Alex Berenson - The Shadow Patrol

But if his smile was any indication, Duto thought it might.

“Anyway,” Wells said. “Unless you want more awkward small talk—”

“You read the cables. What do you think? Operationally speaking.”

“You already know the answer. It’s a mess. Been one since Marburg. Wultse was a drunk, Gordie King was burned out. The new guys, Arango and Lautner, they look good, they’re saying the right things and maybe doing them, too, but they’ve been there awhile and so far they haven’t made progress. If Kabul ran half as well as Islamabad, we’d have won the war by now.”

“Can they? Make progress?”

“I’m not going to pass judgment from seven thousand miles away on guys I’ve never met.”

“So you’ll go see them then?”

“Vinny. What is it you’re not telling me?”

“Right now, Kabul’s our most important station. More than Moscow, Beijing, whatever. If I have to change it up again, I will. But that would be the fourth new chief since Marburg. And it’s not like I have great options. I don’t want to move anyone from Islamabad now that they’re getting traction. I don’t want to bring someone else in from outside the region unless I have to. I want an outside opinion and I know you’ll tell me what you think.”

Wells looked at Shafer. “Okay, I’ll ask you. What is it he’s not telling me?”

“That there might be a leak inside the station.”

“To the Taliban ? Come on.”

“About a month ago, a source told one of our Pak officers about a rumor that, quote unquote, ‘A CIA officer is helping the Talib.’”

“That could mean anything.”

“I know. We asked him for more. He didn’t have it. He’s a good source, though. A Frontier Corps general.” The Frontier Corps was the Pakistan Army unit that guarded Pakistan’s North-West Frontier province.

“That’s all you have?”

“I know it’s thin—”

“It’s not thin. It’s nothing.”

“It isn’t all,” Duto said quietly. Wells and Shafer both swiveled toward Duto. Duto was smiling again. Shafer wasn’t. His mouth had opened a half inch, like an ATM machine about to spit cash. Apparently Duto hadn’t told Shafer about a second source either. “About ten days ago, I got a call from Mike Yancy.”

“Should I know that name?” Wells said.

“Deputy director of the Drug Enforcement Agency.”

“Their motto: A palace for every kingpin.”

“Thank you for that wit and wisdom, Ellis. So the DEA has offices in Kandahar and Helmand. They try to convince farmers to stop planting poppies, switch to food crops like wheat. It’s tough. You can imagine. Opium’s much more profitable.”

“Sure,” Wells said.

“Anyway, the DEA guys were in a village — and before you ask, Yancy didn’t say which one, told me he couldn’t — and this farmer takes them aside and says to them, ‘Why should I work with you when the CIA is buying opium?’ The DEA guys say, ‘No, that can’t be right.’ But he insists. Tells them that he knows that the CIA is working with the Talibs. But no specifics.”

“How would it work?” Wells said. “A CO goes outside the wire, comes back with a suitcase of junk? How does he make sure he doesn’t get blown to bits or kidnapped? And what does he do with the stuff then? Put it out at the Christmas party?”

“Yancy said his agents felt this farmer was credible. He talked to them alone, didn’t want anyone to hear.”

“Let me walk through this,” Shafer said. “A farmer in Kandahar whose name we don’t know told a DEA agent whose name we don’t know about a dirty CIA officer whose name we don’t know. Now you’re telling us. That’s a lot of telephone, don’t you think?”

Duto turned to Wells. “He’s right. It’s all smoke. Only we’re having an awful lot of trouble over there.”

“It’s Afghanistan, Vinny. And they’re rebuilding the station on the fly. In the middle of a war.”

“I’m going over in a month,” Duto said. “With Travers and McTeague. They’ve been asking me to go and I’ve been putting them off, but finally I had to say yes. So it’s set and I can’t change it, not without a really good excuse. I would like to introduce them to the fine men and women of Kabul station without wondering whether one of the people they’re meeting is working for the other side.”

“No wonder you’re taking time from your busy Saturday to beg John for help,” Shafer said.

“It would be a disaster. And not just for me. All I’m asking, you go over, see what you find.” Duto squeezed Wells’s shoulder. Another new move. His handlers must have told him that real politicians weren’t afraid to touch. Though Duto still needed to work on his technique. His grip was too strong. Like he was trying to tear Wells’s arm off. “Sniff it out. You don’t come up with anything, fine. Still be a good trip. The speeches you give to the Joes, those guys will be happy to see you.”

Wells removed Duto’s hand from his shoulder. Wells knew that, as director, Duto had broken more than a few laws. Yet for that very reason, Wells trusted Duto’s instinct about Kabul. Set a thief to catch a thief…. If Duto thought the station had been corrupted, he was probably right. Why he’d chosen to involve Wells was a question Wells would consider later.

“A poorly defined counterintelligence mission without official authority? Based on rumors from an anonymous Afghan farmer? Where do I sign?”

“Thank you, John.”

“Don’t thank me yet. Inshallah ”—God willing—“I won’t find anything.”

The folding chairs were cheap and gray and lined up in tight rows. Before them, a framed photo of Ricky Fowler sat on a homemade plywood table. The picture had been taken at the beginning of the tour. Wearing his uniform, his floppy camouflage hat low on his head, Fowler smiled shyly. He seemed almost hopeful.

Wartime memorial ceremonies at combat bases followed a rigid formula. The dead couldn’t just be forgotten. Their buddies needed to say good-bye. But the ceremonies couldn’t be too long or mawkish. At home, the death of a healthy twenty-something was rare, an occasion for waterfalls of grief. In Afghanistan, healthy twenty-somethings died all the time. Fowler’s family and friends in Texas would have time to mourn. His platoon mates could not afford the luxuries of grief and depression. Not when they would be back outside the wire in a day or two.

So the Army focused funeral ceremonies on the fact that the fallen had died as soldiers . Fowler’s empty combat boots stood beside his photo. His rifle was placed behind the boots, muzzle down and stock up. His helmet and dog tags topped the rifle. The combination of boots, rifle, and helmet symbolized his corpse, which had already been sent back to the United States. They were as important as his body. They were the reason he’d died.

The chairs were set up in a quiet corner of the base, behind the brigade aid station. But life at FOB Jackson didn’t stop for a funeral. Behind a blast wall a hundred yards away, Stryker engines roared to life as another platoon got ready to go outside the wire. A pair of Kiowa helicopters circled low, their turbines thrumming. Meanwhile the soldiers of 3rd Platoon bowed their heads and sang the national anthem. Then Lieutenant Weston stepped behind the plywood podium and unfolded two sheets of paper.

“Private First Class Richard Edward Fowler. Ricky Fowler. All of you knew him. In a unit this size, after this many months together, we all know each other. He was a good kid. A good man. If it was hot, he’d share his CamelBak. For some reason he liked the Dallas Cowboys and I could never convince him he was a darn fool for that. He loved his mom and dad and he wasn’t afraid to tell them so. Every night you could find him at the MWR talking to them. I know we gave him grief for that, but it was the right thing to do. Day after he got killed, I called my folks and told them I loved them. I hadn’t said that to them for a long time. Too long. And I was thinking about Ricky when I did it.