The Night Ranger

18

LANGLEY

For the second time this day, Shafer faced the dubious honor of a trip to the seventh floor. Getting Duto’s help would require face-to-face pleading. Especially after the hiccup earlier.

He found the director sitting at his desk, hands folded, lips furled. The expression was no doubt meant to look serious-yet-sensitive. It came off as constipated to Shafer. On the couch beneath the Katana sword, a fiftyish man with a drinker’s bulbous nose sketched in charcoal on an oversize pad. The man’s name eluded Shafer, but his face was familiar. It belonged to a New York artist known for tasteful portraits of the powerful. Evidently, Duto had decided that his tenure as director merited a higher-caliber artist than the usual D.C. portraitists. Normally, Shafer would have happily skewered this vanity. With Wells’s life at stake, he contented himself with a mild cough. The painter scurried off.

“Affairs of state,” Shafer said.

“You get three minutes. Wouldn’t even sit down if I were you.”

“Can we get a Reaper over southwestern Somalia in the next hour?”

Now Duto grinned, the leer that was his version of a real smile. Shafer wished the painter were here to see it, though no doubt it would send him through another fifth of scotch.

“Thought you were against unmanned aerial vehicles in no uncertain terms, Ellis. Thought we abused them, the poor terrorist on the other side has every right to an attorney, should he be unable to afford an attorney we’ll provide him with one, preferably a nice Jewish boy whose head said terrorist can cut off at his leisure, et cetera.”

Ouch. Of course Duto remembered Shafer’s complaints about drones. “A place for everything and everything in its place. Anyway, most likely we’d only use it for surveillance.”

“So the Hellfires are just for show?”

“More or less.” Shafer explained Wells’s plan to free the hostages. He glided over the fact that Wells was still trying to set the meeting with Little Wizard.

“So Wells gets there and then what? He talks this guy into letting them go?”

“Even if he’s wrong, he’s doing us a huge favor by finding them. NSA’s shooting blanks.”

“I know. I told them to tell me if they locked it down. Before they told you.”

Duto’s way of making sure Shafer knew where he and Wells stood. “So Wells finds ’em, worst case, you know where they are. You can chopper that SOG team in tomorrow. Avoid a war. That’s what you want, right?”

“Assuming Wizard doesn’t kill the hostages as soon as Wells gets there.”

“He’s not killing them. He wants to sell them. Why else go to the families as soon as he caught them?”

“Ellis. The three-minute rule is off. Take a breath. Sit.” Duto pointed at the couch.

Shafer sat.

“Just so I have this right. Wells is putting together a meet with some Somali warlord none of us have ever heard of who’s probably ready to unload a magazine in him just because. I know he likes to run his own shows, but this feels more like a death wish. And you want me to put up a drone for the only backup he’ll have.”

Shafer feared Duto might be right. But being honest with Duto rarely paid. As in never. “Death wish has nothing to do with it. Sometimes I think he’s half Jack Russell. Once he starts a mission, he can’t stop. Makes him crazy. And this time it’s for his son.”

“We don’t put up the drone, he’s still going in, isn’t he? Try to find them on his own somehow and bang his way out.”

“He’s never lacked for confidence.”

Duto turned away from Shafer, looked out the window. Shafer could almost hear him working through risk and benefit. Finding the hostages would be huge in his run for the Senate, especially since Wells would never try to take credit. But if they died after Duto put up the Reaper, would he be blamed? Did Wells have any chance of pulling off this stunt? Wells’s own life was a tertiary consideration. At most.

Thirty seconds passed in silence before Duto spun back to Shafer and flipped up his laptop. “I’ll call Djibouti.”

The CIA operated Reapers out of bases in Ethiopia and Djibouti, near the tip of the Horn of Africa, halfway between Yemen and Somalia. Drones were built for stealth, not speed. The Reaper topped out at about two hundred sixty knots, just under three hundred miles an hour. On the other hand, it didn’t need many preflight checks. The techs could put one in the air in four minutes.

Duto picked up his secure phone, consulted his laptop, punched in a number. “Hello. Hello? This is Vinny Duto.” He grinned at Shafer. “No, I’m serious. It’s okay. You’re not in trouble. Turn the music down and we’ll run the codes and I’ll tell you what I want.”

Five minutes later, Duto cradled the phone, gave Shafer a thumbs-up.

“So your boy’s luck is improving. They’ve got a Reaper over Mog right now, and they graciously enough are going to switch the link and let us run it from downstairs.” Pilots guided drones from a half-dozen bases worldwide, but Langley had its own link so that senior CIA officials could oversee the highest-priority, highest-risk missions in person.

“It’s good to be king,” Shafer said.

“You’d better get down there, tell the pilot what to look for. And Wells needs to understand that I’m looking over your shoulder on this. My first and only priority is saving those hostages. He’s not an employee, he’s not a contractor, as far as I’m concerned he’s a random armed civilian on site.”

“Not sure I understand what you’re saying, Vinny.” Though Shafer did. He’d understood before Duto even wasted his breath giving the speech.

“What I’m saying is we didn’t get him in there and it’s not our job to get him out—”

“Thanks for your help, Vinny.” Shafer offered the Director of Central Intelligence his twin middle fingers and walked out.