Ashley's War (27 page)

Just then Amber heard the Rangers yelling over the radio to pull the women and children farther back. The shooter was still inside, and they were not about to see any more Americans shot or killed that night.

By now hours had passed since they first landed near the village. Between trekking up and down the insanely steep mountain, reaching the objective, flushing out the shooter, and getting their injured Ranger to safety, they had used up nearly all their limited hours of darkness. Shards of daylight began to lighten the sky. Amber wondered whether they were facing the dreaded “ROD”—remain over day—and hoped they weren’t. No one wanted to be there come dawn; the Americans and the Afghans would be juicy prizes in this Taliban stronghold if they were still on that hill when the sun rose. She eyed warily the hills that surrounded them and held her M4 assault rifle even closer.

We’ll be Taliban breakfast, Amber thought to herself.

“CST, let’s go.
Now!
” the Ranger first sergeant ordered.

Amber looked around at the women and children she had just spent the entire night alongside. They may not have spoken English, but they understood the voice command Amber had just received.
Their safety blanket was about to be taken away. The children began to scream and cry in Pashto. She could feel how scared they were now that the Americans had come and gone and found out about their relative, who happened to be an insurgent dedicated to fighting the foreign forces.

She hoped that her being there had made things less terrible for them, but right now she had to get the hell out of there. She offered her goodbyes, grabbed Jimmie by the sleeve once more, and began running out of the village behind the other soldiers.

As they bounded out of the village, Amber glanced back at the crying family. She wondered what would happen to the young woman who had wrapped her baby in Amber’s scarf. Or the small girl with the wide, brown eyes who so loved the Jolly Ranchers? She didn’t know and never would. She had done as much as she could. And now it was time to go.

Time had proven to be a formidable enemy. They missed the nighttime window in which a hulking Chinook could safely land and whisk them back to base. It was too risky, so now their only option was to run to the closest forward operating base and catch a ride back.

It was five miles away and a glint of light could be seen in the sky overhead. The platoon was running through the last moments of darkness, praying they could last just a bit longer under the disappearing cover of night, when Amber heard the sound of small arms fire. Bullets started spraying all around them as villagers greeted them with round after round.

Amber kept moving and studied the men in front of her, watching as they switched from a fast sprint to an unpredictable pattern of running and ducking, using buildings for cover. She had never had proper infantry training, only a half-day tutorial in the CST summer course. The Rangers, on the other hand, specialized in this kind of combat evasion and had prepared extensively for precisely this kind of situation. Guess I am in for some on-the-job training,
Amber said to herself with a dose of gallows humor. Imitation is the best form of avoiding a fatality, or something like that, she thought.

And so, when the Rangers zigged, Amber zigged; when they zagged, she did the same. She mimicked every movement they made: they looked up and down the street, she looked up and down the street. They “pied” corners—a technique for rounding a corner in a dangerous situation that minimizes exposure to the body—and Amber pied corners, ducking, crouching, using the compound walls for cover without actually touching them. Her mind flashed back to action films where the hero dodges gunfire while running at top speed. She always wondered how they managed to stay alive, and now here she was doing it herself, in daylight no less. It all felt surreal, as if she were trapped on a film set. Only the sounds and the sights were undeniably real. She was glad to see she was keeping up with the Rangers, and surprised by just how fast adrenaline and the desire to avoid getting shot propelled them all forward in all that gear. Even Jimmie was close behind; all the sprints had served him well.

Holy fuck, Amber, she coached herself as they tore through the village. Just do what these guys are doing and
do not
screw up.

She kept running. Do not let it be the girl who gets the bullet.

It wasn’t just that Amber didn’t want to get shot for her own sake. She knew that if
anyone
got hit right now the entire platoon would have to slow down to carry that soldier out. She didn’t want to put anyone at even greater risk than they already were.

