Alex Berenson - The Shadow Patrol

Moving only his arm, Wells flipped the rock high into the air. He didn’t care where it landed as long as it reached the other side of the stream, the downhill side. It bounced off a tree and landed on the scree with a crack, and Francesca swung the Dragunov around toward it—

Wells came to his knees and lifted the Makarov and squeezed the trigger twice, knowing these were his last two rounds, knowing that if he missed Francesca would finish him—

He caught Francesca once in the chest and once in the belly. The shots spun Francesca sideways and he fell against the side of the stream beside Alders. He tried to bring the Dragunov back around on Wells, but couldn’t. The muzzle dragged uselessly on the ground. Wells stood, jumped down, walked to Francesca, knelt beside him. The shots had caught him high and low. Ugly wounds, probably mortal. Francesca put a hand on his stomach and looked dumbly at the blood trickling through it.

“Who you working for?”

“You think you’re any different than me, John? That what you think?”

Yeah, somewhere on the way, you stopped caring who you killed. Wells heard American voices in the distance. When they got here, they’d see the Dragunov and the AK and three guys dressed like locals. They’d open up long before Wells could explain he was American, much less the truth of what had happened. Weston would understand, of course, but Weston was no friend. Wells had to get off this ridge now. Ride Francesca’s bike back down the hill and go from there.

“Finish it off,” Francesca said. “Don’t be a bitch.”

“Last time. What’s his name? You call him Stan, I know that, but what’s his name?”

“Wrong question, John. The right question is why? And the answer is, Why not ? Why not , why not , why not .” A breath between each repetition, as if the two words held Francesca’s whole being.

Wells reached down for his knife. Then stopped himself. He wouldn’t give Francesca the pleasure.

“Do it.”

“Not without the name.”

Wells stood, stepped away. Francesca went silent. Then spoke one last time.

“Lautner.”

Wells turned back.

“Pete Lautner is Stan. Now do it .”

They locked eyes. Francesca nodded and Wells knew he’d spoken true. Wells pulled his knife and knelt in the dirt and lifted the blade high.

The voices on the hill were louder now. Wells wanted to offer some final words. But none came. He couldn’t wait. Francesca closed his eyes. And Wells grabbed his hair and pulled back his head and plunged down the knife.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Chief Warrant Officer William F. Alders, 34, of Linwood, W. Va., and Chief Warrant Officer Daniel L. Francesca, 33, of Orlando, Fl., died in Zabul province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when their unit was attacked with small arms fire. They were assigned to the U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Fort Bragg, N.C.

The release was standard, though a careful reader might notice that it used the passive voice to describe the incident: “their unit was attacked,” not “insurgents attacked their unit.” The families of Francesca and Alders were told only that they died in hand-to-hand combat after their position was overrun, a story that was true as far as it went.

Of course, the Deltas who helicoptered from Kandahar to retrieve the bodies knew that Francesca and Alders had been killed close to fifteen miles from their assigned position and weren’t carrying their Barrett. But the Deltas didn’t have to be told to keep their mouths shut. The less said the better. Some questions were best left unasked.

Wells crashed in a KBR trailer at Kandahar the night after he killed Francesca and Alders. The next morning he shaved his beard, the thick black clumps piling in the sink, nearly clogging the drain. He put on his cleanest shirt and borrowed a Hyundai from the KBR lot. When he gave his name to the gate guards at the Delta compound, he half expected that they’d put him on the ground and cuff him. The frontline guys might not have figured out exactly what had happened. But the major who commanded the unit knew of Shafer’s call to Cunningham. He had to suspect Wells was responsible for killing his guys.

Instead, the guards waved him in and asked him almost politely to wait in his car. A few minutes later, a black man about Wells’s age strode toward the gates. He had a square jaw and shoulders that hardly fit under his uniform. He slid into the front passenger seat and nodded to Wells.

“Steven Penn. I run this unit.”

“Major.”

“Let’s take a drive.”

Wells rolled through the gate and into the endless airfield traffic.

“You came here to tell me what happened?”

“As much as I can.”

“I want you to feel you can be straight with me.”

“I always get nervous when somebody says that.”

“I’ll put it this way, then. I’m not taping this. Why do you think we’re talking in your car and not my office?”

Wells decided Penn deserved the truth. “Francesca had a Dragunov. I don’t know where he got it, but it was practically new. They were set up on that ridge targeting a Stryker platoon. I found them, came up on them, killed them.”

“You killed them? Just like that.”

“Just like that.”

“Then you called your boss Shafer and told him to tell me where to find the bodies.”

“I didn’t want them to rot and I knew the Strykers would leave them.”

Penn squeezed his hands together. “Why would my men do that? Engage American soldiers?” Whatever anger or regret Penn felt, his voice was perfectly controlled, barely a whisper. Wells explained what Francesca and the Strykers had been doing. Penn listened in silence until Wells finished.

“You’re sure?”

“It’s why they were up there. One of the Stryker soldiers was talking to me. They were planning to take him out.”

“Any more of my men involved?”

“I don’t think so. It looks like a CIA officer was running them, running the ring.”

“Which is why you’re in on this. Why Shafer called Cunningham. Setting the hook.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you just tell us?”

“All we had was one enlisted man’s word and a couple pieces of circumstantial evidence.”

“And you didn’t think we’d want to hear about it anyway.”

“That’s right.” Though now that he’d met Penn, Wells thought he and Shafer had made a mistake. The Delta officer seemed like a problem solver, not a blame dodger. If Wells had come directly to him, they could have found a less dangerous way to smoke out Francesca and Alders.

“Was this about taking down Detachment 71? Some Langley power grab?”

“I don’t play those games.” Though Vinny Duto does. “This was, is, about a problem in the CIA. A mole working with the Talibs. The director asked me to find him and the investigation ran this way. To drug smuggling and then to your guys. Honestly, I didn’t expect that.”

“And have you found the mole?”

Wells nodded.

“Care to share?”

“I expect you’ll find out soon enough, but I’d rather not.”

They drove in silence toward the cluttered junkyards in the southwest corner of the base. The wind had turned southerly, bringing with it the stench of human waste. The tons of feces that Kandahar’s inhabitants generated every day had to go somewhere. Before being pumped into the fields outside the base, it was chemically treated at an artificial lagoon on the airfield’s west side.