The Rendition

by Albert Ashforth

  I said, “It sounds important.”

  Shenlee sighed. “Kosovo’s gonna declare its independence, Klear. I guess I can tell you that much. In June, when the president was in Albania, he let them know we’ll recognize Kosovo as a sovereign nation. It’s gonna cause a big reaction, believe me. China and Russia are dead set against. But Nadaj can’t, under any circumstances, be a member of the new Kosovo government.”

  “Why not?”

  “What we’re looking at is Greater Albania. Albania, Kosovo, and parts of Macedonia will be de facto one country. Whatever happens, we want to cut their ties with al-Qaeda.”

  “We’re on our way, Jerry.”

  “I still don’t know exactly when I’ll be arriving.”

  “You’re coming over, Jerry?”

  “Yeah. I can’t let you guys run wild. And, Klear, I want you to know that we expect you to return to Krautland when this is over. The U.S. government has problems enough. It is not going to aid a fugitive.”

  “We look forward to seeing you, Jerry.”

  “I’m sure you do. You should know I have tickets for the Kennedy Center for this weekend, a play by Shakespeare. You’ve thrown another monkey wrench into my life, Klear.”

  “Which play is it?”

  “I think it’s the one with Falstaff. Is that Hamlet?”

  “I don’t think so, Jerry. Hamlet has the ‘neither a borrower nor a lender be’ guy in it.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  After I’d hung up, I told Buck that Shenlee wanted us to leave right away.

  “I can’t wait to get back to Kosovo,” Buck said.

  Chapter 36

  Tuesday, February 12, 2008

  We left for Kosovo at 1030 hours the following morning in a C-130 that flew out of Ramstein Air Base. Although we ran into some heavy weather halfway down, the sun was shining when we landed in the military airport just outside Pristina. After grabbing our carry-ons from the pile of gear and getting our KFOR paperwork inside the terminal, a van took us to Camp Bondsteel, a sprawling military installation situated not far from the city of Urosevac.

  At the gate we were met by an officer who introduced himself as Major Chambers and who told us we had an appointment in the administration building that evening at 1900 hours.

  Much of Camp Bondsteel, which is south of Pristina, sits on top of a broad plateau. Kosovo is a rugged country of small mountains, hills, and valleys, and Bondsteel, which is over nine hundred acres, is the largest military installation the United States has built since the days of the Vietnam War. Coming up from Skopje, I’d helicoptered onto the base some years before, but it had looked different back then, not so built up. At that time, we lived in tents and took cold showers.

  After we’d stashed our gear in a SEA-hut and gotten some chow, we hiked up to the Administration Section, which is behind a high chain-link fence at the top of a hill and right across the road from the helicopter pad.

  Captain Reilly, whom we found in a computer-filled room in the S-2 section, turned out to be a no-nonsense Special Forces officer with a ferocious handshake. He was my height, a shade over six, with an intelligent face and thinning brown hair. Together with Chambers and a civilian named Silvio, who spoke English with an Albanian accent, we adjourned to Chambers’s office.

  “We’ve gotten the word from D.C.” Chambers said as he closed the door. “Someone from the NSC is supposed to show up over here.”

  Buck said that would be Jerry Shenlee.

  “Normally, we take orders only from SOCOM,” Reilly said. “So I take it they want this Nadaj guy real bad.”

  “Very bad,” I said.

  “Well, that’s what we’re here for.” Reilly was referring to the fact that he commanded a Special Forces A-team, which was stationed on Camp Bondsteel but which was there for special ops—not for peacekeeping.

  I said that Nadaj would be arriving in Pec the following day.

  Chambers nodded. “Sometimes we hear about meetings, but we never know when or where. The KLA is good at keeping secrets.” When he asked Silvio if our information sounded accurate, he shrugged. That wasn’t too encouraging.

  “We can’t just barge in and arrest Nadaj in Pristina,” Chambers said. “There’d be all kinds of diplomatic protests. The word is Kosovo may declare independence as early as next month.”

  “That’s the problem,” Buck said. “Once Nadaj is part of the new government, he’ll be untouchable.”

