And he’d get the same answers over and over again:
We need a new well, we want you to rebuild and open the school. We need a police station, more canals. And can you get us some electricity?
The diesel power plant in Kanda har serviced about nine thousand families, but nothing had been provided for the towns like Senjaray.
The following week, Harruck’s patrols would ask the very same questions, get the same answers, and nothing would be done because Harruck couldn’t get what he needed. The reasons for that were complex, varied, and many.
Despite the cynicism creeping into his voice, I still trusted that he’d fly the flag high and struggle valiantly to complete his mission. He said that at any time the tide could turn and assets could be reallocated to him.
We Ghosts didn’t have the luxury of leaving the base. In fact, higher wanted us to protect our identities by remaining in quarters when we weren’t conducting night reconnaissance, so I told my boys we were ghosts
and
vampires while in country, but that didn’t last very long.
I finished up a quick conversation with General Keat ing via my satellite phone, and he gave me the usual: “We need Zahed in custody, and we need him talking to us about his connections to the north and the opium trade. It’s up to you, Mitchell.”
It was always up to me, and I had a love-hate relation ship with that burden.
Keating’s trust in me was like a drug. Sometimes I felt like he was grooming me for his own job. I’d already turned down a promotion only because that would mean less time in the field, and I thought I was still too young to rotate to the rear. Scuttlebutt about the mili tary restructuring was rampant, with talk of a new Joint Strike Force, and the general told me I needed to catch the wave. But I believed I could make a greater differ ence in the field.
I guess, even after all these years, I was still pretty naïve in that regard, probably because most of my mis sions had allowed me to turn the tide.
With the sun beating down on my neck with an almost heavy-metal pulse, I headed toward my quarters. Up ahead, Harruck was coming into the base, riding shotgun in a Hummer. He waved to me as the truck came under sudden and heavy gunfire.
Rounds ricocheted off the Hummer’s hood and quarter panels as I dove to the dirt, and the two guys on the fifties on the north side opened up on the foothills about a quarter kilometer away. But the fire wasn’t com ing from there, I realized. It was from inside the FOB.
Three insurgents had somehow gotten past the wall and concertina wire and were firing from positions along the south side of one Quonset hut, which I recalled housed the mess hall.
Harruck and his men were climbing out of the Hum- mer when one of the insurgents shifted away from the hut and shouldered an RPG.
“Simon!” I hollered. “RPG! RPG!”
He and the two sergeants who’d been in the vehicle bolted toward me as behind them the rocket struck the Hummer and exploded, flames shooting into the sky, the boom reverberating off the huts and other buildings, whose doors were now swinging open, soldiers flooding outside.
I had my sidearm and was already squeezing off rounds at the RPG guy, but he slipped back behind the hut. At that point, reflexes took over. I was on my feet, catapulting across the yard. I rushed along the hut between the mess hall and the insurgents, reached the back, rounded the corner, and spotted all three of them—at exactly the same moment the machine gun ners up in the nest did. I shot the closest guy, but only got him in the shoulder before the machine gunner shredded all three with one fluid sweep.
At that second, I remembered to breathe.
Up ahead came a faint click. Then the entire rear third of the mess hall burst apart, pieces of the hut hur tling into the sky as though lifted by the smoke and
flames. The explosion knocked me onto my back, and for a few seconds there was only the muffled screams and the booming, over and over.
Something thudded onto my chest, and when I sat up, I saw it was a piece of the roof and accompanying insula tion. And then it dawned on me that there’d been per sonnel in the mess, still coming out when the bomb had gone off. Wincing, I got up, staggered forward.
A gaping hole had been torn in the side of the mess, and at least a half dozen of Harruck’s people were lying on the ground, torn to pieces by the explosion as they’d been heading toward the door. Some had no faces, the blast having shredded cheeks and foreheads, skin peeling back and leaving only bone in its wake. I began cough ing, my eyes burning through the smoke, as Harruck arrived with his sergeants.
