The Shadow Patrol (31 page)

His sat phone trilled.
“Guten morgen.”

“And
guten morgen
to you, John. Though it’s one a.m. here, so maybe
guten night-en
would be more accurate. We okay to talk?”

“Believe so. I’m on the roof. Looking at beautiful Kabul. Snowcapped mountains to the west, helicopters to the north, Taliban all around.”

“Sounds romantic.”

“What am I doing here, Ellis?”

“I’ve never seen Duto this way. Like he’s paralyzed, doesn’t want to believe it’s Lautner. He wants to talk to you, go over it again.”

“Sure.”

“Sit tight for fifteen minutes.”

An hour later, the phone rang again. No preamble.

“We don’t have enough. No prosecutor would charge him. A few weird e-mails and hearsay from a dead sniper? And what exactly will you say on the cross, when the defense asks how you happened to hear Francesca’s last words?”

“You sound tired, Vinny.”

“Tell me you’re sure about this. How can you know Francesca was telling the truth?”

Because men don’t lie to their executioners.
“I know.”

“If we could find the money. Lautner must have it somewhere.”

“Forget the money. This was never about money.”

“What would you
do?”

“You know what I’d
do.”

“Just answer
me.”

“Francesca’s dead. Lautner knows it’s over. He’s not stupid. He knows. Show him that you know, too. Order him home. Now. The next flight out. Make the call yourself, so he can’t dodge it. But don’t give him a reason. Don’t even let him pack. Push him, make him react.”

“And what do I tell my congressmen when they ask what happened to the station’s deputy chief?”

“Have you heard anything John just said?” This from Shafer. Wells heard the exasperation in his voice. “He’s telling you there’s a real chance Pete Lautner’s going to make himself a one-man welcoming committee and strap on a bomb when you get there. Do I have to spell it out for you? Blow himself up. Like Marburg did to his wife and his brother.
That’s
what this is about. Not money. Revenge.
Get him out of
there.
”

Duto grunted, low and pained. Then he spoke two words, so quietly Wells hardly heard him. “All right.”

* * *

WELLS STAYED
on the roof for a while and then went for a walk. The gate guards tried to convince him to stay inside but he shook them off. The Afghans looked curiously at him. Now that he’d shaved his beard, he had a harder time passing. But he had a pistol on his hip and the sun was high in the sky and Western soldiers were all over downtown Kabul and nobody said a word. He felt like a tourist who’d gotten lost.

He had nearly looped back to the embassy when his phone rang. Shafer.

Lautner had locked the door to his office and put his 9-millimeter in his mouth and vented his brains on the wall. No note. But in his lap, a copy of the official after-action report on Marburg.

There wasn’t anything to say, so Wells didn’t say anything.

“Duto’s postponing his trip,” Shafer said eventually. “You can head out whenever.”

“I assume I’ll be getting a medal for my honorable service. Maybe a small private ceremony at the White House.”

“It’s best for everyone this way. You know.”

Wells hung up. Lautner, dead. Wells felt no surprise, but when he tried to walk, his legs weighed a thousand pounds. Afghanistan was just lines on a map, as fictional and fleeting as any human creation. Land couldn’t be cursed. The idea belonged to a different century. Yet at this moment, the taint felt as real and sharp as the mountains around
him.

* * *

TWENTY MILES SOUTH,
Amadullah Thuwani gobbled down the last remnants of his lunch, roast lamb and rice. He hadn’t heard anything from the Americans since he’d handed over the Dragunov. He wondered whether the CIA man had forgotten him. No matter. He still had his twin treasures, the surface-to-air missiles the man had given
him.

And one day he’d use them.

* * *

BY THE TIME
he reached North Conway, Wells was exhausted through his bones. Two days of flights and layovers. He’d traveled commercial the whole way. For the moment, he couldn’t bear the steel embrace of the American military. So he’d flown through Dubai and Frankfurt and Dulles, gleaming airports all, filled with purposeful men and women and the baubles of the twenty-first century. Duto had tried to make him stop at Langley for a debrief, and Shafer had offered to put him up. Wells had ignored them both and caught the first flight to Boston and found a cab at Logan willing to take him to New Hampshire, a dented Crown Vic. “Cost you five hundred dollars and I’m gonna need that up-front,” the driver said, aggressively, like he was waiting for an argument, but Wells just nodded and reached for his wallet. As they rolled northwest on 93, Wells stared out the window at the office parks and bent roads and gray New England hills and wondered again whether a land could be cursed. Or a people.

Outside Manchester, the snow began, a sudden squall, big soft flakes that poured from the lead-white sky and melted instantly on the highway.

“Has there been much?” Wells said, his first words since Logan.

