The Shadow Patrol

by Alex Berenson

  He knelt beside the fourth Talib, the thin one, the one who hadn’t wanted any part of this mess. The man lay facedown on the scree. A fist-size hole punctured his back, and bright red arterial blood sopped through his gown. AK rounds were supersonic and big. At close range, they tore through guys. The man’s rifle was trapped under his body. Wells flipped the corpse over and closed its eyes. Then he ran down the hill, his bloody gown flapping.

  The pickup was parked in a clearing alongside two others. Wells put the AK on single-shot and blew out the tires of the other two. He switched to semiauto and fired a half dozen shots into their engine compartments. His pursuers would have a tough time following him.

  He heard distant shouts and screams. They must have found the bodies. Wells started the pickup and wheeled it around and bounced down a narrow but serviceable track. The dead man’s phone showed no service. Which meant that the men behind him couldn’t call anyone to come up the hill and block him. Probably. Maybe.

  The track wound east, into the rising sun. Wells raised a hand to shield his eyes and found it sticky with blood. In the bright white glare, he saw the fourth jihadi, the one who’d tried to surrender. He hadn’t wanted to kill these men. They’d left him no choice. He wondered whether his son would call what he had done self-defense.

  Probably not.

  The track had no intersections or gates. It dead-ended at the main highway, which was empty. Muslim Bagh lay to the left, a few miles down. Wells wanted more than anything to turn right, southwest toward Quetta. He could ditch the pickup there, catch a bus to Islamabad. He would be in the United States in forty-eight hours. He would wash his hands clean and lie in bed with Anne.

  He turned left. To Muslim Bagh.

  13

  W

  ells ditched the Toyota behind an empty mosque on the edge of town. He washed the blood from his hands and face with a trickle of brown water from a rusty irrigation pipe. At the guesthouse, he changed into a clean gown and grabbed his things and rolled out.

  Twenty miles northeast of Muslim Bagh, he pulled over and called Shafer at home. He didn’t like breaking cover so soon after starting the mission, but he needed to tell someone what he’d done, and Shafer was his only choice.

  “Hello?” Shafer’s voice was scratchy. It was close to midnight in Virginia. “John?”

  “You in the situation room?”

  “Naturally.” After years of encouragement from his wife, Shafer had installed a giant flat-screen television and a couple leather couches in his basement. Shafer called it the situation room. He was threatening to add a hot tub. “Trouble already?”

  Wells explained. At the end, Shafer sighed. “Four guys.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You should come with a warning label. You want my advice? Get out of there. Amadullah Thuwani isn’t the guy you went over there to catch. He’s a stepping-stone. Go. We’ll find another way to find the mole.”

  “Just leave.”

  “Have you thought maybe Amadullah won’t like an outsider messing with his business? He might hand you over to the families of the guys you killed. Trade you to settle their feud.”

  “You think so.”

  “Probably not. Most likely he’ll give you a big Thuwani high five for getting rid of them. But who knows? And you’re a stranger, not a guest. All that Pashtunwali junk doesn’t apply to you. And you know it’s more than a little elastic anyway.” According to the Pashtunwali code, hosts were responsible for the safety of their visitors. But some tribes took their obligations more seriously than others, as more than one outsider had found out too late.

  “I have to see this through.”

  “All right. Then when you see the Thuwanis, just play scared. Tell them you got caught and the guys who had you started fighting about what to do with you. Then they started shooting at each other and you took off.”

  “Will they believe that?”

  “No one else is alive to tell them different. They’re more likely to believe that version than that some random Saudi took care of four locals.” Shafer paused. “You sound like you’re having a hard time with this one, John.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Try to remember. You don’t want to do it anymore, you don’t have to. You can always get into alligator wrestling, free-climbing, something safe like that.”

  “Sure. Anyway. When I get back, we’re going to sit on that couch and watch football until we fall asleep.”

  “Can I rest my head in your lap?”

