The Night Ranger

Wells felt like he’d stumbled into someone else’s life. “What are we talking about, Guy?”

“Why’d I bring you to that game?”

“I don’t know, so I’d have trouble with the exercise?”

“Idiot. It’s glorified Capture the Flag. Nobody fails. You’re a Ranger. I could cut off your legs, you’d still make it. I made you play poker because I wanted to watch you play poker. And let me clue you in. You have the worst tells I’ve ever seen.”

“Tells.”

“You give away your hands. Raise your eyebrows when you have a winner. Always look left when you’re bluffing.”

“Guy. Gotta be honest. Maybe I’m still drunk, but I’m not getting it.”

Raviv twisted toward Wells in the seat and—a moment Wells knew he’d never forget—slapped Wells across the cheek. Wells suddenly knew that Raviv loved him. Not sexually, maybe, but the desperate feeling here was love all the same.

“You don’t get to pick what kind of operative you are,” Raviv said. “It picks you. You want to go non-official, you’re going to have to lie so deep it’s in your bones. No tells. I promise you one day someone’s going to ask you to do something that’s going to destroy you. Something you can’t even imagine right now, in this pretty place. With its nice high fences so nobody gets hurt. Farm? It ought to be called a nursery. It’s like you’re in strollers in here. And when it happens, that thing, whatever it is, you’re going to have to nod and say, yes, like it was your idea all along. Or you’re going to die. And maybe get some agents killed, too. All this training”—he spat the word like a curse —“they never say a word about that. You understand me? You copy? Over?”

“Yes.”

“No, you don’t. But you will.” Raviv reached across Wells, opened the door. “Get out.”

“Guy—”

“I said out.”

Wells stood in the cool early-morning Virginia air trying to understand what had just happened, what he’d done wrong. Raviv drove off without saying good-bye. Wells didn’t see him for the rest of training. In fact, Wells never saw Raviv again. He died of lung cancer while Wells was living as a jihadi in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier, the deepest cover of all. Wells found out only after he returned to the United States.

But he never forgot that speech. He learned its ugly truth even earlier than Raviv might have expected, in the miserable civil war in the Russian province of Chechnya. The conflict attracted a few hundred Afghan fighters, the true crazies, guys who hadn’t killed enough Russians in the 1980s. Wells joined up, figuring a few months in Chechnya would be the fastest way to prove his devotion to the cause.

The first few weeks were quiet. Wells lived with sixty Afghan and Chechen fighters in the mountains outside Grozny, the Chechen capital. The Russians fired artillery at them, but the shells never did much more than send rock slides down the slopes around their camp. Wells was almost ready to discount the stories he’d heard about the war’s brutality. Then the fighters heard of a Russian convoy that had the bad luck to be traveling at night without helicopter support. They trapped the Russians on a hairpin curve a few kilometers from camp and blew up four BTRs, Russian armored personnel carriers. Wells’s first battle. Everything happened at once. Waves of heat from the carriers as their ammunition and fuel exploded. Desperate Russian soldiers jumping from the hatches, falling down, picking themselves up, running for the forests beside the road as the guerrillas opened up on them. The seven surviving BTRs firing blindly left and right. Wells knew that he ought to be afraid. Yet he was exhilarated. Time slowed to quarter-speed. The relativity of war.

The real hell started when the battle ended. The jihadis took five Russians alive. Back at camp, the rebel leader—a pouch-faced unsmiling Chechen who called himself Abu Khalifa—decided to kill the prisoners. The murders would be taped, the videos sent to television stations in Moscow and Grozny, a warning to every Russian soldier in Chechnya: Don’t expect to be held for ransom if we catch you. Or traded home in a prisoner swap. Expect to die.

Abu Khalifa gave five fighters the honor of slitting Russian throats. He chose Wells to be fifth. Wells wasn’t sure whether he’d been picked at random or as a test because he was American. He only knew he couldn’t refuse. Backing out wouldn’t save the Russian’s life, but it would end Wells’s own. Yet how could he kill an unarmed prisoner? Wells cursed Abu Khalifa and Raviv both. Somehow he felt that if Raviv hadn’t warned him, this choice wouldn’t have been forced on him.

