Advance Praise for
All the Ways We Kill and Die
“The search for the story behind an IED death leads to the history of the post-9/11 wars and the lives of the men and women who fight them…. Castner does a beautiful job of putting together his puzzle, weaving all the seemingly disparate elements into one cohesive whole…. [His] writing is evocative and engaging, completely absorbing from beginning to end. A must-read for military buffs and a should-read for anyone who has given even a cursory thought to the US efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“In this book Brian Castner takes us through a kind of moral detective work, uncovering not only private griefs, but also the broader military and social context of our country’s response to such deaths. A brilliant, moving, and troubling portrait of modern American warfare.”
—Phil Klay, author of the National Book Award-winning Redeployment
“Brian Castner has written an intimate, heartfelt, and rending portrait of the American family at war and at home; and he’s done so in a totally surprising and captivating way, by making the journey as a detective, a soldier, a father, a husband, a citizen. How did my friend die, where did he go, where have I gone in the meantime, who did this to us? These are questions that Castner meditates on as he searches—across thousands of miles and back through the years—for the moment when a total stranger decided to kill a man closest to him and his family. Deftly reported and elegiac in its language, this is a story every neighbor, every parent, every soldier, and every school civics class ought to consider required reading. All the Ways We Kill and Die has much to tell us about how to live.”
—Doug Stanton, author of the New York Times bestseller Horse Soldiers
“Like the best of storytellers, Castner transports us into the world of the men and women who fight and die and grieve: a struggling widow, two amputees, the exhausted pilot, the contractor for hire, a talented female biometrics engineer, even the jihadist bomb makers. An extraordinary work of nonfiction that reads like a suspense novel.”
—Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of the New York Times bestseller Ashley’s War
“A powerful and gripping take on modern war. All the Ways We Kill and Die is a stirring inside look at the deadly dance between EOD and bomb makers on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. Written in crisp, unflinching prose, the book is one of the definitive accounts of our decades of war.”
—Kevin Maurer, author of Hunter Killer and No Easy Day
“Provocative, riveting, and uncommonly insightful in addressing both sides of the story, Castner writes in the tradition of Orwell and Kapuściński. It is impossible to read his book and not be moved by the predicament of the shadow wars we’re mired in. Infused with the knowledge of an insider, this is a bravura performance.”
—Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, author of The Watch
ALSO BY BRIAN CASTNER
The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows
Copyright © 2016 by Brian Castner
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
First Edition
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Visit our website at www.arcadepub.com.
Visit the author's website at www.briancastner.com.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Castner, Brian.
Title: All the ways we kill and die : an elegy for a fallen comrade and the hunt for his killer / Brian Castner.
Other titles: Elegy for a fallen comrade and the hunt for his killer Description: New York: Arcade Pub., [2016] | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015040029 | ISBN 9781628726541 (hardcover: alk. paper); ISBN 9781628726572 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Afghan War, 2001—Personal narratives, American. | Schwartz, Matthew, 1977–2012. | United States. Air Force—Officers—Biography. | Improvised explosive devices—Detection—Afghanistan. | Ordnance disposal Units—Afghanistan. | Castner, Brian. | Afghan War, 2001—Campaigns.
Classification: LCC DS371.43.S39 C37 2016 | DDC 958.104/748—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015040029
Cover illustration: Shutterstock
Printed in the United States of America
To my brothers in arms, still at war,
for all the reasons contained herein
Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England’s overthrow.
But, by God’s providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James’s sake!
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! Make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
—English Folk Verse, c. 1870
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Prologue
PART I: THE DEAD
1 ♦ Blast Waves
2 ♦ Road to Perdition
3 ♦ A Frozen Funeral
4 ♦ Cat vs. Cat
PART II: TEND THE WOUNDED
5 ♦ One Hour to Kandahar
6 ♦ A Child’s Pride
7 ♦ The Robot Has a Name
8 ♦ Breached Hulls
PART III: COLLECT THE EVIDENCE
9 ♦ Brave New War
10 ♦ I’m Going to Kill You Bomb Man
PART IV: HUNT AND KILL
11 ♦ The Black Hole
12 ♦ Helmet Fire
13 ♦ Khowst Bowl
14 ♦ Long and Messy and Gray
PART V: THE DEAD REVISITED
15 ♦ All the Ways We Live and Die
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Notes
Selected Bibliography and Reading List
AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE FIELDS OF WAR, INTELLIGENCE, and medicine—the primary topics of this book—are notoriously filled with dense jargon and acronyms. Every attempt is made in the course of the text to explain such terms as they arise, but to maintain the authenticity of the voices of the primary characters, unfamiliar terminology will inevitably appear. To assist the reader, a glossary and notes are provided at the back of this volume.