Then over the radio she heard one of the leaders congratulate the unit for their part in making the “Mogadishu Mile.” It was a tribute to the Rangers who got pinned down on the streets of the Somali capital city in the Black Hawk Down incident. I gotta hand it to ’em, Amber thought. These guys don’t lose their sense of humor even under fire.

At long last they reached their destination: an American FOB, or forward operating base, where a helicopter could safely land and
carry them home. Amber thought the noise of the gate creaking open might just be the happiest sound she had ever heard.

It wasn’t long before she was strapped into a noisy helicopter, the air filled with the smell of sweat mixed with gasoline, dust, and the gun oil CLP. Basking in a moment of pure relief, Amber realized she was ravenous. She promised herself she would always remember to bring a snack on future missions. Then she looked around at all those fighters, the guys she had dreamed of joining, and felt pure joy.

I have gone cliff diving, executed FBI search warrants to drug-dealing gang members, jumped out of planes, she told herself. But nothing matches this high. She imagined she could stay up for two more days if she had to. Going out to get bad men who were killing innocents and fellow soldiers and then living to tell the tale—well, making it to the other side of all that was a drug in itself, and Amber was sure that nothing else, ever, could match it.

Man, these mountains are majestic, Amber thought as the helicopter lifted them off the ground and over the trees that had, hours earlier, held so much gloom and terror. The sun rose in streaks of brilliant orange and red to greet them.

An hour later, back on base, she sat eating a microwaved s’more and listening to the team debrief the mission: what they had done right, what they had done wrong, the information they had gathered. What they needed to do better next time.

“Oh, yeah, hey, CST, good job out there,” the Ranger who led the brief remarked. “You corroborated the fact that we were missing somebody.”

In that moment she felt part of the team. Even if she still had a lot to learn on the job, which she did, she had contributed to the mission. And she had taken fire without crapping herself.

I love this job, she thought as she collapsed into bed that morning.

12

Making a Difference

* * *

T
here
,” the CST pointed. “There he is.”

Sarah Waldman, MP and former Girl Scout who loved sewing as much as survival training, stood before a cluster of surveillance monitors at the operations center. She was pointing to a blurry dot on the screen, an insurgent called “Hamidullah” whom the Rangers had been watching on-screen for more than a dozen hours. Her job was to serve as a second pair of eyes during the daylong surveillance, a backup to the officers and team members whose duty it was to watch every bit of footage coming in. The fact that a Ranger leader had given her this assignment was a backhanded compliment: the monitoring work was tedious and hard on the eyes, but it was undoubtedly important. Sarah was proud to have been asked, and for hours had been focusing intently on the monitor.

In the last few weeks Sarah had swung between epic frustration and sublime fulfillment with her new role. Some nights the Ranger forces brought her out on mission and put her to work; those nights she loved. Other nights they would tell her there was no room on the helicopter or they didn’t need her; those nights she loathed. She spent the down nights strategizing with Leda about how best to argue her case to the platoon’s commanders.

“Give it time,” Leda advised. “CST is entirely new for these guys; let them see what you can do and let your work speak for itself.”

Sitting and doing
nothing
while her team went on mission was frustrating, but Sarah knew Leda was right.

All over Afghanistan the U.S. military’s counterterrorism teams rely on technology to verify and amplify the intelligence gathered and help them “see” what is happening on the ground. Via satellites, balloons, manned and unmanned aircraft, the last decade of warfare has witnessed an explosive growth of visual sensors, “eyes in the skies” that offer a window on sites the American military could not otherwise observe.
Air Force
magazine called the new intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance—ISR—“a revolution” that’s changing the way war works by bringing superior technology to the battlefield in ever-more-real time. Or, as General McChrystal’s intelligence chief wrote in 2008, “airborne ISR has become critical to this war because it offers persistent and low-visibility observation of the enemy as well as an ability to detect, identify, and track him” in places where foes can easily “camouflage” themselves among civilians. This revolution began in Bosnia, but came into its own in the years following the initial invasions into Afghanistan and Iraq; by the time CST boots hit the ground in Afghanistan, its impact was visible all across the country. The presence of the sensors lowered the number of casualties by allowing the military to stop attacks before they could occur. They also allowed commanders to get a better sense of where and how the insurgents were operating so when they did pursue them, they could minimize the risks to innocents.

