The Shadow Patrol

24

Colonel Gary Cunningham commanded the unit officially known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment — Delta. He was only a full bird, but plenty of generals would have given their stars to have his job. His conversation with Shafer went three minutes, two minutes longer than Shafer expected.

“Colonel.”

“Mr. Shafer.”

“Thanks for taking the time to talk.”

“Always happy to improve agency-military cooperation.” Cunningham spoke with the light lilt of south Virginia. He’d been born in Roanoke.

“Glad to hear. I know you’re busy, so let me get to it. I have a request for you.”

“Request away.”

“I’d like your files on a warrant officer named Daniel Lorenzo Francesca.”

“How do you know he’s one of ours?”

“Please, Colonel. You’re not denying it, are you?” Shafer made a finger pistol and pulled the trigger, pow-pow. In truth, he enjoyed making these kinds of messes.

“I’m neither admitting nor denying. I’m asking you how you know.”

“His jacket indicates he’s a Delta op.” The jacket was the section of Francesca’s personnel file that would be archived and made publicly available after his retirement. It included the basic facts of his service: deployments, dates of promotion, awards. Shafer was asking for the full file, including disciplinary record, aptitude tests, and notes from commanders. The permanent record, in the words of a 1950s high school principal.

“I’m not going to give you access to my personnel files. And for the record, I am still neither confirming nor denying that this man is one of mine.”

“You have a funny definition of agency-military cooperation, Colonel.”

Silence. Shafer pushed on.

“I understand he’s in a pilot project, two-man sniper teams. Official name is Detachment 71.”

“We’re going in circles here, Mr. Shafer. I just told you I will not confirm or deny anything about Mr. Francesca. Might as well ask me to pull my pants down and cough for you. As for that project”—and Cunningham’s voice turned into a sneer—“maybe you should talk to your boss about it.”

In his anger, Cunningham had answered a question that Shafer hadn’t thought to ask. “Fair enough, Colonel. I’ll do that.”

“And now you need to tell me why you’re asking about my officer.”

“All I can say is that I’m conducting an investigation and his name came up. I’d like his record. Since you’ve declined, I’d ask you at least to do me the courtesy of not informing him that we’ve spoken.” A request that ensured Cunningham’s next call would go directly to Kandahar.

“What kind of investigation?”

“The criminal kind.”

“With due respect, Mr. Shafer, you are on very thin ice. If you have evidence that one of my men has broken the law, you’d best tell me about it so I can open an Article 32 if necessary. I wouldn’t want you to interfere with the military justice system. That’s a crime. And if you don’t have hard evidence, if this is a fishing expedition, I will make you pay. You come clean on this now and maybe I won’t call OSD”—the Office of the Secretary of Defense—“and turn it into a real tornado.”

“Anyone who knows me will tell you I love tornadoes, sir.”

“Do you now.”

“And wicked witches and cowardly lions, too.”

“Well, then, Dorothy, why don’t you—” Cunningham ended the conversation with an anatomically impossible suggestion and slammed down the phone.

“Pleasure talking to you, too, Colonel.”

THE EASY PART WAS DONE. Now Shafer faced a trickier conversation. He took the internal stairs to the seventh floor. He was huffing when he arrived at Duto’s windowless anteroom. He sat heavily among the whispering praetorian guard, wishing he had a magazine. Something transgressive, a Hustler, maybe. Or, even better, Mother Jones. No one spoke to him, but after a half hour a secretary nodded him in.

Shafer found Duto with the phone to his ear. He wore a lightweight blue suit that was cut to emphasize his chest, and a shirt so white that it nearly glowed. Again Shafer marveled at how far Duto had come. Maybe Wells was right. Maybe Duto was thinking White House. Though he had no ideology, as far as Shafer could tell. Like Nixon, Duto wanted power strictly for its own sake. To reward friends and punish enemies.

Shafer sat in the leather chairs nearest Duto’s desk. A briefing book sat on the polished wood and Shafer reached for it. Duto slapped at his hand.

“I’m as excited as you are, Chairman.” Duto wheeled his index finger, the universal sign for get on with it. “Yes. Seeing the place in person is the only way to understand it. And we’ll make sure you meet lots of Afghans.” A long pause. “Goes without saying that your safety is our paramount concern…. Of course… Of course… Great.”

He hung up.

“Senator Travers. He wants to see the real Afghanistan. And also he wants a zero-risk trip.”

“A safari of sorts.”

“And equally authentic. We leave in three days, Ellis. Hour’s getting short. You and the boy wonder close?”

“We’ve found the soldier in charge of running the trafficking.”

“And I care because?”

“Because he’s the one guy who knows the mole’s real name. He’s a Delta named Daniel Francesca.” Shafer watched Duto for signs of recognition, didn’t see it. “And also because Colonel Cunningham, the Delta commander, is going to call you screaming from Fort Bragg in about fifteen minutes. Probably the E-Ring, too.”

“You been making friends again, Ellis.”

“Ever heard of Detachment 71?”

Duto smiled. For real. An uncommon sight. Duto pretended to smile a lot, but usually his eyes didn’t follow his lips.

“You’re kidding me. Francesca’s in 71?”

Shafer nodded.

“Where’s he based?”

“Kandahar. Tell me about 71, Vinny.”

“I suspect you already know, but 71 started four years ago. Technically it’s still a pilot project. The Pentagon wanted true black ops capability, so JSOC created two-man sniper teams that can operate outside the wire for medium-term missions, anywhere from forty-eight hours to two weeks. They received extra language training, six months of immersion at Monterey. They wear local clothes, drive local vehicles, carry local IDs. No uniforms, no official or unofficial connection to us. Complete deniability.”

“Nonofficial cover is our job.”

“They aren’t intelligence officers. They handle military missions where standard infiltration by helicopter or convoy is impossible. Sit on top of ratlines. Or let’s say we have intel that a Talib commander may visit a village in the next seven days, but nothing more specific. A 71 team could set up outside the village and wait for him.”

“So what’s it a pilot for? Infiltrating Iran? Pakistan? You can’t have liked this, Vinny. Giving the military even more power.”

“I expressed my concerns, that’s true. Explained that this kind of covert action capability had to be managed closely.”

“I’ll bet. Lo and behold, you send me and John out to find a mole. Lo and behold, we stumble onto a program you hate. Fool me once.”

“I know where you’re going but you’re wrong.” Two years before, Duto had asked Wells and Shafer to investigate the murders of a team of CIA operatives. He hadn’t told them he hoped their investigation would help him rid himself of a rival.

Shafer walked around Duto’s desk and stood by the triple-glassed, bulletproofed, sound-dampened window that offered unobstructed views to the Potomac. Langley had once been on the very edge of the federal sprawl. But the government had grown and grown. Bits of the military-intelligence complex were all around them. The turf wars and lies had grown, too. Shafer looked over his shoulder. “You love a marked deck, don’t you, Vinny? Won’t play without one.”

Duto lifted his hands, like a man with nothing to hide. Like a politician. “Truth, Ellis. I had no idea what you and John would find. Or that this guy was involved. Dumping 71 would be nice, sure, but the whole program is maybe fifteen guys in all. And for now it’s only running in Afghanistan. This is about the mole, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Funny thing is, you might be telling the truth. But you lie for sheer sport, Vinny. Even when I want to believe you, I have a tough time.”

“Can we step back here? Start by telling me why you think Francesca is the right guy. Last we spoke, Wells found something at Daood Maktani’s house in Dubai. Then he went to that base to give a speech. Did you find Maktani? Did he give you Francesca?”

“No. Maktani, David Miller, whatever you want to call him, he’s gone. Nothing from him in weeks. I have a bad feeling about it. I see dead people. Most likely Amadullah took care of him.”

Duto didn’t even pretend to care about Daood Maktani’s fate. “Okay, so he didn’t give you Francesca. Where’d it come from, then?”

“So Wells gave the speech at FOB Jackson.”

“I know that part.”

“Right. Afterward, a sergeant down there went to Wells, told him guys in his platoon were involved in big-time trafficking. Also that he’d seen an SF operative meeting them and he was sure the op was picking up the drugs.”

“You didn’t tell me this.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“This soldier narced on his buddies? That seems like a long shot.”

“Yes and no. Wells and I worked the speech so that anybody who knew about the dealing would sense we were reaching out. We figured somebody had to know. We just needed him to be pissed off to raise his hand. Talking to Wells, it’s not like calling CID. Anyway, that’s what we figured, and it worked.”

“That’s why it was so important that Wells stay in RC South?”

“Correct. So then I tracked down Francesca, connected him to the Stryker soldiers. And earlier today Wells went back to FOB Jackson and got a positive identification from the soldier.”

“But you’ve got no hard evidence.”

“No. Circumstantial only. But why would a Delta hang out with a couple random Strykers?”

Duto nodded. “And you see Francesca as your best bet to find the mole. Not Amadullah?”

“Amadullah’s gone. His phones are dark. When we ran satellites over the compound, we found the women are there but most of the men are gone.”

“So the mole is rolling up his network. Wells came over, got him nervous. Now he’s shutting down.”

“Looks that way. Plus I’m not sure that Thuwani knows who the mole is. The mole’s always used Daood as a cutout. Which leaves Francesca.” Shafer hesitated. “But something else is bothering me. I still can’t figure what this is about. What the mole wants.”

“Motive is overrated.”

More proof that power was the only principle Duto understood. Because he had no ideology, he assumed no one else did either. “Motive is everything.”

“It’s simple. Our guy saw a chance to make some money doing business with the Taliban. He’s greedy.”

Shafer rattled his head back and forth. “You know Kabul station better than that. Tribal leaders don’t take checks.” The CIA sent cases of hundreds and twenties to Afghanistan every month, money that got handed out to friendly locals in return for receipts that were smudged thumbprints. Audits were impossible. A corrupt case officer could simply invent sources and pocket the cash he was supposedly paying out.

“There are other ways to steal, sure.”

“Then why go to this much trouble? It’s like he wanted to build a relationship with the Thuwanis and used the drugs as a way in. But I don’t know why.”

“Francesca can tell us.”

“Let’s hope. I’m looking to connect him with Kabul station, but so far I’ve come up dry. I suspect whoever’s working with him is a childhood friend, or high school. Something not in the records.”

“And you don’t have the evidence to challenge Francesca directly.”

“No. And like you said, we’re getting short on time. We have to yank his chain, make him come out and play.”

“So you called down to Fort Bragg, baited the colonel.”

“Correct.”

“I assume John’s ready on the other end.”

“John’s always ready.”

25

Posters of kittens and puppies covered the walls of the trailer that Francesca and Alders shared. Francesca had bought the first one six months before at an online store that offered free delivery to all military post offices. Two tiny cats tugging on a bright yellow thread of yarn. Across the top, sky blue letters proclaimed, “Playtime.” He hung it over his bunk when Alders was at the gym.

