in the hard drive.” Maggs and Task lay on the floor and pounded away, trying to enlarge the hole with hammer and chisel. The clank of steel on steel ricocheted through the kitchen. Maggs wondered if the neighbors would hear. No matter, because it was 11:20 already. One way or another, they were leaving soon.

Sweat poured down his face. He pulled off his mask, figuring the gas must have long since dissipated. He hammered away at a seam in the concrete, and the hole widened enough for him to slide his fingertips around the edges of the plastic. He tugged at it, wormed it forward inch by inch, no longer concerned it might be booby-trapped. This valley was its own trap. The bundle slid forward in his fingers, stopped, and then came free.

“Let’s go.”

Task began to pile the axes back into the bag, but Maggs grabbed his arm. “Forget it, Sergeant.”

* * *

IN THE LIVING ROOM, Maggs held up the bundle to Armstrong, who raised a fist in silent triumph. They stepped out the front door and piled into the Nissan and the van and rolled out. Through the village. Through Desai. Over the bridge. Onto the road that led out of the Swat Valley and over the mountains. With every mile, Maggs felt himself relax. They’d put their necks in the guillotine, and somehow the blade hadn’t dropped.

Then they rounded a corner to start the long climb southwest. And they hit the roadblock.

An extended-cab Toyota pickup sat astride the pavement two hundred yards ahead, a.50-caliber heavy machine gun mounted on a tripod in its bed. Three Talibs stood beside the gun, two more inside the cab. The militants apparently hadn’t been expecting to face anyone coming out of Mingora. The.50-cal — actually a Russian 12.7-millimeter TUV — was pointed up the road, away from the van. But as they rolled close, the Talibs swung it around until its muzzle faced them. A man jumped out of the pickup.

“Halt! ”

“Major—” Snyder said.

Armstrong stopped the van, raised his hands, looked straight at the Talib. “Nothing fancy here,” he murmured in English. “We’re just gonna take them out. Maggs. You’re going out the back with your AK. You’ve got to hit the guys on the.50. I’ll floor it, crash into the side of the truck.”

“Done,” Maggs said.

“You ready, Chris?”

“Yessir.”

* * *

SNYDER WASN’T AT ALL SURE he was ready. The TUV had a three-foot barrel and a range of nearly a mile. Up close, it had the power to vaporize skulls. And it was definitely up close. Snyder didn’t see how Maggs could get out the back and get a bead on the gunners before they took him and Armstrong out. He began to pray, silently, Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

“Cool,” Armstrong said, his voice steady as a pilot warning of turbulence ahead.

Behind them, Maggs dropped the safety on his AK, unlocked the doors of the van.


THE TALIB RAN TOWARD THEM, his left hand raised, his right gripping his AK. From the back of the pickup, the gunner put a spotlight on them, its glare nearly blinding.

“Turn back!” the Talib yelled.

Armstrong eased off the gas, lowered his window. The van rolled forward. “Have mercy. We’re taking my father to Peshawar, the hospital!” he yelled in Pashto. “He’s very sick.”

The Talib stood in front of them, lowered his AK. “No exceptions to the curfew. Take him home.”

“Please. He won’t survive the night. He’s in the back. Talk to him. Inshallah, you’ll see.”

As Armstrong spoke, Maggs opened the back door and stepped into the road behind the van. Armstrong touched the gas and the van inched forward.

“I won’t tell you again. Turn around.”

Maggs stepped sideways and fired a three-shot burst at the gunner on the TUV. As he did, Armstrong floored the gas. The Mitsubishi leapt forward at the Talib in the road. He fired three shots, missing high, and then disappeared with a grunt under the van. The Mitsubishi thumped over him, front wheels and then back, and roared forward.

In the bed of the pickup, the gunner groaned and slumped forward just as he squeezed the trigger. The TUV’s burst missed high and wide. The Talib beside the gunner tried to push him aside, but Maggs laid out another burst. The rounds tore into the second man’s shoulder and knocked him into the bed of the pickup.

In the passenger seat, Snyder could only watch through the windshield as the van closed on the pickup. He had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t actually in the van, that he was watching a movie of the scene rather than living it. At moments like this, time was supposed to slow, he knew. He was supposed to remember the great moments in his life. Instead, a groaning feeling of unreality overwhelmed him—

The van rammed the pickup broadside and crumpled its passenger door, crushing the Talib in the passenger seat instantly. The impact tossed Snyder and Armstrong against their seat belts, which gave a few inches and then tightened and pulled them back. The van’s engine block was shoved backward, toward Snyder, as his seat popped forward, forcing his left leg up and out. The engine rammed Snyder’s leg and snapped his tibia and fibula as cleanly as wishbones.

As Snyder screamed, the driver of the pickup opened the door and ran through the brush, down the side of the hill, toward Mingora. Armstrong lifted his pistol and shot through the front windshield at him but didn’t get him.

Armstrong laid a hand on Snyder’s shoulder. “You okay.”

“I can’t move, Major. My leg.”

Armstrong looked down at Snyder’s leg, the ankle curled back under the calf in a pose even the best yoga instructor couldn’t have managed. Wounded Warrior Six. “We’ll get you out.”

“Yessir.”

Armstrong tried to pop his door open, but the frame of the Mitsubishi was bowed and the door wouldn’t come loose. He wriggled out the back of the van, the laptop in hand, as tendrils of smoke began to rise from the front of the Mitsubishi. Snyder shot out his window to get air. He hung his head out the side of the truck and coughed.

Maggs ran toward the pickup as the Talib in the bed of the truck came to his knees. The Talib’s AK had gotten caught behind him. He scrabbled for it as blood poured out of the shoulder. Then the Talib gave up and tentatively lifted his hands over his shoulders—

And as he did, Maggs fired a burst and he went down. No prisoners. Not here, not now.


THE NISSAN ROLLED UP and the four Deltas jumped out. Armstrong handed the laptop to Task, the driver, and waved him back into the car. “Task, get around the pickup. If something goes wrong here, you take this and go.” He turned to the other Deltas. “Snyder’s stuck. Leg’s broken. Got to get him out.”

The smoke was thicker now, but Armstrong crawled back into the van as the three Deltas tried to pry open the door. Before they could open it, Snyder screamed, a lungful of obscenities that echoed over the valley. Armstrong had him by the shoulders and was tugging him toward the back of the van. Maggs ran to the back of the van, and together he and Armstrong pulled Snyder out as flames rose from the front of the Mitsubishi. Armstrong and Snyder were coughing, and soot covered Snyder’s face.

“We got you,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong and Maggs and the Deltas carried Snyder to the Nissan, fifty feet past the pickup. Behind them, the van’s gas tank exploded. The van jumped six inches. When it landed, its windows were gone and yellow-orange flames rose from its body.

Armstrong nodded at the burning remains of the van. “We won’t be taking that home.”

“The pickup.”

“Let’s leave it in the road. Buy us some time. We’ll all ride with Task.”

“Gonna be as crowded as that bus.” Maggs looked at the valley below. Ten miles away, at the edge of Mingora, a convoy of cars streamed toward them in the dark. “I’m gonna fix that roadblock.”

As Armstrong and the other Deltas arranged Snyder in the Nissan, Maggs grabbed a grenade and ran for the pickup. The keys were still in the ignition. He turned on the engine and backed up. Metal ground on metal as the pickup pulled away from the van, forming a metal L, that blocked the road completely.

Maggs stepped ten feet away and tossed a grenade inside the pickup and dove for the side of the road. He covered his hands from the twin explosions that followed as first the grenade and then the Toyota’s gas tank blew and the night turned white.

Thunder broke overhead, as if the skies were applauding. Maggs ran for the Nissan, a hundred feet ahead. When he got there, the trunk was open, holes shot through for air.

“Me or you,” Armstrong said, looking down at the trunk.

“Long as it’s not both of us. You’re taller. Stay in the car.” Maggs climbed in and settled himself, shoving aside an AK that was poking into his back. Armstrong slammed down the lid.

* * *

THE NEXT THREE HOURS were among the most unpleasant of Maggs’s life. The road twisted like a badly designed amusement park ride: Check out the new Nausea-Coaster. Rain poured into the trunk through the air holes, soaking him to the skin. And he had no way of knowing if the Talibs were closing. Though maybe not knowing was for the best. He’d find out when the shooting started.

But it never did. And finally, the car stopped and the lid popped open. He stretched his cramped legs but didn’t try to move. He shivered wildly. He hadn’t realized just how cold he was. In the distance he heard traffic, trucks passing.

“Enjoying yourself?” Armstrong said.

“Putting the black man in the trunk. Racism, pure and simple.”

“Believe me, it was no fun up front.”

“Where are we?”

“Five minutes from the Islamabad-Peshawar highway, my friend. We made it. Never even saw them. Roadblock worked. Nice job.” Armstrong reached a hand down. Maggs waved it off.

“I’m comfy. Wake me back at the embassy.”

“Come on, you gotta be freezing.”

“Let’s just get it done.” Maggs wasn’t sure why he was protesting. He only knew they’d have to drag him out of the trunk now.


THEY WERE BACK at the embassy before sunrise. Maggs knew he ought to sleep, but he was too jacked. They all were. Even Snyder, with his broken leg. And not just because of the insanity of what they’d just pulled off.

No, they all had the same question.

“What do you think?” Armstrong said, as he unwrapped the plastic that encased the laptop. It was an IBM ThinkPad, an X60. Maggs was no tech, but it looked undamaged to him. It even had its charger taped to the bottom.

“Really hot Paki porn,” Task said.

“They have hot porn?”

“No. That’s why it’s so special.”

“Horse porn.”

“Horse-dog porn.”

“A horse doing a dog? That’s just sick. Where do you get that, Task?”

Maggs plugged in the charger, reached for the on button, then stopped.

“What if there’s a virus on it, erases the hard drive as soon as we touch it?”

