The Shadow Patrol

12

The hood over Wells’s head gave off a funky odor, sweat mixed with dried blood. If the devil sold perfume, it would smell like this. Taliban. The New Fragrance from Mullah Omar.

“Stand,” Najibullah said. Wells stood. Najibullah patted him down through his shalwar kameez and grabbed the passport and the money from his pockets and tied his wrists behind his back with rough plastic twine. Then Najibullah and the other man frog-marched Wells to the back of the pickup and shoved him in.

“Lie down.” Wells did. The truck rolled off. It had been headed northeast when it stopped. Now it made a U-turn, back toward Quetta. Wells turned so he was lying against the sides of the pickup bed. With his arms hidden against the walls, Wells flexed his hands and rubbed his wrists together to test the knot. It was loose and the twine was cheap. Wells thought he could cut it on a sharp rock. He stopped moving and closed his eyes and tried to eavesdrop, but the pickup was moving too fast.

The truck swung off the highway and slowed and rattled over an unpaved road. The air cooled. They were rising into the mountains. The road noise lessened, and Wells heard Najibullah. “Won’t Amadullah be surprised? We’ll make him pay if he wants this one.”

So these men were fighting the Thuwanis. Maybe they were Afghans who had moved into territory Amadullah didn’t want to share. Or local bandits defending a smuggling route. Or they blamed the Thuwanis for a drone strike. Whatever the reason for the feud, Wells was caught in the middle. With better information he might have avoided this mess, but the CIA had almost no firsthand knowledge of this part of Balochistan. Americans had barely operated here in decades. The good news was that these men weren’t after Wells. They had no idea who he was, or how dangerous he could be.

The truck turned onto a bumpy track that seemed to be little more than a streambed. After half an hour, it stopped. “Get up,” Najibullah said. Before Wells could move, Najibullah kicked at Wells, dragged him up, shoved him out of the back of the truck.

Wells stumbled on a rock, let himself fall. As he hit the earth, he rolled sideways so his arms were hidden. He worked the twine around his wrists over a rough rock, cutting at the strands, feeling them come loose.

“Stupid cow,” Najibullah said. He kicked Wells. Wells grunted underneath his hood and squirmed up. Najibullah grabbed him and dragged him forward. The ground was uneven, and after a few steps Wells stepped into a ditch and stumbled again.

“Take off his hood,” one of the men in front said. “He’ll slow us down.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“He’s no threat. He’s a stupid Saudi. Take off his hood.”

Najibullah grabbed the top of the hood and pulled it off, snapping Wells’s head back. He found himself on a stony hillside, the sky a bright morning blue, the sun rising to the east, casting long shadows. Wells checked the positions of his captors. The pickup’s driver and passenger walked a few yards ahead. They carried holstered pistols, not rifles. Najibullah stood behind Wells. The thin one, Najibullah’s partner, brought up the rear.

Wells turned to walk and Najibullah caught him with a rifle butt in the side, over his right kidney. This time Wells wasn’t faking when he went down. He rested on his knees, his breathing ragged, the pain swelling with every heartbeat. Enjoy yourself, my friend, because the end is nigh. But Wells pushed the thought from his mind. No anger. Angry men made mistakes, and he couldn’t afford another mistake this morning.

“There’s no need for this. I only want to help.” Let them think he was pathetic. A pathetic prisoner was no threat.

Najibullah smiled down at Wells. A generation of war had bred countless men like him, sadists pure and simple. “You Arabs come here and play at jihad and then you go back to your fancy houses. And Saudis are the worst. At least Iraqis can shoot. You’re only good for strapping bombs on. Blowing yourselves up. If Allah gives you the bravery to go through.”

“My brother—”

Najibullah cuffed Wells on the shoulder with his AK. “I warned you about calling me that. My cousin went to Riyadh to work. And you know what happened? The man who brought him over said he was stealing. So he locked him in a cage. For a month. Like he was a dog. No court, no sharia. Just locked him and beat him. He still doesn’t walk right. I’ll put you in a cage, see if you like it. ‘My brother.’ Call me ‘my brother’ again and Allah will have you.”

“Najibullah,” the man in front said. “Enough.”

“It’s true,” Najibullah said sullenly.

THEY WALKED. The hills were quiet, no evidence of humans or any living creatures. Not a squirrel or a sparrow. Wells wanted to make his move soon. He didn’t know how many men would be waiting at the camp. He kept his pace slow, widening the gap with the two jihadis ahead. “Faster,” Najibullah said, jabbing at him.

Ten minutes later, the hills around them narrowed into the beginnings of a canyon. The trail angled right, along a pile of scree, loose rocks and boulders that had slid down. Wells pretended to stumble, kicking rocks back toward Najibullah. The jihadi slipped, sending a minor avalanche down the hill.

“You oaf—”

Wells flexed his shoulders and biceps, putting at the knot, trying to split the ragged twine. The knot tensed and stretched and then it tore. His hands came free. He spun backward. Behind him, Najibullah was lifting his AK.

But before he could get the rifle into position, Wells stepped toward him. Wells wrapped his right arm around Najibullah’s back and pulled him close so the AK was trapped between them. Then Wells reached up with his right hand and grabbed Najibullah’s hair and pulled his head back. Before Najibullah could even open his mouth to scream, Wells raised his left forearm and forced it under Najibullah’s chin and drove his head up and back and up and back—

And Najibullah’s neck snapped as sharp and sudden as a branch breaking. The hate and the anger and everything else left Najibullah’s eyes. He fell away from Wells, dead, and his rifle came free. Wells grabbed it before it hit the ground and pulled it up and dropped the safety. All this in a single breath. As a linebacker in college, Wells had never been the biggest or the strongest player on the field, but he’d always had the quickest first step.

The tall jihadi behind Najibullah fumbled for his rifle. He looked at Wells, his eyes pleading for mercy. “La,” he said. No. Wells shot him, three in the chest, knowing that he would have to deal with the two in front. Knowing that he couldn’t risk leaving an armed man behind him, even one who wanted to surrender. The jihadi tore at his chest and grunted and pitched backward. Wells forgot him and turned and looked up the hill.

The two men ahead were grabbing for their pistols. They were maybe sixty feet up the trail, four car lengths, only a few scrubby trees and bushes between them and Wells. Wells went to a knee as the jihadi farthest away fired three rounds high and wild. The shots echoed off the hills, and behind Wells, a branch broke. Wells sighted and steadied the AK, putting the stock against his shoulder. Make haste, not hurry. He squeezed the trigger three times. He was a good shot, not great, but he didn’t need to be, not with a long gun at this range. Two neat holes tore into the jihadi’s gown and he fell backward and didn’t move.

The fourth jihadi fired twice. He had a clean shot, but he was nervous and rushed it, and sixty feet was much more difficult for a pistol than a rifle. The rounds clicked against a rock a few yards to Wells’s right. Wells put the AK on him. The jihadi turned and fled up the hill, shooting wildly across his body as he ran, all his discipline gone. Wells squeezed the trigger twice. The jihadi yelped and spun down, hit in the right shoulder. He pushed himself up and stumbled to his feet. Wells fired again, catching him in the gut this time. The man screamed and dropped his gun and pressed his hands over his stomach. He slipped to his knees. The echoes of the scream faded into a hopeless grunt, the sound of a hungry baby with no tears left to cry.

Wells ran up the hill. “Leave the gun,” he said. The jihadi didn’t answer. The front of his gown was black with blood. Wells put a hand over the man’s and pushed down. The blood kept coming, covering Wells’s palm, spurting through his fingers. The shot had torn open the jihadi’s intestines. Surgery might save his life, but they were a half day from even the most basic hospital. “You’ll be all right,” Wells said in Pashtun.

The man tilted his head, looked at Wells. I know you’re lying, and you do too, his eyes said. He said something and Wells leaned close to hear him. “Allah forgive me for screaming. But it hurts.”

Wells almost had to admire the insanity of these Pashtuns. This man would be dead within the hour. Yet his biggest fear was that Wells would think he was weak for showing pain. “Where can I find the Thuwanis?”

The man’s head drooped. You waste my last minutes with this? his eyes said. “They pray at a mosque east of town. Near the turnoff for the mines.” He licked his lips. “I’m thirsty.”

“Why do you hate them? Why do you fight with them?” Even as he asked, Wells realized the answer didn’t matter. Men here fought for a thousand reasons. Over slights to honor, real and imagined. To prove their strength and amuse themselves. Because they’d always fought and always would.

“I don’t hate them. They’re not the ones who killed me,” the man said. “Now finish it. Before I dishonor myself.”

Wells heard shouts, distant but closing. The firefight must have echoed a long way in these hills. “Your men are coming.”

“Finish it. Don’t pretend you can’t.”

“La ilaha illa Allah. Muhammad rasulu Allah,” Wells said. The words were the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, the first pillar of Islam. There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Pious Muslims hoped that the shahada would be the last words they heard.

“Allahu akbar,” the man said. “La ilaha illa Allah. Muhammad rasulu Allah.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and crossed his hands over his chest. Wells put three shots into him and he twitched and stilled. Then Wells reached into the front pocket of the man’s shalwar and plucked out the keys to the Toyota and a cell phone and a Pakistani identification card smeared with blood. He jogged back down the hill to Najibullah’s body. The corpse’s head was twisted at a grotesque angle, jaw loose, tongue flopped out. It seemed to be leering at Wells. “You started it,” Wells said. He grabbed Jalal Haq’s passport and money.

He knelt beside the fourth Talib, the thin one, the one who hadn’t wanted any part of this mess. The man lay facedown on the scree. A fist-size hole punctured his back, and bright red arterial blood sopped through his gown. AK rounds were supersonic and big. At close range, they tore through guys. The man’s rifle was trapped under his body. Wells flipped the corpse over and closed its eyes. Then he ran down the hill, his bloody gown flapping.

The pickup was parked in a clearing alongside two others. Wells put the AK on single-shot and blew out the tires of the other two. He switched to semiauto and fired a half dozen shots into their engine compartments. His pursuers would have a tough time following him.

He heard distant shouts and screams. They must have found the bodies. Wells started the pickup and wheeled it around and bounced down a narrow but serviceable track. The dead man’s phone showed no service. Which meant that the men behind him couldn’t call anyone to come up the hill and block him. Probably. Maybe.

The track wound east, into the rising sun. Wells raised a hand to shield his eyes and found it sticky with blood. In the bright white glare, he saw the fourth jihadi, the one who’d tried to surrender. He hadn’t wanted to kill these men. They’d left him no choice. He wondered whether his son would call what he had done self-defense.

Probably not.

The track had no intersections or gates. It dead-ended at the main highway, which was empty. Muslim Bagh lay to the left, a few miles down. Wells wanted more than anything to turn right, southwest toward Quetta. He could ditch the pickup there, catch a bus to Islamabad. He would be in the United States in forty-eight hours. He would wash his hands clean and lie in bed with Anne.

He turned left. To Muslim Bagh.

13

Wells ditched the Toyota behind an empty mosque on the edge of town. He washed the blood from his hands and face with a trickle of brown water from a rusty irrigation pipe. At the guesthouse, he changed into a clean gown and grabbed his things and rolled out.

Twenty miles northeast of Muslim Bagh, he pulled over and called Shafer at home. He didn’t like breaking cover so soon after starting the mission, but he needed to tell someone what he’d done, and Shafer was his only choice.

“Hello?” Shafer’s voice was scratchy. It was close to midnight in Virginia. “John?”

“You in the situation room?”

“Naturally.” After years of encouragement from his wife, Shafer had installed a giant flat-screen television and a couple leather couches in his basement. Shafer called it the situation room. He was threatening to add a hot tub. “Trouble already?”

Wells explained. At the end, Shafer sighed. “Four guys.”

“That’s right.”

“You should come with a warning label. You want my advice? Get out of there. Amadullah Thuwani isn’t the guy you went over there to catch. He’s a stepping-stone. Go. We’ll find another way to find the mole.”

“Just leave.”

“Have you thought maybe Amadullah won’t like an outsider messing with his business? He might hand you over to the families of the guys you killed. Trade you to settle their feud.”

“You think so.”

“Probably not. Most likely he’ll give you a big Thuwani high five for getting rid of them. But who knows? And you’re a stranger, not a guest. All that Pashtunwali junk doesn’t apply to you. And you know it’s more than a little elastic anyway.” According to the Pashtunwali code, hosts were responsible for the safety of their visitors. But some tribes took their obligations more seriously than others, as more than one outsider had found out too late.

“I have to see this through.”

“All right. Then when you see the Thuwanis, just play scared. Tell them you got caught and the guys who had you started fighting about what to do with you. Then they started shooting at each other and you took off.”

“Will they believe that?”

“No one else is alive to tell them different. They’re more likely to believe that version than that some random Saudi took care of four locals.” Shafer paused. “You sound like you’re having a hard time with this one, John.”

“I’m all right.”

“Try to remember. You don’t want to do it anymore, you don’t have to. You can always get into alligator wrestling, free-climbing, something safe like that.”

“Sure. Anyway. When I get back, we’re going to sit on that couch and watch football until we fall asleep.”

“Can I rest my head in your lap?”

For the second time in five minutes, Shafer had made Wells smile. “I thought you’d never ask.” He hung up, tossed the AK in a ditch, and turned around, back to Muslim Bagh. About five miles from town, Wells saw a rutted road, blocked by a chain and marked with a small sign that read “East All-Balochistan Mines Company.” He’d taken no notice of it the day before. Chromium and nickel mines studded Balochistan’s hills.

The mosque lay a hundred yards past the turnoff. It was new, with fresh white paint and a fifty-foot minaret. Wells parked beside a minibus. You’re Jalal Haq. You’ve just had the most terrifying experience of your life. But you lived, and now you want to find the men you came here to meet.

The mosque was high-ceilinged and carpeted with new wool rugs. It could hold a couple hundred men, but Wells saw only three, Pashtuns squatting against the back wall. They looked to be in their twenties, though Wells couldn’t be sure. Men aged quickly in these mountains. A silver teapot and a bowl of grapes sat on the carpet before them. Breakfast in Balochistan.

“Salaam aleikum.”

The man nearest Wells popped a half dozen grapes into his mouth and chewed noisily. “Aleikum salaam,” he mumbled. “Please sit.”

Wells sat. “I hardly speak Pashtun. Do any of you know Arabic?”

“Certainly I speak Arabic,” the grape-chewing man said proudly. Up close, he was maybe eighteen.

“I’m seeking a famous tribe that lives in these hills. The Thuwanis.”

“My friend. You’ve come to the right place,” the man said. He tapped his chest. “I am Sangar. My uncle, Amadullah, he leads our tribe. I am the youngest of all his nephews.”

Wells supposed he was due for a break. He gave Sangar his cover story, not mentioning what had happened in the mountains that morning. Sangar was friendly and a bit dim. When Wells finished, Sangar asked him to wait. He waddled out, returning a few minutes later with an older copy of himself. The second man introduced himself as Jaji, another of Amadullah’s nephews. Jaji waved Sangar away and sat across from Wells, his legs crossed, feet tucked away. “So Daood sent you?”

Wells hid his surprise. Daood was a Pakistani name, not Saudi. Was he an ISI agent? “I don’t know any Daood,” he said truthfully.

Jaji frowned. “Then tell me why you’ve come.” Again Wells explained. Jaji listened intently, leaning forward, hands on his knees. “And you chose our tribe,” Jaji said, when he was finished. “Who told you of us?”

“His name was Faisal, the friend of a friend. He said the Thuwanis were great warriors. He told me of a time in Afghanistan, years ago, when you made two Shia run through a field like the dogs they are. It was a special field, he said. The kind that grows explosions and reaps arms and legs.”

Jaji smiled. “I remember that day. They cried and begged, but it did them no good. But tell me something, Jalal. Why come now?”

“I wanted to help my brothers.”

“You could have joined the cause long ago.”

“A year ago, a cousin of mine, my age, really my best friend, was feeling poorly. A bad cough, sweating at night. He went to the doctor, expected that he’d be given some pills, be fine. Instead, he learned he had cancer of the lung. Two months later, we buried him. And then a few weeks later, another cousin, he died in his sleep, lying next to his wife. His heart. You’re too young to understand that these things happen. Even men who don’t die in war can die suddenly.”

“Inshallah. We live and we die as God sees.”

“Yes, we live and we die. But all these years, I’ve thought of joining the jihad and I’ve always found an excuse. I see now I’ve been trying to protect my little life. But it’s vanishing anyway, so why shouldn’t I come? When I meet Allah, I’d like him to know that I tried to fight for him, at least.”

Wells had offered the jihadi version of a midlife crisis. The story seemed to satisfy Jaji. “I’ll tell my uncle you’ve come,” he said.

“Before you do…” Wells explained what had happened that morning, finishing with a false version of his escape. “When we were on the trail, they argued with each other as to what to do with me. Then they shot at each other. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Truly Allah must want me to fulfill this mission, because he was protecting me.”

“And then what happened?”

“Three of the men died. I took a rifle and shot the fourth. Then I ran away.”

“These men, you know their names?”

“One was called Najibullah. Another was this man.” Wells passed over the identity card. Jaji looked it over, and a smile that Wells couldn’t read curled his lips. Wells wondered whether he’d made yet another mistake, whether he would have to kill the men in this mosque and race for Islamabad with half of Balochistan chasing him. Then Jaji grinned. He stood, reached a hand to Wells, pulled him up. Wrapped his arms around Wells and hugged him so close that Wells could smell his oddly perfumed hair.

“Oh, I think my uncle will be glad to see you.”

LATER, WELLS LEARNED that a cousin of Najibullah’s had raped a niece of Amadullah’s two years before. So the Thuwani men said anyway. Najibullah’s clan no doubt had its own version. The cousin denied the rape and refused to pay compensation. The two sides had feuded ever since. Four men had died so far around Muslim Bagh. Family values, Pashtun-style. The Thuwanis were so overjoyed to hear Wells had been responsible for the deaths of four of their enemies that he probably could have told them who he really was and still been treated as an honored guest.

Jaji took Wells to a big concrete house on the high plateau east of the main road. A feast awaited him there, raisins and grapes and pomegranates, rice and flatbreads flavored with garlic, heaping platters of lamb and chicken. Black ghosts in burqas brought out pitchers of sweet mango juice and tart lemonade and thick yogurt shakes. The tang of roasted meat filled the room, and Wells realized he was famished. He hadn’t eaten that day. His hunger unsettled him—kill and eat and eat and kill—but he followed his appetite and ate until he was sated. As the honored guest, he sat beside Amadullah, a big, boisterous man, the center of the room, with the deepest voice and the loudest laugh. He chewed the green tobacco that the Pashtuns favored, spitting into a cup that shone with the buttery sheen of pure gold. On his wrist he wore a thick gold Rolex. The killing of Najibullah had put him in high spirits. But Wells could imagine his mood darkening instantly if anyone challenged him. The alpha male in a tribe like this could never afford to show weakness.

Afterward, the chief dismissed his nephews and brothers and sat with Wells. “I hope you enjoyed our lunch,” he said. “Of course, we’re poor peasants who have nothing like the wealth you Saudis have at home—”

“There’s no need for modesty. I couldn’t have eaten another bite. I’d always heard of the famous hospitality of the Pashtuns. Now I’ve seen it myself. When you come to the kingdom for your Hajj, my family will host you. We’ll do our best to match your feast.”

“The men who took you this morning weren’t so polite. Allah smiled on you, to survive those thieves.”

“He saw the rightness of my mission.”

“So now do you want to be one of us? Live in these mountains?”

“I’m not a warrior like you. I can do more good raising money for you.” From his pocket, Wells offered the bundle of hundred-dollar bills Naiz had given him in Islamabad. “It’s only ten thousand dollars, but if I can show everyone at home that the money is going to jihad, I should have no problem getting more.”

Amadullah played cool. “I understand,” he said gravely. “Please come with me.” He led Wells through the compound to a windowless room. A laptop sat on a desk.

“MacBook Pro,” Amadullah said. “Top of the line.” He rubbed his fingers over the laptop’s shiny brushed aluminum case as if he were stroking a prized Persian. “Let me tell you, we always need money. For trucks, rifles, explosives, to give to the families of the martyrs.” And MacBooks, Wells thought.

