The Ghost War

by Alex Berenson

  “Maybe I’m just projecting, but I swear he looked relieved,” Gaffan said.

  You’re just projecting, Wells didn’t say. Warned you not to watch. He put the man’s cracked skull out of his mind. He’d save the nightmares for later. “Let’s do this, get close enough to lay a forty in that cave.” A high-explosive 40-millimeter grenade, fired from the M203 launchers attached to the carbines he and Gaffan carried.

  Wells pulled open the barrel of his 203, popped in the grenade—a cylinder that looked like a shotgun shell—and cocked the barrel. He pointed to a stunted tree a hundred feet to their right. “Ready?”

  Gaffan nodded.

  Wells popped up, fired, and dropped down. His grenade blasted into the mountainside, a red-white explosion that faded fast. He’d missed, but not by much. Now let them fire back. The Talibs were loose with their ammo. Let them shoot until their magazines ran dry. Then Wells and Gaffan would break for the tree, where they’d be close enough to do some damage.

  But the Talibs refused to play along. Instead of random AK-47 fire, they fired only a few well-aimed shots. Two rounds hit the dead Talib, making the corpse jump, a caricature of resurrection. Gaffan had no chance to move from the shelter of the rock.

  “Somebody’s been teaching these guys to shoot,” Wells said.

  “I’m thinking that too, sir.”

  Now Wells and Gaffan were pinned. The guerrillas had them targeted and would cut them down the next time they poked their heads up. They watched helplessly as two guerrillas emerged from the boulders by the cave and ran left, diving behind a mound of dirt kicked up by a Hellfire missile. From their new position, the Talibs had an angle on Gonzalez and Hackett, who were stuck because of Hackett’s leg. Sure enough, rounds began smashing into the low, flat rocks that sheltered Gonzalez and Hackett.

  “Pinned here, sir,” Gonzalez yelled through the night. Then: “¡Maricón! ¡Puta! Bitch got my Kevlar.” He fired back ineffectually.

  Not good.

  “NOW WHAT, SIR?”

  Wells thought for a few seconds. Could he aim a grenade well enough to drop it over the boulders that hid the guerrillas? Doubtful. But—

  “Load up with CS.” CS was a powerful chemical irritant that left its victims temporarily blind and gasping for breath. All SF soldiers carried CS grenades in addition to the traditional high-explosive variety. Wells popped a gray-and-green aluminum CS grenade in the 203.

  “But sir—” Gaffan said.

  “Sergeant. Stop calling me sir. Call me John, Wells, dogface, whatever. Not sir. Makes me feel like I’m two hundred years old.”

  “Yes, Mr. Wells.”

  “Mr. Wells? All right, it’ll do. Now stop arguing and load up.” Lying on his stomach, Wells crooked his arms at the elbow so that the barrel of his carbine pointed up like a mortar. He imagined the gas grenade arcing out of the M4 and landing behind the rocks like a perfectly thrown football. He squeezed the trigger. The carbine jerked back as the grenade soared out.

  A few seconds later, white smoke drifted down the side of the mountain, a hundred yards above the entrance to the cave. Not close enough. Wells stayed on his stomach, keeping his arms still.

  “Gimme your M4 and reload mine,” Wells said. Gaffan put his own carbine in Wells’s hands. Wells tilted his arms back slightly, calculating, again imagining the gas canister landing behind the boulders. He fired. The grenade landed thirty yards short. Better, but not good enough.

  AK fire rattled at Wells and Gaffan as the white CS smoke dispersed across the plateau. A rocket-propelled grenade flared out from a gap in the boulders, sailing over their heads. Good. The men behind the boulder were getting anxious.

  “Again,” Wells said. Again Gaffan traded carbines with him. Wells lowered the barrel slightly and squeezed the trigger. Pop! This time the canister landed on the rocks where the guerrillas had hidden. Smoke poured out in all directions, as Wells had hoped. He had chosen to use the CS grenades instead of standard high-explosive grenades because with the CS he didn’t have to have perfect aim. If he could get reasonably close, the gas would disperse over the boulders, doing his work for him.