  For the second time in five minutes, Shafer had made Wells smile. “I thought you’d never ask.” He hung up, tossed the AK in a ditch, and turned around, back to Muslim Bagh. About five miles from town, Wells saw a rutted road, blocked by a chain and marked with a small sign that read “East All-Balochistan Mines Company.” He’d taken no notice of it the day before. Chromium and nickel mines studded Balochistan’s hills.

  The mosque lay a hundred yards past the turnoff. It was new, with fresh white paint and a fifty-foot minaret. Wells parked beside a minibus. You’re Jalal Haq. You’ve just had the most terrifying experience of your life. But you lived, and now you want to find the men you came here to meet.

  The mosque was high-ceilinged and carpeted with new wool rugs. It could hold a couple hundred men, but Wells saw only three, Pashtuns squatting against the back wall. They looked to be in their twenties, though Wells couldn’t be sure. Men aged quickly in these mountains. A silver teapot and a bowl of grapes sat on the carpet before them. Breakfast in Balochistan.

  “Salaam aleikum.”

  The man nearest Wells popped a half dozen grapes into his mouth and chewed noisily. “Aleikum salaam,” he mumbled. “Please sit.”

  Wells sat. “I hardly speak Pashtun. Do any of you know Arabic?”

  “Certainly I speak Arabic,” the grape-chewing man said proudly. Up close, he was maybe eighteen.

  “I’m seeking a famous tribe that lives in these hills. The Thuwanis.”

  “My friend. You’ve come to the right place,” the man said. He tapped his chest. “I am Sangar. My uncle, Amadullah, he leads our tribe. I am the youngest of all his nephews.”

  Wells supposed he was due for a break. He gave Sangar his cover story, not mentioning what had happened in the mountains that morning. Sangar was friendly and a bit dim. When Wells finished, Sangar asked him to wait. He waddled out, returning a few minutes later with an older copy of himself. The second man introduced himself as Jaji, another of Amadullah’s nephews. Jaji waved Sangar away and sat across from Wells, his legs crossed, feet tucked away. “So Daood sent you?”

  Wells hid his surprise. Daood was a Pakistani name, not Saudi. Was he an ISI agent? “I don’t know any Daood,” he said truthfully.

  Jaji frowned. “Then tell me why you’ve come.” Again Wells explained. Jaji listened intently, leaning forward, hands on his knees. “And you chose our tribe,” Jaji said, when he was finished. “Who told you of us?”

  “His name was Faisal, the friend of a friend. He said the Thuwanis were great warriors. He told me of a time in Afghanistan, years ago, when you made two Shia run through a field like the dogs they are. It was a special field, he said. The kind that grows explosions and reaps arms and legs.”

  Jaji smiled. “I remember that day. They cried and begged, but it did them no good. But tell me something, Jalal. Why come now?”

  “I wanted to help my brothers.”

  “You could have joined the cause long ago.”

  “A year ago, a cousin of mine, my age, really my best friend, was feeling poorly. A bad cough, sweating at night. He went to the doctor, expected that he’d be given some pills, be fine. Instead, he learned he had cancer of the lung. Two months later, we buried him. And then a few weeks later, another cousin, he died in his sleep, lying next to his wife. His heart. You’re too young to understand that these things happen. Even men who don’t die in war can die suddenly.”

  “Inshallah. We live and we die as God sees.” />
  “Yes, we live and we die. But all these years, I’ve thought of joining the jihad and I’ve always found an excuse. I see now I’ve been trying to protect my little life. But it’s vanishing anyway, so why shouldn’t I come? When I meet Allah, I’d like him to know that I tried to fight for him, at least.”

  Wells had offered the jihadi version of a midlife crisis. The story seemed to satisfy Jaji. “I’ll tell my uncle you’ve come,” he said.

  “Before you do . . .” Wells explained what had happened that morning, finishing with a false version of his escape. “When we were on the trail, they argued with each other as to what to do with me. Then they shot at each other. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Truly Allah must want me to fulfill this mission, because he was protecting me.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Three of the men died. I took a rifle and shot the fourth. Then I ran away.”

  “These men, you know their names?”

