The Secret Soldier

you can use them one thousand different ways. Make that one thousand and one. The trainer’s nickname, inevitably, had been “one thousand and one.”

Finally, Wells pulled off his sneakers and replaced them with steeltipped boots Gaffan had picked up in Beirut. Close-quarters fighting was called hand-to-hand, but aside from a knife, a solid pair of boots was the most important weapon within three feet. He walked west along the road, his boots crunching gravel.

Gaffan was coming in from the south side of the farm, two miles away. The satellite maps revealed a gravel road that ended in a dry streambed. Gaffan should be able to bring the Jeep in most of the way.

Their cell phones were no good here, and they didn’t have sat phones. Gaffan did have a flare gun in the Jeep, and they’d agreed he would fire it if he hit trouble. But if Gaffan ran into Hezbollah, he’d have bigger worries than warning Wells.

If this had been an agency-sponsored op, they would have had real communications gear. Bulletproof vests. Gas grenades. Most important, a ride out. Wells had e-mailed Shafer that they were going in and received a simple “Okay” in response. Especially after what had happened a year before, Shafer knew better than to make promises he couldn’t keep.

Even so, part of Wells enjoyed running this way, simple and low-tech. American soldiers hated roadside bombs, called them cowardly because they didn’t offer a target for return fire. But whenever possible, the United States used higher-tech versions of the same tactic, killing its enemies at a distance with helicopter gunships and drone-fired missiles. Rightly so. War wasn’t meant to be fair. But Wells knew that a whites-of-the-eyes fight like this offered a psychic release that killing at a distance did not. One of us is going to die. Better you than me.

The road narrowed into the ravine, the gate just ahead. Wells stopped, listened to the night. He heard only the faint grinding of a truck on the central valley road behind him. The gate was made of heavy metal bars topped by razor wire and was kept shut with a steel padlock and chain. It had been placed at the narrowest point in the ravine and stretched to the steep slopes on either side. It had no signs warning against trespassing. It didn’t need them. It was ominous enough.

Wells flipped on his flashlight, shined the beam low through the bars. He saw nothing metallic, no trip wires or mines, just a shiny piece of plastic. Wells looked hard at it before it resolved into a water bottle. Trash. He stepped onto the bottom bar of the gate and pulled his clippers. He trimmed at the razor wire as carefully as an apprentice at a fancy hair salon. After the first couple cuts, the tension in the wire relaxed. Wells pulled on the ends of the wire gently with one gloved hand and took bigger cuts with the other.

Sixty seconds later, he was through. He looked at his handiwork. In daylight the hole in the wire would be obvious, but if they were still here in daylight, they’d have bigger problems. He tucked away his flashlight and pulled his pistol and walked along the road as it curved left. According to the overheads, the barracks was a mile down. The road here was hardpack dirt and stone, and Wells moved quickly. It was 1:49 a.m. He’d split from Gaffan twenty-four minutes before.

Then he heard the engine.

IT WASN’T A GENERATOR. It was quieter, smoother. A car or truck. Wells trotted south toward the barracks, still invisible. The top of the farmhouse appeared over the ridge to his right, the west. He heard a man on the far side of the ridge walking up to the farmhouse. Why weren’t they sleeping? Had they spotted him? Or Gaffan?

To his left, the ravine was nearly a cliff, too steep to climb. To his right, the slope was flatter and treeless. No place to hide there, either. Wells moved faster. He needed to close quickly. The road angled again. Finally Wells saw the barracks, its lights flickering. He was maybe three hundred yards away. Two black Suburbans were parked nose to tail twenty yards from the building. A third car, a beige Toyota sedan, was farther back. Three men stood around the front Suburban. They had black hair and light brown skin. Probably Saudi. The tallest one wore a long brown gown and looked to be in charge. The other two were dressed Western-style, in jeans and long-sleeved shirts. The tall man pointed toward the farmhouse, then back at the barracks. The other two nodded. Wells was too far away to hear what they were saying.

