25
KANDAHAR AIRFIELD
P
osters of kittens and puppies covered the walls of the trailer that Francesca and Alders shared. Francesca had bought the first one six months before at an online store that offered free delivery to all military post offices. Two tiny cats tugging on a bright yellow thread of yarn. Across the top, sky blue letters proclaimed, “Playtime.”
He hung it over his bunk when Alders was at the
gym.
“Seriously,” Alders said when he got back.
“Seriously.”
“Playtime.”
“Playtime.”
Alders didn’t say anything else. So Francesca bought more. He avoided anything ironic, like the poster that proclaimed in heavy black type, “Kitten thinks of nothing but murder all day.” Just cats and dogs running through meadows, splashing in pools. One for every kill. His reward to himself for a job well-done. If anyone had asked, Francesca would have insisted the posters were a joke, and they were. But they were something else, too, a way to remember that the world did have happiness even if he could no longer feel
it.
Now he lay on his cot, hands clasped behind his head, looking at his favorite poster, a tiny Chihuahua with absurdly big ears. Her head was tilted as if she’d just heard her name and couldn’t decide whether to answer. Francesca called her Holly. Sometimes he imagined that when he got home he’d go to a shelter and get a real Holly. But he knew what would happen if he did. He’d play with her, buy her treats. But one night she’d pee on the floor, or he’d get tired of her yapping. He’d tell her to stop and she wouldn’t. Then he’d pick her up and snap her neck and toss her in the trash. Killing humans didn’t bother him. Why would killing dogs? He supposed he could live with a perfectly trained husky or shepherd, an animal that answered to him and him alone and never barked except in warning and never disobeyed or begged for food. But a dog like that would basically be a robot. He didn’t want a robot dog. So he was left with the posters.
He and Alders were due to ride out at two a.m., deep into the Arghandab River Valley, which stretched northeast from Kandahar City into Zabul province. For most of its length, the valley ran roughly parallel to Highway 1, which was about twenty miles to the south. The apparent proximity was deceptive. A rugged ridge of hills and low mountains split the valley from the highway, with only a handful of dirt tracks offering passage. In reality, the central Arghandab was as deeply isolated as anywhere in Afghanistan.
Over the last couple months, a Talib cell had planted five huge IEDs in the valley. Three had been found and disarmed. Two hadn’t. The most recent was the biggest yet, four hundred and twenty pounds of explosive from surplus Russian artillery shells. It had blasted through a Gator armored truck and killed everyone inside, four soldiers and a reporter and photographer from the
Times
of London. Strips from the truck’s armor were found fifty yards down the road. The reporter seemed to have been sitting directly over the bomb. He couldn’t be found at
all.
The Talib cell planting the IEDs was clever. The valley was a soft target, because it had two American combat outposts but no major bases. The closest was FOB Jackson, which was on Highway 1 and focused on that road. No big bases meant no blimps and less helicopter and drone surveillance, which made it possible for the cell to dig bigger holes and plant bigger bombs.
Even so, the Army’s EOD squads, its bomb experts, hadn’t understood at first how such big bombs had been planted in the middle of the valley’s main road. Then an informant in Qalat, the capital of Zabul, told a military intelligence officer that the cell was posting spotters on the road miles from the bomb sites. That way they had advance warning of American patrols. And to reduce the odds that a drone might spot them, they created diversions while they planted the bombs. They sent men out to take potshots at American patrols or rocket a combat outpost. Anything to draw attention from the road.
The informant also explained that the leader of the cell wanted to press his luck. He believed that the Americans wouldn’t expect another attack so soon. He hoped to plant another bomb within the next seventy-two hours east of Toray, a part of the road that hadn’t been hit
yet.
Under normal circumstances, stopping a single IED-planting cell would be considered a relatively low-value mission and left to local units. But a bomb big enough to blow out a Gator got attention at the regional command level, especially when a reporter was involved. And aerial surveillance had revealed an ideal sniper hole near the road, an abandoned grape hut that had a clear line of sight to the target area the informant had mentioned. So Detachment 71 had been asked to send a squad.