“Seriously,” Alders said when he got back.

“Seriously.”

“Playtime.”

“Playtime.”

Alders didn’t say anything else. So Francesca bought more. He avoided anything ironic, like the poster that proclaimed in heavy black type, “Kitten thinks of nothing but murder all day.” Just cats and dogs running through meadows, splashing in pools. One for every kill. His reward to himself for a job well-done. If anyone had asked, Francesca would have insisted the posters were a joke, and they were. But they were something else, too, a way to remember that the world did have happiness even if he could no longer feel it.

Now he lay on his cot, hands clasped behind his head, looking at his favorite poster, a tiny Chihuahua with absurdly big ears. Her head was tilted as if she’d just heard her name and couldn’t decide whether to answer. Francesca called her Holly. Sometimes he imagined that when he got home he’d go to a shelter and get a real Holly. But he knew what would happen if he did. He’d play with her, buy her treats. But one night she’d pee on the floor, or he’d get tired of her yapping. He’d tell her to stop and she wouldn’t. Then he’d pick her up and snap her neck and toss her in the trash. Killing humans didn’t bother him. Why would killing dogs? He supposed he could live with a perfectly trained husky or shepherd, an animal that answered to him and him alone and never barked except in warning and never disobeyed or begged for food. But a dog like that would basically be a robot. He didn’t want a robot dog. So he was left with the posters.

He and Alders were due to ride out at two a.m., deep into the Arghandab River Valley, which stretched northeast from Kandahar City into Zabul province. For most of its length, the valley ran roughly parallel to Highway 1, which was about twenty miles to the south. The apparent proximity was deceptive. A rugged ridge of hills and low mountains split the valley from the highway, with only a handful of dirt tracks offering passage. In reality, the central Arghandab was as deeply isolated as anywhere in Afghanistan.

Over the last couple months, a Talib cell had planted five huge IEDs in the valley. Three had been found and disarmed. Two hadn’t. The most recent was the biggest yet, four hundred and twenty pounds of explosive from surplus Russian artillery shells. It had blasted through a Gator armored truck and killed everyone inside, four soldiers and a reporter and photographer from the Times of London. Strips from the truck’s armor were found fifty yards down the road. The reporter seemed to have been sitting directly over the bomb. He couldn’t be found at all.

The Talib cell planting the IEDs was clever. The valley was a soft target, because it had two American combat outposts but no major bases. The closest was FOB Jackson, which was on Highway 1 and focused on that road. No big bases meant no blimps and less helicopter and drone surveillance, which made it possible for the cell to dig bigger holes and plant bigger bombs.

Even so, the Army’s EOD squads, its bomb experts, hadn’t understood at first how such big bombs had been planted in the middle of the valley’s main road. Then an informant in Qalat, the capital of Zabul, told a military intelligence officer that the cell was posting spotters on the road miles from the bomb sites. That way they had advance warning of American patrols. And to reduce the odds that a drone might spot them, they created diversions while they planted the bombs. They sent men out to take potshots at American patrols or rocket a combat outpost. Anything to draw attention from the road.

The informant also explained that the leader of the cell wanted to press his luck. He believed that the Americans wouldn’t expect another attack so soon. He hoped to plant another bomb within the next seventy-two hours east of Toray, a part of the road that hadn’t been hit yet.

Under normal circumstances, stopping a single IED-planting cell would be considered a relatively low-value mission and left to local units. But a bomb big enough to blow out a Gator got attention at the regional command level, especially when a reporter was involved. And aerial surveillance had revealed an ideal sniper hole near the road, an abandoned grape hut that had a clear line of sight to the target area the informant had mentioned. So Detachment 71 had been asked to send a squad.

When he heard about the operation, Francesca volunteered. Weston had told him about the speech that Wells gave to the Strykers at FOB Jackson. Francesca didn’t think it was a coincidence. Wells was closing in. Francesca wanted to have the option of taking Young out. Being close to FOB Jackson would give it to him.

The digital clock on Francesca’s bedside table beeped. Nine o’clock. Time to get ready. He reached for his pistol, which hung over his bed next to Holly’s poster. He pulled the pistol’s clip and examined the rounds for dust or scratches, then wiped them down with a chamois cloth. He was about to do the same with his spare clip when a knock interrupted him.

“Francesca? Major wants to see you.”

MAJOR STEVEN PENN commanded the Delta squads at Kandahar. He was a black man, tall and solid and more than happy to be first through the door. His office was all business, not a single family picture, no hint where he’d grown up or had gone to school.

“Sir.” Francesca gave his crispest salute.

“Mr. Francesca.” Warrant officers were addressed as “Mister,” because in the military hierarchy they ranked between commissioned officers and enlisted men. “Sit, please.” Penn nodded at the wooden bench beside his desk. “You ever heard of someone named Ellis Shafer?”

Not the question Francesca expected. Or the name. “No, sir.”

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Seems he’s heard of you. Do you have any idea why the CIA might want to investigate you, Daniel? Any idea at all?”

John Wells. “No, sir.”

“This”—Penn hesitated—“man Ellis Shafer works for the CIA. He had the insolence to ask Colonel Cunningham for your file.”

“Sir. May I ask if he said why?”

“He did not. But it’s no secret that our friends at Langley are not a hundred percent on board with what we’re doing.”

For a crazy half second, Francesca wondered whether Stan had planned this twist all along, to set him up, take down Detachment 71. No. He couldn’t see how that would work, much less how the missiles fit in. No, Young had snitched to Wells and Wells had chased him down. Francesca wasn’t sure how. Didn’t matter. What mattered was that Wells and this Shafer were onto him.

But the Delta commanders didn’t know why. They figured that the CIA was making a play against Detachment 71. So Francesca had caught a break. Penn and Cunningham didn’t know whether he was dirty. And they didn’t want to know. Knowing would make protecting the project harder, and protecting the project was their priority. They were giving him a heads-up, a chance to fix whatever was wrong.

And fix it he would.

“Anything at all you want to tell me, Daniel?”

“No, sir.”

“You still want to go up into the Arghandab? Because I can assign another team.”

“Yes, sir. One hundred percent.”

“Glad to hear it. Dismissed.”

Francesca saluted and stalked back to his trailer and grabbed one of his untraceable spare phones. He left the Delta compound and punched in a Kabul number. Stan picked up on the second ring. “Twenty minutes,” he said.

Francesca didn’t want to go back to the compound and leave again. To pass the time, he walked over to the Boardwalk, the airfield’s equivalent of a town square, a block of shops and restaurants. At the Boardwalk, guys who never got outside the wire could eat Nathan’s hot dogs and KFC and buy leather jackets covered with maps of Afghanistan. Of all the things that Francesca hated — and these days his hatred seemed almost infinite — he hated the Boardwalk and the falsity of the pretend soldiers on it most of all. The Air Force ought to drop a nuke on the place.

Stan called back right on time. “What’s going on?”

“Your friends are asking about me. Called my commander. Said my name came up in an investigation.”

“They say what they had?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“They mention me?”

“No. I need to find the freelancer.” How they’d agreed to refer to Wells. No names on these phones, ever, Stan had said.

“I suspect he’s close to you, but I don’t know. Let me handle this. Sit tight.”

“You said that before. This is out of hand. I’m taking care of it.”

“Give me a chance to find out what they know.”

“I’ll think about it,” Francesca said, knowing he wouldn’t. He hung up. Stan rang again a few seconds later, but Francesca didn’t answer. He had another call to make, this one to FOB Jackson.

WHEN HE GOT BACK to the trailer, Alders was cleaning his weapons. “Heard Penn was looking for you. Anything I need to know about?”

“Later. In the truck.”

They cleaned their weapons and went for a final briefing for the Arghandab mission with the captain who ran 71. If all went as planned, they would reach the grape hut — a tall mud building where Afghan farmers dried grapes into raisins — an hour before sunrise. There they would hide themselves and the truck. The insurgents didn’t have drones or satellites, so vehicles were invisible once they were parked inside.

Drones had made repeated runs in the last forty-eight hours to be sure the grape hut was empty. But the Talibs wouldn’t risk planting an IED if they believed that a drone was nearby, so all surveillance would be pulled once Francesca and Alders got to the hut. In fact, much of the valley would be closed to both helicopters and drones for the next five days, both to encourage the bomb makers to get to work and to reduce the chance of friendly fire.

As the briefing dragged on, Francesca’s attention slid to the other operation he was planning. It would be easier. A turkey shoot, really. First Young. Then, with any luck, Wells, who was likely to come running once he heard that Young had been killed.

So he was risking his life to protect one group of American soldiers while killing another. The irony was perfect. The world was perfect. Francesca bit the inside of his lip to keep from laughing.

JUST BEFORE TWO A.M., Francesca and Alders drove out through Gate 1, on the base’s southern side. Each man wore a brown shalwar kameez and had a short-stock AK tucked behind his seat. As usual, the Barrett was hidden in the compartment under the Toyota, along with their uniforms and night-vision scopes and any other gear that might identify them as American. Tonight the Dragunov was down there, too. Alders carried a GPS that had been specially programmed with the Afghan road network. But the GPS had been hidden inside the casing for a cheap Nokia, a common brand in the Afghan countryside.

They were wearing what Special Operations guys called ballistic underwear, basically heavy-duty fire-resistant boxer briefs. The underwear was useful for snipers, who did a lot of crawling on stony ground. The military was considering giving it to every frontline soldier. Any IED big enough to take off arms and legs could blow off more sensitive areas, too. A little bit of extra protection was good for morale. Of course, any Afghan would know that the briefs weren’t local. But if a Talib got close enough to see his underwear, Francesca figured he’d be dead already. Or wishing he were.

Francesca followed a convoy of supply trucks toward Kandahar City. At Highway 1, the trucks swung west toward the city. Francesca turned right. Suddenly they were alone. Past midnight, the Afghan roads were deserted aside from military convoys. The Talibs had learned the effectiveness of American night-vision equipment and rarely tried ambushes after dark. Ordinary Afghans didn’t own cars and had little reason to risk nighttime travel. They locked themselves in their compounds and waited for the sun to set them free.

As the lights of Kandahar faded to specks in his mirrors, Francesca swung left off Highway 1, north on a narrow track that rose up a gentle hillside. After a few minutes, the Toyota crested a ridge and the Arghandab River Valley stretched out below. In the moonlight, it looked almost beautiful. During the day, the grape fields were brown and drab. Now they were black oceans marked by whispery, bare-branched almond trees. Farther north, the pomegranate groves near the river rose thick and lush. Insurgents launched ambushes from the groves, moving under them in fortified tunnels. But at this hour they were as peaceful as the Garden of Eden. Far past the river, the mountains of central Afghanistan soared, their snowcapped peaks glowing white.