PROLOGUE
IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, the Most Gracious
, the Most Merciful, all praise be to Him who commands to fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem; and blessings for His Prophet, peace be upon him, the Messenger of the Holy Book, where we are enjoined to fight them until there is no more oppression and all submission is made to Allah alone; for in the words of our Sheikh, may Allah accept his martyrdom, all who are able must kill them in every country upon the earth until all Muslims are free.
But how shall it be done? God had not yet granted him the power to kill them all today, so whom should he choose? And how? Decades had taught him this: patience is the gift of zeal, persistence the true mark of fervor, and Allah ultimately rewards both.
His soft hand on the mujahid’s shoulder, and the youth lowered the thin wire leads.
Be still, Khalid, he said. Not yet. Those are not the kuffar we will kill today.
The albuyah nasiffah lay in the road in the center of the village. Not a road, a pockmarked track. He had seen real roads, highways even, if the youths had not.
The bomb lay in the road, and a kuffar armored truck was perched right over it. It just sat there and idled and did not move, like a lamb with a knife at its throat submitting to the dhabihah. The trucks were strung in a line down the road, sitting and watching, like him, while a small robot hurried about and undid more of his designs.
The bomb that lay in the road was not the only bomb in the road. The kuffar had found the other, but not this one, not the one that could be detonated via the thin automobile wire held in Khalid’s hand.
He and Khalid had been squatting behind the qalat for half a day, hiding, out of sight of the sensitive cameras mounted on the kuffar’s trucks. Their third man—no, a boy really—was the spotter, also in hiding but much closer, on the other side of the road, with a direct view of the bomb and clutching a small Yaesu radio. There were three of them total, then, he and the two local Afghan youths. They were interchangeable martyrdom-seekers. He was not.
They had waited for the trucks to arrive. They didn’t know the trucks were coming, or at least not this particular group. The trucks always came, though, if you waited long enough; patience and persistence. The kuffar preferred the highway to the south, but very recently they had begun to use this road, so he had moved here as well. It was only to wait until the right truck drove over the bomb. They all looked the same to the younger men, but not to him.
They sat and waited, for two hours they waited, while the kuffar searched and preened and strutted about. Khalid drank from a bottle of water, but he had politely refused. It was a bad habit, leaving one’s fingerprints about. Occasionally, he leaned out from behind the mud wall of the qalat and used a pair of black binoculars to observe the small lead portion of the column. He had taken the binoculars from a Soviet soldier’s corpse when he was still a young man, as young as the corpse in fact, as young as the two mujahid colts he shivered with today.
It was cold, even in the afternoon, cold in a way his homeland never was, and despite his years away and travels to the northern high mountains, his blood had never thickened. These youths were in nothing but their shalwar kameez, not even bundled in their shawls or patu. One was wearing light slippers, the other black high-tops worn through with holes. He cinched his Western jacket tighter.
It was rare for him to accompany common mujahid on their ambush. He was an emir, though an emir with no militia, a marshaler of expertise rather than foot soldiers. He need not be out today, but how else to ensure this katibat was correctly employing his wares? He need not be out today, but he was, and he was the emir, and so he would choose. He knew that not all the kuffar were the same, that some were worth killing more than others.
They are putting the robot back in the truck, agha sahib, his spotter said over the radio.
That is the one we want. Tell me when they are in position, he said.
Through his binoculars he could see several small figures returning to their vehicles. From watching for so many years, he knew that in a moment the convoy would finally move.
Get ready, he said, and Khalid began chanting quietly to himself, praising God in an ever rising voice, until he put his hand out again and the youth went quiet.
I want to hear, he said, and then silence but for cold wind over rock.
He stared through the binoculars. The line of armored ants began to crawl. A particular knobby ant, the one that bore the robot, appeared in his sights, disappeared behind a hut, reappeared in another gap. It was in the center of the column, and it was approaching the marker.
Now, inshallah, his radio said.
Now, he repeated.
The mujahid youth touched the bare wires to the main terminals of the car battery. A second delay, then a cloud of fire and ash above the horizon of mud walls, the spine of a massive armored truck briefly breaching the roofline like the hump and flukes of Yunus’s whale, a moment of anticipation, near silence, and then a blast wave crack that shook his thin bones and echoed across the open country of the river valley.
