The Towers

by David Poyer

  “Let me see that,” one of the Aussies said, a big sergeant with a heavy jaw and raccoon-ringed eyes. Teddy hesitated, then handed over his SOPMOD M4. The guy looked it over critically, flicked a fingernail. “Same as ours. Colts.”

  “How about your sidearm, there?”

  “Browning. Fourteen rounds of nine-mil.”

  Teddy nodded and returned his attention to the desert. The big, squared-off, desert-colored machine, open on top so there was no shade whatsoever, rolled as the ground dipped. Packs and comm gear and made-up tents were strapped all over it, as much, he figured, to protect them from RPGs as for stowage. They were much more heavily armed than the Marine Humvees, with a 7.62 on a flexible mount and a hulking forty-millimeter grenade launcher towering over what would have been a backseat had the vehicle had one. Instead a bench seat like one row of auditorium bleachers accommodated the gunner. Two more Rovers trailed them, antennas wobbling. The middle one carried the high-voltage VIPs, a marine colonel and two guys in civilian-style khakis and polo shirts and ball caps. One looked Italian, the other less categorizable; slicked-back black hair in a widow’s peak, a beak of a nose; piercing blue eyes that examined Teddy for a fraction of a second, then moved on. His black cap had a logo of a snarling gray wolf. The interpreter—the “terp,” Aimal—rode with them too, woolly, round cap and anxious, sharp-chinned face bobbing behind them.

  * * *

  TWO hours later the mountains seemed scarcely closer. The driver of the middle vehicle pulled up and waved them over. “Piss break,” he called, and their own driver herringboned the Rover off to the right of the line of march. Teddy eyed the rock-strewn ground. He didn’t see any bumps or depressions. He stepped down gingerly and followed the Aussie five yards off, where they stood side by side and unbuttoned.

  When he looked around, the terp was standing by himself a little ways off, turned away from the Americans. Teddy waited until he was done—Moslems were funny that way—and strolled over, still keeping an eye on the soil. He held out a pack of Winstons. “You smoke, buddy?”

  The Afghan eyed him sideways. He was young, probably about eighteen, and handsome, with long, black hair cascading from under the round, embroidered hat down over his white shirt and the field jacket someone had given him. Despite the freezing cold his brown feet were bare in flip-flops, and he was unarmed. Teddy caught a whiff of him; cold as it was, his body odor was like sticking your head into a urinal that hadn’t been cleaned in years. “Yes. Thank you,” he said.

  “You the dude they call Animal?”

  “Aimal. Some of them call me animal, yes.”

  “Aimal, what made you sign up with us? You’re with Karzai’s boys, right?”

  “Hamid Karzai is my leader.”

  “You speak real good English, Aimal. Where’d you learn it?”

  “From watching videos.”

  Videos? “And you’re helping us out because…?”

  “I hate the Taliban as much as you. They attacked America, yes. But they forced their ways on us first.”

  “What’d they do? You’re from around here, right?”

  “I’m from Kandahar. My father owned a video store.”

  “That’s cool. Okay, so you watched his videos.”

  “That’s yes. I watched the movies at the counter. But the Taliban firebombed our store. My sisters had to leave school. There is nothing good left here. No Internet. If I translate for you, maybe I can go to America.”

  It sounded right, but in the field you trusted no one except your buddies; especially locals who showed up and wanted to be too friendly right away. “We’ll be keeping an eye on you,” Teddy told him. “You translate exactly what they say to us, hear me? Do that, and we’ll be cool. I might even be able to help you get to the US. To Hollywood.”

  “Hollywood?” The one place, along with Disney World and New York, everyone had heard of. “You know Hollywood?”

  “Grew up there, baby. Take care of us, and you’ll be walking down Sunset Boulevard.” Teddy kneaded Aimal’s shoulder, digging his fingers in so the kid’s eyes went wide. “But you jack us up, Aimal, set us up for an ambush, or we catch you stealing, and I’ll kill you myself. With pleasure.”

  * * *

  WHEN they stopped next, it was at a hamlet in the foothills. The fifty-foot-wide expanse of dirt and sewage that passed for a main drag was full of people and carts and vans and tables set up in the open, some with tarps stretched overhead.