“If something goes wrong, we’ll turn it off, unplug it,” Armstrong said. “It can’t delete itself that fast.”

“You sure.”

“I’m sure.”

They should wait, Maggs thought. But they’d nearly died tonight for this lump of plastic. They’d earned the right to its secrets. He reached for the power button and they watched as the machine sprung to life.

24

Brant Murphy,” Shafer said. “Brant F. Murphy. Know what the F stands for?”

“I can guess.”

“This guy’s like a bad dream. Everywhere we turn.”

“Ellis. You said you don’t believe in big conspiracies.”

“I’m starting to.”

“Me, too.”

“Even when Duto put me under house arrest, back in the day, I understood. Didn’t like it, but I understood. He had his reasons. But this feels different. Not like some bureaucratic snafu. Tell me I’m wrong.”

And yet Wells felt a tingle of what could only be called excitement, the thrill of operating without a net, without the agency behind him. He remembered the months after he had first come back to the United States from Pakistan, when he’d broken out of CIA custody and gone to ground in Atlanta. He’d lived lonely and pure.

Shafer seemed to glimpse Wells’s enthusiasm. “The lady doth protest too much.”

They sat in Shafer’s kitchen, watching Tonka chase squirrels around the oak tree in the backyard. A fat gray squirrel dashed past up the tree and danced on a branch twenty feet above the ground, chittering down as the dog barked furiously back.

“I’ll get you a ladder,” Wells yelled.

“I know how she feels,” Shafer said. “Just hoping for a mistake.”

“Are we the squirrels or Tonka?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“I’m starting to miss the jihadis,” Wells said. “At least I know what they want. This I don’t understand at all. Did Murphy, Whitby, and Terreri really team up to kill everybody in 673?”

“We still need a motive. A couple of million dollars isn’t enough. Not split three ways. Not for this.”

“What if it was more? A lot more. Say 673 got onto something, some secret account for bin Laden that had fifty million dollars in it. A hundred. Pick whatever number you want. They take the money and then they kill the detainees. The whole squad’s in on it. The detainees have to die because if they ever get to Gitmo, they’re going to tell their lawyers about all this money. Murphy comes back here, gets D’Angelo to delete the names, so nobody ever knows the detainees even existed. The squad disbands, and somebody has an attack of conscience. Sends a note to the IG. Alleging torture and theft. And Murphy and Terreri don’t know who sent it. So, they decide to eliminate the rest of the squad. And Whitby, he’s happy with the intel they got, he doesn’t want to hear anything else.”

Not for the first time, Wells was struck by the enormous gap between the agency’s headquarters and its frontline operatives. The lords of the intelligence community sat in their offices at Langley and Liberty Crossing, pretending they were in charge. Until something went wrong. Then they told the prosecutors and the congressional investigators that they couldn’t be expected to know exactly what was happening on the front lines.

“Possible,” Shafer said. “But let me ask you. Why didn’t the letter mention a hundred-million-dollar bank account? Plenty of accusations in there. Why not that? And why cut Whitby in? For that matter, can you see this whole squad killing two prisoners in cold blood? Can you see Jerry Williams going for that? And one more thing. I don’t like Brant Murphy, either. But would he murder his own squad? Or anyone else.”

Wells tried to picture Murphy putting a bullet in someone. Even ordering a hit. And couldn’t.

“Or even Fred Whitby. It takes a certain disregard — a certain coldness—”

“I know, Ellis. Better than you.” Wells looked at Shafer. “Or not. I never have gotten the stories, what you did all those years running around Africa. And behind the Wall.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“I think of you as this oldster whose socks don’t match, but you weren’t always.”

“I wasn’t,” Shafer said. “Maybe there’s another explanation for what happened. And it comes from something we keep forgetting.”

Wells waited.

“The Pakistani nuke depots. Massive coup. Unless Whitby and Duto are flat-out lying, we got it because of intel that 673 developed. Terreri and Murphy must have known it would get noticed at the highest levels. And that they would have to produce the prisoners who gave it up. But what if those prisoners were dead? Problem. Best solution, make the names disappear. Let the intel stand on its own.”

“So, in this scenario the prisoners weren’t killed pintentionally? ”

“Maybe they tried to escape, got shot. Maybe Jack Fisher interrogated them too hard and they died.”

“So, these detainees had the list of all the nuclear weapons depots in Pakistan. Where they’re located, how they’re guarded.”

“I admit, that part doesn’t work. Crazy as the Paks are, I can’t see them giving that info to a terrorist.”

“Try this,” Wells said. “We kidnapped a Pak general. We got the info on the weapons depots from him, and we killed him accidentally on purpose and we made him disappear.”

“And the ISI went along with it? We killed one of their top guys and they didn’t care?”

“Maybe they didn’t know. They thought he defected.” Wells shook his head even before he finished. “It still doesn’t work.”

“Brant Murphy’s going to have to explain it for us.”

“We can’t get to him. We show up at CTC, he calls Whitby, Whitby calls Duto.”

“That’s half right, John. We can’t get to him at CTC.

“You’re not saying we go back to Kings Park West.”

Shafer nodded. And Wells could only smile.

“Know what I like about you, Ellis? You’re as crazy as me.”


BUT GETTING TO MURPHY at home proved as hard as getting to him at work. After the murders of Jack Fisher and Mike Wyly, the agency had given Murphy a permanent protective detail. An unmarked van, two guards inside, sat in front of the house around the clock. An armor-plated Lincoln Town Car ferried him to and from Langley. When he had to drive on his own, he used an agency Suburban, also armor-plated. But he rarely went anywhere except the gym. And wherever he went, two guards always shadowed him.

Because Murphy’s guards were CIA officers, Wells and Shafer couldn’t use any of the agency’s unmarked vehicles. Instead, a friend of Shafer’s at the FBI let them borrow from the bureau’s surveillance fleet, which included everything from bank vans to FedEx trucks to a 1988 Jaguar XJS. They switched cars every day, sometimes twice a day.

They did have one advantage: Murphy wasn’t the only one in Kings Park West who’d bet on real estate. Every fourth house in the neighborhood seemed to be for sale, giving them a good excuse to drive around. They scheduled appointments to visit houses in the early evening, hoping to catch Murphy making a mistake, going for a run or out to dinner without his bodyguards.

But after a week, they were no closer to getting to him or even figuring out how they might. “We need to face facts,” Wells said, on the fifth day of their drive-bys. “This isn’t working.”

“He’ll let his guard down,” Shafer said.

“Not soon enough. And the guards are in the way.”

“We can find a nonlethal way to take them out.”

“Long shot, but say we can. Then what? We kidnap Murphy? Where do we take him, Ellis? Your house? It’s insane.”

“You can always get to people.”

“I couldn’t get to Ivan Markov. As much as I wanted to. And we’re not talking about killing him. We’re talking about interrogating him. Which means we can’t cut and run. It means we need time with him. Which we won’t have. And why exactly do we think he’s gonna talk to us now? He didn’t before.”

“We didn’t have D’Angelo before.”

“Ellis, no matter how many different cars we borrow, we’re low on time. Two guys can’t run long-term surveillance on a defended target. Especially not here. It’s too quiet. I can feel people watching me. We’re going to get spotted. In days. Not weeks.”

Shafer didn’t argue.

“It’s time to clue the bureau in,” Wells said. “Tell them everything. If they knew about the letter and D’Angelo, they might make progress. Or I can go back to New Orleans, talk to Noemie Williams, see if she remembers anything. Or Steve Callar. Or maybe we need to talk to Duto, see if he’ll tell us what game we’re playing.”

“Let’s give it a couple more days, see if anything breaks. It’s just possible Murphy’ll get bored, go for a drive on his own. Or a run, even better.”

“Two days,” Wells said. “No more.”


AND SOMETHING DID BREAK, though it wasn’t what Wells had expected.

Three p.m. Saturday, the seventh and final day of surveillance. Shafer was watching his daughter play softball, so Wells was alone. He had just cruised by Murphy’s house in a Verizon van. The armored van sat out front, as usual, a red Ford Econoline with two unsmiling men in front.

Then he saw two cars in the driveway of a foreclosure that was the closest empty house to Murphy’s. The first was a blue Audi A4 with a vanity Virginia license plate: “SLHOUSE.” It belonged to Sandra (“Call me Sandy”) Seward, a Century 21 agent who had several listings in the area. Wells had met her during his house-buying excursion. The second was a black Toyota Tercel. Wells had seen it before. Precisely three nights ago, stopping in front of Murphy’s house. At the time, it had worn a Domino’s Pizza sign on its roof. The driver hadn’t gotten out of the Tercel. He’d simply lowered his window, said something to the guys in the van — asking for directions, presumably — and driven off. Wells kept driving, reached for his phone, called Shafer.


“ YOU SURE ABOUT THIS? ”

“He’s doing the same thing we are,” Wells said. “Casing Murphy, staking out the neighborhood as quietly as he can.”

“Because if you’re right, then we have to throw everything out. Murphy’s not involved. The killer’s on the outside. Unless Whitby’s put a contract out on Murphy. Which makes even less sense.”

“I’m telling you, this is the guy.”

They decided not to go after him at the house. They had no authority to make an arrest, and if the guy pulled a weapon, they risked getting the real-estate agent hurt and alerting Murphy’s guards. Instead, they would have to chance tailing the Tercel. Wells guessed the guy, whoever he was, was staying at a low-rent motel in D.C., a place that would take cash so he didn’t have to use a credit card.

They split up, positioned themselves at intersections on Braddock Road, which ran between Kings Park and the Beltway. If they missed him, they would have to alert Murphy’s guards to watch for a black Tercel. But Wells much preferred to find the guy himself, figure out who he was, before getting the agency or the Feds involved.

For an hour, Wells sat in a bank parking lot on the corner of Twin-brook and Braddock, watching the lights change. The Tercel didn’t show. He wondered if they had lost the guy, or if maybe he’d been wrong all along.

Then his phone rang.