“I’ll get my people out here to help!” I told him.
He nodded, gritted his teeth, and began cursing at the top of his lungs. I’d never seen him lose it like that.
The facts were clear. We Ghosts had brought this on the camp; the attack was payback for our raid the night before. Innocent soldiers had died because of what we’d done.
I felt the guilt, yes, but I never allowed it to eat at me. We had orders. We had to deal with the consequences of those orders. But seeing Harruck so cut up left me feel ing much more than I wanted. Maybe that was the first sign.
My Ghosts were already outside our hut, all wearing
pakols
and
shemaghs
on their heads and wrapped around
their faces to conceal their identities. I ordered them out to the perimeter to see what the hell was going on.
A roar and thundering collision out near the guard gate stole my attention. A flatbed truck had just plowed through the gatehouse and barreled onward to smash through the galvanized steel gates.
The guards there had backed off and were riddling the truck with rifle fire.
And it took Treehorn all of a second to shoulder his rifle and send two rounds into the head of that driver.
But as if on cue, the truck itself exploded in a swelling fireball that spread over the buildings and quarters beside it, setting fire to the rooftops as more flaming debris came in a hailstorm across the walkway between the huts. We didn’t realize it then, but a hundred or more Tal iban had set up positions along the mountains, and once they saw the truck explode, they set free a vicious wave of fire that had all of us in the dirt and crawling for cover as our machine gunners brought their barrels around . . .
and the rat-tat-tat commenced.
FOUR
Two more pickup trucks raced on past our FOB, cutting across the desert and bouncing up and onto the gravel road leading toward the town and the bazaar. Hundreds of people were milling about that area, setting up shop or making their morning purchases. If the Taliban reached that area and cut loose into the crowds . . .
I shouted for the Ghosts to follow me, and we com mandeered two Hummers from the motor pool on the east side of the base. A couple of mechanics volunteered on the spot to be our drivers. We roared out past the shattered gate, me riding shotgun, the others standing in the flatbeds or leaning out the open windows, weap ons at the ready. I quickly wrapped a
shemagh
around my face.
Behind us, the fires still raged, and the machine guns continued to crack and chatter.
Rounds ripped across the hood of our vehicle, and I began to smell gasoline.
“We should pull over!” shouted the mechanic. “No, get us behind those trucks!”
“I’ll try!”
About fifty meters ahead, the two pickups made a sharp left and disappeared behind a row of homes.
The mechanic floored it, and my head lurched back as we made the turn.
My imagination ran wild with images of civilians fall ing under our gunfire as we tried to stop these guys. I could already hear the voices of my superiors shouting about the public relations nightmare we’d created.
The second Hummer fell in behind us, and we charged down the narrow dirt street, walled in on both sides by the mud-brick dwellings and the rusting natural gas tanks plopped out front. The familiar laundry lines spanned the alleys and backyards, with clothes, as always, fluttering like flags. Our tires began kicking up enough dust to obscure the entire street in our wake, even as we pushed through the dust clouds whipped up by the Taliban trucks.
We still didn’t have replacement Cross-Coms, and all I could do was call back to the other truck and tell them we weren’t breaking off; we were going after these guys. And yes, the threat of civilian casualties increased dra matically the farther we drove, but I wanted to believe we could do this cleanly. I’d done it before.
Nolan, Brown, and Treehorn had already opened fire on the rear Taliban truck, knocking out a tire and send ing one of the Taliban tumbling over the side with a bullet in his neck. The rear truck suddenly broke off from the first, making a hard left turn down another dirt street.
I told the guys in our rear truck to follow him while we kept up with the lead truck, whose driver steered for the bazaar ahead, the road funneling into an even more narrow passage.
