The Shadow Patrol

by Alex Berenson

  “How many confirmed kills does the brigade have?”

  “About a hundred fifty since we arrived.”

  Wells controlled his surprise. This brigade, which had five thousand soldiers and occupied vital territory, had killed only a hundred and fifty enemy fighters in nine months?

  “What about our casualties?”

  “Forty-eight American KIA. About a hundred thirty wounded who needed evac out of theater. Some have come back, fortunately.”

  They talked for a while about the tactical situation, and then Wells casually asked about drug use in the brigade.

  “I hope I don’t come across as naive, but I don’t think there’s much of it,” Brown said. “I do worry about the ANA. Walk through the Afghan tents on base, you’ll smell hash and pot. Nothing we can do. Those guys have their own command-and-control and I’d catch all kinds of crap from my higher-ups if I tried to interfere. No doubt some of my guys have picked up bad habits from the Afghans. But mostly these are solid kids. And the ones going outside the wire, they know it’s bad for readiness.”

  “So you’ve never heard about any kind of large-scale smuggling? Opium or heroin?”

  “No.” Brown frowned. “Have you?”

  “Not really. Just that a soldier on the plane over mentioned it. And, of course, this province is one big poppy farm.” Wells didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t see an alternative.

  Brown looked at his watch. “Hate to pass on dinner but I have an eight p.m. pretargeting meeting and I have to talk to my XO.”

  “So overall what do you think of our chances, Colonel?”

  “Not touching that, Mr. Wells. Not with a ten-foot pole. I may have gotten stuck commanding the maxivan brigade, but I’m still hoping for a star.” He nodded at the door. “One of my sergeants will find you a rack.”

  Wells saluted. “Good to meet you, Colonel. Can I ask you one favor?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You won’t interrupt me tomorrow when I start to roll.”

  “Will it be that bad?”

  “Nothing your guys don’t already know.”

  Brown considered. “Let’s do it. Long as you don’t tell anybody to shoot me.”

  NOW WELLS STOOD on the podium as the soldiers on the airfield cheered. But their applause fell off fast. No doubt they were expecting Wells to mouth the usual clichés. Good. He’d surprise them.

  “Thank you, Colonel, for those kind words. You made me sound a lot more heroic than I am.” Pause. “What the colonel didn’t tell you is that it was the New York City police who shot me back in Times Square.” Polite laughter. “Anyway, I want to thank you all for being here. Now, probably I should give the talk you’re expecting. Tell you how you’re all heroes, everyone back home is grateful to you. Throw in a bunch of clichés about how you’re building a new Asscrackistan.” A murmur went through the crowd as Wells offered the forbidden word.

  “But you deserve more than that. You deserve the truth. So first let’s talk about the Taliban. We tell folks back home they’re brutal, uneducated, hate women, they won’t let kids go to school. And that’s true. They’re bad guys. But then we say the Taliban oppressed the Afghan people and we’ve set them free. We are saving Afghanistan from the Talibs. And you know the reality is trickier. You know that around here, most people support the insurgents, or at least don’t oppose them.”

  “Bull,” a soldier near the front yelled.

  Brown stepped forward and waved his hands sideways like an umpire calling a runner safe. “This man’s come a long way to talk to us. Let’s show some respect.”

  “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

  F

  or 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 notice 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.