  Chambers frowned. “You say he’s staying out near Pec someplace?” We gathered around the map on the wall, and Chambers pointed at Pec. Then he looked at Silvio. “Do you know anyone who grew up out there? Someone you can call?”

  Silvio nodded. “Maybe.”

  Looking at Buck and me, Chambers said, “This isn’t much to go on. How much time do we have?”

  “No more than a day.”

  “Is Nadaj as bad as they say?” Chambers asked. “From what we hear, you got to meet him firsthand.”

  “He could have been more hospitable,” I said.

  Back in the SEA-hut with a three-day-old copy of Stars and Stripes, I read for ten minutes. By 2230 I was sound asleep.

  Chapter 37

  Wednesday, February 13, 2008

  At 0800 the following morning, Reilly picked us up in a van from in front of the chow hall. When I asked him if he’d heard from Silvio, he said he hadn’t.

  We drove to the far side of the big installation, finally arriving at an area surrounded by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence behind which were a half dozen SEA-huts. The Green Berets kept to themselves. At the gate, which was surrounded by piles of sandbags, a lone sentry saluted and raised the barrier.

  “This is where we hang out,” Reilly said, pointing to the compound.

  After we’d been there a half hour, a van arrived, and Jerry Shenlee, wearing camouflage fatigues, came scrambling out. Shenlee seemed to know Reilly, so I assumed he’d arrived at Bondsteel sometime during the night.

  A minute later, Major Chambers arrived.

  “Have we decided yet how we’re gonna do it?” Shenlee asked.

  Reilly said, “We still haven’t pinpointed Nadaj’s whereabouts.”

  Shenlee frowned. “What’s with this Silvio?”

  “We’re hoping to hear from him anytime now,” Reilly said. “He’s always been dependable.”

  “The deputy secretary cares about this,” Shenlee said.

  Reilly and Chambers exchanged glances. Jerry and I went all the way back to Berlin in the 1980s, and I was used to his micromanaging style. But I had a feeling Chambers and Reilly weren’t too happy about the way he was throwing his weight around. Reilly had fixed up one of the SEA-huts as an office, and we walked over there.

  Reilly got his coffee machine going, and we all sat down to wait.

  A little over an hour later, Silvio came walking in the door.

  “I have good news and bad news,” he said. “What do you want to hear first?”

  “The bad news,” I said.

  “No one out near Pec’s heard anything about Nadaj.”

  “What’s the good news?” Chambers said.

  “The good news is that last week Agim Shala ordered an enormous amount of food from the market in Pec. From the butcher in Pec he ordered sausage and beef.”

  “Who is Agim Shala?” Chambers asked.

  “The local Mafia chief. The butcher is a friend of my brother-in-law.” When no one responded, Silvio said, “It makes sense that Nadaj would only visit the Mafia chief in the area. I should have thought of that yesterday.”

  Taking a seat at the room’s computer, Chambers said, “Where is Agim Shala located?”

  “Southeast of Pec. He has property between Gornji and Ljesane.”

  “We conduct daily flyovers,” Chambers said. “Nadaj doesn’t travel alone, I assume.”

  “All these guys have an entourage,” Shenlee said.

  We watched as Chambers slid a disc into the computer and then began calli
ng up images and pictures taken by satellite and aircraft. “You can’t light a cigarette in Kosovo that we don’t know about it,” he said at one point. It took a while, but he was finally able to focus on the property he was looking for. Looking over his shoulder, we could see what seemed to be some kind of compound.

  “It looks as if a number of vehicles are sitting in an area to the right of the gate, which might mean Mr. Shala has visitors. They weren’t there yesterday morning. On the basis of when these were taken, I’d say they arrived sometime yesterday afternoon.”

  When I looked at Buck, he arched his eyebrows.

  Within seconds, Reilly was on his feet and headed for the door. He’d be putting the A-team on alert. If we were going to try anything this evening, they’d need to be ready.

  “The house is right in here,” Silvio said. He was standing in front of a large map of Kosovo on the wall of Reilly’s office. “It’s three miles south of Pec.”

