by Tom Young
He finally found her in the refugee tents with Fatima. The girl had been crying, but she seemed calm now as she clung to Gold’s arm. She looked up at Parson and spoke in Pashto.
“What’s she saying?” Parson asked.
“She remembers you,” Gold said. “She says you are the friend of the giant who brought her here.”
Parson almost laughed. “I guess that’s true,” he said.
“Any intel?”
“QRF went out, but I never heard them shoot.” Parson also told her about the dead and wounded.
“Black Crescent again?” Gold asked.
“I don’t know,” Parson said. “Yeah, probably.”
At the front of the tent, the plywood door creaked open. Blount walked in. He looked like he’d just come in from the field. The big gunnery sergeant wore his body armor and carried that tricked-out rifle of his. Fatima cried out a greeting and waved. Blount smiled and waved back.
“Speak of the devil,” Parson said.
“Not exactly,” Gold said.
“Sir,” Blount replied. “Sergeant Major. Just came by to check on my new friend.”
“She was pretty scared,” Gold said, “but she’s okay now. Nobody in this tent got hurt.”
“That’s good,” Blount said.
“You been outside the wire?” Parson asked.
“Yes, sir. We were part of the QRF.”
“See anything?”
“We didn’t catch nobody, but we saw where they’d been. Slippery bastards. We found three mortar tubes with the ground wet underneath them.”
“What does that mean?” Parson asked.
“They pack ice around the mortar rounds, and the ice holds the round in the mouth of the tube. By the time the ice melts and the round seats and arms itself, they’re long gone.”
“Damn,” Parson said. You could spend a million dollars on some way to kill terrorists, and they could find a fifty-cent way to get around it.
“I swear it’s like stomping roaches,” Blount said. “You just can’t get them all.”
Yeah, Parson thought, but you can keep stomping. He wondered if terrorist groups like Black Crescent, the Taliban, and al-Qaeda were accidents of history, things not supposed to happen. And if they were accidents, were they like accidents in aviation? The result of a chain of mistakes and missed opportunities that line up just the wrong way and lead to disaster? If one link in the chain had broken, if one thing had happened differently, then the catastrophe would not have taken place. He knew pilots who would give anything to go back in time and add power three seconds earlier, or reset that altitude alerter and not transpose the numbers.
“Sir,” Gold said. “You know I can help get these guys.”
Parson looked at her hard. Wasn’t this settled? Then he raised his eyebrows, just to soften his expression. He didn’t want to be angry with Sophia—or at least he didn’t want her to know he was angry.
“Sir, what are y’all talking about?” Blount asked.
“She got some good intel up at that refugee camp in Samangan,” Parson said.
“I heard about that,” Blount said.
“Well, now she wants to go back in there to a village to get some more intel, but she wants to go by road.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Not no, but hell, no.”
Blount kept silent for a moment. “What if some Marines go up there with her?”
Now Parson was even more annoyed, but he held back his temper in a way he could do for no one except Sophia. “I know you two are smart people,” he said. “So what part of no do you not understand? It means negative.”
“Sir, do you know about the Lioness teams?” Blount asked.
“The what?”
“Lioness teams. Female engagement teams in the Corps. Women Marines who speak the language, know the culture. They do a lot of what the Sergeant Major here does; they just haven’t done it as long as she has.”
“What about them?” Parson asked.
“If you okay it, we could hook her up with Lioness. I’ll see if my CO will let part of my platoon escort them up there. So the Sergeant Major wouldn’t go by herself, and she wouldn’t be the only one who speaks Pashto.”
Parson hated the idea. He was still haunted by the last time Gold had been torn from his sight when they were supposed to be together. He had watched helplessly, tied to an overturned chair, as they dragged her away. That image still woke him up at night.
Emotions. They got in the way of the mission. You’re not supposed to let that happen, he told himself. But you’re not supposed to let people take unnecessary risks, either. Where was the link in the accident chain? Would this asshole who called himself Chaaku become the next bin Laden? Do you have the means to stop him right here?
