“You can always say no.”
Young ripped the headshot, straight down the middle, tearing Francesca’s face in two. “Let’s get him.”
BACK AT KANDAHAR, Wells picked up the FedEx package that Shafer had sent and then left the KBR compound, walking south along the busy two-lane road to the base’s main gate. Trucks churned by as he dialed a number he’d burned into his brain the year before.
Two rings, then: “Brett Gaffan.”
“You answer that way, it makes you sound like a telemarketer. ‘This is Brett Gaffan, have I got a deal for you.’”
“What have I done to deserve this honor, John?”
Gaffan was a former Delta operator who had recently worked with Wells on a mission that had started messy and ended messier. He had saved Wells’s life on a hill in the Bekaa Valley. Despite that fact, or maybe because of it, they’d hardly spoken since the end of the mission. Just a couple vague promises to get together. Civilians didn’t understand this side of the military. Men risked their lives for one another and then walked away with hardly a backward glance once the fighting was done. Combat was combat and life was life. The two didn’t always have much in common.
“Long time no speak,” Gaffan said.
“Sorry about that.”
“Sure you are. So come on, out with it.”
“Out with what?”
“You’re calling me from a blocked number, not your own phone. And it sounds like you’re at a truck stop somewhere. Lots of diesel engines. And it’s like seven a.m. here. You must be out of the country, probably on a base, probably Middle East.”
“Afghanistan.”
“I know you want something, so let’s avoid the awkwardness and get to it.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“As a matter of fact.”
Wells could hardly deny his ulterior motives. “You still keep close to your old buddies?”
“Some. Why?”
“Anybody in Kandahar you really trust?”
Gaffan hesitated. “One guy, sure. A master sergeant, Russell Stout. We haven’t talked in a month or so, but I’m pretty sure he’s still there. Good guy. By the book. No-nonsense.”
Meaning that he wouldn’t necessarily be buying whatever Wells was selling. “Noted. Can I talk to him, use your name? I’m looking for an op who I think is based here.”
“Want to tell me why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t it always? At least give me his name. I might even know him.”
“Daniel Francesca. Sniper.”
“Nope.”
“He got into Delta about when you left. He looks like a bad guy. I just want help getting a look at him.”
“Really. That’s all you want.”
Wells imagined Gaffan holding the phone away from his ear, deciding whether to toss it across the room. Oops. We got disconnected. And then my phone stopped working. Sorry I couldn’t help.
Wells stayed quiet and eventually Gaffan coughed into the phone, an almost embarrassed cough. An I-can’t-believe-I’m-letting-you-use-me-yet-again cough. They both knew he would say yes, defer to Wells’s judgment. Gaffan was a very good operator, but he wasn’t a leader.
“I’ll ask him. But if he’s not comfortable—”
“I get it.”
“I assume you’d rather meet him off base.”
“On KAF should be fine. We’ll find somewhere out of sight. This place is, like, five square miles.”
“You have a funny way of treating your friends, John.”
“Better than my enemies.”
“True that. When you get back, you owe me a beer, and this time I’m collecting.”
“Done.”
FOUR HOURS LATER, Wells sat on the steps of an abandoned trailer at the southwestern edge of the airfield. With the surge done, Kandahar was already shrinking. This part of the base was mostly empty. The dirt fields around Wells were littered with trailers, pipes, barbed wire, earthmoving equipment, and a hundred other bits of slowly rusting steel. The United States military had brought this equipment at unfathomable expense a year or two before. Much of it had never been used. Now it was turning into salvage.
Wells saw headlights approaching and stood and waved. A Jeep pulled up, and he stepped in. The driver was wiry and lean and deeply tanned. He was in his early thirties, but his close-cropped gray hair made him look older. Wells pulled the door shut and they rolled slowly west, toward the wire.
“Sergeant Stout?”
“Call me Russ. You know this is the first time I’ve ever seen this part of KAF?”
“Not much reason to go over here.”
“I guess not. So what’s up?”
No-nonsense, Gaffan had said. Wells decided not to dance around the question. “You know a warrant officer named Daniel Francesca?”
“Sure. Danny. Odd guy. In 71.”
“You don’t mind my asking, what is 71?”
Stout turned right, north along the perimeter road. He looked at Wells: Why do you want to know?
“I have reason to believe Francesca’s dirty.”
Stout shook his head. Not enough.
“That he and a senior CIA officer are working with a Talib commander to export heroin. Funding the insurgency and passing operational information to the commander.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I came a long way to make this up.”
They rode for a while in silence. “What kind of evidence you got?”
“It’s circumstantial, but it’s solid. A couple weeks ago, he was seen on another base with a soldier and officer who we think are the pickup team. We’ve checked and he had no reason to be there.”
“That’s not enough.”
“I agree. I’m not planning to do anything. Just asking questions.”
“We created 71 maybe four years ago. D for Detachment. Detachment 71, two-man teams that can operate outside the wire on their own. There’re only three here, three at Bagram, maybe one down in Helmand.”
“So they can pass as local.”
“That’s the idea. Local enough that they can get down Highway 1 and through the villages without getting stopped or jacked anyway. Danny and his spotter, guy named Alders, they’re good.”
“I didn’t know you guys ever went out under NOC in teams that small.”
“Not before this. It’s kind of a pilot project, and there’re only a few guys who can do it anyway. You have to have the language down.”
Something about what Stout had said bugged Wells. He wasn’t sure why. He moved on.
“What about Francesca? You said he’s odd.”
“You know snipers. How can that not get to you? Plus he’s on his third tour. He and Alders call themselves the Shadow Patrol. It’s sort of a joke, but sort of not, you understand. And he has this weird high-pitched giggle that comes out sometimes, not necessarily when anybody’s made a joke. Like he’s a hyena or something.” Stout demonstrated.