“This land is your land, this land is my land,” Francesca burst out. “From California to the New York — sing it with me now—”

Alders punched him. Hard.

“Not nice. You know, Alders. You’re the only one left I can take.”

“Promise you’ll tell me when you decide I’m as bad as everybody else.”

“Yeah?”

“Give me a chance to get out of range of that Barrett.”

Francesca’s giggle echoed off through the cab of the truck. Even he could hear how crazy he sounded.

“What was Penn talking to you about?” Alders said.

Francesca told him.

“CIA? So we have something to take care of.”

“Thought I’d have to convince you.”

“All this time together, you still don’t know me. You think I didn’t guess where this might go?”

“Good, because I already talked to Weston.” Francesca walked Alders through his plan.

“This going to be today?”

“Think so. He’ll tell me soon as he’s sure.”

“You ready on the Dragunov?”

“A rifle’s a rifle.” Though Francesca wasn’t entirely sure. He’d been able to practice on it only once. The Dragunov fired a high-powered AK 7.62-millimeter round, a smaller bullet than the.50 cal. As a result, the Russian rifle was shorter, lighter, and easier to carry than his own. But it couldn’t match the Barrett’s range. The differences were typical of American and Russian engineering. American weapons designers put a premium on technical excellence while barely considering the practical problems soldiers might face in the field. The Russians built less capable systems that were easier to carry and use. Ultimately, though, Francesca figured that if he could get within five hundred meters, he’d be fine. The Talibs sure killed enough guys with Dragunovs.

AT THE BASE of the valley, Francesca turned right. They drove northeast on the narrow road connecting the villages along the Arghandab River. An IED would obliterate the Toyota, but Francesca wasn’t worried. The insurgents saved their bombs for American vehicles, not random farmers who happened to be foolish enough to be out after dark.

For ninety minutes, neither man spoke. The silence in the truck merged with the silence outside. A valley full of phantoms. The road had no signs, no gas stations, no restaurants to mark their path. For a while, Francesca wouldn’t have believed they were moving at all if not for their progress on the GPS. But finally it beeped. Alders squinted at the tiny screen. “Almost here. Maybe another hundred meters.”

Sure enough, a few seconds later Francesca saw a dirt track hemmed by four-foot-high walls on either side. He turned right. Fifty meters in, he stopped, cut the pickup’s lights. Without a word Alders slipped out and knelt beside the pickup. Thirty seconds later, he slid back into the cab and handed Francesca a night-vision scope. Francesca slid the cylinder over his right eye, leaving his left uncovered.

Through the eyepiece, the world looked green and black and oddly two-dimensional, like a 1950s television. In a world without electricity, night optics offered huge advantages. Soldiers could lock on insurgents who had no chance of finding them. But because the equipment blunted depth perception, most soldiers no longer wore full goggles. They favored scopes that covered one eye while leaving the other exposed. With practice, their brains learned to process the weirdly divergent information coming from each eye and create a complete picture.

Francesca eased off the brake, rolled deeper into the silhouette world ahead. The grape hut was directly ahead, a long, narrow building, maybe fifteen feet high. It had narrow slits for windows, like a medieval fortress. Another hut had once stood nearby, but an explosion had destroyed it years before, nearly leveling it. The first hut had partly survived. Its southern wall had been shattered and was crumbling into the mud. But its north side, which faced the valley road, was intact.

Francesca nosed the pickup through a cut in the wall near the hut. The Toyota’s tires sank into the dirt, but he downshifted and clicked on the four-wheel drive. On the southern side of the hut he found a jagged hole, maybe ten feet wide. “Home sweet home,” he said.

He edged the pickup through the hole into the hut. He cut the engine. Inside the hut, the blackness was absolute. Without his eyepiece, Francesca would have been blind. With it, he saw that the hut held dozens of simple wooden racks. Farmers used them to dry grapes into raisins. The grapes had long since disappeared, leaving the racks, and a faint sweet odor, as the only evidence of the hut’s initial purpose.

Francesca’s feet crunched over metal. He reached down, found brass casings and an 82-millimeter mortar tube. Francesca sniffed the tip of the tube. He didn’t smell gunpowder. The mortar hadn’t been used in years. He tossed it aside.

The back of the Toyota appeared to be filled with junk: old bicycles, foam bedrolls, rusted steel rods and sheets, and a couple of blankets. None of the stuff would have attracted notice at a checkpoint. Francesca and Alders pulled it all out. They slid two of the rods into holes the size of quarters that had been drilled into the Toyota’s front bumper. They laid one end of a steel sheet over the rods. The rods and sheet had been machined to fit together as easily as LEGO blocks, with an equally satisfying click. The far end of the sheet lay atop the Toyota’s cab. The sheet was seven feet wide, six feet long, just big enough for Francesca and Alders to lie side by side with the Barrett between them, its muzzle poking out of one of the hut’s narrow slits. A firing platform.

Once the platform was set, Francesca and Alders stretched the brown blankets over it and the truck. The Toyota was brown and covered with dirt and mud anyway. Inside the grape hut and under the blankets, it would be basically invisible, even during the day. Francesca climbed onto the platform. Alders reached down for the Barrett and lifted it to him, grunting at the weight of the rifle. Francesca pulled up the Barrett and snapped its legs into place. Alders handed him another camouflage net and he draped it over the Barrett’s muzzle to hide the steel.

Then Francesca settled back and slipped off his eyepiece. He put his eye to the Barrett’s infrared scope, which had far sharper resolution than his own. He found himself looking at an empty green world, the stillest of nights. No grapes had been grown in the fields around here for at least a year. Even the mice seemed to have disappeared.

He was six feet off the ground, with an open view of the road to the north, no farmhouses or high walls for a mile east or west. The position was close to perfect, concealed and with a huge field of fire. These Talib bomb-planting cells usually had no more than four guys. If they set up the way he expected, Francesca could kill them all in under a minute.

Sniper fire was confusing and terrifying, even for experienced infantry. Typical firefights happened at close range, distances no more than a football field. As a result, when an ambush began, soldiers instinctively assumed the enemy was close by. They needed several seconds to realize that they were under sniper attack. When they realized they didn’t have any way to counterattack, they typically dove and froze, trying to present as small a target as possible. But during a sniper attack, going to the ground was suicide. Francesca could put a round in a stationary target from a mile away. Unless perfect cover was available, the best solution was to scatter and regroup. Run. But by the time the Talibs figured that out, they’d be dead.

Alders handed him a bottle of water and Francesca took a long slug.

“How’s it look?”

“Real good. Whyn’t you sack out? I’ll take first watch.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll call it in, let them know we’re here.” Their sat phones worked everywhere in Afghanistan — everywhere in the world, in fact — and they were supposed to report when they arrived and every eight to twelve hours afterward. Francesca tried to stick to the schedule, mainly because the Delta commanders got nervous otherwise. When they got nervous, they were apt to do stupid things, like put up a rescue bird. He reached for the sat, made the call.

He’d just hung up when his other phone vibrated. Afghan cellies. Amazing. He didn’t even know where the tower was. Probably somewhere on the ridge behind them. The caller identification showed a local phone. Had to be Weston.

“You in position?” Yep. Weston.

“We’re where we need to be.” Francesca didn’t appreciate this kid’s attitude. He’d considered taking Weston and Rodriguez out along with Young. In fact, he was still considering it.

“Okay, I still haven’t heard whether it will be today or tomorrow. Should know soon.”

“Call me when you do.” Francesca hung up. Put his eye to the rifle’s infrared scope. Listened to Alders snore gently on the ground below. And smiled as he watched the empty night.

26

The transmitter was two inches long, no wider around than a dime. Half the size of the eraserless pencils that miniature golfers used to count putts. Shafer had told Wells that the geeks called it an intermittent locator. As long as whatever it was attached to was moving, it reported its position every forty-five minutes to the military’s Iridium satellite network. Each transmission lasted only five milliseconds. Otherwise the bug stayed silent, offering no electronic evidence of its existence.

If the transmitter stopped moving for more than forty-five minutes, it offered one final update on its location. Then it shut down. It broadcast so infrequently that it was basically undetectable. Plus it transmitted on a nonlinear cycle. Even Shafer couldn’t explain what that meant. But he promised Wells it would enable the bug to beat every electronic countermeasure in existence.

Shafer had sent Wells three transmitters in three different colors. One gray, one brown, one black. They had no on/off switches or lights. They looked like plastic junk. He’d also included a handheld GPS that would track the transmitter. And a note. Be nice to them. You’d be surprised what they cost. Wells never remembered Shafer worrying about budgets before. Either the transmitters were seriously expensive or the man was getting strange about money in his old age.

DESPITE HIS ANGER, Stout had shown Wells where Francesca kept his pickup, a muddy parking lot near Kandahar’s giant PX. Aside from a razor-wire fence, the lot looked ordinary, full of pickups, SUVs, and Humvees. A small sign beside the front gate said “Reserved/TF86 Vehicles.”

“TF86 doesn’t exist,” Stout said. “This lot is SF only. Everybody keeps trucks in here. The Canadians and Brits, too. It’s unlocked during the day, but there are always a couple of guards. They work for Sandton. That’s a private contractor that JSOC uses a lot. They look like they’re just hanging out, fiddling with a truck, but they’ll challenge you at the gate. At night, it’s locked down and alarmed. You need a key and a code to get in. And if you look at the gate, you’ll see the surveillance cams.”

Wells looked. Two cameras, both watching the gate. He liked the setup. Hidden in plain sight. Though it didn’t help him any.

Stout pointed to a beat-up Toyota pickup near the back of the lot, one of the rattier vehicles. “That’s Francesca’s. You can’t see it from here, but underneath there’s a compartment where they hide their rifles and unis.”

“That’s definitely theirs? They never swap with the other squads?”

“No. So that’s it. All I can tell you.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re not welcome. And don’t ask me to get you inside the lot. In fact, don’t ask me about anything else, or for anything else.”

They didn’t speak again until Stout dropped Wells back at the KBR trailer where he was holed up. Wells sat on his bunk and closed his eyes. He owed Shafer a call and he ought to be figuring his next move. But he was stuck on what Stout had said to him as they were driving. Which faith? Islam or America? He seemed to be failing both. His mind turned to the man in the hills outside Muslim Bagh. They’d prayed together. Then Wells had killed him. How could God view his words as anything but a mockery?

Islam had helped Wells survive all those years in the North-West Frontier. But now he no longer could explain what he believed, or why. Was he clinging to his faith strictly to separate himself from the other Americans who were fighting this war? To prove to the men he killed that religion played no part in his quarrel with them? They certainly didn’t agree.

Eventually Wells tired of asking himself questions without answers. He knelt and lowered his head to the floor and recited the first surah over and over. The prayer itself was a tonic. The Arabic soothed his lips, even if he no longer trusted himself to understand what it meant.

