The Night Ranger

“And you’re helping. Asking our friends in Maryland to run numbers for him.”

“They’re not our friends. They’re more like our geeky half brother, the one we made fun of all through high school. Then out of nowhere he invented Google and now he’s a billionaire.”

“I don’t think you answered my question, Ellis.”

“In my cleverness I’ve forgotten it.”

“Cleverness or old age?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Let me ask again. Why are you asking NSA to run Kenyan phone numbers?”

“John asked me to.”

“You know what the Kenyans want? What their ambassador told the President last night?”

Shafer had plenty of answers to that question, from More visas to A new pony, but years of trial and error had taught him that these conversations had a rhythm. Annoying Duto too hard for too long put him in lockdown. And Duto seemed to have something important to say. Shafer held his tongue.

“They want us to help them out with al-Shabaab,” Duto said. “And by ‘help out,’ I mean invade.”

“They must know we’re not going anywhere near Somalia. They’ve seen Black Hawk Down like everybody else.”

“That was twenty years ago. This is now. Nick Kristof writes about South Sudan so much it’s like he’s running tours to the place. And guess what, people listen. They want to know why we and our trillion-dollar military don’t do something about it.”

“But South Sudan is a thousand miles from Somalia.”

“Out there”—Duto pointed vaguely at the cars on 123—“it’s just Africa. And Africa is hot again. Right now we the people, in our infinite wisdom, for reasons neither you nor I can divine, take our minds off the economy, whatever, we have decided to give a rat’s ass. Conflict minerals, Joseph Kony, Congo, it’s all bad. And we need to fix it. Shoot the Children and Save the Warlords, or maybe the other way round.”

“You’re on a roll, Vinny. Please continue.”

“Which is to say these four nitwits picked either a really good time or a really bad time to get kidnapped. The Kenyans, they see everybody’s paying attention. And, back to where this started, they want us to finish off Shabaab. Go over the border into Somalia and wipe them out.”

Shafer understood. “Why they keep fingering Shabaab for the kidnapping. The next step, they start pushing us, first in private, and then in public, to go into Somalia to get the volunteers.”

“Correct. And there are folks in Stuttgart more than happy to do that.”

“Stuttgart?”

Duto smiled. His teeth were white and perfect. They hadn’t always been. “I’m disappointed in you, Ellis. You don’t know that Stuttgart, Germany, is the home of Africom, especially created by the Pentagon in 2007 to oversee military operations in Africa. And General Ham, commander of Africom, knows very well that his pride and joy is A- one on the chopping block with budget cuts coming.”

“His name’s really Ham, Vinny? That’s unfortunate. On several levels.”

“Carter Ham, yes. Point is that he’s looking for something to do. You can assume that colonels in Germany are working up PowerPoint presentations as we speak.”

“And you’re sharing all this with me because you’re not in favor.”

“Enough is enough. Time to give the frontline guys a break. Even if this is only ten, fifteen thousand soldiers, you know what everybody who just got home from Afghanistan is gonna think? Here we go again. Now we’re attacking Africa? Guys are gonna snap. But our lifers by the airport”—the Pentagon was just across 395 from Reagan National—“you know how they are. Best way to get promoted is to plan a war that actually happens.”

“You think we could send fifteen thousand men? For four hostages?”

“We sent more than that to Mogadishu twenty years ago.”

“That was a famine, Vinny.”

“It’s Somalia. There’s always a famine. Not saying it’s a lock. Just that everything’s lining up. The media’s going crazy, the Kenyans are whispering sweet nothings, Africom’s gung-ho, and it looks like an easy win. White House loves those. So we figure we’ll go in with a battalion, and before we know it we have three brigades committed. Mission creep.”

—

Shafer enjoyed hating Duto. Not just because Duto was arrogant or a bully or a liar, though he was all those. Duto was the system made flesh, the physical embodiment of the agency’s worst traits, its self-protective bureaucracy and endless craving for more. More meaning more money, more operatives, and more authority to fly unmanned drones in a worldwide covert war. The drone program galled Shafer. The agency killed scores of suspected terrorists each year without ever telling the public—much less the targets—how it chose them.

Killing top-level targets like Ayman al-Zawahiri made sense. But Shafer believed that Duto had allowed the agency to rely too heavily on missile attacks. The endless assassinations damaged America’s moral standing. They would inevitably create a new generation of terrorists desperate to revenge themselves on American soil. Even the names that the Air Force and General Atomics had given the drones annoyed Shafer: The MQ-1 Predator. The MQ-9 Reaper. What, The FU-69 Awesome Flying Killing Machine That’ll Blow Your Terrorist Ass to Shreds would have been too subtle?

But as far as Shafer could tell, Duto didn’t worry about long-term blowback. To him, the drones were the best kind of program, one that provided easily measurable evidence of its effectiveness. Every quarter, Duto could offer PowerPoint shows to the congressional intelligence committees detailing how many missiles the agency had fired, how many targets it had killed. Even better, the strikes happened in unpleasant places like central Yemen. Independent journalists and aid groups had little chance to discover who had really been killed. The congressional committees were happy to take Duto’s assurances. No one wanted to ask too many specifics and mess up a program that seemed to be disrupting terrorist activity at little risk to Americans.

Truly, Duto had won. On his watch, the CIA had helped find Osama bin Laden and set back the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Within the alphabet soup of agencies that made up the American intelligence community, no one doubted that Duto was more powerful than the Director of National Intelligence, his nominal boss.

Now he’d decided to get involved with these hostages. Shafer suspected Duto couldn’t care less about the morale of the soldiers who might be sent to Somalia. Most likely he wanted one final triumph before riding off into his Senate campaign. If the CIA found the hostages, it would make sure that the reporters who covered the agency gave it—and its director—full credit.

But Shafer knew he had no choice but to rise to Duto’s bait. He couldn’t stand by as the United States skidded toward another military adventure. In his own way, Duto was brilliant. He was profoundly amoral, but he knew how to use morality’s tug to mold Shafer and Wells to his own ends. He knew they would grit their teeth and let him use them. He didn’t even have to lie, at least not today.

Duto turned toward Shafer now, his body broadcasting his eagerness to win Shafer’s agreement. “You’re about as subtle as a car salesman,” Shafer said.

“Another war. You want that?”

No. I don’t. Especially not if this kidnapping is some game James Thompson is playing.

“What’s John doing, Ellis?” Duto pressing his advantage.

“He’s at the WorldCares compound, that’s really all I know.”

“Why’d he get involved at all?”

“His son asked.” Shafer explained Evan’s connection. “Anyway, he talked to Thompson last night after the press conference. Asked me to run Thompson’s phone numbers through NSA.”

“And one came back blank?”

Fortunately, at that moment the Suburban stopped short and Shafer had a chance to hide his surprise. He wondered if he’d ever stop underestimating Duto. Just because the guy had stubby fingers and eyelids like Nixon’s didn’t mean he was stupid. He’d obviously spent the last twenty-four peeking over Shafer’s shoulder. Now that Shafer had come up with evidence that maybe the case was more than a simple Shabaab kidnapping, he’d stepped up.