The Taliban Don't Wave (14 page)

I wrote my report, but omitted the argument between myself and Major Bane, and Stompin' Tom's big debut. I sent the warrant to find out what Aziz had done with the suspects. The Wizard came back to say that he was quietly questioning them in his HQ, and “that he would not require our assistance.” I was sure it wasn't because anything untoward was happening, but rather that he didn't want us to find out that he had no clue how to properly question “persons of interest.”

One by one, my teammates borrowed the satellite phone from the outgoing crew and went off to call home. It would be our first communication with our loved ones back home in over a week. I kept working on the report, and when I was finished I asked the warrant to join me; I wanted him with me when I confronted Major Bane regarding his apparent live-and-let-live policy regarding Timothy. I desperately needed some good answers as to
why
the Taliban IED planters weren't being slaughtered by our world-class snipers. Then I asked Hetsa to find the sniper sergeant and ask him to please join the warrant and me in the briefing room at the HQ.
There will be a reckoning.

As we walked toward the HQ I asked the Wizard how things were back home and he said everything was fine. I was happy to hear it, and looked forward to calling my wife, Amélie, that night. Hopefully I'd be able to say the same.

We entered the HQ building and grabbed some Freezies before making our grand entrance.
Nothing like a little liquid-sugar courage.

We entered the briefing room, and I politely asked the major if he, his CSM, my 2 I/C, and the sniper sergeant could discuss some ongoing issues. He seemed to fidget and looked visibly distressed as he thought about it for ten seconds, and then finally agreed. He asked a corporal to go and grab his CSM and then to not disturb us. The sniper sergeant arrived and joined the Wizard and me on one side of the table, and the major and his CSM sat down on the other. The line in the proverbial sand had been drawn between the shoot/don't shoot factions at Strong Point Sperwhan Ghar, although I wasn't sure which side Bane's CSM was on.

The major began by saying, “So, what seems to be the problem, Captain Semroo?”
Would it kill people to get my name right?!

“Well, sir, first off, thanks for taking the time to discuss some things that have been troubling me lately.”

“And what exactly has been
troubling
you lately?”

“Sir, I get it. I'm the new guy. We've only just arrived, I get that. But in the short time I've been here, it seems obvious to me that the snipers have been asking for permission to kill IED planters, and they're constantly being denied permission.”

“And what if they're wrong?” the major interrupted.

“They
haven't
been wrong. Not once. They've said they've got someone planting an IED and they've been denied permission to shoot—by you.”
And there it was!
We all stared at each other across the table.

“Okay, Captain. How can you tell me, with one hundred per cent certainty, that they're right?”
Holy crap, was he for real?

“Because they have a very good, proven track record, sir. They haven't been wrong, not once, and with all due respect, sir, we're fighting a war, so there's no such thing as ‘one hundred per cent certainty.'”

The major snapped, “You can spare us your lectures on war, Captain.” He was pissed, but I knew I had to strike while the iron was still hot.
All right Rob, time to put on your barracks-room lawyer suspenders!

“Sir, if you're looking for one hundred per cent certainty, let's look at the burden of proof. The first strike against the planters is we know the guys working in the middle of Route Brown at three in the morning aren't employed by the local city council to do road repairs. Second strike against them: they're not wearing the red lights that every farmer has been told to have on when they work in their fields at night, for fear of being killed by us if they
don't!
And, of course, they're not working in a field, but in the middle of Route Brown. Strike three: they're carrying what looks like howitzer shells and digging in the middle of the road at three in the morning, right between the same culverts where ten other times in a row, they've buried IEDs. They're not pirates searching for buried treasure in the middle of Route Brown!”