IN THE MORNING he put on a regulation Army uniform complete with a colonel’s eagle on the chest. In the trailer’s mirror, he found he didn’t look like a colonel. Even in the Special Forces, colonels didn’t have beards like his. He pulled off the insignia. He slipped on his Red Sox cap and his Ray-Bans. A smile twitched his lips as he remembered the morning Anne had given him the sunglasses.

He drove back to the lot Stout had shown him. Sure enough, two guys tinkered under the hood of a Ford Expedition near the front gate. One flagged Wells down. “Morning.”

Wells stopped, lowered his window. “Morning.”

“Haven’t seen you before. You certain you found the right lot?” The guy sounded South African to Wells. Lots of security contractors were.

“Pretty much. Guys at Bengal sent me here to park. Problem?”

The guy looked at Wells, his beard and shades and killer’s hands. “No problem. Welcome to KAF.”

Wells parked three spots down from Francesca’s Toyota, positioning the Land Rover between the pickup and the guards. He looked around, didn’t see anyone else in the lot. He stepped over to the Toyota. Its bed was filled with metal rods and sheets that Wells guessed could be assembled into a firing platform. He pulled out the transmitters. The brown one more or less matched the Toyota’s paint. He peeled off the backing on two of its six sides, exposing an epoxy superglue. He pressed it in the corner of the bed behind the passenger seat. Once it stuck on, it was practically invisible. He would have put it on the undercarriage, but it needed a direct line of sight to the atmosphere.

He slid back into the Land Rover and headed out. He didn’t want Francesca wondering why an unfamiliar vehicle was parked near the Toyota. As he passed the Expedition, he lowered his window. “Change of plans,” he said. “See you soon.”

“Happy hunting,” the guard said.

Wells saluted him casually, one pro to another.

HE CALLED SHAFER. “Good to go.”

“I’ll call Cunningham tomorrow morning my time. Maybe ten a.m.”

“Seven-thirty p.m. here.”

“Look at you, doing the math. So you can expect that he’ll be on the phone to KAF pretty much the second he hangs up.”

“No chance he’ll cooperate?”

“I call him, back-channel him, tell him one of his guys may be a criminal target and I want his file. And I won’t say why, won’t show him any of the evidence. Plus I act like an asshole on top of it. He’s more likely to send a hit squad up here than help me.”

“All these years I thought being an asshole was your personality. Now it turns out it’s part of your cover.”

“Cute. Like talking to my wife. Anyway, figure Cunningham sounds the alarm to the Delta commander at Kandahar, I believe it’s a major named Penn. That guy tells Francesca. Who gets off base soon as he can come up with some legit operation that gets him pointed toward FOB Jackson.”

“You’re sure the Deltas won’t lock him down while they check this out on their own?”

“If I gave Cunningham something concrete, maybe. Not this way. They start kicking over rocks, they don’t know what they might find. Best not to look.”

“Speaking of things that hide under rocks, what about Duto? He know where we stand?”

“Not yet. I’ll talk to him after I set the hook with Cunningham. Don’t jump down my throat for asking, but do you have anyone backing you up over there? Gaffan’s buddy?”

“Look, if that bug you gave me works—”

“It works—”

“Then I’ll know where Francesca and Alders are hiding. And they won’t know I know. If that’s not a big enough edge, I’d better find a new line of work.”

“Modern dance instructor.”

Wells hung up, called Anne.

“John?”

“Hello, babe.”

“You’re wearing the Ray-Bans, aren’t you?”

“How’d you know?”

“You’d only call me things like babe when you’re wearing them. Rocker John.”

“I’ve been called lots of things over the years, but I assure you Rocker John isn’t one.”

“Tell me you’re almost done over there.”

“I am. Honestly.”

“You gonna get the bad guy?”

“I always do.” Almost.

“Then we’ll live happily ever after. You and me and Tonka makes three. He told me how much he missed you this morning. Said you’re not a good owner, but you’re his favorite anyway.”

“Tell him I miss him, too. And you, Anne. Can’t wait to see you.”

“I love you, John. Whatever it is you’re doing, be careful.”

“I love you, too.” A word Wells had rarely used with Anne. A word that felt right today.

HE SPENT THE AFTERNOON getting his gear together. Then he had nothing to do but wait. He went back to his trailer and slept. No point in wasting energy he would need soon enough. He woke after sunset to a call from Shafer, who explained what had happened with Cunningham and Duto.

“So Duto knew about 71 all along,” Wells said.

“He swears he had no idea that the trail would go that way.”

“You believe him?”

“It doesn’t matter. Train’s way down the tracks.”

Shafer was right. They couldn’t stop chasing Francesca now. As usual, Duto had played them.

“One of these years, I’m going to pay him back.”

“Inshallah, my friend. Knock ’em dead.”

“I’ll do my best.”

IT WAS NEARLY ELEVEN P.M. when his local phone rang. Young.

“Coleman.”

“Out of nowhere, Weston told us to be ready for an op in the next twenty-four hours. Motorcycle registration in the Arghandab.” Insurgents favored motorcycles, so the military was trying to track them with tamper-proof registration stickers. Never mind that the insurgents had an endless supply of cheap bikes. Registration offered a measurable benchmark for commanders to meet. The military loved measurable benchmarks.

“Where exactly?”

“He says we don’t have final orders yet. But the most likely spots are a couple roads that run from Highway 1 and up into the valley. Pretty near the base. Eighty to a hundred miles northeast of KAF. You know where I’m talking about?”

“More or less.”

“More or less does not promote confidence, sir.”

“When you know more, you call me. I promise I’ll be there.”

“That’s more like it.”

SO WESTON WAS GETTING his platoon off FOB Jackson. Which meant Francesca would be leaving KAF soon enough. Wells’s GPS was plugged into the feed from the transmitter on the pickup. Wells waited for it to ping.

And waited. The hours dragged. Midnight passed. One a.m. Maybe Francesca wouldn’t leave base until tomorrow. Or maybe Young was wrong. Maybe Francesca wasn’t part of this scheme after all. Two a.m. Wells tried to sleep, couldn’t.

At 2:30, the GPS beeped. A single blue dot indicated that Francesca’s pickup was ten miles outside of the airfield. He’d taken the bait. Wells knew where he was heading. North and east, deep into the Arghandab River Valley. Toward 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 7th Stryker Brigade. Toward Coleman Young.

Part of Wells wanted to chase them immediately, but moving at this hour would be a mistake. Francesca and Alders couldn’t do anything until Young was off FOB Jackson. Best to let them get set in their sniper hole, then go after them.

Wells set his alarm for 5:30, before dawn. He closed his eyes and dreamed of a wave that started in the Hindu Kush and swept down and down, through the poppy fields, the empty Registan Desert, over the mountains in Pakistan, all the way to the sea.

SOON AS HE WOKE Wells checked the GPS. Something was wrong. Three transmissions — covering a ninety-minute period — showed motion northeast in chunks of thirty miles or so. The third transmission came in around four o’clock. But after that, the locator went silent. At least two more transmissions should have followed by now. If the pickup had stopped, the transmitter should have reported that, too. Wells called Shafer. “What’s going on?”

“Probably they’ve stopped somewhere where the transmitter doesn’t have line-of-sight to the atmosphere. It’ll keep pinging every forty-five minutes until the signal goes through and it gets an answer.”

Wells thought of the metal firing platform he’d seen in the back of the pickup. If Francesca had set that up and it reached over the transmitter, it would block the signal. “If there’s metal in the way—”

“Metal’s not good. But it will keep trying.”

“Meantime I’m just supposed to guess where they holed up.”

“I’ll put some calls out, see if I can get a handle on what their official mission is.”

“You think the Deltas are going to tell you that after the way you left it with Cunningham?”

“You do your job, John. Let me do mine.”

Shafer hung up. Wells rose and showered. He pulled on a shalwar kameez and covered it with a brown windbreaker for the ride and packed a nylon bag with his kit. Everything he was carrying would pass for local, even the GPS and his binoculars. For weapons he had a knife strapped to his leg and three Russian RGO-78 grenades and his old Makarov and silencer. No AK. Even a short-stock would be impossible to hide. Anyway, a long-range gun battle with Francesca would be suicide. An AK had an effective range of maybe a hundred yards. Francesca could be lethal from ten times that distance. Wells would need to ambush him close in.

His new motorcycle was parked outside his trailer. He’d bought it the day before. It didn’t look like much, a Chinese-made Honda knockoff with an air-cooled 250cc engine and wire wheels. The word Hando was painted in white on its gas tank. No one would ever confuse it with a Ducati. Its speedometer went to two hundred kilometers an hour, but Wells figured the wheels would come off long before then. But Wells had looked it over closely before buying it. It was mechanically sound, and the tires and shocks were solid.

In any case, anonymity mattered more than performance. Anonymity translated into surprise, and Wells had learned over the years that tactical surprise beat firepower. Bar brawls or gunfights, the guy who hit first won. Maybe not always, but close enough. In Hollywood, fights went on and on and on. In the real world, they didn’t take long. Once a punch or kick or bullet knocked you down, going back on the attack was nearly impossible. You kept getting hit until the other guy stopped. Sometimes he didn’t stop until you were dead.

Francesca seemed to have learned the same lessons. His dirty pickup was what Wells would have used if he’d needed to carry a sniper rifle. And like Wells, Francesca and Alders operated without uniforms, or backup to bail them out. A casual observer might not see much difference between Wells and Francesca.

But somewhere Francesca had lost himself, forgotten his purpose. Forgotten that anyone could pull a trigger, take a life. The act itself was simple. The why was what separated soldiers from serial killers. Wells hadn’t forgotten the why. So he hoped. He put his bag on the back of the bike, slipped the key into the ignition.

THE MORNING TRAFFIC on Highway 1 was picking up as Wells headed east, shielding his eyes from the sun. The flatlands of southern Afghanistan turned cool in the mornings at this time of year. Wells shivered under his windbreaker as he followed Francesca’s trail north off Highway 1 and into the Arghandab Valley.

Even by Afghan standards, the valley was a backwater. A half dozen children swirled around a woman in an electric-blue burqa. A donkey dragged a cart inch by inch, whining with each step, as a gaunt man with skin the color and texture of leather clapped a switch across his haunches. Two Afghan soldiers leaned against a pickup truck, cigarettes in hand. One had painted the stock of his AK pink and covered the muzzle with rhinestones. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Afghans on both sides of the insurgency had a strange fondness for tricking out their rifles. The soldiers eyed Wells as he passed, but didn’t bother to stop him.