“You say you’ll go with her?” Parson asked.
“Yes, sir,” Blount said.
“All right, listen. You check with your CO and these lion women. She can go only if you and your whole squad go with her. In MRAPs, too. Not some light-ass Humvees.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Rashid and I have to fly tomorrow,” Parson continued. “Gold can stay here and work it out with you jarheads. But if I get back and I find out she’s gone with anybody but you, in anything but an MRAP, I will kick your ass all over this airfield no matter how big you are.”
“We’ll take care of her, sir.” Blount smiled. “Sir, did you ever consider being a Marine?”
“Hell, no,” Parson said. “Do I look crazy?”
10
Gold saw a lot of her younger self in Lance Corporals Lyndsey Meacham and Ann Woolrich. Both women were in their early twenties, so Gold had more than a decade on them. Their military bearing and courtesy never wavered; they answered every question with “Yes, Sergeant Major” or “No, Sergeant Major.” However, Blount had misunderstood their language ability. They spoke a few words of Pashto, but unlike Gold, they had not studied at the Defense Language Institute.
What Pashto they knew they had picked up on the job in the Lioness program. The Lionesses could come from any Marine Corps job specialty. They were originally intended to search local women, who, under cultural norms, could not be searched by men under any circumstances. But their role had expanded to include more than searches. Ann and Lyndsey told of accompanying infantry as the men kicked in doors. The Lionesses would talk to the women inside, with or without interpreters. Lioness teams had lost at least three of their number to roadside bombs, and Gold imagined history would record them as the military granddaughters of the WACs, WAVEs, and WASPs of World War II.
The two younger women sat across from Gold in the back of the Cougar MRAP vehicle. They wore Marine Corps camo like Blount and his men, and they carried full-sized M16A2 rifles, larger than Gold’s M4. Each wore the standard Kevlar combat helmet and body armor, with spare magazines in pouches at the front of the armor. Both had tied their hair in long ponytails instead of tight buns. Given their role, Gold presumed they wanted to make their gender immediately apparent. A private took the wheel, and Blount rode in the right front seat. A gunner manned the .50-cal in the turret. Gold could see only his boots and legs.
She carried her usual field gear, with one other piece of equipment. One of her pouches contained a Blue Force Tracker, an electronic device that looked like a handheld GPS. It was that, and more. The BFT let the command post know her position at all times, and it could send and receive text.
Gold also brought an item to use as a gift for villagers, a token to ease the conversation along, if things went well enough to have a conversation. She’d talked one of the camp’s cooks out of a twenty-four-ounce bag of Domino sugar.
When the driver started the engine, the diesel clatter sounded to Gold like an incantation, a prayer for safe passage. The rear ramp clanged shut, and she heard two other Caterpillar engines rumble to life, the rest of Blount’s team in a pair of identical Cougars.
The MRAPs rolled from their parking spots on the tarmac, thr
ough a sandbagged checkpoint with unsmiling Afghan sentries, and out onto a perimeter road left crumbling by the earthquake. Gold watched through steel louvers that shielded windows of bulletproof glass as thick as her thumb. She knew the ride might take at least two hours, though her destination was less than eighty miles away. It all depended on the condition of the roads.
The paved portion of the route did not last long. The three Cougars, Gold’s in the middle, jounced onto a dusty road that amounted to only two ruts across a rock-strewn valley floor. They passed a small village—just four houses of stacked shale. A cow grazed behind the stone huts, ribs visible underneath its hide.
The village gave way to a qalang—a flat expanse of wheat. The wind picked up, and the wheat stalks bent and flowed like green-amber breakers on an inland sea. Beyond the fields, the terrain began to rise and the road to twist. The rough path hurt the bones in Gold’s hips, and her shoulders strained against the aircraft-style harness; the Cougar’s suspension offered strength, not comfort.
