The Shadow Patrol

“What about the DEA?”

“They didn’t always share. Didn’t view us as such a reliable partner. Thought we had different priorities.” Put another way, the CIA sometimes traded information with the same cartels the DEA was trying to break.

“So then you came here.”

“Yep. It’s similar to what I was doing back home. Only the politics are even more complicated. Understand, if we wanted, we could kill every poppy plant in Kandahar and Helmand. There’s no technical obstacle to spraying. This isn’t Colombia. No jungle canopy. But if we did that, two million Pashtuns would go to war with us.”

“Without opium, there’s no economy down there.”

“Correct. So the DEA mainly tries to interdict a couple of levels past local. It lets the farmers sell the poppies and get paid. But even then, it’s tricky. The Afghan police move a lot of heroin and opium. We’re not touching them. Then some of the tribes in the north, the friendly ones, are in the business, too. And it might be tricky if Congressman X starts complaining we’re in bed with known traffickers.”

“But what we don’t know—”

“Correct. When I came here, my predecessor told me my job was, quote, to give policymakers the overall trends in drug trafficking. Not to play detective. End quote. I suspect that on the second floor they may get intercepts that I don’t. Ones with names like Karzai in them. But I don’t ask. I keep my head down and do what I’m told. I’m just a little church mouse, even if I do keep a SIG Sauer in my nightstand back home.”

“You have a SIG in your nightstand?”

“A nice little nine. Fits right in my palm. Better safe than sorry. I used to lock it in the closet so I wouldn’t be tempted to shoot my philandering husband, but I live alone now.” Wells’s face must have revealed his disbelief. “I may look like an overage hippie who belongs in the Haight, but as far as I’m concerned the Second Amendment’s the one that pays for all the others. Out of my cold dead hands, mister.”

She was smiling, but she wasn’t joking. Wells liked her. And he thought that she’d give him straight answers if she had them.

“You’ll be glad to get home to your SIG.”

“Got that right.”

“Ever seen any intercepts about anyone from the agency buying dope from the Talibs?”

“No.”

“What about other coalition forces, the military or someone else?”

For the first time she hesitated. “Not really.”

Wells folded his hands together and waited.

“It’s like this. I don’t have to tell you the Pashtuns aren’t just one tribe. There’re really dozens of subgroups, every one controlling a different province or region or village. One that we watch is called the Thuwanis. They also move a lot of dope. Nasty bunch.”

SUDDENLY WELLS was in Kowt-e ’Ashrow, west of Kabul. The years were blurry, but he thought it was 2000. October, maybe. Somewhere far away, Bill Clinton was president. But in the Afghan hills, summer was over and winter was closer than it seemed. And a Talib named Alaa Thuwani had ordered two Shia prisoners to run through a minefield where rotting goat carcasses lay like the devil’s own mascots.

Thuwani told the Shia they had a choice. They could run through the field, which stretched about two hundred meters. Or he could shoot them in the back of the head. He promised that if they got through he’d set them free, let them go back to their homes in the north. They were small men, Wells remembered. One had a little belly that poked out of his gown. They didn’t argue.

Wells wasn’t with the Thuwanis. He’d been riding in a convoy of Talib guerrillas. When they heard about the prisoners, the fighters wanted to stop and see the show. The five-tons pulled off the road and everybody jumped off.

“IT WAS PRACTICALLY a party,” Wells said now, at the Ariana. “We just needed fireworks and a band.”

“What was?”

“I TELL YOU APOSTATES, go to Allah and beg for His mercy!” Thuwani fired his AK into the air. The Shia ran. The one with the potbelly got fifty yards before the ground exploded around him, clumps of dirt spraying high in the air. When the dust settled, he lay on the ground, moaning and begging. Thuwani shot a couple of rounds in the air from sheer joy. Then he and the other Talibs opened up with their AKs.

The other Shia didn’t zigzag or look down or back. He just ran straight through like he expected to levitate over the mines. And somehow he did. He crossed onto the path at the far edge of the field. He dropped to his knees and touched his head to the earth and shouted, “Hamdulillah!” Thanks be to God. Thuwani said something low and dark to the men around him. They laughed.

“Now come back!” Thuwani yelled. “Then I promise you’ll really be free.”

The Shia stood and looked across the field. “Back!” Thuwani yelled. Like the Shia was a misbehaving dog. The Shia ran hopelessly away toward a cluster of mud homes. Thuwani and his friends lowered their AKs and sprayed long bursts, one-handed on full auto. They shot so badly that for a few seconds Wells thought the guy might get away. But then one stepped back and took careful aim.

“THE THUWANIS,” Wells said. “Nasty. The chief’s a guy named Alaa.”

Frey looked puzzled at his knowledge, but she said only, “Alaa died a few years ago. Replaced by a guy named Amadullah. Cousin or half brother, I’m not sure. Anyway, we’ve been up and down on them.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we have a few phone numbers for them, and Amadullah’s canny. But some of the younger guys aren’t too smart. So we get a ping from them every so often. But I don’t want to overstate their importance, tell you their names come up a ton.”

“But they are Talibs. They’re connected to the central leadership.”

“Yes. And they move enough weight to be worth watching. Anyway, a couple months ago a wiretap transcript popped up with one of their old phones. A Pak cell one of Amadullah’s nephews uses. He was calling an Afghan cell and he told the guy on the other end, ‘Tell your men to have twenty packages at the house by the river in the red field. The infidels will pick them up. Tomorrow afternoon. The usual procedure.’ Now, a package usually means a kilo, so that would imply twenty kilos.”

“That sounds like a lot.”

“It is. As for a river in the red field, that could be anywhere. They use simple codes for locations. River could mean mosque, red field could mean a specific village. Nothing complicated about it, we just don’t know what it means.”

“And what did the guy on the other side say?”

“Just, ‘The same Americans.’ The first guy said, ‘I think so, yes.’ I wondered if the translation was wrong, but translation from the NSA is pretty good, and anyway, American is an obvious word. Then they said good-bye and hung up. Nothing else. It seemed clear they’d done this before.”

“He said Americans.”

“That’s right.”

“And this was when?”

Frey pulled up a screen on her computer, paged through the wiretap database. “Ten weeks ago today. After I got it, I cross-checked to see if the number on the other end had ever come up. But it hadn’t. It was an AWCC phone, a burner.”

“AWCC?”

“Afghan Wireless. Almost all their phones are cash prepaid. Not too many credit cards here. So we had no idea who was on the other end. And the Paki cell never popped up again either.”

“And no one ever found Amadullah’s nephew.”

“No. Truth is I can’t even be sure he was the one making the call. Anyway, I’d never heard any reference like that before. I told my boss — that’s Julianna Craig, she’s in charge of all analysis for the station. She agreed it was interesting, told me to chase it.”

“So there was no interference.”