Green on Blue (16 page)

I don’t know, said Tawas. Does it truly matter? Maybe I’ll stay with the Special Lashkar. Commander Sabir is a fair man. He takes care of us. Gazan
isn’t the only dog worth killing. There are others. Or, I could try to find work in Orgun, or maybe to the north around FOB Sharana . . . I don’t know.

I pulled the old scarred bolt off the air filter. Tawas pushed me out of the way and turned on the next one. All answers don’t need to come at once, he said as he thrust his head under the hood. For now badal
is enough, and then, well, I believe all will seem as new once Gazan is dead.

His wrench slipped again. His knuckles slammed into the engine block, breaking skin. In pain, he bit his lip, but then smiled to himself, content in his work.

Once Tawas and I replaced the air filter, we walked with the rest of our team to the mess hall. We devoured plates of greasy rice baked into a chalow and warm naan. Back in our barracks, we found Issaq reclining against his bed, full and sleepy. He paid little attention as the squad filed in. Not knowing what to do and not wanting to bother Issaq, Yar motioned for us to sit on our beds and wait. Despite the excitement of what lay ahead, the dust and warm afternoon air ground us toward sleep. Some dozed, and some cleaned rifles and night-vision goggles with old American toothbrushes. All were attuned to the door, though, wondering when Commander Sabir would come with the plan. When finally he entered, it felt like we’d waited a very long time. Silently we stood, wanting to be told what to do and then to do it.

Commander Sabir stopped in the aisle between our bunks. His arms were folded across his Nike Swoosh T-shirt. His skin was pulled tight and pale over his cheeks and chin. Across them was stubble. He looked sick from drinking the night before. At first he spoke quietly to Issaq, who looked down our rows of beds and nodded back. Then Issaq nodded again, raised his arm, and called us over. We silently circled around Commander Sabir.

He turned out his hands and gazed upward, putting his face to God’s. Bizmullah ir Rahman ir Rahim, he said in prayer.

We, his soldiers, responded in unison: Bizmullah ir Rahman ir Rahim, in the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Commander Sabir dropped his head, running his palms over his eyes and cheeks. We did the same. He lowered his gaze, leveling his face with ours. A great opportunity has come, he said. This night, Gazan will be at the madrassa along the north road. One of my informants assures me of it. Some spingaris
in Gomal have offered to support Gazan with food and weapons. These old fools have planned to meet him so they might discuss this deception, but they will find us there too.

He then explained how the entire Special Lashkar would be part of this raid, how we would capture, and most likely kill, Gazan and the spingaris from Gomal. He described how the Comanches would block the north road and surround the madrassa while we, the Tomahawks, searched its rooms. A simple mission. Commander Sabir handed out some satellite photos he must’ve gotten from Mr. Jack. In them we saw the madrassa, a one-story square mud building with a high wall running its perimeter. It crowned a round hill that we would run up.

Commander Sabir finished the order and reminded us: The spingaris in Gomal refuse to let us build an outpost. They say they want no part in this war, but they help Gazan. These men are as much our enemies as any.

He finished speaking and in the quiet, he placed his hard stare on each of us. And as he did, I couldn’t help but meet his eyes with the glimmer of violent hope in my own.

–

A few hours later, Mortaza shook me by the shoulders.

It is time, he whispered.

Inside the barracks it was dark in that deep way where you must check to see if your eyes are open or closed. I groped next to my bed
until I felt my rifle. No one wanted to turn on all the lights. It would be too difficult to shift back into darkness. So we dressed in the dim shadows cast by our flashlights.

It was a little before midnight.

I ran my palms along the barrel of my Kalashnikov and turned on the flashlight bolted to its side. The beam shone a narrow column down the rows of beds where Yar and Tawas stood dressing among the ten others in our squad. They tied black do-rags over their kinked hair, Yar’s dark and gray, Tawas’s sandy brown. We all shuffled around the barracks, tugging at boots, grabbing rifles and night-vision goggles. I looked over my body armor, my magazines were topped off, my grenade pouches full. I pulled my brother’s hospital photo from my cargo pocket. His empty stare made me bitter. It made me bitter enough to be vicious, and I wanted to be vicious. I slid it into a plastic bag and tugged open the Velcro flap on my body armor. I put the photo between the steel plate and the piece of canvas that rested against my chest. If I were shot in front, the round would have to penetrate the steel plate, then the photo, and then my body. I draped my body armor over my head. It fell heavily against me and, as thin as the photo was, I felt it on my chest.