  “Bazaar day,” the big Australian said. Teddy nodded, keeping outboard security with his weapon over his knee, a round in the chamber but the safety on. As they rolled in he eyeballed the crowd, taking recordings with his brain for the field intel report. The houses were mud brick. Grass grew out of their thatched tops, or maybe sod, and small bushes, like on a pioneer’s hut back on the frontier. The stink hit in earnest as they slowed for a flock of muck-crusted, woolly sheep, tails and back legs smeared with shit. The kids were thin and too small, with black hair and dark eyes, most of them. But here and there pale jade eye too, and features that wouldn’t have looked out of place back in California. When the Rovers braked, Teddy eased to the ground, scanning the field where the sheep were milling around, his carbine hanging muzzle down by its sling but still tactical, ready to swing up with one hand. From the stir of livestock a bearded man in shalwar kameez and sheepskin vest watched them, leaning on a staff. At second glance, Teddy saw why he leaned: He had only one leg.

  Not speaking, the Aussies deployed out to surround the VIP vehicle. Teddy strolled a few yards away, sparing one glance at the mountains. Where the clouds moved, they were purple and nearly black, unimaginably huge, going up range after range in folds and peaks, like a whole continent tilted on its side and about to fall. He couldn’t believe it wasn’t already sliding, billions of tons of rock and ice coming down on them.

  Her jerked his eyes away, to the kids. They’d stopped a few yards away, staring, then edging in. Cute from a distance, but as they got closer, he saw snotty noses, open sores, layers of dirt, scabby bare feet, rags stiff with dirt. They chattered and waved. When Aimal yelled, waving them away, they just pressed closer.

  Few women on the street, all in burka, and as he watched, even these vanished into the huts. The adult males didn’t approach, but they didn’t look frightened, either. When Aimal called to one, he just raised a hand and walked away. Teddy strolled along the street, looking at what was for sale. Dangling carcasses of what seemed to be sheep, to judge by the severed heads artistically arranged in front of them. A blanket on the ground was covered with some sort of twisted, dusty roots. Another had three sheepskin coats laid out. Rugs, like those you saw all over the Mideast, but threadbare and dust-covered. Cheap plastic food bowls, tumblers, water jugs. Everything looked used, battered, and grimy.

  One old man with a forked white beard to his waist huddled like a heap of propped-together sticks on a scrap of brick-patterned linoleum. Cast-metal pothooks and trivets and little flat brass pans and turned cups with a faint effort at enameled decoration lay on a gray blanket along with a long, nicked bayonet with a wooden handle and a hooked quillon. Their eyes met; the elder gestured silently to a bubbling pot of tea.

  Teddy almost didn’t accept, then said, “Aiwa, shukran.” Not Pashto, but most people in this neck of the woods spoke at least a little Arabic.

  The tarnished little brass cup was so hot it burned his fingers. “Harr,” he grunted. He blew on it, keeping his eyes going as he sipped. Christ on a pony, strong fucking tea. Guy must have boiled it for weeks. It tasted great. He found a familiar shape in his cargo pocket and bolted one of the big oval 800 Motrins they called SEAL candy and washed it down with the rest of the tea. He smacked his lips and handed the cup back. Hesitated, then offered the oldster a Motrin too. The old man backhanded it into his mouth without an instant’s hesitation, grinning and jiggling where he sat as if Teddy’d told a dirty joke.

  Teddy touched his cap and paced on, gaze dwelling on hands, faces, rusted Ja
panese pickups. He didn’t expect trouble. From what the recon leader had said, this hadn’t even been a planned stop. After a few firefights, a few ambushes, you learned to trust your radar.

  By the time he circled back to the Rovers, four elders were talking to the VIPs, Aimal helping out with animated gestures. Teddy stood a few yards off, attention on the street, not the talk, but caught words here and there.

  “No Taliban here, he says. They came and stayed for a time, then left.”

  “Is there a school? A clinic?”

  “Years ago. Not now.”

  “A mosque?”

  A wave toward a larger hut.

  “The Talibs. How long ago did they leave?”

  “A few weeks. Perhaps a week?”

  “And where did they go?”

  A gnarled hand waved vaguely at the mountains. “Out there, he says.”

  The big bushie shouldered up beside Teddy. “Got any Pashto?”