“I got him,” Shafer said.

Fifteen minutes later, the Tercel was on the Beltway, Wells and Shafer behind. They crossed the Woodrow Wilson Bridge east into Maryland, then turned north on 295. The driver kept in the right lane at a steady fifty-eight. Probably he was worried about being pulled over in a car with fake plates. But caution made him an easy tail.

At Route 50, the Tercel turned west, into D.C., over the narrow, sluggish Anacostia River. Wells felt a faint thrill as he crossed over the bridge. He would always remember meeting Exley at the Kenilworth gardens, barely a mile from here, on the night that Omar Khadri had called him to New York. Exley. He didn’t know how to leave her behind. And yet he had. Maybe he just needed a cute New Hampshire cop who would take him on hikes and bust his chops when he retreated too far into himself. Maybe he needed to give that a try, anyway.

Two miles west of the Anacostia, Route 50 became New York Avenue, a rambling strip of liquor stores, strip clubs, fast-food restaurants, and cheap motels. Surveillance here was trickier. Shafer jumped the Tercel, so that they would at least have a chance at him if he made a light that Wells missed.

Just past Montana, the Tercel turned into the parking lot for the Budget Motor Inn. Wells cruised by in time to see the Tercel pull into a spot in front of room 112. Ten minutes later, Wells and Shafer were sitting down the block at a KFC.

Shafer had insisted on buying a four-piece dinner special, giving Wells the dubious pleasure of watching him eat. As he chewed, he spun the drumstick like an ear of corn. Disgusting but efficient, like so much that Shafer did.

“Sure you don’t want some?”

“Yes,” Wells said. Though he hadn’t eaten KFC in a long time and the chicken looked tasty. Terrible, but tasty. If that combination was possible. “When do we call the cops?”

Shafer laughed. A piece of chicken, or some chicken-like substance, flew from his mouth, landing on Wells’s hand. “Good one.”

“Then could you finish that, so we can go in?”

“He’s not going anywhere, and we’re not going in until after midnight.”

“He could go after Murphy before that.”

“This guy’s careful. He’s not moving until he’s sure.”

“Then I’m going home for a while, pick up some things.”

“Like what?”

“Are you really asking me that? In the middle of a restaurant?”

“It’s a KFC.”

“Things we might need.”

“And it’s finger-licking good.”

“Do not lose him, Ellis. You lose him, I might use those things on you.”

“You promise?”

Wells took the rest of Shafer’s chicken and left.


THE BUDGET MOTOR INN didn’t have a lobby. It had a waiting room, like a doctor’s office, if the doctor worked in Mogadishu. Wood-grain veneer on the walls and thick bulletproof glass protecting the front desk. A sign taped to the inside of the glass explained, “Credit cards or cash only. No checks. No exceptions.” The guy behind the glass was in his late twenties, black, with a shaved head and Urkel-sized black glasses. He barely looked up from his battered copy of Fight Club as Shafer and Wells walked in.

“You want one bed or two?”

“We don’t want a room,” Shafer said. He held up his CIA identification.

“Lemme see that.”

Shafer slid the badge under the glass. The guy frowned at it, handed it back.

“CIA? You expect me to believe that?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not allowed to do anything on American soil.”

“Everybody’s a lawyer.”

“As a matter of fact, I’m hoping to go to law school.”

Wells pulled out his own CIA identification, held it against the glass.

“John Wells? Mr. Times Square? Seriously?”

Wells nodded.

“Where you been since then?”

“Hanging out on the beach,” Wells said. “Those fruity drinks with the umbrellas? Mai tais?”

“For real?”

“But now he’s back,” Shafer said. “And he’s better than ever. And he and I have business with the guy in room 112. Anything you can tell us about him?”

“You cannot be serious.”

Shafer slid two hundred-dollar bills under the glass. “For your college fund.”

“It’s law school.” The guy pecked at the ancient keyboard on his desk. “You’re gonna be disappointed. He’s registered under the name Michael Jackson.”

“He show ID?”

“Doesn’t say here, but probably not. You don’t have to if you pay cash up front and put down a three-hundred-fifty-dollar deposit. More than the whole room’s worth.”

“We’re going to say hi to him,” Wells said. “All we’re asking is that you ignore him if he calls you when we knock on his door.”

“What if he calls the cops?”

“He’s not calling the cops,” Shafer said.


THE TERCEL SAT in front of room 112, as it had all night, empty spaces to either side. Even with an RV taking up five spaces, the motel’s parking lot was only half full. But New York Avenue was alive with Saturday-night traffic, SUVs cruising by, pumping rap from behind tinted windows. A D.C. police car slowed as it rolled past, the cop inside looking curiously at Wells and Shafer. They ignored him and kept walking, and he disappeared. Wells didn’t want to be here for his next pass.

The noise from the street covered their approach. Wells loosened his jacket but left his pistol in his shoulder holster. He and Shafer were going in cold. They needed this guy alive. Wells reached 112 first, flattened himself against the wall, two big steps from the door. The window shade was drawn, the room silent and dark, lacking even the glow of a night-light.

Shafer stood fifty feet away. Wells counted five and nodded at him. Shafer walked noisily to the door, rapped his knuckles against its faded red paint. “Henry! ” he shouted. “That you, Henry?”

No response.

Shafer knocked again, harder. “Henry! Come out, you two-timing prick! ”

“Get lost!”a voice inside yelled back. Wells had heard it before but couldn’t place it.

Shafer hammered away like a woodpecker on meth. Inside, someone stood up and shuffled to the door. “I’m not Henry,” the voice said, more calmly now. “Please go away.”

“Henry! I’m gonna call the cops!”

The door opened a notch, still on the chain. “Henry’s not here.” The tip of a pistol poked through the gap between the door and the frame. “And you need to leave.”

“I am sorry,” Shafer said. “So, so sorry.” He raised his hands and stepped away.

The pistol disappeared and the door swung shut—

But even as Shafer backed off, Wells was moving. He rocketed forward, popped his shoulder into the door, carrying himself back to those crisp fall afternoons at Dartmouth. Two decades gone now. He’d been quick enough then to speed-rush from the outside, tearing past linemen and tight ends on his way to the quarterback. He wasn’t that fast anymore. But he was fast enough.

His shoulder hit the door and he felt the chain pull taut and then snap loose, the screws that held the fastener popping out of the wall. The door made solid contact with the man inside, and Wells got low and kept pumping his legs—never stop moving your legs, that’s where the power comes from, Coach Parker always said. The guy on the other side of the door grunted and went down, and Wells swung open the door and stepped in.


THE ROOM WAS DARK, illuminated only by the glow from the parking-lot lights outside. The man inside sprawled in the narrow aisle between the bed and the wooden chest of drawers that sat against the wall. Wells still couldn’t see his face. The man scrabbled back, groped for his pistol.

Wells leapt down on the man. As he landed, slamming chest against chest, he saw the face of his enemy.

Steve Callar.

Wells’s shock was so complete that for the first time in his life he dropped his guard during a fight. Callar took advantage. With his free hand, his left hand, he clubbed Wells twice. Wells sagged but held Callar’s right arm, the one that held the pistol. Callar heaved his body convulsively and tossed Wells off. They lay sideways beside each other, close enough for Wells to see every pore on Callar’s face, smell the sweet-sour whiskey on Callar’s breath. Then Callar rolled on top of Wells. Wells rolled with him, trying to use his momentum to flip Callar another one hundred eighty degrees and put him on his back. But the space between bed and dresser was too cramped and instead they got stuck side by side again.

Wells chopped at Callar’s face with his right forearm, the trick that had worked on Jim D’Angelo. But he didn’t have the momentum, and anyway Callar was fighting with a rage that Wells couldn’t match. Wells outweighed Callar by at least twenty pounds, all muscle, and yet Callar was giving him everything he could handle—

Before Wells could finish the thought, Callar twitched sideways and pushed his left leg between Wells’s legs and drove his knee into Wells’s testicles.

The agony was so enormous that Wells couldn’t move. Tears filled his eyes, and the air came out of his body. Somehow he kept his grip on Callar’s right arm as Callar tried to tug down the pistol. Callar grinned at him, a hard, crazy smile, and began to wrench his arm free. Wells was holding on with his left hand, his weak hand. His strength was ebbing. In a few seconds more, Callar would have him. Callar felt it, too. His grin widened.

Wells saw the opening.

He shifted his legs to block Callar from kneeing him again. And he hooked his right thumb into Callar’s mouth and pulled back Callar’s cheek. Callar’s face twisted and he snapped his jaws shut, trying to bite Wells’s thumb. But Wells pushed his thumb in farther and tugged until Callar’s cheek tore—

Callar screamed, a desperate bleat. He thrashed his legs and swung his head sideways and scratched at Wells’s face, long fingernails clawing into Wells’s face, as Wells pulled and Callar’s cheek tore further—

When he had done as much damage as he could, Wells pulled his thumb out of Callar’s mouth and made a fist and slammed it into Callar’s jaw, a miniature uppercut. He hit Callar once, twice, and a third time, and then shifted his grip to wrap his hand around Callar’s neck, Wells’s superior strength taking over now. He clenched Callar’s neck tighter, tighter. Callar’s face turned red and his eyes rolled up and foam mixed with the blood running from the corner of his mouth and—

* * *

THE LIGHTS FLIPPED ON, and someone pounded on Wells. Shafer.

“Don’t kill him, don’t, don’t.”

Wells rose to his knees and straddled Callar’s chest and relaxed his grip. Callar’s mouth opened, and the blood burbled out of his torn-up face. Wells and Shafer watched him breathe. Then Shafer grabbed the pistol from his limp right hand. Wells picked him up and put him on the bed. Shafer pulled two sets of cuffs from his jacket and locked Callar’s wrists together and then his ankles. The adrenaline evaporated from Wells, and he sagged against the wall.

“We need to go.”

“No,” Shafer said. “Rooms 111 and 113 are empty, and there’s no sirens.”

