The Last Platoon

by A Novel of the Afghanistan War (retail) (epub)

“They’re burying five mujahideen as we speak,” Balroop said. “Five! Your locals are overmatched. That American base threatens our lab.”

  “Zar has put out many mines,” Sadr said. “And I have assurances that only askars operate to the west.”

  “What if a drone detects the firepits?” Balroop said. “What then? The Americans must be forced to leave, and Zar doesn’t have the brains to do that alone.”

  By combining guile with an iron will, Emir Sadr led the most powerful Taliban shura in Pakistan. He resented a lecture from a Punjabi.

  “You went behind my back yesterday,” he said calmly. “You reached an agreement with the Persian without telling us.”

  “I consulted with you beforehand,” Balroop said.

  “No, you told me you had a plan,” Sadr said. “You take too much for granted. Helmand is our land. You don’t decide for us.”

  Balroop ignored the rebuke. Sadr, like most of the elder Taliban, suffered from several maladies. Without ISI aid, he would be living in a hovel, wracked with arthritis and hacking up phlegm and blood. He would let the old Pashtun complain, as long as he agreed in the end.

  “The Persian provided the money for the poppy,” Balroop said, “not your shura. I made a swap with him, a few missiles for the Asians. They are on their way now.”

  “We don’t need them. I have my own plan. I have brought a fidayeen for Zar to use.”

  Balroop was surprised that Sadr had acted so quickly.

  “A good idea, if you can get him in position,” he said. “My plan does not depend on chance. A front is already forming in the Gulf. You must do your part when the weather changes.”

  Sadr stroked his beard, as if lost in thought.

  “How much did the Persian charge for the missiles?” he said.

  This was the question Balroop had dreaded. The Taliban controlled the lab and counted every bag. There was no room for evasion.

  “The first twenty-five million from the sale,” he said.

  “The shura must receive the same,” Sadr said.

  Balroop didn’t hide his exasperation.

  “Ridiculous. The heroin comes out through Baluchistan,” he said. “Without the ISI, you have nothing—no money, no shelter, and no future. You know that!”

  “And you know that after our fidayeen strikes,” Sadr said, “the Americans will pull out. Then there is no need for the Asians you paid for. You made a bad choice.”

  They haggled for half an hour before agreeing the shura would receive ten million, if the fidayeen succeeded. Balroop was now committed to paying to others the first thirty-five million of the estimated one hundred million. He knew how his general would react. Either the fidayeen or the Asians succeeded, or he would be fired.

  Both attacks depended upon Zar. To keep his composure, Balroop rubbed his forehead before speaking in a slow, cadenced tone.

  “Zar will be here shortly,” he said. “His temper, those beheadings…a rabid dog cannot kill a bear. He will fail if left on his own.”

  Sadr held up his hand in reassurance.

  “Zar will do his part,” Sadr said. “He owes obedience to the emir.”

  When Zar arrived shortly later, he was in a foul mood, having ridden for hours in a ten-year-old Toyota with sagging springs. Balroop and Sadr waited politely while he gulped down sugary tea.

  “How’s the struggle going?” Sadr began.

  “Fine, Qaed Sadr,” Zar said. “I’ve put out many mines. This morning, we killed six americanis. But still they ran toward our bullets. We lost two mujahideen, praise to Allah.”

  Sadr expected Balroop to challenge the lies. Instead, the Pakistani colonel changed the subject.

  “You’re taking good care of Mullah Khan?” Balroop said.

  “The Persian enjoys our grapes,” Zar said. “He has a few more farms to contact.”

  “So the harvest is not complete,” Balroop said. “And what about our shipments?”

  “With the americanis digging in next to us,” Zar said, “we can’t move the product.”

  Balroop gauged Zar, calculating how far to provoke his pride.

  “Are you afraid to attack their base?”

  Zar burst out a torrent of Pashto curses. Balroop let him run down, then spoke softly.

  “How many mujahideen can you gather in one day?”

  “Ha! Thirty, perhaps forty.”

  Balroop looked at Sadr, who nodded in agreement.

  “I will leave the brave mujahideen to talk privately,” Balroop said.

