The Shadow Patrol

by Alex Berenson

  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.”

  “Life lessons from Ellis Shafer.”

  “Not playing soccer would give him more time to get laid.”

  “You’re talking about my little boy.”

  “I’ll bet if you check out his Facebook page, his Twitter feed, you’ll find plenty of evidence he’s all grown up.”

  “Precisely why I’ve resisted the urge so far.”

  And then Shafer realized he might have another way to find the connection between Weston and Rodriguez and the SF officer. He would need them to be a little bit gullible, and a little bit horny—but then, they’d been in Afghanistan for ten months. The horniness wouldn’t be a problem.

  “Jenny. I have to go.”

  “Something come up?”

  Shafer could hear her disappointment. No doubt she’d love to know what he was working on, but she was too much of a pro to ask. “You could say that.”

  “Knock ’em dead. Literally.”

  “Come on by sometime for a cup of that famous Langley coffee.”

  “Tell John to be safe, okay?”

  “You want to tell him that, tell him yourself.” Though Shafer wasn’t sure that he wanted her to follow through. Sometimes the past was best left undisturbed.

  “Bye, Ellis.”

  He hung up, got to work.

  21

  EASTERN ZABUL PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN

  I

  n rural Afghanistan, AK-47s were as cheap and easy to find as cell phones. The Pashtun family that didn’t own at least one rifle was poor indeed. American soldiers quietly tolerated the weapons. They’d learned the hard way that confiscating them caused unnecessary trouble.

  But they treated Dragunov sniper rifles very differently. Dragunovs were costly and rare, and soldiers would detain anyone caught with one as an insurgent. Even Amadullah Thuwani didn’t have one. He ordered his clansmen to find one, and after two days a half nephew came back with a never-used Dragunov, still in its crate. The price was two thousand dollars. Amadullah grumbled and paid. He had no choice. He had to have it. Though not for himself.

  SINCE PICKING UP the surface-to-air missiles, Amadullah had stayed in Afghanistan. He was living now with his half brother Hamid in a village in Zabul so small it didn’t appear on maps. He’d trimmed his beard and taken off his Rolex, trying to stay anonymous. Still, he kept the cell phone Stan had given him. He knew he was taking a risk. The Americans could track the phone when it was on, and for all Amadullah knew, when it was off, too. But after seeing Stan kill Daood, Amadullah had decided to trust him. His lies, his venom, were aimed at other Americans. Why else had he killed Daood and given Amadullah these SA-24s? Amadullah had even brought his bomb-making cousin from Muslim Bagh to look over the missiles. They were real. Amadullah thought now that the drugs had been an excuse, a way for the CIA man to reach him.

  Three days after their meeting, Stan called and asked him to buy the Dragunov. “And what shall I do with this?”

  “Bring it to Kharjoy on Saturday. At noon. On Highway 1. Park at the petrol station by the bazaar.”

  “I know where Kharjoy is.”

  “Of course. Someone will meet you.”

  “How will I know him?”

  “He’ll know you.”

  “An American?”

  But Stan was gone.

  Amadullah had understood the Soviets. They were kaffirs and unbelievers, brutal men. In the early years of their invasion, when they still believed that they could win with sheer force, they had bombed whole villages into dust. They had killed two of Amadullah’s brothers. Even now Amadullah hated the single star of the Red Army. But he’d understood what they wanted. They wanted the Afghans on one knee, serving the Kremlin. They had come from the north over the Amu Darya River and tried to break the Afghans. But Amadullah and his people had broken them instead. The Russians were hard, but the Afghans were harder. All the Soviet jets and tanks weren’t enough. Finally they turned tail and went home.

  The Americans were different. They had come here to rid themselves of Osama bin Laden and the Arabs. Amadullah didn’t blame them. After all, the Arabs had attacked them in their own country. And the Arabs were troublemakers. Amadullah didn’t like them. The rich ones looked down on the Pashtuns. The poor ones made a competition of prayers, as if Allah cared how many verses of the Quran they knew. None of them respected these mountains.

  So the Americans came and broke up the camps where the Arabs trained. They had even killed bin Laden. They’d taken a long time, but they’d killed him. But still they hadn’t left. Their soldiers were everywhere. Even the birds couldn’t escape their helicopters and their big
white balloons filled with cameras that watched the whole world.