  “One was called Najibullah. Another was this man.” Wells passed over the identity card. Jaji looked it over, and a smile that Wells couldn’t read curled his lips. Wells wondered whether he’d made yet another mistake, whether he would have to kill the men in this mosque and race for Islamabad with half of Balochistan chasing him. Then Jaji grinned. He stood, reached a hand to Wells, pulled him up. Wrapped his arms around Wells and hugged him so close that Wells could smell his oddly perfumed hair.

  “Oh, I think my uncle will be glad to see you.”

  LATER, WELLS LEARNED that a cousin of Najibullah’s had raped a niece of Amadullah’s two years before. So the Thuwani men said anyway. Najibullah’s clan no doubt had its own version. The cousin denied the rape and refused to pay compensation. The two sides had feuded ever since. Four men had died so far around Muslim Bagh. Family values, Pashtun-style. The Thuwanis were so overjoyed to hear Wells had been responsible for the deaths of four of their enemies that he probably could have told them who he really was and still been treated as an honored guest.

  Jaji took Wells to a big concrete house on the high plateau east of the main road. A feast awaited him there, raisins and grapes and pomegranates, rice and flatbreads flavored with garlic, heaping platters of lamb and chicken. Black ghosts in burqas brought out pitchers of sweet mango juice and tart lemonade and thick yogurt shakes. The tang of roasted meat filled the room, and Wells realized he was famished. He hadn’t eaten that day. His hunger unsettled him—kill and eat and eat and kill—but he followed his appetite and ate until he was sated. As the honored guest, he sat beside Amadullah, a big, boisterous man, the center of the room, with the deepest voice and the loudest laugh. He chewed the green tobacco that the Pashtuns favored, spitting into a cup that shone with the buttery sheen of pure gold. On his wrist he wore a thick gold Rolex. The killing of Najibullah had put him in high spirits. But Wells could imagine his mood darkening instantly if anyone challenged him. The alpha male in a tribe like this could never afford to show weakness.

  Afterward, the chief dismissed his nephews and brothers and sat with Wells. “I hope you enjoyed our lunch,” he said. “Of course, we’re poor peasants who have nothing like the wealth you Saudis have at home—”

  “There’s no need for modesty. I couldn’t have eaten another bite. I’d always heard of the famous hospitality of the Pashtuns. Now I’ve seen it myself. When you come to the kingdom for your Hajj, my family will host you. We’ll do our best to match your feast.”

  “The men who took you this morning weren’t so polite. Allah smiled on you, to survive those thieves.”

  “He saw the rightness of my mission.”

  “So now do you want to be one of us? Live in these mountains?”

  “I’m not a warrior like you. I can do more good raising money for you.” From his pocket, Wells offered the bundle of hundred-dollar bills Naiz had given him in Islamabad. “It’s only ten thousand dollars, but if I can show everyone at home that the money is going to jihad, I should have no problem getting more.”

  Amadullah played cool. “I understand,” he said gravely. “Please come with me.” He led Wells through the compound to a windowless room. A laptop sat on a desk.

  “MacBook Pro,” Amadullah said. “Top of the line.” He rubbed his fingers over the laptop’s shiny brushed aluminum case as if he were stroking a prized Persian. “Let me tell you, we always need money. For trucks, rifles, explosives, to give to the families of the martyrs.” And MacBooks, Wells thought.

  Amadullah opened the laptop and clicked through a photo-and-video gallery of an IED attack, start to finish. A Chinese 120-millimeter mortar shell was turned into a bomb, taken over the border in the back of a minibus, and buried on a dirt road that crawled along the edge of a steep hillside. A blurry video of an explosion and a smoking Humvee followed.

  “My nephews did this. Three years ago.” Amadullah clicked forward to an image of eight young men pointing AKs at the camera. Another photo showed the same men smiling at American soldiers on patrol. “You see. They have no idea. We cross the border as we like, we live in the hills or in the villages with our cousins. When the moment is right, we strike. When it’s to our advantage, not theirs.”

  “Will you send me these photos? It’ll help me raise money.”

  “Of course, Jalal. I’ll have my nephew give you one of those little things—”

  “A flash drive—”

  “Right. But anyway, you see how it is. We learn more about the Americans every year, while they know nothing about us.”