“That’s Steve Callar.”

“Yeah. I’ve seen his picture. He doesn’t look much like it now.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You should go in the bathroom, get yourself cleaned up.”


WELLS FLICKED ON the fluorescent lights and saw a berserker in the bathroom mirror. A thick, red trail of blood, maybe his own, maybe Callar’s, streaked down under his eye. Spit and phlegm covered his cheeks. Wells turned the tap and dabbed at his face until the wash-cloth was red. Traces of blood lingered, but he looked mostly human. He pulled down his jeans and boxers and winced as he touched his swollen testicles.

Shafer opened the bathroom door, holding a bottle of peroxide and a box of Band-Aids from the first-aid kit in the car. His jaw slipped open as he saw Wells poking at himself.

“Now’s really not the time, John.”

“Funny, Ellis.”

“Next time wear a cup.” Shafer tossed Wells the bottle and the Band-Aids, grabbed a towel, and left. Wells patched up his face as best he could and pulled his pants back up and walked shakily into the bedroom.

“He’s gonna need stitches,” Wells said.

“Stitches? You just gave him a new mouth. He’s gonna need a face transplant, like that French lady.” Shafer pressed at the bloody gash on Callar’s face with the towel.

“It’s not that bad.”

“Remind me never to get in a fight with you.”

“You need reminding of that?” Wells put a hand on Callar’s shoulder. “I still can’t see how he got to his wife.”

Callar groaned and stirred. Wells stepped away, drew his Glock, tried to keep his hand steady. Callar’s eyes blinked open. He poked his tongue though the hole in his face.

“You found me.”

“Saw you cruising the neighborhood,” Wells said.

“But you didn’t know it was me. Until you got here.”

“That’s right.”

“Anybody else know? FBI? Or is it just us chickens?”

“It’s over now, so why don’t you tell us what happened?” Shafer said. “Why you killed your wife and everyone else. And how you got from Phoenix to San Diego and back without anyone noticing.”

Callar laughed, a huffing laugh that turned into a vicious cough. Blood and spit exploded from his mouth, and a gob of phlegm landed on the television on the dresser.

“I’ve been telling you all along, and you still don’t get it,” he said. “My wife killed herself.”

Then, finally, Wells understood.

25

ISLAMABAD. AUGUST 2008

The video had been shot with what looked like a pinhole, through-the-wall camera. The image quality wasn’t great. But it was good enough.

On-screen, Jawaruddin bin Zari stood beside another man, tall, in his early fifties, in a neatly tailored suit. A trimmed black beard framed his face. Maggs knew him immediately. They’d met once before, at the embassy. Abdul-Aziz Tafiq, head of the ISI. Arguably the most powerful man in Pakistan.

Maggs wondered if the video had been spliced or faked. The NSA’s techs would have to check. But to his eyes it seemed authentic. Given the risks of the meeting — for both men — whatever had brought them together must have been crucial, an issue that could only be resolved face-to-face.

The terrorist and the security chief were in what looked like an empty office. No window or desk or phone, just a table and a couple of chairs. An on-screen clock recorded the date and time: 14 Dec. 2007, 6:23 p.m.

“Salaam alekeim.”

“Alekeim salaam,” Tafiq said. “My friend, you asked to see me. Here I am.”

“I wanted to be sure this message came from you.”

“It does.” Tafiq paused. “So? Can you?”

“How many bombs have I set over the years?”

“You missed the general.”

“That was more complicated. And Pervez is fortunate.”

“This won’t be easy. Her car will be armored. Police in front and behind.”

“Leave it to me. She’ll hardly be moving. Those streets. And she can’t help herself. Waves to the crowds like the woman she is. As long as I have the route.”

“You’ll have it.”

“And the details of her security. Whatever you can give me.”

“Done. She cannot survive.”


“OH, MAN,” MAGGS SAID to Armstrong, who’d been translating the conversation from Pashto. “You’re sure about this?”

“I’m sure.”

Only one she counted in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto. And she hadn’t survived. No. She’d been assassinated on December 27, 2007, in Rawalpindi, after a rally for her political party, the Pakistan Peoples Party. Another chance for peace in Pakistan destroyed by violence. The killer, or killers, were never caught.

A murder condoned — not just condoned but set in motion — by the chief of the ISI.


ON-SCREEN, bin Zari put a friendly hand on Tafiq’s arm. “Don’t worry,” he said. “She won’t.”

“And your men?”

“Whoever you like. With connections or no.”

Meaning, Maggs presumed, that bin Zari was asking Tafiq to decide whether the assassins would be known members of Islamic terrorist groups or sleepers unknown to any intelligence agency.

“No connections,” Tafiq said. “But make sure they’re expendable. In case there’s pressure from the Americans and we must find them.”

“Done,” bin Zari said. “As for the money—”

“You should do it for free. You hate her more than we do.”

“As for the money.”

“Half tomorrow. The rest when it’s over.”

“Done.”

The two Pakistanis leaned in, hugged. And the screen went black.

26

Your wife killed herself,” Wells said. “So you killed everyone else.” “Someone finally gets it.”

Wells looked around, seeing the room for the first time, eleven feet square, the ceiling barely seven feet high and mottled with brownish stains. A light fixture poked like a pimple from the beige stucco wall behind the bed. Callar must have sat in rooms like this for weeks on end, in San Francisco and New Orleans and Los Angeles, plotting his mad revenge.

Wells ran a hand over his face and came away with a thin trail of perspiration and blood. Callar watched him with flickering eyes.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

“I’ve seen less depressing torture chambers. Really.”

“It does have HBO.”

“You stay here when you killed Ken Karp?”

Callar shook his head. “Down the street. Believe it or not, this is a step up. No bedbugs. Who’s your buddy, John? Didn’t do you much good in the fight.”

“I’m Ellis Shafer. Why don’t you tell us what happened?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“Fair enough,” Shafer said. “Stop me when I make a mistake. You didn’t know exactly what happened over there. But it was bad. Hard on your wife. And she wouldn’t quit. You asked her to come home, but she wouldn’t.”

“She wouldn’t even take her second leave.”

“Finally, the tour ended. Rachel came back to California. Got even more depressed. Wasn’t working. You couldn’t help her. She wouldn’t talk to you about it. She was the doctor, you were the nurse.”

“I couldn’t even get her out of bed. She lay there all day. Every day. A couple weeks before she died, I called her folks, asked them to come down from L.A. Didn’t tell them exactly what was wrong, but they knew it had to be something serious or I wouldn’t have called. She’d only seen them once since she had her breakdown in med school. A few minutes before they got to the house, I told her they were coming. She didn’t say a word, just got dressed, put on makeup,” Callar said. “They got to the house and she put on this act, went out to lunch, told them she was fine. She came home and told me if I ever did anything like that again, she’d leave me on the spot. She said her life was her life, she didn’t want anyone to know what was happening, and especially not her parents.”

“Not a healthy attitude. Especially for a mental-health professional.”

“I could have tried to have her committed involuntarily. In California we call it a fifty-one fifty. But she would have run rings around the cops. Probably would have wound up having me committed instead.”

“But you still loved her.”

“More than anything. You know, I wanted her from the first moment I saw her in the emergency room. It really was like that. And it never went away. The way she held herself, the way she could look at a patient, a sick one, a real crazy, size him up, put him at ease right away, just putting a hand on his shoulder.”

“A real crazy,” Wells said.

“Outside the hospital, she was funny. Smarter than I was. I guess we were never really partners, and maybe I should have minded, but I didn’t. My whole life, people been telling me what to do, and it never bothered me.”

“Rachel say what happened over in Poland?”

“Around the edges. She told me she thought that Murphy and the colonel were skimming. And something bad happened at the end. But I didn’t know what. She never said.”

“Then she sent you to Phoenix. Did you know what she planned to do?”

“I wasn’t sure.” Callar ducked his head to his shoulder, wiping at the blood trickling down his face. “No, that’s not true. I knew. But I hoped I was wrong. Anyway, like I told you, she never listened to me.”

“And when you got home, she was dead.”

“That’s right.”

“She leave a note?”

“She said she was sorry. That I’d be better off without her. That she failed.”

“She say how?”

“No. ‘I failed.’ That was it. And these twelve numbers. All ten digits long.”

“Did you know what they were?”

“I thought they were those ‘prisoner identification numbers.’ She’d mentioned them.”

“So, you hid the note from the cops,” Shafer said. “And a couple weeks later, you sent the letter accusing Murphy and Terreri of skimming. And for good measure, you accused the squad of torture.”

“Pretty much. I wanted a real investigation. There were enough details in the letter. I figured someone would have to look into it.”

“But you were wrong.”

“I figured somebody would call the house. Ask to talk to her. They didn’t know she was dead at that point. And when they found out, I figured it might make them wonder even more about the letter. But after a couple of months, I realized nobody cared.”

“You decided on your own action.”

Callar grinned. Blood dripped off his chin and onto the dark blue blanket beneath him. Wells wondered if the owners of the Budget Motor Inn had chosen the color because it hid bloodstains.

“Do you remember where you got the idea?”Shafer said.

“Indeed I do. She had one picture of the squad. Taken close to the end. Except for her, they all looked happy, believe it or not. Smiling, arms around each other. Wearing these cowboy hats. She was off to one side. She was smiling, too, but I knew she was faking it. The way she was holding herself, with her arms folded. I looked at that picture. Looked at it and looked at it. And kept imagining Rachel not being in it. And then I found out that those two Rangers had died in Afghanistan. And I imagined them not being in it, either.” Callar looked at Wells. “Remember that movie Back to the Future, when we were kids?”

“Sure.”

“So in that movie, Michael J. Fox, he’s got this picture of his family. And when he goes back to 1950-whatever and messes up the way his mom and dad are supposed to meet, the people in the picture, they start to vanish. Because he’s screwed up his own birth, see? And one day I saw the same thing happening to Rachel and the Rangers in the 673 picture. I mean, I didn’t imagine it. I saw it. I knew what I had to do. I just saw that picture entirely blank. It only seemed right.”