“I can see why you wouldn’t want him babysitting.”
“Definitely not.”
“These 71 teams live in your barracks?”
“Yeah. You know where we are?”
Wells shook his head.
“This high-sec compound close to the main airfield terminal. Called Bengal. On the maps it’s just listed as extra officers’ housing, but if you walk by you’ll see fifteen-foot walls, barbed wire, lots of aerials. We even have a helipad inside, although we can’t use it except if we declare CMS.”
“CMS?”
“Critical Mission Status, like we think we can catch Mullah Omar but we have to go immediately. Otherwise the Air Force controllers hate any air traffic south of the runway. For regular missions we go from the helo ramps on the north side like everybody else. Anyway, the 71 teams almost never go out by helicopter. They have local vehicles and they wear local clothes outside the wire. True black ops. When they’re at Bengal, they hang out a little bit, eat with us and work out sometimes, but most
ly they stick to themselves and practice speaking Pashtun.”
“And you have different missions anyway.”
“Right. You know what we do. Go out in traditional teams, mostly on modified Black Hawks that can refuel in the air. On my first tour, seven years ago, we rode in GMVs.” The GMVs were the Special Forces equivalent of Humvees, modified with smoke-spouting canisters and .50 caliber rifles on top. To save weight, they had lighter armor, sometimes no armor at all.
“Dune buggies.”
“Maximum speed and firepower. Those were fun. Too bad we can’t use ’em now, but a big IED will just vaporize them. So mainly we go airborne, these night raids. But the 71s, they just take their pickup trucks, drive off base, and disappear. Sometimes they support us, sit on an exfil route for a house or villa we’re targeting, pick off stragglers once we get them moving. But mostly they just go their own way, do whatever it is they’ve been tasked for, come back a few days later needing a shower and a hot meal.”
Stout turned right and headed east along the northern edge of the base. To the north, a blimp hung eerily in the night sky. Its cameras watched the mountain where insurgents tried to set up rockets to fire at KAF. Wells wondered what the Afghans—most of whom had never seen a plane that wasn’t a threat to bomb them—made of the blimps.
“I’m guessing they don’t keep their vehicles inside your compound.”
“Heck, no. They mostly enter and leave at night. We’ve got a side entrance that dumps guys into the back of a DFAC. In case somebody’s keeping an eye on the front gate. You know, going outside the wire the way they do, no armor and soft-skinned vehicles, they’d be dead in an hour if they got made.”
Stout had just given Wells the break that he needed. “They use local weapons?”
“From what I can see, generally no. They like the .50 for the range. Their pickups have a hidden compartment welded underneath the bed for their rifles, their uniforms, whatever else they’re using.”
“They carry American uniforms?” Wells didn’t understand, and then he did. “If they get to the point where someone is checking that closely, their covers won’t hold anyway.”
“Correct. They’re not trying to live in a village for months or anything. Not looking to infiltrate AQ like you did back in the day. Just get scalps and go.”
Francesca was in an ideal position to move the drugs, Wells saw. He could move freely on both sides of the wire. Wells wondered why he didn’t pick the stuff up himself instead of depending on Weston and Rodriguez. But snipers preferred to keep their distance from the enemy. Francesca might figure he and his spotter wouldn’t be safe in a face-to-face meet.
Stout reached the eastern edge of the airfield, made another right turn and bumped south, toward the center of the base.
“One last question and then I have a favor. I know you don’t know him that well, but does Francesca strike you as the kind of guy who could do this?”
Stout was silent for so long that Wells thought he didn’t plan to answer. Then he laughed, a short, sharp bark. “I’m not sure what kind of guys any of us are anymore. What’s your favor?”
“I need to see where Francesca parks his pickup.”
“You said you weren’t planning to do anything.”
“I’m not. Not unless he gives me reason.”
Stout went quiet again. Then he pulled the pickup to the side of the road. A Humvee behind honked and flashed its brights and he waved it by. “You want me to hang one of my own out. Detachment 71, it makes no difference, the guy’s Delta. On no evidence, no photos, no SIGINT, nothing. Gaffan asked me to talk to you and I’ve known him a long time, so here I am. But I got to tell you that inside the community, a lot of guys don’t like you. The whole Muslim thing, it’s just weird.”
Wells felt his temper rise. “Ask me what you want, but don’t question my faith.”
“Guess what I’m asking you is, which one, John? Which faith? Islam or America? The way you quit the agency, went to work for the Saudis.”
The ones who don’t know me, is this how they see me? Even now? Wells had thought he put these questions to rest on his very first mission after coming home, when he’d stopped the Times Square bombing. And maybe he had for a while. But the way Duto used him in the Midnight House mission, and then the way he’d quit and gone solo afterward, had obviously started the whispers again. Wells felt a lowing in his stomach. Even among these men, he was an outsider.
Wells could have explained everything. But Stout hadn’t earned the right to ask. “Gaffan’s friends with both of us. He’ll tell you who I am. I’ve been straight with you, every word. If I’m right about Francesca, he’s gonna go after the sergeant who made him. I promised that guy I’d protect him and I’m gonna keep my word. As for Francesca, I’m telling you I won’t lay a finger on him unless I’m sure. My word’s not enough, then we’re done talking. I’ll find another way.”
Stout exhaled, long and deep, like a truck releasing its air brakes. Wells didn’t say another word. Neither did Stout. Didn’t tip his hand. Just put the Jeep in gear and rolled south, toward the heart of the airfield.
PART THREE
24
LANGLEY
C
olonel 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.”
The Shadow Patrol Page 27