“First real storm all year.”

Wells decided the storm was good luck and then decided that exhaustion had made him fanciful. Soon enough he’d be seeing omens in jet contrails. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the driver was rolling up outside the old farmhouse Wells shared with Anne and Tonka. The snow was still falling hard, sticking now, coating the earth, hiding its scars. Gray smoke rose from the chimney into the gray
sky.

“Here you are,” the driver said.

Wells left him behind, walked into the yard. Tonka looked out from the living room window and started to wag his long bushy tail with absurd speed. All the welcome any man could want. The door was unlocked. Wells pushed it open.

“I’m home.” The word low and solid in his throat. The only word he needed. “Home.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Neil, Ivan, Leslie, Tom, Marilyn, Matthew, and everyone else at Putnam who makes John Wells come to life. Thanks to Heather, who battles tirelessly for the best deal, and Dev, who watches the watchers. Thanks to my family for all your support and thoughtful comments. And, of course, thanks to Jackie, wife, friend, and partner.

I also want to extend a special thanks to Lt. Paszterko, Capt. Field, and the rest of the “Hard Rocks” for putting me up, and putting up with me, in Kandahar last year. Seeing the United States military in action is a privilege and honor. Stay safe.

As always, thanks to anyone who got this far, and please do write me at [email protected] with comments and suggestions. I promise to do my best to write back. (And if you’re not sick of me yet, you can follow me on Facebook and Twitter.)

DADAAB, KENYA

N
ot that Gwen Murphy would tell anyone. She pushed the idea out of her head as soon as it came. But the truth was that the refugees were starting to creep her out.

Gwen lay on her cot, pretending to sleep. Outside the canvas walls of the trailer she shared with Hailey Barnes, the Hagadera refugee camp was coming to life. Diesel engines rumbled in the distance as the morning’s first supply convoy arrived. Closer, two men shouted to each other in their clicking African language. “Happy birthday,” Gwen murmured to herself. Her twenty-third. The first she’d spent outside the United States, much less in Africa.

For twelve weeks Gwen had volunteered at Hagadera for WorldCares/ChildrenFirst, an aid agency that offered food and medical care to Somali refugees. The Somalis came to Kenya to escape famine and war. Hundreds of thousands lived in Hagadera and other camps around the town of Dadaab in eastern Kenya. At first the mission had seemed simple to Gwen. Feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, protect the innocent. But the longer she stayed the less she understood this place.

She tried not to think about that, either.

Her alarm beeped. She gave up the charade of sleep, opened her eyes. Seven thirty a.m. Rise and shine. Across the trailer, Hailey’s cot was empty. Hailey always left before Gwen. She claimed she liked to watch the sun rise. Gwen thought she might have something going with Jasper, this former Marine who ran security at their compound, but Hailey denied they were anything but friends.
I just like the place when it’s quiet,
she said.

Gwen wrapped herself in her thin cotton blanket, reached for her laptop. WorldCares housed its workers in a walled compound at the edge of the Hagadera camp. The compound had its own electricity and water and wireless service, not great but enough to download e-mail without a wait.

She found twenty-two new messages on her Gmail account, mainly birthday greetings. Her little sister Catelyn had sent a picture of them by the Golden Gate Bridge. The photo was one of Gwen’s favorites, from a trip to California the year before.
Only four more weeks of do-gooding! Can’t wait for you to get home so I can buy you a 3 a.m. Egg McMuffin
—
hinting at an epic night on that trip.
Tell Hailey the Heartbreaker I said hi! Owen and Scott too! Happy 23rd! XOXO C

Next up, from her mom:
Daddy and I will call today but if you’re busy or we don’t get through I want you to know how much we love, love, LOVE you! And we’re so proud of you. What you’re doing over there is really great . . .

Really great. If they only knew. Gwen signed off, pulled on sweatpants and a long-sleeve shirt to walk to the bathroom trailer. On her first morning here, she’d made the mistake of leaving her trailer in nothing but boy shorts and a thin cotton tee. She hadn’t gotten ten steps before a crusty, forty-something woman had intercepted her.

“This is a refugee camp, not a gentleman’s club,” the woman had barked in a thick British accent. “We respect local sensitivities. As I don’t doubt you’re aware, you have a very pleasant body”—somehow
pleasant
sounded like an accusation—“but if you want to dress like a Russian whore I suggest you move to Moscow. You’d do well.”

Whore?
Gwen had wanted to argue but instead had hustled back to her trailer. She’d later learned the woman was Moss Laughton, the logistics director for WorldCares. Moss’s moods ranged from bad to worse. Still, Gwen had grown to like her after that initial run-in. Maybe because they couldn’t be more different. The British woman had short, spiky hair and was shaped like a potato. She didn’t care how she looked or what people said about her. And she wasn’t afraid to yell. She once described her job to Gwen as
trying to keep the stealing to a reasonable level. And failing.

