The Shadow Patrol

“Very good.”

They sketched out the details of the transfer. “You are sure these soldiers can do this?” Amadullah said.

“Yes.” In truth, Miller didn’t know how Stan would arrange the pickups on the other end. But that wasn’t his problem.

“All right. Give me your mobile number. My men will tell you when they’re ready.” And — again without the usual pleasantries — Amadullah swept out.

THEY HADN’T MET face-to-face since then. Miller arranged the pickups with Amadullah’s nephews. They’d run five drops so far, roughly one every six weeks. In all, the soldiers had picked up about a hundred kilograms of pure heroin, worth six hundred thousand dollars to Amadullah and his men, $8 million to the gangs back home that bought by the kilo and cut the stuff for sale, and $40 million on the street.

The math went like this: a ten-dollar bag, a single dose, held about twenty-five milligrams of pure heroin. So a gram translated into forty dime bags. One kilo equaled a thousand grams. And a hundred kilograms meant four million dime bags. Figure twenty million hours of empty dreams for the lost souls putting needles into their arms.

Not bad, considering the stuff came out of the ground for free. Poppy plants hardly even needed watering. As every Afghan farmer knew, they were tougher than food crops like wheat.

Stan treated Miller as a conduit to Amadullah, nothing more. Miller didn’t know the names of the soldiers who picked up the stuff, though he had figured out that they had to be part of the Stryker brigade in eastern Kandahar and Zabul province. He knew that Stan was moving it to Germany, but he wasn’t sure how. Still, Miller couldn’t complain. He was making more money than he ever had. Stan paid him twenty-five hundred dollars a kilo. A quarter million dollars so far, for a few days of work. He was wondering whether the call at Heathrow hadn’t been a lucky break after all.

Then Stan called with a new request.

“You need to see our friend. Now.”

“I’m in London.”

“I don’t care. Get over there. E-mail me after you set the meet and I’ll tell you what I need.”

Stan’s tone brooked no argument. Miller hung up and booked his flights to Quetta and reached out to the Thuwanis. Fortunately, the successful deals had bought him goodwill. By the time he reached Quetta, Amadullah agreed to a meeting. Miller e-mailed Stan with the news.

Stan’s response came a few hours later. After he read it, Miller wanted to disappear. Until now, he’d convinced himself that Stan might be making these deals as part of a larger CIA mission he couldn’t see. Maybe they were connected to a trade with the Thuwanis to get Mullah Omar.

But now Stan wanted Miller to tell Amadullah that a Special Forces squad was going to raid a farm in Kandahar province where two of Amadullah’s nephews were hiding. Miller was no lawyer, but he figured that giving the enemy advance warning about an attack spelled treason. He wrote back, one word: Can’t.

His phone rang ten minutes later. “What’s the problem?”

“People get executed for this kinda thing.”

“You’re only seeing a piece of this. Trust me. It’s all right.”

“What about the guys going in? It all right with them?”

“It is.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Too late for that.”

“I do this and I’m done.”

A sigh on the other end of the line. “Daood. This isn’t some movie where you do one last deal and then get out. Let me know when you’ve set the meet.” Click.

Miller wished he could see a way out. But he didn’t.

NOW HE SAT in the backseat of a Toyota Crown wedged between two stinking Pashtuns. He wore Hugo Boss cologne and a black cashmere sweater and two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar Diesel jeans. He was pissed off and in no mood to wear local threads. He wasn’t pretending to be one of them today. Anyway, they knew he wasn’t. Though they trusted him enough not to handcuff or blindfold him.

The road ran northeast out of Quetta toward Peshawar. After an hour, the Toyota pulled into a garage. The men led Miller down a spiral staircase and into a concrete tunnel so low that Miller had to duck his head. The tunnel opened into another garage, this one empty except for a Pakistani police van. One of the Thuwanis put on a police uniform. The others piled in the back with Miller.

The van’s cargo compartment had no windows, so Miller couldn’t see where they were headed. His companions talked of people he didn’t know, villages he’d never seen. They made no effort to include him in their conversation and he didn’t press.

Finally the van stopped. The back door opened. “Stay,” the men said to Miller. They stepped out. A minute later, to Miller’s surprise, Amadullah lumbered in. The door shut and the van rolled off.

“What is it you needed to tell me?”

Miller explained the raid. Amadullah rubbed his big brown hands down the sides of his face, like a primitive sculpture come to life. “When does this happen?” he asked when Miller finished.

“In the next few days. I can’t be sure exactly. But you should tell your nephews to leave. Or be ready to fight if they stay.”

Amadullah stroked his beard. Long, careful strokes, as if he were petting an ornery dog. The van drove slowly now, on rutted roads. “Why do you tell me this?”

“I do what I’m told. Stan said it would be valuable to you.”

“What does he want in return?”

“Nothing.”

“He tells me about an American operation and asks for nothing.”

Stan had once used the word cutout to describe Miller’s role in this operation. For the first time, Miller really understood what Stan meant. He was as disposable as construction paper that little kids used in art class. He wondered which parts of him would get cut out if Amadullah lost his temper.

“That’s what he says.”

“Does he think I’m a fool?”

“I do what I’m told,” Miller said again.

“Then I want to talk to him directly. Maybe he should come to Quetta. Tell him I promise he’ll be safe.” Amadullah smiled, but his eyes stayed cold.

“He said you would say that. He said he wants to talk to you, too. Give him a phone number and he’ll call you.”

Amadullah yelled, “Stop!” to the front of the van. He leaned over, latched a thick brown hand around Miller’s neck. “I give you my mobile and a missile blows up my house. Give me his phone number.”

“I don’t have it.” Amadullah’s rough fingers tightened around Miller’s neck. Miller smelled sweet tobacco and something else, a heavy perfume. “I swear to Allah.”

“If you’re smart you won’t mention Allah again. How do you reach him without his mobile?”

“We e-mail. When he wants to talk to me, he calls me. I’ve never called him.”

“Give me the e-mail address.”

Miller croaked out Stan’s address. He decided afterward that Stan had expected him to give up the e-mail all along — and had simply wanted to provoke Amadullah by telling Miller to ask for Amadullah’s phone number. Stan was a perverse dude. Without ever having met him, Miller was certain of that.

A FEW MINUTES LATER, the van stopped. Amadullah kicked Miller out. Literally. He put his big Pashtun sandals in Miller’s rear end and shoved him onto the road. Miller found himself outside a sweetshop in some lousy Paki village in Balochistan. He couldn’t even guess how far he was from Quetta, or how long he would need to get