Amadullah opened the laptop and clicked through a photo-and-video gallery of an IED attack, start to finish. A Chinese 120-millimeter mortar shell was turned into a bomb, taken over the border in the back of a minibus, and buried on a dirt road that crawled along the edge of a steep hillside. A blurry video of an explosion and a smoking Humvee followed.

“My nephews did this. Three years ago.” Amadullah clicked forward to an image of eight young men pointing AKs at the camera. Another photo showed the same men smiling at American soldiers on patrol. “You see. They have no idea. We cross the border as we like, we live in the hills or in the villages with our cousins. When the moment is right, we strike. When it’s to our advantage, not theirs.”

“Will you send me these photos? It’ll help me raise money.”

“Of course, Jalal. I’ll have my nephew give you one of those little things—”

“A flash drive—”

“Right. But anyway, you see how it is. We learn more about the Americans every year, while they know nothing about us.”

“Still, it must be hard to know how they think. Have you ever captured one?” Wells was fishing now, hoping to get Amadullah to talk about the drug trafficking ring, though he wasn’t sure Amadullah would.

“No, but—” Amadullah broke off. He flipped to another photo, lower resolution than the others. Taken from a cell phone camera, Wells thought. It showed three American soldiers standing in front of a high mud-brick wall. Unfortunately, the soldiers were too distant and the photo quality too low for Wells to see details of their faces. But he could tell that one looked Hispanic while the other two were white.

“You see these men?” Amadullah said. “We corrupt them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“We sell them drugs. Heroin.” Amadullah flipped forward to a photo of a bag of grayish powder being weighed.

“My brother. You’re a genius.” So Amadullah was presenting his drug trafficking as a plan to corrupt American soldiers in the service of jihad. “So — if you don’t mind my asking — how does it work?” Wells decided to take a blind shot. “Is Daood involved?”

Amadullah snapped the MacBook shut. The good cheer on his face disappeared. At this moment, he reminded Wells of Vinny Duto, only bigger and browner and much more dangerous. And Wells knew he had his answer. Daood, whoever he was, connected the Thuwanis with the mole in Kabul.

“Who told you about Daood?”

Again Wells found himself playing the frightened Saudi. “No one. I mean, Jaji. But he didn’t tell me anything. When I met him, he asked if Daood had sent me. So I thought—”

“Thought what?”

“Allah forgive me, when you showed me these pictures, I wondered if Jaji thought these drugs were the reason I’d come here. I’m so very stupid. I’m sorry.”

“No. Jaji should never have mentioned the name. Daood is no one for you to worry about.”

“I won’t then.”

As quickly as that, Amadullah’s anger passed. He smiled and went back to playing the gracious host. He took Wells to an outbuilding to see his arsenal, AKs and RPGs and even a rusted-out Stinger.

After the weapons tour, Amadullah didn’t seem to know what to do with Wells. He obviously wanted to prove his jihadi credentials to keep the money flowing. But Wells could see that the Thuwanis weren’t exactly on the front lines this fighting season. Wells suspected that Amadullah was making so much money from the drug ring that he didn’t want to take chances.

They had another feast that night. Amadullah’s men regaled Wells with stories of attacks on American and Afghan units. Wells felt a little like a visiting dignitary, a member of Congress who had come to a forward base to be told how well the war was going. He promised that on his next trip to Muslim Bagh, he would go on a mission.

“Yes, come with us. Watch us kill kaffirs,” Jaji said. “Slit their throats and make them wish they’d never come to our country.”

“God willing,” Wells said. He wondered whether he could steal the laptop and decided not to take the risk. He had gotten Daood’s name and the photos. He would have to hope that would be enough.

The next morning he left. He carried a flash drive with photos and video of the attack, a Gmail address for Amadullah, and a mobile number for Jaji.

“You don’t have a phone, Amadullah?”

Amadullah circled a finger over his head as if to say, They’re listening. “To reach me, call Jaji. Or just come back to the mosque.”

“Very good.”

They said good-bye and hugged. Then Wells walked out with Jaji, headed for the mosque and his 4Runner. The last twenty-four hours had been among the strangest of his life. He had killed four men — and then been treated as an honored guest. He couldn’t help feeling that he’d gotten off easy.

SEVEN HOURS LATER, at Dera Ismail Khan, he stopped at a gas station and called Shafer. “Daood,” Shafer said, when Wells finished. “First name is all you got. How about an age? Physical description? Nationality?”

“None of the above.”

“Because that’s a little bit vague.”

“Why don’t you come out here and try doing your own detective work?”

“You’re sure he was connected to those soldiers, the dealing?”

“I can tell you Amadullah was seriously unhappy that I made the link.”

“Okay. I’ll start looking. So what’s next? Are you heading back to the Ariana? See if anyone will admit knowing Amadullah or Daood?”

Wells had considered that idea. But going back to Kabul was unappealing. The mole would have his defenses ready, and Wells didn’t have the leverage to break them. The Ariana felt like a trap.

“I think I’m better off staying away. So I’m going to Kandahar, shake some hands, maybe see if I hear anything about drug smuggling.”

“Long shot.”

“I know, but that was half my cover for coming over here anyway. I might as well stick to it. Until you find Daood. Get that big brain in gear, Ellis.”

14

Daood. Dawood. Daud. Daoud.

Bad enough that Ellis Shafer couldn’t find the courier, didn’t have a hint of who he was. Almost a week after talking to Wells, Shafer couldn’t even be sure how to spell the guy’s first name.

Like many Muslim names, such as Ibrahim and Yusuf, Daood was a Quranic version of a Jewish Biblical name, in this case David. Muslims chose names from a relatively small pool. Their favorites included Abdul, Ali, Hussein, Khalid, and the always popular Muhammad, a name given to tens of millions of Muslims worldwide — and a few unlucky Christians, too. Daood and its variants weren’t quite as popular. Still, Shafer had hundreds of thousands of potential targets.

He wouldn’t be going door-to-door.

AFTER HIS TALK with Wells, Shafer’s first call went to Fort Meade. He asked the NSA to track the e-mail address and phone number that Wells had gotten, and search its e-mail and voice databases for references to men named Daood. But his hope for a dose of technological magic didn’t pan out.

The agency started with an e-mail to Amadullah’s Gmail address. The e-mail looked like a standard account-maintenance message, but opening it would infect the host computer with a virus that would broadcast the IP address of the server connecting the computer to the Internet. The agency could use the virtual address to pin down the computer’s physical location. But the plan was a bust. As far as the NSA could figure, Amadullah never used the Gmail account. As for the cell number, the NSA was already tracing it as part of its surveillance of the Thuwanis.

The broader e-mail and phone searches Shafer had requested also came up dry. The name Daood appeared hundreds of times in the agency’s databases. But after two days of combing through suspect messages, Shafer found nothing that appeared remotely related to trafficking or the Thuwanis. He wasn’t surprised. The CIA officer running this plan would know just how good the United States had become at tracking Internet traffic.

The voice records had their own problems. The NSA’s voice database was spottier than its e-mail counterpart. Nearly all e-mails worldwide passed through a handful of electronic junctions that the United States tapped. But phone companies tried to keep calls inside their own systems to avoid paying interchange fees to other phone companies. A phone call from Islamabad to Peshawar might never leave Pakistan, making it harder to trace. And even if the NSA did have the calls in its databases, finding them in a blind search would be extraordinarily difficult. The agency couldn’t possibly hire enough Arabic and Pashtun speakers to go through all the calls in its databases. It had spent hundreds of millions of dollars on voice recognition programs that listened for obvious words like bomb and martyrdom—as well as more subtle ones like container or antibiotic. The NSA could also query the software to track specific words. Calls pegged as suspicious were passed to human analysts.

But the software was spotty. Computers had a hugely difficult time parsing and recognizing human speech, as anyone who’d ever called an airline 800 number knew. And the agency particularly disliked blind searches, which used huge amounts of computing power and generally came up dry. So Dr. Teresa Carter, who oversaw the programs, told Shafer.

“You’re telling me it’s impossible,” Shafer said.

“We can try. But I need to know, will finding this man Daood stop an imminent threat to American civilians or military personnel?”

Shafer hesitated. “I can’t guarantee that.”

“In that case, given the other projects we have queued up, we can’t treat this request as a top priority.”

“A medium priority?”

“It’ll be on the list.” Her voice was cool. “Mr. Shafer, we’re currently tasked on other searches that have a direct probability of saving lives. You may not believe me, but I want to help. If there’s an imminent threat, call me and I’ll push.”

SHAFER HATED being reminded how much the CIA relied on the wizards across the Potomac. The Luddite in him was almost happy to find out that technology wasn’t totally infallible. But he needed a new way to shrink the target pool. He decided to flip the search, look from the inside out instead of the outside in. Specifically, he would assume that Daood was already connected with the agency, that whoever was running the trafficking hadn’t recruited him cold.

If Daood had ever worked for the agency, his real name would be kept in a database at Langley, Shafer knew. Even before they were officially recruited, agents received code names — Sparrow, Gemstone, Medallion. Case reports and files always referred to them by those names. Under normal circumstances, only a handful of people would know an agent’s real name. But all agents also had their names and biographical information sent to Langley and saved. The reason was simple: the CIA mistrusted everyone, even the agents it recruited. Most especially the agents it recruited. If they were suspected of being doubles controlled by their home governments, counterintelligence officers and desk officers at Langley might need to know who they really were. So each regional desk kept a database of biographical information.

But keeping the names at Langley came with its own risks. In 1985, a disgruntled counterintelligence officer named Aldrich Ames had given the real names of the CIA agents in the Soviet Union to the KGB. Several were executed. After the Ames scandal, the agency tightened access to the databases. They were no longer stored at each regional desk. Instead, the Directorate of Security stored them on encrypted hard drives in a vault that could be opened only upon a written finding signed by an assistant deputy director. Once a database was pulled, two 128-digit key codes were required to unlock it.

Given the importance of the databases, Shafer understood the precautions. But they meant that he couldn’t search the databases quietly. Word of the search for Daood would likely leak to Kabul. Shafer didn’t know what the mole would do if he heard.

He did have one other option: the “Kingdom List.” Even inside the CIA, the existence of the Kingdom List remained a closely held secret. It contained the name and basic biographical information of everyone that the agency had ever recruited, active or retired, dead or alive.

The list was stored in a cavern in West Virginia, part of the underground complex where the president would be evacuated if Washington faced a nuclear attack. A written finding from the president, vice president, or national security advisor was required to see the Kingdom List. It could be decoded only in the presence of the agency’s director or most senior deputy director. Theoretically, it provided the ultimate backup in case of a catastrophic nuclear attack on the Langley campus.

In reality, a nuclear attack big enough to destroy Langley would probably destroy all of Washington. In reality, the list served as the last defense against a top-level mole. For example, if the director suspected that an agent in Russia could prove that his deputy was a spy for the FSB, the list would give him a way to contact the agent directly without anyone else inside the CIA knowing.

Shafer wondered whether Duto would give him access to the list. Probably not, especially since they still had no hard proof that the mole existed. But it was worth asking. He called the seventh floor, Duto’s direct line.

“Director’s office.” The voice wasn’t Duto’s.

“Where’s Vinny?”

“This is Joseph Geisler. May I help you?”

“It’s Ellis. I need to talk to Vinny.”

“Ellis who?”

“Ellis Shafer, you nimwit.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know that name.”

Shafer closed his eyes and counted to ten. His doctor had warned him about stress. He was closer to seventy than sixty now, and learning the aging process was just growing up in reverse. Every time he went to the doctor, another pleasure was taken from him. And those were the good trips, the ones where he wasn’t poked and prodded and snipped.

“Sir?”

“Joseph. How old are you?”

“Twenty-nine.”

Shafer had worked for the agency longer than this guy had been alive. He wished he could be happy about that fact. “And how long have you worked for Vinny?”

“I’ve had the honor to be a member of Director Duto’s personal team for three months.”

“Please tell someone who is not in diapers that Ellis Shafer is coming up to see Vinny, and it’s urgent.”

“Sir, the director is in meetings all morning—”

“ELLIS,” DUTO SAID when Shafer walked into his office. Duto’s eyes looked up, but his thumbs didn’t. He had his legs on his desk and was texting away furiously. “You hurt Joe’s feelings, you know.”

“Every month you have more of these guys. What’s next? Food taster?”

Duto didn’t rise to the bait. He rarely did these days. “I’m glad you came by. I was wondering about John. Kabul said he’s disappeared. Left the station one morning and went to Moscow. Funny thing is that no one in Moscow seemed to get the message.”

“Went to Pak to chase a lead. Now he’s back in Afghanistan, at KAF.”

“He’s in Kandahar.”

“Correct.”

“What’s he doing there?”

“Talking to soldiers, shaking hands.” Avoiding that snake pit in Kabul.

“What about his cover?”

“Junk. No one at the Ariana believed it. They told him they knew he was after a mole.”

Finally, Duto stopped texting. “Did they now?”

“They did.”

“And did he get what he was looking for in Pakistan?”

“Progress as promised, Vinny.” Shafer recounted Wells’s trip to Muslim Bagh, leaving out only the way Wells had killed the four men. Duto wouldn’t mind, but Shafer figured that Wells should decide whether to tell that part of the story.

“So now we’re trying to find Daood. We figure he’ll lead us to the mole. Though the theory does have one weak link.”

“What’s that?”

“Aside from that story you initially gave us from the DEA before John went over, we still have no evidence connecting the trafficking with the mole. John and I both think it’s likely. These soldiers making the pickups can’t have found Amadullah on their own. Somebody at a high level has got to be directing all this, somebody who can operate on both sides of the border. But that somebody isn’t necessarily one of ours. We think it is, but thinking it isn’t the same as proving it.”

“Amadullah Thuwani,” Duto said. “Would you believe that two nights ago an SF team raided a farm in Kandahar where a couple Thuwanis were supposed to be living? Guys in their twenties, Amadullah’s nephews. We suspected that one was connected to a bombing on Highway 1 that cooked an MRAP and everybody inside. We helped develop the intel, so JSOC kept Kandahar station informed.” The letters stood for the Joint Special Operations Command, the group that oversaw Delta Force, the Green Berets, and other elite units.

“And what happened?”

“Special ops had satellite recon for weeks, had their patterns down. Everything. Locked down. And guess what? When we hit, we didn’t find one military-age man on the compound. Not one. Kids and old men only. Which is the reason I know about this. JSOC intel’s chief and our guys in Kandahar can’t figure out how it leaked.”

“Could be a coincidence.”

“You think so?”

“No.” Thuwani’s men wouldn’t have left without good reason, and operational security on night raids was extremely tight. Someone had tipped them. The mole was real.

“Me neither. Now tell me about Daood. Why you’re so sure he’s one of ours.”

“Our mole is too smart to take a chance on a courier he doesn’t know. He wants somebody he can leverage. Somebody he can own. But at the same time, he wants somebody who doesn’t have an active case officer, because in that case the guy might go running to his CO.”

“What if the mole is actually Daood’s CO?”

“Our guy’s too smart to use anyone who could be connected with him that easily. No, Daood is an occasional.” CIA jargon for a low-grade informant who provided tips but didn’t merit full-time management by a case officer. Since they weren’t officially on the CIA payroll, the agency paid limited attention to them. “I’m afraid Kabul will hear if I start fishing for him. Now that we’re certain the mole’s real, is there any chance I can use the Kingdom List?”

“That’s national emergencies only, and this doesn’t qualify.”

“Meaning you don’t want the White House to know you may have a mole.”

“I’m not debating this.”

“Vinny—”

“Forget it, Ellis.”

Shafer gave up. Duto’s tone brooked no argument.

“Then what do you suggest?”

“What about the DEA?”

“What about them?”

“Maybe he’s in their system, too. Maybe he’s one of these guys who bounces around, us and the feds and the DEA. Soon as we figure out he’s giving us a big bag of nothing, he gets a new daddy.”

Duto’s words gave Shafer an idea. The DEA would be in no hurry to do the agency any favors. But occasionals weren’t protected like real agents. Sometimes their names spread wide. Especially if they were problem children, the type who did business with more than one agency. Shafer stood to leave. “Thanks for all the help, Vinny.”

“Should I ask what you’re doing?”

“What I should have done all along.”

“What’s that?”

I’m giving up on a silicon-flavored miracle. I’m doing my job the old-fashioned way, the right way. I’m calling somebody who can answer my questions. “I’m going home, breaking out the Dewar’s, raising a glass to your health.”

“In that case, make it a double.”

BACK IN HIS OFFICE, Shafer unlocked his safe and pulled out his Rolodex, an antique like him. He had thousands of case officers and station chiefs and desk heads in here, decades of contacts scratched in pen and pencil. Maybe two in five were still active. The rest had retired or quit to work for contractors. Or died. Just in the As, Shafer recognized Henry “Argyle” Aniston, an old-school agency type who’d worn the ugliest sweaters known to man and dropped from a heart attack three months before he was scheduled to retire, and James Appleston, whose prostate cancer had spread to his brain. Shafer thought he’d take the heart attack.

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

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

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

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

“Ellis. Ellis Shafer.”

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

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

“You are correct.”

“And urgent?”

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

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

“I can find it.”

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

“Eatin’ good in the neighborhood.”

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

“No. Sorry.”

“See you at eight then.”

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

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

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

“You, too.”

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

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

“When?”

“Three months ago.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

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

“You want to tell me about it?”

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

“Sure.”

“Because who cares?”

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

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

“No.”

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

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

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

“Tell me about it.”

So Ryker did.

15

KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, AFGHANISTAN

The Drone Home, aka the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Center, occupied a couple acres on the south side of the Kandahar runway. A high-security fence backed with green netting hid hangars and concrete workshops from prying eyes. Inside, Air Force mechanics and CIA engineers and General Dynamics contractors worked on the drones so crucial to the Afghan war. The Predators and Reapers were well-known. Less so the agency’s newest baby, the “Beast of Kandahar.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s going on in there?”

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

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

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

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

“That’s a lie.”

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

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

“Aren’t you fancy?”

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

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

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

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

“Didn’t want to bother you.”

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

“Weston says no.”

“You believe him.”

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

“I’m glad he checked.”

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

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

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

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

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

“I can see that.”

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

“Not very sporting of them.”

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

“Can you?”

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

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

“You can?”

“I think so.”

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

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

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

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

“No doubt.”

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

“All right. I’ll tell them.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then maybe we will.”

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

“Fortress Kandahar,” Francesca said.

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

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

“Wells is sniffing around our thing.”

“How do you know?”

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

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

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

“I’m honored. What about the cutout?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay.”

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

“Be safe, Danny.”

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

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

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

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

16

After meeting Ryker, Shafer did what he did best. He sped back to Langley and spent the night mining databases as ferociously as a prospector who’d glimpsed a vein of pure gold. By noon, he’d tracked down addresses and arrests and immigration records for Miller. Curiously, Miller’s American passport showed only three visits to Pakistan in five years. Shafer figured Miller had another passport, probably Pakistani, probably in his birth name. He’d use that for trips to Pakistan to save himself trouble at American immigration.

Since the NSA had everything, it probably had Miller’s Pakistani passport records in a database somewhere. But no one had bothered matching up the files. Miller wasn’t an agent and he wasn’t a terrorist. He was a sleazebag occasional. The CIA had plenty of those. Ergo, no one paid much attention to him or his travels. Until now.

Flight records showed that Miller had left Chicago for Dubai about a month before. He was scheduled to return to O’Hare two weeks later, with a one-day stopover at Heathrow. His usual pattern. Miller often stayed in London on his way home from Dubai. Maybe he had an English girlfriend.

This time, his plans changed. Miller never got on the London — Chicago flight. He turned around, went back to Dubai and then Quetta. He was so eager to reach Pakistan that he used his American passport the whole way instead of taking the time to book flights under different names. Shafer didn’t see any clues to explain Miller’s haste. His Chicago cell phone didn’t have the answer. Miller seemed to use it exclusively to order takeout and call home. No doubt Miller had other cell phones in Dubai and Pakistan. And the mole would have insisted on burner phones and single-use e-mail accounts. Short of using human couriers, constantly shifting numbers and e-mail addresses was the best way to stay ahead of the NSA. Though even couriers had risks, as Osama bin Laden had learned.