In the JOC, teams of specialists working with the Rangers had been watching Hamidullah most of the day as he got on and off his motorcycle, making his rounds throughout the village, traveling from stop to stop to meet with his contacts. Intel folks understood he was a central figure in a plot to bomb a target in a nearby town center—a high-visibility attack designed to strike a crowded location at a busy time of day and terrify as many as possible. The goal of Sarah’s commanders was to stop him before he struck.

Sarah carefully kept her eye on the blurry figure as it moved
through the crowded streets. Finally, she saw Hamidullah stop before one of the biggest and most impressive compounds in the area. The building was built in Alexandrian style and boasted fourteen-foot walls with high towers rising from every corner. The house looked sturdier and more expensive than most in the area, as though it had been constructed from cement, usually imported from Pakistan, rather than the dirt or thatch that covered most houses in the insurgency-controlled rural areas. Most of those homes proved vulnerable to the harsh extremes of the Afghanistan climate, and looked like they might easily give way during even a modest storm. Like many of the compounds in the area, this one housed several extended families behind thick walls that offered privacy by making the house impossible to see from the outside. Inside, a network of narrow lanes connected one home to another, and a series of spacious courtyards provided areas for children to play and women to socialize. The families frequently consisted of one man with multiple wives and many more children, plus assorted visitors. This meant there might be three, four, or five men at home at once, along with at least three times as many women and children.

Minutes ticked by and Hamidullah stood by the door. On the other side of the wall, Sarah could see what appeared to be children playing. Then another figure came out and quickly returned inside, bringing the little ones with him. The children came back out and an adult brought them back inside again. She watched as Hamidullah rolled his motorcycle down the road by the handlebars to the entrance of what looked like a guesthouse and covered it with a sheet. A door opened and he quickly disappeared from sight.

Having confirmed the insurgent’s presence in the compound, a team of Rangers filed onto their helicopters that night. Sarah initially worried she would be held back, since he was thought to be armed and official guidance from the higher-ups required that a CST remain on base if there was arduous terrain or an imminent threat of “contact”—meaning getting fired at or shot. But she had seen the
compound Hamidullah entered and so had the Rangers. Kids lived there, which meant women nearly certainly did as well. Her services would be useful. Sarah, like all the CSTs, understood that contact could come at any time on any night, on any mission—they were
never
safe, and they accepted that. They had come to Afghanistan to do a job, not to be protected from the hazards of the work. This time, she was asked to join the operation.

She now found herself running off the bird with members of the Ranger platoon and walking toward the very same walls the insurgent had recently passed through. Once they reached their destination she waited for the assault team to do its work.

From a hundred feet back she watched as the Rangers cleared the compound and entered the guesthouse. The U.S. soldiers and their Afghan counterparts moved from room to room, silently hunting for explosives, weapons, and intelligence items.

“CST,” she finally heard over the radio. “We need you here.” Sarah and her interpreter, Wazhma, moved inside the compound to the living area and found a woman and children huddled together, nervously watching every move of the men who had summoned her in. Sarah could feel their terror.

She began by addressing the only adult in the room, who turned out to be the woman of the house, Masuda. She sat in the middle of the richly decorated room, surrounded by her seven children. Wine-colored tapestries hung on the walls and the carpets were freshly washed and well tended. She wore a dress with elaborate beading and embroidery running through the fabric. As someone who grew up making blankets and pillowcases, Sarah could appreciate the effort such handwork required. The crisp, loose-fitting gown looked new, not at all like the fading, threadbare dresses covered with old woolen shawls she was accustomed to seeing here in one of the most rural parts of the country. Masuda looked as if she wouldn’t appear out of place in one of Afghanistan’s heavily crowded and rapidly modernizing cities.