The Faithful Spy

luxury, taken off an unlucky Russian major in Chechnya — and scanned the valley below. Hundreds of trucks had massed. Maybe three thousand soldiers in all, Afghan and Arab. Here to defend Kabul from the infidels who wanted to let women show their faces in public. If the Talibs broke through the Northern Alliance’s front line, they might be able to retake much of what they had lost. Wells’s unit had been sent to look for signs that the Alliance had learned of the attack. So far, he saw no defensive preparations.

Wells handed Ahmed the binoculars. “It is true, then?”

“Nam. We attack tonight.”

“Can we win?”

A month ago Ahmed’s question would have been unthinkable. The American bombing had hurt the confidence of the Taliban more than Wells had realized.

“Of course,” he said. “Inshallah.” In truth, Wells admired the plan’s boldness. The Taliban would take the fight to the enemy rather than waiting to die in their bunkers. But the massed Talib soldiers would be a ripe target for the jets overhead. To succeed, the Taliban troops would need to punch through the Northern Alliance front lines quickly. Then Talib and Alliance soldiers would be mixed in close combat. The Americans would be unable to bomb without destroying their allies as well as their enemies.

The Taliban troops below broke into company-sized groups, readying themselves to move forward.

They never had the chance.

The bombs began falling almost as soon as the last truck of soldiers reached the front line. Blasts tore through the night, exploding white and red on the plain below Wells like upside-down fireworks. Sharp cracks and long heavy thumps came randomly, three or four in quick succession followed by long pauses. Their force shook the huts where Wells and his men stood, and one blast lit the night with a huge red fireball.

“Must have been an ammunition truck,” Wells said, half to himself, half to Ahmed.

THE BARRAGE SEEMED to last for hours, but when it ended and Wells checked his watch he found that only forty minutes had passed. He raised his binoculars to examine the plain below. Fires licked the wrecked bodies of pickups and five-ton trucks. Men lay scattered across the hard ground. The Americans had been waiting all along, and the Talibs had driven into the trap. Which meant that a Special Forces unit was hidden nearby, directing the bombardment. Just as Wells had hoped.

His men were silent now, shocked by what they had seen. Below, the Talibs were trying to regroup, but now the Northern Alliance had opened up with machine guns and mortars. And another round of bombing was surely coming. Without surprise, the Taliban had no chance.

Wells lowered the binoculars. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Back?” Ahmed said.

Wells shook his head and pointed north, over the folds of the ridge. “Americans are up there aiming the bombs.” Ahmed looked surprised but said nothing. Wells had been right before, and in any case as commander he could do what he liked.

They saddled up and rode north in the darkness. Unlike the spectacular mountains of northern Afghanistan, the Shamali ridge was stunted and uneven, low hills of crumbling stone and dirt. They traveled in single file at a steady trot, led by Hamid, their best horseman. Beneath them the bombs fell again. A few headlights were already moving south toward Kabul, the Taliban’s attack fading before it even began.

“Slow,” Wells said, as his squad neared the crest of a hill north of their encampment. He was sure the American unit had picked a position similar to the one he had chosen. Wells and his men came over the hill and stopped. Ahead, the ground dipped, then rose again. Wells looked through his binoculars. There they were, a half dozen men standing beside a cluster of mud huts, peering down at the Taliban front lines. They could be villagers, roused by the bombing…but they weren’t. They were American. The proof was in the pickup half-hidden behind a hut.

The truck meant that the SF guys would have a SAW — a light machine gun — or maybe a.50-caliber, a bigger weapon than anything his men carried. But Wells and his squad would have surprise on their side. Wells waved his men forward, warning them to be quiet. They were excited now, excited at the chance to attack Americans. And Wells, though he hated to admit it, was excited too.

U.S.S. Starker, Atlantic Ocean

The ride out had been smooth, but Jennifer Exley felt her stomach clench as the helicopter landed and she stepped onto the gray metal deck of the Starker, fifty miles east of Norfolk, Virginia. In international waters, of course, so its precious cargo would remain outside the jurisdiction of American courts.

An old navy amphibious assault ship, the Starker was now a brig, a floating jail. Today the vessel held just one prisoner, Tim Keifer, a.k.a. Mohammed Faisal, a twenty-two-year-old American who’d been captured fighting for the Taliban near Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan. Fighting for the Taliban against the United States. Exley was still trying to get her mind around that one.

The capture of John Walker Lindh, the other American Taliban, had been broadcast worldwide. But Keifer’s detention had stayed quiet. President Bush had signed an order declaring Keifer an “enemy combatant” and suspending his rights, including his access to American courts. Now Keifer was literally floating in a steel limbo, a place where U.S. laws did not apply. Exley wasn’t sure she liked that decision, but maybe this wasn’t the time to worry about little things like the Bill of Rights. The ship twisted beneath her, and she yelped as she lost her footing on the slick metal deck. Her guide, a friendly young ensign, reached out a hand and steadied her.

“You okay, Ms. Exley?”

“Fine.”

He led her off the deck and down a brightly lit hallway. “Mohammed’s in the hospital,” the sailor said. “We try to be careful, but he keeps having accidents. Banging his head on doors, sh—” He remembered he was talking to a woman and caught himself, she saw. “Stuff like that.”

How predictable, Exley thought. As long as they didn’t kill him.

“I suppose the crew would rather just throw him overboard?”

“We’d draw straws for the chance,” he said brightly. “Here we are.”

She showed her CIA identification and special navy pass to the two sailors posted outside Keifer’s room. They eyed both carefully, then saluted her. The ensign pulled a thick metal key from his pocket and slid it into the heavy lock on the door. He pushed the door open slowly, and she stepped into the windowless room.

“Take as much time as you like, ma’am,” the ensign said, closing the door behind her. “Mohammed’s not going anywhere.”

Keifer lay on a narrow hospital cot, hands and legs shackled to the side of the frame, an intravenous drip flowing into his arm. His beard had been shaved roughly and his hair cropped close. A yellow bruise ringed his left eye. He was skinny and small and looked like a philosophy grad student or something equally useless. He wasn’t much of a flight risk, but just to be sure, a camera in the corner was trained on the bed, and two more sailors stood by the door. Either could have tossed Keifer into the Atlantic with one hand. For one tiny moment Exley felt sorry for him. Then she didn’t.

UNDER NORMAL CIRCUMSTANCES, Exley wouldn’t have spoken to Keifer. She was a handler, not an interrogator, and the CIA and DIA — the Defense Intelligence Agency, Rumsfeld’s boys — had grilled Keifer for weeks. But after reading the transcripts of Keifer’s interrogations, Exley and Ellis Shafer, her boss, the section head for the Near East, decided she should talk to Keifer herself.

Exley decided to be his mother. She was old enough, and he probably hadn’t seen a woman in a while. She walked to the bed and put her hand on his shoulder. His drugged eyes blinked open. He shrank back, his shoulders hunching, then relaxed a little as she smiled at him.

“Tim. I’m Jen Exley.”

He blinked and said nothing.

“You feeling okay?”

“What does it look like?”

Unbelievable. This dumb kid still wanted to play tough. All hundred and forty pounds of him. Fortunately, the sodium pentothal and morphine running through his veins had softened him a little. Amnesty International might have objected, but they didn’t get a vote. Exley tried to arrange her face in sympathy rather than the contempt she felt. “Can I sit down?”