“So how much did they tell you about this mission?” Gold asked.
“Not much,” Ann said.
“Only that we would talk to some women in a village, and you didn’t want to go in loud with helicopters,” Lyndsey added.
“That’s right,” Gold said. “And do you know about this new insurgent group?”
“They briefed us that there have been attacks from something called Black…” Ann seemed to struggle for the word.
“Black Crescent,” Gold said. “The Taliban played too nice for them, so they went into business for themselves.”
“Sergeant Major,” Ann asked, “aren’t you the one who brought back that detainee from the C-130 that got shot down a few years ago?”
“I helped,” Gold said.
“I remember hearing about that on the news,” Lyndsey said. “It was right after I graduated from boot camp.”
Gold couldn’t recall what the media had reported at the time. For her safety, the Army refused to release her identity, and she had never given any interviews. The Air Force had done the same for Parson. Given his bluntness, Gold imagined Air Force public affairs would never let him anywhere near a television camera, anyway.
But within the military grapevine, their reputations had spread. Gold didn’t like to talk about the incident, and she certainly didn’t like attention resulting from it.
“We just did what the mission required,” Gold said. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
For her, the lesson learned was Charlie Mike. Continue Mission. You were put here for a reason, and if you remained alive, then you still had a job to do. As Parson might say, it wasn’t over until all your friends were standing around the funeral home talking about how natural you looked.
Terraced hills rolled by Gold’s window as the terrain began rising. Some of the layered fields grew more wheat, and others held rows of small trees. The orchards were too far away for Gold to identify the trees, but she guessed they were mulberries, or perhaps almonds or walnuts.
Blount twisted around in his seat, handed back three bottles of water. Gold took one and passed the others to Ann and Lyndsey. “Have you done a lot of these KLEs?” Blount asked.
“Not recently,” Gold said.
She’d done many key leader engagements back when she worked with the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. The groups would meet with tribal elders and try to coax them into helping build schools and roads, or at least not attacking schools and roads. It usually worked for as long as the company or battalion remained in the area. But when the troops left, the insurgents returned, often with the cooperation of villagers. She was beginning to wonder if all the schools, hospitals, and hydroelectric generators did any good. Did they win hearts and minds or just generate disappointment?
And Gold wasn’t sure she’d call this mission a KLE. More like a long shot in the dark on iron sights. She twisted open the water bottle and took a drink.
The road wound past a bluff pocked with small caves. Gold noticed Ann and Lyndsey gripping their rifles a little tighter. She knew what they were thinking. Hiding places near the road meant good spots for an ambush—or for a lone jihadist to sit with a cell phone or a radio, waiting for coalition forces to drive past. A press of a button would set off the IED. The gunner must have thought the same thing. His boots shifted around on the turret stand as he swiveled his weapon.
The bluff receded in the dust, and the dust got whipped away by the wind. The team drove past another farm where long-haired sheep roamed unfenced. The animals bleated and ran from the road as the Cougars rumbled past.
Around the next bend, Gold saw two boys walking a goat through a field. Both looked about twelve, and one held a length of hemp looped around the goat’s neck. The animal had black fur, two stubby horns, and yellow eyes. The goat twisted and pulled against the rope in what seemed a halfhearted attempt at escape. Gold waved at the boys, though she doubted they could see her through the window shields.
One of the kids—in an Adidas T-shirt—reached down and picked up a stone. He hurled it at the Cougar. Gold watched it spin toward her like a rifled bullet. The rock clanged against the steel plating over her head. The gunner’s feet shifted again, but he did not fire. Gold heard him mutter, “Bite my ass, you little shit.”
“Takes balls to attack an armored vehicle with a rock,” the driver said.
“They know we won’t open up on them,” Blount said.
Gold sighed, moved her rifle from the crook of one elbow to another. Hearts and minds. She wondered if there was anything she could ever do, any good she could accomplish, by which she might arrive at contentment. Of course she would press on, do her best. But her continued efforts reminded her of Samuel Johnson’s line about the triumph of hope over experience.