After arriving in Quetta, Miller disappeared. He wasn’t using his credit cards or phone. Maybe Amadullah was holding him captive in Muslim Bagh. Maybe he’d gone over the border into Afghanistan. Maybe he’d gone back to Dubai on still another passport. Shafer wasn’t too worried about him. The guy’s a cockroach, Ryker had said. A survivor. He’ll still be here when you and I are sucking down dust.

Shafer called Wells to fill him in, tell him to head for Dubai.

“You sure this is the guy?”

“My source thinks so. And I’ve confirmed the arrests, the name change, everything.”

“I’m sick of Kandahar anyway.”

“You get anything yet?”

“It’s tough to sit in the mess, start asking guys if they know about big-time heroin dealing. Kind of a conversation stopper.”

“So that’s a no.”

“That’s a no.”

“Miller can take us straight to the mole if we find him.”

“So you want me to go to Dubai. I’ve got the perfect cover.”

“You’re about to make a joke, aren’t you, John? I can tell because you get all out of breath, like it’s your first time on a bike with no training wheels.”

“Jehovah’s Witness.”

“That’s funny.”

“I’ll go knock on his door. See if anybody’s home.”

“I want more than that.” Shafer explained.

“B-and-Es aren’t my specialty.”

“The DST boys have amazing gear now. Idiot-proof.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“Book a room tomorrow night at the Grosvenor House under the Saudi passport. I’ll FedEx you what you need.”

“And what about Chicago? Who’s going to handle that?”

“Me.”

“You.”

“I can talk to a drug dealer’s wife without you backing me up.”

“It’s foolish, Ellis.”

“Call me from Dubai.”

It was nearly eight p.m. when Shafer shipped Wells the equipment he’d promised. He drove home, booked the night’s last flight to O’Hare. He packed a garment bag with his best blue suit. Then went to the safe in his basement to grab the FBI identification that he wasn’t supposed to have and the 9-millimeter he never used. He had just opened the safe when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He turned—

And saw his wife. Who wasn’t smiling. “What are you doing?”

“I thought tonight was your book club.”

“Tomorrow.” She was standing at the foot of the stairs, holding Costco bags she hadn’t even put down. He went to her and kissed her and took the groceries.

“What are you doing?” she said again.

“I have to go to Chicago. Be back tomorrow.”

Normally that would have been enough for her, but this time she folded her arms and looked at the safe. “Why do you need that?”

“I’m not even gonna load it.”

“You’re carrying a gun with no bullets.”

“It’s a prop.”

“Ellis, you’re too old for this. You think it’s cute, these little adventures—”

“I’ll be fine. I have to go. Flight leaves in an hour.”

“You’re behaving like a child, Ellis.”

He couldn’t even meet her eyes. “Forget it, will you.”

“At least load it. If you’re gonna carry it, load it.”

THE NEXT MORNING Shafer parked his rental car, a dark blue Chevy Malibu, at a hydrant outside a tidy brick house on the Near North Side, practically in the shadow of the John Hancock Tower. David Miller had done well for himself. Real estate records showed he’d paid eight hundred and forty-five thousand dollars for the place five years before, an all-cash deal. Shafer slipped an FBI placard on the dash, smoothed out his suit, tucked his pistol in his shoulder holster.

A television played faintly upstairs. Shafer knocked heavily on the front door, peeking through a frosted window. The door opened to reveal a heavy black man wearing a White Sox T-shirt and jeans. Asha Miller was keeping busy.

The guy folded his arms across his gut, which was nearly as big as Shafer’s body. “Help you?” His voice was high, almost Tyson-esque. He didn’t look like he wanted to be particularly helpful.

“I’m with the FBI.” Shafer flashed his badge. “I’d like to talk to Mrs. Miller.”

“Who is it?” a woman yelled from upstairs, over the Today show. “Tell him we don’t want any.”

“Man claiming to be an FBI agent. By himself, though.” To Shafer: “You boys usually travel in pairs. Like roaches.”

“I’m here about Daood Maktani,” Shafer shouted up the stairs.

“Nobody here by that name,” the man said.

The television muted. The man opened the door and Shafer glimpsed Asha Miller walking down the stairs, a pretty black woman, but tending toward fat. Oprah had ruined a whole generation, Shafer thought.

“Shoo, Bernard,” she said.

“Look at him. He look like an FBI agent to you?”

“He knows that name, he is FBI. Federal something anyway. Now shoo.”

Bernard trudged down the hall. “I’ll make coffee,” he said over his shoulder. Keeping his dignity. Asha took his place at the door and looked at Shafer. She had merry eyes. Or maybe she was just amused by the sight of him in his blue suit.

“What’s your name, Mr. FBI?”

“Ellis Shafer. May I come in?”

“You may not. Unless you have a warrant. First thing Daood taught me.”

“Daood went to Dubai a month ago.”

She didn’t ask how he knew.

“He hasn’t come back.”

“That a question?”

“When was the last time you heard from him?”

She sighed. “Somebody arrest him again?”

“I don’t know. But I think he’s in trouble. And you didn’t answer me.”

“He’s always in trouble, always gets out. The last I heard from him was in London.”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Sounds about right. He said something had happened and he had to go back to Dubai.”

“Do you know how he made his money?”

“This is how it went. We were together when he got arrested the first time, and I stuck by him, and he liked that. Didn’t expect it, I think. Couple years later, we got married. Maybe ’cause I told him I was leaving him if he didn’t. Maybe so he could be sure I couldn’t testify against him. Maybe he just liked the idea of getting married. It was an excuse for a party and he loves parties. But I was never under any illusions that I was his only woman. That wasn’t his style.”

“So you knew?”

“Please. Man never had a job in his life, and look at this house. But I figured he was playing both sides. He was too lucky for too long in terms of not getting arrested. Nobody’s that lucky. Plus every so often, I’d see cars at that same hydrant you parked at. American cars with tinted windows and two men in suits inside. Never came to the house, never knocked on the door, just sat and watched.”

“Letting you know they knew.”

“Something like that. And also that’s just how David is. Playing both sides, he thinks that’s style.”

“I understand.”

She smiled. “Bet you grew up just that way. So, yes, I knew that he wasn’t any Boy Scout, but I never asked any details.”

“Anything change the last year or so?”

She shifted her weight and some of her spirit creaked out. “You out to get him?”

“No. Truth? I think he got into something deep and I might be able to help.”

She looked him over, weighing his sincerity. Finally, she nodded. “I think you’re telling at least half the truth. But it don’t matter, because I don’t know anything. Just recently he seemed more stressed out. Drinking more, too. But I don’t know why.”

“He ever mention anyone in particular from the FBI, the DEA, the CIA? Anyone leaning on him?”

She shook her head.

“Could he have left anything important on a computer here?”

“Not here. He was careful about that.”

“You have a phone number for him? E-mail?”

She gave him both. Shafer was happy to hear that the cell wasn’t the one he’d already found. But he sensed she was keeping something back. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“When I said I hadn’t heard from him since London. That’s true, I mean actually hearing his voice. But about a week ago, he e-mailed. Said he was in Pakistan and might be there awhile, and he didn’t know when he’d be back and he wanted to tell me he loved me. Wasn’t like him to write that. Like he wanted me to understand that he was in deep.”

“Thank you. You get anything from him, please let me know.” Shafer handed her his card.

“Long as you promise to do the same.” She lowered her voice. “I know what you’re thinking about Bernard, but if you look close, you’ll see he’s just a big old queen who keeps me company when David’s not here. My husband’s not a one-woman man, but I’m stuck with him and him alone.”

Everybody overshares these days, Shafer thought. He blamed Oprah for that, too. “Call me anytime, day or night,” he said, and backed away from the door.

17

Wells was happy to leave Kandahar Air Field. Even in war zones, the military needed big, well-defended bases to house its planes, coms networks, all the stuff that made the guys on the front lines so effective. But the guys at KAF sometimes seemed to forget that their job was supporting the soldiers outside the wire, not the other way around. Massive resources went into making sure that the airfield’s forty thousand inhabitants had plenty of creature comforts. Meanwhile, some infantry units lacked basics like showers.

KAF’s size was part of the problem. The people who worked there could be forgiven for forgetting that Afghanistan even existed. Almost no Afghans lived or worked on the base. The Taliban fired rockets blindly from the ugly brown mountain that loomed over the base to the north, but they rarely did much damage. Like bases back home, KAF even had a full complement of military police officers who wrote parking tickets and enforced other petty regulations, like making soldiers wear reflective belts after dark.

The Air Force didn’t run flights from Kandahar to Dubai, so Wells booked a ticket on Gryphon Air, a Pentagon-approved charter service. Most of Gryphon’s passengers worked for DynCorp, a contracting company that filled thousands of jobs at Kandahar.

The contractors at Kandahar split into two broad groups. The English-speaking ones were mostly ex-military, soldiers and Marines who’d cultivated special skills like training bomb-sniffing dogs. When their contracts expired, they jumped to private contracting companies that paid a hundred and fifty thousand or more a year.

“Same job, but three times the money and a tenth the risk,” one said to Wells over lunch at the giant Kandahar mess hall called Luxembourg. “PMCs”—private military contractors—“never go outside the wire. No such thing as desertion or dereliction of duty. No brig. Worst they can do is fire you and tell you they won’t pay. Plus I got no sergeants telling me what to wear or how to salute or what time to be in bed. Course, back when I was wearing the uniform, I bitched about the contractors, said they all were useless as tits on a bull.”

“You feel differently now.”

“I do and I don’t. Not saying I work like a Joe. But how was I gonna turn this deal down? Hundred and sixty K. My wife doesn’t work and we got three kids. I put in my time, spent five years getting shot at. Fair’s fair. I don’t make the rules.”

Wells had had several similar conversations. He figured that the contractors were honest guys who felt guilty about their windfall. So they overexplained, justified themselves. Wells wanted to tell them not to worry, that Alex Rodriguez got paid as much to play one baseball game as they did in a year. But he thought that kind of reassurance would just piss them off, so he kept his mouth shut.

The second set of contractors didn’t talk to Wells. They hardly spoke English. They were the Filipinos and Indians who cooked and scrubbed and took out the trash, the scut work that the United States military no longer did for itself. Wells supposed that they freed up American soldiers to fight. They weren’t making a hundred and fifty thousand a year, either, so they might even have been cost-effective.

Still he found their presence disconcerting. They made Kandahar feel like an old-school colonial occupation. Brown men taking care of white men who were fighting other brown men.

THE GRYPHON JET FLEW southwest over the empty desert that dominated southern Kandahar province and then swung over Pakistan and the Persian Gulf. It landed in late afternoon at Dubai’s massive airport. Wells grabbed his bag and joined the parade of unshaven contractors thirsting for Dubai’s bars.

But along the way to the immigration hall he disappeared into a men’s room. When he walked out, he was wearing a dishdasha and thobe. Once again he was Jalal Haq, Saudi adventurer. Wells had considered entering Dubai on his real passport, setting a lure to see who at the agency was tracking his moves. He and Shafer decided that the plan had too much risk. They couldn’t be certain of finding whoever was tracing him. Better for Wells to use the invisible Saudi passport.

Saudis were favored travelers in Dubai. The immigration agent barely bothered to look at Wells before waving him through. Two minutes later, he stood in the humble-jumble at the front of the airport and listened to deals being made in English and Arabic and a dozen other languages. Pakistani taxi drivers and Indian hotel hawkers competed for business from Russian tourists in velour sweat suits. Dubai was a long way from anywhere, a six-hour flight from Europe and Russia, twelve from the United States. Despite the jet lag, everyone seemed excited.

By rights, Wells should have disliked Dubai. As much as anywhere in the world, the city represented the triumph of empty consumer culture. Yet he found the city strangely compelling. It had no natural advantages. Its weather was miserable most of the year. It lay thousands of miles from the major cities of Europe and Asia. It didn’t have a good natural harbor. Unlike the rest of the region, it didn’t even have oil. Yet since the 1980s, Dubai had grown as fast as anywhere on earth, sprouting thousand-foot-high sand castles built with cheap labor and cheaper money.

Americans didn’t have a good word for cities like Dubai, or the buccaneers who made and lost fortunes in them. The English did: flash. Flash was the shiny toy that broke the day after its warranty expired. Flash was the drunk buying rounds for everyone with a credit card a buck short of its limit. Flash was the late-night investment guru promising to give up the stock market’s secrets at a $799 weekend seminar. Act now and save $100.

At their worst, flash men carved misery into the lives around them. They lived high and skipped town, leaving behind thousand-dollar suits and unpaid child support. But mostly they meant no harm. Mostly they were lazy dreamers who couldn’t multiply or divide any better than their customers. Every so often, almost by accident, they came up with something great. As they had in Dubai with the Burj Khalifa, which Wells saw from the cab taking him to his hotel.

The Burj was the tallest skyscraper ever built, a half mile high, an incredible feat of engineering. To withstand the desert winds, the Burj was built of a dozen rounded towers that buttressed one another as they rose. One by one the supporting towers fell away until only the tallest remained, impossibly long, a fingerclaw puncturing the sky. Most of the Burj was empty, and as a business venture the tower was no doubt a disaster. But who cared? Like Notre Dame or the Hoover Dam or the Great Wall, the Burj would awe visitors long after its architects were gone. It was a hundred-and-fifty-story monument to flash, with an almost magnetic pull. Wells stared at it until lesser skyscrapers nearer the highway blocked his view. “Have you been to it?” he asked his driver.

“Not me, no. Very expensive. One hundred dirhams.” About twenty-five dollars. “Also I am afraid of heights.” The driver sounded sheepish. To prove he wasn’t a coward, he cut in front of a tanker truck.

The Grosvenor was a five-star hotel, marble and sleek. Wells used one of his Saudi credit cards to take a high-floor suite that overlooked the gulf. Dubai was located on a western-facing shoreline of the Arabian peninsula, so the dusky red glow of the setting sun echoed in the waters of the gulf.

Wells wondered what Shafer was doing in Chicago, ten time zones behind. Probably about to knock on Asha Miller’s door. Wells hoped he didn’t get himself in trouble. He supposed Shafer qualified as his best friend these days. An atheist Jew and a Christian turned Muslim. But Wells trusted Shafer as deeply as he’d ever trusted anyone. He had lied to Shafer over the years, and Shafer had done the same to him. But never out of malice, on either side. Shafer had his back. Wells wondered whether he could ever build similar trust with Anne, if he had the strength to open himself to her that way.

In Dubai, the calls to prayer sounded more quietly than in most Muslim cities. The hotels and nightclubs didn’t want to remind Western tourists that Dubai wasn’t really Las Vegas East, that a different set of laws applied. Even so, as the sun descended into the gulf, Wells heard faint calls for the Maghrib. He knelt before the sunset — for Mecca was almost straight west of Dubai — and lowered his head. He prayed to an Allah who might accept him and Shafer and Anne alike, for forgiveness for the blood he had shed and would shed again. His more orthodox brothers might find his prayers wanting. But in the end only Allah could judge. And He was keeping His thoughts about Wells — and everything else — to Himself.

AFTER HIS PRAYERS, Wells showered, brushed his teeth, opened the FedEx box that the concierge had given him. He found a black leather carrying bag with a shoulder strap. Anne would have called it a man purse. The thought made Wells smile. The bag held what looked like the leftovers from an estate sale: a flash drive, a Zippo lighter, two garage door openers, two strips of white plastic, two handkerchiefs, a flat gray rock, high-resolution satellite photos of David Miller’s house in Dubai, and a credit card — size Sony camera. Only the camera and the photos were what they appeared to be. Everything else came from the basement labs at Langley, the Directorate of Science and Technology.

When Wells trained at the Farm, these toys hadn’t existed. He needed to give them a dry run. He looked through the online Dubai real estate listings until he found a target. Then he called the Avis office in the Grosvenor’s lobby and rented a Toyota. Nothing fancy. Nothing memorable.

He drove east through the Dubai night, away from skyscrapers on the coast, toward the industrial neighborhoods near the airport. The roads stayed fantastically wide, eight- and ten-lane boulevards, but the traffic steadily lightened. Wells saw a sign for “Dubai Oasis Super East” and turned right onto a long, curving boulevard. Suddenly he entered a ghost city.

Beginning in 2008, developers abandoned housing projects all over Dubai, especially in the unsexy neighborhoods far from the gulf. These developments were the tinsel side of flash, paid for with 100 percent borrowed money. Now the banks had stopped lending, and these half-built houses literally could not be given away. Finishing them would cost more than any buyer would pay. They sat empty, waiting for cheap money to start flowing again, or the desert to retake them.

The boulevard narrowed and then turned left into a cul-de-sac. Eight lanes into none. Urban design at its worst. One finished house and three shells were scattered around the teardrop. Halfway down the block, a single street lamp leaned drunkenly over the asphalt. The winds had tilted it, or the summer heat had buckled its base. Or both. To the east, helicopters fluttered around the Burj Khalifa. But the cul-de-sac occupied another universe, postapocalyptic in its desolation. Wells half expected to see a sentient robot scuttling by.

He parked outside the wire fence protecting the lone finished house. “No Trespassing/Alarmed Response,” signs warned in Arabic and English. Wells pulled himself over and trotted for the house. The front door had two locks, a dead bolt up high and a standard knob below. Inside, a red light blinked on an alarm box.

Wells turned the door handle. Locked. As he’d hoped.

He flipped open the Zippo lighter Shafer had sent him. Where the metal cage around the wick should have been, the lighter had a notch that looked like a USB port. Wells slipped the head of the flash drive into the port. Then he pulled off the plastic casing at the back of the drive, revealing two narrow metal picks with oddly shaped tips. When Wells plugged the flash drive into the Zippo, a light on the side of the drive blinked green.

Wells lined up the tips of the picks with the deadbolt’s keyhole. He pushed a tiny button next to the light, and the picks slid into the keyhole. Metal scraped on metal inside the lock. Then the flash drive made a quarter turn sideways, and the deadbolt slid back with a solid thwack.

Wells repeated the procedure with the bottom lock. He reached for the handle and the door opened smoothly. Wells stepped inside, let his eyes adjust. The rooms were empty. The house was hot and stale and stank of varnish and something sharp, maybe mold. The windows and doors hadn’t been opened in years, but grit and sand covered the floors.

Ten seconds after Wells walked in, the alarm beeped frantically, as if it were guarding a nuclear weapon, not an empty house. Wells pulled out the device that looked like a garage door opener, a black plastic box with a single black button. He peeled a plastic sheet on the box’s back, revealing a sticky adhesive, and pressed it on the wall next to the alarm system. He pushed the button on the front.

Shafer had promised him that the device would beat any standard household alarm. Something about a short-range electromagnetic pulse powerful enough to disrupt circuits. The pulse caused the software inside the alarm to run very slowly. An alarm that normally sounded thirty seconds after a break-in would instead need an hour or more to go off.

“Just make sure you give the thing a couple of feet when it’s on.”

“Why?”

“Just make sure.”

So Wells pressed the button and stepped away. The response was immediate and gratifying. The alarm no longer warned of the end of the world. Now it sounded like a heart monitor, with long pauses and dignified single beeps. Incredible. Wells walked through the empty rooms for a few minutes. The house was nearly finished. The bathrooms even had sinks, though when Wells turned the taps he heard only a faint hiss.

He took one final look and walked out, grabbing the alarm disruptor. The device did have one flaw. It stopped working once it was removed. An operative who used it had to pull it and run, or leave it and prove that he wasn’t an ordinary thief. But the advantage the device offered was worth the trouble. The next time he came home, Wells wanted to meet the engineers who’d built it — and the lock picker.

A HALF HOUR LATER, he was driving through the neighborhood where Miller lived. He didn’t plan to hit Miller’s house this night, but he wanted to case it. The technology was new, but the fundamentals of surveillance hadn’t changed.