  Men yelled in Arabic. Seconds later the coughing began, a vicious hacking as if the men behind the boulder were trying to spit up their poisoned lungs.

  “Again.” Again Gaffan handed him a reloaded carbine. Wells adjusted his aim infinitesimally and fired again. This time the shot went slightly long, landing on the mountainside a few yards above the cave. But the smoke seeped down into the area where the guerrillas were hiding. The coughing grew louder.

  “Get your mask on,” Wells said. “One more, then we go in.”

  Wells fired the fifth canister, then pulled on a gas mask. The mask made breathing a conscious decision rather than an automatic fact. Inhale. Fill your lungs. Exhale. Hear air rattle through the activated charcoal filters. Inhale again.

  Wells pulled his helmet back on and popped a fresh grenade—standard high-explosive, not CS—into the 203. Two men in brown robes crawled from behind the boulders, their bodies shaking, clots of white phlegm dripping down their faces.

  Gaffan took aim. “Wait,” Wells said. But no more men joined the two.

  “Okay. Drop ‘em.”

  Gaffan squeezed the trigger of his carbine. The first guerrilla twitched spasmodically and collapsed face-first. The second man stood and turned toward them, raising his arms blindly, in defiance, or surrender. Gaffan didn’t wait to find out. He fired again. The man pressed a hand to his robe, twisted, and fell.

  “Looks like we got the dumb ones,” Gaffan said. Behind the boulder, the desperate coughing continued. At least two men left back there, Wells thought. No point in waiting any longer. CS was nasty, but its effects wore off fast. “Cover me,” he said to Gaffan. “On three.”

  “I’ll go, John.” Gaffan started to stand.

  Wells shoved him down. “You cover.” Wells crouched in the shadow of the rock. It was 250 feet to the boulders in a straight line, though he would be zigzagging to keep the guerrillas from getting a clean shot. He wasn’t as fast as he’d once been, but he was fast enough. He held up three fingers to Gaffan, two, one. He took off.

  And as his legs pumped over the plateau’s broken rocks, the mania of hand-to-hand combat filled him. He knew he would survive. God, Allah—whatever He was called, whatever He was—wouldn’t let him die out here. He was invincible. Indestructible.

  Wells sprinted, the M4 cradled across his chest, hurdling a low rock, always moving, cutting over the field like a running back who’d made the safety miss and knew the end zone wasn’t far off. When he was a hundred feet away, a man stepped from the shadows of the boulders, white, holding an AK in both hands, wearing a jean jacket—

  And a gas mask like Wells.

  Agas mask. Choose now or never choose anything again. No point in trying to shoot. He was running too fast to have a chance of hitting the guy. Instead Wells pulled the second trigger on the carbine, launching his high-explosive grenade. Maybe he’d be close enough at least to rattle the man in the mask—

  Thata-thata-thata.The guerrilla’s AK exploded with a staccato burst.

  Wells dove to his right. He landed hard on his shoulder and rolled, reaching for his carbine.

  The grenade blew in an enormous white flash. Wells ducked his head as shrapnel rained around him. When he looked up, the man in the jean jacket no longer existed.

  Wells sat up. He didn’t think he’d been hit, but his right arm hung out of its socket and his shoulder felt as though it were on fire. Wells reached across his body and cradled the shoulder in his left hand. He grabbed his right biceps and tugged his arm forward, trying to pop the joint into place. The pain was the worst he’d ever felt. A river of agony flooded through his chest. Tears flooded his eyes and filled his gas mask. Wells dropped his arm.

  He caught his breath and again wrapped his left hand around the top of his right biceps. In one convulsive movement he jerked his arm forward. The world spun. He pulled even
harder. He could feel the joint give. The stars merged and the sky glowed a chunky white. Wells didn’t stop pulling. Then the joint popped back into place and the pain lessened. Wells tried to lift his arm and was amazed to find he could. Then he picked himself up and ran for the rocks, to see if anyone else was still back there.