The major tried to interrupt me but I was in the zone and really rolling. “The fourth strike against them is whenever we launch parachute flares or fire illumination rounds to light them up, they run, take cover, and hide until the round burns out in the sky. Then they go back to work, burying howitzeresque shells in the middle of the road. Very suspicious. Fifth strike: they're stringing det-cord wire, from said device, over to the side of the road, and then burying the wire. Sixth strike against them is they're stringing the wire to a trigger point fifty metres away, where they'll have eyes on the device. Seventh strike is they're sitting there, and waiting. For hours on end. Waiting for us, or some ANA patrol to bumble along so they can kill them. Eighth and final strike against them, with which I am
now
intimately familiar, is they will turn and burn; they will run away from you, even when armed men are calling to them to come over and talk, when you've found their magic string.”

The major wasn't buying it, but the CSM seemed to be agreeing with me.

“So, in my opinion, since we're all smart people at this table, I would think that as a team of professional soldiers dedicated to killing or capturing the enemy so that one day we can all go home again, we could all agree that two or three men, without red lights on, dressed in loose, flowing man-jammies that won't restrict them in their Ben Johnson wind sprints, who peek out from behind cover to make sure the coast is clear, then come out of cover, and begin to dig frantically in the same place where multiple—
multiple
—IEDs have been planted in the past, then bury a fucking howitzer shell in the hole they just dug, then take cover and hide when illumination rounds light up their handiwork, and later bury the wire and string it out to a point fifty metres away where they've got eyes on, and then wait for someone to turn up, are in all likelihood fucking Taliban planting IEDs on Route Brown!”

The major looked at me coldly, but I wasn't finished. “I would respectfully suggest, sir, that when you take those individual pieces of evidence and connect them together as a whole, we would
hopefully
all draw the same conclusions: namely that we've got IED bomb-planters working on Route Brown to try and kill us, and not city road workers doing pothole repairs, again, at three in the morning.”

After a good minute's silence, the major quietly asked, “And
what if
they're wrong?”

I was rapidly losing my patience with his obstinacy. “I mean no disrespect, sir, when I say, if we're going to play the
what if
game, then we probably have no right being here. But the snipers haven't been wrong, sir, not once.”

The major continued, “And
if
they're wrong, then what? An investigation? The last thing I want, Semrow, is an NIS investigation into an illegal shooting . . . .”

There it is. Finally! You don't want to give your snipers permission to shoot, because you're afraid of being investigated by the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service
(a military police investigative branch). I thought to myself,
Brutal . . . what the hell am I supposed to say to that?

Longview seemed shocked by the major's admission, the sniper sergeant was furious, the CSM lowered his eyes to the table, and I sighed loudly as I said, “Sir, every time you
don't
give the snipers permission to shoot, the long and the short of it is, you put
my
team, the ANA, the engineers, the QRF . . . you put
all
of us at risk. Ask Warrant Longview, sir; yesterday and today were freaking gong shows, and the ANA are going to get us all killed if we have to keep going out and cordoning off IEDs when the Taliban should have been shot the second they marched out from cover carrying howitzer cannon shells and began burying them in the middle of the—”

“Thank you, Captain; that will be all. You're dismissed,” the major snapped.

“Sir, please, I just—”

“You're DISMISSED!” He shouted across the table.

I stood up, stared at the major for a few seconds, and then turned and left the briefing room, the warrant and sergeant falling into step beside me.

We walked about ten feet. I hesitated, mid-stride, and was about to turn around when the warrant wisely said, “Keep walking, sir,” and gripped me firmly by the elbow. It wasn't a suggestion, and he had a damn strong grip!

We walked outside into the searing heat. I put on my sunglasses, and let out a long, drawn-out sigh.

“Well, sir,” the sergeant said with empathy in his eyes, “it was a good try and you were right, but there's no getting through to him. We're all super frustrated. We thought this was going to be a good go, the best tour we'd ever get, but it's been—”

I don't normally cut people off, but it was too much for me just then, and I couldn't bear to listen. “I hear ya, Sergeant. Thanks for backing us up today. I'm sorry for what you guys have had to deal with, I really am. But we tried, and at the end of the day, that's all a man can do: his best to get through to people and make 'em see the light. No joy, but not for lack of effort on our part. Thanks again.” We shook hands and he slowly began the long walk back up to the top of the hill.

