The Infection (21 page)

And so this meeting had been brokered in an attempt to stop the fighting.

Two Bradleys loaded with heavily armed combat infantry were sent to the base as a demonstration of strength. Sarge was glad to be in the point vehicle. For most of the trip, he was able to enjoy the beautiful scenery rolling by without eating the other vehicle’s dust.

The truth was he loved Afghanistan and had even learned to love its people. The Afghans lived close to life and death. This was one of the places of the world where it was still common to see nomads living off the land. It was a very old place. Numerous armies had marched through it—Greek, Persian, Indian, Mongol, British, Soviet. The Afghans had beaten the British and the Soviets and had nothing to show for it; centuries of warfare had impoverished the country, and many people here lived as they had for thousands of years, in ignorance and poverty.

Sarge had grown up in Los Angeles searching for something he could not name. He spent his teenage years gang banging on the city’s hard streets as a corner dealer and later as muscle. He killed a boy three days before his seventeenth birthday, but they never caught him for that. A month later, his girl dumped him and he smashed windshields in a drunken, brokenhearted rage all the way up two blocks of Hillcrest until the cops finally showed up. He took a swing at one and they did a Rodney King on him. In court, he was given a choice of prison or the Army.

Two years later, he was deployed to Afghanistan. Found himself sitting on a Bradley, watching M1 Abrams tanks drive across fields of poppies overlooked by the wild mountains of the Hindu Kush and endless blue sky.

And that thing he’d been searching for? He’d found it.

The column followed the jingly truck into the base in a blinding cloud of dust. The men piled out of the truck. One hoary specimen, his eyes white with cataracts and sporting a long white beard, scowled at everything. The Colonel and his staff emerged from a large tent set up for the meeting and they shook hands all around. The old man with the beard stood off to the side, refusing to shake. Noticing Sarge, he spat and said something in Pashtun, ending with
Yabba dabba doo
!

Sarge knew the expression but had never heard it spoken. It was Afghan slang, roughly translating as, “falling crates that knock down houses.” During the invasion in 2001, the Americans dropped boxes of food onto the villages, and some of them landed on huts and destroyed them, a perfect little parable of the trouble with good intentions.

One of the other Afghans, the man who had waved to him from the back of the truck, laughed and said, “Do not take it personal. He thinks you are Russian. He thinks you are all Russians.”

“He’s got a long memory,” Sarge said. “Maybe he thinks I’m British.”

“Ha. Perhaps. English and Russians alike died here. I hope you will do better, my friend.”

“
Inshallah
,” Sarge said. If God wills it.

The Afghan laughed with feeling. “There is a path to the top of even the highest mountain,” he exclaimed, quoting an Afghan proverb. Then it was Sarge’s turn to laugh.

More jingle trucks pulled up to drop off more village representatives. The squad in Sarge’s Bradley dismounted in full battle rattle, showing off their firepower to the Afghans. The place was suddenly swarming with locals and heavily armed soldiers in a melee of salutations and small talk. The Colonel ushered them into the big tent for tea, and then it was quiet again in the compound.

A dollar got you fifty afghanis, the local money. Sarge had seen a lot of Afghanistan and particularly enjoyed visiting the larger bases that had a market day where you could buy local food, crafts, anything. He loved the food, especially the rice
pilau
, and ate it the way the Afghans did, using
naan
flatbread as a utensil to scoop the food into his mouth. But in these smaller bases, there was nothing to buy. And nothing to do except duck bullets.

Sarge talked to Devereaux about the base and its vulnerabilities for a few minutes, and then decided to join a few of the base’s soldiers sitting and smoking on buckets and ammo crates in the protective shadow of a concrete bunker. This little nook apparently passed for the base’s lounge.

“Welcome to Mortaritaville,” one of the soldiers said. “Got any cigarettes?”

Devereaux did, and they all got along fine trading jokes and war stories and cutting into MRE pouches looking for candy. Sarge found a comfortable spot on the ground with his back against a wooden bin holding water bottles. The soldiers were already laughing at Devereaux. The boys in the squad called him “the Afghan” because he loved to tell big stories. The smallest firefight became an epic starring him and the Bradley. Sarge loved this part of Army life. Shooting the shit and occasionally busting balls.

“Black and white don’t matter to me, Sarge,” Devereaux was saying. “I wouldn’t mind being a black dude like you if there weren’t so many fucking douchebags. I’d rather be white because there are more white douchebags than black douchebags, and so the odds of somebody being a douchebag to me are less being white. Does that make any sense?”

“At least you’re not a jinglie,” another soldier said to Devereaux, referring to the Afghans. “Everybody’s a douchebag to the jinglies. This place has been douchebagged since the dawn of time.”

Sarge laughed.

The meeting dragged on all day until the Afghan leaders piled into their jingly trucks and started the drive back to their villages. They were smiling when they left, which the soldiers took as a good sign. Word went around that the Colonel had made good progress in getting the locals back on their side. Sarge understood that he and his boys would stay the night, and then rejoin his unit near Mehtariam tomorrow morning. The valley filled with a familiar mechanical sound and he looked up, shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare with his hand, to see a pair of Chinook helicopters pounding air, escorted by a single Apache attack helicopter.

One of the Chinooks wobbled and abruptly fell out of the sky, crashing into the mountainside moments later and breaking into pieces as it rolled into the trees.

“Whoa,” Devereaux said to one of the base’s soldiers. “Did you see that?”

The soldier shook his head in wonder. His nose wrinkled and he said, “Man, that smells funny.” Then his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed screaming.

“Medic!” Sarge roared, kneeling next to the man to check his vital signs. “We need some help over here!”

But soldiers were falling everywhere onto the crushed stones, screaming.

