The Shadow Patrol

desk in the last decade but hadn’t been a star. The stars had spent their time chasing bin Laden and al-Zawahiri. They wouldn’t have been interested in Daood. Also, he needed somebody gossipy. But not so gossipy that he’d whisper to Kabul that Shafer was poking after an occasional. And he needed somebody who liked him enough to be honest.

Shafer had to get to the Rs before he found someone who might fit. Mark Ryker had retired five years before. If Shafer recalled correctly, he lived somewhere in southwestern Virginia. A lot of agency guys wound up in that area, far enough from Washington to avoid the dangers they’d spent their lives fighting, close enough to feel like they were still part of the world.

Shafer punched in Ryker’s number. To his mild surprise, the phone was picked up after one ring. “This is Mark.”

“Mark. It’s Ellis Shafer.” He heard a sitcom’s canned laughter in the background.

“Ellis. Ellis Shafer.”

He wasn’t quite slurring his words, but his tone was as bright and artificial as the dye for a kid’s birthday cake. Pharmaceutical enhancement for sure. “I’d like to talk to you about something.” Shafer figured he’d need to draw out Ryker. He was wrong.

“Mr. Ellis Shafer wants to talk to me? About something. Must be important. I assume this is a face-to-face business, tete-a-tete, too superclassified for an open line?”

“You are correct.”

“And urgent?”

“Life-and-death.” Shafer vamping now, getting into the spirit.

“Life and death. Death and life. I know about those. All right. Tell you what. Shoot down 81 tonight, and I’ll meet you in Lexington. You know where that is?”

“I can find it.”

“I suppose you can. There’s an Applebee’s there, and I promise you nobody’ll bother us. Say, eight.”

“Eatin’ good in the neighborhood.”

“Are you too fancy for Applebee’s, Ellis?” Pause. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question. I want an answer.”

“No. Sorry.”

“See you at eight then.”

SHAFER CALLED HIS WIFE and told her he probably wouldn’t be home that night. She didn’t ask why, or where he’d be. One of the virtues of being married as long as he had. He got his usual late start and had to fight through the suburban D.C. traffic, but 81 was as beautiful and open as ever, running southwest through the lush Virginia hills. He pulled into the parking lot at 8:05.

The Applebee’s was bright and three-quarters empty and the server was a purty little bleached-blond thing who greeted him too eagerly. “Table for one, sir?” Shafer ignored her and found Ryker sitting alone in a booth. He was drinking a bright green concoction that Shafer would swear was an appletini. Ryker didn’t look good. He was skinny and weirdly tan and his shirt hung loose. Shafer didn’t get it. He hadn’t known Ryker well at Langley, but he remembered the guy as just another Central Asia desk officer. During the 1990s, Pakistan and Afghanistan hadn’t been glamorous posts. The action was elsewhere.

“Mark. Good to see you. It’s been too long.”

“You, too.”

“How’s Lois?” Shafer kept the names of wives in his Rolodex, an old trick.

Ryker laughed low and ugly. Everything about him made sense now. Shafer had better update his index cards. People kept dying. Shafer wondered how he’d do as a widower. Probably no better than Ryker. Maybe worse.

“When?”

“Three months ago.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Why would you? It’s not like we were friends.”

“You want to tell me about it?”

“No. Instead let me tell you why I agreed to see you, knowing that you’re going to ask me to give up something classified, something I shouldn’t tell you, or why else would you have driven all the way out here on four hours’ notice?”

“Sure.”

“Because who cares?”

Maybe this isn’t the time, Shafer almost said. But he kept his mouth shut. He needed to know about Daood. Ryker was his best bet. So he flagged a waitress and ordered a Bud Light and popcorn chicken and told Ryker he was looking for a guy who might be an occasional and might have been running drugs, too.

“A hundred guys fit that profile,” Ryker said. “More. You want to tell me why you need this one?”

“No.”

“That’s all you have? You have a name?”

“A first name. Daood. Though I’m not sure how to spell it.”

Ryker sucked down his appletini and licked his lips. “I am. D-A-O-O-D. Last name Maktani. Daood Maktani. Though he prefers to call himself David Miller.” Just that quick, something woke up in Ryker’s face. For the first time all night, he looked to Shafer like a case officer instead of a man waiting for the clock to run out. “Half the desk knew his name. No OPSEC on an asshat like him. One of those guys. Running drugs out of Pakistan the whole damn time. Didn’t even try to hide it, really. The DEA bitched at us for using him, but they used him, too. He was a smart guy and he gave us just enough that we kept him around, but nobody liked him.”

“Tell me about it.”

So Ryker did.

15

KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, AFGHANISTAN

The Drone Home, aka the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Center, occupied a couple acres on the south side of the Kandahar runway. A high-security fence backed with green netting hid hangars and concrete workshops from prying eyes. Inside, Air Force mechanics and CIA engineers and General Dynamics contractors worked on the drones so crucial to the Afghan war. The Predators and Reapers were well-known. Less so the agency’s newest baby, the “Beast of Kandahar.”

The Beast was a miniature single-wing plane that looked like a hobbyist’s model of a B-2 stealth bomber. It didn’t carry weapons. It was designed solely for surveillance, the stealthiest plane ever built. It was invisible to radar or the naked eye from more than a couple hundred yards away. It carried ground-penetrating radar and color cameras sensitive enough to distinguish eye color from a thousand feet up. It had spent hundreds of hours in the air above Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad. Neither bin Laden nor the Pakistani military had ever guessed at its presence.

Now the agency was trying to add microphones to the Beast. Picking up voices from an aircraft circling hundreds or thousands of feet in the air was a monumental technical challenge. But the payoff would be just as big. The CIA would hear the other side’s plans in real time. And it would make fewer targeting errors, a euphemism for civilian deaths.

Francesca, who was waiting for his buddy Stan in the parking lot outside the Drone Home, knew all about the Beast. He and Alders did most of their work in the border areas where the drones were busiest. To reduce the chance that he’d be mistaken for a Talib, Francesca carried a transponder. When on, it emitted an electronic signature identifying him as American. He’d been briefed on what to do if the transponder failed. The advice basically boiled down to, Get out of the hot zone as quickly as you can, because you don’t want to be on the incoming end of a Hellfire.

The briefings had come from an Air Force colonel. Francesca had never met any of the guys who actually