Wells reached the last point the transmitter had signaled just over two hours after leaving Kandahar. He pulled over and looked for any sign that Francesca and Alders had stopped nearby. Open fields lay north of the road, toward the river. To the south, a narrow cart track passed through a handful of farm compounds. Wells didn’t think the Toyota would fit on the track. Anyway, he could see a stream of smoke coming from one compound, and kids playing on the roof of another. Wells couldn’t imagine how Francesca and Alders would have hidden themselves in an occupied house. They had to be squatting someplace abandoned.

Wells rolled on. The landscape stayed the same for the next few miles. Compounds and the occasional grape hut sat south of the road. North, toward the river, the pomegranate groves thickened. Still, this part of the Arghandab was much less fertile than the land nearer Kandahar, the trees less dense.

The road passed through a village. To the south, several shops occupied a plaza, the Afghan version of a strip mall. At the far end was a garage big enough to hide the pickup. Wells stopped outside the plaza’s first store, walked in. Three men hunched over sewing machines, working long strips of white cotton. Posters taped to the concrete walls showed their offerings. The men barely acknowledged Wells. In these tiny villages, outsiders were suspect, especially if they weren’t Pashtun.

“Good morning.”

“Morning,” the man nearest Wells mumbled. One of his eyes was a deep, ugly red, the skin around it swollen and tender. Severe conjunctivitis. In the United States, a doctor would cure that infection with a few cents of medicine. Here, the man might go blind.

Wells leaned over his machine. “I see you do excellent work.” The man grunted and fed cloth through as the machine clucked. Time to get to the point. “I’m looking for two men who might have stopped here early this morning. Before sunrise.”

The man raised his head to stare with his weeping eye at Wells. The machines halted one by one until the shop was silent. “No one’s stopped here.”

“They were driving a Toyota, a pickup.” Wells reached into his pocket for a wad of afghanis. “Are you sure you haven’t seen them?”

“No one’s stopped here. And who are you?”

Wells backed out. As he got back on the bike, the sewing resumed. He didn’t understand why the tailors had been so unfriendly. He put the bike in gear, rolled by the garage. A side door was open and he could see inside. Empty. They hadn’t stopped here. Wells pulled back onto the road.

Past the village, more dirt tracks ran south, though most petered out before the ridgeline. Just three roads in this part of the valley ran over the ridge and toward Highway 1. If what Young had said was right, the Strykers would be on one of those roads sometime today. But Wells needed more. He hoped Shafer was making progress on unearthing their official mission. To find them without the transmitter’s help, he had to pin down what they were doing. And he had to lock them down soon, so he could track them as they moved on Young. Only then would Wells have the proof he needed to take them out. Right now he had only circumstantial evidence. He had to catch them in the act.

Worst-case, if Wells couldn’t find them, he could try to cover Young directly as the Stryker platoon registered motorcycles. But Francesca would be expecting him. Finding and tracking Francesca as he moved on Young would give Wells his only real chance of beating Francesca’s firepower advantage.

AS HE STARTED TO RIDE AGAIN, his phone buzzed.

“Told you, let me do my job,” Shafer said. “Point one. That road you’re on has turned into an IED alley. Four soldiers and two British journos got creamed last week. That got noticed all the way up to RCS HQ.”

No wonder the locals were giving the fish eye to outsiders, Wells thought. They couldn’t stop the Taliban from planting bombs, but they were worried that more casualties would provoke a big American counterattack, the kind that flattened villages. “What’s point two?”

“Point two. Yesterday the drones at KAF, in fact all air support, was ordered away from a sector of the valley sixty kilometers long and thirty wide. Lockdown for five days. Reason given is Special Operations mission, otherwise unspecified. How much would you like to bet your friends are setting up, waiting for Red Team to plant another IED? Makes for great cover.”

“It’s even better than that. The mission gives them an excuse to be out here. The no-fly zone means that when they kill Young, the Strykers can’t hit back. They go back to their original nest, take out the IED cell, come home to Kandahar. Mission accomplished. They just need to put a few miles between where they’re supposed to be, the official post, and the Young kill.”

“Sounds right.”

“So I should be looking for a nest near the road, within a mile or so. Not on the ridgeline. An abandoned farmhouse, something like that. With room to hide the pickup.” Wells was thinking out loud now.

“I hear more, I’ll let you know.”

Wells hung up. Now he could focus on houses within a few hundred yards of the road, with an open field of fire. Plus the firing position had to be big enough to hide the Toyota. Only a few buildings could meet all those conditions.

Still, he had a lot of ground to cover. Francesca and Alders would have reached the nest between four a.m., the time of the locator’s final transmission, and 4:45, when it should have reported again. Even if they had needed ten minutes to hide the pickup and put the firing platform together, they could have driven for thirty-five minutes, enough time to get as much as twenty miles east of the final location the transmitter had recorded.

Wells headed east, watching both sides of the road. For a few minutes, the valley became more densely populated. Compounds and villages tumbled together, the Arghandab’s version of suburban sprawl, unlikely ground for a sniper’s hole. Then the land opened up again. And Wells came on a good spot for a nest, a damaged grape hut with an unobstructed view of the road. The hut’s narrow windows made for good firing ports, and a dirt track led directly past it. Wells couldn’t risk taking the track. But he knew that in Francesca’s position he would have chosen the hut, or a place just like it.

WELLS RODE until the hut disappeared. He’d take his chances in one-on-one combat with anyone. But snipers were different. He felt as if he’d appeared at dawn for a duel and found himself holding a slingshot instead of a pistol. A half mile was a long way. Ten New York City blocks. Nine football fields. From a half mile, Wells couldn’t even see his enemy’s face without binoculars, good ones. Yet an experienced sniper like Francesca had a good chance of putting a bullet in a target’s chest from the same distance.

Wells pulled the bike over at a primitive gas station, the first he’d seen in fifty miles. Again he called Shafer. “I need a visual, a satellite pass.” Wells gave the coordinates. “It’s a grape hut, a big one. ASAP.”

“Really. You don’t want to wait a few days.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“This guy’s got you a little bit spooked, doesn’t he?”

Wells didn’t answer.

“All right. You know it’s past midnight here, but I’ll make it happen as fast as I can. Could be anywhere from fifteen minutes to six hours, depending on what we have overhead. I’ll call you when I know.”

Wells propped the motorcycle on its kickstand, reached into his bag for a bottle of water. He drank deeply. A couple kids stared until he waved them on. In these villages, any stranger was conspicuous. He couldn’t stay in one place too long, but he didn’t want to ride farther from the grape hut. Thirty minutes later, Shafer called.

“You must be living right. NRO had a Keyhole passing Kabul. The overnight targeting officer is an easily impressed sort. He ran a quick series.”

“And?”

“I can’t see them firsthand because he won’t send them to my Gmail account. NRO’s funny that way. And the shots aren’t great because they couldn’t get the KH directly over, they had to angle, and the roof is mostly covered. But he swears he can see a pickup truck inside.”

“What about people?”

“He said he didn’t see anyone, but that I shouldn’t read much into that because the imagery is so dirty. No need to thank me, John—”

One of the kids was wandering close again, giving Wells an excuse to hang up. What next? Finding Francesca was only half the battle. Young hadn’t called yet. So Wells didn’t know where the Strykers were running their motorcycle registration. Until Wells knew exactly, he couldn’t position himself to intercept Francesca. Why wasn’t Young calling?

His first instinct was to leave the valley floor, head south into the hills, find a promontory where he could overwatch the grape hut. But the Arghandab’s geography was trickier than it first seemed. The hills were a smaller version of the Bitterroot Range in Montana, where Wells had grown up. They rose as much as twenty-five hundred feet above the valley floor. Gullies and draws cut deep into their sides. Once he got into them, moving east to west across them would be very difficult. Maybe impossible. The GPS could tell him where he was, but not where he needed to go. He needed a good map for that, and he didn’t have one. He would also have to ditch the motorcycle, which was his only major tactical advantage. Worse, he wouldn’t have cell service once he left the valley floor, so Young would have no way of reaching him. No.

He had two other alternatives. He could sit where he was, wait for Young to call. Or he could take the high-risk option, set up on one of the three north — south tracks that went over the ridge. But if he chose wrong, he would be stuck ten or more miles away from the ambush, with no easy way to get to the right spot. He couldn’t justify taking a one-in-three gamble that could leave him badly out of position. Playing linebacker growing up, he’d never liked the guys who went for the big pick instead of batting the ball away. When they were right, they got the glory, but when they were wrong, they gave up a touchdown and the whole team paid.

Then he realized. He took off his windbreaker and stuffed it in his bag. At the gas station, he filled up and bought two big stacks of wood. He bundled them on the backseat of the bike to hide his bag. He left his pistol and grenades inside the bag. He couldn’t risk Francesca spotting them through the scope.

He mounted up and headed west. Toward the grape hut.

AT THE DIRT TRACK nearest the hut, he swung left, south, bouncing over the ruts. He tried not to think about the fact that Francesca was surely tracking him from inside the hut. This close, the.50 caliber would blow through him and leave an exit wound the size of a softball. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about bleeding out. He’d die instantly.

But he had to trust that Francesca wouldn’t shoot a random farmer on a motorcycle. Francesca had no reason to believe that Wells could have tracked him here. And Wells could pass as local better than anyone.

Halfway to the hut, Wells still couldn’t see the pickup. He wondered whether Shafer or the NRO had made a mistake. Finally, maybe a hundred yards from the hut, he saw a blocky shape inside the narrow windows. The hut was a great position. Even this close, Wells wouldn’t have seen the truck if he hadn’t been looking. At a hundred feet, he saw the first hint of a sniper nest, camouflage netting around one of the slits. He still couldn’t see the muzzle of the rifle.

Just past the hut, Wells pulled over. He was safer here, on the south side, with the hut between him and the rifle. The.50 caliber was big and heavy and hard to maneuver. He put the motorcycle in neutral and dropped the kickstand, but left the engine running. He pushed aside the bundles of sticks so he could reach the bag and the pistol inside.

“Hello,” he yelled in Pashtun. “Uncle?”

No answer. Walking into the hut would be a mistake. If they were sure he’d seen the Toyota and the firing platform, they’d shoot him. But they wouldn’t do that unless they had to. They would think he lived nearby, and they wouldn’t want to get the locals upset. Instead, one of them should come out, challenge Wells, tell him to get lost.

But no one did.

Wells switched off the engine. Waited. Nothing. No whispered voices in English or Pashtun. No movement inside the hut. No scrape of metal on clay as Francesca repositioned the Barrett. Wells unzipped the bag, grabbed his pistol. He stepped over the cut in the wall and into the compound. The hut’s mud walls were pebbled and uneven. Sprigs of weeds were growing in some of its slatted windows as nature began to reclaim its soil. Wells saw fresh tire tracks in the dirt. No doubt the Toyota had come this way. He looked close, saw two more sets of tracks atop the tire treads. They were narrower. Bicycle tires.