“You have the photo with you?”

“In my backpack.”

Wells rummaged through, found it. The members of 673 stood in front of an anonymous concrete barracks. Everyone but Callar wore cowboy hats. In the center, Murphy and Terreri held up a painted wooden sign that read, “Task Force 673, Stare Kiejkuty: The Midnight House.” Callar was in the group but not of it. Her smile was pained, her face tilted slightly away from the camera, as if she was looking at something the others had missed. A ghost on the edge of the frame.

“Why not just go after Terreri? Or Terreri and Murphy?”

“I blamed all of them. I didn’t know exactly who did what, but I knew everybody was dirty. It wasn’t my job to make distinctions.”

“It was your job to kill them,” Shafer said. “With an assist from whoever killed those Rangers.”

“That’s right.” Now that he wasn’t talking about Rachel, Callar’s voice was flat, remorseless.

“What about that posting on the jihadi Web site after Wyly and Fisher were killed? The one that said it was revenge for the way we treat detainees?”

“I knew at some point you guys would put the murders together. I was hoping to jump in front, misdirect you.”

“You figured out how to post it in Arabic?”

“I had time, the last few months. It wasn’t that tough. Lot of cutting and pasting.”

“The banality of evil,” Shafer said. “We could discuss the morality of collective punishment with you, but there wouldn’t be much point.”

“No, there wouldn’t.”

“What about the fact that your wife killed herself?”Wells said. “I don’t like Brant Murphy, either. But he didn’t hurt your wife. And you said she had a breakdown in medical school. Maybe this would have happened no matter what.”

A growl escaped from Callar’s ruined mouth. “Easy,” Shafer said. Callar tugged at his cuffs. Wells imagined the steel shearing, as if Callar’s anger could bestow superhuman powers. But nothing happened, and finally Callar gave up.

“Nobody hurt her?”he said. He spat at Wells. Then laughed, a high screech that bounced around the room, wrapping around Wells like a spiderweb of madness. “They broke her. She went there as a doctor. She came back as a torturer. That’s how she saw it. They made her see what she was capable of. Don’t you see, that’s why she posed for that picture? That’s why she saved it. To remind herself that she was no better than anyone else. That she was worse. She was a doctor.

“They took her will to live,” Shafer said.

“That’s right. She had that breakdown fifteen years ago, but she was copacetic for a long time. So, don’t put this on her. Not on her.”

Wells wondered, Did she know how much you loved her? Though maybe it didn’t matter. Either way, she’d killed herself.

“Ever done anything like this before, Steve?”Shafer said.

“Anything like this? You mean, murder? No. This is a first.”

“You’re a natural.”

“It’s not that hard. If you can handle a gun. The tough part is not getting caught. Especially in this case, a bunch of different cities. But I was careful. I had money saved up, and Rachel left more. I quit work and figured out where everybody lived, and I cased them out. I drove everywhere, bought different cars in every city, stayed in motels like this. But now that you know it was me, you’ll find the traces.”

“How come you didn’t start with Terreri and Murphy?”

“By the time I figured out what I wanted to do, Terreri was over in Afghanistan. And Murphy, I figured if I hit a guy high up in the agency, somebody would put it together. The way I did it, I got a long way before anybody figured out what was happening.”

“Tell us about the first murder.”

“That was Karp. He was the easiest. Bad habits. Left him vulnerable.”

“How’d you get to Jerry?”

“Lucky for me, he was drinking pretty hard. I set up on the street with a twelve-pack around the corner from that bar he liked. Took a couple days, but sure enough he came by. I asked him if he wanted a beer. I’d met him in the bar, so his guard was down. He had about five. I offered to drive him home. I’d bought this old Jeep Cherokee with tinted windows. He got in the front and I went in back and blew off his head. Drove the body out to the swamp and dumped him.”

Wells stood, looked around the room for something sharp, something heavy.

“Please do,” Callar said. “You’d be doing me a favor.”

“Sit down, John.” Shafer patted his arm. “Sit.”

Wells sat.

“But you didn’t think it through,” Shafer said. “You left the CO and the XO. And now they’re defended.”

“I would have gotten to Murphy if you hadn’t found me.” Callar lay on his back, spoke to the ceiling. “Any more questions, gents? Or is this where you call those FBI cyborgs and turn me in?”

“You’re sure you don’t know what happened at the end over there? Or the specific intel they got?”

“You’re going to have to ask Murphy and the colonel.” Callar sat up again. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to uncuff me, give me a minute with that Beretta of mine? One round would do. Spare us all the indignity of a trial.”

“Maybe we need some indignity,” Wells said.

Shafer stood. “Maybe. Step into my office, Mr. Wells.”


UNDER THE FLUORESCENT LIGHTS of the bathroom, Shafer outlined his plan.

“You’re insane,” Wells said.

“Then let’s call the FBI, be done with it. Like we should have already. Whitby will drop Callar in some rathole and that’ll be the end of it. We’ll never know what happened in Poland. We’ll have no leverage at all. This is our best shot.”

“Duto didn’t ask us to figure out what happened over there, Ellis. He asked us to figure out who was killing the squad. Which we have.”

“Somebody needs to know who those detainees were, what happened to them. If only to tell their families. Somebody needs to find out what was going on at the Midnight House. What we did. Even if there aren’t going to be any trials.”

“What if Murphy won’t bite? Would you really go through with it?”

The look in Shafer’s eyes was answer enough.


AN HOUR LATER, Wells parked his Subaru in the driveway of the vacant house in Kings Park West where he had spotted Callar’s Tercel. He unholstered his pistol, tucked it under the seat.

He walked down the driveway and along the road toward Brant Murphy’s house. He was wearing only a T-shirt and jeans and holding his hands at his shoulders. As he reached the property line of the house, still fifty feet from the front door, a spotlight from the van caught him. He stopped walking, raised his arms over his head. The guards stepped out of the van, hands on their holsters.

“John Wells?”

“Yes.”

“Down on the pavement.”

Wells dropped to his knees. The guard stepped closer.

“Lie down.”

“I need to talk to Brant.”

“Lie down, Mr. Wells. That’s an order.”

Wells lay down, prone, arms above his head like he was a kid playing at Superman. He was tired of having strangers point guns at him. But then nobody had made him come over here.

The guard stopped six feet away. He had shiny black eyes and a long narrow chin and a halo from the spotlight behind him. He reminded Wells of a Jesuit priest in a seventeenth-century Spanish painting.

“What are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to Brant.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

“I’ve got no gun,” Wells said. “If I’d wanted to hurt him, believe me, this isn’t how I’d go about it. I’ve got a message for him, and it’s urgent. Frisk me and tell him I’m here to see him. Please.”

The guard glanced up at the house. “Stand up and raise your shirt.” Wells did. “Over to the van. Slowly. When you get there, put your hands against the passenger door.”

At the van, the guard frisked Wells, slowly and expertly, squeezing his legs, working down from thigh to ankle and then back up. Wells hoped the guard wouldn’t go too high. He was still throbbing from Callar’s knee.

“Sit down.”

“Tell him his life is at risk,” Wells said. “And that he shouldn’t call anyone until he talks to me.”

The guard walked up the driveway.


TWO MINUTES LATER, Murphy emerged, holding a flashlight. The guard stood beside him, his pistol trained on Wells’s chest.

“I should have you brought in right now,” Murphy said.

“Good news. Shafer and I, we know who’s after you.”

“Prove it.”

“Give me five minutes.”

“Come on, then.” Murphy stepped back up the driveway.

“It’s better if we do this outside.”

They walked side by side down the empty street, the van trailing, in what was without doubt the strangest meeting ever held in Kings Park West.

“What happened to your face?” Murphy said.

“The guy, the killer, he’s in custody. Not far from here.”

“You’re full of shit, John.”

“I’m completely serious.”

“How come I haven’t heard, then? When was he arrested?” Murphy stopped, put a hand on Wells’s arm. “Who has him in custody?”

“At the moment, Ellis Shafer.”

“You personally found the killer.”

“Ellis and I, tonight, yes.”

“And have him.”

“Ellis does. The guy was casing your house. You were next on the list.”

“You are going to be very sorry you woke me up at two thirty in the morning for this.”

“Look at me.” Wells waited until he had Murphy’s attention. “It’s no joke. So, the good news, we have him. There’s bad news, too. The bad news is this is very personal for him, and he’s willing to die. And you, Poland was as close as you ever got to the front lines, so you don’t know what it’s like, that mind-set. But I’m telling you that a man who’s willing to die is unstoppable. Especially if he’s patient. I mean, if you’re the President and you have an unlimited budget and a thousand Secret Service officers and you never go anywhere that hasn’t been vetted first, maybe you have a chance. But you’re not the President, Brant. This is all the protection you’re going to get. In a year or two, you’ll have less. The agency’ll take it away bit by bit. It’s expensive. People forget. But this guy, he won’t forget. He’ll wait and wait. Then he’ll hit you. I wouldn’t bet against him.”

“I’m calling Whitby right now. Have you brought in.”

“Sure. Only one problem.” They were at the crux. “You do that, Shafer’s gonna let him go.”

“You wouldn’t.” Murphy grabbed Wells’s arm, leaned in close. He looked around, side to side, his eyes darting, as if the killer might even now be lurking behind a tree or under a car.

Behind them, the van stopped. The Jesuit guard opened his door. “There a problem, Mr. Murphy?”

“No problem,” Murphy said. He hissed at Wells, “You’d let him go? Knowing that he’s killed Americans? Soldiers? Our operatives? You’ll be an accessory to murder, spend the rest of your life in jail. You’ll—”

“Shafer can’t help it if this guy overpowers him.”

“I’ll tell everyone what you said.”

“And I’ll deny it.”

Murphy stopped. The only sound was the low grumble of the Ford’s engine.