Longview and I walked over to the house of international pancakes and army scoff and grabbed a couple of free coffees. The warrant said they were his treat, but I didn't feel like laughing. I stared into my mug of joe and thought about what had just happened.

I knew Major Bane wasn't evil.
Gutless?
For sure. He was so worried about making the wrong call, and then being investigated by the CFNIS, that he wouldn't accept the responsibility that came with his job. That responsibility forced him at times to take certain risks and make tough calls. No one would want to be in the position of, “Sir, we're waiting; do we kill him or not?” But Bane just couldn't seem to trust anyone to do their job properly and present him with enough evidence. I thought that for a guy like him,
no
amount of evidence would have ever been enough. For him, it seemed that putting other soldiers at extreme risk was not as troubling as making the wrong call and shooting someone who didn't have it coming. Although it should've been obvious to everyone present that “they” certainly had it coming!

And since when did we have to talk about evidence?
All that talk of evidence would've made someone think we were lawyers discussing a police action and not soldiers talking tactics. But that was the reality of the current war, where every battle group lieutenant colonel had a JAG (Judge Advocate General) lawyer standing next to him, watching the same real-time video feed from a UAV, and advising him whether or not to give the shoot order. I'd even heard that sometimes the lawyers were more aggressive than the lieutenant colonels!

But the snipers weren't psychopaths. They weren't going to shoot someone just to be the first kids on their block with a confirmed kill. They used the burden-of-proof method like I'd mentioned, and after enough evidence came in, it was up to the major to make the call, or a more trusting officer would have given the snipers the permission to shoot or not shoot beforehand. That was entirely up to the major in charge. But Bane refused to let the snipers do their job, every time. And when he refused, he put guys like me and my team, who would then be tasked to go out there and cordon off the IED, at terrible risk.
I suppose the prison warden in
Cool Hand Luke
had gotten it right when he said, “Some men, you just can't reach.”

The warrant let me ponder for a while the deep mysteries of trying to fight a war in the age of political correctness, and then he quietly said he wasn't happy with me. I asked why, and he said, “Sir, you keep coming on strong like that, and you're going to get replaced, and we don't want that to happen. We've only just got you to the point now where we can read your simple mind and manipulate you nicely, but what if we get someone smarter who won't do as he's told?” He slapped me roughly on the back, spilling my coffee.

I half-smiled and said “You're a wise man, Wizard, and one day, I'm sure you'll have a seat on the Jedi Council. Of course, you're also much
uglier
than me, but certainly wiser.”

“When you've got the TI I've had, sir, you'll be ugly too!” We laughed and walked back to our shack, not really saying much after that.

It was one of those laugh or cry situations.
That's that, then.
No further discussion. Timothy will keep laughing at us as he plants his IEDs with impunity, knowing that no one will ever be allowed to put a high-powered round through his brainpan. And one day, sooner or later, he'll get lucky.

Chapter 6

Ali came up to us, looking very concerned, and told us the ANA had just received a delegation of elders from the village who wanted their two teenagers back. The ANA said, “Um . . . no,” and told the elders to leave. I took Ali over to see Lieutenant Aziz, who said he was almost done with them; they weren't guilty, they were just a couple of scared kids. I looked them over: they were fine, just like how we'd found them. I said I thought if he had no evidence or anything to suggest they were Taliban, then it would be for the best if he let them go. He agreed and said he would in a few minutes. I excused myself to go and track down a sat phone. My ninja sixth sense told me there was no point in writing my report just yet, the gods of war still had a few surprises in store for us.
Might as well try and call the missus.

