On the surface, everything made sense. Stan wanted to use Amadullah to assassinate other Talib leaders, ones the CIA couldn’t find. The drug trafficking had been a way to reach Amadullah and convince him that he could trust Stan. But the more he considered the story, the less Francesca believed
it.
If Stan had planned to turn Amadullah all along, why go to such great lengths to hide the trafficking from his own bosses and everyone else at Kabul station? Why not just get someone senior at Langley to sign a finding for the project and use the Ground Branch, the agency’s paramilitary arm, to handle the pickups?
The SA-24s also bothered Francesca. The Russians knew they couldn’t build helicopters that could match American designs, so they’d spent a lot of time developing surface-to-air missiles as a cheap countermeasure. The SA-24 was their top-of-the-line missile, as good as or better than anything the United States had. By all accounts, it could make mincemeat of Chinooks. Probably Black Hawks and Apaches, too. In all his years fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, Francesca had never seen one. Yet Stan had somehow delivered two to Amadullah. Using them to attack a ground convoy, even one with armored vehicles, seemed a major waste. An RPG or basic antitank missile would be much more effective at much lower cost.
Of course, Stan might have other reasons for going to the trouble of delivering the SA-24s. He might have imagined that the SA-24s would impress Amadullah.
Or . . . Amadullah could be lying. The missiles—assuming they existed at all—could be meant for another target. One that flew on helicopters or jets that were vulnerable only to the most sophisticated missiles. An American target.
Francesca wondered whether to call Stan, confront him, demand an answer. Then he thought of the Dragunov in the secret compartment. Let Stan and Amadullah play whatever game they wanted. Francesca had his own game. He was already thinking about how he might use the Dragunov on Coleman Young or John Wells. Maybe when he was done, he’d give Stan a taste of the rifle, too. Make him a hero the easy way, with one trigger pull. He could see the headlines:
High-Level CIA Officer Shot to Death in Kabul . . . Taliban Claim Responsibility.
No, Francesca would keep his mouth shut, wait for the right moment to find out what Stan was doing. Check and double-check. Calibrate and recalibrate. At that moment, Francesca understood more than ever why he loved being a Shadow. The trigger pull was the only true moment in the whole damn war. Everything else was a
lie.
22
LANGLEY
A
s soon as he hung up with Exley, Shafer started the process of putting together a Facebook profile for “Mindy Calhoun.” Mindy lived in Tempe, Arizona. She was twenty and a business major at Maricopa Community College. Her interests included the Green Bay Packers, Shia LaBeouf, Kim Kardashian, and “Hot men in uniform! American only!”
Mindy’s profile had a half dozen photos, each naughtier than the next, though none pornographic enough to attract the attention of Facebook’s censuring software. The photos came from Corbis, though with a little help from the Directorate of Science and Technology, Shafer had tweaked them. Anyone who tried to find the originals through the image-recognition engines on the Internet would come up empty.
Mindy had a heart-shaped tattoo on her wrist and a blue mermaid for a tramp stamp. She looked ready for a few years as a Bud poster girl followed by a long career at Hooters. Within minutes of her creation, she had more than a hundred Facebook friends, mostly bots like her who lived in the CIA’s servers. That number was enough to make her credible to the soldiers whom Shafer wanted to friend. He picked guys from the South whose profiles showed no connections with Arizona. None of the facts on Mindy’s page were checkable except for her enrollment at Maricopa. Anyone who called the college would have found out that she didn’t exist. But as Shafer had expected, soldiers weren’t interested in running background checks. Forty-two accepted Mindy’s friend request within twelve hours. Several sent back messages that would have made Shafer blush if he were the blushing type. A couple guys were dumb enough to send pictures, too. Shafer wondered whether he’d been this horny when he was eighteen. Probably. And he hadn’t even been coping with the extra surge of testosterone that came with fighting a
war.
After a day, Mindy had enough real soldiers as friends to make her profile believable even to someone who might have reason to be cautious, someone like Tyler Weston. So Shafer reached out to Weston.
Yr super-cute,
he wrote.
And coming home soon . . . That’s awesome!
A few hours later, Weston friended her:
Me and my boys love college girls. Got more
pics?