“So let him go. We’ll find him. The FBI—”

“Hasn’t had much luck so far.”

“This is gutless,” Murphy said. “You’re gutless. Hiding behind this man. You want to threaten me, threaten me yourself. Not this.”

The words stung. Wells had never been called gutless before. And he’d never had cause to think of himself that way. But tonight he did. Because Murphy was right. Wells should never have let Shafer use Callar this way.

But Wells had come too far to back off now.

“I guess I must not like you much,” Wells said.

Murphy rubbed his face and squeezed his eyes shut. He opened them, as if he hoped to find himself back in his bed, this nightmare over. But Wells stood in front of him. “Just tell me what you want,” he said.

“The truth. About the missing detainees. About what happened at the Midnight House. Ten days ago, Whitby showed us this incredible intel. The location of every nuclear weapon in Pakistan. That’s a coup. He said it came from you, from your squad. So, how come no one will give us a straight answer about what happened over there? How come the IG’s investigation got zapped? How come Jerry Williams’s wife says he wasn’t the same after he got back?”

“That’s all.”

“That is all. No notes, no tapes. Just the truth. Then we hand this guy over for whatever justice the people of the United States of America see fit to dispense.”

“Even if I tell you, it won’t do you any good.”

“Maybe it’ll do you some good, Brant. Maybe it’ll set you free.”

“You’re quoting me the lobby?” When the original CIA headquarters was completed in 1961, the chief at the time, Allen Dulles, had inscribed a proverb on a wall in the lobby, John 8:23. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

“Look, you must have killed them, those two detainees, otherwise you wouldn’t have paid D’Angelo to zap their records. That was a big mistake, and you knew it was risky, but you did it anyway. And the only explanation is that you had to have them gone because they were dead. So, why don’t you just come clean? I swear, Brant, I’m not wearing a wire. Your guys frisked me.”

“You think that’s what happened? You think we killed our prisoners. Got what we needed from them and disposed of them. War crimes.”

“Maybe it was an accident.”

“You know what, John? I’m gonna tell you after all. Outside of Whitby and Terreri and me, you’ll be the only one who knows the truth. And then you can decide who to blame.”

27

STARE KIEJKUTY. SEPTEMBER 2008

By the time Rachel Callar walked into Terreri’s office, the rest of the squad was there. The room stank of cigar smoke. Eight men, eight cigars. Even Jerry Williams, normally a health nut, was puffing away.

“Major.”

“Colonel. I see you have a fire drill planned.”

“A pleasure as always,” Terreri said, waving his cigar at her. “Can I offer you one?” He nodded at the wooden box on his desk. “Cubans. From this store in Warsaw. I’m picking up a few dozen before we go home.”

“Congratulations. Who’s watching Jawaruddin and Mohammed? ”

“Fatty and crazy aren’t going anywhere,” Murphy said. “We figured they could use some time alone.”

Callar knew Murphy wanted to rile her. Yet she could hardly resist the bait, putting a finger in his chest and telling him to shut up, that those were human beings downstairs and she didn’t care if Jawaruddin had given them the keys to Fort Knox and Osama bin Laden, too, and—

She breathed in deep, reached for the place where she was in control. She knew it existed, though she needed a map to find it these days.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave them alone.”

“Then go keep an eye on them,” Murphy said.

“Enough,” Terreri said. He reached for a cardboard box from under his desk, pulled out cowboy hats in all shapes and sizes.

“We’ve all worked hard all these months. I know it’s been tough. But it’s paid off. This is what Jawaruddin bin Zari has been hinting at for the last couple weeks. We recovered it four days ago in Pakistan. Karp and I are the only ones who are supposed to see it, but I figure we all deserve a look. But you’ll only see it once, so watch closely. And it goes without saying, this is beyond classified.”

He clicked on his laptop. On the flat-screen television across the room, the video of bin Zari and Tafiq began to play.


TWO FLOORS DOWN, Mohammed Fariz sat on his cot, his eyes closed, his legs folded under him. He looked almost peaceful, but he wasn’t. The djinns were with him constantly now.

They didn’t yell at him anymore, and for that he was grateful. They didn’t yell because he’d agreed to do what they asked. He understood them now. They were his friends, the djinns, his only friends. They helped him see.

Every day, the Americans walked Jawaruddin down the corridor past Mohammed’s cell. And every day Mohammed saw that Jawaruddin wasn’t Jawaruddin at all. A devil had put salt in his mouth and seeped into his blood through his throat. He seemed to breathe, but he didn’t. The Jawaruddin-devil was in charge here. The Americans pretended to hold him, but really they worked for him. He could leave anytime. Every time Jawaruddin walked by Mohammed’s cell, he said hello, and the words made Mohammed’s teeth hurt so much that he wanted to pull them out. But Mohammed didn’t say anything at all. He just nodded and smiled. The djinns told him that if he nodded and smiled, his teeth wouldn’t hurt. The djinns explained everything. They came in the night and talked to him.

They showed him how to unscrew the metal leg of his cot, how to sharpen its edges against the bed frame each night while the guards slept. They showed him that if he stood on his cot he could use the leg as a screwdriver to loosen the grate that covered the air duct in the ceiling. The screws were rusted tight, and for a week Mohammed worked them, inch by inch, tearing up his fingers. He wondered if the Americans would notice, but the djinns told him not to worry, that the Americans didn’t pay attention to him anymore. Finally, the night before last, the screws came loose and he took off the grate and stood on his tiptoes and looked inside the vent.

The tube above was a dark tight metal hole, too small for an average-sized man to fit. But Mohammed wasn’t an average-sized man. He was an underfed teenage boy, 1.6 meters — five-four — and sixty kilograms — one hundred thirty pounds. He reached inside the vent. Less than a foot above the ceiling, it connected with a cross-tunnel that ran above all the rooms and cells in the basement. Mohammed screwed the grate back on and lay down and closed his eyes and waited for the djinns to tell him what to do next.


MODERN AMERICAN PRISONS DIDN’T have ventilation systems that extended directly into their cells. But this wasn’t a modern American prison, and until 673 arrived, these cells weren’t used for long-term confinement anyway. Misbehaving Polish soldiers were hauled in for a week or two and then discharged or transferred to larger bases for more serious punishment. And central heating was a necessity in Stare Kiejkuty, where the temperature regularly dropped below zero in the winter.

When 673 took over the barracks, Jack Fisher had seen the vents. He’d given the Rangers standing orders to check them once every two weeks, make sure the prisoners didn’t tamper with them. Mohammed’s cell was due for another check. In four days.


AS MOHAMMED READIED HIMSELF for his mission, bin Zari lay two cells away on his cot, hands folded behind his head. He could almost believe he’d dreamed those weeks in the torture chamber. The antibiotics had taken care of his pneumonia. The blisters on his skin had healed. He had no scars, no broken bones. His insides had nearly recovered, the woman doctor told him. Even the most sympathetic lawyer might not believe his story.

These Americans had defeated him without leaving a mark. He wanted to be angry at himself for breaking, but he couldn’t. He’d sent dozens of believers to their deaths, helped them strap explosives to their bodies and blow themselves into eternity. But in truth he’d helped those men, offering them the briefest burst of earthly torment in return for the perpetual bliss that Allah granted his martyrs. What the Americans had done to him was something else, endless pain unrelieved by death. No one could beat that room.

Since he’d agreed to talk, they’d treated him decently. Then again, he hadn’t given them reason to hurt him. In the last few weeks, he had thought of going back on his word, giving them fake names, addresses, plots. But he didn’t know how much they knew. And if they put him back in the torture cell, he would shed his skin like a snake, thirsty and desperate as the blood poured off him. They would take him to the brink and bring him back, over and over, until his mind snapped.

The day before he broke in the torture room, its walls had turned into living crepe paper. He’d needed a few seconds to realize he was seeing roaches, thousands of them. They scuttled across the floor and over his skin, crawled into his mouth and nose and even his ears, scuttling along, their touch dry and quick. They weren’t real. He knew they weren’t real. They had bomb belts, tiny and perfectly formed, strapped to their shells. Bin Zari had enough sanity left to know that roaches didn’t wear suicide bombs, that the stress of being chained to the floor for days on end was making him hallucinate. But they felt real. He saw them and heard them and suffered their touch on his skin. And he knew that if he stayed much longer in the cell, he would lose what was left of his mind.

Whenever he thought about lying to the Americans, he remembered the roaches. Maybe he was a fool. Maybe the Americans would go back to torturing him after he’d given up his secrets. But he didn’t think so. They’d offered a clear bargain all along. Give us what you know, and we won’t hurt you.

He’d realized something else, too, something he should have figured out months before. He could turn his weakness into strength. The most important piece of information he had might be more dangerous for them than for him. Let them find the videotape with him and Tafiq. Let them play it at a tribunal at Guantánamo. Let the world see it. The Americans would know once and for all that their supposed allies in Pakistan could not be trusted. The ISI would be forced to declare its allegiance openly.

But he couldn’t tell them about the tape right away, or they might not believe him. He gave up other information first to prove his reliability. Each day they debriefed him. They were pleasant to him now. They gave him bottled water whenever he wanted, and he ate what they ate now, no more gruel.

In turn, he gave up safe houses in Peshawar and the North-West Frontier. He even gave up the cell that Ansar had put together in Delhi to work on an attack against the Indian parliament. In truth, bin Zari had always doubted the ability of the men they’d assigned to that job, so the information was less valuable than it appeared. He let them think he was broken, an act that wasn’t hard to pull off, since he was, more or less. Then, when the interrogator who called himself Jim asked about the ISI, bin Zari sprang the trap.

“Of course we were close to the ISI.”

“Senior officers.”

“In some cases.”

“Did you communicate regularly?”

“Yes. In fact—” Bin Zari broke off. “I’ve answered all your questions. But this I can’t speak about.”