Yar was the first to leave our barracks for the trucks. The rest of our team followed. As we stepped outside, a strong wind blew smooth and warm against our bodies, and the clouds were low in the sky and heavy with rain. Across the firebase, Commander Sabir paced inside his quarters, his silhouette breaking the light that leaked out around his door frame. He readied himself for the darkness. Past his quarters, the night was complete. The moon had yet to rise and we shuffled through the rocky dirt, kicking up invisible dust that we breathed and tasted.

At the motor pool, we searched for our HiLux until Tawas found it in the darkness. He opened the back door, climbed in, and flashed his light once for the rest of us to see. No one spoke. We took our positions.
I climbed over the tailgate to the machine gun. My foot caught, sending me face-first into the bed.

You all right, Aziz? asked Tawas.

Fine, I said between clenched teeth. Then I noticed that the flashlight bolted to my Kalashnikov’s side had been knocked loose. I reached blindly for it in the bed, but we had no time to spare. It was lost.

From inside the cab, I could hear the radio on the dash and the noise of its transmissions as they came and went in static. Our HiLux jerked into gear, and we drove toward the gate where the rest of the convoy assembled. Yar lined up our truck in the column. Some of the Comanches had already gone to block the north road. The rest of them, two HiLuxes worth, were lined up in front of us. Their engines idled and they gathered in small groups outside their vehicles. A single soldier peeled off from one of the groups and jogged down the convoy. He first stopped at Commander Sabir’s HiLux, which had parked just ahead of us. The soldier looked closer and saw the two Afghan flags on the hood, flapping in the night breeze. He ran past the truck. Just as he did, Commander Sabir stepped out from it. Yar saw him and went to see what he wanted, soon joined by Issaq and the Comanches’ squad and team leaders.

While Yar jogged toward Commander Sabir, the soldier continued to jog toward us until he hooked his arms over our HiLux’s bed and looked up at me. His night-vision goggles covered his face, but in a familiar voice he called out: Is this Tawas’s truck?

It was Qiam. I lifted my goggles so he could see me, but when my naked eyes looked back at him, his face disappeared into the darkness. It’s me, Aziz, I said. Tawas is in the cab.

Qiam grasped my arm. Aziz! he cried. Good luck tonight, my friend!

He opened the back door and climbed inside. The wind whipped across our convoy and the clouds hung increasingly low. A few moments later Mortaza stepped from the cab. He looked up at me and raised his
voice above the wind: The brothers should have a moment to speak before a thing such as this.

Mortaza and I stood silently and listened to the rhythm of their hushed conversation. I looked out over our convoy. The Comanches’ trucks idled in front of us. The two red stripes marking their doors, Mr. Jack’s war paint
,
appeared dark and green in my tiny field of view. The first of their two HiLuxes was parked with its fender eagerly pressed against the gate—the lead vehicle. Our assault element was lined up behind them—our squad’s two HiLuxes and Commander Sabir’s. I watched him as he stood in his huddle with Issaq, Yar, and the others. His hands rested solidly on his hips. The figures around him gestured wildly, their arms flapping like streamers on the wind, making their arguments. And while their debate continued, Commander Sabir stood motionless. Then he pointed once at Yar, said something, and pointed at the convoy. The group walked back to their trucks.

I banged on top of the cab. Qiam stepped outside and Mortaza climbed into his seat. Make him suffer, Qiam shouted over the wind. Tawas’s arm reached through his open window and grasped his brother’s. Then their grips broke and Qiam jogged back up the convoy. There was a great love between the two. It came from lives spent suffering together. And for me, it was a sad thing to think that but for their suffering, they would not have been so close.

I pulled apart the Velcro on my body armor. My fingers found the photo of my brother pressed against my chest. My breaths rose and fell against the steel plate, anxious and quick.

Without Ali, I was alone.

Yar ran back to our truck. Aziz, he said, the plan has changed. There is a back door to the madrassa, and from the cordon in the hills, the Comanches won’t be able to see it. When we arrive you’ll move quickly to the far side and cover the door. Shoot any who run from it.