I walked into Stephens's shack, found the phone, and walked over to the sandbag gun emplacement by the western edge of the base to call home. Back in Kabul in 2002, I got to call home twice. Once, Amélie was on the Internet (before the days of high speed), so I only got the answering machine. It was still great to hear her voice, but understandably, not quite as much fun as talking to her. The second time, she was on the phone with her mom, so again, I got to leave a message.

This time, however, she picked up on the first ring, and we immediately began telling each other how much we missed and loved each other. She wanted to know right away if it was safe where I was, and I lied through my buckteeth, telling her we were doing great and nothing ever happened in our sector, that all was quiet on our front, and there was nothing to worry about, nothing at all.

I felt terrible for being less than completely honest, but I would rather live with myself than know I caused her sleepless nights, afraid for my life. I remembered the words of the great twentieth-century existentialist Homer J. Simpson, who said, “It takes two to lie. One to lie, and one to listen.” I would confess later, when I was back home again and could look her in the eye to better explain myself. But she was far too switched on to be fooled by my pathetic efforts to string her along. She knew what was really going on, but she graciously let me get away with it.

I asked about our newborn daughter, Caméa, and Amélie said she was doing great, she was really growing. Cam was only three months old when I deployed, and I missed her and my wife terribly. I was so happy to hear Amélie's voice and to be able to laugh and tell her . . .

SNAP SNAP! . . . CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! Incoming enemy rounds passed feet and then mere inches over my head as the Taliban opened up on Sperwhan Ghar.
Crap, did Amélie hear that?

“What was that?” she asked, a familiar tone of suspicion in her voice. It was the same tone I got when she wanted to know what I'd been looking up on the Internet.

“Absolutely nothing! Hey, I'm really sorry,
chou,
but something's come up and I gotta go, right now. I'll call you back as soon as I can.” I started to run toward my building, trying to crouch, sprint, and lie to my wife all at the same time as rounds cracked over my head. “Love you, gotta go, bye!” I hung up the phone and ran into our shack. “Stand to boys, the base is being attacked. First man dressed get over to the other shack, use the field phone and call the CP, let 'em know we've got incoming SA [small-arms] fire and we're being attacked. Go go go!”

I think I set my personal best for getting kitted up, and ran over to the other building. The boys were playing vids and working on the computers, not hearing the sounds of incoming fire overtop of their video game—or more accurately, they probably just didn't care. This was crazy exciting for us newbs, but nothing new for them. “Base is under attack,” I said and quickly grabbed the field phone. The sergeant on the other end told me that I had to hurry; my ANA were already scrambling out the front gate to go and get some.
Crap, that was quick!

I asked Stephens and his boys if they wanted to come out and play guns but they were short-timers and knew it, and they weren't about to get pasted on their last day in Sper over some pissant drive-by shooting. I honestly couldn't blame them, not one bit. They'd done their time and now it was our turn.

“Wish us luck,” I said, jogging out the door. I met the boys and told them what the command post had just told me. “We've gotta hurry.” I made my rifle and the gat of justice ready to sing, and started jogging toward the main gate, listening to the radio traffic over the net.

Fourneau looked sick. “We'll be fine,” I said. “Just stay right behind me.” As we began to run down the slope we were now exposed to Timothy in the village to the west, where the incoming fire was originating. I remembered a trick from Northern Ireland, one we used when leaving the main gate. It was called “Hard Target,” and it meant running zigzag out the gate so that snipers couldn't get a bead on you. I started zigzagging down the slope, trying to make myself a “Van Damme” (Hard Target) and shouted at the others to do the same. I ran as fast as I could down the small hill, eager to get behind the cover of the ten-foot-high blast walls as incoming rounds smacked into the rocks around our feet. Thankfully we all made it into cover and then quickly ran up to the front gate.

I shouted at the Canadian in the watchtower, “What've you got?” I heard a whoosh sound and looked up in the sky as the pretty, grey contour trail of an incoming RPG warhead passed over our heads. The rocket detonated harmlessly into the side of Sperwhan's hill.
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. . . .

