Ashley's War (28 page)

Sarah closed the doors to the room so none of the men could see
inside, and began speaking in quiet tones, in hopes of calming everyone and persuading them that she would do all she could to keep them safe. She promised that no one would enter or be able to hear their conversation, and she begged the woman to speak freely. The children quieted down and Masuda began to tell her story.

This man you are looking for,
she said,
invaded our home today. He began banging on our gate this afternoon and demanding that my husband let him in. My husband didn’t answer for a while because he wanted the man to go away, but then the man shouted that he carried guns and explosives and that if my husband didn’t allow him in our home he would simply blow up the door and kill everyone inside.

The only sound in the room came from one of the older boys, who was sniffling loudly between bouts of tears.

Finally my husband had to let him in. What were we going to do otherwise? So he came into our house and demanded that we feed him. We prepared dinner for him
—
I made everything we had so that he would be full and then leave our house
—
and served him in the main house, because he insisted. But he wouldn’t leave even after my husband pleaded with him to go. And then you came
.

Sarah asked Wazhma to stand watch and left the room to confer with the Rangers. She and her fellow CSTs had heard this story of the “unknown intruder” frequently, and many times the facts proved it false. But tonight, Sarah thought, this woman’s story added up. She learned that the Rangers had quickly identified Hamidullah by the bounty of guns, ammo, and grenades he wore strapped to his person. The only question was whether the other man present had been acting as his accomplice. Sarah conveyed to the Rangers everything she had learned from Masuda, explaining how the entire family had been held hostage for much of the day. Her account backed up the intel the Rangers had gathered, and it all led to the same conclusion: Masuda’s husband had nothing to do with the insurgency and no connection to the would-be attacker. They just happened to live in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sarah returned to the room with the tapestries to reassure the family that everything would be okay.

Finally relaxed for the first time that evening, Masuda stroked the arm of one of her sons, who was clutching a doll that Wazhma had given him. She described how a Taliban-allied network was running rampant throughout the region. Her husband made his money as a contractor for the Afghan government, which meant he earned coveted dollars that came from the Americans. This association with well-funded foreigners meant she lived with the constant fear that her home and family members would be a target. Sarah and Wazhma sat quietly speaking with her and the children until a soldier’s voice crackled through the radio.

“CST, time to move!” As she filed out of the compound behind the Ranger unit in the courtyard Sarah saw Hamidullah. She thought of all her fellow soldiers who had been injured and killed in her two months on the ground at the hands of men like this one. Sarah and Wazhma then heard a voice come through Hamidullah’s radio. It was now reaching very different listeners than the men on the other end of the connection expected.

“Where is Hamidullah?” the voice called out. Sarah knew enough rudimentary Pashto to understand.

Silence.

“Hamidullah, where are you?” came a second voice.

“He’s not there,” said a third man.

Finally one of the Afghan interpreters had had enough.

“Hey, Taliban: don’t you worry about Hamidullah,” the translator said, interrupting their conversation. “We got your guy.”

The entire crew ran even faster than normal back to the helicopters, knowing they could still get blown up anytime on the way home. They called for air support to stand guard on the way out to protect them as they ran to the security of their lift back to their base. Sarah found the roaring of the bird’s engines oddly comforting: a soothing white noise against which she could empty her thoughts.
Staring at the insurgent, Sarah wondered about the endlessness of it all, and the barbarity. If this man and his brethren had found the Americans before they captured him he would have beheaded them all and posted the video on YouTube for all the world to see. She had heard the voices of his fellow insurgents on the radio, men who no doubt were already forging plans for their next attack. She hoped Masuda and her children would stay safe.