And so Shafer had the chance to examine Weston’s roster of 332 friends, including Rodriguez—though not Roman. He worked through them, trying to find the Special Forces officer whom Young had described to Wells. He came up with three candidates on his first pass. But upon closer inspection, none of the three looked right. The first had rotated home a month earlier. The second operated mainly in the mountain provinces east of Kabul, not in southern Afghanistan. The third, a Ranger lieutenant named Allan Rose, operated out of Kandahar, but he had an airtight alibi. He’d been on a mission in Kandahar province on the night Young had seen the suspect at FOB Jackson.
Shafer expanded his search, friending Rodriguez and Roman. But he came up short there, too. Then inspiration struck. He turned to Jake Weston, Tyler’s older brother.
Your bro’s hot but yr even hotter. . . . I luv bad boys. . . .
Ninety minutes later, Mindy and Jake were friends, at least by Facebook’s definition. And on Jake’s page, Shafer found D. Lorenzo, who had only two photos in his publicly available profile. The first showed him from the side, wearing a white T-shirt and a floppy hat. The hat hid Lorenzo’s face, but not the oversize ace of spades tattoo on his equally oversize bicep. The ace was a favorite of Delta ops. Under “location,” Lorenzo had posted
Kandahar
.
Under “works at”:
I could tell you . . . but I’d have to kill you. Seriously.
The second photo showed a single round, long and copper-tipped. A .50 caliber bullet. A sniper’s bullet.
Shafer searched public and military records and couldn’t find Lorenzo. He wondered whether the name was an alias. Then he remembered that soldiers who wanted to protect their privacy while still giving friends a way to find them often used middle names instead of last on Facebook. Bingo. Within ten minutes, Shafer had him. Daniel Lorenzo Francesca. He’d joined the Army fourteen years before and grown up a half mile from Tyler and Jake Weston. Before Afghanistan, he’d been based at Fort Bragg, the home of the Deltas. Now his personnel file listed his status as
deployed/unavailable
, the Army’s usual euphemism for a soldier on Special Operations duty.
Shafer called Wells, who was back at Kandahar. Technically, General Nuton had banned Wells from every base he controlled, including KAF. But the airfield was so big that as long as Wells stayed away from Nuton’s headquarters, the general couldn’t know he was there.
“I have good news, John.”
“David Miller.”
“Better. I found the middleman. Name’s Daniel Lorenzo Francesca. He was a sniper in Iraq, Special Ops, and he joined Delta about five years
ago.”
“Sniper.”
“He might have killed more guys than
you.”
“Unlikely.”
“Jealous, John? He’s finishing his second tour in Afghanistan. Looks like he’s based at
KAF.”
“You have a photo?”
“I’m working on it.” For obvious reasons, the Special Forces kept the names and faces of their operatives secret. The Deltas were doubly cautious. “I’ll get one from the North Carolina DMV. I’d rather not tip him
yet.”
“He may already know. I’m looking for
him.”
“Fair point.” The mole had probably warned Francesca after Wells showed up in Kabul. “Even if he knows we’re looking, let’s not let him know he’s been found. Anyway, his file’s strange.”
“Define strange.”
“As in, he seems to have gotten special language training. A few years ago, he went to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey for six months to learn Pashtun.”
“So?”
“So that’s unusual. JSOC usually views these guys as too valuable to pull them from the field that way. Plus I can’t figure out which Delta unit he’s part of. After Monterey, his assignment is listed as Delta/D71, no company or squad.”
“D71.”
“Correct.”
“You’re sure he’s our guy? You’re putting a lot on this Facebook connection.”
“
Sure
is too strong. But he’s the best candidate.”
“Get me the photo and I’ll see what Coleman says.”
“I’ll do better than that. I’ll get you six guys and you can run a lineup.”
“Good. And let’s say Coleman recognizes this guy. What then? I go talk to him? Ask him about his heroin trafficking? Because I have a feeling that’s not going to do it. And I don’t think CID or the Deltas are going to want to hear about it either.”
“I have a plan.”
“Do tell.”
“Three steps. The first at Kandahar, the second here, and the third at FOB Jackson.” Shafer explained.
“I don’t like it,” Wells said when he was finished. “It feels like tying a goat to a tree and waiting for the lion to show
up.”
“Except the goat’s got a
gun.”
“So’s the lion.”
“You have another way, I’m listening. But the hour’s getting short, John. Duto leaves in less than a week. Anyway, it’s Young’s call, not yours, right?”
“All right. I’ll ask him. Meantime you’ll send me what I need?”