At first Jim smiled, joked, cajoled bin Zari to talk. But after an hour of questions, Jim grew irritated. Finally, he ordered the Rangers to take bin Zari back to his cell. “No supper,” he said. “Take tonight, sleep, and wake up ready to talk.”

The next morning, Jim appeared outside bin Zari’s cell carrying a tray. He tilted it so bin Zari could see what it held: three biscuits and a bowl of honey. The sweet, hot smell of the biscuits filled bin Zari’s nostrils, made his mouth drip. Bin Zari wondered where they’d come from. He’d not seen food like this since they’d captured him.

“You must be hungry after missing supper,” Jim said. He dipped a biscuit into the bowl of honey, ate it carefully, one small bite after another. “Remember, in the other cell? How hungry you were?”

Jim dipped the second biscuit into the bowl. “So, you’ll tell me what you meant, about the ISI?”

“I can’t.”

“You don’t get to decide. You answer my questions, or I’ll put you back in that place. Just as soon as I’ve eaten this breakfast.”

“You promised.”

“And you promised to be honest with us, Jawaruddin.”

“Please.”

Jim seemed to lose interest in the conversation. He kept eating. And when the third biscuit was gone, he turned away.

“That’s it, then,” he said. He didn’t even seem angry. “I’ll send the soldiers for you. Please don’t fight.”

“Don’t.”

Jim began to walk away.

“All right,” bin Zari said.

Jim stopped.

“I’ll tell.” Bin Zari explained that he’d once taped a meeting that showed him talking over a terrorist plot with a senior member of the ISI. He refused to disclose the details of the meeting, saying that Jim wouldn’t believe him. “You’ll think I’m lying, and I fear what you’ll do,” he said. “You must see it yourself.”

He’d stored the video on a laptop, and hidden it at a farmhouse that belonged to distant cousins of his in the Swat Valley. They didn’t even know it existed, he said.

“Why make this tape?” Jim said.

“In case the ISI ever decided to betray me. Or Ansar Muhammad.”

“If you’re lying—”

“I’m not.”

“And you can show us where to find it?”

“Yes.”

That evening, Jim came to his cell holding a Quran. “For you.”

Bin Zari didn’t thank Jim. He hadn’t fallen that far yet. But he took the beautiful book, with its gray cover and intricate silver filigree, gratefully.

That night, as he read, he wondered what the Americans planned to do with him. Would they find the laptop? And if they did, would they send him to Guantánamo? Or simply kill him? He no longer cared.

But he knew that in the next world, Allah would see fit to torture these Americans, just as they’d tortured him. For eternity. No matter how much they begged for forgiveness, how loudly they screamed their mistakes. For this vengeance Jawaruddin bin Zari prayed as he read his holy book.


MOHAMMED PEEKED THROUGH the bars of his cell. The corridor ran forty feet, past four side-by-side cells. Mohammed was housed in the second cell, Jawaruddin in the fourth. Past Jawaruddin’s cell the corridor ended in a concrete wall. On the far end of the corridor, two gates controlled the entrance to the cell block. A pair of chairs were positioned outside the gates. Usually a guard or two was stationed there to watch the corridor, an American during the day, one or two of the others at night.

But for the first time in Mohammed’s memory, the chairs were empty. Now, the djinns told him. Now.

Mohammed squatted low and flipped the cot up against the wall under the vent. He unscrewed its sharpened leg, careful not to slice his palm open on its edges. When it was loose, he touched its blade with the tip of his thumb and was pleased to see blood rise from his brown skin.

He pulled himself up the side of the bed and squatted on its edge. With his free hand, he loosened the screws that held the vent. A bigger man would have knocked over the cot, but Mohammed’s lack of size worked to his advantage. The cover came loose. He pulled it free and jumped down. He left the cover on the floor and peeked out the front of the cell. Still no guards.

It’s time, the djinns said.


BIN ZARI CLOSED his eyes and tried to sleep. Though for some reason that little monkey Mohammed was scraping around his cell. Normally Mohammed didn’t say much, just stared whenever bin Zari walked by. Bin Zari wished the Americans would send the boy to Guantánamo or back to Pakistan. Wherever. He was strange, and bad luck. A fierce sour smell came off his greasy, tangled hair, and his eyes were black stones that gave no hint of what, if anything, he might be thinking.

Bin Zari knew Mohammed wasn’t responsible for their original arrest, but he blamed the boy anyway. He’d never been close to being captured until that night in Islamabad. “Little monkey,” he yelled. “What are you doing?”


UPSTAIRS, THE VIDEO WAS DONE.

“Remember it,” Terreri said. “You’re never gonna see it again. I shouldn’t have shown it to you, but we are a team, we’ve always been a team, and we will always be a team.”

“Even you, doc,” Fisher said.

“I feel so much better now,” Callar said.

“What happens next, Colonel?” This from Jerry Williams.

“We’re going home,” Terreri said. “Unless you want to stay awhile while, hang out in Poland.”

“Sir, that’s not what I meant.” Humor wasn’t Williams’s strong suit. “I meant with the prisoners.”

“Yes, Muscles, I know. Hasn’t been decided. What you just saw, that could cause a lot of problems with the Paks. Only a few people back in D.C. even know about it. Even fewer know how we got it. And they don’t want Jawaruddin to get to Gitmo and start bitching about how he’s been treated. ’Specially if along the way he mentions the video. And we can’t exactly send him back to Pakistan, either. So, it’s complicated.”

“We ought to leave them here, let the Poles have ’em.”

“Personally, I wouldn’t care if they spent eternity and a day downstairs. But no, they won’t be staying here. When we go, the Midnight House is done.”

“We oughta just kill ’em,” Fisher said. He looked around the room. “I’m serious. Much easier.”

Terreri puffed his cigar, blew a perfect ring. “You mean it, don’t you, Jack?”

“That man downstairs is a human roach.”

“You’re sick,” Callar said.

“All your complaining, you’ve been here every step,” Fisher said. “Little late to be holding your nose.”

“Wish I could agree with you, Jack,” Terreri said. “But that’s not how we do.”

“You sure? One hundred percent? If I went downstairs right now and did it myself, I’ll bet none of you would turn me in.”

“I would,” Callar said.

“Would you, now, sweetheart?” Fisher stepped toward her, blew a stream of smoke in her face.

“Enough, Jack,” Terreri said. “Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

“Good. And on that happy note, let’s go outside, take a couple pictures. Something to remember when we’re old and gray.”


DOWNSTAIRS, MOHAMMED PULLED HIMSELF atop the cot, wormed his head into the vent. The tube was cracked and rusted, the air inside hot and stale. He wanted to pull out his head. He wanted to lie on the floor and close his eyes and sleep. And wake up in the room in Haji Camp he shared with his brothers, wake up before the Jaish had touched him. He was so tired.

But the djinns didn’t care about his excuses. They had chosen him for the mission. As he wavered, their voices rose, a cacophony of curses and threats, filling him until he couldn’t breathe. Go on, the djinns said. Leave it behind.

Mohammed balanced himself on top of the cot. He pushed himself into the vent and found the cross-passage that ran horizontally through the ceiling of the cell block. To his right, the passage led to the front of the block and the guard station. To the left, it ran toward the rear wall and Jawaruddin’s cell.

Left, the djinns whispered. Left.

Mohammed put the knife into the passage to his left. He reached for the ridges of metal where the ventilation pipes had been welded together and pulled himself left, pushing the knife before him. For a moment he was stuck, and then he wriggled his shoulders sideways and freed himself and squirmed forward with the syncopated twists of a snake. He slid over the vertical vent that dropped into the cell beside his and wriggled along until he reached the fourth and final cell. In the cell below, he heard Jawaruddin. He looked down and saw Jawaruddin’s bulky body through the grate. “Monkey. Are you up there?”

Now, the djinns said. He’s the devil. The devil, the devil, the devil. And if you don’t do what we say, you’ll be the devil, too.

Mohammed dropped down and kicked through the grate and slid out.


IN THE CELL BELOW, bin Zari looked up almost in awe as Mohammed’s feet emerged from the vent. “Crazy monkey. Where did you think you were going? Trying to escape?”

Bin Zari reached out and tugged at Mohammed’s legs and pulled him down. Centimeter by centimeter, Mohammed’s belly and neck and head came out of the grate. His arms were over his head, the last part of him to emerge—

And so bin Zari had only an instant to react when Mohammed’s arms came free and Mohammed’s right arm swung down at his face with something that looked like a lightning bolt wrapped inside his brown fingers. Bin Zari grunted and twisted his head and let go of Mohammed—

But he was too late. The sharpened edge of the cot leg caught his left eye and tore through the lid and the cornea and into the meat of the eyeball. Bin Zari lifted his arms and tried to scream, but Mohammed shoved the leg deep into his brain, and before bin Zari knew what had happened the pain spread from his eye to everywhere and nowhere and he couldn’t hold himself and—

He collapsed beneath Mohammed, dead before he touched the ground.


BUT MOHAMMED AND THE DJINNS weren’t finished. Mohammed slashed at Jawaruddin’s face and belly until the big man’s guts covered the floor of the cell and his nose and ears lay stacked on what was left of his chest. Now eat, the djinns told him. Eat.

“No,” Mohammed said aloud.

Then we’ll never leave you alone.

But Mohammed had the answer for that. He wiped the cot leg as best he could against bin Zari’s blanket. When the blood was gone and he could see the edge of the blade he’d made, he tilted back his neck and tore at himself. The cutting wasn’t easy. The blade was dull now and he wouldn’t have imagined his poor, wretched body would fight its own destruction so desperately. But the djinns were quiet at last. So he cut and cut until his own warm blood covered his hands and his chest and washed him clean.

28

We took pictures for a while and sat outside and had a couple beers. Then we came back in and found the bodies. Callar did. She went downstairs, and we heard her screaming.”

Wells and Murphy had circled the neighborhood as Murphy explained how bin Zari was captured and tortured and finally broken. How he’d told them about the laptop. How the Deltas had found the computer in the Swat Valley. And what it had held.