Although I’d never been into the town, Harruck had told me about the bazaar. You could find handmade antique jewelry, oil lamps, Persian rugs, and tsarist-era Russian bank notes displayed next to bootlegged DVDs and knock-off Rolexes. There were also dozens of white bearded traders selling meat and produce. Some vendors were part of an American-backed program that intro duced soldiers to Afghan culture and injected Ameri can dollars into the local economy. Although locals bought, sold, and traded there, Harruck’s company actu ally pumped more money into the place than anyone else because his soldiers purchased food to prepare on the base and souvenirs to ship back home. The Taliban knew that, too, which was why they’d come: maximum casual ties and demoralization.
We nearly ran over two kids riding old bikes, and the mechanic was forced to swerve so hard that we took out the awning post of a house on our left. The awning col lapsed behind us, and I cursed.
Suddenly, our Hummer coughed and died.
My guys started hollering.
“We’re out of gas,” shouted the driver. “It all leaked out!”
“Dismount! Let’s go!” I shouted to Nolan, Brown, and Treehorn, then eyed the driver. “You stay here with the vehicle. We’ll be back for you.”
The four of us sprinted down the block, reaching the first set of stalls covered by crude awnings. The shop keepers had seen the pickup fly by and had retreated to the backs of their shops.
The truck screeched to a stop at the next intersection, about fifty meters ahead, and four Taliban jumped out.
I expected them to do one of two things:
Run into the crowd and draw us into a pursuit.
Or . . . take cover behind their truck and engage us in a gunfight.
Instead, something entirely surreal happened, and all I could do was shout to my men to hold fire.
The citizens of Senjaray rushed into the street, both vendors and shoppers alike, and quickly formed a human barricade around the four men and their truck.
Two of the vendors began shouting and waving their fists at us, and from what I could discern, they were yell ing for us to go home.
As we drew closer, the crowd grew, and the four Tal iban were grinning smugly at us.
A man who looked liked a village elder, dressed all in army-green robes and with a black turban and matching vest, emerged from one of the shops and ambled toward
us, his beard dark but coiled with gray. Most of the locals wore beat-up sandals, but his appeared brand-new. In Pashto he said his name was Malik Kochai Kundi.
“I own most of the land here. I will not allow you to hurt these men. Zahed has treated us well—much better than the governor. You will not shatter that alliance.”
Brown started cursing behind me, and I shushed him, then struggled for the right words. “You heard the fighting. They attacked our base.”
Kundi stroked his beard in thought. “It’s my under standing that you struck first . . . last night. Now, show me your face, and I will talk to you.”
I glanced over Kundi’s shoulder and noted some thing going on among the four Taliban. The tallest one, perhaps the leader, was shifting his gaze among the others.
Kundi said something to me, but it was hard to hear him now over the rising voices of the crowd. I heard some folks telling Kundi to leave us alone, while others shouted again for us to leave.
Behind me, John Hume cursed—and I saw why.
The four Taliban turned and dashed back through the crowd, heading in four different directions.
“Take a guy!” I yelled.
We reacted swiftly, Brown, Hume, and Treehorn each going after a thug while I went for the tallest one.
I wasn’t sure why they’d chosen to run. Maybe they didn’t quite trust the citizenry either.
My guy rushed down a side street, leaving the bazaar
for yet another stretch of sad-looking homes. I was gain ing on him when he stopped, whirled, and leveled his rifle. Before he got off a shot I was already diving to the right side, realizing that the cover I’d sought was one of
those natural gas tanks. Great.
The guy fired, but his rounds drummed along the dirt beside me. I rolled, came up, peered around the tank, saw him rushing forward between houses.
I bounded after him, sweating profusely now, my eyes itching with dust. Once I got into the alley, I caught a glimpse of him before he turned another corner. I jogged ten meters, reached the corner—and a long row of houses stretched before me.
He was gone.
But then I looked down into the dirt, tracked his boot prints, and heard a child’s cry coming from one of the houses.
I jogged forward, eyeing the prints, heard the noise once more, turned and rushed toward the nearest front door, pushed it open, and burst into a small entrance area.
It all hit me at once:
The smell of sweet meat cooking . . .