  He walked outside to the parking lot. A small, thin teenager, barely past puberty, was standing next to Zar’s Toyota. He shyly adjusted his shemagh, tucking in a stray strand. A few feet away, two Pakistani sentries were smiling sadly. When Balroop approached, the senior corporal saluted and stood at attention. Balroop frowned, waiting for an explanation.

  “The boy brought with him his teacup from the madrassa, Colonel,” the soldier said. “That’s all he has. He asked for a Coca-Cola, with ice.”

  Several minutes later, Sadr came out of the hangar, followed by a scowling Zar. Without saying goodbye, Zar roughly pushed the boy into the worn-out Toyota and left. Balroop looked at Sadr.

  “Zar thinks too much of himself,” Balroop said.

  “If the fidayeen fails,” Sadr said, “I have ordered him to use the Asians.”

  “Too much depends on him,” Balroop said.

  Sadr nervously fingered his prayer beads.

  “Zar is angry, but will do as instructed,” he said. “He believes he is the sword of Allah. It is written in the Qu’ran, ‘Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers.’”

  After Sadr had left, Balroop reflected on their conversation. He distrusted the two true believers. Both zealots flaunted their piety. Sadr scented his body with musk, and Zar cleaned his teeth with a pine twig. Balroop believed men who embraced medieval ablutions had medieval minds. He hoped his next duty station would be in Islamabad among civilized Punjabis, far from these Pashtun Islamists with their fantasy of establishing a caliphate, after they had slaughtered all unbelievers.

  Day 4

  APRIL 9

  29

  Martyr or Murderer

  Feeling unappreciated, Zar brooded during the return drive. He was a warrior of Allah, not a schemer like the Pakistani colonel. When the Marines had come years ago, the mujahideen had fought them with mines and small ambushes, inflicting tiny cuts until the kafirs tired and went home. This time, after one ambush that had not gone well, Mullah Sadr had summoned him. He resented how the emir had instructed him as though he were a child, how to lure the Americani to the fidayeen and how to obey the Asians if that failed.

  Zar drummed his fingers and looked out at the hillsides devoid of trees or brush, dreary even in the soft pinkish hues of twilight. He hated all things in Pakistan, except cricket and scotch. He glanced at the boy sitting to his left, face pressed against the window. He wondered how often the boy had been debased inside that Pakistani madrassa. He felt a slight erection, or was it that he wanted to be distracted?

  “Give the halek a Coke,” he said.

  They reached Nantush’s compound in the middle of the night. He waited outside, mulling over his instructions from Sadr, until Tulus drove up in a Hilux.

  “You have them?” he said.

  “Two mortars, six shells,” Tulus said.

  “Turn on your headlights,” Zar said.

  With the Americani only a few kilometers away, Tulus knew this was foolish but kept his mouth shut. Both vehicles, with headlights on, drove into the courtyard.

  “Put those tubes in a shed,” Zar said. “Then go back to the mosque.”

  Lights from kerosene lanterns, candles, and a few fluorescent bulbs shone from several buildings. In the main house, a cluster of sobbing, ululating women attended Ala’s body, scrubbed clean and wrapped in a white cotton cloth. A few older children sat dozing against the walls. In adjacent rooms, a score of toddlers slumbered fitfully. Hassan’s
body, also washed, lay in a smaller building alongside his dead cousin and the other two from Hassan’s village. In the morning, the three bodies would be placed in a trailer behind a tractor and trundled to the nearby village cemetery. The fifth martyr had been buried in a field, unattended by mourners, the site marked by a white cloth attached to a scraggly pole.

  Zar did not enter the vestibule of the dead, where the women would reproach him with tear-filled eyes. He waited outside, telling his driver to flash the headlights on and off. In a few minutes, Nantush came out, offering no greeting. Zar ignored the man’s surliness and offered measured sympathy for his loss.

  “You lost a son, may Allah grant him entry,” Zar said. “Heaven and eternal bliss await all true martyrs. Like them, it is our duty to drive out the infidels!”

  Zar waited for a response, but none came. Nantush seemed listless, lost in his grief.

  “My men have stored a few arms here,” Zar continued. “They are not your concern.”

