The engines whined and the chopper’s front end rose and then its rear end lurched up into the night. The Chinooks were so big that sometimes they gave the illusion that they were moving in pieces, like accordion buses, instead of all at once. Francesca couldn’t see much, but he didn’t need to. He’d killed people all over this damn country.
He untied his boots and put in his earplugs and closed his eyes and let the Chinook’s vibrations put him to sleep. Strange but true, these rides were the only place he truly relaxed anymore.
In Kabul, only a couple guys got off, so the copter stayed stuffed. Fifteen minutes later, the Chinook touched down at Zebra Ramp in Bagram. Francesca’s job was almost finished. Though this last bit was the trickiest.
THE CHINOOK HAD LANDED north of the airport runway. The passenger and cargo jet terminals were on the south side. The runway was supposed to be impassible. Anyone connecting from a helicopter to a jet was supposed to leave the tarmac and reenter through the passenger terminal.
But Francesca didn’t have that option. Bags at Bagram were examined before they were allowed on the tarmac. The screeners were mainly looking for explosives, but the plastic-wrapped bundles of heroin in his pack bore an uncanny resemblance to bricks of C-4. Francesca couldn’t put the bag through an X-ray machine. Fortunately, he was on the tarmac already. He just needed to cross the runway to get to the passenger side.
Francesca stepped out of the helicopter, looked around. Unlike civilian airports, Bagram never slept. Planes took off and landed twenty-four hours a day. Even now, close to midnight, the air was thick with jet fuel. As he watched, an F-18 pulled off the runway almost vertically and disappeared into the night. A minute later, a Reaper drone took its place on the runway, slowly gaining speed, finally rising from the earth. Compared to the F-18, the Reaper looked like a hobbyist’s creation, spindly wings and a long, narrow nose. Yet the Reaper was a far cheaper and more effective weapon.
Around Francesca, the Chinook emptied like a clown car, passengers pouring out the back, glad to leave the noisy bird behind. They grabbed their bags and made their way toward the gate that separated the helicopter landing area from the rest of the base. Francesca lit up a cigarette, an excuse to wait on the tarmac.
“You need a ride somewhere?” a white-haired guy in a General Dynamics jacket said.
“Thanks. I’m good.” Francesca smoked until he was the last guy by the bird. When the cigarette was finished, he edged toward the gate. After a few steps, he bent over and tied his boots. The pilots were finishing their final postlanding checks. All the passengers were close to the gate. No one was within a hundred feet of him. No one was looking at him. Chinooks weren’t exactly loaded with classified technology. They’d been around forty years. And nobody cared too much where passengers went after a helicopter touched down.
Francesca turned, walked purposefully away from the gate. Sure, somebody could have run back to ask him whether he was lost. But folks had rides waiting and didn’t want to be late. The Special Forces tags helped. He ducked behind a hangar and waited. A few minutes later, he heard the pilots joking with each other as they left. He waited fifteen minutes more. Now he was alone for sure.
He headed for the gate, which had been closed and locked. An all-terrain vehicle was parked beside it. The mechanics rode them around the airfield. A lucky break. Even better, the key was in the ignition. Francesca rolled east along the outer taxiway, leaving the Chinook behind. He passed an enormous hangar filled with fighter jets. Mechanics stood by an A-10 Warthog, the ugliest and arguably most useful plane the Air Force had. The Warthogs flew low and slow and fired rounds the size of Coke cans. They could slice through tank armor or reduce a house to rubble. The mechanics looked over as if wondering who he was. He nodded, didn’t say anything, kept driving.
Finally, Francesca reached the northeastern edge of the runway, where dozens of old Russian Mi-8 helicopters slept in a fenced-off pen, as if to prevent them from contaminating American choppers and jets. Contractors flew the Mi-8s, which were rickety and slow but famously indestructible. The finicky turbines that powered American helicopters needed clean fuel or they seized up in midair. Mi-8s ran on practically anything.