  BUT WHEN WELLS FINALLY ENDED his 250-foot marathon and reached the mouth of the cave, he didn’t find anyone. Anyone alive, anyway. The grenade had slammed into the chest of the man in the jean jacket, a one-in-a-million shot that had blown him apart. His headless torso lay in a thick pool of blood. The head, still covered with the gas mask, lay ten feet from his body. Through the clear plastic mask its eyes watched Wells, promising to visit him while he slept. “Asshole,” Wells said aloud, unsure if he was talking to himself or the man he had killed.

  And he wasn’t finished yet. There was another one. Somewhere in that cave, there was another one.

  14

  SHAFER WALKED INTO EXLEY’S OFFICE IN LANGLEY, folder in hand. “Mis-ter Mole. Oh Mis-ter Mole. Where are you?”

  Exley looked up from the papers she was pretending to read. “Cute, Ellis.”

  “How’s the hunt? We any closer to whack-whack-whacking this mole?” Shafer stood in front of Exley’s desk and battered imaginary moles with an imaginary mallet. “Never was any good at that game.”

  “Ellis, are you stupid? Did you forget what’s happening rightnow? While you stand in my office with your tongue hanging out like an escapee from Sesame Street?”

  “Of course I know. He’s gonna be fine, Jennifer. You said it yourself. He was born for this.”

  “He’s in trouble. I know it.” She did, too. She didn’t believe in extrasensory perception or astrology or any of that voodoo. But she knew Wells was in trouble, bad trouble, at this moment.

  “You’re just nervous.”

  “And you’re just a bureaucrat whose idea of living on the edge is extra-spicy taco sauce. You don’t get what it’s like, having a gun in your hand, killing them before they kill you.” And I do, Exley didn’t say. I’ve only done it once, but once was enough.

  “Jennifer—”

  “So don’t patronize me, Ellis. Yeah I’m nervous. Until I hear from him, that’s not going to change. Now, can we do some work?”

  Without another word, Shafer pulled up a chair. Together they looked at the list Exley had been trying to focus on all morning:TOP SECRET/SCI/EPSILON

  RED—ACCESS WORK GROUP—UPDATE 2B

  Abellin, Paul

  Balmour, Victoria

  Baluchi, Hala

  Bright, Jerry

  The list consisted of everyone who knew the Drafter’s name or enough details about his identity to compromise him. Already it was fifty-three names long, and despite its length, it still wasn’t finished. Tyson had told Exley and Shafer to expect several more names before the updates stopped.

  The length of the list testified to Langley’s screwed-up priorities, Exley thought. The agency jealously guarded the information the Drafter provided, while treating his name with a carelessness bordering on negligence. The data was valuable, the source worthless.

  After just a couple of weeks working this case, Exley had gained new respect for Tyson’s job. Even under ideal circumstances, when the agency had been tipped to the exact identity of a spy in its ranks, counterespionage was tough. Just showing that a CIA employee had hidden income or had failed a polygraph wasn’t enough. To build ironclad cases, Tyson’s teams needed to catch moles in the act of turning over classified information to their handlers.

  Meanwhile, as they investigated, they had to be sure they weren’t following false leads from foreign spy agencies. During the Cold War, the KGB had more than once sent Langley down dead-end paths. The sad truth was that without a tip, discovering who had betrayed the Drafter would be incredibly difficult, Exley thought. At this point they had no suspects. And the North Koreans had made sure that the Drafter wouldn’t be able to help.

  For now, Tyson’s work group had put together basic bureaucratic details for each of the fifty-three people on the list: Date of Hire, Pay, Career History/Evaluations, Marital and Family Status, and—maybe most important—Date of Last Polygraph.

  No bank records. They would need subpoenas for those. Tyson’s group had run the names through the FBI’s criminal records database, checked for felony arrests or convictions. No one had any, though Virginia and D.C. police records showed two misde meanors. Edmund Cerys, a case officer who’d spent time in Hong Kong in the 1990s, had been caught urinating in public after a Redskins game. And Herb Dubroff, deputy director for the East Asia Division, had gotten himself busted for setting off fireworks on the Fourth of July. Neither arrest exactly screamed double agent.

