Wynne's War (6 page)

They went down an earthen hallway, sandbag antechambers to their left and right. Russell could hear mortar rounds hammering somewhere in the world above. Grains of sand dislodged from the ceiling and sprinkled down the collar of his jacket, strangely cool. The corridor turned and turned again, and they started going up. When they ascended the incline at the far end of the bunker, the surgical team was gathered at the top of the steps, some kneeling, some seated against the wall with palms over their ears. The woman was standing in the entryway, silhouetted against the bright blue sky. Wheels and Russell watched her for several moments. Wheels asked him what she was doing.

“Beats me,” said Russell. “Maybe she's curious.”

“Maybe she's fucking nuts,” Wheels said.

Russell looked at him. A voice said, “Behind you,” and they turned to see the shirtless man coming up the passage. His shoulders were wide enough to touch the tunnel walls, but he twisted sideways, snaked past Wheels and Russell, and went up the steps. He had blond hair buzzed down to stubble, coated with a thin layer of talc, and tattooed in an arc across his back was the word
INFIDEL
. He wore the headset around his neck now, but the walkie-talkie was still in hand. He gestured with it.

“We're good,” he said. “They're done for now.”

Members of the surgical team began to ascend the last few steps and exit the bunker. Wheels and Russell followed, blinking in the sunlight.

They stood for several moments, all bunched together. Then Wheels asked the shirtless man how he knew the attack was over.

“Prophet just gave the all clear.” The man pointed his radio's rubber antenna at the sky and described a small circle: “Our intel network.” The surgical team had formed up around him as he spoke, and he gave them a quick once-over and said, “If you're ready, we got you set up over here.” He set off walking, and the team began to follow him across the camp. Wheels and Russell just stood.

“I don't think he means us,” said Wheels.

“I don't think he does, either,” Russell said.

He glanced around the firebase. At the trenches snaking between the sandbag walls. At the cinder-block bunkers, the canvas tents of various sizes. At the HESCOs surrounding the base's perimeter, stacked on top of the sandstone walls, the machine-gun emplacements every twenty meters. Concertina wire sparkling in the sunlight. And everywhere the bustle of men—most of them shirtless, pants legs cut off at the knee, many wearing tennis shoes or no shoes at all. One soldier passed in front of them with a bright red mohawk, tattoos sleeving both arms to the wrist.

Another soldier, this one in uniform, approached the shirtless man and the column of techs and surgeons. They conferred together a few moments, the shirtless man turning to point back at the Rangers. The uniformed man nodded and then started in their direction.

Russell saw, as the man drew closer, that he wore the rank of a first lieutenant on his chest, and the sleeve insignia of the 82nd Airborne on his left shoulder. He was tall and thin with dark hair buzzed in a crewcut. He came up, shook Russell's hand and then Wheels's. He introduced himself as Kent, but his nametape read
KELLAM
.

“Weren't expecting you guys till tomorrow,” he told them.

Russell didn't know how to respond to this. He just nodded.

“You want the tour?” Kent asked. “We can get you chow if you're hungry.”

He turned and pointed to the mess tent, which squatted at their right, long and low-slung, canvas flapping idly in the breeze and exuding a faint odor of grease.

“Hell,” said Wheels, “give us the tour. We can eat anytime.”

He hadn't addressed the officer as “sir,” but the lieutenant didn't seem to notice. He escorted them down a trail worn smooth by a thousand boot heels. There was the armory bunker, he told them. Over there, supply. Russell asked where they could find the commanding officer, but the man seemed not to hear. They went along the wall of HESCOs at the camp's western edge—cutouts in the shape of soldiers, plywood decoys propped above the barriers—and there was a gap in the barricades; they were granted a view of the valley beneath: the mountain falling sheer for several hundred meters and then descending in green terraced slopes. In the distance, more mountains, dotted with pine trees, thick in the morning haze.

He asked the lieutenant if they got sniper fire at this altitude.

Kent pointed to one of the plywood silhouettes to their left, and Russell glanced over to see the nickel-sized holes perforating its torso.

