Wells fired the fifth canister, then pulled on a gas mask. The mask made breathing a conscious decision rather than an automatic fact. Inhale. Fill your lungs. Exhale. Hear air rattle through the activated charcoal filters. Inhale again.
Wells pulled his helmet back on and popped a fresh grenade — standard high-explosive, not CS — into the 203. Two men in brown robes crawled from behind the boulders, their bodies shaking, clots of white phlegm dripping down their faces.
Gaffan took aim. “Wait,” Wells said. But no more men joined the two.
“Okay. Drop ‘em.”
Gaffan squeezed the trigger of his carbine. The first guerrilla twitched spasmodically and collapsed face- first. The second man stood and turned toward them, raising his arms blindly, in defiance, or surrender. Gaffan didn’t wait to find out. He fired again. The man pressed a hand to his robe, twisted, and fell.
“Looks like we got the dumb ones,” Gaffan said. Behind the boulder, the desperate coughing continued. At least two men left back there, Wells thought. No point in waiting any longer. CS was nasty, but its effects wore off fast. “Cover me,” he said to Gaffan. “On three.”
“I’ll go, John.” Gaffan started to stand.
Wells shoved him down. “You cover.” Wells crouched in the shadow of the rock. It was 250 feet to the boulders in a straight line, though he would be zigzagging to keep the guerrillas from getting a clean shot. He wasn’t as fast as he’d once been, but he was fast enough. He held up three fingers to Gaffan, two, one. He took off.
And as his legs pumped over the plateau’s broken rocks, the mania of hand-to-hand combat filled him. He knew he would survive. God, Allah — whatever He was called, whatever He
Wells sprinted, the M4 cradled across his chest, hurdling a low rock, always moving, cutting over the field like a running back who’d made the safety miss and knew the end zone wasn’t far off. When he was a hundred feet away, a man stepped from the shadows of the boulders, white, holding an AK in both hands, wearing a jean jacket—
And a gas mask like Wells.
Wells dove to his right. He landed hard on his shoulder and rolled, reaching for his carbine.
The grenade blew in an enormous white flash. Wells ducked his head as shrapnel rained around him. When he looked up, the man in the jean jacket no longer existed.
Wells sat up. He didn’t think he’d been hit, but his right arm hung out of its socket and his shoulder felt as though it were on fire. Wells reached across his body and cradled the shoulder in his left hand. He grabbed his right biceps and tugged his arm forward, trying to pop the joint into place. The pain was the worst he’d ever felt. A river of agony flooded through his chest. Tears flooded his eyes and filled his gas mask. Wells dropped his arm.
He caught his breath and again wrapped his left hand around the top of his right biceps. In one convulsive movement he jerked his arm forward. The world spun. He pulled even harder. He could feel the joint give. The stars merged and the sky glowed a chunky white. Wells didn’t stop pulling. Then the joint popped back into place and the pain lessened. Wells tried to lift his arm and was amazed to find he could. Then he picked himself up and ran for the rocks, to see if anyone else was still back there.
BUT WHEN WELLS FINALLY ENDED his 250-foot marathon and reached the mouth of the cave, he didn’t find anyone. Anyone alive, anyway. The grenade had slammed into the chest of the man in the jean jacket, a one-in- a-million shot that had blown him apart. His headless torso lay in a thick pool of blood. The head, still covered with the gas mask, lay ten feet from his body. Through the clear plastic mask its eyes watched Wells, promising to visit him while he slept. “Asshole,” Wells said aloud, unsure if he was talking to himself or the man he had killed.
And he wasn’t finished yet. There was another one. Somewhere in that cave, there was another one.
14
SHAFER WALKED INTO EXLEY’S OFFICE IN LANGLEY, folder in hand. “Mis-ter Mole. Oh Mis-ter Mole. Where are you?”
Exley looked up from the papers she was pretending to read. “Cute, Ellis.”
“How’s the hunt? We any closer to whack-whack-whacking this mole?” Shafer stood in front of Exley’s desk and battered imaginary moles with an imaginary mallet. “Never was any good at that game.”
“Ellis, are you stupid? Did you forget what’s happening
“Of course I know. He’s gonna be fine, Jennifer. You said it yourself. He was born for this.”
“He’s in trouble. I know it.” She did, too. She didn’t believe in extrasensory perception or astrology or any of that voodoo. But she knew Wells was in trouble, bad trouble, at this moment.
“You’re just nervous.”
“And you’re just a bureaucrat whose idea of living on the edge is extra-spicy taco sauce. You don’t get what it’s like, having a gun in your hand, killing them before they kill you.” And I do, Exley didn’t say. I’ve only done it once, but once was enough.
“Jennifer—”
“So don’t patronize me, Ellis. Yeah I’m nervous. Until I hear from him, that’s not going to change. Now, can we do some work?”
Without another word, Shafer pulled up a chair. Together they looked at the list Exley had been trying to focus on all morning:
TOP SECRET/SCI/EPSILON
RED — ACCESS WORK GROUP — UPDATE 2B
Abellin, Paul
Balmour, Victoria
Baluchi, Hala
Bright, Jerry
The list consisted of everyone who knew the Drafter’s name or enough details about his identity to compromise him. Already it was fifty-three names long, and despite its length, it still wasn’t finished. Tyson had told Exley and Shafer to expect several more names before the updates stopped.
The length of the list testified to Langley’s screwed-up priorities, Exley thought. The agency jealously guarded the information the Drafter provided, while treating his name with a carelessness bordering on negligence. The data was valuable, the source worthless.
After just a couple of weeks working this case, Exley had gained new respect for Tyson’s job. Even under ideal circumstances, when the agency had been tipped to the exact identity of a spy in its ranks, counterespionage was tough. Just showing that a CIA employee had hidden income or had failed a polygraph wasn’t enough. To build ironclad cases, Tyson’s teams needed to catch moles in the act of turning over classified information to their handlers.
Meanwhile, as they investigated, they had to be sure they weren’t following false leads from foreign spy agencies. During the Cold War, the KGB had more than once sent Langley down dead-end paths. The sad truth was that without a tip, discovering who had betrayed the Drafter would be incredibly difficult, Exley thought. At this