“I’ll FedEx it tonight to the KBR office at KAF. Project manager there named Alan Sussman owes me a favor.” The breadth of Shafer’s connections always surprised Wells. But then Shafer had been in the game a very long time.
“Sussman.”
“Yeah. He’ll hold it for you, and that way it doesn’t have your name on it, just in case somebody’s looking for you. Meantime I’m going to see if I can trace Francesca up the chain, figure out who in Kabul he might know.”
“Facebook again.”
“I wish. But based on everything we’ve seen, our mole’s more careful than that. And speaking of careful. Watch out for this guy, okay?”
“Don’t worry about me, Ellis.” Wells sounded almost personally offended at the suggestion that this Delta operative might pose a challenge to
him.
“I’m just saying—”
“I know what you’re saying. I’ve never liked snipers. Takes a special kind of nasty.”
23
FORWARD OPERATING BASE JACKSON
B
esides its brigade aid station, FOB Jackson had a combat stress clinic where a psychiatrist and a social worker talked to soldiers. Guys mostly came voluntarily, though sometimes commanders ordered them in. As Colonel Brown had told Wells, troubles at home were the biggest source of strain. Nearly every base had a Morale, Welfare, and Recreation center offering free Internet access. Many guys e-mailed their wives and families every day. But the constant contact didn’t always help. Deployment didn’t change relationships. Soldiers who’d had strong marriages in the United States had strong marriages in Afghanistan. For others, being in touch was more curse than blessing. Guys fought with their wives about child care, or freaked out after seeing pictures on Facebook of their girlfriends hanging out with other men. Military shrinks called the problems MWR
syndrome.
The stress clinic at FOB Jackson was a simple one-story plywood building topped with sandbags and protected by a twelve-foot blast wall. Soldiers who didn’t want to be seen going in the main entrance could sneak through a gap in the rear wall that opened to a motor pool parking lot. Wells took that route, jogging up three wooden steps to an unlocked door. Inside, he found himself in the clinic’s break room, which held a coffeemaker and a shelf of paperback books and pamphlets about alcoholism, drug abuse, and family violence. An old-fashioned office clock ticked slowly, and vaguely depressing motivational posters covered the walls: “Fear Is Nothing to Fear,” “Six Ways to De-stress Yourself.”
“Hello?”
But no one answered. The clinic had officially closed for lunch at noon, a half hour before. Wells walked to the first door on the left, stepped inside. The room was windowless, six by six. Young sat on a plastic chair, leafing through a pamphlet with a light blue cover: “Signs Your Drinking May Be Getting the Better of
You.”
“Coleman.”
“Mr. Wells,
sir.”
“Call me John. Please.”
“I’m more comfortable using your last name.”
Wells had gotten that answer from enlisted men before. “Your choice. Sorry I’m late.”
“No problem, sir. Catching up on my reading.”
“Worried about your drinking?”
“No, sir. I don’t drink. Been thinking what I ought to do when my contract’s up and I’m wondering about social work. Dealing with Oak Cliff kids like me. I’d have to get my B.A. first.”
“You’re not going to re
-
up.”
Young shrugged as if the question didn’t merit an answer.
“You been okay the last few days? No problems with Weston or Rodriguez?”
Another shrug.
“For what it’s worth I’m guessing you’d make a good social worker, Coleman.”
“How’s that?”
“You listen more than you talk. Probably the key to success.”
“In social work.”
“And life in general.”
“Yes,
sir.”
Wells laid six pieces of paper on the desk, each with a head shot from the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles. Six men stared up, their lips curled into forced smiles.
I’ve wasted a half day renewing my license already. Get me out of here.
“Recognize anybody?”
“It’s one of these men,
sir?”
“That’s for you to answer. Take your time. Even if you’re sure right away.”
Young examined the shots one by one. Methodical and cautious. Wells looked away. He didn’t want to tip Young. Finally, Young nodded and picked up Francesca’s picture. “This
guy.”
“Definitely?”
“Yes. First I wasn’t sure, but them big elephant ears gave it away.” For the first time since Wells had met him, Young smiled. “He thinks he’s some bad, too. I can see it even in this.” Young tapped the DMV photograph. “Staring at the camera like he’s got better places to be. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re not. His name’s Daniel Lorenzo Francesca. He’s buddies with Tyler Weston’s older brother, guy named Jake. He’s a warrant officer based at KAF. A bug-eater.” Regular soldiers called Special Forces operators
bug-eaters
, because their training supposedly included ways to survive on a diet of worms.