  The Americans said they were friends. Maybe they believed their own words. They hired men by the thousand to dig ditches and clean fields. Their officers met village elders each week to drink tea and talk about building canals and schools. At first, Amadullah thought that the meetings were a trap and the Americans would arrest anyone who came to their bases. But no. The safe-conduct privilege was real. The Americans wanted to hear what the elders had to say. They didn’t rape and murder like the Russians either. Amadullah knew of a boy who had fallen down a well and broken his legs and arms. His brothers dragged him out and carried him to an American base near Kandahar City. The doctor there helped him, put him in a cast and gave him medicine. The boy’s brothers had been Talibs. But the doctor hadn’t cared.

  So Amadullah couldn’t hate the Americans as he hated the Russians. Maybe they were telling the truth when they said they didn’t want to rule Afghanistan. Even so, he and his men would fight them as long as they stayed. They didn’t belong in his country any more than he belonged in America. No matter how hard they tried to prove they meant well, their very presence stirred up trouble. On patrols, they gave candy to children and made them disrespect their fathers. They brought Tajiks and Hazaras down to the Pashtun lands and gave them rifles and told them they were soldiers. Even worse, they caused problems between men and women. The Americans talked about giving rights to women, but the truth was the opposite. The women wanted the Americans gone most of all. They wanted to know why their husbands and fathers couldn’t stop soldiers from coming into their houses and looking at them, disrespecting them, humiliating them.

  If the Americans would just leave, then Amadullah and the other Pashtuns would make sure that al-Qaeda never came back to Afghanistan. Amadullah himself would slit the Arabs’ throats. He had fought his whole life. He wanted a few years of peace, a few years of living in a country that wasn’t just a battlefield for outsiders. But the Americans didn’t trust the Pashtuns to do that work. They didn’t understand. And so every day, more Americans died. Amadullah had no sympathy for them, no pity. He’d kill as many as he could. But still he couldn’t help but feel that the war was a waste.

  Now he’d run across this strange CIA man. Amadullah thought the man must be mad, that something had happened to twist his reason. He supposed that one day he’d learn what. The mountains exposed every secret.

  AMADULLAH DIDN’T WANT to carry the Dragunov in his Ford. The Americans and Afghans sometimes put roadblocks on Highway 1. He stowed the crate in the back of Hamid’s old Nissan pickup and covered it with sacks of bricks and told Jaji to follow him in the Nissan. Jaji ran his hands through his thick black Pashtun hair and looked vaguely sulky at the order but didn’t dare disagree. In any case, the roadblocks were off that morning. They reached Kharjoy at eleven a.m. A cold rain had fallen the night before, but the swift autumn wind had moved the clouds away and left the sky bright and blue.

  They parked near the petrol station and walked through the bazaar, stepping over the mud puddles the storm had left. Merchants and their boys sat under plastic tarpaulins outside one-room stores. They sold potatoes and pomegranates and flour, plus chips and batteries and brightly colored candy from China. These days they also had music and movies. Some merchants had gone back to selling pornography, too. During the Taliban’s time, a merchant caught selling regular movies was supposed to get twenty-five lashes. One selling the sex videos could get a hundred. Of course, plenty of the Talibs liked pornos. They would watch the DVDs they took from the merchants.

  At the edge of the bazaar, Amadullah bought himself a Coke. As he did a patrol of American soldiers walked past. “Good morning,” a soldier said. He was young, like all of them, and broad in the shoulders and wearing the sunglasses that they favored and the heavy armored vest. A child who hoped that hiding his eyes would make him a man. He walked with a loose, proud gait, as if he believed he belonged here. Just as Stan had named Kharjoy for the meeting and then told Amadullah it was on Highway 1. As if Amadullah hadn’t lived here his whole life. As if he didn’t know every village and all the chiefs within a hundred miles.

  Amadullah hated the soldier and felt a strange shame, too. Living in Pakistan had kept him safe. But it had also let him avert his eyes from these American boots everywhere on his soil. Go. Leave my land. The soldiers turned a corner and Amadullah poured the Coke into the muddy soil and threw away the can.

  Just past noon, a Toyota pickup with heavily tinted windows parked at the edge of the muddy lot. A man stepped out. He had light brown skin and wore a gray shalwar kameez and sandals. He looked like a northerner, though he didn’t have the almond-shaped eyes of many Tajiks. “Good day,” he said.

  His Pashtun wasn’t as good as the other American’s. And he stood too tall, like the soldiers on the patrol. Not like the other American. John Wells, the CIA man had called him. That one carried himself with his pride hidden away and so he had fooled Amadullah.

  “Good day.”

  “I understand you have something for me.”

  “Not here.” Amadullah nodded at the convoy parked a few hundred meters away.

  “I know a place three or four kilos away. Protected. Safe.”