  “Not a word.”

  “I can speak a little. But this is a waste of time. Get ’em inside their huts, put some bikkies on the table, we’ll get useful intel. Nobody’s going to say anything out here.”

  Teddy nodded toward the old man on the linoleum. “Try that good old boy with the teapot. He’ll actually look at you.”

  The Australian squatted. He fingered the bayonet, turning it over. Then laid it down and in the same motion placed something else on the blanket, covering it with a fold of gray wool so deftly Teddy couldn’t see it even though he’d been watching.

  When the Aussie stood he tilted his head and winked. “Next village up the road. ‘Toward the mountains,’ he says. They left yesterday.”

  “The next village is where we’re going,” Teddy said. “Can you ask if there were any Arabs with them?”

  “Already did. He saw foreigners, yeah. Six of ’em.”

  “‘Foreigners.’ Arabs? Al Qaeda?”

  “Correct.”

  A good sign, that they thought of OBL’s bunch as outsiders. Teddy checked his six. The other SASRs had the perimeter. They seemed like the sort of lads who’d stick to you in a firefight. He nodded to the old man and turned away and perambulated around the bazaar once more as the wind drove plastic scraps and dust and dead bushes across the road. The Rovers’ engines had been running the whole time. When one of the drivers gunned his, Teddy and the sergeant strolled back.

  * * *

  BUT the next village wasn’t a village. It was a mud-brick fort out of a sword-and-sandal epic. Each side was a three-meter-high wall that stretched perfectly straight for at least a hundred yards.

  Teddy looked up from the Rover in awe. The thing looked as if it’d been drawn with a ruler. The gate was massive, with colossal oaken crossbeams that must have been dragged down out of the mountains, and thick iron hinges dimpled with the blows of blacksmiths’ hammers. It could have been ten years old, or a thousand. The column sat parked in front of it for several minutes before anyone got out, and all that time Teddy’s unease grew.

  When the colonel dismounted, he took off his shooter’s gloves and slapped the dust off his uniform with them. He was spare and balding and his face looked burned, as if he’d opened a pottery kiln without thinking ahead. His gear hung as if he’d lost twenty pounds since he’d strapped it on. “Tell ’em to open up,” he told the terp. Aimal flinched as if something had stung him, but Teddy didn’t see any wasps.

  “This is fucked-up,” Teddy muttered to the sergeant. Who shrugged, swung down, and began loosening up, stretching and doing a couple of quick squats. This looked like a good idea so Teddy did too. His joints creaked. He patted his knife and his pistol, then massaged some of the dust off his carbine with his sleeve. When he pulled the bolt back a couple of centimeters to check the chamber, he felt it grinding. Sand was never good, and that went double for a 5.56, with its small parts and tight tolerances. He got out the little squeeze bottle of CLP, squirted a stingy two drops into the gas ports, and wiped it down again. Oil and sand, not good either, but you had to have lubrication. Maybe he ought to go with that dry lube Swager was always raving about.

  “What exactly we doing here, compadre?”

  “Just paying a call, Obie. Just paying a call.”

  Teddy tried to shake off the willies and focus. Get tactical. But where was the buzz? He shifted and shook each arm out in turn, loosening up. The gate was grinding open, hinges grating as if they could use some CLP too. Aimal had convinced whoever was inside to open up. If he hadn’t, Teddy figured they wouldn’t be getting in, not without the kind of breaching charges they’d used on the raid the month before. Remembering that juiced him a bit. If armor was garaged here, they were butt-fucked, that was all. He drifted over to the colonel’s vicinity, but didn’t get too close. Asked the SASR lieutenant, “Hey, sir. Your guys got anything can take out light armor?”

  “There’s no armor here,” the lieutenant said stiffly.

  “Yes, sir. But you got any—”

  “Let’s move on in,” said the colonel, and Teddy figured fuck it and oriented on his sergeant.

  They went in smoothly, sweeping the inside of the gate, combat crouched, almost the same way the Teams did it, only with more talking, keeping each other informed. Which was okay in daylight, when somebody knew you were coming. The courtyard was huge, with a well near the center and the housing, all mud brick and those heavy beams, at the far end. Rusty bikes and a truck on blocks. A litter of oil cans and brake parts and tow straps. A lean-to over an old Land Cruiser, with the steel framework on top for cargo. It looked operational, and he wondered what kind of cargo they needed to carry.