“Always see the target before you make your move,” Guy Raviv, Wells’s favorite teacher, had told Wells and the other eager beavers in his training class at the Farm. Raviv was dead now, and the class a lifetime away. “If you’re not sure about something, go back again. Once. No more. You don’t want them wondering who you are before you get there. And never spend more than fifteen minutes inside, whether it’s a home or an office. Five is preferable. Ten is trouble. Fifteen is the limit. People turn around, double-check that they haven’t left the air-conditioning on. Janitors change their schedules, work the floor you’re on instead of the one below you. Time is not your friend on these missions. Never. So do what you came to do, whatever that may be, and get out quick.”

Easier said than done, then and now.

Miller lived in an area called Al Barsha South, closer to the gulf than Wells’s last stop. “Welcome to ABS,” a billboard proclaimed in English. “A great place to live. An even better investment.” But Al Barsha hadn’t escaped the bust. Its streets were named after European landmarks, Hyde Park Street and Trevi Fountain Drive, names that sounded even sillier in Arabic. Most houses were dark. On one lot, a blue tarp flapped over a Caterpillar earthmover, its treads sinking into the earth. A fence and “No Trespassing” signs blocked off an unfinished playground, complete with a slide that didn’t reach the ground, a half-remembered dream. East of the playground, the only evidence of life came from the distant headlights along the outer Dubai ring road.

Miller lived in Al Barsha’s wealthier western end, which had been built first and avoided the crash. Here, eight-foot walls protected concrete mansions. Miller’s house stood two stories tall and nearly filled its lot. The satellite photos from Shafer revealed that it had a small oval pool in its backyard, a bright blue tear. In Dubai, as in Beverly Hills, pools were closer to a necessity than a luxury. Wells rolled by slowly, peering through the bars of the front gate. In their last conversation, Shafer had told him that Miller had a girlfriend, or possibly a second wife, in Dubai.

“You don’t know?” Wells said.

“There’s some evidence in the records for both. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Point is, figure probably somebody’s home. The electric records show use consistent with an occupied house the last few months, even when Miller’s in Chicago.”

As usual, Shafer was right. As he passed the front gate, Wells heard the rumble of a garage door rising. He tapped the brakes, stopped long enough to glimpse the icy headlights of a luxury sedan inside the garage. Before the gate could swing open, Wells rolled on. At the end of the street, he turned left, onto the eight-lane avenue that connected Al Barsha South with the main Dubai highway. If the car was leaving the neighborhood, it would come this way.

Wells pulled over, put on his hazard lights. He popped the hood and got out and pretended to fiddle with the battery. Ninety seconds later, a Lexus rolled by, nearly blinding Wells with its xenon headlights. A man drove, with a woman in the back. The lights stopped Wells from seeing her clearly. But she was Arab. She wore a long-sleeved gown and a loosely tied head scarf that let her hair flow freely, the uniform of the cultured gulf elite outside Saudi Arabia. The wife/girlfriend. She was having dinner with friends. Getting her nails done. Shopping. The malls in Dubai stayed open late. Wells didn’t care, as long as she stayed out at least a half hour.

He quickly made a U-turn and drove back to Miller’s house. He grabbed his man purse. In a perfect world, he would have had gloves, pliers, a grappling hook and rope. Maybe a knife or pistol. But Wells couldn’t pass up this chance to get inside. Once the woman got back, he didn’t know when she’d leave again. A stakeout would be difficult and conspicuous in this neighborhood. Anyway, Wells wasn’t too worried about leaving evidence. Let the Dubai police dust all they liked. Jalal Haq hadn’t been fingerprinted at immigration.

A DOOR WAS NOTCHED in the concrete wall beside the driveway gate. It had a simple knob lock that Wells thought the picker would handle with ease. He reached for the buzzer to check that no one was home — and stopped as a car turned onto the road. It was a white Nissan sedan with a blue light bar across its roof. Neat Arabic script along the side of the car proclaimed, “Al Barsha Private Security.”

Wells willed the Nissan to drive by. Instead, it pulled over beside him. The driver’s window slid down. “Salaam aleikum. Excuse me, sir.” Wells stepped toward the car. Two men in blue uniforms sat in front. They had the dark skin of men from the Indian subcontinent. Wells decided being aggressive was the best play. Saudis demanded deference, especially from anyone from Pakistan or India.

“What do you want?”

“May we see your identification, sir?”

“Is this good enough for you?” Wells pushed his Saudi passport through the window.

The driver paged through it. “Mr. Haq, sir — is this house yours?”

“You’re questioning me? I could buy this whole street if I wanted. Buy you, too, and put you in a suitcase and send you home tomorrow. Would you like that?”

The driver glanced at the other guard and back at Wells. “Sir. I don’t mean to disturb you.” His voice quavered a little. “We received a call that a strange car was driving around the area—”

“You speak Arabic like a dog. My language. You mangle it. And it’s not a strange car, it’s my car, and these people are friends of mine, which is why I have their key. Please, go ahead, call the police.”

“There’s no need—”

“No, perhaps you should. Real Emirati police. Let them see the way you treat Saudis. They’ll be impressed.”

“We’re sorry to have bothered you.” The guard handed over his passport. Wells snatched it back.

“You should be.”

But they didn’t leave. As Wells went back to the gate, he realized he would have to open it while they watched. The passport and his fit had cowed them, but they obviously had to make a report. The longer he waited, the stranger his story would seem. They would wonder why he hadn’t parked inside. He couldn’t risk buzzing either. He’d told them he had the key, so why would he buzz? No, he’d just have to pick the lock and walk in. The house should be empty. The woman and her driver were gone. If Miller happened to be home, Wells would be happy to find him.

Wells stood at the gate, so his body blocked the cops’ view of the keyhole. He took the picker from his pocket and lined it up with the hole. Three seconds later, the gate was open. The guards couldn’t have seen what he’d done.

Wells walked into the yard and slammed the gate. At the front door, he saw an alarm, its light flashing green. A lucky break. He wouldn’t have to fiddle with the disruptor.

HE HEARD FOOTSTEPS and realized too late that he hadn’t been lucky at all. The alarm was off because someone was inside. Probably a housekeeper. Wells should have known. In a neighborhood like this, full-time housekeepers were practically mandatory. She’d heard him and was coming to investigate. He checked the doorknob. It was unlocked. He opened it, stepped in.

A woman stood on the staircase that rose from the front hallway. She was dark skinned and almond eyed. Ethiopian or Somali. She wore sensible black shoes and a white uniform that reached her ankles. She screamed and he ran up the stairs for her. She turned and took a step and tripped and he grabbed her before she fell. She punched at him wildly, like a child, but he wrapped his forearm over her mouth and pulled her down the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs, he turned and dragged her down the first-floor hallway. The floor was polished marble and didn’t give her much purchase. She bit at him, her teeth scraping through his robe. He handled her roughly, squeezing her wrists, trying to make her understand his strength so she wouldn’t resist. He pushed open the first door he saw. A guest bathroom, with a toilet, sink, and fancy pink soap. He dragged her inside and felt her panic increase.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said. He spun her so they were face-to-face, shifted his grip so his right hand was over her mouth, pushed her against the wall. Their eyes met and her head vibrated sideways in panic like a metronome on high. He raised a finger to his own lips and then lifted his hand off her mouth. She twisted her head, drew her breath to scream. Again he covered her mouth, her lips pressed wetly against his palm. He put a finger to his lips for the second time. This time, she nodded. He lifted his hand a few inches from her mouth.

“Please, sir,” she said in heavily accented English.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“No rape.”

Wells’s heart clenched. No wonder she was terrified. “No rape. I want to…” He swung a finger around. “The mister? Does he have an office?”

“The mister not here.” She shut her mouth as if she realized she’d made a mistake by admitting she was alone.

“I need his office. His papers.”

She shook her head, her face uncomprehending. He grabbed her and turned her so she was facing the wall and reached into his bag for the flex-cuffs — the wide white plastic strips Shafer had sent. She started to scream, and he made a fist and belted her in the side of the head hard enough that her knees sagged. He twisted her arms tight and cuffed her wrists together. He grabbed a handkerchief from the bag, wound it over her mouth, tied it tight. He turned her around and sat her on the toilet. Their eyes met and her mouth worked on the kerchief. She couldn’t speak, but her eyes told him what she thought of him.

I’m doing the right thing. I’m one of the good guys. One day you’ll thank me. Someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny. Springsteen. Maybe he really was losing it. He’d have plenty of time to hate himself. Not now, though. Now he had to get on with the search.

He went to a knee beside her and pulled back her right ankle and used the second flex-cuff to tie her leg to the narrow pipe behind the toilet. “All right,” he said. “Stay calm.” He left her in the bathroom, took the front stairs two by two. He had to find whatever papers or computers Miller might have left. At least he didn’t need to worry about being subtle. Not anymore. Not with the evidence of his home invasion bound and gagged in the bathroom.

He opened doors along the second-floor hallway. Master bedroom, second bedroom, bathroom, closet. At the end of the hall, a locked door. Wells lowered his shoulder and ruined it, splintering the wood, tearing the lock from the frame. Happy for the chance to hit something instead of someone. The room was dustier than the rest of the house. Wells guessed the housekeeper wasn’t allowed in here. A shaded window overlooked the pool. A framed photo of the Chicago skyline dominated one wall. On a coffee table, a laptop and a legal pad. Wells grabbed them. He tossed the couch cushions and pulled books off a shelf beside the couch, looking for keys, flash drives. He found a miniature notebook, palm-size with a black leather cover, and grabbed it.

All along, Wells heard the housekeeper thumping like an angry ghost in the bathroom downstairs. He didn’t think anyone outside could hear her through the thick concrete walls, but these homes were awfully close. He finished ransacking the room, looked once more through the rooms upstairs. From the bedroom, he grabbed a silver-framed picture of Miller.

Downstairs, he glanced through the kitchen, the dining room, the living room. Nothing. The worst search ever. Barely ten minutes after he’d entered the house, he walked out the front door. Guy Raviv would have been happy about his speed, if nothing else. He left the housekeeper locked up. He wasn’t worried about her. He would call the Dubai police in the morning and tell them to check on the place. But the cops were likely to find her long before. The lady of the house would be home in a couple hours. And the housekeeper might be able to beat the flex-cuffs even sooner. She was strong and angry and Wells hadn’t bound her very tight.

The private security car was gone when Wells emerged on the street. Good. He would have to leave Dubai on the first flight he could book. He had left a trail that even Mr. Magoo could follow. The Dubai police would call the local security guards as soon as they got inside the house. In hours, Jalal Haq would be a wanted man.

So Wells headed for Dubai International. Along the way he made two phone calls, one to Air India, the other to Singapore Airlines. Getting out at this hour was easy. Most long-haul, fully fueled flights took off from Dubai after dark to avoid the desert heat. The airport was as busy at midnight as at noon. Reserving seats was no problem, once Wells explained that he would be happy to buy a first-class full-fare ticket.

At the airport, he dumped the Toyota in a short-term lot and checked into the one a.m. Singapore Airlines flight under his Jalal Haq passport. He headed straight for passport control. He’d left the house barely forty minutes before. Even if the police had already arrived and gotten Jalal Haq’s name from the guards, Wells couldn’t believe the immigration agents would have it yet. “You didn’t stay long, Mr. Haq.” The agent was polite, vaguely puzzled. Nothing more. Dubai was the ultimate stopover. Plenty of visitors stayed only a few hours.

“I’ll be back.”

“Please do.” Then Wells was through, down the escalator and onto the moving walkway that ran to Terminal 1. The place was as absurdly diverse as a Coke ad. Two blue-eyed Russian hookers in miniskirts stood next to a half dozen women in full burqa. An African man, tall and thin and ebony dark, towered over three Japanese tourists who were, yes, taking pictures of one another. A cliché in three dimensions.

The police would be looking for a Saudi in a robe. Wells stopped at a duty-free store and bought an overpriced button-down shirt — long-sleeved, to hide the bruises on his arm where the housekeeper had bitten him — and a pair of jeans and reading glasses and a blue baseball cap with the logo of the Burj Dubai. He found a men’s room and went back to being John Wells. At a newsstand, he bought a copy of Michael Connelly’s newest paperback. A trick from the Farm. Books hid their readers’ faces almost as well as newspapers, and were a far less obvious disguise.

He found the gate for his Air India flight to Delhi and presented himself to the agent. “Name’s John Wells. Wanted to double-check my seat. Think it was two-A, but I lost my boarding pass.” The no-nonsense American businessman, skipping pronouns to save time.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wells. You haven’t checked in.”

“Sure I did.”

She tapped her keyboard doubtfully. “I can’t find it in the system. But I guess you must have or passport control would have stopped you. No matter. I’ll recheck you.”

Wells took his boarding pass and settled in to read Harry Bosch’s latest adventures. Connelly was always reliable. A half hour later, he looked up to see three airport police officers walking briskly past. The Singapore flight boarded ten gates down.

Five minutes later the Air India flight opened for boarding. Wells was first in line. As he walked onto the jetway, he heard the terminal’s loudspeakers announce, “Mr. Jalal Haq, please report to security. Mr. Jalal Haq, please report to security.”

Wells would have to remember for future reference that the Dubai police didn’t waste time. Jalal Haq had managed to clear passport control, but he’d have no way to get on a plane. Without the spare passport, Wells would have been stuck. When cops looked over the surveillance videos, they would realize that Jalal had gone into a bathroom and hadn’t come out. Meanwhile, though, the police weren’t about to shut down one of the world’s busiest airports to look for one Saudi who’d tied up a housekeeper.

DELHI WAS SUPPOSEDLY a fascinating city. Wells didn’t care. He checked into the hotel closest to the airport, a Radisson. As soon as the door to his room closed, he booted up Miller’s laptop and scanned its files, which consisted mainly of photos of Miller with different women. Plenty of the pictures were what Internet gossip sites called Not Safe for Work. Wells also found spreadsheets and tax returns. For a drug dealer, Miller kept good financial records. Wells didn’t see any hint of Miller’s drug trafficking or his connection with Thuwani. Of course, he was no expert at recovering hidden files. He would send the laptop to Shafer and hope the Langley geeks could find more.

The miniature black notebook held a handwritten list of figures and dates that stretched back years. Wells guessed he was looking at Miller’s record of his drug deals. On the last page of the notebook, Wells found three phone numbers, another crumb for the NSA.

Finally, Wells turned to the legal pad. Its top sheet was blank. Wells wasn’t even sure why he’d taken it, except that it had been directly under the laptop. He flipped through it, not expecting anything.

But there it was. About three pages from the end, Miller had written, Stan??? and an e-mail address. Real name??? Find him? HOW? Strykers. Dragon. Make a Deal/Treason/Authorized mission? $$$!

Everywhere else, Miller’s handwriting had been careful and precise. Here he’d swiped the words across the page. His desperation was obvious. Wells puzzled over the sheet for a while and then called Shafer. Who answered on the first ring, though it was midnight now in Virginia.

“What are you doing in Delhi?”

Wells didn’t ask how Shafer knew the city code for Delhi, much less the country code for India. “Long story.”

“You all right? Did the stuff work?”

“Yes, but I had some trouble.”

“Anybody die?”

“No.” Wells hesitated.

“Out with it.”

“I had to punch a woman in the head. A civilian in the house.” Wells couldn’t bring himself to say housekeeper.

“As long as you didn’t kill her.”

“I’m comforted to hear you think I’m capable of killing a random woman. How was Chicago?”

“Not much. The wife hasn’t heard from him in a while. Besides punching women, did you get anything?”

“His computer. I didn’t see anything on it, but I’ll send it to you. And I want to fax you something he wrote. There’s some kind of code on it.”

“Code.”

“You’ll see.”

Ten minutes later, Shafer called back. “Where’s the code?”

“Dragon? Stryker?”

“You never heard of Strykers? Big armored trucks? Badly designed, lots of problems, but the Army bought them and by God it’s going to use them even if they get guys killed. Ring any bells?”

“Now that you mention it.”

“And guess what. The 7th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, also known as Task Force Dragon, is based east of beautiful Kandahar City in Zabul province at Forward Operating Base Jackson. About four thousand soldiers there. Now all you have to do is figure out which of them are big-time heroin smugglers. Don’t worry. I’m sure they have a big sign over their cots.”

“Four thousand is better than a hundred thousand,” Wells said. “What about Daood?”

“You’ve got ideas on where to find him, I’m open. But I suspect he’s up in the mountains with Amadullah, and I think you’d be pushing your luck to go back there.”

“I can’t disagree.”

“Plus, the way I read this note, Daood was trying to figure out who was running him just like we are.”

“Stan?”

“There’s no one with that first or last name at Kabul station. I checked. And doesn’t it strike you as awfully coincidental? Like, Afghani-stan?”

“Nice.”

“Nice. So I’ll put the NSA onto the new phone numbers and e-mail addresses you got. But I’m betting they won’t go anywhere. Anyway, soon as Miller comes out of the mountains and hears what happened in Dubai and Chicago, he’ll know we’re looking for him. He’ll know the game is almost over. I’ll bet he reaches out to us.” Shafer talked fast when he was excited, and he was talking fast now. “Even if he doesn’t, I’ll bet we find him pretty damn quick. We have his real name, his bank accounts. We know where he lives.”

“And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime, I’m gonna look at that brigade. Check out its 15-6s and 32s and after-action reports in the files for its tour.” A 15-6 was a military record of an investigation into suspected criminal behavior by a soldier. An Article 32 report was similar, but used for serious crimes, the military counterpart of a grand jury indictment.

“And I’m supposed to go to that base and start asking guys if they know about a massive heroin trafficking ring.”

“You laugh, but I have an idea.” Shafer explained his plan.

“That can’t work.”

“You have anything better?”

Wells was silent.

“Then I suggest you get on it.”

“Okay. But there’s one thing you’re going to need to send for me to have any shot at all. A secret weapon.”

“What secret weapon?”

Wells told him.

“Not bad, John. Maybe you have learned a few things.”

“Still. It’d be nice if we could find David Miller. I bet he can move us up the chain.”

“My concern is that whoever’s running him is thinking the same.”

Wells didn’t have to ask Shafer what he meant.

18

Roads in Afghanistan came in two categories: bad and worse. The fifty-mile track from Sharan to the Pakistani border belonged in the second group, less a road than a dashed line on a map, washed out and littered with stones big as beach balls.

Down this uncertain path bounced a Ford Ranger, four doors, nearly new, a gift to Afghanistan from the American taxpayer. Amadullah Thuwani drove, David Miller beside him. Amadullah sat low and steered one-handed, fingers draped over the steering wheel. He reminded Miller of a South Side gangbanger. He just needed a Bulls cap tilted low on his forehead and a fat gold chain along with his Rolex. Fortunately, his driving style posed no danger. The Ranger was moving barely twenty miles an hour. Any faster and rocks would tear up the chassis.

Without warning, Amadullah reached across the seat, pinched Miller’s cheek like an unfriendly grandfather. “You’re sure this is the way,” he said. They’d been driving for three hours and Amadullah’s patience looked to be wearing thin.

“Of course.” Miller wasn’t. He wondered what Amadullah would do if they stumbled into an American convoy. As usual, Miller was the only one in the truck who didn’t have a weapon. Come to think of it, he was probably the only adult male in the whole province who didn’t have an AK within arm’s length.

The road passed through a loose group of mud-walled compounds, and Miller saw the abandoned schoolhouse Stan had told him to look for. Against its wall, three empty oil barrels were stacked in a pyramid. Side by side means no meeting, Stan had said. Pyramid means keep coming.

“That’s it,” Miller said, nodding at the barrels. “We’re close.”

Five minutes later, Amadullah stopped the Ranger beside a wash of scrubby pine trees. He lowered the windows and killed the engine.

“Now we listen for mosquitoes,” Amadullah said, Talib slang for drones. “They won’t face us like men. They use this science instead.” In Amadullah’s mouth, science sounded like a curse. He spit out the window into the dust. Amadullah’s son Azim wandered off and took a long piss against a mud wall.

They sat and listened. But the air was still. So was the land, no cars or trucks. Not even any donkey-drawn carts. The mountains in Paktika were shorter than the famous peaks of the Hindu Kush but equally unforgiving, crumbling hills with soil too rocky for farming.

“You see my watch?” Amadullah raised his wrist to show the gold Rolex.

“Are you giving it to me? That famous Pashtun hospitality?”

“If I give it to you, you’ll wear it around your neck.”