“Anyone ever get hit?” Wheels asked.

“They get hit,” Kent said.

He walked them toward the north end of camp and the camp's main entrance—steel gates protected by gunners and razor wire. Kent told them about the trail that ascended the face of the mountain in switchbacks and then he led them down another path by the latrines, lengths of PVC pipe hammered into the ground, damp ground and the swarm of flies, plywood outhouses a little farther down. It was the job of some unfortunate private to burn their contents every day with diesel.

Down another trail—more bunkers, more trenches, an alcove where the platoon had set up their 120-millimeter mortar, lethal out to 7200 meters. Then along a short passageway that went underground, its walls braced by cinder block and two-by-fours, and out again into the noonday light, where they saw the valley on the other side of the mountain, this one to the east.

Kent said, “The captain has his camp down there. They'll send someone to get you in the next couple days. We're not allowed to go down there uninvited.”

“Captain Wynne?” asked Russell.

Kent nodded. He explained that the chief purpose of Firebase Dodge was to provide security for the Special Forces camp below.

As the lieutenant spoke, Wheels climbed up onto the sandstone wall and was standing on tiptoe, trying to see over the HESCO barriers and down into the valley. When Kent saw what he was doing, he said, “You're not going to be able to see much. Not from up here.”

Wheels turned and looked back at him. “We can't just walk on down?”

“Not without authorization, you can't. They'll send someone up. We've got a bunker you can use in the meantime.”

Wheels seemed to be considering all of this.

“That's kind of fucked up,” he concluded.

The lieutenant shrugged. He said it was the way it was.

Russell cleared his throat. He asked if they got many women in camp.

Kent stared at him several moments with his brow furrowed. Then his face relaxed and he started nodding.

“Right,” he said. “The surgical team.”

“Yeah,” Russell said.

“We get a new team choppered in every few months. They'll have female medics sometimes. RNs or whatever. Way we're situated, we get casualties all the way from Bargi Matal. They'll stabilize them here before shipping them out to Bagram. Or try to stabilize them, anyway.”

“I didn't know if it was a regular thing,” said Russell.

“Wouldn't call it ‘regular.' It happens.”

They turned and looked over at Wheels. He was up on his tiptoes again, trying to see down into the valley.

They watched him several moments.

“I don't see why we can't just walk on down there,” he said.

 

They filled the days playing cards—poker mostly. They'd been assigned quarters in a cinder-block bunker that housed three other soldiers, and they spent their nights here, listening to wolves howl on the slopes about, Russell lying on the low canvas cot, each of its legs in coffee cans filled with kerosene as a defense against scorpions. He'd awaken before dawn each morning to find clusters of them floating in the thick amber liquid, some still alive and wriggling. You had to empty the cans every few days or they'd fill with the skeletons of the creatures. He'd heard men compare their sting to being stabbed with a carving fork. Only the pain didn't diminish once the tines left your flesh. Like everything else in this country, it got worse with time.

This firebase, for instance. Aside from members of the surgical team and the handful of Afghan militia, Lieutenant Kent seemed to be the only soldier still in uniform. The only soldier in boots for that matter. The Green Berets remained in their camp on the other side of the mountain, and the Airborne platoon had been told, apparently, to pretend they didn't exist. Russell had yet to set eyes on one. The angle was too steep to see into their camp from this hilltop fortress, and he figured that was precisely how the Green Berets wanted it. Or planned it, rather. Nothing Special Forces did happened by accident.

Up here it was all accident. Mishap. Confusion. In place of actual uniforms, these soldiers fought in shorts and sandals and sleeveless T-shirts, and the patches on their body armor—when they bothered to wear it—didn't indicate blood type but asked “What Jesus would shoot?” or told you to “Rock out with your cock out” or broadcasted half a dozen other slogans that would get you written up on outposts farther west.

He was discussing it with Wheels over a game of pitch when he glanced up to see a man in tan fatigues come down the steps of their bunker. He had a khaki ball cap that he wore backward, and there was a bleached strip around his eyes in the shape of the sunglasses he'd just pushed onto his forehead. He had a great bushy growth of beard—brown and silver—and his hair touched his collar in back. There were no patches on his uniform other than blood type—
O POS
—no rank or unit insignia, no skill tabs or badges. He stood for a silent moment.