The prisoners were lined up, the camera set. Like the other executioners, Wells pulled on gloves and a mask. A faceless killer. Abu Khalifa made a long speech that Wells didn’t understand. Then the slaughter began. Wells waited for the fighters to turn away in disgust. Instead a hum went through the men around him. They edged closer so they wouldn’t miss the show. Wells was glad for his hood. Not supposed to go like this, he thought. Cavalry’s over the hill. They’ll be here any minute.

When his turn came, he took the knife—a scimitar, really, a curved steel blade with an edge sharper than any razor. The oaken handle was wet under his fingers, slick with the blood and gristle of the soldier who’d just been slaughtered. Wells dried the knife on a piece of cloth and took his place behind the sacrifice chosen for him. Two men flanked him, grappling the Russian’s arms, holding him steady.

No angel appeared with horn or ram. No cavalry, either. Wells knelt, wrapped his hand around the Russian’s forehead. And heard a single word whispered—

Don’t.

Wells wondered if the soldier was speaking. But the Russian wouldn’t know English, and anyway his mouth was gagged tight.

Don’t don’t don’t. Louder now. His conscience. His soul, pleading its case. Let this crime belong to someone else. You don’t even know his name. But his name didn’t matter. Whoever this Russian was, he would die tonight for the crime of surrendering to an enemy that took no prisoners. Nothing could save him. Not Wells or anyone else.

“Ready?” Abu Khalifa said.

Wells felt the blade heavy and full in his hand as he pulled the man’s head back. The first four soldiers had accepted their fate. This one moaned under the gag, fought the rope that held him, twisted his head under Wells’s gloved fingers. If he hoped for mercy, he was mistaken. His fear fed the bloodlust. The jihadis jeered in four languages, the angry shouts tumbling over one another. A rock gashed the soldier’s cheek. Cutting his throat would be a mercy, Wells saw. Else he’d be stoned, stomped, torn limb from limb. Wells dug the tip of the scythe into the man’s throat and twisted the curved blade deep and sliced. As his blood gushed, the soldier screamed. The moan tore at Wells, maddened him. To stop it, he tore at the soldier’s neck until finally the man was quiet. Even then Wells didn’t stop cutting, not until blood sopped his hands and the soldier’s head flopped loose on its neck. The other jihadis gathered around him and cheered. Abu Khalifa himself took Wells by the wrist and raised his arm high like Wells had just won a prizefight. The blood dripped down from the knife. Wells thought he might go mad.

“Allahu Akbar,” Wells said. Though he had never felt more distant from God. The jihadis never did put out the video of that killing—upon further review it was too messy even for them—but Wells saw it. Once. He couldn’t believe how little time the whole episode had taken. Nine seconds. Nine seconds to make a living man dead. Nine seconds and a knife.

The Russian was the first man Wells had killed. An unarmed prisoner. Wells tried to forget what he’d done. He’d never told anyone about it, not Anne, not Shafer, not even Exley. He thought he’d buried it. And for years he had. But in the last few months the memory had crept up on him, distracted him at crucial moments. Like this one.

—

The thrum of the motorcycles brought him to reality. Think: He and Wilfred faced split targets who could cover each other at a distance they couldn’t match. Nor could Wells change the plan he’d already set. No more than a hundred feet separated him and Wilfred, but they didn’t have phones or radios. Their only advantage was surprise, and if they shouted they’d lose it. Wells would have to hope Wilfred decided to follow what was left of the plan. In other words, take out the two guys closer to them. Hope the two at the other end of the camp weren’t great shots even with the advantage of AKs.

Wells flattened himself against the wall of the hut, a step from the doorway. He pulled the Glock from his waistband, made sure he had a round chambered. Outside, one bike drew close. The other circled around the compound.