“Sounds uncomfortable.” Miller knew he should take what Amadullah dished out, but the boasting and threats had worn thin.

“It was a Saudi who gave me this. Many years ago.”

“Osama bin Laden?” The Talibs loved to brag about how they’d fought alongside bin Laden, especially now that he was dead and couldn’t contradict them. Osama would have had a million-man army if they were all telling the truth.

“Not Osama. Though I did meet him once. Skinny and full of love for himself. No, this man, when he came here, I had just come back from Kandahar, a very good mission. We bombed Russian tanks, linked the explosives and set them off all at once. The whole road was on fire. Killed four tanks. Boom-boom-boom-boom! The wrecks stayed on Highway 1 for a month, and after that the Russians left us alone down there. Thanks be to Allah. Those T-72s had heavy armor all over, but underneath they didn’t. Stupid Russians.”

“But the watch.”

“Yes, the watch. So the Saudi came, and we had a feast. And they were calling me the lion of Zhari, that’s the western part of Kandahar province. And the Saudi, he said to me, ‘What can I do for you, lion? I want to be part of this jihad.’ And I said, ‘Give me your Rolex.’”

Miller could imagine the look on the Saudi’s face. “Not what he was expecting.”

“You know, I can’t even remember his name. Probably Abdul. All of the Saudis who came here were named Abdul or Saud or Faisal. The Saudis. They pretend they hate the princes, but they fall to one knee when one passes within ten kilometers.” Amadullah spit again into the dirt.

“So he gave you the watch.”

“Of course he did. He was far from home.”

“What became of him?”

“Only Allah knows. But I still have the watch. My second wife polishes it every week and it still works perfectly. Do you see what I’m telling you?”

Miller saw. The visitors from Saudi Arabia and Russia and the United States came with their gifts. But sooner or later, they left the warriors in these mountains to their business. Amadullah had spent his whole life within a hundred miles of here. He didn’t have a passport or a bank account. He’d never seen a skyscraper or flown on an airplane. As far as Miller knew, he couldn’t even read or write. Yet he and his people could never be broken, not in this land. Killed, but not broken.

Miller had forgotten most of his single semester at Harold Washington City College, but one class had stuck with him: Philosophy 101. At first he’d done the reading mainly to impress his teacher, this cute white girl from the University of Chicago. He never did work up the guts to ask her out. The U of C might have been on the South Side, but it was in a different universe from his. Anyway, a few weeks into the semester, he’d seen her boyfriend picking her up. But by then he was into the class, and he kept on reading.

He wasn’t interested in Plato and the Greeks, debating the mysteries of existence, shadows on the cave wall. No, he liked the political philosophers, the ones who talked about power in the real world, where it came from, how to use it. Especially this English guy, Hobbes: the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short. Amadullah surely felt the same. Or would have, if he’d ever heard of Hobbes.

Miller wondered whether the watch’s backstory was bloodier than Amadullah had said, whether the Saudi who’d given it to him had been taken on a mission that didn’t have a way out.

“A very nice watch,” Miller said aloud.

“Real gold. Swiss-made.”

“I’m sold.”

They fell silent. Miller found himself intensely conscious of the ticking of the Rolex. Finally, Amadullah muttered, “Enough.” He shoved a plug of tobacco into his mouth and started up the Ranger. The road rose slowly, following a dry streambed around the flank of a brown mountain, an unpoetic stretch of land, a place to grind through. Behind the mountain, the road forked.

“Left or right?”

“Right.” The marker was reflective tape stuck low on a lightning-scarred tree.

The right fork turned back into the mountain, rising in the shadow of a ridgeline. The pines here were sheltered from the prevailing easterly winds and stood thicker. The road dead-ended at a man-made clearing, the trees cut to stumps. At the far edge, two horses stood riderless, a mare and a gelding, both saddled and tied to a tree. They stamped their hooves and whinnied as the Ranger rolled in. Miller relaxed a little. He’d brought them to the right place.

The CIA officer who called himself Stan had done an extraordinary job of winning Amadullah’s trust, Miller thought. A year before, the United States had created a most-wanted list of forty-seven Taliban commanders, including Amadullah. Thirteen of those men were now dead, and seven more captured. Even so, Amadullah had agreed to leave the safety of Muslim Bagh and come to Afghanistan to meet Stan. He was taking an enormous chance. The Americans could have a company of Special Forces operatives waiting.

But Miller understood why Amadullah was taking the risk. Miller had delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars to Amadullah, money Amadullah could use to control his tribe and build a private army. When the Americans left Afghanistan, Amadullah would be ready to govern a province, maybe even bribe his way into a cabinet position. Then Stan had cemented his relationship with Amadullah by tipping him about the Special Forces raid. Amadullah had told Miller earlier today that Stan had been right, that helicopters had raided the farm a few days after their meeting.

Amadullah slung a short-stock AK over his shoulder. “You’ve never been here before,” he said to Miller.

“All I know is that we’re supposed to follow the path.”

“Then let’s follow it. Find this man I’ve come to see.”

“Father,” Azim said. “Let me come, too, guard you.”

“You think I need to be guarded from him?”

Amadullah walked over to the taller horse, the gelding, and mounted him in a single smooth leap that belied his size. Miller put a hand on the mare’s flank. She was skinny and swaybacked, white except for the gray blaze on her chest. She turned her head, fluttered her big lips at him. She seemed friendly enough, but Miller hesitated. He’d never ridden before. The South Side of Chicago wasn’t exactly horse country.

“Come on,” Amadullah said.

Miller awkwardly stepped into the stirrup and swung himself over the saddle. The horse swayed. For an unpleasant moment, he thought he might fall. Then he jammed his left foot into the other stirrup and grabbed the reins.

“Not too hard,” Amadullah said. “She knows what to do if you’ll let her.” He turned his horse up the trail. Miller followed. The path rose in short switchbacks. The forest was thicker than Miller expected, and crusty branches whipped at his legs. He ducked low, leaning over the mare’s back. To his surprise, he found the ride relaxing. The mare moved at a steady walk and didn’t seem to mind carrying him. Miller looked for a trap, broken branches or footprints made by men waiting to capture Amadullah. But the trees appeared undisturbed.

“Your friend planned this meeting well,” Amadullah said. “Even if I wanted to take him, I couldn’t.”

Amadullah was right, Miller realized. The path could be followed only in single file. No doubt it circled around the mountain and reached another clearing where Stan had hidden his own vehicle.

After twenty minutes, they crossed a notch in the ridge, emerging on the mountain’s north face. The trees stopped suddenly. Patches of snow were scattered in the shadows of the boulders above them. The trail passed through a rock slide, squeezed between two house-size boulders, and opened onto a stretch of flat rock.

And there he was. The CIA officer who called himself Stan. Miller had expected a big guy, a military type. But Stan was skinny. He wore an olive green North Face jacket and a 9-millimeter Glock strapped to his hip, but no armor or sunglasses or beard. At first, he didn’t look like a soldier. More like a lawyer. But his eyes gave him away. They were blue and hard and flat, the eyes of a man who had been shown no mercy and would show none. In Miller’s experience, white folk rarely had those eyes. He wondered where Stan had gotten his.

“Amadullah,” he said in Pashtun. “Meet Stan, the man with the plan.” Like he knew Stan. Like they were friends. Stan didn’t blink. Miller hoped he couldn’t speak Pashtun. Miller would have a better chance of continuing his unbroken winning streak in the life-versus-death sweepstakes if he could play translator, tweak the conversation to his advantage. He knew that he might never get off this mountain. Even so, he couldn’t help feeling weirdly privileged to be here. How often did Talib commanders and CIA operatives meet face-to-face?

Amadullah slid off his horse and offered a hand to Stan. Miller waited for the trap to spring, for soldiers to jump from hidden positions. Instead, the American put his left hand on Amadullah’s arm and patted his own chest with his right hand to show his respect. “Tell him I’m glad he came,” Stan said to Miller in English. “I know it’s dangerous. For both of us. I’m glad he trusted me enough to come.”

So he doesn’t know Pashtun. Good. Miller translated.

“I wanted to see you with my own eyes,” Amadullah said.

“Here I am, then. I wish I could have seen your country fifty years ago, when there wasn’t a war. When we could have met in your home and feasted like men instead of hiding here like beasts.”

“I don’t know anything about you. Not even your name. You know my name and I don’t know yours.”

“My name wouldn’t mean anything to you. I’m not famous like you.”

“Still I need a name for you.”

“Call me Stan, then.”

Amadullah considered. “It will do. Tell me why you’ve done all this, at least. You’re a believer?”

“A Muslim?” A gray smile crossed Stan’s face. “No.”

“For money, then?”

“The money’s nice, but not the main reason.”

“Then why?”

“I’m tired, that’s all.” Stan tipped his head up, directing his explanation to the heavens. “The agency I work for, it’s corrupt. My country, my government, this whole war, corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. We tell you we’ve got the answers, but we don’t have anything at all. We lie to ourselves as much as everyone else. It’s time for us to leave here, leave you alone.”

“What do you think,” Amadullah said to Miller, when he’d finished translating. “Is he telling the truth?”

Miller was surprised Amadullah had asked his opinion. “I don’t know why he’d lie. Maybe there’s more to it, but I don’t know what it is.”

“Did he say anything to you about it?”

“I told you. He treats me as a courier. Nothing more.”

“Ask him, then, why he’s brought us here.”

Stan smiled, a real smile this time, when he heard the question. He led them to his horse, a thick-legged white stallion tied to a mulberry tree. A white wool blanket was draped over the horse’s flanks. Stan pulled off the blanket with a magician’s flourish, revealing twin boxes. They were about six feet long, a foot square, and covered with Cyrillic lettering.

“You know these?”

“SAMs,” Amadullah said in English. “Russian Stingers.”

“A new model. SA-24s. The Russians started making them about three years ago. The Russian Army says these can take out a Black Hawk, and I think they’re right. Especially if I give them some help. You think you might have use for these, Amadullah?”

Amadullah grinned.

“Now I’m going to tell you something,” Stan said. “The director of the CIA is coming to Afghanistan soon. In only a few days. And American politicians, too. Important ones.”

“You’re certain of this.”

“Yes. I’ll have their flight schedule.”

Amadullah tapped one of the steel boxes. “And what do you want for this?”

“Nothing. It’s a gift.”

“I don’t like that sort of gift. Not even stones are free, we Pashtuns say.”

“All right, Amadullah. If you insist, you can give me something in return. Information. Tell me, have any Americans come to see you recently?”

“Aside from this one, no.” Amadullah spit green spit at Miller’s feet.

“Anyone else? Has anyone come to Balochistan? Not necessarily American.”

Amadullah pursed his lips. “Almost two weeks ago, yes. But he was Saudi. He wanted to help fund the jihad. These men appear every so often. They never make any trouble. If they do, we send them home. One way or another.”

“You’re sure he was Saudi.”

“He had a Saudi passport. He came for a day and left.”

Stan reached into his pocket, handed Amadullah an envelope. Amadullah flicked it open with his dirty yellow thumbnail, extracted a photo. He looked it over, grunted in surprise, handed it to Miller.

The photo showed a tall man, handsome and square shouldered. He had wavy brown hair and a crooked smile that was more lips than teeth. Miller didn’t recognize him.

“This is the Saudi. How did you know?” Amadullah said.

“That’s John Wells. One of our agents.”

“He wasn’t American. He couldn’t have been. He spoke Arabic, Pashtun. And he killed four men. Troublemakers. Enemies of my tribe.”

“Sounds like Wells. What did you tell him?”

Amadullah chapped a new plug of tobacco in his mouth. Buying time, Miller thought. “Nothing. I didn’t trust him.”

“Did you give him any phone numbers or e-mail addresses?”

Amadullah nodded slowly.

“Destroy all those phones. Burn them and then burn the ashes and then drop them off the side of a mountain. Never use any of those e-mails again. Destroy all the computers where you’ve ever checked those e-mails. And probably plan to move.”

“The computers, too? My new Apple from Dubai.”

“All of it. Did you tell him about me?”

“No.”

“This is important, Amadullah. That we’d been in contact? Anything?”

“No. I swear to Allah.”

“Did you tell him about the drugs?”

“I told him that we sold drugs to Americans, nothing more.”

“Did you tell him what unit?”

“No.”

“Did you tell him about Daood?”

“No, but one of my nephews did.”

“But no,” Miller said in English, pretending to translate. “I didn’t tell him about Daood. And he didn’t know anything about Daood.”

Miller did not want Stan to hear that John Wells knew his name. He was as certain of that as he’d ever been of anything.

STAN WAS QUIET. His dead blue eyes shifted from Amadullah to Miller. In the silence, Miller heard the wind rustling down the mountain. “You think I don’t speak Pashtun?” Stan said to Miller. In Pashtun.

Stan pulled his pistol. “On your knees, hands behind your back.” Miller had looked at pistols before. He’d pulled them himself. An occupational hazard of the drug business. Usually folks were playing, showing off. This time, Miller felt a sick certainty that Stan would blow his brains out. He went to his knees, feeling the stones scrape his shins through the thin fabric of his gown.

“What did you tell Wells about Daood?” Stan said to Amadullah.

In answer, Amadullah swung his rifle toward Stan. Miller kept his breathing steady. Maybe they’ll kill each other and I’ll walk away.

But Stan said, “I’m no danger to you, Amadullah. We’re partners.” He pulled the magazine from his pistol and dropped it. It clapped against the stone and skittered away. “Just one round in the chamber. For him, if we decide so.”

Amadullah lowered his AK. Miller felt his hope fade.

“What did you tell Wells?” Stan said again.

“Nothing. In truth, my nephew Jaji mentioned Daood to this man Wells, that’s all. Then Wells asked me about Daood and I told him it wasn’t his business.”

“See,” Miller said. “Wells doesn’t know anything about me. You know how many guys are named Daood in Pakistan?”

Stan turned toward Miller. “Has he tried to contact you? Don’t lie.”

“No. I swear. I promise, if he finds me, I won’t say a word. Anyway, Stan, I don’t even know your name, your real name, I mean.” Miller was sputtering, trying to find the magic words.

“You promise.”

“I promise. I’m sorry I didn’t translate right, I should have told you what Amadullah said, but I thought—”

“I know what you thought. If it makes you feel any better, Daood, I probably would have had to kill you anyway. Now that Amadullah and I have gotten to know each other, you’re a liability.”

“Wait. If I hear Wells is after me, I’ll let you know. That way, you’ll have some warning. Besides, if I disappear, my wives will look for me. I’m more useful to you alive.”

For a moment, Miller thought his offer might work. Then Amadullah walked next to Stan, and together they looked down at Miller. Judges from hell.

“The Russians, when they came here, they had a saying,” Amadullah said. “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.”

“From Stalin originally,” Stan said. “He had another saying, too. The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of one million is a statistic.”

“I think this one wouldn’t even be a tragedy.” Amadullah pointed his AK toward Miller, and Miller knew the time for begging was done. He had to distract them long enough to get to a horse. He looked down, saw two gray rocks on the stone slab in front of him. One was as big as a cell phone, the other an oversize egg. His best chance. Only chance. They could quote Stalin all they liked. Miller would stick with 2Pac.

Wonder how I live with five shots /

Niggas is hard to kill on my block.

“Let me pray, then. Please.” Miller began to murmur the first surah of the Quran. Bismillahi-rahmani-rahim… All the time he’d spent infiltrating mosques had taught him the words.

He leaned forward, and as his head touched the stony ground he grabbed the rocks, the bigger in his right, the smaller in his left. He came up throwing, aiming a sharp sidearm right that caught Amadullah on his left cheek. Amadullah grunted and twisted away and fired high. The shots cut rock from the slab behind Miller.

With his left hand, Miller threw the smaller rock at Stan’s chest. It caught him full in the stomach. Stan grunted and fired low and wide. The round sliced across Miller’s right biceps, doing no real damage. Stan cursed and bent over, looking for the magazine he’d dropped.

Miller stood and ran for the big white horse. He didn’t want to go back the way he’d come, not with Amadullah’s son waiting for him. Anyway, the stallion looked fast.

Behind him he heard the stutter of metal on metal and wondered whether Amadullah’s AK had jammed. He heard Amadullah curse and knew it had.

Miller reached the stallion and pulled the reins from the mulberry tree and jumped onto its back. But this horse was taller than the filly he’d ridden, and stronger, and didn’t like him. Miller found himself sprawled across the saddle, perpendicular to the stallion’s body, the missile boxes pressing into his legs and chest. The horse neighed and tossed his head in the air and stepped sideways.

Miller grabbed the stallion’s reins and pulled himself around until he faced forward. Somehow he kicked his right foot and then his left into the stirrups. Blood trickled down his arm onto the stallion’s back. Behind him, Miller heard the hard snap of a 9-millimeter magazine being jammed into a pistol.

Miller pushed his legs into the horse’s heavy flanks. “Go!” he yelled. The stallion took a half step forward and he slapped its neck with his right hand. Miracle of miracles, the stupid thing started to trot. Miller ducked low and slid his arms around the stallion’s neck. He wondered whether Stan would shoot his own horse. If he could get out of the clearing, they’d have to chase him—

He heard three shots, loud and close. The stallion whinnied and jumped and reared up. Miller grabbed at the reins and tried to hang on, but his feet slid out of the stirrups and—

He fell, landing on his right shoulder. He heard as much as felt his collarbone crack. When he tried to sit up, a highway of fire flew down his arm and across his chest. He knew he should run, but instead slipped onto his left side and cradled his right arm in his left. Stan grabbed the horse. Amadullah walked over to Miller and grabbed his right arm and tugged. The pain was so intense that Miller couldn’t even scream. He must have passed out for a few seconds, because when he opened his eyes Amadullah and Stan stood in front of him. Miller felt the blood trickling down his skull and getting caught in his hair, and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe 2Pac wasn’t the best role model. Considering he got gunned down when he was twenty-five. Miller smirked.

Stan knelt down and looked at Miller. Miller raised his head to make eye contact, an effort that sent a shiver of agony through Miller’s arm. “I’m only going to ask you one more time. If I think you’re not telling the truth, I’m going to let Amadullah do what he likes with you. Did John Wells ever call you, e-mail you, anything?”

“No. I swear.”

Stan looked at him with those cold blue eyes and finally nodded. Miller bit his tongue so he wouldn’t beg, and Stan put his pistol under Miller’s chin. Miller closed his eyes and tried to pray again, for real this time. But it was no good. He couldn’t remember the words, Arabic wasn’t his language and had never been, and he’d never been the churchy type anyway. All he could think of was Biggie Smalls, Tupac Amaru Shakur’s Brooklyn twin, standing onstage, a microphone to his mouth, singing, Biggie Biggie Biggie, can’t you see—

And Stan squeezed the trigger.

19

The soldiers formed neat lines on the airfield, a camouflage rectangle of men and women fifty wide, forty deep. About two thousand soldiers in all, half the brigade. Wells looked them over from a makeshift wooden stage, as Colonel Sean Brown, the base commander, stepped to the podium.

“Soldiers of the 7th Strykers, I have the pleasure of introducing John Wells. I’m sure all of you remember how he stopped the attack on Times Square a few years back. Took a bullet doing it. What you may not know is that Mr. Wells spent years in Afghanistan both before and after September eleventh. He knows the Taliban and al-Qaeda from the inside out. He’s a hero, plain and simple. Join me in giving a Dragon’s roar to Mr. Wells.”

ARRANGING THE SPEECH at FOB Jackson proved easy. The Strykers had turned into the Army’s ugly and unloved stepchild. Their soldiers ranked last on the list for everything, including celebrity visits. Wells wasn’t Carrie Underwood, but he was better than nothing. Colonel Brown was happy to have him.

“Why don’t you come in two days?” Brown said. “We can have dinner and I’ll give you a tactical briefing. You can talk the next afternoon. I’ll make sure the whole base shows, bring in the guys from the outposts, too.”

The night before he arrived, Shafer filled him in on the brigade’s records. “They’re spread pretty thin, across eastern Kandahar and Zabul. They spend a lot of their time playing defense, having to react.”

“You see any specific platoons or companies that I should focus on?”

“One or two, sure.”

Wells waited for more, but Shafer stayed quiet. “Gonna tell me which ones?”