At the edge of the tarmac, Francesca turned south and steered the ATV to the end of the runway. “No Trespassing. Emergency Vehicles Only,” a sign warned. To his east, a fence blocked the end of the runway from the perimeter road that circled the base. This far over, planes would be hundreds of feet above him on takeoff. A C-130 lumbered overhead, giving him some cover, as he headed across the runway to the southern taxiway.
Now he just needed to find the big jet to Frankfurt. One left every night, usually around two a.m., filled with soldiers heading home for their leaves. The departure time seemed lousy, but it got guys to Frankfurt in time for morning connections to the United States.
Unlike big civilian airports, Bagram didn’t have jetways. To board, guys walked out a fenced area at the back of the terminal and across the tarmac and up a mobile staircase and into the jet. Francesca planned to park the ATV near the terminal. When the guys left the terminal to board, he’d join the line. In the darkness, he would be just another soldier. No one would notice him or question his presence.
Before he got to the stairs, he’d find a cargo handler and ask whether he could stow his bag in the hold, because it was so big and heavy. The handler, most likely a contractor, would take the bag and give him a gate check. Francesca would put it in his pocket and walk back into the terminal and disappear. Tomorrow he’d catch a Space-A back to Moqor. No one would ever know he’d been here. What happened to the bag in Frankfurt wasn’t his concern. He had never asked, but he imagined someone on ramp duty there would pick it up.
HE DIDN’T REGISTER the headlights until they were almost on him. An SUV had edged onto the taxiway, blocked his path. Now he saw the black letters on the side: Military Police. He wondered whether he’d popped up on the ground radar the controllers used to track the taxiway, or if the stop was just bad luck.
No matter. The military police at Bagram were basically crossing guards. He’d make sure they saw he was Delta, be on his way. The cop on the passenger side got out, put a flashlight on him. Francesca raised a hand to shield himself from the glare and started to stand. The cop put a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t move. What’s your name?”
“Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Francesca.”
“You come over the runway just now?”
“The far edge over there, Officer. I thought I was okay. I’m sorry.”
“Bet you are. Did you see the sign?”
“Sign?”
“The big sign that says emergency vehicles only. No trespassing. That sign. Did you see it?”
This guy was a real hard-ass. Francesca felt his anger rising. Another jet soared into the night. He cooled himself down, waited until it passed.
“Like I said, I’m sorry. Even us bug-eaters make mistakes. I’m supposed to be going to Frankfurt tonight, start my leave, and my ride was delayed and I didn’t think I would make it.”
The cop moved his flashlight to Francesca’s backpack. “What’s in the bag?”
“The usual.”
“I’m going to need to see it.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
The cop’s hand was on his holster now. “What did you say?”
“I said, sure, Officer.”
Francesca knew what was going to happen. He should have been looking for a way out, but he wasn’t. The knife on his leg would do fine. He’d never killed anyone with a knife. He was looking forward to it. Military, civilian, friend, enemy, he didn’t care anymore. Let’s do this. He felt his pulse beating down to his fingertips. He had the sensation whenever he put a target in his sights.
He tossed the bag on the ground. The cop bent down for it. Francesca dropped his hand toward his knife—
AND THE TAHOE HONKED, long and loud.
The officer wagged a finger at Fra
ncesca, Don’t move, and hurried back to the Tahoe. The two cops had a short conversation, and then the first walked back to him. “Your lucky day. A Gator”—an armored vehicle—“just pancaked two joggers. Even stupider than you, running at night. We got called to find witnesses. I told my partner you’re full of it, you don’t belong out here and I want to take you in, but I got outvoted. So good-bye and get lost.”
The cop hustled back to the Tahoe. It rolled off, lights flashing. Francesca watched it disappear. He touched the gas, headed the four-wheeler toward the passenger terminal. The cop was right. His lucky day. Even if he had killed both officers cleanly and ditched the bag, he’d have left a trail. His fellow passengers on the Chinook would have remembered that he hadn’t left with them. The mechanics had seen him on the cart. The military investigators would have pulled the Space-A files at Moqor from the trash and his name would jump out.
