“You’re certain of this.”
“Yes. I’ll have their flight schedule.”
Amadullah tapped one of the steel boxes. “And what do you want for this?”
“Nothing. It’s a gift.”
“I don’t like that sort of gift. Not even stones are free, we Pashtuns
say.”
“All right, Amadullah. If you insist, you can give me something in return. Information. Tell me, have any Americans come to see you recently?”
“Aside from this one, no.” Amadullah spit green spit at Miller’s feet.
“Anyone else? Has anyone come to Balochistan? Not necessarily American.”
Amadullah pursed his lips. “Almost two weeks ago, yes. But he was Saudi. He wanted to help fund the jihad.
These men appear every so often. They never make any trouble. If they do, we send them home. One way or another.”
“You’re sure he was Saudi.”
“He had a Saudi passport. He came for a day and left.”
Stan reached into his pocket, handed Amadullah an envelope. Amadullah flicked it open with his dirty yellow thumbnail, extracted a photo. He looked it over, grunted in surprise, handed it to Miller.
The photo showed a tall man, handsome and square shouldered. He had wavy brown hair and a crooked smile that was more lips than teeth. Miller didn’t recognize
him.
“This is the Saudi. How did you know?” Amadullah said.
“That’s John Wells. One of our agents.”
“He wasn’t American. He couldn’t have been. He spoke Arabic, Pashtun. And he killed four men. Troublemakers. Enemies of my tribe.”
“Sounds like Wells. What did you tell
him?”
Amadullah chapped a new plug of tobacco in his mouth.
Buying time,
Miller thought. “Nothing. I didn’t trust
him.”
“Did you give him any phone numbers or e-mail addresses?”
Amadullah nodded slowly.
“Destroy all those phones. Burn them and then burn the ashes and then drop them off the side of a mountain. Never use any of those e-mails again. Destroy all the computers where you’ve ever checked those e-mails. And probably plan to move.”
“The computers, too? My new Apple from Dubai.”
“All of it. Did you tell him about
me?”
“No.”
“This is important, Amadullah. That we’d been in contact? Anything?”
“No. I swear to Allah.”
“Did you tell him about the drugs?”
“I told him that we sold drugs to Americans, nothing more.”
“Did you tell him what unit?”
“No.”
“Did you tell him about Daood?”
“No, but one of my nephews
did.”
“But no,” Miller said in English, pretending to translate. “I didn’t tell him about Daood. And he didn’t know anything about Daood.”
Miller did not
want Stan to hear that John Wells knew his name. He was as certain of that as he’d ever been of anything.
* * *
STAN WAS QUIET.
His dead blue eyes shifted from Amadullah to Miller. In the silence, Miller heard the wind rustling down the mountain. “You think I don’t speak Pashtun?” Stan said to Miller. In Pashtun.
Stan pulled his pistol. “On your knees, hands behind your back.” Miller had looked at pistols before. He’d pulled them himself. An occupational hazard of the drug business. Usually folks were playing, showing off. This time, Miller felt a sick certainty that Stan would blow his brains out. He went to his knees, feeling the stones scrape his shins through the thin fabric of his gown.
“What did you tell Wells about Daood?” Stan said to Amadullah.
In answer, Amadullah swung his rifle toward Stan. Miller kept his breathing steady.
Maybe they’ll kill each other and I’ll walk
away.
But Stan said, “I’m no danger to you, Amadullah. We’re partners.” He pulled the magazine from his pistol and dropped it. It clapped against the stone and skittered away. “Just one round in the chamber. For him, if we decide
so.”
Amadullah lowered his AK. Miller felt his hope fade.
“What did you tell Wells?” Stan said again.
“Nothing. In truth, my nephew Jaji mentioned Daood to this man Wells, that’s all. Then Wells asked me about Daood and I told him it wasn’t his business.”
“See,” Miller said. “Wells doesn’t know anything about me. You know how many guys are named Daood in Pakistan?”
Stan turned toward Miller. “Has he tried to contact you? Don’t
lie.”
“No. I swear. I promise, if he finds me, I won’t say a word. Anyway, Stan, I don’t even know your name, your real name, I mean.” Miller was sputtering, trying to find the magic words.
“You promise.”
“I promise. I’m sorry I didn’t translate right, I should have told you what Amadullah said, but I thought—”
“I know what you thought. If it makes you feel any better, Daood, I probably would have had to kill you anyway. Now that Amadullah and I have gotten to know each other, you’re a liability.”
“Wait. If I hear Wells is after me, I’ll let you know. That way, you’ll have some warning. Besides, if I disappear, my wives will look for me. I’m more useful to you alive.”