“I’d rather not, not right away. Better for you to give this speech fresh.”

“What if the company’s on patrol when I get there, doesn’t even hear what I’m saying?”

“Let’s try it my way first. I have a feeling about this. Let them come to you.”

“And a speech is going to make them do that?”

“If it’s the right speech.”

The next afternoon, Wells rolled out of Kandahar with a platoon Colonel Brown sent to pick him up. At the base, Brown waited. He had a ropy neck and a strong handshake. He led Wells to the brigade’s Combat Operations Center, a house-size wooden building surrounded by satellite dishes and filled with high-res flat-screen monitors. His office had four laptops and three corkboards covered with maps and Excel spreadsheets and letters to and from the Pentagon. Even without fighting the Taliban, running a brigade was a full-time job.

“Looks like you have a lot of downtime.”

“You should have seen it before we got organized. Coffee?” Brown had an expensive coffeemaker on his desk, well away from the laptops. “My wife sent me this thing and I’ve finally learned how to use it.”

Wells nodded, and Brown poured them two cups. “You came a long way to see us.”

“Hadn’t been here in a while. I missed it.”

“And has it changed?”

“I think I have. Maybe I’m just older.”

“I don’t think any of us thought this war would last this long.”

“Except the Taliban.”

“True enough. You enjoy your first Stryker ride?”

“I guess you get used to not having windows after a while.”

“Not everybody. I suspect the next generation, if there is a next generation, will have that V-shaped hull that you see on the new trucks, the Cougars and the Gators. Turns out that’s a pretty good way to keep guys alive.”

“How’s morale?”

“I assume we’re just talking. This isn’t going into a report.”

Wells nodded.

“It’s been a long tour and the guys are ready for it to be over. In just the last two months, we’ve had three guys evaced to Landstuhl for mental health problems. Lot of home-life stress. At least a hundred divorces.”

“Are you in line with other brigades?”

“Little bit worse. This tour hasn’t been great for my career. No way around the fact that these vehicles we ride in are not ideal. Compared to a Humvee, you can argue for them. Okay, they’re not as maneuverable, but they’re better armored and they carry a whole squad. But the debate isn’t Stryker versus Humvee anymore. It’s Stryker versus MRAP. MRAPs have as much armor as the Stryker and the safer hull design. And they’re more maneuverable than Strykers, too. And cheaper. So all the Stryker really gives us is the chance to put a whole squad in a single vehicle, instead of two or three. Which is nice when we come out under fire. But mostly we don’t.”

“And the guys know it.”

“Doesn’t take long to figure out. So that’s bad for morale. And they hear about the Marines fighting in Helmand and the airborne getting busy in western Kandahar and they know that we’ve been stuck off to the side driving Highway 1. That said, I believe we’ve done a solid job here, given the constraints. We’ve kept the highway clean. We’ve found tons of caches. We’ve supported the ANA and ANP.” The Afghan Army and police. “Have we degraded the Taliban directly as much as I’d like? No, but we’ve been directed to keep civilian casualties to a minimum and that hurts our ability to engage. We leave the high-value targets to SF, and those guys operate independently.”

“How many confirmed kills does the brigade have?”

“About a hundred fifty since we arrived.”

Wells controlled his surprise. This brigade, which had five thousand soldiers and occupied vital territory, had killed only a hundred and fifty enemy fighters in nine months?

“What about our casualties?”

“Forty-eight American KIA. About a hundred thirty wounded who needed evac out of theater. Some have come back, fortunately.”

They talked for a while about the tactical situation, and then Wells casually asked about drug use in the brigade.

“I hope I don’t come across as naive, but I don’t think there’s much of it,” Brown said. “I do worry about the ANA. Walk through the Afghan tents on base, you’ll smell hash and pot. Nothing we can do. Those guys have their own command-and-control and I’d catch all kinds of crap from my higher-ups if I tried to interfere. No doubt some of my guys have picked up bad habits from the Afghans. But mostly these are solid kids. And the ones going outside the wire, they know it’s bad for readiness.”

“So you’ve never heard about any kind of large-scale smuggling? Opium or heroin?”

“No.” Brown frowned. “Have you?”

“Not really. Just that a soldier on the plane over mentioned it. And, of course, this province is one big poppy farm.” Wells didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t see an alternative.

Brown looked at his watch. “Hate to pass on dinner but I have an eight p.m. pretargeting meeting and I have to talk to my XO.”

“So overall what do you think of our chances, Colonel?”

“Not touching that, Mr. Wells. Not with a ten-foot pole. I may have gotten stuck commanding the maxivan brigade, but I’m still hoping for a star.” He nodded at the door. “One of my sergeants will find you a rack.”

Wells saluted. “Good to meet you, Colonel. Can I ask you one favor?”

“What’s that?”

“You won’t interrupt me tomorrow when I start to roll.”

“Will it be that bad?”

“Nothing your guys don’t already know.”

Brown considered. “Let’s do it. Long as you don’t tell anybody to shoot me.”

NOW WELLS STOOD on the podium as the soldiers on the airfield cheered. But their applause fell off fast. No doubt they were expecting Wells to mouth the usual clichés. Good. He’d surprise them.

“Thank you, Colonel, for those kind words. You made me sound a lot more heroic than I am.” Pause. “What the colonel didn’t tell you is that it was the New York City police who shot me back in Times Square.” Polite laughter. “Anyway, I want to thank you all for being here. Now, probably I should give the talk you’re expecting. Tell you how you’re all heroes, everyone back home is grateful to you. Throw in a bunch of clichés about how you’re building a new Asscrackistan.” A murmur went through the crowd as Wells offered the forbidden word.

“But you deserve more than that. You deserve the truth. So first let’s talk about the Taliban. We tell folks back home they’re brutal, uneducated, hate women, they won’t let kids go to school. And that’s true. They’re bad guys. But then we say the Taliban oppressed the Afghan people and we’ve set them free. We are saving Afghanistan from the Talibs. And you know the reality is trickier. You know that around here, most people support the insurgents, or at least don’t oppose them.”

“Bull,” a soldier near the front yelled.

Brown stepped forward and waved his hands sideways like an umpire calling a runner safe. “This man’s come a long way to talk to us. Let’s show some respect.”

“I’m not saying that’s true everywhere. Not in Kabul, at least among the educated people who don’t want to get whipped for watching television. But plenty of these Pashtuns, they’ll happily raise that white Taliban flag. If we hadn’t invaded after September eleven, the Taliban would have taken complete control of this country. They had the Northern Alliance pinned practically back to Tajikistan. And you can believe me on that, because I was here. And if we left tomorrow, the Taliban would take over around here pretty damn quick.”

“So what do we do?” the soldier yelled. “Pull out, let them have their way?”

“I can promise you that won’t happen. The powers that be have decided that Afghanistan is too important to be left to the Afghans. I guess we could come in here with a Vietnam-size force, a half million guys, and own the place. But that’s not happening either. We don’t have the money or the stomach for that war. So we’ve got limited options. Believe it or not, I think the plan the four-stars have come up with isn’t too bad.”

“Can you explain it, then?” somebody yelled from the safety of the middle of the crowd. “Because I don’t get it.” A few soldiers laughed. Wells was glad to see them loosen up.

“Put a bunch of guys into Helmand and Kandahar to kill any Talib dumb enough to come at us. Push their midlevel commanders into the mountains, so the SF can pick them off with minimum civilian casualties. Use drones to get after the high-level guys in Pakistan, make them negotiate with us. And I mean negotiate, not surrender, because they aren’t surrendering. Basically get them to see that they can’t have the whole country, so they might as well join up with the government and get what they can.”

“What about destroying them?” the soldier yelled.

“Destroying them isn’t going to happen. Let me tell you something. You should be proud of the fact that you’ve put these guys on their heels even a little bit. The Russians couldn’t, and they had way more men. Now I want to talk about what’s going on back home. Ninety percent of Americans can’t find Afghanistan on a map. They think about you twice a year, Veterans Day and Memorial Day. You see it when you’re on leave. You go to a bar, guys buy you a round, ask about what you’re doing. But if you tell them, their eyes glaze over. It’s too far away, confusing. Plus, they’re ashamed to hear about it because they’re getting drunk in college, mommy and daddy paying the bills, and you’re putting your butts on the line for them every day. They don’t want to think about it. They just want to buy you a beer and tell you you’re a hero.”

“Amen!” somebody yelled.

“And let me tell you, it sounds cheap when they say it, but they’re right. You are heroes. You didn’t come here on your own. Nobody in this brigade said, ‘It’s time to invade Afghanistan.’ You didn’t hold a bake sale and charter a C-17. Presidents from both parties have signed off on this mission. Whatever is right or wrong about what we’re doing here is on them. Not you. You’re doing what your country has asked. And I know you’ll keep doing it. You’ll fight because you gave your word and you don’t break promises. You’ll fight to make the lives of the people here a tiny bit better. And you’ll fight for each other. The folks back home will keep sleeping, and you’ll keep fighting.”

“Hoo-ah!” someone cheered. The chant spread through the crowd, melding, until two thousand voices shouted as one: “Hoo-ah! Hoo-ah!”

Wells looked out at them. For the first time, he understood the lure of politics. He had connected with these soldiers. Roused them. For a moment, he felt a thousand feet tall. And he came to the hidden point of the speech, the reason he was here.

“Hoo-ah. Yes. But there’s one more thing to say. I know you care about your fellow soldiers. I see it. I heard it just now, when you brought your voices together.”

Another cheer.

“But not every soldier is worthy of the name. Some guys don’t respect the uniform. I’m speaking from experience here. Once I was one of you. Before I was in the agency, I was a Ranger. And I feel duty-bound to say this to you. If you see guys crossing the line, dishonoring your service, you have to stand up to them.”

The crowd, so enthusiastic a few seconds before, turned sullen. No matter. He pushed on, hoping someone on the field understood what he was saying.

“I’m not talking about crying to your sergeant because somebody steals your flip-flops in the shower. I’m talking about the guys who are taking out their frustrations by shooting locals, smuggling drugs. If you’re going to be safe outside the wire, you have to be able to trust the soldiers in your unit. Soldiers who behave that way are soldiers you can’t trust.”

Wells looked over the airfield, hoping for nods, signs of life. But his sermonizing had taken the air out of the crowd. He’d taken his shot and he’d have to see whether anything came of it.

“Anyway. That’s what I’ve got. I wish I could sing, or play the guitar. Do something to put a smile on your faces. But believe me, you don’t want to hear me sing. If anybody wants to hear about how I got myself shot by New York City’s finest, or anything else for that matter, come on over to the trailer where I’m staying and I’ll tell you. I might even have some beer over there, the non-nonalcoholic kind. First come, first served.” Wells looked at Brown. “The colonel’s just going to have to pretend he didn’t hear that.”

A cheer roared through the crowd. The secret weapon. Shafer had packed four cases of beer in bubble wrap and overnighted it to Wells at Kandahar.

Brown took the microphone back. “I didn’t hear a thing,” he said. “I can tell you one thing, John. Nobody’s ever given a speech like that to this brigade before. Let’s give Mr. Wells a big round of applause.” And they did.

WHEN WELLS GOT BACK to his barracks, a dozen guys were waiting. “Here’s what we’ll do,” he said. “I’ve got two cases of Bud and two of Bud Light for those of you watching your girlish figures. There’s some ice cream and Cokes, too, from the DFAC. I’m just going to bring them out for everyone to share. I ask you to keep the beers to one per person, ’cause there’re so many folks who’d like one.”

The beer didn’t last long, but somebody set up an iPod and a pair of speakers. Guys, and a few women, hung around and chatted and pretended they were anywhere but FOB Jackson. Nobody mentioned what Wells had said near the end of the speech. After about ninety minutes, the crowd thinned. As a morale raiser, the speech had worked pretty well. As a backdoor approach to an informant, it was looking like a bust. Wells would have to get potential targets from Shafer and go at them directly.

Then a guy Wells hadn’t seen before walked up. He was black and stocky. The sun had disappeared behind thick clouds, but he wore a floppy hat low on his head. He had the triple chevrons of a sergeant. His name tag read “Young.”

“Sergeant. I’m afraid we’re all out of beer.”

The guy leaned in. “I was thinking about what you said back during your speech.” The words slid out the side of his mouth, a low mumble. “About bad guys. Almost sounded like you had something in mind. Like a particular situation.”

“That’s a possibility.”

“I’d like to talk to you in private, Mr. Wells.”

20

For two days, Tyler Weston and Nicholas Rodriguez had stared at Ellis Shafer. Their headshots were pinned to a corkboard in his office. Shafer had tried to amuse himself by drawing a handlebar mustache on Rodriguez and giving Weston a thought bubble that read “I love the smell of poppies in the morning.” Still, their two-dimensional lips smirked at him.

Assuming Coleman Young was telling Wells the truth, Rodriguez and Weston were drug traffickers and killers. Wells believed Young. And if Wells believed him, then so did Shafer.

But he couldn’t find the link. Weston and Rodriguez weren’t connected with anyone at the CIA, in the United States or Afghanistan. According to their personnel records, neither man had been to Kabul on this tour. Their platoon was based hundreds of miles from the Afghan capital.

Shafer did notice that Weston’s platoon had split from the rest of Bravo Company early in its tour. In theory, it provided extra protection for supply convoys on Highway 1. In reality, the trucks ran once or twice a week. On other days, the platoon was given scut jobs like guarding detainees. Basically, the unit operated on its own. As long as Weston’s guys did the work no one else wanted, his commanders wouldn’t bother him. Even Fowler’s death — which should have raised red flags because of Weston’s decision to send just seven men to investigate a potential enemy position — rated only a three-page after-action memo. Weston and Rodriguez couldn’t have asked for a better setup.

The personnel files for 3rd Platoon showed that Weston came from central Florida, near Orlando. He’d played second-string quarterback in high school and gotten good grades. He’d joined up after serving in the ROTC program at the University of Florida. In other words, he was indistinguishable from most junior officers, except for his family’s surprising criminal history. His father had served eleven months for insurance fraud in a minimum-security prison near Tallahassee. And his brother Jake had also been arrested as a juvenile. The court records were sealed, but the case had taken months to process, and the family had brought in a prominent defense lawyer to represent Jake. Nobody did that for a vandalism misdemeanor. Tyler Weston had seen more criminal behavior growing up than the average Army first lieutenant.

Rodriguez had his own problems. His file showed two arrests for gang fights. His criminal record should have disqualified him for military service. But he’d enlisted when the Iraq war was at its worst and the Army was missing its recruiting quotas. He scored in the ninety-third percentile on the intelligence test for new soldiers and was granted a waiver.

The only hint of a connection between Weston or Rodriguez and the agency was the fact that two case officers had gone to the University of Florida at the same time as Weston. But the U of F had forty thousand students. Shafer saw no evidence that the three had met one another. Plus the officers worked at Langley and had never been to Kabul. When Shafer surprised them with visits to their offices, both denied knowing Weston. He believed them.

Other potential trails also petered out. Bank records for Weston and Rodriguez showed no evidence of large deposits. Maybe they were buying gold with their drug profits, or hiding it in safe-deposit boxes. Most likely they hadn’t brought it back from Afghanistan yet. Cell records were another dead end. Neither man had used his American phone since arriving in Afghanistan. Their military e-mail accounts revealed only official communications, nothing personal. They were careful, and someone even more careful was helping them.

Shafer had also checked out Kevin Roman, the third guy Young accused of being involved. But Roman’s bank and e-mail records were as clean as the other two. Young had told Wells that Roman wasn’t much more than a lookout. Shafer believed him. His IQ was thirty points below Rodriguez’s and Weston’s, according to the Army’s tests. He was taking orders, not giving them.

Wells wanted to go at Weston and Rodriguez directly. But Young had blocked him. He was worried what might happen outside the wire. You talk to them after you figure out who the Delta dude is, he’d told Wells. Not before. Young had also said that no one could talk to people who knew Weston and Rodriguez back home. Doing so would risk tipping them off. So Shafer was stuck looking for clues in the electronic world.

Wells and Young were missing something else, too, maybe the most important piece. Motive. Shafer wanted to understand the why along with the who and how. Money was a possibility, of course. But money rarely told the whole story.

SHAFER’S PHONE TRILLED. Not a number he wanted to see, but he picked up anyway.

“Vinny. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“So John’s at a forward base, I hear.”

“FOB Jackson, yes.”

“And made a speech there.”

“Why are you pretending to be surprised by this?”

“I’ve had a complaint. About the speech. Reg told CENTCOM that Wells was encouraging insubordination.” Gregory “Reg” Nuton was the two-star general who commanded the tens of thousands of soldiers who occupied Kandahar and Zabul.

“He didn’t encourage anything. He talked about the war. At the end he made a coded plea to anyone who might know about the trafficking.” Shafer didn’t plan to tell Duto that Coleman Young had come forward. Not yet.

“He gave out alcohol.”

“He had a couple cases of beer.”

Duto laughed, an unexpected sound. “All right. I did my duty. Some three-star at the Pentagon called to moan about this and I promised I’d make sure I’d make it clear the behavior was unacceptable. And now I have. Like we don’t have better things to do. Like a war to fight. From the way they’re whining, you would think that Wells showed up with a tanker truck of vodka and called for a mutiny.”

“No one ever got stars on his collar by taking chances.”

“That said, Wells is going to have to leave the base. Nuton is insisting.”

“He can’t. Not yet.”

“I’ll buy you a couple days, but — are you close, Ellis?”

“Not sure. You leave in a week, right?”

“Six days.”

“Can you push it back?”

“Congressmen don’t like it when you mess with their schedules on short notice. Not without a good excuse. Which I don’t have. No, I’m going.”

Pride made men strange, Shafer thought. Duto was willing to put himself and his congressional paymasters at risk, simply to avoid admitting a problem. “Your call. But there’s something you should understand.”

“Do tell.”

“Whoever this guy is, he’s smart. And he’s gone to a lot of trouble to stay unfindable. I just have a feeling that it’s not about the drugs for him, or even about destroying our networks. I think he has something bigger in mind.”

“Spit it out, Ellis.”

“You going over there, it could be his chance. I’m not saying don’t go, but—”

“Ellis. You don’t like me, true?”

“I can’t see the percentage in answering that question.”

“You can say it. We’re grown-ups, and I know it anyway.”

“Not particularly.”

“But have you ever known me to be a coward?”

Shafer didn’t need to answer. Duto was arrogant, power-hungry, and vain. But no one had ever accused him of being afraid, not physically anyway. As a case officer in Colombia, he’d been captured by leftist rebels, held for two months. In the pre-al-Qaeda days, the jungle rats were the agency’s worst nightmare. When a Special Forces team finally hit the camp and pulled him out, Duto had lost twenty-eight pounds and two teeth.

Normally, after that kind of ordeal, officers went to Langley for at least a year of recovery. Many never went back to the field. Duto? He took his wife and kids to Barbados for two weeks, stayed at a five-star hotel on the agency’s dime. Then he went back to Bogotá. A year later, he was station chief.

“I’m going. I’m counting on you and your boy to sort this out before I get there. If not, maybe the congressman and the senator and their aides will get a more honest view of the war than they bargained for.” Duto hung up. For the first time in a long while, Shafer felt something like respect for the man.

SHAFER HAD BARELY CRADLED the phone before it rang again.

“Ellis?” The voice belonged to Jennifer Exley, once Shafer’s deputy. A blue-eyed tornado, irrepressible and good-hearted and a brilliant analyst. She and Wells had nearly gotten married. Shafer supposed he’d loved her, too, in his own way. Though he’d never given his feelings the slightest space for fear they’d explode into the open and destroy his marriage. She was the steadiest member of their troika. But she’d quit years ago, after nearly dying in a botched assassination attempt on Wells. Now she was in exile. When they’d last talked, a few months before, she’d claimed to be at peace with the world. Raising her kids and getting on with her life. Shafer wasn’t so sure. Being on the inside, knowing the world’s secrets, left an itch that civilian life could never really scratch. Maybe Exley was different, but Shafer didn’t think so.

“Jennifer.”

“Ellis. How are you?”

“My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.” Shafer winked at the photos of Weston and Rodriguez. They didn’t wink back.