Wells unslung the AK, threw himself down, crawled ahead. A few scrubby bushes lay between him and the barracks, a few rocks. Not enough. Before he became a spy, Wells had been a soldier. A Ranger. Cover means life, he’d learned. But the land around him was miserly with cover. If he moved too fast, they’d spot him. If he didn’t move at all, they’d still spot him eventually. Two hundred yards was theoretically close enough to use the AK, but in reality he had about as much chance of hitting a home run at Fenway.

To say he was in a tactical hole would be an understatement.

The two jihadis in Western dress disappeared, leaving the tall one. He popped the back of the Suburban, pulled out a plastic bottle, took a long drink. Wells used the distraction to pop up and scramble eighty yards closer. He ducked behind a low rock and scraped his left leg hard as he went down, tearing open his sweats, bruising his knee and calf. Getting too old for this. But that was a problem for tomorrow.

He steadied his breath, sighted through the AK’s hashes. This close, he guessed he had a fifty-fifty shot to take out the tall guy. Then what? The rest would scatter and get under cover. He had to get closer. Another forty yards, at least. He tucked the rifle behind the rock and got as low as he could and waited.

Four men walked out of the barracks and hoisted a duffel bag into the back of the Suburban. Wells heard the clanking of metal as the edge of the bag caught the sill of the truck. Wells wondered why they were moving now. Over the car’s engine, Wells caught a snippet of Arabic.

“He wants us there tomorrow night. twelve hundred kilometers…” Twelve hundred kilometers. Wells would map possible routes in the morning. Assuming he got through tonight. The men turned away, and Wells lost the conversation. If the Suburban came this way, he would have to open up. They would see him as they passed. He was facing at least seven guys, plus one or more up at the house. And Gaffan was still missing in action.

A walkie-talkie hissed. The tall man pulled an old-school handheld radio from his pocket, listened. “Are you sure? All right. Stay up there, then, and watch.” He turned to the man beside him, squareshouldered and stubby. If Wells had to tag them using American army ranks, he’d make the tall one a lieutenant and the short one an E-6, a staff sergeant.

“Bandar says someone is coming toward us.” He pointed south. “That way. He thinks the man has a rifle. You three go and see about it. Remember, don’t shoot him unless you’re sure. We don’t need trouble with the al- Naqbis.”

“Why would one of them come here at this hour?”

“I don’t know, but go.”

The overheads hadn’t shown any sentry posts, one reason that Wells had believed they’d be able to pull this off. It was plain bad luck that the jihadis were moving out tonight, more bad luck that one had gone to the house and seen Gaffan. Not one-in-a-thousand bad luck. These things happened. Maybe one in ten. But bad luck nonetheless. On a mission like this, outnumbered and outgunned, bad luck was lethal. They needed absolute surprise. Instead they were about to start a firefight against a larger force on its home territory.

In happier news, they’d found the right camp for sure. No Boy Scouts here tonight.

THE JIHADIS HAD THEIR backs to him. They were looking at the hill to the south, where the danger seemed to be. Wells dropped the firing selector on the AK to semiauto. He popped up and ran. Sixty yards from the Suburban, he ducked behind a beach ball-sized boulder, the last decent cover between him and the barracks. He could do real damage with the AK from this range. He might even have a chance with the pistol.

At first the barracks blocked Wells from seeing the three jihadis who were going after Gaffan. A few seconds later, he spotted them jogging up the rise behind the barracks in a V formation about ten feet wide. The V spelled trouble. Amateurs would have moved in a row. Trained soldiers created space.

Wells decided he had only one play. He tugged the silenced pistol from his belt, dropped the safety. He breathed deep, sighted at the center of the lieutenant’s back. No head shots. He couldn’t afford to miss. He waited for the jihadis who were going after Gaffan to top the ridge. He counted to three. He squeezed the trigger.

The silencer wasn’t as good as the ones the agency used, but it was good enough. The pistol burped. A hundred seventy-five feet away, a neat hole appeared in the tall man’s gown, halfway up his back, left of the spine.