So, as he steered along the south taxiway, Francesca knew he should have been relieved. Instead, as his pulse slowed and the electricity in his fingertips faded, he felt nothing but disappointment.
8
KABUL
W
ells rode in the front passenger seat of a crew-cab pickup in the shark-tooth mountains east of Jalalabad. The man beside him had a long black beard, a Talib beard. Wells had a beard, too, dyed blue. He wondered whether he was a prisoner. But the other man ignored him. In the distance explosions thumped hollowly. The pickup came over a rise and Wells saw an M1 tank blocking the road. Its turret swung toward them. The pickup’s driver grinned at Wells. Are you ready? He gunned the engine—
And Wells opened his eyes and found himself at the Ariana. The explosions were knocks on his door. “John? It’s Gabe Yergin.” The station’s operations chief, its third in command. “Wondered if you wanted lunch.”
Wells dragged himself up, saw a bloodshot-eyed zombie in the mirror. Getting too old for this. That thought came to him more and more. “I’ll come by your office.”
“Sure.”
The station’s senior officers worked on the second floor. A thick-necked guard buzzed Wells into a corridor whose walls were lined with high-res satellite maps of Kabul and Kandahar—as well as the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Peshawar. Proof, not that any was needed, that this war didn’t stop at the border.
“Here.” Yergin poked his head from a doorway like a groundhog checking for his shadow. He was thirty-five going on fifty, a small man with a deep widow’s peak and puffy black circles under his eyes. Even after he sat beside Wells on the couch, he seemed to be in motion. He rocked forward, drumming his fingers against his jeans. He produced a pack of Marlboros from his jacket, lit up, dragged deep. The nicotine worked its magic immediately. Yergin relaxed, sat back against the cushions.
“Let me guess,” Wells said. “You didn’t smoke until you got here.”
“Been smoking since college. Every six months or so I quit, but it never takes. Hasn’t anyone ever told you? There’s something very satisfying in meeting an addiction over and over. You like the posters?” Posters for Transformers and The Godfather hung behind Yergin’s desk.
“Sure.”
“The Godfather, best movie ever made.”
“And Transformers?”
“I could tell you it’s a metaphor for the way we can never trust the Afghans, they’re always changing. Truth is, it’s an excuse to put up a picture of Megan Fox.”
“I’m sure the women in the office love that.”
“You’d be surprised. So Vinny sent you.”
“So much for small talk, huh?”
“My ADD can’t tolerate it.”
“The director wants my take on how it’s going.”
“We must be doing a terrible job.”
“Finger-pointing isn’t my style. I’m trying to help. But I promise you this about Duto: If he thinks you guys are in trouble and that the problems could come back at him, he’ll make sure he’s insulated. If that means ending your career in the ugliest possible way, he will. So if there’s an issue, it’s talk to me now or talk to somebody else later. Maybe under oath.”
The speech left plenty of questions unanswered, but it seemed to satisfy Yergin. “First off, understand the strategic situation’s a mess. We’re playing Whac-A-Mole here. First we had our guys in the east, and the south went to hell. Now we’ve moved everybody south, and the east is going to hell. And by the way, the south isn’t great either. This quote-unquote government we’re working with, it’s beyond corrupt. Everything’s for sale. You want to be a cop? That’s a bribe. Five to ten grand, depending on the district.”
“Ten thousand Afghanis?” That was four hundred dollars.
“Ten thousand American dollars. To become a patrolman. You want to be a district-level police chief? Twenty, thirty thousand. At the national level, the cabinet jobs are a quarter million and up.”
“That seems crazy.”
“You have to remember, this country has African-level poverty. Average income is six hundred dollars a year. Total economy, maybe twenty billion. We come in, we’re spending a hundred billion a year. Think about that. Five times the Afghan GDP. And the locals make sure they get their share.”
“How so?”
“Three main buckets. The military spends billions on base construction, supply convoys, local guards. Second, we fund reconstruction projects, roads, dams, schools, et cetera. Third, we give direct subsidies to the Afghan government to pay for their army, police, judges, toilet paper for all I know. Combine the buckets, probably close to twenty billion.”