“Lies both ways.”

“Not like I believe in human perfectibility or anything, but do we have to make the same mistakes over and over?”

“I believe we do.” She laughed her deep, throaty laugh. “And speaking of making the same mistakes, how’s John?”

Oh, my. Just as Shafer had never entirely believed that Exley was through with spying, he’d never been certain that she and John wouldn’t get back together. They had connected with an almost electric force.

“In Afghanistan.”

“In the mountains?”

“Believe it or not, he’s at a base of ours. Though not necessarily safer.”

“Is he okay?”

“He’s John. He went to see his son a few weeks ago and it didn’t work out and he was disappointed.”

“I’m glad he went. Anyway. He needed to.”

“How are yours?”

“David’s looking at colleges. He applies next fall.”

The last time Shafer had seen Exley’s son, he’d been playing thirteen-and-under youth soccer.

“We’re all getting old. He have anywhere in mind?”

“Dartmouth, believe it or not.”

“John can give him the tour.”

“They want him to play soccer. Though he’s thinking about UVA, too, and I have to admit I wouldn’t mind that.”

“You’d save a few bucks.”

“There’s that. Plus it’d be two hours to see him instead of ten.”

“No doubt he views that as a disadvantage.”

“But I don’t think he’d get to play soccer at Virginia. They recruit from all over the world.”

“Be good for him. Teach him that disappointment starts early and never stops.”

“Life lessons from Ellis Shafer.”

“Not playing soccer would give him more time to get laid.”

“You’re talking about my little boy.”

“I’ll bet if you check out his Facebook page, his Twitter feed, you’ll find plenty of evidence he’s all grown up.”

“Precisely why I’ve resisted the urge so far.”

And then Shafer realized he might have another way to find the connection between Weston and Rodriguez and the SF officer. He would need them to be a little bit gullible, and a little bit horny — but then, they’d been in Afghanistan for ten months. The horniness wouldn’t be a problem.

“Jenny. I have to go.”

“Something come up?”

Shafer could hear her disappointment. No doubt she’d love to know what he was working on, but she was too much of a pro to ask. “You could say that.”

“Knock ’em dead. Literally.”

“Come on by sometime for a cup of that famous Langley coffee.”

“Tell John to be safe, okay?”

“You want to tell him that, tell him yourself.” Though Shafer wasn’t sure that he wanted her to follow through. Sometimes the past was best left undisturbed.

“Bye, Ellis.”

He hung up, got to work.

21

In rural Afghanistan, AK-47s were as cheap and easy to find as cell phones. The Pashtun family that didn’t own at least one rifle was poor indeed. American soldiers quietly tolerated the weapons. They’d learned the hard way that confiscating them caused unnecessary trouble.

But they treated Dragunov sniper rifles very differently. Dragunovs were costly and rare, and soldiers would detain anyone caught with one as an insurgent. Even Amadullah Thuwani didn’t have one. He ordered his clansmen to find one, and after two days a half nephew came back with a never-used Dragunov, still in its crate. The price was two thousand dollars. Amadullah grumbled and paid. He had no choice. He had to have it. Though not for himself.

SINCE PICKING UP the surface-to-air missiles, Amadullah had stayed in Afghanistan. He was living now with his half brother Hamid in a village in Zabul so small it didn’t appear on maps. He’d trimmed his beard and taken off his Rolex, trying to stay anonymous. Still, he kept the cell phone Stan had given him. He knew he was taking a risk. The Americans could track the phone when it was on, and for all Amadullah knew, when it was off, too. But after seeing Stan kill Daood, Amadullah had decided to trust him. His lies, his venom, were aimed at other Americans. Why else had he killed Daood and given Amadullah these SA-24s? Amadullah had even brought his bomb-making cousin from Muslim Bagh to look over the missiles. They were real. Amadullah thought now that the drugs had been an excuse, a way for the CIA man to reach him.

Three days after their meeting, Stan called and asked him to buy the Dragunov. “And what shall I do with this?”

“Bring it to Kharjoy on Saturday. At noon. On Highway 1. Park at the petrol station by the bazaar.”

“I know where Kharjoy is.”

“Of course. Someone will meet you.”

“How will I know him?”

“He’ll know you.”

“An American?”

But Stan was gone.

Amadullah had understood the Soviets. They were kaffirs and unbelievers, brutal men. In the early years of their invasion, when they still believed that they could win with sheer force, they had bombed whole villages into dust. They had killed two of Amadullah’s brothers. Even now Amadullah hated the single star of the Red Army. But he’d understood what they wanted. They wanted the Afghans on one knee, serving the Kremlin. They had come from the north over the Amu Darya River and tried to break the Afghans. But Amadullah and his people had broken them instead. The Russians were hard, but the Afghans were harder. All the Soviet jets and tanks weren’t enough. Finally they turned tail and went home.

The Americans were different. They had come here to rid themselves of Osama bin Laden and the Arabs. Amadullah didn’t blame them. After all, the Arabs had attacked them in their own country. And the Arabs were troublemakers. Amadullah didn’t like them. The rich ones looked down on the Pashtuns. The poor ones made a competition of prayers, as if Allah cared how many verses of the Quran they knew. None of them respected these mountains.

So the Americans came and broke up the camps where the Arabs trained. They had even killed bin Laden. They’d taken a long time, but they’d killed him. But still they hadn’t left. Their soldiers were everywhere. Even the birds couldn’t escape their helicopters and their big white balloons filled with cameras that watched the whole world.

The Americans said they were friends. Maybe they believed their own words. They hired men by the thousand to dig ditches and clean fields. Their officers met village elders each week to drink tea and talk about building canals and schools. At first, Amadullah thought that the meetings were a trap and the Americans would arrest anyone who came to their bases. But no. The safe-conduct privilege was real. The Americans wanted to hear what the elders had to say. They didn’t rape and murder like the Russians either. Amadullah knew of a boy who had fallen down a well and broken his legs and arms. His brothers dragged him out and carried him to an American base near Kandahar City. The doctor there helped him, put him in a cast and gave him medicine. The boy’s brothers had been Talibs. But the doctor hadn’t cared.

So Amadullah couldn’t hate the Americans as he hated the Russians. Maybe they were telling the truth when they said they didn’t want to rule Afghanistan. Even so, he and his men would fight them as long as they stayed. They didn’t belong in his country any more than he belonged in America. No matter how hard they tried to prove they meant well, their very presence stirred up trouble. On patrols, they gave candy to children and made them disrespect their fathers. They brought Tajiks and Hazaras down to the Pashtun lands and gave them rifles and told them they were soldiers. Even worse, they caused problems between men and women. The Americans talked about giving rights to women, but the truth was the opposite. The women wanted the Americans gone most of all. They wanted to know why their husbands and fathers couldn’t stop soldiers from coming into their houses and looking at them, disrespecting them, humiliating them.

If the Americans would just leave, then Amadullah and the other Pashtuns would make sure that al-Qaeda never came back to Afghanistan. Amadullah himself would slit the Arabs’ throats. He had fought his whole life. He wanted a few years of peace, a few years of living in a country that wasn’t just a battlefield for outsiders. But the Americans didn’t trust the Pashtuns to do that work. They didn’t understand. And so every day, more Americans died. Amadullah had no sympathy for them, no pity. He’d kill as many as he could. But still he couldn’t help but feel that the war was a waste.

Now he’d run across this strange CIA man. Amadullah thought the man must be mad, that something had happened to twist his reason. He supposed that one day he’d learn what. The mountains exposed every secret.

AMADULLAH DIDN’T WANT to carry the Dragunov in his Ford. The Americans and Afghans sometimes put roadblocks on Highway 1. He stowed the crate in the back of Hamid’s old Nissan pickup and covered it with sacks of bricks and told Jaji to follow him in the Nissan. Jaji ran his hands through his thick black Pashtun hair and looked vaguely sulky at the order but didn’t dare disagree. In any case, the roadblocks were off that morning. They reached Kharjoy at eleven a.m. A cold rain had fallen the night before, but the swift autumn wind had moved the clouds away and left the sky bright and blue.

They parked near the petrol station and walked through the bazaar, stepping over the mud puddles the storm had left. Merchants and their boys sat under plastic tarpaulins outside one-room stores. They sold potatoes and pomegranates and flour, plus chips and batteries and brightly colored candy from China. These days they also had music and movies. Some merchants had gone back to selling pornography, too. During the Taliban’s time, a merchant caught selling regular movies was supposed to get twenty-five lashes. One selling the sex videos could get a hundred. Of course, plenty of the Talibs liked pornos. They would watch the DVDs they took from the merchants.

At the edge of the bazaar, Amadullah bought himself a Coke. As he did a patrol of American soldiers walked past. “Good morning,” a soldier said. He was young, like all of them, and broad in the shoulders and wearing the sunglasses that they favored and the heavy armored vest. A child who hoped that hiding his eyes would make him a man. He walked with a loose, proud gait, as if he believed he belonged here. Just as Stan had named Kharjoy for the meeting and then told Amadullah it was on Highway 1. As if Amadullah hadn’t lived here his whole life. As if he didn’t know every village and all the chiefs within a hundred miles.

Amadullah hated the soldier and felt a strange shame, too. Living in Pakistan had kept him safe. But it had also let him avert his eyes from these American boots everywhere on his soil. Go. Leave my land. The soldiers turned a corner and Amadullah poured the Coke into the muddy soil and threw away the can.

Just past noon, a Toyota pickup with heavily tinted windows parked at the edge of the muddy lot. A man stepped out. He had light brown skin and wore a gray shalwar kameez and sandals. He looked like a northerner, though he didn’t have the almond-shaped eyes of many Tajiks. “Good day,” he said.

His Pashtun wasn’t as good as the other American’s. And he stood too tall, like the soldiers on the patrol. Not like the other American. John Wells, the CIA man had called him. That one carried himself with his pride hidden away and so he had fooled Amadullah.

“Good day.”

“I understand you have something for me.”

“Not here.” Amadullah nodded at the convoy parked a few hundred meters away.

“I know a place three or four kilos away. Protected. Safe.”

Amadullah nodded. The man went back to his Toyota. For the second time, Amadullah was opening himself to capture. But then, if the Americans had wanted to take him, they could have already.

A kilometer down, the American turned off Highway 1 and onto a dirt road bordered on both sides by mud walls covered with grapevines. Amadullah and Jaji followed. After ten minutes, they reached an abandoned cluster of farmhouses, a minivillage that had seen heavy fighting. Bomb craters pocked the earth. Bullet holes scarred the walls. The American parked in the shadow of a two-story farmhouse. Amadullah pulled alongside. The American stepped out and nodded for Amadullah to follow. Amadullah didn’t. He reached under the passenger seat for the pistol hidden there.

The American walked over to his window. “Where is it?”

“What’s your name?”

“Shadow,” the man said.

Enough American arrogance. “Your true name.”

The man’s eyes shifted to the Makarov in the passenger seat. “Frank.”

Amadullah still thought he was lying, but Frank would have to do. He led Frank to the pickup, shoved aside the sacks of bricks. Jaji found a pry bar and popped open the Dragunov’s crate to reveal a hard-sided plastic case.

Inside, a sniper’s tool kit: the rifle, four ten-round magazines, an eight-power scope, a cleaning rod in three pieces, a cleaning kit, and pouches to hold it all. Plus a bayonet and a knife for close-in work. Unlike some of his nephews, Amadullah wasn’t a fanatic about weapons. As far as he was concerned, AKs worked fine. Still, the Dragunov was impressive. The center of its stock was cut out to save weight, and it had a long, low profile, with a skinny muzzle. It looked light and lethal.

Frank popped open the Dragunov’s bolt, pulled a tiny penlight from his pocket, and shone it down the barrel. The grooves etched inside nearly glowed.

“Chrome,” Frank said. “Very cool.” He closed the bolt, snapped on the scope, hefted the rifle to his shoulder, cocked his head, put his eye to the sight. “Nice and easy. Not a beast like the.50.” Frank was more relaxed now that he had the Dragunov in his hands, Amadullah saw. The Taliban had men like this, too, men who loved weapons. Usually they didn’t care much for people.

“Have you fired one before?”

“Once or twice. So you’re Amadullah Thuwani.”

“You know my name.”

“Of course. There’s a bounty on your head. Fifty thousand dollars.” Frank put down the Dragunov, snapped off the scope, as if to say, Don’t worry. I won’t try to collect.

“Only fifty thousand.”

“If you want a higher price, you need to do more than nail a patrol or two.”

“Now that your friend Stan has given me the missiles, perhaps I will.”

“The missiles?”

So you don’t know, Amadullah thought. He shouldn’t have spoken. Stan had kept the secret from his own side. Now Amadullah wondered whether he could turn the mistake to his advantage by telling Frank more. He might have found a cheap way to stir up trouble. Yes. “I give you a Dragunov, he gives me SA-24s. A good trade, I think.”

“SA-24s. Russian SAMs.”

Amadullah nodded.

“What’s your target?”

Amadullah decided he’d said enough. He couldn’t be sure what Frank would do if he found out that the other American wanted to kill the head of the CIA. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but do you know the man called Omar al-Douzani?”

“The leader of the Douzani tribe.”

“He lives in Pakistan. South Waziristan. And travels in convoys, armored trucks. Sometimes with Pakistani military escorts. Your friend Stan told me that with these missiles I could destroy him from five kilometers away. Ten. And then our business can expand.”

“Stan gave you the missiles to use against Douzani?”

Sometimes the Americans needed everything said straight out. “Yes.”

“And where does the heroin come in?”

“The powder opened the connection, gave us trust in each other. When Douzani is gone, his family will break. He has no sons anymore, only cousins and nephews.”

“They’ll all fight to control his tribe.”

“Yes. When that happens, some will come to me for help. I’ll choose which one to support, or maybe I’ll sit back and let them fight. Either way, I’ll feast on them. By the time the Douzanis are done with their war, you’ll need a truck for all the powder I can sell you.”

As Amadullah spoke, he found himself believing his own story, the surest sign that Frank would believe him, too. It wasn’t even a lie, just a version of the truth that Allah hadn’t yet called into being. Frank stepped back and folded his arms. The Americans couldn’t hide their emotions. Amadullah could almost see what Frank was thinking: Stan should have told me. He trusts this Pashtun, this Talib, more than me. Good. Let Stan and Frank try to untangle their own lies. While they wrestled, Amadullah would decide what to do with the missiles.

Amadullah leaned his bulky body over, picked up the Dragunov. “You still haven’t told me why you need it.”

“I may have to clean up a mess.” Frank smiled, and Amadullah saw the anger in him, the real and true cruelty.

“This makes a good broom.”

FRANCESCA WATCHED the Afghans drive off and stowed the crate in the secret compartment welded to the bottom of his pickup. At Highway 1 he turned left, southeast toward Kandahar. Calibrate and recalibrate, snipers learned. Check and double-check before you pull that trigger. You have every advantage until you shoot, so take your time. Now Francesca laid his hands on the wheel and tried to calibrate what Amadullah had told him.

On the surface, everything made sense. Stan wanted to use Amadullah to assassinate other Talib leaders, ones the CIA couldn’t find. The drug trafficking had been a way to reach Amadullah and convince him that he could trust Stan. But the more he considered the story, the less Francesca believed it.

If Stan had planned to turn Amadullah all along, why go to such great lengths to hide the trafficking from his own bosses and everyone else at Kabul station? Why not just get someone senior at Langley to sign a finding for the project and use the Ground Branch, the agency’s paramilitary arm, to handle the pickups?

The SA-24s also bothered Francesca. The Russians knew they couldn’t build helicopters that could match American designs, so they’d spent a lot of time developing surface-to-air missiles as a cheap countermeasure. The SA-24 was their top-of-the-line rocket, as good as or better than anything the United States had. By all accounts, it could make mincemeat of Chinooks. Probably Black Hawks and Apaches, too. In all his years fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Francesca had never seen one. Yet Stan had somehow delivered two to Amadullah. Using them to attack a ground convoy, even one with armored vehicles, seemed a major waste. An RPG or basic antitank missile would be much more effective at much lower cost.

Of course, Stan might have other reasons for going to the trouble of delivering the SA-24s. He might have imagined that the SA-24s would impress Amadullah.

Or… Amadullah could be lying. The missiles — assuming they existed at all — could be meant for another target. One that flew on helicopters or jets that were vulnerable only to the most sophisticated missiles. An American target.

Francesca wondered whether to call Stan, confront him, demand an answer. Then he thought of the Dragunov in the secret compartment. Let Stan and Amadullah play whatever game they wanted. Francesca had his own game. He was already thinking about how he might use the Dragunov on Coleman Young or John Wells. Maybe when he was done, he’d give Stan a taste of the rifle, too. Make him a hero the easy way, with one trigger pull. He could see the headlines: High-Level CIA Officer Shot to Death in Kabul… Taliban Claim Responsibility.

No, Francesca would keep his mouth shut, wait for the right moment to find out what Stan was doing. Check and double-check. Calibrate and recalibrate. At that moment, Francesca understood more than ever why he loved being a Shadow. The trigger pull was the only true moment in the whole damn war. Everything else was a lie.

22

As soon as he hung up with Exley, Shafer started the process of putting together a Facebook profile for “Mindy Calhoun.” Mindy lived in Tempe, Arizona. She was twenty and a business major at Maricopa Community College. Her interests included the Green Bay Packers, Shia LaBoeuf, Kim Kardashian, and “Hot men in uniform! American only!”

Mindy’s profile had a half dozen photos, each naughtier than the next, though none pornographic enough to attract the attention of Facebook’s censuring software. The photos came from Corbis, though with a little help from the Directorate of Science and Technology, Shafer had tweaked them. Anyone who tried to find the originals through the image-recognition engines on the Internet would come up empty.

Mindy had a heart-shaped tattoo on her wrist and a blue mermaid for a tramp stamp. She looked ready for a few years as a Bud poster girl followed by a long career at Hooters. Within minutes of her creation, she had more than a hundred Facebook friends, mostly bots like her who lived in the CIA’s servers. That number was enough to make her credible to the soldiers whom Shafer wanted to friend. He picked guys from the South whose profiles showed no connections with Arizona. None of the facts on Mindy’s page were checkable except for her enrollment at Maricopa. Anyone who called the college would have found out that she didn’t exist. But as Shafer had expected, soldiers weren’t interested in running background checks. Forty-two accepted Mindy’s friend request within twelve hours. Several sent back messages that would have made Shafer blush if he were the blushing type. A couple guys were dumb enough to send pictures, too. Shafer wondered whether he’d been this horny when he was eighteen. Probably. And he hadn’t even been coping with the extra surge of testosterone that came with fighting a war.

After a day, Mindy had enough real soldiers as friends to make her profile believable even to someone who might have reason to be cautious, someone like Tyler Weston. So Shafer reached out to Weston. Yr super-cute, he wrote. And coming home soon… That’s awesome! A few hours later, Weston friended her: Me and my boys love college girls. Got more pics?

And so Shafer had the chance to examine Weston’s roster of 332 friends, including Rodriguez — though not Roman. He worked through them, trying to find the Special Forces officer whom Young had described to Wells. He came up with three candidates on his first pass. But upon closer inspection, none of the three looked right. The first had rotated home a month earlier. The second operated mainly in the mountain provinces east of Kabul, not in southern Afghanistan. The third, a Ranger lieutenant named Allan Rose, operated out of Kandahar, but he had an airtight alibi. He’d been on a mission in Kandahar province on the night Young had seen the suspect at FOB Jackson.

Shafer expanded his search, friending Rodriguez and Roman. But he came up short there, too. Then inspiration struck. He turned to Jake Weston, Tyler’s older brother. Your bro’s hot but yr even hotter…. I luv bad boys….

Ninety minutes later, Mindy and Jake were friends, at least by Facebook’s definition. And on Jake’s page, Shafer found D. Lorenzo, who had only two photos in his publicly available profile. The first showed him from the side, wearing a white T-shirt and a floppy hat. The hat hid Lorenzo’s face, but not the oversize ace of spades tattoo on his equally oversize bicep. The ace was a favorite of Delta ops. Under “location,” Lorenzo had posted Kandahar. Under “works at”: I could tell you… but I’d have to kill you. Seriously. The second photo showed a single round, long and copper-tipped. A.50 caliber bullet. A sniper’s bullet.

