The Shadow Patrol jw-6 Read online

  “I told you I get it.”

  Upstairs, a shower kicked on. While they waited, Heather filled him in on Evan’s life, his difficulties with AP Biology, his love of basketball, his dream college — the University of California at San Diego. “I don’t know if he has the grades for it.”

  “What about girls?” Wells said.

  “Nothing serious. These kids don’t really date. They text one another and sneak over to one another’s houses and we can’t do much about it unless we want to lock him in his bedroom all the time. Which would only make it worse. And I don’t want to be a hypocrite either. Not like I was a nun in high school. So I told him to be careful, not to get anyone pregnant, and he looked at me like, ‘I’m not an idiot. I know.’”

  Evan reappeared freshly scrubbed fifteen minutes later. “Ready, Pops?”

  “Where to?”

  “I figured you could take me into the backcountry, show me how to blow stuff up. Survival training. Make a man out of me, know what I’m saying?”

  Wells looked at Heather. “Please tell me he’s joking.”

  “Of course he’s joking.”

  “Of course I’m joking. We’re going to this coffeehouse downtown. By the U. It’s kind of a cliché, but the coffee’s good.” Evan kissed his mother on the cheek. “You were right. He doesn’t have a great sense of humor.”

  “I warned you.”

  “I’m in the room,” Wells said. “I can hear you. Both of you.”

  GRIZZLY COFFEE had overstuffed couches and grainy black-and-white photos of car accidents on the walls and a community corkboard with offers of rides to Seattle. The guy behind the counter had an ornate zombie tattooed across his right arm, its red-and-yellow eyes iridescent in the late-day sun.

  Wells ordered a large coffee, skim milk. He was obscurely pleased to see Evan do the same. The tables in the back were empty.

  “Here we are, father and son, together at last,” Evan said.

  “I want to thank you for seeing me, Evan. From everything your mom’s said, you’re an amazing young man.”

  “I’m here because I figured you wanted to give me the key to a secret bank account with, like, a hundred million dollars.”

  “If I had it, it would be yours. I just thought maybe we could get to know each other.” As soon as Wells said the words, he wished he hadn’t. Get to know each other. Like this was a first date. A bad one, with no chemistry.

  “I just threw up in my mouth.”

  Wells sipped his coffee and waited for Evan to talk. To distract himself, he watched the barista make drinks, working the knobs and handles of the machines behind the counter as expertly as a nineteenth-century trainman running a steam engine.

  “You’re just going to stare into space until I start talking,” Evan said after a few minutes.

  “Waiting is one thing I’m good at.”

  “Fine. You win. Ve have vays of making you talk. So let’s talk.”

  “I just wanted to tell you face-to-face, I thought about you all these years. Wondered how you were, what 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 lu
xury 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 whispered phone calls. But they’d left that conversation behind. They drove in silence. When they arrived, Heather waited on the front steps. Evan opened his door before the car had stopped. Wells sat in the car and watched him go. He’d lost his relationship with his only child without ever having one. Neat trick. After Evan disappeared, Wells stepped out of the car.

  “Smart kid.”

  “He is that.”

  “Doesn’t like the war much. Or me.”

  She turned up her hands.

  “You could have warned me.”

  “I wasn’t sure it would go that way and I didn’t want to jinx it. I’m sorry.”

  “I like him, you know. Politically aware, intelligent — he’ll run for something one day. Something important. And win.”

  “I hope so.”

  “At least I don’t have to worry that he misses me. He made that clear.”

  “Would you rather he did? He felt some terrible lack in his life?”

  She shoots, she scores. “Maybe I’ll try again in a few years. Meantime, if you or he want to reach me—”

  She stood, hugged him. “Good-bye, John.”

  WELLS DROVE. He’d booked a hotel for two nights, but now he just wanted to roll on 90, let its long twin lanes carry him east. He’d grown up in Hamilton, south of Missoula, and he’d planned to visit the graveyard where his parents were buried. He’d have to wait for another trip to pay those respects.

  He wasn’t angry with his son for questioning the necessity of war. Blind faith in your leaders will get you killed, Bruce Springsteen had said. But Wells could take only the coldest comfort in his pride. He’d lost any chance to connect with the boy. If Evan thought of him at all, it would be as a sperm donor, the man who’d contributed half his DNA and then disappeared.

  Wells closed his eyes and counted silently to ten. When he opened them, the wide prairie on either side of the highway hadn’t changed. Time to face the truth, leave his son behind.

  AND THEN HIS CELL RANG. A blocked number.

  “John. You up in the woods, scaring the bears?” Ellis Shafer, his old boss at the agency. He was scheduled to retire in the spring. But Wells figured Shafer would work out a deal to stay. He claimed to have a happy life outside the agency, but he was in no hurry to get to it. Just like Wells. At this moment, Wells knew he’d buy whatever Shafer was selling.

