The Shadow Patrol jw-6

by Alex Berenson

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

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

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

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

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

  “What about destroying them?” the soldier yelled.

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

  “Amen!” somebody yelled.

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

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

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

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

  Another cheer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “That’s a possibility.”

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

  20

  LANGLEY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “FOB Jackson, yes.”

  “And made a speech there.”

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

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

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

  “He gave out alcohol.”

  “He had a couple cases of beer.”

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

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

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

  “He can’t. Not yet.”

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

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

  “Six days.”

  “Can you push it back?”

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

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

  “Do tell.”

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

  “Spit it out, Ellis.”

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

  “Ellis. You don’t like me, true?”

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

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

  “Not particularly.”

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

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

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

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

  SHAFER HAD BARELY CRADLED the phone before it rang again.

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

  “Jennifer.”

  “Ellis. How are you?”

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

  “Lies both ways.”

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

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

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

  “In Afghanistan.”

  “In the mountains?”

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

  “Is he okay?”

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

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

  “How are yours?”

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

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

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

  “Dartmouth, believe it or not.”

  “John can give him the tour.”

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

  “You’d save a few bucks.”

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

  “No doubt he views that as a disadvantage.”

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

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