The Shadow Patrol

Riyadh to work. And you know what happened? The man who brought him over said he was stealing. So he locked him in a cage. For a month. Like he was a dog. No court, no sharia. Just locked him and beat him. He still doesn’t walk right. I’ll put you in a cage, see if you like it. ‘My brother.’ Call me ‘my brother’ again and Allah will have you.”

“Najibullah,” the man in front said. “Enough.”

“It’s true,” Najibullah said sullenly.

THEY WALKED. The hills were quiet, no evidence of humans or any living creatures. Not a squirrel or a sparrow. Wells wanted to make his move soon. He didn’t know how many men would be waiting at the camp. He kept his pace slow, widening the gap with the two jihadis ahead. “Faster,” Najibullah said, jabbing at him.

Ten minutes later, the hills around them narrowed into the beginnings of a canyon. The trail angled right, along a pile of scree, loose rocks and boulders that had slid down. Wells pretended to stumble, kicking rocks back toward Najibullah. The jihadi slipped, sending a minor avalanche down the hill.

“You oaf—”

Wells flexed his shoulders and biceps, putting at the knot, trying to split the ragged twine. The knot tensed and stretched and then it tore. His hands came free. He spun backward. Behind him, Najibullah was lifting his AK.

But before he could get the rifle into position, Wells stepped toward him. Wells wrapped his right arm around Najibullah’s back and pulled him close so the AK was trapped between them. Then Wells reached up with his right hand and grabbed Najibullah’s hair and pulled his head back. Before Najibullah could even open his mouth to scream, Wells raised his left forearm and forced it under Najibullah’s chin and drove his head up and back and up and back—

And Najibullah’s neck snapped as sharp and sudden as a branch breaking. The hate and the anger and everything else left Najibullah’s eyes. He fell away from Wells, dead, and his rifle came free. Wells grabbed it before it hit the ground and pulled it up and dropped the safety. All this in a single breath. As a linebacker in college, Wells had never been the biggest or the strongest player on the field, but he’d always had the quickest first step.

The tall jihadi behind Najibullah fumbled for his rifle. He looked at Wells, his eyes pleading for mercy. “La,” he said. No. Wells shot him, three in the chest, knowing that he would have to deal with the two in front. Knowing that he couldn’t risk leaving an armed man behind him, even one who wanted to surrender. The jihadi tore at his chest and grunted and pitched backward. Wells forgot him and turned and looked up the hill.

The two men ahead were grabbing for their pistols. They were maybe sixty feet up the trail, four car lengths, only a few scrubby trees and bushes between them and Wells. Wells went to a knee as the jihadi farthest away fired three rounds high and wild. The shots echoed off the hills, and behind Wells, a branch broke. Wells sighted and steadied the AK, putting the stock against his shoulder. Make haste, not hurry. He squeezed the trigger three times. He was a good shot, not great, but he didn’t need to be, not with a long gun at this range. Two neat holes tore into the jihadi’s gown and he fell backward and didn’t move.

The fourth jihadi fired twice. He had a clean shot, but he was nervous and rushed it, and sixty feet was much more difficult for a pistol than a rifle. The rounds clicked against a rock a few yards to Wells’s right. Wells put the AK on him. The jihadi turned and fled up the hill, shooting wildly across his body as he ran, all his discipline gone. Wells squeezed the trigger twice. The jihadi yelped and spun down, hit in the right shoulder. He pushed himself up and stumbled to his feet. Wells fired again, catching him in the gut this time. The man screamed and dropped his gun and pressed his hands over his stomach. He slipped to his knees. The echoes of the scream faded into a hopeless grunt, the sound of a hungry baby with no tears left to cry.

Wells ran up the hill. “Leave the gun,” he said. The jihadi didn’t answer. The front of his gown was black with blood. Wells put a hand over the man’s and pushed down. The blood kept coming, covering Wells’s palm, spurting through his fingers. The shot had torn open the jihadi’s intestines. Surgery might save his life, but they were a half day from even the most basic hospital. “You’ll be all right,” Wells said in Pashtun.

The man tilted his head, looked at Wells. I know you’re lying, and you do too, his eyes said. He said something and Wells leaned close to hear him. “Allah forgive me for screaming. But it hurts.”

Wells almost had to admire the insanity of these Pashtuns. This man would be dead within the hour. Yet his biggest fear was that Wells would think he was weak for showing pain. “Where can I find the Thuwanis?”

The man’s head drooped. You waste my last minutes with this? his eyes said. “They pray at a mosque east of town. Near the turnoff for the mines.” He licked his lips. “I’m thirsty.”

“Why do you hate them? Why do you fight with them?” Even as he asked, Wells realized the answer didn’t matter. Men here fought for a thousand reasons. Over slights to honor, real and imagined. To prove their strength and amuse themselves. Because they’d always fought and always would.

“I don’t hate them. They’re not the ones who killed me,” the man said. “Now finish it. Before I dishonor myself.”

Wells heard shouts, distant but closing. The firefight must have echoed a long way in these hills. “Your men are coming.”

“Finish it. Don’t pretend you can’t.”

“La ilaha illa Allah. Muhammad rasulu Allah,” Wells said. The words were the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, the first pillar of Islam. There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the Messenger of God. Pious Muslims hoped that the shahada would be the last words they heard.

“Allahu akbar,” the man said. “La ilaha illa Allah. Muhammad rasulu Allah.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and crossed his hands over his chest. Wells put three shots into him and he twitched and stilled. Then Wells reached into the front pocket of the man’s shalwar and plucked out the keys to the Toyota and a cell phone and a Pakistani identification card smeared with blood. He jogged back down the hill to Najibullah’s body. The corpse’s head was twisted at a grotesque angle, jaw loose, tongue flopped out. It seemed to be leering at Wells. “You started it,” Wells said. He grabbed Jalal Haq’s passport and money.

He knelt beside the fourth Talib, the thin one, the one who hadn’t wanted any part of this mess. The man lay facedown on the scree. A fist-size hole punctured his back, and bright red arterial blood sopped through his gown. AK rounds were supersonic and big. At close range, they tore through guys. The man’s rifle was trapped under his body. Wells flipped the corpse over and closed its eyes. Then he ran down the hill, his bloody gown flapping.

The pickup was parked in a clearing alongside two others. Wells put the AK on single-shot and blew out the tires of the other two. He switched to semiauto and fired a half dozen shots into their engine compartments. His pursuers would have a tough time following him.

He heard distant shouts and screams. They must have found the bodies. Wells started the pickup and wheeled it around and bounced down a narrow but serviceable track. The dead man’s phone showed no service. Which meant that the men behind him couldn’t call anyone to come up the hill and block him. Probably. Maybe.

The track wound east, into the rising sun. Wells raised a hand to shield his eyes and found it sticky with blood. In the bright white glare, he saw the fourth jihadi, the one who’d tried to surrender. He hadn’t wanted to kill these men. They’d left him no choice. He wondered whether his son would call what he had done self-defense.

Probably not.

The track had no intersections or gates. It dead-ended at the main highway, which was empty. Muslim Bagh lay to the left, a few miles down. Wells wanted more than anything to turn right, southwest toward Quetta. He could ditch the pickup there, catch a bus to Islamabad. He would be in the United States in forty-eight hours. He would wash his hands clean and lie in bed with Anne.

He turned left. To Muslim Bagh.

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