“Hello?” he yelled again. Then ran for the hut. No sense waiting now. If they were inside, they were laying a trap for him. If they weren’t, he needed to find out.

THEY WEREN’T.

The pickup was there, the firing platform, and the rifle. But Francesca and Alders were gone. Wells bent low, looked for bicycle tracks. He found them near the pickup’s back gate.

Wells pulled out his cell. The reception was fine. But something had gone wrong. Young hadn’t called. Now Francesca and Alders were on their way to ambush him. If he couldn’t find them, stop them, he would have himself to blame for Young’s death.

Not this time. Not after what had happened in Mecca.

Wells sprinted out of the hut, back to the motorcycle. He turned back. To the valley road. He had one chance. Three roads led to Highway 1. He had to figure out which one Francesca and Alders had taken. He couldn’t guess. If he guessed wrong, he would lose an hour or more. He had to be sure. How?

27

Francesca strained up the hill, cranking the pedals under his leather sandals, staring down at the dust beneath his front wheel. He raised his head, saw Alders pulling away around the next bend.

“Slow down,” Francesca yelled. In English. A tactical breach. He didn’t care. The road was rutted and steep, barely wide enough for two bikes side by side. A small car could scrape through, but it would need a new paint job afterward. In an hour of riding, Francesca had seen only two motorcycles, both coming north, toward him.

At least the air was cool up here. The folds of the hillside hid the sun. Still, Francesca would never again question the manhood of the riders in the Tour de France. He found Alders waiting at the top of a sharp left turn. “Not too bad from here,” Alders said. Francesca pulled over, waited for his breath. Alders gave him thirty seconds, then rode off. Francesca followed, cursing. But Alders was right. After one final turn, the road flattened out and opened into a narrow saddle. Scattered pine trees and mulberry bushes broke the rocky soil. To east and west, the slopes climbed steeply. It was the best natural pass across the ridge for ten miles in either direction, which was why the road ran through it. Though road was a highly generous term.

Francesca looked back the way they’d come, across the Arghandab Valley. The pomegranate groves that bordered the river were maybe ten miles north and fifteen hundred feet lower. Closer in, smoke rose from a grape field. The nearest fire department was at KAF, so the fire would be burning awhile.

Alders pulled out a plastic-coated terrain map. They’d left their GPS back at the hut so they couldn’t be tracked. But Francesca didn’t need the map. He felt comfortable with the terrain up here. He could see where to set up.

The far side of the ridge, the southern side, sloped gently toward Highway 1, where FOB Jackson was located. The road they were riding turned slightly left as it emerged from the saddle, running south-southeast. About five hundred meters ahead, the road bisected a small village. Maybe forty compounds. Weston had told Francesca that the platoon would set up there, stickering motorcycles and checking out some of the houses. A presence and registration patrol.

The day was clear, the wind low. Assuming Weston did his job and got Young into the open, Francesca expected the shot would be easy. After the kill, he and Alders would head back the way they’d come. The platoon would have little chance to chase them. The Strykers could get only as far as the saddle. On the northern side, the road was too narrow and steep for the big trucks to navigate. On the bikes, Francesca and Alders could easily outrace anyone foolish enough to chase them on foot. The no-fly zone meant that they didn’t have to worry about drones or helicopters. And Francesca planned to ditch the Dragunov. Taking it back to the grape hut and then KAF could only cause trouble. So even if some overzealous Apache pilot violated the no-fly zone and came over the ridge, he’d see nothing but a couple of Afghan farmers on bicycles, miles away from the kill zone. Once they were back at the hut, they would hang out and wait for the Talib IED-planting cell to show.

WESTON HAD CALLED just after sunrise. Francesca hadn’t slept at all, but he felt great, thanks to two greenies. Breakfast of champions. He felt the vibrations of every mote of dust in the grape hut. He was in tune with the world. He was alive.

“Got the okay from my CO. We’re gonna roll this morning. Little bit sooner than I thought. You cool with that?”

“We’re always cool, Lieutenant. Where we talked about before?”

“Yes. The village is called Mohammed Kalay. We’ll be there at ten-thirty. Eleven at the latest.”

“Roger that. Eleven. And your boy will follow orders long enough to give me a chance to engage?”

“He hasn’t said no to a mission yet. I don’t see him starting now.”

“And you haven’t heard anything from the other one?” Meaning Wells.

“The one who came and talked? No.”

“You do, you let me know.”

“Will do. When you’re in position, will you signal?”

Yeah, I’ll signal. Coleman Young getting his throat ripped out. That’s the signal.

Francesca hung up. Alders was still snoring. Francesca squeezed him on the shoulder. Not hard. Guys who spent their lives in nests like this didn’t like being woken too suddenly. Alders sat up, wiped a hand over his mouth.

“Was I lucky enough to get blown to hell while I slept or am I still stuck in this tar pit?”

“Sad to say you’re still alive.”

“Why did you wake me? I had a good one going.”

“Your favorite nurse again?”

Months before, Alders had told Francesca that he had a nurse fantasy, not the usual candy striper but a chubby, big-breasted East Indian who gave him a rough massage with a barely happy ending.

“I should never have told you that.”

“True. Ready to rock and roll?”

“Our Talib friends?”

“Our other friends.”

“We just got here.”

“I know, but this way’s better. Get it done quick, come back, chill.”

Francesca hadn’t told Alders that he was still thinking about taking out Weston and Rodriguez with Young. He figured he’d see how the trap set up. A game-time decision.

THEY RODE OFF a few minutes later in their brown shalwar kameez. They had three hours plus before the Strykers arrived. The grape hut was about thirteen or fourteen miles from the saddle. Francesca figured they would have plenty of time. Then they hit the hills. For the last couple miles, he’d wondered whether walking might be faster. The ride had taken so long that they burned through most of their cushion. By Francesca’s watch, they had about forty-five minutes to pick their spot, get settled. Less time than he would have liked.

Francesca pulled the bike off the road, left it behind a rock, grabbed the canvas bag that held the Dragunov’s hard-sided case. He walked east, keeping back from the ridgeline. The saddle turned steeper, blending into the hill above. Loose rocks cut at Francesca’s sandals. He wanted to gain maybe forty or fifty feet of elevation, make the shot easy to take, hard to trace.

Alders ranged ahead and closer to the ridgeline. About a hundred yards east of the road, he waved Francesca over. Above, a dry streambed crosscut the hillside, running southwest. It fell over the ridgeline thirty yards away from where they stood. A tangle of mulberry bushes marked the spot. Francesca and Alders could set up in the streambed between the bushes, which offered great cover. Aside from the last few feet, they wouldn’t even have to crawl or crab-walk to the position. They could walk without fear of being seen from the fields below.

“You see.”

“Long as it has the right angle.” If a boulder or the folds of the ridge blocked Francesca’s line of sight to the village, the position was useless, no matter how good the cover. He cut over to the streambed. It was dry, six feet wide, a couple feet deep. This part of the Arghandab Valley didn’t get much rain. The runoff that fed the river fell in the mountains to the north. Just shy of the ridgeline, Francesca unzipped the bag and pulled out his binoculars and a thin brown blanket. He unrolled the blanket. He wanted to keep his gown clean. On the ride home, even the most oblivious Afghan police officer might notice a man in a dirt-covered shalwar kameez. He squirmed forward on the blanket, ignoring the stones poking at him. At the edge, he propped himself on his elbows, raised his binoculars.

Perfect.

The contours of the hill made him nearly invisible to the villagers below, but no rocks or outcroppings blocked his view. The mud houses and compounds started a quarter mile away. Inside them, villagers did what Francesca had decided Afghans did best: not much. In one compound, three men sat against a wall, drinking tea from a battered brass kettle. Outside another, a bony farmer dragged a rake slowly through the earth, as an equally bony cow grazed nearby. Two empty burqas floated high in the air, ghosts on a clothesline.

In the center of the village was an empty dirt field, a town square of sorts. The Strykers were sure to park there. None of the walls between him and the square were high enough to matter. The fluttering burqas were a lucky break, too. Their movement would make gauging the breeze easy. Francesca hardly even needed Alders.

“Look good?”

“That it does.”

Alders crawled up beside him, holding the rifle and his bag of gear. Francesca edged left and traded the binoculars for the Dragunov. “Too easy,” Alders said.

“There’s no such thing.” Francesca slid the Dragunov’s scope over the rifle’s barrel, which was designed with a metal rail that made attaching the scope a cinch. He flipped a latch to lock it in place. Next he reached for a magazine. He’d brought four, all loaded with ten rounds of 203-grain steel-jacketed 7.62-millimeter ammunition. The bullets could smash Level IV armor plates that stopped regular AK rounds.

At five hundred meters, even a perfectly aimed shot from the Dragunov could go wide of its target by six inches. Instead of a head shot, Francesca planned to aim for Young’s chest and fire a three-shot burst. Unlike most sniper rifles, the Dragunov was semiautomatic. Each squeeze of the trigger fired another round. At worst, the first burst would shatter Young’s vest and knock him down. With ten rounds, Francesca would have plenty of chances for a kill shot.

Francesca locked onto the farmer bent over his rake. I could kill you and you’d never know where your death came from. Not where or why. The excitement went beyond words. Death and life were his to give. He dropped the safety and put a finger to the trigger, his mouth open and every breath a rapture. After a long moment, he flicked up the safety, pulled back. I’ve let you live. Forget Allah. Pray to me tonight, old man. He draped brown netting over the Dragunov’s muzzle and rested his head on his arms and waited for the Strykers to come. Waited for prey.

28

Wells stopped at the intersection of the valley road and the easternmost of the three tracks that led over the hills. He jumped off and squatted low, looking for bicycle tracks in the dirt. If Francesca and Alders had come this way this morning, their narrow tires should still be visible. But the treads Wells saw were far too wide to belong to bicycles. He pulled out his binoculars and followed the track into the hills. No bicycles, no men walking.

Fifty yards down, three boys played soccer, kicking a ragged ball with the studied indolence of teenagers everywhere. Wells stepped toward them. “Have you been here all morning?” The boys looked at one another. The ball never stopped moving.

“Have the Americans taken your tongues? Answer me.”

The tallest boy grinned at Wells, a confident smile that somehow reminded Wells of his own son. “Yes.”

“Have you seen men riding bicycles this way?”

“One man. My uncle Hamid. He lives down there.” The boy nodded to a low-walled compound about a mile down the road.

Wells hurried back to his motorcycle. He could eliminate this track. Two left. The second intersection was barely ten miles west, but Wells wasn’t sure how long he would need to reach it. Forty miles an hour on the Arghandab road equaled a hundred and twenty on an American highway. Any faster and he would pop a tire.