  “What’s the area like?” I asked.

  “Hilly,” Silvio said. “Lots of trees. As you can see, there are also trees on the property.”

  Chambers called us over to have another look at his computer screen. Pointing to the monitor, he said, “These are recon photos of the area. Low-altitude shots, from one of the drones.” As he worked, he was able to enlarge an area on the screen.

  What we saw was a detailed picture of a good-sized house taken from the sky. Around the perimeter was a wall. At one end, a road leading out from the city was plainly visible. Silvio pointed at the map. “Here’s a gate.”

  “I suppose there’ll be guards at the gate,” Shenlee said. When Silvio nodded, Shenlee asked how high the wall was.

  “I would guess eight or nine feet.”

  “How far from the wall to the house?” Buck asked.

  “Fifty yards, maybe a little more.”

  “A firefight is out of the question,” Reilly said. He had returned a few minutes before. “If we go in, it’s to get this Nadaj character. It’s not to kill anyone.”

  “Something else,” Shenlee said. “No one can know the United States is involved. We have to make it look like a local thing. We deny involvement. We give the responsibility for Nadaj’s disappearance to one of the rival factions.”

  “Which means we don’t wear uniforms,” Reilly said.

  Buck asked how many guards they’d have with them.

  Chambers said, “Since there are four vehicles, I’d guess at eight to ten. A few will probably have gate guard duty.”

  Reilly pointed to the recon photo. “We go over the wall. We’ve got the equipment. I’d say four guys go in. They make it to the house, grab Nadaj, hustle him back to the wall.”

  “How do we get him back over?” Shenlee asked.

  Reilly hesitated, then said, “We blow a hole in the wall. That shouldn’t be difficult. Four of our people approach the gate to keep the guards there busy. They say their car conked out. Because he knows the lingo, one of them has to be Silvio. Four other guys stake out the perimeter. Four blast open the wall.”

  I looked at Reilly. “I’ll go over the wall—”

  “No, no,” Shenlee said. “Not you, Klear.”

  “I know what Nadaj looks like, Jerry.”

  Looking at Reilly, Shenlee said, “I’ll go over with three guys from the A-team. I know what Nadaj looks like. I’ve seen his pictures.”

  “I know him personally,” I said. “I think it’ll be safer if I—”

  “Come off it, Klear. You and Romero man the perimeter.” Shenlee looked at Reilly. “That’s the way we’re gonna do it.”

  Shenlee outranked us all, or at least he was acting as if he did. In any case, we all knew better than to argue with someone from the NSC, who at every opportunity was throwing around his association with the deputy secretary of defense.

  Our next stop was the supply shack, which quickly turned into a beehive of activity. We were joined by Reilly’s A-team men drawing weapons and the equipment we’d need for our little mission. Since it looked as if Buck and I would be manning the perimeter, we were each issued an M-16 and an M-4 automatic. We checked out flashlights, compasses, gloves, and radios. Shenlee needed special shoes, a rope, some climbing hooks, and got himself an M-4.

  It would have been nice to have a Humvee along, but since we were supposed to be civilians we had no choice but to ride in vans. All told, we were seventeen men. We left Camp Bondsteel in four vehicles at three-minute intervals beginning at a few minutes after 1630. Kosovo’s roads are primitive, and Pec was over sixty miles distant from Bond-steel. We had a rendezvous point on a road less than two miles from the house where we hoped we’d finally find Ramush Nadaj.

  Color me pessimistic, but as we rode, I couldn’t help wondering whether this attempt to grab Nadaj was going to be any more successful than the last one—and whether it wasn’t going to turn into another colossal disaster.

  * * *

  Jerry Shenlee shook his head. “No, Klear, you’re wrong.” We had reached the rendezvous point, a quiet clearing on a side road, and I had just finished telling Shenlee that I should be accompanying Captain Reilly’s three A-team members and going over the wall to get Nadaj.

  “I have an idea this might work out better, Jerry, if I—”

  “Relax, Klear. Leave this one to the professionals. It’s gonna be a piece of cake, believe me.” Before I could say anything more, Shenlee said, “You’re rusty. That’s why you’re nervous.”