  “Montana. Visiting Evan.”

  “Sojourning.”

  “Is this call about the size of your vocabulary?”

  “Master Duto has something for you. A mission, should you choose to accept it.”

  Wells was silent.

  “Before you say no—”

  “I didn’t say no.”

  “Must have gone badly out there.”

  Wells didn’t answer.

  “John?”

  “I realize you enjoy demonstrating your cleverness at every opportunity, Ellis, but now is not a good time.”

  “Duto wants you to go to Afghanistan.”

  “He forget I don’t work for him anymore?”

  “He thinks there’s a problem in Kabul, and I think he’s right.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “The kind better discussed in person.”

  Sure as night was dark, Duto had an angle here. Angles, more likely. “What’s my excuse?”

  “Officially, you’ll be there on a morale mission. Also — and this will be shared privately with senior guys — you’ll be making an overall assessment of the war. Nothing in writing, just impressions that you’ll present when you get home. You go over, spend a couple days at Kabul station. Have dinner with COS”—an acronym that sounded like an old-school rapper but in reality stood for chief of station—“then visit a couple bases, meet the Joes. Talk to whoever you like.”

  “Pretty good cover.”

  “Yes. Come to Langley, and Duto and I will fill you in on the rest.”

  Wells wondered what Evan would make of this offer. No doubt he’d dismiss it as macho crap, a pointless exercise.

  “Great,” Wells said. “I’m in.”

  3

  HAMZA ALI, AFGHANISTAN

  In the village, five minutes ticked by. The sun lost itself behind a cloud. Young pulled open a pouch on his Kevlar vest, extracted a pack of Newports.

  “You have to smoke Newports, Coleman? I can almost see you on a billboard wearing one of those Day-Glo orange suits. Right above an ad with Billy Dee Williams sipping from a quart bottle.”

  Young took a deep drag, blew the smoke in Fowler’s direction. “Menthol tastes good. Plus you people don’t smoke them, so I don’t have to share.”

  “You people.”

  “White people. You’re the one who went there.”

  “Lemme try one.”

  “A white person?”

  “Come on.”

  Young tucked away the pack. Fowler surveyed the empty village.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Don’t know. And not guessing.”

  “Where’s B Team?”

  “Lighting up, probably. And nothing menthol. Nothing that comes in a pack.”

  Fowler was embarrassed he hadn’t realized. Of course. The three soldiers on the B fire team had turned into hash smokers the last couple months. Along with half the rest of the platoon.

  “What are we doing here, Coleman?”

  “You’re tripping over your own damn feet. I’m trying to stay alive. Get home.”

  “No, what are we doing here? Right now.”

  “Maybe Rodriguez
found himself a kebab stand.”

  “Kebabs.”

  “Or tacos. I don’t know and I don’t care. You’re so curious, go check it out for yourself.”

  Just that quick, Fowler decided he was tired of being scared. “You know what? I think I will.”

  “You find any kebabs, let me know.”

  THE STREET WAS FILLED with the random junk that was everywhere in Afghanistan, shreds of plastic and canvas, the stuff even the goats couldn’t eat. No metal, though. Metal was valuable. The Afghans salvaged it.

  The village looked as dismal up close as it had from a distance. In richer areas, Afghans lived in compounds hidden by ten-foot mud-straw walls. Here the walls were barely waist-high, exposing the battered homes behind them. The air was sweet and greasy, with a bitter tang underneath. A mix of wood smoke, cooking oil, and sewage.

  Fowler heard the voices of women and children hiding in the houses. The words faded as he moved closer, picked up again once he passed. They couldn’t see him and still they treated him like a leper. As if even their voices were a gift he didn’t deserve. He wanted to hate them. But then, they hadn’t asked him to come here. He reached the house where the Afghan had led Rodriguez and Roman. This was the fanciest place in town, the tallest midget, with seven-foot walls and a filigreed gate. He peeked through the filigree—

  And a single shot cracked behind him. Fowler flattened himself against the wall, checked left and right. Chickens squawked wildly. Behind him, Young tossed away his cigarette and scanned the empty fields that lay between them and the rest of the platoon. Fowler wondered whether the Talibs had lured them out here to cut them off, trap them.

  But nothing happened. Terror and boredom, the twin poles of infantry duty. The chickens chattered away. Fowler took advantage of their noise to pull open the gate. He slipped inside, two quick sliding steps.

  The yard was empty aside from a rusty Weber gas grill, which didn’t make sense, and a brand-new ATV, which kinda did. A diesel engine, probably an electrical generator, hummed somewhere in back. Electricity and an ATV. By local standards, whoever owned this place was living large. Fowler eased the gate shut and waited for someone to open the door, walk out of the house. But no one did.