Wells swung the bike around, headed west. In the last two hours, he’d gotten to know this strip of road: the one-room store that seemed to sell nothing but potatoes and apples, the skinny German shepherd chained to a tree who barked madly when Wells passed. The grape hut that Francesca and Alders were using as a bed-and-breakfast.

Finally, the second ridgeline road. Wells pulled over, looked for bicycle tires.

There. Two thin tracks, not quite side by side. Wells pulled his binoculars, looked up at the hills. Nothing. And no kids to ask.

The road passed a handful of compounds on its way to the ridgeline. The bikes could have belonged to local farmers. Even so, Wells decided to go with his gut, chase the tracks. He turned south. The road was so rutted and rocky that he couldn’t get out of second gear. Francesca and Alders must have had an even tougher time. The slowest chase in history. A 250cc Honda knockoff after two bicycles. Wells smiled, but only for a moment. He didn’t understand why Young hadn’t called him, warned him. He might be too late already. Francesca might be taking aim at this moment—

No. He pushed the thought away. He rolled the throttle and the motorcycle zipped ahead, bouncing beneath him, past grapevines and almond trees. After about fifteen minutes on the track, he passed the last farmhouse and came upon a patch of dried mud that stretched all the way across the track. If he saw the bike tires here, he’d know that Francesca and Alders were ahead. If not, he’d wasted even more time.

Wells bent his head to the mud with the desperate hope of a poker player peeking at his last down card, needing an ace. And saw… fresh tracks. He rode on, more confident now, as the road rose in earnest into the hills. Wells wended his way between ruts deep enough to snap his ankle. Wells saw now why the Arghandab Valley was so isolated. Farmers couldn’t use these tracks to ship their produce to Highway 1 and the rest of Zabul. Even a well-built four-wheel-drive SUV would have a tough time with this hill.

Wells took a curve too fast and the front wheel chopped into a rut. The bike tilted precariously left and the back end kicked out. Wells pulled his left foot off the peg and stepped sideways onto the muddy track. His toes jammed into a rock, sending a jolt up his leg. The bike stalled. As he struggled to keep it from going down, his right leg touched the superheated exhaust pipe. He tried to pull away, but the bike moved with him, the pipe searing his gown into his calf. Finally, Wells regained his balance and jerked the bike up. He stood in the track, grunting in pain. A bright red burn the size of a silver dollar rose from his right calf. His left foot throbbed angrily. He wasn’t exactly mortally wounded, but the odds that he’d win a foot chase with Francesca had just plunged.

Wells gritted his teeth and put the motorcycle in gear and rolled on. First gear. No faster. He’d be useless if he broke a leg. Anyway, Francesca and Alders couldn’t be that far ahead. On bikes, they’d be lucky to make five miles an hour.

Minute by minute, turn by turn, he rose up the hill.

TEN MINUTES LATER, he reached the saddle. And saw their bikes, sprawled carelessly a few feet from the road. Eureka. Wells stopped, looked left and right. The bikes lay to the left, east, so Francesca and Alders had probably gone that way. But he didn’t see them, or any obvious position.

He could leave the road, ride up the hill. But they’d hear the engine coming their way long before he found them. He couldn’t ride and shoot at the same time. They’d take him out easily. He could ditch the bike and go up the ridge on foot. But if they were close, and they probably were, they would hear the motorcycle cut out. And wonder why it had stopped instead of passing over the saddle. Or… if the Strykers hadn’t arrived yet… if he had even a few minutes…

Wells rode to the southern edge of the saddle and put the bike in neutral and looked out. The village lay a few hundred yards below. No Strykers, but Wells saw a convoy of blocky vehicles maybe five miles away. They’d be at the village in ten minutes, fifteen at most.

He eased back into gear, rode over the ridge and down the hill. As he left the safety of the ridgeline, he was intensely conscious that Francesca had to be above, watching through his scope. He kept his eyes forward. No reason to look anywhere but the village ahead. No reason to be nervous. He was just a farmer out for a ride.

Then he closed on the village, or it closed on him. The compounds splayed out around the road. He came to a muddy open square and what must have been the only shop in town. Four teenagers stood beside its open doorway. Just what Wells had hoped to see. He pulled up beside them, parking beside a wall that hid him from the ridgeline.

“Nice motorcycle,” the biggest of the four said.

“What’s your name?”

“Razi.”

“You know how to ride, Razi?”

Razi squared his shoulders. “Of course.”

“Then you can have it.”

“What?”

“The bike. You can have it. I’ll give it to you.”

“You’re not funny. You’re stupid.”

Wells raised a hand. “Allah cut out my tongue if I’m lying. Let me tell you what I need.”

When Wells had explained, Razi shook his head.

“Why do you want this?”

Wells nearly told the kid not to ask, then decided the truth would work better. “There are men hiding in those hills. I want to get to them and this is the best way.”

“Then what?”

Wells heard the rumble of the Strykers’ diesel engines in the distance. They couldn’t be more than five or six minutes away. “Yes or no, Razi? Yes or no?”

The kid looked at the others. He didn’t want to seem scared in front of them, Wells thought. Peer pressure worked every time.

“Yes.”

Wells stepped off the bike. He pulled off his bag and the branches that had covered it and tossed the branches on the ground. Razi took his place at the handlebars. Wells slid in behind him and put the bag between them and rested his hands on Razi’s shoulders. Without a word Razi put the bike in gear and turned them around and took them back up the hill. Wells was glad to find that the kid rode smoothly.

As they emerged from the square into the sun, Wells peeked at the eastern slope of the saddle. He saw a big boulder that might have been Francesca’s nest, and a couple of thick shrubs. But he couldn’t look too closely and risk tipping off Francesca. Instead he tucked his head into Razi’s shoulder and visualized what he would do when the bike reached the ridgeline.

29

Francesca watched the Strykers come up the road through the open fields. They dwarfed the crummy mud houses and everything else they passed. They were a ways off, but they would reach the village soon enough. They were moving twenty-plus miles an hour, faster than Francesca had expected, especially since the lead Stryker had to push its mine roller up the hill.

Still, they were running a few minutes late. On a routine mission like this, somebody always fell behind schedule. Not that the schedule mattered. The village was tiny. The platoon wouldn’t run across many motorcycles. The guys would hang out for a couple hours, knock on some doors, get back to FOB Jackson in plenty of time for dinner. Another mission complete. Another day closer to home.

Then Francesca heard the whine of a motorcycle engine. It was close by, coming up the hill behind them, the same road they’d ridden up. The bike sounded small, a couple hundred cubic centimeters. The engine was revving high, like the rider was in first gear. It made the last turn, reached the saddle, stopped. Alders started to get up, but Francesca put a hand on him to keep him down. A few seconds later, the bike moved on, to the edge of the ridgeline. It idled even more briefly, like the rider was looking over the ridge down at the village. Then it moved south.

“What was that?” Alders said.

Francesca raised a finger to his lips and scooted forward as the bike came into view. It looked to be a Honda knockoff with a 250cc engine, just like the two they’d passed on the way up. A bunch of branches hung off the back, like the bike had a wooden Afro. The motorcyclist was a big guy with a big beard and a brown shalwar kameez.

“Why’d he stop on the saddle?” Alders said.

“Probably saw the bikes, tried to figure it out.”

“And then on the ridge?”

“Maybe he saw the Strykers.” Then Francesca realized. “Could be he’s part of that IED cell.”

“I still hate the timing.”

Francesca didn’t like it either, but the guy looked local. Anyway, if Francesca took him out, they’d lose any chance at Young. “I’m gonna let him roll.”

The guy reached the square in the middle of the village, disappeared behind a mud wall. Francesca could still hear the bike idling. He looked down the road. The Strykers were closing, under three miles out now, steaming up the hill.

“I don’t like it,” Alders said.

Francesca ignored him. The biker was no threat. And if he looked like he was becoming one, Francesca could take him out in seconds. He wasn’t wearing armor. Francesca would have seen it under his gown.

A minute later, if that, the bike emerged from the square. Now it was coming back north. Now the guy who’d been riding was on the back. A teenage kid was up front. The branches were gone. The passenger was holding some kind of bag.

“Told you,” Francesca said. “Dude’s ACF”—anti-coalition forces—“all the way. Getting out of Dodge before the cavalry gets here. Bet you a hundred bucks I catch him planting an IED back at the hut and I take him then.” Francesca liked that idea. Watch him now, kill him later.

“He stops on the saddle, we’re gonna have a problem.”

“He’s not stopping.”

The bike came up the road, its little engine humming chugga chugga choo. Francesca let it come, didn’t even scope it. He was staying focused on the Stryker convoy, less than two miles away now. He wanted to hit Young quick, soon as he had a clear shot. Weston and Rodriguez, too. Snip those loose ends. If Alders got pissed, so be it. The man couldn’t exactly file a complaint with CID. But Francesca figured Alders wouldn’t be upset, not after what he’d said in the truck. Alders had turned out to be stone-cold after all.

The bike disappeared from sight as it approached the ridge. Then it was on the saddle. It slowed, might even have idled for a second. Then it revved and disappeared down the back side toward the Arghandab, its engine fading.

“Told you,” Francesca said. “No problem. Show’s about to start.”

30

When the bike got to within fifty yards of the ridgeline, Wells tapped Razi’s arm. The kid downshifted. Wells stood, put his hands on Razi’s shoulders. Razi nodded to Wells’s unspoken command and tapped the rear brake lightly as they hit the saddle. Wells kicked his right leg over the seat and jumped.

He landed cleanly. Even so, he felt like someone had put a spike through his left foot. He grabbed the pistol and two grenades. He stuffed the grenades in his gown pockets, ducked behind a tree close by the road. Behind him, the motorcycle’s engine revved as it rolled away down the hill. Wells had offered Razi the bike in trade for the one-minute ride from the village to the saddle. The deal was more than fair, aside from the chance of sudden death by sniper. Though Wells had kept that risk to himself. Anyway, Francesca had stayed quiet and the bike was Razi’s now. He’d earned it. Wells hoped he had fun with it.

Wells didn’t think Francesca or Alders would leave their nest to investigate a passing motorcycle, especially since they could hear it disappearing. But he stayed behind the tree for fifteen long seconds before standing and stalking east, up the hill, pistol loose at his side. He scanned for the nest, the glint of metal, the shadow cast by an arm or leg. Nothing. He heard the Strykers now, their big engines rumbling. They must have reached the village.

Then he saw the streambed and the mulberry bushes.

THE STRYKERS were so big that only two could park in the central plaza. The third and fourth stopped at the edge of the village, a hundred meters away. Francesca focused on the two in the center of town.

“You ready for this?” he said to Alders. “Blue on blue?”

“It is what it is.”

The Dragunov’s scope was marked with chevrons and graphs that formed a primitive but effective range-finding system. Francesca marked distance to target at 525 meters. The black burqas were limp on their clothesline. The breeze had stopped.