“The money we funnel in is equal to the rest of their economy put together.”
“Correct. So the Afghans, they can keep living on two dollars a day, or they can get onto our gravy train. If they have to pay bribes to do it, they will. And lots of this money sneaks back into the Taliban’s pockets. The contractors we hire to deliver fuel, they bribe the Taliban not to attack them.”
“We’re paying for both sides of the war.”
“More or less.”
“You don’t sound optimistic.”
“It is what it is.”
“What would you do if you were in charge?”
“I’d pull out. But barring that, I don’t have a good answer.”
“So the war’s a mess,” Wells said. “What about the station? Marburg knocked you guys down for a while.”
“Knocked us down? Marburg lit us on fire and threw us off a cliff. Seeing those coffins at Bagram was as bad as watching my parents get buried. Nine dead. And it was so avoidable. Marci and Manny wanted al-Zawahiri so bad they didn’t pat Marburg down. Basic blocking and tackling. Not that we talk about it.”
“Because of Peter?”
Yergin’s eyebrows lifted so high they nearly fused with his widow’s peak. “I didn’t say that. But yes. Hard to believe, but our deputy chief doesn’t want to hear about how his wife got herself and his brother killed. And since then, you know the history.”
“The outlines, sure.”
“Jim Wultse turned out to be a grade-A boozer. I remember walking into his office once around noon, seeing him spike his coffee. Nice silver flask, had a dragon inscribed on it. His hand shook when he saw me, and whatever he was pouring wound up on his desk. He looked down like, ‘Sweet manna of heaven, I’ve lost you.’ If I wasn’t there, I swear he would have started licking the wood.”
“That bad?”
“No joke. I thought I was watching an after-school special on the dangers of alcoholism. And when Wultse left, Gordie King came and we were excited for about two minutes. Thought he was going to kick ass and take names. But he just didn’t have the stones anymore. He hated Kabul. Refused to live here. This is where the war is. It’s not moving to Switzerland.”
“You lost more than a year.”
“It was brutal. We covered for it. Getting bin Laden took a lot of heat off. We didn’t have much to do with that—it came out of Pakistan and then the CTC took over. But it had a halo effect, made everyb
ody look good. Plus we kept running the drones, and that’s basically a military op. Runs off tactical intel. So we blasted lots of low- and midlevel guys. A lot of the intel for those hits comes direct from the insurgents, by the way. They use the drones to settle scores with one another, and we let them.”
“What about civilian casualties?”
“We’re careful. We see kids around, anything like that, we won’t shoot. And the optics these things carry are amazing. You ever seen them?”
“Not really.”
“You should. You know how in the movies they show the bad guys’ faces and you see every pore crystal clear? It’s even better than that.”
“Too bad you can’t read their minds.”
“Too bad. So yeah, even in the worst days, we blew up a bunch of guys carrying guns over the border, that kind of thing. But they’re totally replaceable. There’s an infinite supply of them.”
“We kill their drones with our drones.”
Yergin laughed wheezily. He sounded like a flooded lawn mower engine trying to start. “More or less. And that’s not what we’re here for.”
“What are you here for?”
“You know full well.”
“I want to know how you see the job.”
“If we’re doing it right, we’re getting into the top of the government, assessing who’s trustworthy. Figuring out which Talib commanders we can buy off and which we can’t. Offering an independent view of how the war is going, so the White House isn’t relying only on the military.”
“And finding al-Zawahiri and Mullah Omar.”
“Ron and Pete haven’t emphasized that as a goal. And I agree. The logic is that (a) they’re probably in Pakistan and it’s Islamabad’s job, and (b) al-Qaeda doesn’t have much to do with the insurgency here.”
“Makes sense.”
“Glad you approve. Can I have my promotion now?”
Wells smiled. More and more, Yergin reminded Wells of Shafer. He probably wasn’t as cynical, not yet. Give him thirty years.
The Shadow Patrol Page 11