“A Delta?”
“Yes and
no.”
“What’s that mean?”
“He’s part of a separate unit inside Delta
.
Called D71
.
Ever heard of
it?”
Young shook his head
.
“What’s that about?”
“He’s gotten special language training, that’s about all I can tell you. Speaks Pashtun. One more thing I have to tell you. He was a sniper in Iraq before he joined Delta.”
Young wasn’t smiling anymore. “So he’s a sniper. Tier One. Speaks the language. And he’s got some mysterious job that even the CIA can’t figure.”
“That’s about right.”
“Sir. Question. What part of this is supposed to make me feel good?”
“I guess the fact that we found
him.”
“So now what? You grab
him?”
“Did you ever see him carrying drugs? Or even Weston or Rodriguez?”
“You know the answer’s
no.”
“Hear him talking about the deal? Or what happened to Ricky Fowler? Or anything illegal at
all.”
“The closest I got to this guy was maybe a hundred feet. I never heard anything. Maybe if I had ears like him.” Young shook his head. “Don’t tell me you can’t do this. You’re not some MP, sir. You’re
CIA.”
“Even the CIA can’t grab a Delta operator for no reason.”
“You believe me? About the drugs and what happened to Fowler and everything?”
“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Mr. Wells, sir. You run the guy down and sneak back here and bring me these pictures and I say it’s true, it’s really him. Then you say you can’t do anything about it. What is that?”
“I didn’t say I can’t do anything about it. There’s a way. But it puts you on the line. Because this guy will go after you for sure when we pull his chain. From the minute I go back to Kandahar, you have to figure that you’re at risk every time you go outside the wire. Maybe inside,
too.”
“Tell
me.”
Wells explained. When he was finished, Young picked up Francesca’s head shot, stared at it as if it might confess. “Boxed me, didn’t you? Know I can’t say no after that speech I made. Why it pays to keep your mouth shut.”
“You can always say
no.”
Young ripped the head shot, straight down the middle, tearing Francesca’s face in two. “Let’s get
him.”
* * *
BACK AT KANDAHAR,
Wells picked up the FedEx package that Shafer had sent and then left the KBR compound, walking south along the busy two-lane road to the base’s main gate. Trucks churned by as he dialed a number he’d burned into his brain the year before.
Two rings, then: “Brett Gaffan.”
“You answer that way, it makes you sound like a telemarketer. ‘This is Brett Gaffan, have I got a deal for you.’”
“What have I done to deserve this honor, John?”
Gaffan was a former Delta operator who had recently worked with Wells on a mission that had started messy and ended messier. He had saved Wells’s life on a hill in the Bekaa Valley. Despite that fact, or maybe because of it, they’d hardly spoken since the end of the mission. Just a couple vague promises to get together. Civilians didn’t understand this side of the military. Men risked their lives for one another and then walked away with hardly a backward glance once the fighting was done. Combat was combat and life was life. The two didn’t always have much in common.
“Long time no speak,” Gaffan said.
“Sorry about that.”
“Sure you are. So come on, out with
it.”
“Out with what?”
“You’re calling me from a blocked number, not your own phone. And it sounds like you’re at a truck stop somewhere. Lots of diesel engines. And it’s like seven a.m. here. You must be out of the country, probably on a base, probably Middle East.”
“Afghanistan.”
“I know you want something, so let’s avoid the awkwardness and get to
it.”
“Am I that obvious?”
“As a matter of fact.”
Wells could hardly deny his ulterior motives. “You still keep close to your old buddies?”
“Some.
Why?”
“Anybody in Kandahar you really trust?”
Gaffan hesitated. “One guy, sure. A master sergeant, Russell Stout. We haven’t talked in a month or so, but I’m pretty sure he’s still there. Good guy. By the book. No-nonsense.”
Meaning that he wouldn’t necessarily be buying whatever Wells was selling. “Noted. Can I talk to him, use your name? I’m looking for an op who I think is based here.”
“Want to tell me
why?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t it always? At least give me his name. I might even know
him.”
“Daniel Francesca. Sniper.”
“Nope.”
“He got into Delta about when you left. He looks like a bad guy. I just want help getting a look at
him.”
“Really. That’s all you want.”
Wells imagined Gaffan holding the phone away from his ear, deciding whether to toss it across the room.
Oops. We got disconnected. And then my phone stopped working.
Sorry I couldn’t
help.