The lead Stryker’s ramp inched down. One by one, men stepped out. Francesca watched through the scope. Americans. With American uniforms and helmets and M-16s and M-4s. No. Not Americans or Talibs. Not friendlies or enemies. Targets.

Weston was fifth man out of the Stryker. Soon as his feet touched dirt, he started directing traffic. He sent two men to the eastern edge of the square, spread the rest around the Stryker. They were loose and relaxed, Francesca saw. No one expected trouble. For just a moment, Weston looked up the ridgeline, like he was trying to spot the nest. But his eyes slid by Francesca and kept right on going.

Francesca moved to the second Stryker. The ramp had dropped. Two men out already. A third emerging. Rodriguez. So Young was in there, too. Young was in Rodriguez’s squad. He’d be out in a matter of seconds.

Even better, here came Weston, walking over to Rodriguez. “Three for the price of one,” Francesca said.

“It is what it is,” Alders said again.

Francesca wondered whether Alders thought he had some profound wisdom there. Because he didn’t. But Francesca didn’t argue. They’d come to the silent moment before the lightning. Francesca steadied his hands, slowed his heart. He thumbed down the safety, put his eye to the scope, slipped his index finger through the trigger guard.

And he waited.

Young walked down the ramp, took a half step onto the muddy ground. Francesca’s finger tightened on the trigger—

Young turned and walked back into the Stryker like he’d forgotten something. Rodriguez stepped toward the ramp. He seemed to be yelling. Probably asking Young what the heck he was doing, telling him to get his butt out of the truck.

Then Francesca felt as much as heard a presence behind them. A scuffling on the dirt, leaves crackling. He couldn’t explain exactly how he knew. But he knew.

“Check the six,” he whispered to Alders.

“What?”

“Now.”

Alders didn’t argue. He reached for his AK, pushed himself to his knees, turned—

And then everything happened at once.

WELLS CLIMBED to the streambed and angled down. Following the draw would give him the best chance of spotting the nest without being seen. Forty meters from the bushes, the streambed dipped between two refrigerator-size rocks. Wells walked between them. Another step and he could see almost to the ridgeline. A brown blanket. And two pairs of sandaled feet side by side. His first glimpse of Francesca and Alders, not face-to-face but face-to-foot.

Wells took another step, raised his pistol. And suddenly the man on the right sat up and turned. Alders. Holding an AK. His mouth popped open as he saw Wells.

Wells pulled the trigger, a quick one-handed shot. He didn’t have time to aim. The bullet caught Alders high in the chest, close to the shoulder, and pushed him down. Wells fired again, missing. A geyser of dirt exploded up from the streambed. Alders grunted in pain and kicked himself backward toward the ridgeline, cutting off Wells’s angle.

Wells stepped forward, but Alders put up a couple wild shots so Wells couldn’t charge. Wells shifted his aim to Francesca as Francesca pulled in his legs. Wells fired twice and missed both times. Only one for four now. Alders returned with the AK. This time the shots were close, and Wells threw himself down to the streambed. At this range, even a half-aimed burst could connect.

“Drop it!” Wells yelled.

Alders answered with another three-shot burst. Wells raised the Makarov, fired two shots blindly. Six gone now from the pistol’s ten-shot clip. But he needed to keep Alders and Francesca down. Wells had them pinned and facing the wrong way. They wouldn’t want to go over the ridgeline and expose themselves to the soldiers in the village unless they had to. But if Francesca could get himself and his rifle turned around, he’d have a serious firepower edge.

“Last chance!”

No answer. Wells raised himself to his knees, shifted the Makarov to his left hand. With his right, he reached into his gown for a grenade.

ALDERS WAS HIT BAD, Francesca saw. The right side of his gown was already inked with blood. His big front teeth were chomping at his lower lip as he tried to keep quiet. Francesca had no idea how Wells had tracked them here. The answer hardly mattered, not now.

Down in the village, the Strykers had taken cover. If Weston had any sense, he would delay as long as he could, give Francesca a chance to work this mess out for himself. But eventually he would have to send a couple squads up here to search the ridgeline. Francesca needed to be gone by then. He would have a tough time explaining why he was up here carrying a Russian sniper rifle.

He had to take out Wells and get back into the Arghandab. Let Weston and Rodriguez run his corpse over with a Stryker until it was unrecognizable. Meanwhile Francesca would get back to the grape hut and call in a medevac for Alders, tell some story about how he’d gotten pegged while he was out taking a piss. It wasn’t a great plan. It left Young alive. But Young had no evidence and wouldn’t be big on talking anyway, not after he saw his buddy Wells get creamed.

“You win,” Francesca said. He squeezed Alders’s hand. “We surrender.” Wells was too close for Francesca to tell Alders what he planned. Even a whisper would carry. He’d just have to hope Alders got it. Alders winked. Good enough. Alders turned and pushed himself up with his good hand. Francesca grabbed the Dragunov and got ready to launch himself over the ridgeline. He would spin and stand and fire through the mulberry bushes. He wouldn’t have much of an angle and he’d be shooting uphill. But he had a sniper rifle against a pistol and that should be enough.

ALDERS STOOD UP unsteadily from the streambed, every breath a struggle. His right arm dangled uselessly. He wasn’t holding the AK. Francesca was still hidden. Wells was on his knees, holding the grenade low and close against his body so Alders couldn’t see it. As grenades went, the RGO-78 wasn’t great, a modern version of an old Russian design. It weighed about a pound and looked like an oversize green egg with a ridge in the middle. If Wells could drop it within five meters of Francesca, it would be lethal.

“Francesca!” Wells yelled. “Now!”

“He’s coming,” Alders said. “I promise—”

Alders was talking too much, covering, and then Wells heard Francesca scrambling at the edge of the streambed. Wells put the grenade to his teeth and pulled the pin and released the handle and tossed it up, aiming for the ridgeline. The grenade arced high, end over end, desperate and beautiful as a field goal try with no time left. Wells knew as soon as he threw it that he’d left it short.

“Grenade,” Alders yelled. “Grenade!”

Alders dove. Wells went down, too. These RGOs kicked fragments thirty meters.

Boom. The explosion echoed off the hills, louder than a single grenade had any right to be. Alders cursed and Francesca screamed and Wells crawled down the streambed on hands and knees, the stones scraping the burn on his leg. Alders came to his knees and raised his trembling left hand. Shrapnel had cut open his arms, and the front of his gown was black with blood. His mouth was a hole in his beard. He would be dead in an hour unless one of the Stryker medics down the hill could stanch the bleeding.

“Yield,” Alders said. In English. Reminding Wells that he was an American. An American soldier. In his eyes, Wells saw the truth of the surrender. No trick this time. Suddenly the Makarov weighed a thousand pounds. Wells had never killed an American.

“Tell me the truth. Why you were here.”

“You know why.”

“Say it and I’ll let you live.”

“Coleman Young. Please.”

Alders had given up any claim to mercy with the false surrender. He’d given up any claim when he’d come here to murder Young. Wells raised the pistol.

“You said—”

I lied, Wells thought. He squeezed the trigger. Twice. In the chest. Alders slid against the side of the streambed and his dead eyes accused Wells.

In the silence, Wells could hear Francesca’s ragged breathing.

“Alders,” Francesca said from just beneath the ridgeline. Wells couldn’t see him or the Dragunov.

“Francesca. Tell me who you’re working for.”

“You gonna let me live, too?” Francesca giggled. “That what you’ll do for me?”

“I’ll do you a bigger favor. Kill you now. No trial, you don’t spend fifty years in Leavenworth. Go out like a man. Your parents, your buddies, they never know you’re a traitor.”

Wells reached into his gown for his second grenade. Would Francesca move left or right along the ridgeline to protect himself from more grenades? Or would he stay close to the streambed for the most direct shot with his rifle? Yes. He’d stay close, try to end this now. Wells grabbed his second grenade from the gown. His last grenade. His extra Makarov magazines were back in his bag, too. He was down to two rounds.

“Fair enough,” Francesca said.

Wells pulled the pin on the grenade. If he left it short, the ridgeline would protect Francesca. If he put too much on it, it would slide down the hill. Wells didn’t throw it. He rolled it down the dry streambed, hard. Then he jumped out of the streambed and dove down behind a rock and waited for the explosion.

It came too soon. The grenade had blown before falling off the ridgeline. Even as the echo died, Francesca yelled, “Missed.” Wells raised his head and saw Francesca standing up, spinning, holding a rifle chest-high, where he could get an angle and fire up the streambed. Francesca snapped off three quick shots before he realized Wells had moved. But Wells had no angle either, and with only two rounds left, he couldn’t afford to miss. He waited, expecting Francesca to hide under the ridgeline again.

Instead, Francesca stepped forward. He went to one knee in the streambed next to Alders’s body. He swung the Dragunov slowly left to right, covering the trees and rocks on both sides of the streambed. From where he waited, he couldn’t see Wells. But Wells still had no angle on him, and they were only about twenty-five meters from each other, and Wells would have to give up his cover to move.

“Americans dressed like Afghans killing each other with Russian guns,” Francesca said. “How about that?” Wells had the crazy thought that Francesca sounded like Keith Jackson calling college football. “I know you’ve only got a couple rounds left in that peashooter, Johnny. Make ’em count.”

Wells reached out, felt the edge of a rock with his fingertips. He reached for it, couldn’t get to it. He inched down, quietly. Let Francesca talk. The Dragunov swung side to side, never stopping. Francesca was waiting for any move, any sound.

“I heard Alders surrender. How do you shoot a man, he’s got his hands in the air, he’s begging for his life? Tell me that.”

Wells got his hand around the rock, found it was the size of a baseball. Just right.

“Tell you what, Johnny. I’ll tell you who I’m working with. And when you meet him in hell, you tell him the Shadow sent you there. And be sure to ask him about the missiles, will you?”

Moving only his arm, Wells flipped the rock high into the air. He didn’t care where it landed as long as it reached the other side of the stream, the downhill side. It bounced off a tree and landed on the scree with a crack, and Francesca swung the Dragunov around toward it—

Wells came to his knees and lifted the Makarov and squeezed the trigger twice, knowing these were his last two rounds, knowing that if he missed Francesca would finish him—

He caught Francesca once in the chest and once in the belly. The shots spun Francesca sideways and he fell against the side of the stream beside Alders. He tried to bring the Dragunov back around on Wells, but couldn’t. The muzzle dragged uselessly on the ground. Wells stood, jumped down, walked to Francesca, knelt beside him. The shots had caught him high and low. Ugly wounds, probably mortal. Francesca put a hand on his stomach and looked dumbly at the blood trickling through it.

“Who you working for?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do it.”

“Not without the name.”

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

“Lautner.”

Wells turned back.

“Pete Lautner is Stan. Now do it.”

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

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