Somehow they wound up sitting on the driveway where Wells had parked his WRX. The two agency guards watched from the van.

“So who killed them?” Wells said. “Jack Fisher?”

“No. Mohammed.”

“The boy?”

“He snuck into bin Zari’s cell through the overhead vent and killed bin Zari and then himself. They were alone for close to an hour. Plenty of time.”

“How? ”

“A blade from his cot leg. Must have made it at night when the Polish guards were sleeping.”

“You’re sure Fisher didn’t do it.”

“Why would I lie? Guy’s dead. And we could see what happened. Mohammed unscrewed the grate in his cell, got into the heating system, crawled across to bin Zari’s cell. Anyway, if you’d seen the bodies—” Murphy shook his head. “Bin Zari was torn up like wild dogs had gotten him. His body was in about eighty-five pieces. And Mohammed had bled out so badly. We practically needed waders to get to him. He was still holding the knife.”

“But it was convenient. Since you didn’t know what to do with them.”

“It was a nightmare. The most important prisoner since Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, more important, and this crazy kid offs him because we got sloppy. Lazy. We were there too long, all of us. We’ve been fighting this war too long.”

“Did you ever figure out why Mohammed did it?”

“No reason. Kid was nuts. Psychotic. Callar thought so all along.”

Psychosis, insanity in all its forms, was the thread, Wells thought. The madness had traveled from Mohammed Fariz to Rachel Callar to her husband like a kids’ game of telephone. If kids played telephone anymore.

Murphy reached into his pocket, withdrew a canister of Copenhagen. He extracted a wad of dip the size of a knuckle and stuffed it in his lower lip. “I’m not sorry we did what we did to Jawaruddin. We had to break him. But he shouldn’t have died that way, and Mohammed shouldn’t have either.”

Wells wasn’t interested in hearing Brant Murphy’s opinions on right and wrong. “You found the bodies. Then what?”

“Must be hard to be perfect, John.”

“Finish your story so I can tell you who I caught and get out of here and never have to see you again.”

Murphy spat a stream of dip into the driveway. “It was Terreri who realized what we had to do. Terreri and Fred Whitby.”

“Whitby knew that the tape you’d gotten from bin Zari—”

“Would make his career. Once-in-a-lifetime stuff. All along, he told us to do whatever we wanted to the detainees, long as the take was good and we didn’t leave marks. If they didn’t have scars or burns or missing fingers, nobody would care. That was the way Fred figured it. And he was right. But two dead bodies, especially in that condition, that would be hard to explain. Either we were negligent or just plain murderers.”

“You had to make them disappear.”

“We bought a couple of bank safes in Warsaw. We chopped up the bodies. Bin Zari was pretty well chopped up already. We put the pieces in the safes and borrowed a Polish military helicopter and flew out a hundred miles over the Baltic Sea on a cloudy night and dumped them. Boom. Boom. Problem solved.”

Wells didn’t trust himself to speak. Americans. Soldiers. Tossing human bodies away like garbage.

“Nobody on the squad protested,” Wells said.

“The only one who would have was Callar, and she wouldn’t speak to any of us by that point. But there was still one loose end to clear up.”

“The prisoner numbers.”

“I flew home. I’d met D’Angelo a couple times and I had a feeling about him, that he could be bought. At least rented. He was the kind of guy, always going somewhere fancy, getting somebody else to pick up the tab.”

“Takes one to know one.”

Murphy spat dip, another long stream.

“And he cleaned the database,” Wells said. “Jawaruddin bin Zari and Mohammed Fariz were never in U.S. custody. But he got too cute on the payoff.”

“We should never have agreed to the paper trail.”

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Wells said. “The video with bin Zari and Tafiq. Wouldn’t it be less valuable without bin Zari to authenticate it?”

“I get why you’d think that. But follow the chain. Don’t you think the ISI would do anything to keep that video secret?”

Now Wells saw. “We made a deal with Tafiq. Keep the video secret in return for access to the Paki nuke depots. Benazir Bhutto was murdered, and we know who’s behind it, and we haven’t told anyone.”

“I believe the term is realpolitik. We make the tape public, Pakistan goes crazy. Total anarchy. Sure, the ISI is dirty. They killed Bhutto, they fund terrorism. They’re despicable. But we can manage them. Those nukes are all the Pakis have. Without them, Pakistan’s got nothing on Bangladesh. They don’t have oil, and we’ve had about enough fighting in Muslim countries for a while. All we want is to keep an eye on those nukes. The rest of Pakistan can rot.”

“Justice for Bhutto.”

“Good one, John.” Murphy’s grin revealed the flecks of dip between his teeth. “And Tafiq, he knows, the video comes out, the Pakis string him up. He tries for exile, who’s going to take him? Not the French. Not the Arabs. Not even the Russians. He’ll be stuck someplace like Somalia. He wants to make sure the tape stays in a vault somewhere. What’s he going to do? Tell us he was misquoted, he wants to see bin Zari to talk it over? He knows it’s real.”

“And he assumes bin Zari’s still alive. Somewhere in custody.”

“Correct. Everybody wins.”

Wells was silent. The pieces fit together now. The mystery solved. Yet ash filled his mouth. There would be no justice here, not for Benazir Bhutto, not for Jawaruddin bin Zari or Mohammed Fariz. Maybe not even for the members of 673 who had died at Steve Callar’s hand.

“You know all this for sure, or are you guessing?”

“Only the principals know for sure. But I saw the video, and I know about the nukes. The connection’s there. The greatest good for the greatest number.”

Murphy sounded cheerful now. He’d received a great gift, the chance to confess his sins without facing punishment. Without even chanting a dozen Hail Marys. The chance to rub Wells’s face in the reality of power politics at the highest level.

“Now I’ve told you everything. Time for your side of the bargain. And please don’t say it’s some government hit squad. I wouldn’t know whether to piss myself or slap you across the face.”

“One last question. You said the principals know. Who would that include? ”

“I would think all the obvious names. The President, the Vice President. The head of NSC and the SecDef. Whitby for sure. Duto, probably.”

“Duto? ”

“I’m guessing, but this kind of deal, don’t you think they ask the DCI for his opinion?”

Duto’s fingerprints were everywhere now, Wells thought. Only one thread left to unravel. Had Duto known about the dead prisoners all along? Had he set Wells and Shafer on the trail knowing even before they started what they would find?

“Did you tell Duto what happened to bin Zari and Mohammed?” Wells said.

“Of course not. The squad and Whitby were the only ones who knew.”

“Could he have found out some other way?”

“You’ll have to ask him yourself.”

“I’ll do that.”

“So,” Murphy said. “A deal’s a deal.”

“It’s Steve Callar.”

“That’s impossible.”

“He already confessed.”

“But he was in Phoenix—”

Wells explained.


WHEN HE WAS DONE, Murphy nodded. “I see it,” he said. “Callar wore down. We got rough, and she couldn’t take it. We all knew she was depressed. Karp asked Terreri to send her home, but Terreri wouldn’t. He was stubborn, said we needed a doctor, and unless she requested a transfer he wouldn’t give it. And then at the end, finding the bodies sent her over. She told us we were all murderers, just like the Nazis, that she was going to report us. Terreri told her to go right ahead, betray us. She spent most of the last two months in her room. She kept telling us how she’d failed, how all of us had failed. Terreri would have sent her home by then, but the tour was practically done. Yeah, I see it.”

“But you couldn’t care less.”

“She knew what she was getting into. No one’s fault but her own that she freaked out. She comes home, offs herself, the coward’s way out. Then her whack-job husband decides he deserves revenge. On us. Like we’re responsible for her mental problems. I never laid a finger on her, never even raised my voice to her. You want me to feel sorry for her? I don’t think so.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“There’s another? Lemme guess. Poor little Rachel felt more deeply than the rest of us. Oh, the humanity.” Murphy stood. “The bad guys in this are Jawaruddin bin Zari and Steve Callar.” He walked down the driveway. “It’s time for me to go home.”

“Don’t you want to know where Callar is?”

Murphy gave him a mocking salute. “I leave him to you. I trust you’ll do the right thing. You always do.”


WELLS STAYED CALM on the surface roads, but when he reached the Beltway he pushed his foot to the floor and the WRX rocketed through the Virginia night. A childish escape, but it was all he had. For the first time in months, Springsteen filled his ears: “And there’s a darkness in this town that’s got us, too. ” “Independence Day.” The song’s hero was getting ready to move away, leave his life behind. Wells wondered if he had the strength to do the same.

Back in room 112, he found Callar and Shafer watching HBO, an early-season episode of The Sopranos. Callar’s cheek had bled through all the towels and most of two pillowcases, but he looked oddly comfortable as he grinned at Wells.

“Come outside with me,” Wells said to Shafer.

They sat in the WRX as Wells recounted what Murphy had told him.

“We make it official, he’ll be in custody the rest of his life,” Shafer said. “We’ll call him a material witness. An enemy combatant. He’ll never get a trial. We’ll never let that video come out.”

“Maybe.”

“Definitely.”

“Then that’s how it’s going to be. If the President makes that choice and signs those orders and Callar’s lawyers can’t get a judge to look at the case.”

“There’s another way.”

“No. Ellis, you’re the one who told me we needed to get the answers.”

“That was before I knew what they were. We go back in there and give him his one bullet. He’ll do it. I know he will. It’s all he’s been talking about.”

“No.”

“It’ll be easier. For him and for us.”

Wells gripped the steering wheel tight. “Easy is what got us here. We’re following the law this time.”

“And when the law fails?”

“I’d rather see the law fail than put my own judgment ahead of it. It ends here.”

“At the Budget Motor Inn.”

“That’s right.”

Wells stepped out of the car, walked into the room. Callar looked up from the television. “I want to see my wife.”

“Not tonight,” Wells said. “Tonight we’re taking you in.”

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