Wells stayed quiet and eventually Gaffan coughed into the phone, an almost embarrassed cough. An I-can’t-believe-I’m-letting-you-use-me-yet-again
cough. They both knew he would say yes, defer to Wells’s judgment. Gaffan was a very good operator, but he wasn’t a leader.
“I’ll ask him. But if he’s not comfortable—”
“I get
it.”
“I assume you’d rather meet him off base.”
“On KAF should be fine. We’ll find somewhere out of sight. This place is, like, five square miles.”
“You have a funny way of treating your friends, John.”
“Better than my enemies.”
“True that. When you get back, you owe me a beer, and this time I’m collecting.”
“Done.”
* * *
FOUR HOURS LATER,
Wells sat on the steps of an abandoned trailer at the southwestern edge of the airfield. With the surge done, Kandahar was already shrinking. This part of the base was mostly empty. The dirt fields around Wells were littered with trailers, pipes, barbed wire, earthmoving equipment, and a hundred other bits of slowly rusting steel. The United States military had brought this equipment at unfathomable expense a year or two before. Much of it had never been used. Now it was turning into salvage.
Wells saw headlights approaching and stood and waved. A Jeep pulled up, and he stepped in. The driver was wiry and lean and deeply tanned. He was in his early thirties, but his close-cropped gray hair made him look older. Wells pulled the door shut and they rolled slowly west, toward the wire.
“Sergeant Stout?”
“Call me Russ. You know this is the first time I’ve ever seen this part of
KAF?”
“Not much reason to go over here.”
“I guess not. So what’s
up?”
No-nonsense, Gaffan had said. Wells decided not to dance around the question. “You know a warrant officer named Daniel Francesca?”
“Sure. Danny. Odd guy. In
71.”
“You don’t mind my asking, what
is
71?”
Stout turned right, north along the perimeter road. He looked at Wells:
Why do you want to
know?
“I have reason to believe Francesca’s dirty.”
Stout shook his head.
Not enough.
“That he and a senior CIA officer are working with a Talib commander to export heroin. Funding the insurgency and passing operational information to the commander.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I came a long way to make this
up.”
They rode for a while in silence. “What kind of evidence you
got?”
“It’s circumstantial, but it’s solid. A couple weeks ago, he was seen on another base with a soldier and officer who we think are the pickup team. We’ve checked and he had no reason to be there.”
“That’s not enough.”
“I agree. I’m not planning to do anything. Just asking questions.”
“We created 71 maybe four years ago.
D
for Detachment. Detachment 71, two-man teams that can operate outside the wire on their own. There’re only three here, three at Bagram, maybe one down in Helmand.”
“So they can pass as local.”
“That’s the idea. Local enough that they can get down Highway 1 and through the villages without getting stopped or jacked anyway. Danny and his spotter, guy named Alders, they’re good.”
“I didn’t know you guys ever went out under NOC in teams that small.”
“Not before this. It’s kind of a pilot project, and there’re only a few guys who can do it anyway. You have to have the language down.”
Something about what Stout had said bugged Wells. He wasn’t sure why. He moved
on.
“What about Francesca? You said he’s
odd.”
“You know snipers. How can that not get to you? Plus he’s on his third tour. He and Alders call themselves the Shadow Patrol. It’s sort of a joke, but sort of not, you understand. And he has this weird high-pitched giggle that comes out sometimes, not necessarily when anybody’s made a joke. Like he’s a hyena or something.” Stout demonstrated.
“I can see why you wouldn’t want him babysitting.”
“Definitely
not.”
“These 71 teams live in your barracks?”
“Yeah. You know where we
are?”
Wells shook his head.
“This high-sec compound close to the main airfield terminal. Called Bengal. On the maps it’s just listed as extra officers’ housing, but if you walk by you’ll see fifteen-foot walls, barbed wire, lots of aerials. We even have a helipad inside, although we can’t use it except if we declare
CMS.”
“CMS?”
“Critical Mission Status, like we think we can catch Mullah Omar but we have to go immediately. Otherwise the Air Force controllers hate any air traffic south of the runway. For regular missions we go from the helo ramps on the north side like everybody else. Anyway, the 71 teams almost never go out by helicopter. They have local vehicles and they wear local clothes outside the wire. True black ops. When they’re at Bengal, they hang out a little bit, eat with us and work out sometimes, but mostly they stick to themselves and practice speaking Pashtun.”
“And you have different missions anyway.”