  I wasn’t nervous, but I knew there wasn’t any sense arguing with Jerry. It was already dark, and Reilly called me and Buck over to the van where he had a map spread out on the seat, which he was reading with a pencil flashlight.

  “From here on, we go by foot,” he said. “Your job is to cover the far side of the house. Over here there’s a small stream, which runs out of the big river here. You can get your bearings from that. You shouldn’t have any problem finding the wall.” When Buck asked Reilly where he would be, he said, “I’m going to be with the munitions team. When the people inside the wall give us the word, we set off the explosive. We have a couple of five-pound satchels. It’ll be just enough to make a hole in the wall for the men to come through. When they’re out, we radio you guys. We rendezvous back here.”

  We nodded. Although I had an idea that, like me, Buck would have liked to be with the people going over the wall, he was a good soldier and didn’t say anything. Shenlee was running the show.

  The Gold Dust Twins’ reputation wasn’t anything like it once was.

  Buck and I set off in the direction of the house, going through the woods and staying off the road. After forty minutes of slogging, we reached a clearing on the far side of which I could see a ten-foot-high wall.

  “That’s it,” Buck said. The wall was about a hundred feet away. “Whoever lives there doesn’t want unannounced visitors.”

  Pointing to my right, I said, “The gate should be in that direction.” When Buck nodded, we headed off in the other direction, moving along the perimeter of the woods and doing our best to keep out of sight.

  When we’d circled the house, we kept going until we reached the stream that Reilly had mentioned. On this side, the woods were thicker and extended all the way to the wall. Buck stationed himself about sixty feet from the stream. On the far side, two more of our guys would have come from the other direction and, by now, have taken up positions on the perimeter. We had the place surrounded.

  When I checked in on the radio, Reilly said, “They’re over the wall. So far, so good.”

  “Roger.” I passed the news along to Buck.

  I knew Shenlee’s team would be proceeding slowly, and I wondered what they’d find at the house. They had bolt cutters, a large fire axe and a hooley, which is a crowbar specially designed for prying doors open.

  The next thing we expected to hear was the explosive charge going off, which would be our signal to head back toward the rendezvous point. Five minutes went by without anything happening. Six minutes. Seven minute
s. From where I was, I couldn’t see Buck, so when I heard something, I thought the sound might have been him moving in my direction.

  It took a couple of seconds before I realized someone was scrambling over the wall at a point twenty yards beyond where I was posted. I wondered whether Buck had heard the noise. Moving quickly, I made my way quietly along the wall. Thirty feet ahead of me I saw a black silhouette. Whoever it was, he was going fast. He was already over the wall and in the woods before I reached the point where he’d climbed over.

  He’d disappeared into the woods with a minimum of commotion—and I wondered whether it was someone I knew.

  A minute later, Buck appeared. When he flashed me a questioning look, I shrugged my shoulders, then pointed in the direction the guy had gone.

  “He came over the wall real fast. I’d like to know who it was.”

  Then we heard the bang, which meant that Shenlee and his team had Nadaj and were now outside the compound.

  If Buck and I had any thoughts about trying to find whoever was out in the woods, they were superseded by the knowledge that we had to get back to the rendezvous point.

  We headed off in the direction we came. It took a half hour to make it back to the meeting place. We were the last ones.

  “It’s about time,” Shenlee said. “What took you so damn long?”

  “You got him?” Buck asked.

  “Let’s get going,” Shenlee said.

  Reilly pointed toward the van. “We gave him something to help him sleep.”

  Unable to control my curiosity, I slid open the door to have a look. The prisoner’s hands were shackled, and he was unconscious on the floor of the van.

  “For God’s sakes, Klear,” Shenlee shouted. “Can we get started?”

  “I think we have a slight problem.” When Reilly asked what it was, I said, “This guy isn’t Nadaj.”

  Needless to say, my announcement caused Shenlee to go ballistic. After he’d finished telling me that I didn’t know what I was talking about, I said, “I know what Nadaj looks like, Jerry. That’s not Nadaj.”