Gwen decided to give herself an extra-long, extra-hot shower this morning. Moss wouldn’t be amused. Moss said any shower more than three minutes long was a waste of time and water. But it wasn’t Moss’s birthday, was it?

The Hagadera camp was one of three giant refugee centers near Dadaab, an overgrown village on the dusty plains of eastern Kenya. The camps opened in 1991, when Somalia’s government first collapsed. For most of their existence they’d held fewer than one hundred thousand refugees. But since 2009, drought and war had caused hundreds of thousands of Somalis to flee their homes. With nowhere else to go, they trekked west across the desert toward Kenya. Along the way, bandits stole from them and raped them. If they were too weak to walk, they got left behind. And not for the Rapture. They died of dehydration or starvation. Hyenas and lions dragged away their corpses.

Even when they reached Kenya, they weren’t safe. The Kenyan police demanded bribes and threw the Somalis back over the border if they didn’t pay. But enough refugees got through that nearly half a million now lived in the camps, in endless rows of tents that studded the desert like anthills. Some received sturdy white tents that looked like they belonged in an upscale camping expedition.
Abercrombie and Kent: Journey to Dadaab.
The others built their own shelters out of plastic sheets and scraps of wood. Vast open plains surrounded the camps, but the Kenyan government refused to expand them. So the tents were crammed into ever-smaller plots as new refugees arrived. Each camp was a miniature city of refugees, with a city’s problems.

Gwen hadn’t known any of this when she’d come to Dadaab three months before, with Hailey and Owen Broder and Scott Thompson. The four of them had just graduated from the University of Montana, in Missoula. Gwen had grown up in western Montana, lived there her whole life. She was ready for a change. An adventure.

Then Scott had said he might go to Kenya to work for his uncle James helping refugees. Gwen had been surprised because Scott had never struck her as caring. In fact, when it came to women, she knew firsthand he was exactly the opposite. But he’d told her that James ran a charity called WorldCares.
We can go to Africa for a few months. Beats hanging around Missoula. Plus when we’re done, we’ll go on a safari. Watch lions getting it on. You know they have sex for like two days straight.
Scott had sounded at least as enthusiastic about the lions as the refugees.

That night after she got home, she’d searched online for Dadaab. The pictures had shocked her. She couldn’t believe people still starved to death. Of course, anorexia, but that was different. Anyway, the point was that the refugees were starving. U
NITED
N
ATIONS
SAYS
750,000
S
OMALIS
AT
RISK
FROM
FAMINE,
the headlines read. W
ORST
FAMINE
SINCE
1991
.
Babies with bellies swollen from hunger. Women with arms like sticks. Gwen had decided right then that she’d go. Do whatever it was that aid workers did.

When she’d told her family about her plan, she’d figured her mom—and certainly her dad—would put up a fight. Aside from a few weekends in Canada, she’d only been out of the United States once, on a spring break trip to Cancun. But they hadn’t. “It’ll be good for you,” her mom had said. “Broaden your horizons.”

Then Hailey had decided to come, too. She’d told Gwen she wanted a better shot at med school. She’d applied her senior year, but her test scores weren’t great and the only place that had accepted her was in the Caribbean. “This stuff looks great on your resume,” Hailey had said. “In the interviews, too. ‘When I saw little Dikembe come back to life, I knew I wanted to be a healer.’ I don’t have to tell them that the kind of healing I’m talking about is dermatology. Laser skin peels for five hundred dollars a pop.”

“Isn’t that a little cynical?”

“It’s a lot cynical. But doctors make mucho dinero and, unlike you, I can’t afford the luxury of being an idealist.”

“I’m not rich.”

“Gwennie, rich people always say that.”

Finally, Owen had joined up. He hadn’t had to explain why. Gwen knew. He’d had a terrible crush on her for two years. Though he wasn’t a stalker. More a hopeless romantic. He gave her longing looks when he thought she wasn’t paying attention. She wished she found him attractive. But he was curly haired and soulful. Gwen didn’t go for soulful. Gwen went for jocks. Jerks. Like Scott. Scott was about six two, two fifteen, with sandy blond hair and broad shoulders and a ridiculous six-pack. Scott could
dunk
. Gwen had seen him. When Scott wrapped an arm around her, she felt held. She was starting to rethink Scott and all the Scotts of the world. One had given her a bad herpes scare a few months back. But for now she was still in the jock/jerk camp.