  SHAFER EXTRACTED HIS OWN COPY of the list from his file folder. The names were covered with doodles, evidence of his untidy mind. “Anything jump out?”

  “Way too many people had his name. Especially on the DI side.” The DO, or Directorate of Operations, was home to the case officers who managed spies like the Drafter. The DI, or Directorate of Intelligence, had the analysts responsible for thrashing out the reports that the agency sent to the White House. “There’s no excuse for it. Those guys should all get code words only.”

  “When you’re an asset that long, your name leaks. It’s inevitable. Both sides of the house, the analysts and the case officers, they all think they deserve to know details about the assets. They say it’s crucial for judging the information.”

  “But they’re really just trying to prove what big swinging dicks they have.”

  “Now, why would you say something like that?”

  “Anyway. There are five on this list who haven’t taken their polys on schedule. Two others showed signs of quote-unquote minor deception on their last test but haven’t been reexamined. All seven now have tests scheduled for next month.”

  Any CIA employee with access to sensitive information was supposed to take a polygraph every five years as a routine precaution. In practice the agency was short on polygraph testers. Some mid-level officers went a decade between tests.

  “Next month. Glad to see they’re taking this so seriously,” Shafer said. “I’ll call Tyson, ask them to move it up.” He dropped the sheet of names on her desk, stood up, and started to pace. She recognized the signs. He was about to have a “Shafer moment.” In half an hour they’d have a new way of looking for the mole. Maybe it would make sense, maybe not. But at least they’d have some leads to chase.

  “Forget the list for a second,” Shafer said. “Who are we looking for? Who is this guy? What kind of man betrays his country?”

  “Betrays his country? Isn’t that a little theatrical, Ellis?”

  “What would you call it, then?”

  “Fine. Betraying his country it is.”

  “But in a way you’re right. He’s not betraying his country. He’s betraying us. The agency. He’s been passed over for promotions. His career hasn’t gone how he wanted.”

  “That fits half of Langley,” Exley said.

  “He’s on his second marriage, or his third.”

  “Hanssen was on his first marriage.” Robert Hanssen, the FBI double agent.

  “That’s the exception, but okay. Strike the second marriage. He’s a loner for sure. Not many friends at the agency. Middle-aged, forty to fifty-five. Scores well on tests but terrible interpersonal skills. Always sure he’s the smartest guy in the room.”

  “I didn’t know you were spying for North Korea, Ellis.”

  “I’ll remind you I’m on my first wife.”

  “Like Hanssen. Why are you so sure it’s a he?”

  “It’s a he, Jennifer. Women aren’t double agents.”

  “Because we’re such nurturing souls. Like Paris Hilton.”

  “Because women don’t have the stomach for this kind of risk.”

  “That’s crap and you’re an MCP.”

  “A what?”

  “A male chauvinist pig.”
>
  “Wow. Haven’t heard that since Gloria Steinem stopped burning bras. Anyway, I’m right.”

  “What about Mata Hari?”

  “An exception.”

  Exley didn’t bother to argue. “So does he have kids?”

  “Possibly. Ames didn‘t, but Hanssen did.”

  “Go on. What else?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s something. Some sexual tic, maybe.”

  “He’s in the closet, cruising Dupont.” Dupont Circle, the center of Washington’s gay population, a few blocks west of Exley’s apartment. “Could you be any more predictable, Ellis?” Exley was enjoying this back-and-forth now. “Maybe he’s just a happy suburban dad, likes it missionary once a week.”

  “You don’t do this if you’re happy.”

  “Right you are. Does he do drugs?”

  “More likely he gets his kicks legally. Gambling. Drinking, maybe.”

  “We can track that,” Exley said. “A DUI.”

  “With a good lawyer he could get a DUI knocked down to a misdemeanor speeding ticket. And traffic records are a nightmare. Even if we just do Maryland and Virginia, it’ll take weeks. But we can try.”

  “And we can send NSLs to Vegas, ask the casinos if anyone on the list is a major player.” NSLs were national security letters. The agency sent them to companies when it was looking for information to aid espionage or terrorism investigations.

  “Thought you believed in the Bill of Rights,” Shafer said.