“Fuck all! I can't see shit!” he shouted back. I could tell
The Fear
had gotten a hold of him, and was giving his sphincter a good squeeze.

I shouted back, “Get as low as you can, you'll be
fine
!” The warrant looked at me and laughed at my flippancy. I thought for a moment about taking my three trained killers with me and running out after the Afghans, but then dismissed it as an exceedingly bad idea.
Either the Taliban will outnumber us and kill us, the ANA will shoot us out of pure confusion, or the Canadians will assume anyone running outside the wire with guns is fair game!

I thought again for a moment and asked, “Hey, buddy? Did you see any Afghan soldiers go running out the gate?”

“No, no I don't think so. I'm tellin' ya man, I haven't seen fuck all!”

“Wait a minute, didn't you just call the CP to tell them the ANA were running out the gate to go and stick it to Timothy?”

“No. I told them the ANA had brought some civilians down to the gate, but that was it. I don't know what the hell you're talking about!”
Nice.

“Okay, so where are they?” I asked, looking around for any ANA and civilian persons of interest, but not seeing anyone matching the description.

“Can't you see them?” he shouted. “Look around, they were there a minute ago! I'm not coming down to find them for you! Shit!” Evidently his pucker factor was going full bore.
Poor bastard
,
all freaked out!

“Okay,” I shouted back sarcastically, “sorry for bothering you!” I looked over at the warrant and . . .

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Time slowed down as I looked at the sandbar just over top of the warrant's and Hetsa's heads. Bullets kicked a long line of dust up in the soft sand, about ten inches over their heads, and although they couldn't see what was happening, surely they could hear it. Amazingly, neither of them so much as flinched. But the noise of supersonic bullets breaking the sound barrier right over their heads should have made them duck just a little bit! I was on the other side of the road, and
I
flinched! I was terribly jealous of their sang-froid.

“Congratulations!” I shouted and smartly walked over to the Wizard and the dirty Hungo, outstretching my hand in fellowship. “First time being shot at?” I asked Hetsa.

“Why, yes! Yes, it is!” he said, shaking my hand in the spirit of camaraderie. His incoming-rounds cherry had finally been popped.

“How about you, Warrant? First time?” I asked, smiling a toothy grin and stretching out my hand.

“Go fuck yourself!” he snarled.

“Okay, no need to be rude about it.” I walked back over to Fourneau and put my hand on his shoulder. “First time, young man?”

“Yes, sir.” He didn't seem to be enjoying the moment like the rest of us.

“Well congratulations, you're a new man after this! It's a soldier's rite of passage. Like the gunny in
Full Metal Jacket
once said, ‘You'll be born again, hard!' Well done!” We shook hands, but it had the same feeling you'd get from squeezing a dead fish.

“Hey guys,” I said excitedly, “I just thought of something—we have now officially qualified for our Bronze Combat Badge!” Everyone snickered at my sarcastic comment. The rumour going around the army sewing circle was that Americans were giving Canadians attached to them a hard time, asking the Canadians, “Where's yer combat infantryman's badge?” Because every American who had been in combat (and every army in the world defined
combat
quite differently) wore a special badge to show he'd been in the shit. But Canadians didn't have that.

So someone in the Canadian HQ felt left out, and started floating around the idea of having bronze, silver, and gold combat badges. The three separate badges would be awarded based on the nature of the combat you had survived. Bronze was supposed to be for getting shot at by small-arms fire, rockets, artillery, etc., but
not
actually shooting back, so technically, we all qualified!
Yippee!
Although, we'd all seen pictures of the proposed badges and agreed they were truly hideous, so we weren't exactly sure who would want to wear them anyway.

