The Shadow Patrol

Brown. “The colonel’s just going to have to pretend he didn’t hear that.”

A cheer roared through the crowd. The secret weapon. Shafer had packed four cases of beer in bubble wrap and overnighted it to Wells at Kandahar.

Brown took the microphone back. “I didn’t hear a thing,” he said. “I can tell you one thing, John. Nobody’s ever given a speech like that to this brigade before. Let’s give Mr. Wells a big round of applause.” And they did.

WHEN WELLS GOT BACK to his barracks, a dozen guys were waiting. “Here’s what we’ll do,” he said. “I’ve got two cases of Bud and two of Bud Light for those of you watching your girlish figures. There’s some ice cream and Cokes, too, from the DFAC. I’m just going to bring them out for everyone to share. I ask you to keep the beers to one per person, ’cause there’re so many folks who’d like one.”

The beer didn’t last long, but somebody set up an iPod and a pair of speakers. Guys, and a few women, hung around and chatted and pretended they were anywhere but FOB Jackson. Nobody mentioned what Wells had said near the end of the speech. After about ninety minutes, the crowd thinned. As a morale raiser, the speech had worked pretty well. As a backdoor approach to an informant, it was looking like a bust. Wells would have to get potential targets from Shafer and go at them directly.

Then a guy Wells hadn’t seen before walked up. He was black and stocky. The sun had disappeared behind thick clouds, but he wore a floppy hat low on his head. He had the triple chevrons of a sergeant. His name tag read “Young.”

“Sergeant. I’m afraid we’re all out of beer.”

The guy leaned in. “I was thinking about what you said back during your speech.” The words slid out the side of his mouth, a low mumble. “About bad guys. Almost sounded like you had something in mind. Like a particular situation.”

“That’s a possibility.”

“I’d like to talk to you in private, Mr. Wells.”

20

LANGLEY

For two days, Tyler Weston and Nicholas Rodriguez had stared at Ellis Shafer. Their headshots were pinned to a corkboard in his office. Shafer had tried to amuse himself by drawing a handlebar mustache on Rodriguez and giving Weston a thought bubble that read “I love the smell of poppies in the morning.” Still, their two-dimensional lips smirked at him.

Assuming Coleman Young was telling Wells the truth, Rodriguez and Weston were drug traffickers and killers. Wells believed Young. And if Wells believed him, then so did Shafer.

But he couldn’t find the link. Weston and Rodriguez weren’t connected with anyone at the CIA, in the United States or Afghanistan. According to their personnel records, neither man had been to Kabul on this tour. Their platoon was based hundreds of miles from the Afghan capital.

Shafer did notice that Weston’s platoon had split from the rest of Bravo Company early in its tour. In theory, it provided extra protection for supply convoys on Highway 1. In reality, the trucks ran once or twice a week. On other days, the platoon was given scut jobs like guarding detainees. Basically, the unit operated on its own. As long as Weston’s guys did the work no one else wanted, his commanders wouldn’t bother him. Even Fowler’s death — which should have raised red flags because of Weston’s decision to send just seven men to investigate a potential enemy position — rated only a three-page after-action memo. Weston and Rodriguez couldn’t have asked for a better setup.

The personnel files for 3rd Platoon showed that Weston came from central Florida, near Orlando. He’d played second-string quarterback in high school and gotten good grades. He’d joined up after serving in the ROTC program at the University of Florida. In other words, he was indistinguishable from most junior officers, except for his family’s surprising criminal history. His father had served eleven months for insurance fraud in a minimum-security prison near Tallahassee. And his brother Jake had also been arrested as a juvenile. The court records were sealed, but the case had taken months to process, and the family had brought in a prominent defense lawyer to represent Jake. Nobody did that for a vandalism misdemeanor. Tyler Weston had seen more criminal behavior growing up than the average Army first lieutenant.

Rodriguez had his own problems. His file showed two arrests for gang fights. His criminal record should have disqualified him for military service. But he’d enlisted when the Iraq war was at its worst and the Army was missing its recruiting quotas. He scored in the ninety-third percentile on the intelligence test for new soldiers and was granted a waiver.

The only hint of a connection between Weston or Rodriguez and the agency was the fact that two case officers had gone to the University of Florida at the same time as Weston. But the U of F had forty thousand students. Shafer saw no evidence that the three had met one another. Plus the officers worked at Langley and had never been to Kabul. When Shafer surprised them with visits to their offices, both denied knowing Weston. He believed them.

Other potential trails also petered out. Bank records for Weston and Rodriguez showed no evidence of large deposits. Maybe they were buying gold with their drug profits, or hiding it in safe-deposit boxes. Most likely they hadn’t brought it back from Afghanistan yet. Cell records were another dead end. Neither man had used his American phone since arriving in Afghanistan. Their military e-mail accounts revealed only official communications, nothing personal. They were careful, and someone even more careful was helping them.

Shafer had also checked out Kevin Roman, the third guy Young accused of being involved. But Roman’s bank and e-mail records were as clean as the other two. Young had told Wells that Roman wasn’t much more than a lookout. Shafer believed him. His IQ was thirty points below Rodriguez’s and Weston’s, according to the Army’s tests. He was taking orders, not giving them.

Wells wanted to go at Weston and Rodriguez directly. But Young had blocked him. He was worried what might happen outside the wire. You talk to them after you figure out who the Delta dude is, he’d told Wells. Not before. Young had also said that no one could talk to people who knew Weston and Rodriguez back home. Doing so would risk tipping them off. So Shafer was stuck looking for clues in the electronic world.

Wells and Young were missing something else, too, maybe the most important piece. Motive. Shafer wanted to understand the why along with the who and how. Money was a possibility, of course. But money rarely told the whole story.

SHAFER’S PHONE TRILLED. Not a number he wanted to see, but he picked up anyway.

“Vinny. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“So John’s at a forward base, I hear.”

“FOB Jackson, yes.”

“And made a speech there.”

“Why are you pretending to be surprised by this?”

“I’ve had a complaint. About the speech. Reg told CENTCOM that Wells was encouraging insubordination.” Gregory “Reg” Nuton was the two-star general who commanded the tens of thousands of soldiers who occupied Kandahar and Zabul.

“He didn’t encourage anything. He talked about the war. At the end he made a coded plea to anyone who might know about the trafficking.” Shafer didn’t plan to tell Duto that Coleman Young had come forward. Not yet.

“He gave out alcohol.”

“He had a couple cases of beer.”

Duto laughed, an unexpected sound. “All right. I did my duty. Some three-star at the Pentagon called to moan about this and I promised I’d make sure I’d make it clear the behavior was unacceptable. And now I have. Like we don’t have better things to do. Like a war to fight. From the way they’re whining, you would think that Wells