  Amadullah nodded. The man went back to his Toyota. For the second time, Amadullah was opening himself to capture. But then, if the Americans had wanted to take him, they could have already.

  A kilometer down, the American turned off Highway 1 and onto a dirt road bordered on both sides by mud walls covered with grapevines. Amadullah and Jaji followed. After ten minutes, they reached an abandoned cluster of farmhouses, a minivillage that had seen heavy fighting. Bomb craters pocked the earth. Bullet holes scarred the walls. The American parked in the shadow of a two-story farmhouse. Amadullah pulled alongside. The American stepped out and nodded for Amadullah to follow. Amadullah didn’t. He reached under the passenger seat for the pistol hidden there.

  The American walked over to his window. “Where is it?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Shadow,” the man said.

  Enough American arrogance. “Your true name.”

  The man’s eyes shifted to the Makarov in the passenger seat. “Frank.”

  Amadullah still thought he was lying, but Frank would have to do. He led Frank to the pickup, shoved aside the sacks of bricks. Jaji found a pry bar and popped open the Dragunov’s crate to reveal a hard-sided plastic case.

  Inside, a sniper’s tool kit: the rifle, four ten-round magazines, an eight-power scope, a cleaning rod in three pieces, a cleaning kit, and pouches to hold it all. Plus a bayonet and a knife for close-in work. Unlike some of his nephews, Amadullah wasn’t a fanatic about weapons. As far as he was concerned, AKs worked fine. Still, the Dragunov was impressive. The center of its stock was cut out to save weight, and it had a long, low profile, with a skinny muzzle. It looked light and lethal.

  Frank popped open the Dragunov’s bolt, pulled a tiny penlight from his pocket, and shone it down the barrel. The grooves etched inside nearly glowed.

  “Chrome,” Frank said. “Very cool.” He closed the bolt, snapped on the scope, hefted the rifle to his shoulder, cocked his head, put his eye to the sight. “Nice and easy. Not a beast like the .50.” Frank was more relaxed now that he had the Dragunov in his hands, Amadullah saw. The Taliban had men like this, too, men who loved weapons. Usually they didn’t care much for people.

  “Have you fired one before?”

  “Once or twice. So you’re Amadullah Thuwani.”

  “You know my name.”

  “Of course. There’s a bounty on your head. Fifty thousand dollars.” Frank put down the Dragunov, snapped off the scope, as if to say, Don’t worry. I won’t try to collect.

  “Only fifty thousand.”

  “If you want a higher price, you need to do more than nail a patrol or two.”

  “Now that your friend Stan has given me the missiles, perhaps I will.”

 
“The missiles?”

  So you don’t know, Amadullah thought. He shouldn’t have spoken. Stan had kept the secret from his own side. Now Amadullah wondered whether he could turn the mistake to his advantage by telling Frank more. He might have found a cheap way to stir up trouble. Yes. “I give you a Dragunov, he gives me SA-24s. A good trade, I think.”

  “SA-24s. Russian SAMs.”

  Amadullah nodded.

  “What’s your target?”

  Amadullah decided he’d said enough. He couldn’t be sure what Frank would do if he found out that the other American wanted to kill the head of the CIA. “I shouldn’t tell you this, but do you know the man called Omar al-Douzani?”

  “The leader of the Douzani tribe.”

  “He lives in Pakistan. South Waziristan. And travels in convoys, armored trucks. Sometimes with Pakistani military escorts. Your friend Stan told me that with these missiles I could destroy him from five kilometers away. Ten. And then our business can expand.”

  “Stan gave you the missiles to use against Douzani?”

  Sometimes the Americans needed everything said straight out. “Yes.”

  “And where does the heroin come in?”

  “The powder opened the connection, gave us trust in each other. When Douzani is gone, his family will break. He has no sons anymore, only cousins and nephews.”

  “They’ll all fight to control his tribe.”

  “Yes. When that happens, some will come to me for help. I’ll choose which one to support, or maybe I’ll sit back and let them fight. Either way, I’ll feast on them. By the time the Douzanis are done with their war, you’ll need a truck for all the powder I can sell you.”

  As Amadullah spoke, he found himself believing his own story, the surest sign that Frank would believe him, too. It wasn’t even a lie, just a version of the truth that Allah hadn’t yet called into being. Frank stepped back and folded his arms. The Americans couldn’t hide their emotions. Amadullah could almost see what Frank was thinking: Stan should have told me. He trusts this Pashtun, this Talib, more than me. Good. Let Stan and Frank try to untangle their own lies. While they wrestled, Amadullah would decide what to do with the missiles.