Just then Lieutenant Aziz decided to make a guest appearance from around the far side of the watchtower, where undoubtedly he and his persons of interest had taken cover as the rounds started coming in. I was about to ask Ali to translate something for me, but
damn it, I forgot Ali!
In my haste to join the ANA outside the wire, I forgot to bring the only guy who could actually talk with them! I heard the voice of an old teacher of mine called Cort say in his gruff voice, “One mistake is all it takes to get a man killed, most of the time.”
You idiot, Rob, you can't make mistakes like that and expect to live very long in this place!

Rounds continued to crack over our heads and into the hill as Lieutenant Aziz hauled the two teenagers over to us and began asking some pointed questions, and even though my Dari was failing me, my psychology degree from the University of Saskatchewan (no honours,
barely
graduated) didn't let me down.

But for some reason (that I could never quite figure out), whenever I saw the Afghans arguing amongst themselves, it always sounded in my head like the authentic, realistic dialogue from the movie
Lawrence of Arabia
, where white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant males (who had never even travelled to the Middle East) made up fight dialogue that was about as authentic as deep-fried chicken balls were to real Chinese cuisine.

Aziz opened with, “You say you are
not
Taliban, but the moment I tell the village elders ‘No, you cannot have them back in time for supper,' our base gets attacked! Explain that, you leprous worms!”

“We are not Taliban,
habibi
, we are simple farmers!”

“You lie like a donkey with a moustache! If you are not Taliban, then who is shooting at us?”

“We do not know,
habibi.
We are simple farmers!”

“Go then, back to your village, and tell your cowardly neighbours to stop shooting at us!”

“We will go now, thank you, but we cannot guarantee the shooting will stop, for we do not know who is doing it, so how can we . . .”

“Go, you sons of pregnant jackals, before I lose my patience and change my mind!” Or words to that effect. . . .

So with a flourish, Lieutenant Aziz pushed them out the front gate to go and mediate at the Sperwhan Village Peace Accords of 2008. And they must've been very skilled diplomats, because miracle of miracles, within five minutes the firing stopped completely.
Huh!
As my Grandma Lockhart would've said, “Will wonders never cease?”

As the sun began to set, we had a good laugh over the madness of it all and walked back up to our building. I thanked Aziz again, and radioed the CP to let them know that we were back in our shack, call sign 72A complete, and told them they had been the victims of the whispers game, where you whisper a simple message to a child and see how many variations of the message you get by the time it reaches the kid at the end of the line. The CP sergeant told us to stand by for further ops. None of us liked the ominous sound of that.

I told the boys that from now on, I was instituting a new 72A SOP. After every patrol, the first thing we'd all do when we got back to our building was top up our water and dust off our weapons, because we never knew when we'd get the call to go back out again. I also reminded them of the cautionary movie
Blackhawk Down
, where the American Rangers didn't bother taking their night-vision goggles (NVGs) out on a day op, believing they'd be back long before nightfall. Unfortunately for them, they could've really used their NVGs before the fighting ended days later. For every patrol from now on, we'd always carry our small NVG monocle that could quickly be attached to our helmet, just in case we got caught outside the wire after nightfall. “These team SOPs are non-negotiable, starting now. And another thing—don't let me forget Ali again! Unless any of us just became fluent in Dari through the powers of reverse osmosis, I'm guessing we might need him one day.”

The lads went and grabbed bottles of water and began refilling their CamelBaks, an amazing piece of kit. It had a long hose attached to a three-litre water bladder in our day sacks. We slowly began stripping off our armour and tac vests, but I kept my radio earpiece on, waiting for the word from on high. The rest of the boys took off their gear, still drenched with sweat from the morning, and were about to lie down on their beds when the command post transmitted our orders: “Seven Two Alpha, you will collect as many ANA as you deem necessary, and make your way outside the wire, approximately twenty-five metres northwest to a position designated by the snipers as the location of a dead Taliban insurgent carrying an RPG launcher on his back. He was shot off the back of a motorcycle trying to flee during this last engagement. You will recover the RPG launcher, over.”