“I help you?” Wheels asked.

“I'm Billings,” the man said. “Assistant commander for Wynne's team.” He gestured to their cots and told them to grab their gear.

Russell and Wheels fell to lacing their boots and filling their packs, but Billings had already turned and gone back up the steps. The two of them scrambled around, stowing their equipment, harnessing up.

“What would he be,” Wheels whispered, “warrant officer?”

“I believe so,” Russell said.

When they made it outside, Billings was leaning against a row of sandbags, surveying the camp with a thinly veiled disgust. Then he looked at the Rangers with a similar expression.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yessir,” they said in unison.

“Don't ‘sir' me,” he told them. “I apologize for not coming up to collect you sooner. We had half the team on recon.”

He turned, held shut one nostril with an index finger, and ejected a spray of mucus onto the dirt. He wiped his nose with the side of his hand and turned back to study the two of them. He asked if they were healthy, and Wheels told him they were.

“Well,” said Billings, turning to give the camp a last look, “there's that.”

 

The camp below was a collection of beehive huts and adobe structures, and seen from a distance of several hundred meters it resembled a nineteenth-century pueblo from a movie set. It was nestled in these remote hills and sheltered by a trick of geography, cut off from roads and indigenous settlements, protected by the outpost on the mountain above. There were no HESCOs or trenches, no rolls of concertina wire. Russell didn't see so much as a sandbag or defensive berm.

Hiking down the hillside, all he could make out were several of the larger buildings. But the next morning, he woke to a familiar smell in the predawn air, and he knew before he could confirm it with his eyes. He hurried into his clothes and then out of the adobe shelter, made his way across the compound in the early chill, and there on the camp's northern side was the half-acre corral of split-rail fencing and a dozen or so horses waiting to be curried and fed.

He came forward like a man testing a new pair of eyes. Five of the horses were standing with heads over the corral's top rail, four watching his approach, the other staring at something in the distance. Two roans, two paints, and a magnificent Arabian whose coat glistened in the faint morning light. Fog had settled several feet above the ground, and Russell waded through it, a luminous, waist-high mist that parted and twirled behind him as he passed. The horses watched. One of the paints lifted its nose to test the air. Russell could see the leather nostrils expand slightly and contract, and the animal gave a low whinny from deep inside its chest. A little two-year gelding. He reached out his palm and the horse stretched its neck to him, and Russell brushed his fingers through the rough hair beneath the horse's jaw.

“Hey, fella,” he said.

The horse nuzzled his hand and snorted. Russell ran his palm down the horse's neck. He could see, now, it wasn't a gelding at all. She was a little filly.

“That's a good horse,” he said.

He backed a few feet, climbed the fence, and threw a leg over the top rail, straddling it. He sat watching the horses on the other side of the corral, stepping about the bare-dirt enclosure. Several more paints, another roan. The mists were rising and evaporating in the gathering light. He turned and glanced toward the low building that served as a stable and felt something against his shoulder, a warm sweet breath moving across his arm.

Russell ran a hand over the filly's neck.

“You going to follow me around?” he asked the horse. “Is that how it's going to be?”

The filly raised her nose. She blinked and Russell watched the long lashes flutter up and down.

“How long since you been rode?” he said. He braced his boots against the lowest rail of the fence and stood precariously, both hands on the horse's neck, and then gradually leaning against her, seeing how much weight she would accept. The horse lifted her left front hoof and then lowered it.

Russell swung over the fence and stepped into the corral with the horse. He brushed his hands down the filly's neck and spoke to her and then slid a palm over her back. The hide trembled slightly under his touch, that loose feel of flesh, then the muscles relaxing. He could feel the massive bellows of the horse's lungs inflating and deflating, and he knew whoever had broken her had done a poor job of it. She'd likely have to be broken all over again if she was to accept a saddle. He placed both arms over the animal and, bouncing, heaved himself onto her back.