  “Still, it must be hard to know how they think. Have you ever captured one?” Wells was fishing now, hoping to get Amadullah to talk about the drug trafficking ring, though he wasn’t sure Amadullah would.

  “No, but—” Amadullah broke off. He flipped to another photo, lower resolution than the others. Taken from a cell phone camera, Wells thought. It showed three American soldiers standing in front of a high mud-brick wall. Unfortunately, the soldiers were too distant and the photo quality too low for Wells to see details of their faces. But he could tell that one looked Hispanic while the other two were white.

  “You see these men?” Amadullah said. “We corrupt them.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We sell them drugs. Heroin.” Amadullah flipped forward to a photo of a bag of grayish powder being weighed.

  “My brother. You’re a genius.” So Amadullah was presenting his drug trafficking as a plan to corrupt American soldiers in the service of jihad. “So—if you don’t mind my asking—how does it work?” Wells decided to take a blind shot. “Is Daood involved?”

  Amadullah snapped the MacBook shut. The good cheer on his face disappeared. At this moment, he reminded Wells of Vinny Duto, only bigger and browner and much more dangerous. And Wells knew he had his answer. Daood, whoever he was, connected the Thuwanis with the mole in Kabul.

  “Who told you about Daood?”

  Again Wells found himself playing the frightened Saudi. “No one. I mean, Jaji. But he didn’t tell me anything. When I met him, he asked if Daood had sent me. So I thought—”

  “Thought what?”

  “Allah forgive me, when you showed me these pictures, I wondered if Jaji thought these drugs were the reason I’d come here. I’m so very stupid. I’m sorry.”

  “No. Jaji should never have mentioned the name. Daood is no one for you to worry about.”

  “I won’t then.”

  As quickly as that, Amadullah’s anger passed. He smiled and went back to playing the gracious host. He took Wells to an outbuilding to see his arsenal, AKs and RPGs and even a rusted-out Stinger.

  After the weapons tour, Amadullah didn’t seem to know what to do with Wells. He obviously wanted to prove his jihadi credentials to keep the money flowing. But Wells could see that the Thuwanis weren’t exactly on the front lines this fighting season. Wells suspected that Amadullah was making so much money from the drug ring that he didn’t want to take chances.

  They had another feast that night. A
madullah’s men regaled Wells with stories of attacks on American and Afghan units. Wells felt a little like a visiting dignitary, a member of Congress who had come to a forward base to be told how well the war was going. He promised that on his next trip to Muslim Bagh, he would go on a mission.

  “Yes, come with us. Watch us kill kaffirs,” Jaji said. “Slit their throats and make them wish they’d never come to our country.”

  “God willing,” Wells said. He wondered whether he could steal the laptop and decided not to take the risk. He had gotten Daood’s name and the photos. He would have to hope that would be enough.

  The next morning he left. He carried a flash drive with photos and video of the attack, a Gmail address for Amadullah, and a mobile number for Jaji.

  “You don’t have a phone, Amadullah?”

  Amadullah circled a finger over his head as if to say, They’re listening. “To reach me, call Jaji. Or just come back to the mosque.”

  “Very good.”

  They said good-bye and hugged. Then Wells walked out with Jaji, headed for the mosque and his 4Runner. The last twenty-four hours had been among the strangest of his life. He had killed four men—and then been treated as an honored guest. He couldn’t help feeling that he’d gotten off easy.

  SEVEN HOURS LATER, at Dera Ismail Khan, he stopped at a gas station and called Shafer. “Daood,” Shafer said, when Wells finished. “First name is all you got. How about an age? Physical description? Nationality?”

  “None of the above.”

  “Because that’s a little bit vague.”

  “Why don’t you come out here and try doing your own detective work?”

  “You’re sure he was connected to those soldiers, the dealing?”

  “I can tell you Amadullah was seriously unhappy that I made the link.”

  “Okay. I’ll start looking. So what’s next? Are you heading back to the Ariana? See if anyone will admit knowing Amadullah or Daood?”