In a few days, Sarah would turn twenty-four in this remote valley of Afghanistan. Her birthday would also mark the tenth anniversary of Operation Enduring Freedom, the official name for the military campaign that began in October 2001, weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Back in those dark days, Sarah sat with her father on the steps leading into their kitchen watching the TV blare news of the fight. She knew she would always remember the day America went to war, because in the middle of it her mother entered the room carrying a big yellow ice cream cake with a smiley face on it and belted out “Happy Birthday” to her girl. Now, ten years later, she was living in a spare outpost on the front lines of that very same war with a team that was tracking down insurgents. Instead of ice cream with her family she would share a hot chai and a CrossFit workout with her CST partner Lori. She wasn’t complaining; she had chosen to be there. But life here was so different, and few back home could understand just how, or why.

She wondered where she would be next year. Would
she
make it to twenty-five? Sarah had told her mother little about what she was doing, but enough for her to understand its gravity and seriousness, and to be prepared in case something happened. Back in New York, Sarah’s mother was composing a note for her daughter.

At 3:31 am they placed you, a purplish pink beautiful baby girl with dark hair on my belly. Daddy cut your cord and set you free to the outside world. What a magic, miraculous moment your birth was. As I was holding you and being wheeled to recovery,
I was in awe of this new chapter of my life. I remember asking God to help me. I put you into His hands. Now more than ever, when I get scared or concerned about you, I think back to that moment. I think of God holding and keeping you safe because I can’t. It gives me a sense of peace and calm.

You have made me the happiest mother on earth. Even though I can’t give you a birthday hug, I know you can feel it in your heart as I can feel it in mine.

Continue to do the good work you have been doing on your missions. You are making a difference.

B
ack in Kandahar, Ashley too had just celebrated her birthday. She, Lane, and their bunkmate Meredith, who had first shown them around their rooms, had grabbed a couple of spoons and shared a Funfetti “cake in a jar” with frosting that Meredith’s younger sister had sent from Illinois. Then they smoked a hookah in their room.

“It was definitely a memorable twenty-fourth,” Ashley told the newly arrived Leda with a smile.

Having recovered in record time from the leg injury she had sustained in pre-mission training, Leda resumed her duties as officer in charge (OIC) in September, and traveled to Kandahar as part of her whirlwind tour of all the CST outposts. Her first order of business was to visit each one of her teams in person to make sure that everyone had what she needed.

By October, the CSTs had been in Afghanistan for almost three months and, as one officer commented, “the training wheels were off.” It was a more seasoned group of soldiers, and Leda’s role had shifted from helping them get ready for war to helping them succeed in it. While she had been back in the United States recuperating, she had tracked them closely by email and online and had coached some of them through the rough patches of integrating into their teams; now she was witnessing them in action, and she was gratified, if unsurprised, to learn about their successes.

Leda knew that some of the CSTs felt the burden of isolation at their remote outposts. They missed the camaraderie of the summer when they all lived together and could gather as a group for meals in the dining hall, joke around, or discuss tactics. To replace that physical camaraderie, Leda turned to technology: in addition to her weekly email report, the one that she sent to JSOC leaders that cataloged what they did, learned, and located each night, she created a second, internal-only version in which the CSTs shared moments only they would understand, from ordering Spanx bodywear so uniform bottoms slid on more easily to getting caught peeing or falling into a wadi (dry riverbed) while out on mission surrounded by a team of Ranger men. Leda also launched a series of regular video teleconferences for the CSTs so they could interact with one another while sharing the “best practices” they developed on the job as well as all the gory details of their battlefield mishaps. She knew that a key aspect of her job was to keep the team unified and morale high despite the physical distances between them.

Leda had long been a student of leadership strategies, studying everything from neurolinguistics to the work of Jim Collins and Tony Robbins. She viewed leadership in this kind of high-stress, high-intensity, high-performance environment as being all about caring for, supporting, and leading the whole person, not just his or her soldier self. The women, in turn, called on Leda for everything, small or large. When they hankered for Honey Nut Cheerios and the DFAC didn’t have any, Leda delivered. And when a young male officer began making uninvited visits to Amber at her base, it was Leda she confided in. Amber never saw the man again.

They had never felt so taken care of in their lives.

