by David Poyer
The enemy wasn’t surrendering. He was withdrawing, into those high fastnesses where since Alexander the Afghans had held out against invader after invader. Or worse: sucked them into those steep passes, those roadless crags, and massacred them. Teddy kept looking up, letting the land seep into his soul. Thousands of square miles of rugged, nearly treeless rock that scuttlebutt said was full of caves. And on the other side, Pakistan, then the Kush … range after range, all the way to China.
The Aussies towed the prisoner past, his head wagging within the bag. Teddy saw how slight he was. Side by side with the Westerners, he looked like a fifteen-year-old. The troopers in their toad-colored uniforms were joking, reaching out when he stumbled, pushing him back upright just a little too roughly.
“Chief Oberg?”
As he turned, the big Aussie loomed from blowing dust. He held up a glove. “Just came over the blower. Sounds like the balloon’s about to go up. They want us back just as quick as we can get there.”
“About time we got our gun on,” Teddy said.
“How fooking right. Load up, mates,” the sergeant called, turning in a circle. Teddy looked for Swager and Tatie. When he had eyes on both, he swung up into the Rover too. Found himself next to the prisoner, whose covered head was slumped on his chest. His shirt had been cut off and a fresh bandage covered the wound. Teddy cleared his throat. Started to speak, but didn’t.
For the whole ride back, for hours, they sat together, and shared not a word.
18
Bagram
FAR above the tormented earth, Dan circled over a possible landing strip north of Kandahar. Elevation and topo lines glowed into existence, crawling over the terrain. As he gradually descended, gray valleys bleached into green, yawning into 3-D vistas that erupted into tormented mountains. Minuscule callouts, when the operator put the pip over them, blew up into images annotated with line after line of data.
He straightened, rubbing cheeks gritty with beard-bristle and stiff as balsa from fatigue. He wasn’t cruising high over rough terrain, freezing, on oxygen, wary every moment for a launch signature. He was in the Joint Operations Center, looking over the shoulders of a team of Army specialists at a large screen flanked by two smaller ones. The view was real time, from a Predator zoom telephoto linked to threat databases back at CENTCOM. He sucked a deep breath. “So, what’s the conclusion? How much effective runway? We need someplace we can put down C-17s.”
C-17s were the Air Force’s most modern transport, replacing the C-130 turboprops for tactical lift. They were designed for unimproved, even improvised, runways. Which was what he was trying to do now, land them close to the battlefront to shorten supply lines that stretched back into Central Asia. A specialist moved a mouse, and the pip edged along a highway that paralleled a straight-line canal, climbing out of Kandahar toward a mountain lake.
Then zoomed down again, falling from thousands of feet. The trees leapt up like green detonations. Dan had to look away, close to nausea.
“Almost four thousand feet of runway, sir. And we think the load rating’s adequate—the soil should take it. The problem’s altitude. Five thousand feet, here. Five thousand, five hundred here. We can fly in, but the load capacity’s going way down.”
Dan rubbed his mouth. He was holding down at least three jobs now. The ramp-up to a major effort, combined with what seemed to be a marked reluctance to send more officers to Bagram, had resulted in far too few staff. He was attending all the briefings, and keeping Template—the fused intel localization, including CIRCE—wired with the necessary intel inputs and the outputs pipelined to the right people in the Fusion Cell, the Joint Working Group, and the operational staff. Then the J-4 had asked for help. Dan had organized food and medical supplies during the famine and drought in Ashaara; privately he considered he knew just enough to be dangerous, but even that seemed to make him the local subject-matter expert.
Just now he was researching airfields, for both reasons, offensive and humanitarian; exploring how to get troops and light armor to support an assault, and how to get food and clothing to Afghans facing a bitter winter. Which so far had meant by airdrop, arranged with the Special Forces teams in contact with the various tribes.
Unfortunately, there was only so much capacity, and in the past few days Lieutenant General Randall Faulcon, USA, the Joint Special Operations commander, had been pushing to use most of those assets to carry a major force down to the Gardez area, north of Kandahar and west of the White Mountains. Lifted and supplied from there by helicopter, they’d surround Pajuar and pin down, attack, and kill Osama bin Laden and the senior Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership.