Any? I asked.

Any! Yar shouted above the wind. All who run are against us. Hold your position until I wave you inside.

Yar disappeared into the cab to explain the new plan. Up front the Comanches’ trucks shifted into gear and our convoy unspooled onto the high plain. Once the Comanches left, all that remained was Commander Sabir’s HiLux in front of us and Issaq’s behind us. Although there were nearly thirty soldiers on the operation, there would be barely ten of us in the assault. I felt exposed and, for the first time since I’d arrived in Shkin, truly afraid. Then Commander Sabir’s HiLux shifted into gear and bounced toward the north road and the madrassa. As we followed him, the firebase’s steel gate crashed shut behind us.

I sat in the bed of the truck and held on to the buttstock of my machine gun. The moon wouldn’t rise until almost morning and we sank deeper and deeper into the darkness and the mountains. Our convoy kicked up dust. Nothing appeared clear. I focused and refocused my night-vision goggles. Behind us, Issaq’s HiLux trailed like a spirit. Every few minutes its headlights and fender would float in front of me, glowing like a mouth and eyes swimming in dust and night. When we’d approach a steep climb or cross a wide ravine the HiLux would slip farther behind, disappearing like a face submerged in clouded waters.

After an hour or so, a flash of small lights appeared ahead of us on the north road. I flipped up my goggles but saw nothing. I put them back down and they reappeared. They were infrared. The Comanches’ first set of checkpoints. I stared past the hood of our truck. The lights grew brighter and brighter, pulsing, yet invisible to all except us.

A single HiLux was parked on the narrow shoulder. A soldier climbed from its cab, his rifle slung across his back, but without his body armor, night-vision goggles, or helmet. He’d taken off the cumbersome equipment. Without it, he seemed naked. Through the darkness
he glanced toward us. His eyes mirrored the light like some sort of night animal, his face appeared dim and hollow. He couldn’t see the road, but he could hear us on it. We drove toward him, but he stared past us and into the mountain range beyond. Without his goggles he’d chosen to be blind and to find more of the world in what he could not see.

Commander Sabir’s HiLux stopped just before the checkpoint. He climbed out of the driver’s seat and shouted into the wind. The soldier came to attention and ran toward a single strand of concertina wire that blocked the road. By instinct his hands found the wire and slid it clear. Commander Sabir’s HiLux shifted back into gear, its flags caught the wind, and our convoy drove past the checkpoint and farther down the north road. As we passed, the soldier waved and gave us a victory sign, but still he stared, unseeing, into the darkness of the mountains.

It started to drizzle and the wind rose and a warm summer rain came down in sheets. It was loud against the earth. I couldn’t understand the transmissions inside the cab, but I could hear the static from Yar’s radio key in and out, in and out. My anticipation grew. At any moment our HiLux would stop, its doors would fly open, and we’d lead our assault over the steep ground to the madrassa. The rain was lucky. It would mask the sound of our movements, but still we would need to run fast. Perched on one of the ammunition cans, I stretched my legs in front of me and kneaded at their muscles with the heel of my palm. Behind our HiLux, a circle of lights flickered and formed among the ridgelines above. I flipped up my goggles. My naked eyes saw only blackness. The lights were infrared, the inner cordon, the Comanches. Almost there.

The rising moon shone full and bright behind clouds that glowed almost orange. We turned off the main road and down a smooth ribbon in the mud that suggested a trail. It ran hardly a hundred yards up the hill and toward the madrassa. Soon our convoy crammed fender to bumper along it and Commander Sabir’s HiLux shuddered and stopped.
His door swung open. He shouted against the wind that came hard over the mountains, but I couldn’t hear him. Our HiLux came to a sudden halt and my chest slammed against the cab. I was glad for the steel plate I wore and I thought of the photo of my brother pressed between it and my chest. I leapt over the tailgate and landed hard on the ground. As I stood, Tawas scrambled around the back and pulled a wooden scaling ladder from the bed. He ran with one arm hooked through its rungs and the other grasping his rifle. Issaq and Yar formed the assault element into a line whose width faced the madrassa. Tawas and the ladder arrived, the final missing piece. Then the entire string of us fanned out and advanced up the hill, its roundness crowned by the square-walled madrassa.