For a moment, Miller thought his offer might work. Then Amadullah walked next to Stan, and together they looked down at Miller. Judges from hell.
“The Russians, when they came here, they had a saying,” Amadullah said. “Death solves all problems. No man, no problem.”
“From Stalin originally,” Stan said. “He had another saying, too. The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of one million is a statistic.”
“I think this one wouldn’t even be a tragedy.” Amadullah pointed his AK toward Miller, and Miller knew the time for begging was done. He had to distract them long enough to get to a horse. He looked down, saw two gray rocks on the stone slab in front of him. One was as big as a cell phone, the other an oversize egg. His best chance. Only chance. They could quote Stalin all they liked. Miller would stick with 2Pac.
Wonder how I live with five shots /
Niggas is hard to kill on my
block.
“Let me pray, then. Please.” Miller began to murmur the first surah of the Quran.
Bismillahi-rahmani-rahim . . .
All the time he’d spent infiltrating mosques had taught him the words.
He leaned forward, and as his head touched the stony ground he grabbed the rocks, the bigger in his right, the smaller in his left. He came up throwing, aiming a sharp sidearm right that caught Amadullah on his left cheek. Amadullah grunted and twisted away and fired high. The shots cut rock from the slab behind Miller.
With his left hand, Miller threw the smaller rock at Stan’s chest. It caught him full in the stomach. Stan grunted and fired low and wide. The round sliced across Miller’s right biceps, doing no real damage. Stan cursed and bent over, looking for the magazine he’d dropped.
Miller stood and ran for the big white horse. He didn’t want to go back the way he’d come, not with Amadullah’s son waiting for him. Anyway, the stallion looked fast.
Behind him he heard the stutter of metal on metal and wondered whether Amadullah’s AK had jammed. He heard Amadullah curse and knew it
had.
Miller reached the stallion and pulled the reins from the mulberry tree and jumped onto its back. But this horse was taller than the filly he’d ridden, and stronger, and didn’t like him. Miller found himself sprawled across the saddle, perpendicular to the stallion’s body, the missile boxes pressing into his legs and chest. The horse neighed and tossed his head in the air and stepped sideways.
Miller grabbed the stallion’s reins and pulled himself around until he faced forward. Somehow he kicked his right foot and then his left into the stirrups. Blood trickled down his arm onto the stallion’s back. Behind him, Miller heard the hard snap of a 9-millimeter magazine being jammed into a pistol.
Miller pushed his legs into the horse’s heavy flanks.
“Go!”
he yelled. The stallion took a half step forward and he slapped its neck with his right hand. Miracle of miracles, the stupid thing started to trot. Miller ducked low and slid his arms around the stallion’s neck. He wondered whether Stan would shoot his own horse. If he could get out of the clearing, they’d have to chase
him—
He heard three shots, loud and close.
The stallion whinnied and jumped and reared up. Miller grabbed at the reins and tried to hang on, but his feet slid out of the stirrups
and—
He fell, landing on his right shoulder. He heard as much as felt his collarbone crack. When he tried to sit up, a highway of fire flew down his arm and across his chest. He knew he should run, but instead slipped onto his left side and cradled his right arm in his left. Stan grabbed the horse. Amadullah walked over to Miller and grabbed his right arm and tugged. The pain was so intense that Miller couldn’t even scream. He must have passed out for a few seconds, because when he opened his eyes Amadullah and Stan stood in front of him. Miller felt the blood trickling down his skull and getting caught in his hair, and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
Maybe 2Pac wasn’t the best role model. Considering he got gunned down when he was twenty-five.
Miller smirked.
Stan knelt down and looked at Miller. Miller raised his head to make eye contact, an effort that sent a shiver of agony through Miller’s arm. “I’m only going to ask you one more time. If I think you’re not telling the truth, I’m going to let Amadullah do what he likes with you. Did John Wells ever call you, e-mail you, anything?”
“No. I swear.”
Stan looked at him with those cold blue eyes and finally nodded. Miller bit his tongue so he wouldn’t beg, and Stan put his pistol under Miller’s chin. Miller closed his eyes and tried to pray again, for real this time. But it was no good. He couldn’t remember the words, Arabic wasn’t his language and had never been, and he’d never been the churchy type anyway. All he could think of was Biggie Smalls, Tupac Amaru Shakur’s Brooklyn twin, standing onstage, a microphone to his mouth, singing,
Biggie Biggie Biggie, can’t you
see—
And Stan squeezed the trigger.