Throughout August and September, Leda stayed in close touch with Ashley by email and phone. The North Carolina Guardswoman had always been special to Leda, ever since the first days at the Landmark Inn when Ashley had confided her fears that her quiet shyness might somehow hinder her potential. From the moment they met
at Assessment and Selection Leda was confident this officer would come into her own at war, but she hoped that her breaking-in period wouldn’t be any longer or more awkward than it had to be. Now she had come to Kandahar to see for herself how her younger friend and teammate was faring. And what she saw surprised her.

L
eda’s first inkling that Ashley was fitting in perfectly well came the morning she arrived. Standing in the barracks door she watched Ashley roll out of bed around noon, hair scraggly, T-shirt wrinkled, and black sweatpants bunched up around her shins. She looked like everyone else around her, drowning in her hoody and bleary-eyed from the rhythms of the nocturnal life that had become her new normal. She welcomed Leda with a warm embrace and in no time began describing in precise detail the previous night’s mission.

Gone was the shy second lieutenant who had trouble addressing a group of Ranger men. In her place was an increasingly assertive, recently promoted first lieutenant who could comfortably and effectively communicate through an interpreter with Afghan women in the middle of a combat mission while searching for hidden insurgents and intel. Not only that: Ashley was eager to share with her OIC what she was learning each night and how it fit into the larger effort to end the war and make Afghanistan safer.

She’s actually beaming, Leda thought as Ashley walked her through the evening’s pre-mission brief. It seemed incredible to Leda that after just eight weeks Ashley’s biggest concern was that her platoon leader would think she was too injured to go out that night. She had Band-Aids on her legs to cover rope-climbing burns earned at the gym. Leda assured her that no one would notice. “Those guys all have their own nicks to tend to,” she said. “Keep the Band-Aids on and let your legs heal while they can.”

More gratifying were the reports she was receiving from Rangers around camp who said Ashley had proven tactically efficient and increasingly adept at getting what was needed each night. Just as Jason
had predicted, his wife’s artless kindness and professionalism—boosted by Nadia’s experience and guidance—had proven to be powerful in winning over both the men she worked with and the women and children she met each night.

S
atisfied with what she saw and heard from the CST and the men she supported, Leda asked Ashley what her thoughts were about the future. With six months left in Afghanistan, Leda wanted all her soldiers to begin thinking about what they wanted to do next—and about how their OIC could help. Earlier that day she had put the same question to Anne, who replied that all she wanted was to keep doing CST missions as long as she could. Period.

But Ashley was contemplating a different future. She still wanted to become a physician’s assistant (PA); the only question that remained was where she would go and what program would accept her. She also needed to find out where Jason would be stationed next and if he could remain at Fort Bragg, as she very much hoped, so she could try to find a job with JSOC after her deployment ended. Leda had once mentioned the possibility of finding a civilian role as a PA within the special operations community and after working with the Rangers, Ashley loved that idea even more. It had been a privilege to serve with special operations, and she also was keen to remain in the little house with the yellow kitchen in Fayetteville. She was already training for a marathon she planned to run in Ohio once her deployment was over. Leda sensed that the future was very much on her mind.

“There’s one other thing,” Ashley added.

“I think I want to be a mom,” she said. Leda noticed the shift in tone from confident to nearly embarrassed as Ashley uttered the word
mom
. She guessed Ashley didn’t want her hard-charging OIC to think less of her because she wanted to focus on family after this was all done.

“Ash, why are you hesitating? Were you nervous about telling me
that?” Leda asked. “You want to be a mom? Of course I think that’s great. Hell, yeah, I think that is terrific!”

Leda knew that Ashley had been poring over kinesiology books in the broom closet office whenever she wasn’t on mission or asleep, and now said that if Ashley was serious about applying to physician’s assistant school she could start her family and her studies at the same time and keep working within the special operations community. Leda mentioned several people she knew who would be helpful to Ashley as she thought through her job options and courses of study.