When he heard about the operation, Francesca volunteered. Weston had told him about the speech that Wells gave to the Strykers at FOB Jackson. Francesca didn’t think it was a coincidence. Wells was closing in. Francesca wanted to have the option of taking Young out. Being close to FOB Jackson would give it to
him.
The digital clock on Francesca’s bedside table beeped. Nine o’clock. Time to get ready. He reached for his pistol, which hung over his bed next to Holly’s poster. He pulled the pistol’s clip and examined the rounds for dust or scratches, then wiped them down with a chamois cloth. He was about to do the same with his spare clip when a knock interrupted
him.
“Francesca? Major wants to see
you.”
* * *
MAJOR STEVEN PENN
commanded the Delta squads at Kandahar. He was a black man, tall and solid and more than happy to be first through the door. His office was all business, not a single family picture, no hint where he’d grown up or had gone to school.
“Sir.” Francesca gave his crispest salute.
“Mr. Francesca.” Warrant officers were addressed as “Mister,” because in the military hierarchy they ranked between commissioned officers and enlisted men. “Sit, please.” Penn nodded at the wooden bench beside his desk. “You ever heard of someone named Ellis Shafer?”
Not the question Francesca expected. Or the name. “No,
sir.”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes,
sir.”
“Seems he’s heard of you. Do you have any idea why the CIA might want to investigate you, Daniel? Any idea at
all?”
John Wells.
“No,
sir.”
“This”—Penn hesitated—“man Ellis Shafer works for the CIA. He had the insolence to ask Colonel Cunningham for your file.”
“Sir. May I ask if he said
why?”
“He did not. But it’s no secret that our friends at Langley are not a hundred percent on board with what we’re doing.”
For a crazy half second, Francesca wondered whether Stan had planned this twist all along, to set
him
up, take down Detachment 71. No. He couldn’t see how that would work, much less how the missiles fit in. No, Young had snitched to Wells and Wells had chased him down. Francesca wasn’t sure how. Didn’t matter. What mattered was that Wells and this Shafer were onto
him.
But the Delta commanders didn’t know why. They figured that the CIA was making a play against Detachment 71. So Francesca had caught a break. Penn and Cunningham didn’t know whether he was dirty. And they didn’t want to know. Knowing would make protecting the project harder, and protecting the project was their priority. They were giving him a heads-up, a chance to fix whatever was wrong.
And fix it he would.
“Anything at all you want to tell me, Daniel?”
“No,
sir.”
“You still want to go up into the Arghandab? Because I can assign another team.”
“Yes, sir. One hundred percent.”
“Glad to hear it. Dismissed.”
Francesca saluted and stalked back to his trailer and grabbed one of his untraceable spare phones. He left the Delta compound and punched in a Kabul number. Stan picked up on the second ring. “Twenty minutes,” he said.
Francesca didn’t want to go back to the compound and leave again. To pass the time, he walked over to the Boardwalk, the airfield’s equivalent of a town square, a block of shops and restaurants. At the Boardwalk, guys who never got outside the wire could eat Nathan’s hot dogs and KFC and buy leather jackets covered with maps of Afghanistan. Of all the things that Francesca hated—and these days his hatred seemed almost infinite—he hated the Boardwalk and the falsity of the pretend soldiers on it most of all. The Air Force ought to drop a nuke on the place.
Stan called back right on time. “What’s going
on?”
“Your friends are asking about me. Called my commander. Said my name came up in an investigation.”
“They say what they
had?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“They mention
me?”
“No. I need to find the freelancer.” How they’d agreed to refer to Wells.
No names on these phones, ever,
Stan had said.
“I suspect he’s close to you, but I don’t know. Let me handle this. Sit tight.”
“You said that before. This is out of hand. I’m taking care of
it.”
“Give me a chance to find out what they know.”
“I’ll think about it,” Francesca said, knowing he wouldn’t. He hung up. Stan rang again a few seconds later, but Francesca didn’t answer. He had another call to make, this one to FOB Jackson.
* * *
WHEN HE GOT BACK
to the trailer, Alders was cleaning his weapons. “Heard Penn was looking for you. Anything I need to know about?”