19
FORWARD OPERATING BASE JACKSON
T
he soldiers formed neat lines on the airfield, a camouflage rectangle of men and women fifty wide, forty deep. About two thousand soldiers in all, half the brigade. Wells looked them over from a makeshift wooden stage, as Colonel Sean Brown, the base commander, stepped to the podium.
“Soldiers of the 7th Strykers, I have the pleasure of introducing John Wells. I’m sure all of you remember how he stopped the attack on Times Square a few years back. Took a bullet doing it. What you may not know is that Mr. Wells spent years in Afghanistan both before and after September eleventh. He knows the Taliban and al-Qaeda from the inside out. He’s a hero, plain and simple. Join me in giving a Dragon’s roar to Mr. Wells.”
* * *
ARRANGING THE SPEECH
at FOB Jackson proved easy. The Strykers had turned into the Army’s ugly and unloved stepchild. Their soldiers ranked last on the list for everything, including celebrity visits. Wells wasn’t Carrie Underwood, but he was better than nothing. Colonel Brown was happy to have
him.
“Why don’t you come in two days?” Brown said. “We can have dinner and I’ll give you a tactical briefing. You can talk the next afternoon. I’ll make sure the whole base shows, bring in the guys from the outposts,
too.”
The night before he arrived, Shafer filled him in on the brigade’s records. “They’re spread pretty thin, across eastern Kandahar and Zabul. They spend a lot of their time playing defense, having to react.”
“You see any specific platoons or companies that I should focus
on?”
“One or two, sure.”
Wells waited for more, but Shafer stayed quiet. “Gonna tell me which ones?”
“I’d rather not, not right away. Better for you to give this speech fresh.”
“What if the company’s on patrol when I get there, doesn’t even hear what I’m saying?”
“Let’s try it my way first. I have a feeling about this. Let them come to
you.”
“And a speech is going to make them do that?”
“If it’s the right speech.”
The next afternoon, Wells rolled out of Kandahar with a platoon Colonel Brown sent to pick him up. At the base, Brown waited. He had a ropy neck and a strong handshake. He led Wells to the brigade’s Combat Operations Center, a house-size wooden building surrounded by satellite dishes and filled with high-res flat-screen monitors. His office had four laptops and three corkboards covered with maps and Excel spreadsheets and letters to and from the Pentagon. Even without fighting the Taliban, running a brigade was a full-time job.
“Looks like you have a lot of downtime.”
“You should have seen it before we got organized. Coffee?” Brown had an expensive coffeemaker on his desk, well away from the laptops. “My wife sent me this thing and I’ve finally learned how to use
it.”
Wells nodded, and Brown poured them two cups. “You came a long way to see
us.”
“Hadn’t been here in a while. I missed
it.”
“And has it changed?”
“I think I have. Maybe I’m just older.”
“I don’t think any of us thought this war would last this long.”
“Except the Taliban.”
“True enough. You enjoy your first Stryker ride?”
“I guess you get used to not having windows after a while.”
“Not everybody. I suspect the next generation, if there is a next generation, will have that V-shaped hull that you see on the new trucks, the Cougars and the Gators. Turns out that’s a pretty good way to keep guys alive.”
“How’s morale?”
“I assume we’re just talking. This isn’t going into a report.”
Wells nodded.
“It’s been a long tour and the guys are ready for it to be over. In just the last two months, we’ve had three guys evaced to Landstuhl for mental health problems. Lot of home-life stress. At least a hundred divorces.”
“Are you in line with other brigades?”
“Little bit worse. This tour hasn’t been great for my career. No way around the fact that these vehicles we ride in are not ideal. Compared to a Humvee, you can argue for them. Okay, they’re not as maneuverable, but they’re better armored and they carry a whole squad. But the debate isn’t Stryker versus Humvee anymore. It’s Stryker versus MRAP. MRAPs have as much armor as the Stryker and the safer hull design. And they’re more maneuverable than Strykers, too. And cheaper. So all the Stryker really gives us is the chance to put a whole squad in a single vehicle, instead of two or three. Which is nice when we come out under fire. But mostly we don’t.”
“And the guys know
it.”
“Doesn’t take long to figure out. So that’s bad for morale. And they hear about the Marines fighting in Helmand and the airborne getting busy in western Kandahar and they know that we’ve been stuck off to the side driving Highway 1. That said, I believe we’ve done a solid job here, given the constraints. We’ve kept the highway clean. We’ve found tons of caches. We’ve supported the ANA and ANP.” The Afghan Army and police. “Have we degraded the Taliban directly as much as I’d like? No, but we’ve been directed to keep civilian casualties to a minimum and that hurts our ability to engage. We leave the high-value targets to SF, and those guys operate independently.”
“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.