  “Clear.”

  “Clear.”

  He tail-end-Charlied into the housing area. Women with black cloth thrown over their faces squatted motionless, heads lowered. Kids stared with open mouths. An open hole for a latrine. Flies all over everything. An old man gesticulated, mumbling through a toothless mouth and wispy beard.

  “Weapons,” somebody yelled from the far side of the compound. Teddy’s heart rate stepped up. He thumbed the safety off, keeping his muzzle clear of the man in front. The team leader spoke into a mike and kept going. Another room, jumbles of old furniture, old bedsteads, the musty stink of dust. Teddy sneaked out his canteen, swallowed hot mouthfuls that tasted of good American plastic. Better.

  When they came back out into the courtyard, three used but functional AKs and an RPK were laid out on a madder-stained rug. Mustard-yellow sardine cans of ammo, with Cyrillic stenciling in black. A Tokarev pistol. A long, heavy, battered top-loader rifle that looked almost handmade, with a cloth belt of fat brass cartridges the size of small bananas. Beside them knelt a flex-cuffed young man in a beard and pillbox hat, head back and eyes closed as if enjoying the sun. Flies swarmed a bloodstained bandage that bulged at his shoulder. The Aussies were rummaging another room to the side of the lean-to, with much clattering and banging of thin metal. Aimal was murmuring steadily to the kneeling man, but he gave no sign of listening; seemed almost in a trance. Teddy thought: an all-day mission, twelve specfor trigger-pullers, and we get six small arms and one prisoner.

  The colonel came striding through the gate, pistol held down by his thigh, the civilian to his right and the lieutenant on his left. He halted by the prisoner, looking at the weapons. Told the terp, “What he’s doing here. How he got wounded. If he’s seen any Arabs. The usual.”

  “He’s not talking, sir. All he will say is ‘Praise Allah.’”

  “Good enough. Bag him and put him in the lead vehicle.”

  The Afghan opened his eyes. He lowered his head and spoke in what Teddy guessed was either Pashto or Dari.

  “Where are you taking him? he asks,” Aimal said.

  “To interrogation,” said the civilian. He smiled, dark eyes crinkled at the edges. The terp related this. Listened to a few sentences, bending, hands on knees, but not translating yet.

  “What’s he say?” the colonel prompted.

  “Time.”

 
“What?” said the colonel, leaning in.

  The terp flinched again. “He said … he will remember my face. And they will find my family. Ah, and, I don’t remember the word…” Aimal tapped his wrist.

  “Watch,” Teddy supplied.

  “Yes. Watch. He says, ‘You have the watch, the watches, but we have the time.’ He means … it is a saying. Sooner or later, you will leave. And we—they—will be back.”

  An old man tottered out into the sunlight and slowly made his way toward them. He sank to his knees and clutched the hem of the civilian’s vest, warbling what sounded like endearments in a low, supplicating voice. The civilian shook him off.

  “What’s he want?” the colonel snapped.

  “He apologizes for the Russian weapons. But he wants to keep the oldest. His grandfather took it from the British when they invaded. It is a … keepsake, I think the word is.”

  “Who is this man? Ask him. Is he his son? A relative?”

  The old man hesitated, glancing at the prisoner, who seemed uninterested in the whole process. The terp translated, “He is not family, but a guest. He asks us to let him go.”

  “Like hell we will. He’s lucky we don’t take his whole family. Ask him where the Taliban is.”

  The old man lifted his eyes. Looking at the top of the wall. No, Teddy realized; beyond it. “They’re in the tangai,” Aimal said. He pointed with his fist. “In the mountains.”

  “It’s a weapon. Take it.” The colonel holstered his pistol and spun around. Called back, “Load the prisoner. We’ll do the interrogation back at Jaguar.”

  * * *

  OUTSIDE, Teddy looked up at the sky again. So deep blue. The thin air, so cold. The endless ranges hovered in fold on fold of russet and violet stone. The Alliance was surging forward into a terrain wiped clean by the planes whose contrails combed the sky. But where were the prisoners? They came in trickles, where there should be thousands.