Khalid looked up at him in wonder, then back at the battery leads.
Allahu Akbar, the youth said quietly to himself.
The Engineer said nothing.
PART I
THE DEAD
“My lands are where my dead lie buried.”
—Crazy Horse
1 ♦ BLAST WAVES
A WESTERN MOUNTAIN WARM SPELL had stolen the modest Christmas snows, and the home of Matthew and Jennifer Schwartz sat among bare trees and dying grass, a pale house on a brown lawn.
The house was nearly empty. The girls were off at school. Jesus and his radiant Sacred Heart stared from the living room wall at a blank television and forgotten couch. Duke the chocolate Lab slept at the foot of the stairs. The only sound in the empty house was the mechanical hum of the treadmill and the regular beat of a runner’s footfalls.
The house was often empty. A new pickup truck and trailer filled the driveway, camping equipment filled the garage, dirty dishes filled the sink, Duke shuffled and huffed about the backyard, the three girls laughed and sang songs, but Matt was gone, always gone, and the hole remained. A toothbrush here, a T-shirt there, the small reminders of him were strewn about the house like so many pretty gold rings, and she but the amputated stump of a hand with no fingers.
That morning Jenny was finishing another long run on her treadmill. She had discovered running on Matt’s second tour. At the start of his deployments, she ran four or six miles. Now that he had been gone three months, she was up to ten and barely out of breath.
Jenny had learned long ago not to pine by the phone; it only made the hours crawl. But she had also learned to save the last recording on the answering machine, not to delete the last email. Matt had been out on a long-distance patrol for over a week, and had managed only a quick and broken sat phone call. So more than anything, it was a last email that kept tumbling through her head. It bothered her that it read like a last email. Heavy zippered sweatshirts in the dryer, tumble, tumble, the email always in the back of her mind as she ran.
Jenny was soaked when she got off the treadmill, dripping the sweaty, unwashed funk that comes from not having showered since, well, who keeps track of these things when your husband is gone and the girls need you? She paced and began her stretching routine, and the doorbell rang. Under no circumstances would she ever answer the door smelling like she did, but she did look out the window.
She saw a sea of uniform blue hats stark against the dry Wyoming prairie.
If I don’t answer the door, she thought, he’s not dead. He’s not dead yet.
The doorbell rang again. Perhaps a third time. They weren’t leaving.
Jenny disconnected her mind and entered a dream. She felt herself drifting across the floor as her feet, under their own programming and direction, moved her body to the door.
“Ma’am, are you Mrs. Jennifer Schwartz?”
Yes, the empty body answered.
“Ma’am, on
behalf of the United States government, we regret to inform you that your husband has been killed in action in Afghanistan.”
THAT JANUARY EVENING, soon after the New Year, when darkness comes early to New York State’s northern tier and the chill clamps tight, I finished a walk in my woods and shed my snowshoes at the back door to find my wife curled up under a knitted blanket on the couch, nestled in front of the Christmas tree as one would sit before a fire, a still twinkling in an otherwise unlit room.
The kids busied themselves with an embarrassment of new toys, recent Christmas gifts from all members of the family. A pile of papers, my wife’s half-edited PhD dissertation, lay abandoned next to her in this, her favorite of post-holiday spots; Jessie’s efforts to work were stymied by the softness of the seat and the comfort of the blanket, the pleasant glow from so many small white lights and the snow outside. I kissed her and snuggled in and felt the warmth from her back and neck and no one had tried to kill me in five years.
We sat together on the couch, and I pulled out my phone, an unconscious habit. My thumb moved through various Facebook status updates, past children at Disney World, a four-year-old’s birthday party, a new hairstyle and car, political memes like modern prayer cards. I checked on Dan Fye, who had lost a leg half a year earlier and was struggling through rehab with a halo of pins and screws erupting from joints. I checked on Evil, to see if he had time to update while flying out of Bagram. I checked on three dozen other friends, brothers really, closer than any friends, who were in Afghanistan, about to leave for Afghanistan, just back from another tour. Jessie asked me what I was looking at, and I lied and said, “Nothing,” as she stared at the tree in peace.
I was thumbing through my phone, my wife’s head across my chest, my children distantly playing some electronic game in the basement, when it happened. No telegram arrived. The phone did not ring. There was no knock on the front door. The tiny screen on my phone simply flickered as I scrolled to more recent updates.
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