The Shadow Patrol

your life was like.”

“You had a weird way of showing it. I know you were gone a long time. But you’ve been back five years now, more, and you never tried to see me.”

“Your mom didn’t want me to, and I respected her wishes.”

“Yeah. You seem like the kind of guy who does what other people tell you.”

“I look at you, I don’t see a stranger. I see how we’re connected. And I know how you’re feeling.”

“Of course you do, Dad. You know me so well—”

“Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best way to phrase it—”

“Can we stop talking now?”

Wells played what he hoped would be his winning card. “Is there anything you want to know about me? What I’ve been doing?”

“I know. You’ve been saving the world. Call of Duty: John Wells Edition. Only problem is, I don’t see how the world’s been saved. Looks like a mess to me.”

“Wait till you’re my age.”

“Have you ever killed anyone?”

Wells was ready for this question, at least. He’d decided years before that Evan deserved the truth. “Yes.”

“How many?”

“More than one.”

“More than one. What kind of answer is that? More than ten?”

Wells hesitated. “Yes.”

“In self-defense?”

“That’s not really a yes-or-no question.”

“I think it is.”

“What if Chinese cops are chasing you, and if they catch you, they’ll turn you over to someone who’s going to kill you? So you shoot them even though they’re just doing their jobs? Or say it’s 2001, after September eleventh, and you’re undercover with some Talibs and you have to make contact with your side, the American side. But the only way to do that is to kill the guys you’re with. So you do.”

“How come you put it in the second person? You mean I. ‘So I do. I killed them.’”

“That’s right. I killed them.” He’d executed them, no warning. Men he’d known for years. Their skulls breaking and exposing the gray fruit inside.

“Doesn’t sound like self-defense.”

“It was necessary.” Wells leaned across the table, fighting the urge to grab his son by the shoulders. “Evan. I’ll tell you about what I’ve done. Everything I can, except the stuff that’s classified and might get you in trouble. But I’m not going to argue the morality. Some things you can’t understand unless you’ve been there.”

“That’s what guys like you always say. That nobody else gets it.”

“These people we fight, they target civilians. Innocents.” Wells was arguing now, contradicting what he’d said just a few seconds before, but he couldn’t help himself. “They strap bombs to kids your age, and blow themselves up in crowded markets.”

“When we fire missiles and blow up houses in Pakistan, what’s that?”

“I am telling you, I’ve seen this up close, and we make mistakes, but these guys are not our moral equivalents.” Wells wondered whether he should explain that he personally was certain that he’d saved more lives than he’d taken. But they weren’t talking about him. They were talking about Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Vietnam. Those long, inconclusive conflicts that ground to a close without parades or treaties. Wars where the United States had a hundred different goals and the enemy had none, except to send American soldiers home in body bags.

“Let me ask you something, then, Dad. Suppose I told you in two years, ‘Hey, I want to join the Army. Enlist.’ Would you be in favor of that?”

“Not as an enlisted man, no.”

“But—”

“Soldiers follow orders. If you’re concerned about the way we’re fighting, you’ve got to be giving those orders. Be an officer. That’s life. You wanted to go to West Point, get your butter bar”—the gold-colored bar that newly minted second lieutenants received—“I wouldn’t be against that.”

“But you quit. You left the agency.”

“Because I was disgusted with the politics inside Langley. But I’ll always believe that the United States has the right to defend itself.”

“Oh, so that’s what we’re doing?”

The contempt in Evan’s voice tore a hole in Wells’s stomach real as a slug. Suddenly, Wells knew that Evan had agreed to see him for one reason only. Evan despised him, or some funhouse vision of him, and wanted him to know. Wells wondered what Heather had told Evan. Or—

“Is this because I wasn’t around? Are you mad?”

“I have two real parents. I couldn’t miss you any less.”

“Listen.” Evan stiffened, and Wells knew he’d said exactly the wrong word. Then he repeated it. “Listen. You think you’re the only one wondering what we’re doing over there? Everybody who’s been there asks himself whether we’re doing any good.”

“But you keep doing it. They keep doing it.”

“Because those soldiers don’t have the luxury of second-guessing their orders. They do what they’re told, and when they’re outside the wire, they have to figure out who’s a civilian and who’s the enemy, and if they guess wrong they die—”

“They’re all volunteers. Right? They knew what they were getting into. Whatever we’re doing over there, they’re not bystanders. They’re morally responsible.”

“That makes them heroes, Evan. Not villains.”

“Just like you.”

Wells pushed himself back from the table. He’d pictured meeting his son a hundred times: hiking in Glacier National Park, rafting on the Colorado River, even driving to Seattle for a baseball game, an echo of the road trips he’d taken with his own father to Kansas City. He’d imagined Evan would want to hear the details of his missions, would ask him about being Muslim. Wells had converted during the long years he’d spent undercover, and he’d held on to the faith after coming back to the United States. He’d even wondered whether he might become something like an uncle who visited once a year. Ultimately, he’d imagined his son telling him, I want you to be part of my life.

But somehow he’d never imagined this particular disaster, this fierce, cool boy taking him apart as if they weren’t blood at all. The bitterest irony was that Evan’s dispassionate anger wasn’t far from Wells’s own casual cruelty. Wells didn’t doubt that, with the right training, Evan would be a Special Forces — caliber soldier. He had the reflexes and the size. Though this might not be the moment to mention that career path.

“Evan. You’re a strong young man, you’re politically engaged—”

“Don’t patronize me—”

“I’m not. But you think I’m a war criminal—”

“I didn’t say that—”

“Close enough. And if not me, a lot of guys I know. And that’s so far from the truth that I’m going to lose my temper soon, and I don’t want that. You’ve got to be able to separate the war from the men who fight.”

“The war is the men who fight.”

“Let me take you home, and in a few years, when you have more perspective, we can try again. If you want.”

“I’m never gonna change my mind.”

“People your age always say that.”

“Let’s go.”

WELLS WOULD HAVE LIKED to ask Evan about basketball, or girls, or his classes, all the everyday details of life as a teenager. Surely high school hadn’t changed, even if kids flirted now in 140-character bursts instead of