Dan could see that as an endgame, but each passing day brought indications neither ALQ nor the Taliban were going to stay pinned. Both local intelligence and SIGINT showed them withdrawing into the mountains, rather than surrendering or fighting. The question being debated was what to do about it. Special Forces and SEALs had conducted recons up to the mountains, and in a few cases into them, descending on compounds and caves where the enemy might be concentrating. The air strikes continued, but at the moment, the multinational effort seemed to be marking time.
Sooner or later, they were going to have to move. Faulcon’s idea for an airborne encirclement seemed as good as any.
Dan pushed open the tent flap and strolled toward a ditch scooped from the icy ground by a bulldozer, thinking as he unbuttoned his fly and gazed at distant violet slopes about force availability. The Fifteenth and Twenty-sixth Marine Expeditionary Units had leapfrogged up from Camp Jaguar to the Kandahar airport, putting them a long stride closer to the White Mountains. The Tenth Mountain and the Eighty-second Airborne were mainly providing base security; they were available. And the 101st was on alert to move to Afghanistan too.
But the more he saw of this country, the more daunting the logistics seemed. He was used to operating close to the sea, or at least with access to a port. But Afghanistan was landlocked. Worse, the roads were so bad you couldn’t even truck fuel in to Bagram. It had to be “wet winged” out of transports into the swollen black rubber bladders that lined the airstrip. (He often wondered what would happen if one of the rockets that occasionally fell hit that tank farm.) The closest strategic airlift strips were in Kuwait and Turkey. From there everything had to be cross-loaded to smaller aircraft, which used up even more fuel and made it hard to schedule flow of assets into the theater. They could purify local water, but everything else—food, ammo, batteries, medical supplies—would have to go in by helicopter. And an attack into the high valleys could easily entail a six-hour hike from the helo LZs, either on foot or by donkey.
US forces would be restricted to the sort of logistics train that had supplied Lee and Grant during the Civil War. No, worse; there wasn’t a single operating railroad in Afghanistan.
Dan was mulling this over walking back from the piss pit when a hulky figure in a fur vest intercepted him. Beanie Belote, pistol on his hip, in bandanna and black, Russian high boots, a pakul hat looking odd atop his braided pigtail. He hitched a bright green athletic bag higher on his shoulder. “Commander. What you working on? Right now?”
“Transport. Food relief. Keeping the magnifying glass on the HVTs.”
“I’m going to Gardez. Tony thought you might want to come along?”
Why did Belote end all his sentences with an up inflection? “Gardez? Uh, I’ve got a lot to do right here. Sorry, but—”
“Down this morning, stay overnight, back tomorrow. You can get your eyeballs on these airstrips you’re researching while you’re down there?”
His initial reaction was too pat to voice without thought. So he reconsidered. Gardez was south of Kabul, west of the Shah-i-khot, Not too far north of Kandahar. Some sort of combined Agency/SOF operation was being run out of that city. If an operation was launched toward Pajuar, it would most likely stage out of Gardez. Not only would it give him a chance to see the ground, it was a chance to get out of the concertina-fenced Camp Bragg the
airfield was becoming.
But why was the CIA asking him to go with them?
Belote took hesitation as assent. “Helo at sixteen hundred local,” the agent said. “Don’t wear uniform. Something scruffy—it’ll fit in better? And dress warm?”
* * *
GARDEZ was a medium-size city surrounded by fields dry brown with the coming of winter. The helo landed in one of them and they drove in, in a civilian taxi, followed at a discreet distance by eight Northern Alliance soldiers in a jingly truck. Dan was in jeans, Chicago Bulls ball cap, and a gray Academy sweatshirt turned inside out to hide the trident and galley. He shivered in the cold. Belote had given him a short-barreled M4 and a pair of sunglasses someone had left in-country, but the prescription lenses distorted everything, and if he turned his head too quickly, he felt nauseated. Riding with the carbine by his feet on the floor of the taxi beside Belote’s bag, he felt both freer and less safe than he had traveling behind armor in military convoys. Dull broom grass bristled along the dry, rocky side of the highway, and mountains floated far ahead. It looked like Arizona. They drove into a roundabout at the town center, then out toward the mountains again.