“Later. In the truck.”
They cleaned their weapons and went for a final briefing for the Arghandab mission with the captain who ran 71. If all went as planned, they would reach the grape hut—a tall mud building where Afghan farmers dried grapes into raisins—an hour before sunrise. There they would hide themselves and the truck. The insurgents didn’t have drones or satellites, so vehicles were invisible once they were parked inside.
Drones had made repeated runs in the last forty-eight hours to be sure the grape hut was empty. But the Talibs wouldn’t risk planting an IED if they believed that a drone was nearby, so all surveillance would be pulled once Francesca and Alders got to the hut. In fact, much of the valley would be closed to both helicopters and drones for the next five days, both to encourage the bomb makers to get to work and to reduce the chance of friendly fire.
As the briefing dragged on, Francesca’s attention slid to the other operation he was planning. It would be easier. A turkey shoot, really. First Young. Then, with any luck, Wells, who was likely to come running once he heard that Young had been killed.
So he was risking his life to protect one group of American soldiers while killing another. The irony was perfect. The
world
was perfect. Francesca bit the inside of his lip to keep from laughing.
* * *
JUST BEFORE TWO A.M.,
Francesca and Alders drove out through Gate 1, on the base’s southern side. Each man wore a brown
shalwar kameez
and had a short-stock AK tucked behind his seat. As usual, the Barrett was hidden in the compartment under the Toyota, along with their uniforms and night-vision scopes and any other gear that might identify them as American. Tonight the Dragunov was down there, too. Alders carried a GPS that had been specially programmed with the Afghan road network. But the GPS had been hidden inside the casing for a cheap Nokia, a common brand in the Afghan countryside.
They were wearing what Special Operations guys called ballistic underwear, basically heavy-duty fire-resistant boxer briefs. The underwear was useful for snipers, who did a lot of crawling on stony ground. The military was considering giving it to every frontline soldier. Any IED big enough to take off arms and legs could blow off more sensitive areas, too. A little bit of extra protection was good for morale. Of course, any Afghan would know that the briefs weren’t local. But if a Talib got close enough to see his underwear, Francesca figured he’d be dead already. Or wishing he were.
Francesca followed a convoy of supply trucks toward Kandahar City. At Highway 1, the trucks swung west toward the city. Francesca turned right. Suddenly they were alone. Past midnight, the Afghan roads were deserted aside from military convoys. The Talibs had learned the effectiveness of American night-vision equipment and rarely tried ambushes after dark. Ordinary Afghans didn’t own cars and had little reason to risk nighttime travel. They locked themselves in their compounds and waited for the sun to set them free.
As the lights of Kandahar faded to specks in his mirrors, Francesca swung left off Highway 1, north on a narrow track that rose up a gentle hillside. After a few minutes, the Toyota crested a ridge and the Arghandab River Valley stretched out below. In the moonlight, it looked almost beautiful. During the day, the grape fields were brown and drab. Now they were black oceans marked by whispery, bare-branched almond trees. Farther north, the pomegranate groves near the river rose thick and lush. Insurgents launched ambushes from the groves, moving under them in fortified tunnels. But at this hour they were as peaceful as the Garden of Eden. Far past the river, the mountains of central Afghanistan soared, their snowcapped peaks glowing white.
“This land is your land, this land is my land,” Francesca burst out. “From California to the New York—sing it with me
now—”
Alders punched him. Hard.
“Not nice. You know, Alders. You’re the only one left I can take.”
“Promise you’ll tell me when you decide I’m as bad as everybody else.”
“Yeah?”
“Give me a chance to get out of range of that Barrett.”
Francesca’s giggle echoed off through the cab of the truck. Even he could hear how crazy he sounded.
“What was Penn talking to you about?” Alders said.
Francesca told
him.
“CIA? So we have something to take care
of.”
“Thought I’d have to convince
you.”
“All this time together, you still don’t know me. You think I didn’t guess where this might
go?”
“Good, because I already talked to Weston.” Francesca walked Alders through his plan.
“This going to be today?”
“Think so. He’ll tell me soon as he’s sure.”
“You ready on the Dragunov?”