Shafer searched public and military records and couldn’t find Lorenzo. He wondered whether the name was an alias. Then he remembered that soldiers who wanted to protect their privacy while still giving friends a way to find them often used middle names instead of last on Facebook. Bingo. Within ten minutes, Shafer had him. Daniel Lorenzo Francesca. He’d joined the Army fourteen years before and grown up a half mile from Tyler and Jake Weston. Before Afghanistan, he’d been based at Fort Bragg, the home of the Deltas. Now his personnel file listed his status as deployed/unavailable, the Army’s usual euphemism for a soldier on Special Operations duty.

Shafer called Wells, who was back at Kandahar. Technically, General Nuton had banned Wells from every base he controlled, including KAF. But the airfield was so big that as long as Wells stayed away from Nuton’s headquarters, the general couldn’t know he was there.

“I have good news, John.”

“David Miller.”

“Better. I found the middleman. Name’s Daniel Lorenzo Francesca. He was a sniper in Iraq, Special Ops, and he joined Delta about five years ago.”

“Sniper.”

“He might have killed more guys than you.”

“Unlikely.”

“Jealous, John? He’s finishing his second tour in Afghanistan. Looks like he’s based at KAF.”

“You have a photo?”

“I’m working on it.” For obvious reasons, the Special Forces kept the names and faces of their operatives secret. The Deltas were doubly cautious. “I’ll get one from the North Carolina DMV. I’d rather not tip him yet.”

“He may already know. I’m looking for him.”

“Fair point.” The mole had probably warned Francesca after Wells showed up in Kabul. “Even if he knows we’re looking, let’s not let him know he’s been found. Anyway, his file’s strange.”

“Define strange.”

“As in, he seems to have gotten special language training. A few years ago, he went to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey for six months to learn Pashtun.”

“So?”

“So that’s unusual. JSOC usually views these guys as too valuable to pull them from the field that way. Plus I can’t figure out which Delta unit he’s part of. After Monterey, his assignment is listed as Delta/D71, no company or squad.”

“D71.”

“Correct.”

“You’re sure he’s our guy? You’re putting a lot on this Facebook connection.”

“Sure is too strong. But he’s the best candidate.”

“Get me the photo and I’ll see what Coleman says.”

“I’ll do better than that. I’ll get you six guys and you can run a lineup.”

“Good. And let’s say Coleman recognizes this guy. What then? I go talk to him? Ask him about his heroin trafficking? Because I have a feeling that’s not going to do it. And I don’t think CID or the Deltas are going to want to hear about it either.”

“I have a plan.”

“Do tell.”

“Three steps. The first at Kandahar, the second here, and the third at FOB Jackson.” Shafer explained.

“I don’t like it,” Wells said when he was finished. “It feels like tying a goat to a tree and waiting for the lion to show up.”

“Except the goat’s got a gun.”

“So’s the lion.”

“You have another way, I’m listening. But the hour’s getting short, John. Duto leaves in less than a week. Anyway, it’s Young’s call, not yours, right?”

“All right. I’ll ask him. Meantime you’ll send me what I need?”

“I’ll FedEx it tonight to the KBR office at KAF. Project manager there named Alan Sussman owes me a favor.” The breadth of Shafer’s connections always surprised Wells. But then Shafer had been in the game a very long time.

“Sussman.”

“Yeah. He’ll hold it for you, and that way it doesn’t have your name on it, just in case somebody’s looking for you. Meantime I’m going to see if I can trace Francesca up the chain, figure out who in Kabul he might know.”

“Facebook again.”

“I wish. But based on everything we’ve seen, our mole’s more careful than that. And speaking of careful. Watch out for this guy, okay?”

“Don’t worry about me, Ellis.” Wells sounded almost personally offended at the suggestion that this Delta operative might pose a challenge to him.

“I’m just saying—”

“I know what you’re saying. I’ve never liked snipers. Takes a special kind of nasty.”

23

Besides its brigade aid station, FOB Jackson had a combat stress clinic where a psychiatrist and a social worker talked to soldiers. Guys mostly came voluntarily, though sometimes commanders ordered them in. As Colonel Brown had told Wells, troubles at home were the biggest source of strain. Nearly every base had a Morale, Welfare, and Recreation center offering free Internet access. Many guys e-mailed their wives and families every day. But the constant contact didn’t always help. Deployment didn’t change relationships. Soldiers who’d had strong marriages in the United States had strong marriages in Afghanistan. For others, being in touch was more curse than blessing. Guys fought with their wives about child care, or freaked out after seeing pictures on Facebook of their girlfriends hanging out with other men. Military shrinks called the problems MWR syndrome.

The stress clinic at FOB Jackson was a simple one-story plywood building topped with sandbags and protected by a twelve-foot blast wall. Soldiers who didn’t want to be seen going in the main entrance could sneak through a gap in the rear wall that opened to a motor pool parking lot. Wells took that route, jogging up three wooden steps to an unlocked door. Inside, he found himself in the clinic’s break room, which held a coffeemaker and a shelf of paperback books and pamphlets about alcoholism, drug abuse, and family violence. An old-fashioned office clock ticked slowly, and vaguely depressing motivational posters covered the walls: “Fear Is Nothing to Fear,” “Six Ways to De-stress Yourself.”

“Hello?”

But no one answered. The clinic had officially closed for lunch at noon, a half hour before. Wells walked to the first door on the left, stepped inside. The room was windowless, six by six. Young sat on a plastic chair, leafing through a pamphlet with a light blue cover: “Signs Your Drinking May Be Getting the Better of You.”

“Coleman.”

“Mr. Wells, sir.”

“Call me John. Please.”

“I’m more comfortable using your last name.”

Wells had gotten that answer from enlisted men before. “Your choice. Sorry I’m late.”

“No problem, sir. Catching up on my reading.”

“Worried about your drinking?”

“No, sir. I don't drink. Been thinking what I ought to do when my contract’s up and I’m wondering about social work. Dealing with Oak Cliff kids like me. I’d have to get my B.A. first.”

“You’re not going to re-up.”

Young shrugged as if the question didn’t merit an answer.

“You been okay the last few days? No problems with Weston or Rodriguez?”

Another shrug.

“For what it’s worth I’m guessing you’d make a good social worker, Coleman.”

“How’s that?”

“You listen more than you talk. Probably the key to success.”

“In social work.”

“And life in general.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wells laid six pieces of paper on the desk, each with a headshot from the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles. Six men stared up, their lips curled into forced smiles. I’ve wasted a half day renewing my license already. Get me out of here. “Recognize anybody?”

“It’s one of these men, sir?”

“That’s for you to answer. Take your time. Even if you’re sure right away.”

Young examined the shots one by one. Methodical and cautious. Wells looked away. He didn’t want to tip Young. Finally, Young nodded and picked up Francesca’s picture. “This guy.”

“Definitely?”

“Yes. First I wasn’t sure, but them big elephant ears gave it away.” For the first time since Wells had met him, Young smiled. “He thinks he’s some bad, too. I can see it even in this.” Young tapped the DMV photograph. “Staring at the camera like he’s got better places to be. Tell me I’m wrong.”

“You’re not. His name’s Daniel Lorenzo Francesca. He’s buddies with Tyler Weston’s older brother, guy named Jake. He’s a warrant officer based at KAF. A bug-eater.” Regular soldiers called Special Forces operators bug-eaters, because their training supposedly included ways to survive on a diet of worms.

“A Delta?”

“Yes and no.”

“What’s that mean?”

“He’s part of a separate unit inside Delta. Called D71. Ever heard of it?”

Young shook his head. “What’s that about?”

“He’s gotten special language training, that’s about all I can tell you. Speaks Pashtun. One more thing I have to tell you. He was a sniper in Iraq before he joined Delta.”

Young wasn’t smiling anymore. “So he’s a sniper. Tier One. Speaks the language. And he’s got some mysterious job that even the CIA can’t figure.”

“That’s about right.”

“Sir. Question. What part of this is supposed to make me feel good?”

“I guess the fact that we found him.”

“So now what? You grab him?”

“Did you ever see him carrying drugs? Or even Weston or Rodriguez?”

“You know the answer’s no.”

“Hear him talking about the deal? Or what happened to Ricky Fowler? Or anything illegal at all.”

“The closest I got to this guy was maybe a hundred feet. I never heard anything. Maybe if I had ears like him.” Young shook his head. “Don’t tell me you can’t do this. You’re not some MP, sir. You’re CIA.”

“Even the CIA can’t grab a Delta operator for no reason.”

“You believe me? About the drugs and what happened to Fowler and everything?”

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Mr. Wells, sir. You run the guy down and sneak back here and bring me these pictures and I say it’s true, it’s really him. Then you say you can’t do anything about it. What is that?”

“I didn’t say I can’t do anything about it. There’s a way. But it puts you on the line. Because this guy will go after you for sure when we pull his chain. From the minute I go back to Kandahar, you have to figure that you’re at risk every time you go outside the wire. Maybe inside, too.”

“Tell me.”

Wells explained. When he was finished, Young picked up Francesca’s headshot, stared at it as if it might confess. “Boxed me, didn’t you? Know I can’t say no after that speech I made. Why it pays to keep your mouth shut.”

“You can always say no.”

Young ripped the headshot, straight down the middle, tearing Francesca’s face in two. “Let’s get him.”

BACK AT KANDAHAR, Wells picked up the FedEx package that Shafer had sent and then left the KBR compound, walking south along the busy two-lane road to the base’s main gate. Trucks churned by as he dialed a number he’d burned into his brain the year before.

Two rings, then: “Brett Gaffan.”

“You answer that way, it makes you sound like a telemarketer. ‘This is Brett Gaffan, have I got a deal for you.’”

“What have I done to deserve this honor, John?”

Gaffan was a former Delta operator who had recently worked with Wells on a mission that had started messy and ended messier. He had saved Wells’s life on a hill in the Bekaa Valley. Despite that fact, or maybe because of it, they’d hardly spoken since the end of the mission. Just a couple vague promises to get together. Civilians didn’t understand this side of the military. Men risked their lives for one another and then walked away with hardly a backward glance once the fighting was done. Combat was combat and life was life. The two didn’t always have much in common.

“Long time no speak,” Gaffan said.

“Sorry about that.”

“Sure you are. So come on, out with it.”

“Out with what?”

“You’re calling me from a blocked number, not your own phone. And it sounds like you’re at a truck stop somewhere. Lots of diesel engines. And it’s like seven a.m. here. You must be out of the country, probably on a base, probably Middle East.”

“Afghanistan.”

“I know you want something, so let’s avoid the awkwardness and get to it.”

“Am I that obvious?”

“As a matter of fact.”

Wells could hardly deny his ulterior motives. “You still keep close to your old buddies?”

“Some. Why?”

“Anybody in Kandahar you really trust?”

Gaffan hesitated. “One guy, sure. A master sergeant, Russell Stout. We haven’t talked in a month or so, but I’m pretty sure he’s still there. Good guy. By the book. No-nonsense.”

Meaning that he wouldn’t necessarily be buying whatever Wells was selling. “Noted. Can I talk to him, use your name? I’m looking for an op who I think is based here.”

“Want to tell me why?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Isn’t it always? At least give me his name. I might even know him.”

“Daniel Francesca. Sniper.”

“Nope.”

“He got into Delta about when you left. He looks like a bad guy. I just want help getting a look at him.”

“Really. That’s all you want.”

Wells imagined Gaffan holding the phone away from his ear, deciding whether to toss it across the room. Oops. We got disconnected. And then my phone stopped working. Sorry I couldn’t help.

Wells stayed quiet and eventually Gaffan coughed into the phone, an almost embarrassed cough. An I-can’t-believe-I’m-letting-you-use-me-yet-again cough. They both knew he would say yes, defer to Wells’s judgment. Gaffan was a very good operator, but he wasn’t a leader.

“I’ll ask him. But if he’s not comfortable—”

“I get it.”

“I assume you’d rather meet him off base.”

“On KAF should be fine. We’ll find somewhere out of sight. This place is, like, five square miles.”

“You have a funny way of treating your friends, John.”

“Better than my enemies.”

“True that. When you get back, you owe me a beer, and this time I’m collecting.”

“Done.”

FOUR HOURS LATER, Wells sat on the steps of an abandoned trailer at the southwestern edge of the airfield. With the surge done, Kandahar was already shrinking. This part of the base was mostly empty. The dirt fields around Wells were littered with trailers, pipes, barbed wire, earthmoving equipment, and a hundred other bits of slowly rusting steel. The United States military had brought this equipment at unfathomable expense a year or two before. Much of it had never been used. Now it was turning into salvage.

Wells saw headlights approaching and stood and waved. A Jeep pulled up, and he stepped in. The driver was wiry and lean and deeply tanned. He was in his early thirties, but his close-cropped gray hair made him look older. Wells pulled the door shut and they rolled slowly west, toward the wire.

“Sergeant Stout?”

“Call me Russ. You know this is the first time I’ve ever seen this part of KAF?”

“Not much reason to go over here.”

“I guess not. So what’s up?”

No-nonsense, Gaffan had said. Wells decided not to dance around the question. “You know a warrant officer named Daniel Francesca?”

“Sure. Danny. Odd guy. In 71.”

“You don’t mind my asking, what is 71?”

Stout turned right, north along the perimeter road. He looked at Wells: Why do you want to know?

“I have reason to believe Francesca’s dirty.”

Stout shook his head. Not enough.

“That he and a senior CIA officer are working with a Talib commander to export heroin. Funding the insurgency and passing operational information to the commander.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I came a long way to make this up.”

They rode for a while in silence. “What kind of evidence you got?”

“It’s circumstantial, but it’s solid. A couple weeks ago, he was seen on another base with a soldier and officer who we think are the pickup team. We’ve checked and he had no reason to be there.”

“That’s not enough.”

“I agree. I’m not planning to do anything. Just asking questions.”

“We created 71 maybe four years ago. D for Detachment. Detachment 71, two-man teams that can operate outside the wire on their own. There’re only three here, three at Bagram, maybe one down in Helmand.”

“So they can pass as local.”

“That’s the idea. Local enough that they can get down Highway 1 and through the villages without getting stopped or jacked anyway. Danny and his spotter, guy named Alders, they’re good.”

“I didn’t know you guys ever went out under NOC in teams that small.”

“Not before this. It’s kind of a pilot project, and there’re only a few guys who can do it anyway. You have to have the language down.”

Something about what Stout had said bugged Wells. He wasn’t sure why. He moved on.

“What about Francesca? You said he’s odd.”

“You know snipers. How can that not get to you? Plus he’s on his third tour. He and Alders call themselves the Shadow Patrol. It’s sort of a joke, but sort of not, you understand. And he has this weird high-pitched giggle that comes out sometimes, not necessarily when anybody’s made a joke. Like he’s a hyena or something.” Stout demonstrated.

“I can see why you wouldn’t want him babysitting.”

“Definitely not.”

“These 71 teams live in your barracks?”

“Yeah. You know where we are?”

Wells shook his head.

“This high-sec compound close to the main airfield terminal. Called Bengal. On the maps it’s just listed as extra officers’ housing, but if you walk by you’ll see fifteen-foot walls, barbed wire, lots of aerials. We even have a helipad inside, although we can’t use it except if we declare CMS.”

“CMS?”

“Critical Mission Status, like we think we can catch Mullah Omar but we have to go immediately. Otherwise the Air Force controllers hate any air traffic south of the runway. For regular missions we go from the helo ramps on the north side like everybody else. Anyway, the 71 teams almost never go out by helicopter. They have local vehicles and they wear local clothes outside the wire. True black ops. When they’re at Bengal, they hang out a little bit, eat with us and work out sometimes, but mostly they stick to themselves and practice speaking Pashtun.”

“And you have different missions anyway.”

“Right. You know what we do. Go out in traditional teams, mostly on modified Black Hawks that can refuel in the air. On my first tour, seven years ago, we rode in GMVs.” The GMVs were the Special Forces equivalent of Humvees, modified with smoke-spouting canisters and.50 caliber rifles on top. To save weight, they had lighter armor, sometimes no armor at all.

“Dune buggies.”

“Maximum speed and firepower. Those were fun. Too bad we can’t use ’em now, but a big IED will just vaporize them. So mainly we go airborne, these night raids. But the 71s, they just take their pickup trucks, drive off base, and disappear. Sometimes they support us, sit on an exfil route for a house or villa we’re targeting, pick off stragglers once we get them moving. But mostly they just go their own way, do whatever it is they’ve been tasked for, come back a few days later needing a shower and a hot meal.”

Stout turned right and headed east along the northern edge of the base. To the north, a blimp hung eerily in the night sky. Its cameras watched the mountain where insurgents tried to set up rockets to fire at KAF. Wells wondered what the Afghans — most of whom had never seen a plane that wasn’t a threat to bomb them — made of the blimps.

“I’m guessing they don’t keep their vehicles inside your compound.”

“Heck, no. They mostly enter and leave at night. We’ve got a side entrance that dumps guys into the back of a DFAC. In case somebody’s keeping an eye on the front gate. You know, going outside the wire the way they do, no armor and soft-skinned vehicles, they’d be dead in an hour if they got made.”

Stout had just given Wells the break that he needed. “They use local weapons?”

“From what I can see, generally no. They like the.50 for the range. Their pickups have a hidden compartment welded underneath the bed for their rifles, their uniforms, whatever else they’re using.”

“They carry American uniforms?” Wells didn’t understand, and then he did. “If they get to the point where someone is checking that closely, their covers won’t hold anyway.”

“Correct. They’re not trying to live in a village for months or anything. Not looking to infiltrate AQ like you did back in the day. Just get scalps and go.”

Francesca was in an ideal position to move the drugs, Wells saw. He could move freely on both sides of the wire. Wells wondered why he didn’t pick the stuff up himself instead of depending on Weston and Rodriguez. But snipers preferred to keep their distance from the enemy. Francesca might figure he and his spotter wouldn’t be safe in a face-to-face meet.

Stout reached the eastern edge of the airfield, made another right turn and bumped south, toward the center of the base.

“One last question and then I have a favor. I know you don’t know him that well, but does Francesca strike you as the kind of guy who could do this?”

Stout was silent for so long that Wells thought he didn’t plan to answer. Then he laughed, a short, sharp bark. “I’m not sure what kind of guys any of us are anymore. What’s your favor?”

“I need to see where Francesca parks his pickup.”

“You said you weren’t planning to do anything.”

“I’m not. Not unless he gives me reason.”

Stout went quiet again. Then he pulled the pickup to the side of the road. A Humvee behind honked and flashed its brights and he waved it by. “You want me to hang one of my own out. Detachment 71, it makes no difference, the guy’s Delta. On no evidence, no photos, no SIGINT, nothing. Gaffan asked me to talk to you and I’ve known him a long time, so here I am. But I got to tell you that inside the community, a lot of guys don’t like you. The whole Muslim thing, it’s just weird.”

Wells felt his temper rise. “Ask me what you want, but don’t question my faith.”

“Guess what I’m asking you is, which one, John? Which faith? Islam or America? The way you quit the agency, went to work for the Saudis.”

The ones who don’t know me, is this how they see me? Even now? Wells had thought he put these questions to rest on his very first mission after coming home, when he’d stopped the Times Square bombing. And maybe he had for a while. But the way Duto used him in the Midnight House mission, and then the way he’d quit and gone solo afterward, had obviously started the whispers again. Wells felt a lowing in his stomach. Even among these men, he was an outsider.

Wells could have explained everything. But Stout hadn’t earned the right to ask. “Gaffan’s friends with both of us. He’ll tell you who I am. I’ve been straight with you, every word. If I’m right about Francesca, he’s gonna go after the sergeant who made him. I promised that guy I’d protect him and I’m gonna keep my word. As for Francesca, I’m telling you I won’t lay a finger on him unless I’m sure. My word’s not enough, then we’re done talking. I’ll find another way.”

Stout exhaled, long and deep, like a truck releasing its air brakes. Wells didn’t say another word. Neither did Stout. Didn’t tip his hand. Just put the Jeep in gear and rolled south, toward the heart of the airfield.