Orienting by the sun, Dan put the Shah-i-khot—or Shahi Kowt, as the Army was calling it—directly ahead in those eastern peaks. Strangely humped whaleback foothills, dun and tan like everything but the snow, rolled like swells from a far-off typhoon between plain and mountains. The peaks were invisible, shrouded in fog and trailing bridal veils of snow. On the other side of a loftier peak to the south would be small hamlets in valleys at eight-thousand-plus feet. One was Pajuar, the location of the planned ALQ meet.
But you couldn’t just load troops into trucks and drive up. Working with maps, overhead imagery, and the Predators, he was beginning to grasp just how tormented this sub-Himalayan geography was. The mountains soared, buckled, and folded in violent ridges and deep valleys dotted with strataed caves. The hamlets were thinly linked by rocky trails mainly navigable by donkeys in summer and, in winter, only negotiated with difficulty by human beings acclimated to the altitude.
A vicious place to fight. It could conceal whole armies or suck other armies in. And now it was snowing up there, blinding both the drones and the air support so important to US forces.
All of which was, of course, why their enemy had retreated there. Sixteen thousand British troops had tried to fight their way through those mountains from Kabul back to India in the 1840s. One man had survived. Everyone knew about Alexander the Great, and the Soviet invasion, but those had only been two among hundreds of incursions, invasions, and civil wars—by Iranians, Mongols, Chinese, Macedonians. The country had never really been at peace since recorded history began. Each time, the natives had withdrawn to the mountains, harassing and ambushing and betraying the invader until he either surrendered or retreated. The only conquerer ever to subdue Afghanistan had been Genghis Khan.
“Doing okay?” Belote rumbled. Dan nodded. “Almost there. When we arrive? Don’t take your time. Stay on my ass right out of the taxi.”
They pulled off into a side street without warning. A man atop a wall cradling a Kalashnikov called to them. Belote reached forward to hand the driver a roll of bills. They piled out and he said, “Follow me. That on safe? Good. Try not to look so American, all right?”
Dan tried to slouch, to disguise his height, and they walked rapidly but not suspiciously so down an alley littered with garbage. Belote rapped at a back gate that looked like wood but sounded like steel. It opened immediately, pulled inward.
Four men looked up from bottles of lemon pop or mugs of tea, sitting under a leafless tree, around a rusting garden table. They were all in shalwar kameez and beards and parkas or heavy sheepskin coats. A brazier smoked, radiating heat.
Belote sighed, releasing some inner pressure, and parked the green bag by the brazier. He set his rifle in a wooden rack; hung a pistol from a whittled peg of raw wood; eyed Dan.
Dan set his M4 in the rack beside several Kalashnikovs and joined the men as they made room, bracing his back against the smoking brazier. The heat felt good, but the smoke made his eyes water. Two of the men were American, introduced by Belote without giving ranks. Dan made them as either CIA or Special Forces, part of the A teams that had worked with the local militia to such deadly effect thus far. The other two were Afghanis, one in his late forties or early fifties, the other perhaps twenty years younger. Dan figured them as local allies, tribal leaders. Pashtun, he assumed, which would make them of the same tribe as most of the Taliban. The older leaned forward to finger Belote’s vest, which seemed to be of some sort of brown fur. Then patted his own, a red plaid, new-looking, down-filled Gander Mountain, looking satisfied.
One of the Americans started the questioning. “All right, Beanie, what’s Faulcon got planned?”
“He’s pushed for a major force package. Land them in C-7s. They’ll surround, then attack.”
Belote went on to say that the difficulty was that the SecDef and his assistant for Afghanistan, Roman Annunziata, were waffling. “Faulcon started small, a raid, but this Annunziata keeps asking what if this happens, what if that happens. They keep adding support units and increasing force size. Pretty soon it’s going to be a major operation.”