The Colonel came running out of the tent.

“We’re under attack! Get to your posts!”

The Apache veered and collided with the other Chinook, bringing them both down onto the mountain in a spectacular, hundred-yard-long eruption of dust and stones.

The soldiers were falling and lay on the stones screaming, their bodies taut with pain.

“Holy shit,” Sarge said, and ran for the Bradley.

He sat in the commander’s station, panicking, his heart pounding against his ribs. What had happened to those men? Were they dead? If this were a biological or chemical attack, weren’t they all exposed? If the Taliban did this, the gloves would come off. They were begging the world’s best military for wholesale extermination, and they would get it.

After waiting for several minutes, he shifted into the gunner’s seat, working the periscopes to scan the heights for possible enemy attack.

The screaming stopped. Sarge almost cried with relief. After several moments of pure silence, the compound filled with shouting voices. Sarge sat for three hours, talking occasionally to the commander of the other Bradley on the radio, trying to find out what he could. Martinez and Thompson, the driver and the gunner, did not return. He assumed the worst.

Somebody banged on the side of the Bradley.

“You in there, Sarge?” It was Devereaux. “Answer me, goddammit!”

Sarge popped the hatch and emerged blinking into the late afternoon air.

“I’m here,” he said. “I’m okay. How about you? Your boys okay?”

His comrade nodded, his eyes glazed and his face pale.

“We’re managing,” Devereaux told him.

“Where’s my crew?”

“They’re down, Sarge.”

“
Goddammit
,” Sarge said fiercely.

Devereaux added, “They’re still putting everybody in that big tent where they had the meeting. The base suffered twenty percent casualties from whatever the hell just happened.”

One of five men was down. It was incredible.

“What’s our alert status? Why is everybody walking around?”

“The Colonel just dropped security to thirty percent,” Devereaux said. “I heard somebody say they heard the RTO tell the Colonel that this is happening everywhere, and the Colonel is figuring it’s not an attack. Right now he’s arguing with the Captain over whether to send a unit out to look for survivors at the place where those helicopters crashed. The Captain is refusing orders. He doesn’t want to go. Says we might still be attacked.”

“What do you mean, ‘everywhere?’” said Sarge. “You mean the whole country?”

“
INCOMING!
”

Soldiers were running everywhere, seeking cover. Devereaux ran and dove into a mortar pit, leaving Sarge to look for the source of the fire. The mortar round fell short, exploding just outside the base’s timber walls in a flash followed by a giant cloud of smoke and dust. A machine gun began firing on the rocky heights, sending plunging fire into the compound. Small arms fire flashed across the distant hills. Sarge flinched as he heard the first hissing snap and twang of bullets flying past his ears.

He climbed back onto the Bradley, lowered himself in and began working the control handles to maneuver the turret and align the rig’s cannon with the MG position at the top of the ridge.

It’s the locals, he realized. They fell down screaming too and they think it’s us who did it to them. Christ, there are seventy thousand NATO troops in the Sandbox and nearly thirty million Afghans. Twenty percent casualties would be fourteen thousand NATO troops but
six million Afghans
. If they think we did it, we’re toast. They slaughtered the goddamn Red Army for a fraction of the offense.

He fired, sending rounds arcing to crash into the heights. The MG fire stopped.

Big Dog 1, this is Big Dog 2, come in, over
, he heard over the radio.

“I’m here, Big Dog 2, over,” he said, scanning for another target.

“The Mark 19 is down!” somebody yelled outside.

Mortar shells were bursting in the compound. A rocket propelled grenade hit the Bradley—an amazing shot—and glanced off before bursting in the air, raking its armor with shrapnel.

Big Dog 1, we’ve got reports of fire from the police station. Can you confirm, over?”

“Identified,” he said into the mike. “I’ve got hostile fire from the ANP station, Big Dog 2. The insurgents have taken the building, over.”

They’re all yours, Big Dog 1. Happy hunting, out.

He fired the cannon, dropping a score of rounds onto the building, which crumbled under the fire in a massive cloud of smoke and dust.

“Target,” he said.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

“Big Dog 2, this is Big Dog 1, over.”

Then he saw. The Afghans were sending plunging fire down into the tent where the fallen soldiers had been placed. The radio filled with angry voices.

We need fire on that fucking hill!

The human condition is to survive. When a man is just surviving, he has been carved down to the animal he once was. And animals only think of their own survival. It is all about fight or flight and a lot of times the animal in you wants to run blindly to safety. What makes a soldier a good soldier, Sarge knows, is when he is properly trained to control these impulses. What makes a soldier brave, even noble, is when he is willing to sacrifice his own safety for his fellow soldiers.

Soldiers were running into the open to draw fire, trying to distract the insurgents away from shooting at the tent, and were getting cut down. Sarge counted three bodies writhing on the stones bleeding and a fourth lying completely still. Another soldier was standing in the open on a carpet of spent brass and links, firing steadily into the hills. It was Devereaux.

“The Afghan” is going to have one hell of a story to tell if he survives this, Sarge thought. He continued to rain suppressing area fire onto the enemy positions along the ridge.

The radio steadily filled with traffic.

We got hostiles identified in the open to the north and east. They’re crossing the minefield, over.

The insurgents were launching a full-scale attack, spending their first wave on the minefield. Two additional waves followed closely on the heels of the first. Then it would be hand to hand fighting among the hooches. There were hundreds of insurgents in the assault.

Combat Outpost Sawyer was very close to being overrun. Sarge could hear the distant voices shouting,
Yalla yalla
! One of them cried
All
ā
hu akbar
, and the rest took up the shout. The volume of fire intensified. Hand grenades began bursting near the bunkers.

Jalabad says we’re getting zero air support, over.