* * *

BACK IN HER TRAILER,
post shower, Gwen tugged on cargo pants and boots and a black T-shirt that she knew flattered her. Though, in truth, she would have looked good in sackcloth. She had the honey blond hair and the long, lean legs of a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. She stood out absurdly in the camp’s crowds, an alien from Planet Beautiful.

But her looks hardly mattered here. The refugee kids wanted to touch her hair, sure. Their parents wanted more rations, a chance for an American visa. When they realized she couldn’t help, they moved on. She was just another aid worker here, unworthy of special attention. The realization unsettled her. She wondered if she was getting a glimpse of what life would be like when she was sixty.

She walked to the WorldCares canteen, a concrete room with a gas-fired stove and two oversized refrigerators. Posters of missions covered the walls, smiling black and brown children with white volunteers. Owen and Scott sat at a wooden table in the middle of the room, spooning up oatmeal from chipped bowls.

“Oatmeal?” They hadn’t had oatmeal yesterday. Gwen poured herself a cup of coffee and busied herself brewing a fresh pot. Leaving the coffeemaker empty was a great sin at WorldCares. As Moss had made sure she learned.

“Bunch of Quaker instant came in yesterday,” Owen said. “All kinds. Apples and cinnamon, brown sugar and whatever—”

“Pepsi’s getting a nice tax deduction on that, I’ll bet,” Scott said.

“Pepsi?” Gwen didn’t get it.

“They own Quaker. Stuff’s about to expire, they can’t sell it, so they give it to us, write it off at full price. Everybody wins.”

“I get it.”
Just because I didn’t know that Pepsi owned Quaker doesn’t make me stupid.
Or did it? Other people always seemed to know things she didn’t. But then she’d never tried very hard in school. Around sixth grade, she’d realized that boys would do her homework. She didn’t even have to fool around with them unless she wanted to. They were happy to be near her. This band the Hold Steady had a song called “You Can Make Him Like You.”
And it was true. All the way through college, where she’d barely graduated with a 2.1 average in sociology. Even that had required her to flirt with a professor senior year so he would let her retake her final. Not that she’d slept with him. He was old.
And married. But she’d gone to his study hours dressed in her cutest gray yoga pants, the ones that cupped her ass perfectly, and made sure to lean over his desk and let him see the black thong poking out where her T-shirt didn’t reach. She knew that her moves were obvious, and she knew he knew, too. But she’d learned over the years that men didn’t care. They could be fully aware they were being played and still enjoy the game. No doubt he was filing her image away for later, when he was having boring sex with his wife for the millionth time.
You seemed especially excited tonight, honey.

So she’d gotten her Cs, and she was a college graduate; nobody could take that away. But she wondered if she should have studied a little harder. For this trip she’d bought a Kindle and loaded it with a bunch of famous books she hadn’t read:
The Great Gatsby
and
The Invisible Man
and whatever. She’d forced her way through them, too. But she had to admit she didn’t really enjoy reading them. Maybe she should have tried
Twilight
and
The Hunger Games
; a lot of her friends liked those.

“What’s happening today?” Gwen said.
Besides my birthday.
She wondered if they’d forgotten.

“I’m meeting with James about that reporter coming next week,” Owen said.

“What’s that?”

“Yeah, from Houston. He wants a list of talking points for everybody, make sure we’re all on message about the mission. Talk about our local partners, how we do more than just hand out food, all that stuff.”

“Spin, in other words,” Scott said. “Make sure WorldCares gets mentioned along with CARE and MSF and the big boys. Publicity means donations. So if you have any questions about what we’re doing over here, keep them to yourself.”

“So Scott wants all of us to take a run to Lamu,” Owen said.

Moss had told Gwen about Lamu. She made the place sound like paradise. It was an island a few miles off the Kenyan coast, in the Indian Ocean. Turquoise blue water and an old port. But the Somali border was only about fifty miles away, and the year before, bandits had attacked a resort close by. They’d killed an English tourist and dragged his wife back to Somalia, where she’d died in captivity. Since then, most tourists had stayed away. “Isn’t it too dangerous?”

“You said that yesterday when I told you I was going to Witu.”

“Just because you didn’t get killed doesn’t mean it was smart.”

“Suggs says we’ll be fine. We drive to Garissa and then southeast so we don’t get too close to the border. Get to Mokowe in four or five hours—that’s on the coast—and from there it’s about a twenty-minute speedboat ride.”

Gwen wished she didn’t have such a nasty headache. “What do you think, Owen?”

“I think it’s probably okay as long as we have Suggs with us. Maybe we go one morning, stay a couple nights, drive back in the afternoon. I was talking to an MSF guy last week and he said it really is great down there. And all the millionaires are staying away, so if we go now we’ll have the place to ourselves.”