Her Blue Force Tracker chimed. She unzipped its pouch and saw she had a message. She pressed on READ and saw: HOW GOES IT? MP.
She pulled off her gloves to compose her answer: OK. ABOUT HALFWAY THERE. U?
A moment later the BFT chimed once more: GETTING READY TO FLY.
Gold considered ending the exchange, but somehow texting with Parson pulled her out of the sour mood brought on by the thrown rock. She wrote one more message: SOME KID JUST BOUNCED ROCK OFF MRAP. When the BFT chimed again, it said: DID U THROW ROCKS BACK?
She smiled, cleared the screen, looked outside. The vehicles splashed through a muddy spot. The water came from a narrow stream that cut through a wheat field and ran across the road without benefit of a culvert. It had not rained since Gold’s arrival in Afghanistan, so she guessed the stream was fed year-round by snowmelt from higher elevations.
At the edge of the field lay a rusting hulk, the wreckage of a Soviet aircraft. A wing had broken off, but the fuselage remained pretty much intact. Part of a red star was still visible on the tail. From the condition of the wreckage, Gold surmised the plane had not burned, but that its crew had crash-landed. Reminded her a little too much of her first day with Parson.
The aircraft looked like some kind of transport, though she had no idea of the model. Parson would know. Vines grew around the two bent propellers.
Beyond the field came a barren stretch of ground. The ride grew rougher, and Gold could see why. The soil was so choked with rocks that the ground seemed almost paved in cobblestone.
The Cougars drove past a bombed-out compound. Roofless mud-brick walls crumbled against wooden beams. The gunner’s feet shuffled. More hiding places here, too.
The compound disappeared behind them without incident. Next, Gold noticed a pile of stones beside the road, maybe six inches high, as if to mark something. She puzzled over that for just an instant.
An explosion slammed the vehicle from underneath. The Cougar lifted into the air a few inches, thudded back to earth. All of Gold’s bones seemed to rattle against one another. Her ears popped. She could hear the shouts of the Marines, but from far away.
* * *
Parson didn’t like the look of the sky. Lens-shap
ed clouds hovered over the mountains, paralleling the ridgelines. An untrained observer might have called them pretty, but Parson knew standing lenticular clouds resulted from strong wind flowing across high terrain. The wind carried moisture that condensed as it got lifted higher, forming a telltale convex shape. That meant turbulence. Maybe it was better that Gold had gone by road after all. But he and Rashid’s crew had no choice but to fly.
He took one final look up at the cloud formations, tromped up the boarding steps. The air was cool again today, but he wore no jacket. His body armor and survival vest kept him warm enough.
Inside the Mi-17, Rashid punched a start button for the left engine. When the engine reached the proper RPM, he moved an overhead stopcock lever to feed fuel, and the Klimov lit off. Rashid repeated the process for the right engine, then let both of them stabilize at idle.
Parson listened to Rashid, Aamir, and Sharif clean up the engine start checklist, their Pashto incomprehensible to him. He hadn’t bothered to replace Gold with another interpreter for this flight. It was a simple mission—just take a load of food and two passengers up to another devastated village. Reyes rode along in case the crew ran into more injured refugees, and the crew chief manned his door gun. The passengers were civilians from that urban rescue team in Virginia, and one of them brought a cadaver dog with him. The Belgian Malinois whined and pawed in its kennel.
I’d whine, too, if I had that dog’s job, Parson thought. Or maybe she just doesn’t like riding in helicopters any more than I do.
Parson turned off his Blue Force Tracker so its emissions wouldn’t interfere with the helicopter’s electronics. Then he pulled his laptop out of his helmet bag and turned it on. When it booted up, he left-clicked to open a moving map display. A tiny airplane icon in the center of the screen rested atop a blue circle that represented the Mazar airfield. As the flight progressed, the airplane would fly across the moving VFR chart.