When the CIA agent translated this into Pashtun, the older Afghan looked worried. He spoke, and the translation came. “These troops. They will stay in Pajuar? On our lands?” Belote denied it, but disbelief and suspicion ignited in the older man’s eyes.
After several more polite questions, the point the Afghans wanted to make came through. The more troops, the more local leaders would resent their presence; perhaps even turn against them. What wasn’t clear was why. Dan shifted on his chair. “Okay if I ask a question here?” he finally put in.
The senior Army guy looked reluctant, but nodded. “You fought the Soviets?” Dan asked them.
The older Pashtun nodded and pulled up a sleeve. An anemic forearm was seamed with scar tissue as if steel had been grapneled through the live flesh. He spoke for a long while, waving his hands. Belote said laconically, “His war record. Your question is?”
“He seems uncomfortable about working with us. Because we’re Christians? Americans? Or just outsiders?”
The younger man smiled, and Dan realized he understood English, though he hadn’t spoken yet at all.
The old man’s words tumbled over one another. Addressing now not Belote but Dan, as if he’d decided he was the elder. Belote said, “He says, when he was young, they had peace. But that was thirty years ago. First, the Russians came. They bombed mosques. Destroyed whole villages with tanks and helicopters … wait a minute, he’s going too fast … then they left and the Arabs came. Bin Laden brought promises, but it is true, then turned his hand to evil. He knows the Americans fear God. He knows they want revenge for the attack on New York. But his land has been the toy of others for too many years. The Americans are welcome as guests. That is the custom, he says. But a guest who stays too long is no longer a guest. This is the same in every country. Why do people think Afghans are different?”
“Have you heard about a meeting of ALQ at Pajuar?” Dan asked them. Belote looked startled, but translated.
“We have heard rumors of such a meeting,”said the younger Afghan, speaking for the first time. Smiling. “Yes.”
“Can your men help us in an assault? At least, provide guides?”
One of the Americans shook his head, warning Dan off. He made a fanning gesture at his throat. The Afghans didn’t meet Dan’s eyes, but maybe that didn’t mean the same thing in this culture. “It might be possible,” the younger one said. He didn’t sound enthusiastic. “But you know, it is snowing now. It would be very difficult.”
Belote cleared his throat, and they all looked at him. He got up and retrieved the green bag. Set it on the table and nodded to the older Afghan. The old man smiled and unzipped it. Dipped within and held up a few of the shrink-wrapped packages. Each was an inch thick, a shea
f of green and gray bills that looked brand-new.
Dan took the hint and kept quiet. The Afghans stacked the money, counting it aloud, then put it back into the bag and slid it under the table. They seemed friendlier now. The younger man said his men were assembling east of Gardez, ready for battle. “The Deobandis, you call them Taliban, we have no use for them. Bin Laden’s Arabs give many oaths, but nothing happens. They live in luxury and treat us like dogs. America will feed our families and make us rich. So my men are eager to fight and die for America.”
One of the Special Forces guys went into the house, and not long after a servant or employee brought out goat meat, rice, avocados, and boiled eggs on trays, and they ate with the Afghans, talking until long after dusk fell.
After the Pashtuns left, taking the gym bag, the Americans sat in the dark drinking beer and talking over the possibilities. Dan didn’t say much, but made it his business to listen. So far, or so these operators seemed to think, a few OGA teams and Special Forces had managed to liberate every city in the country in only two months and were closing in on the last resisters in the last redoubts. More cash, weapons, and ammunition for the friendly Afghans, and they could wrap up bin Laden and start setting up for elections.
At last the Army guys stood. They said good night and left through the metal door. Dan hesitated, wondering if he and Belote were going with them. Apparently not; the OGA man went inside. Dan looked at the brazier again, then followed.
The house was bare, as if all the furnishings had been cleared out. “So, what did you think?” the Agency guy asked Dan. “They’re changing, all right. Some of the background stuff I read, it said years ago they wouldn’t eat with infidels. They threw the food away after you touched it. These guys, they dug right in.”
“Those were Pashtuns, right?”
“Correct.”
“And the Taliban are Pashtun too. So why are these suddenly so eager to play on our team?”