  Grasping Nantush by his shoulders, he changed his tone to one of sympathy.

  “Elder brother, I share your sorrow,” he said. “I know Ala was your heir. I saw how you smiled upon him and how brave he acted. I am in your debt. If you need me, I will drop everything to be at your side. The Qur’an says, ‘Those who believe in Allah are united as brothers.’”

  Nantush brightened slightly. Zar had not spoken so warmly before.

  “To Allah we belong,” Nantush said ritually, “and to him we shall return.”

  “Exactly,” Zar said softly. “Older brother, your son was mujahideen. No one who believes in Allah can be excused from jihad.”

  Nantush grasped the message; he was about to be used.

  “What do you want of me?” Nantush said.

  “The halek I brought with me has volunteered for martyrdom,” Zar said. “You must prepare the boy and feed him these capsules. In the morning, the infidels will come, and you point him toward them.”

  He handed three brown capsules to Nantush, who nodded dully.

  “What if the infidels do not come?” Nantush said.

  Zar wanted to slap him for his truculence, but held back.

  “Oh, they will come,” Zar said.

  He left the compound and walked toward his car. He pulled the boy out, held him by his thin shoulder, and spoke in a firm, encouraging tone.

  “You have been chosen for greatness,” Zar said. “Your family will be taken care of. To defend Islam, you must deceive and kill. Death is not blackness. You will enjoy heaven with Allah, forever!”

  After pushing the boy toward Nantush, Zar got in the car. Once outside the walls, he had his driver flick the headlights on and off to be sure the drone somewhere overhead recorded the location.

  Inside the compound, Nantush gave the boy one of the heroin capsules. A half hour later, he and his wife took him into an empty room.

  “I am following the book of Allah,” the boy recited. “Ummah resides in me.”

  He sat half dozing, his face placid. The woman knelt before the boy and washed his limbs before applying lipstick and black mascara to his soft face.

  “At the madrassa, they will praise my name,” he said dreamily. “I will be seen on YouTube. May I watch my martyrdom from heaven?”

  AT FOUR IN THE MORNING, the watch chief in the ops center awakened Barnes, who in turn alerted Coffman. In rapid succession, Barnes showed him a series of images on the video screen.

  “Yesterday afternoon, sir, we saw these jugs unloaded at this compound,” he said. “Last night, five bodies were brought there. An hour ago, a Hilux unloaded two mortar tubes.”

  “Distance?” Coffman said.

  “The compound’s on our side of the canal, sir. About a click east from here.”

  Coffman silently cursed the ANA. This was their responsibility, but they were patrolling to the west. He couldn’t launch an artillery strike that was certain to kill women and children. Yet if he stayed buttoned up and did nothing, the Taliban would lob a few more mortar shells. They had failed the first time, but if they got lucky General Killian wouldn’t be forgiving.

  “Right,” Coffman said. “Dispatch a patrol to search that compound.”

  AN HOUR BEFORE LIGHT, Sergeant McGowan moved 2nd Squad into position at the wire, where Cruz and the CIA team were waiting. Before stepping off, McGowan strapped a tourniquet above each knee.

  “Take them off,” Cruz said.

  “Sir?” McGowan said. “I’m making it easier for my men. If I get blown up, doc doesn’t have to crawl to me.”

  “You’re hard, Sergeant,” Cruz said. “I’ll give you that. But you’ll rattle your troops. It’ll get in their heads. Unstrap the quets. If you’re hit, take deep breaths. That slows the bleeding.”

  “RT, you’re all heart,” McGowan said.

  “I don’t want to hear that RT shit again,” Cruz said. “Get your herd on the move.”

  In the thin light, they left the wire. Walking point, Wolfe held to a deliberate pace, avoiding the obvious openings between fields as he swept his metal detector back and forth. Whenever the needle quivered, he paused to hover over the suspicious spot like a setter sniffing for pheasant. Ashford guarded him, alternating between squinting through his rifle scope and squirting Silly String to mark the path. Eagan was third in line, much to Ashford’s relief.

  The patrol was twenty minutes out before Wolfe registered the first solid ping! After McGowan and Cruz marked the location on their tablets, Wolfe adjusted the route and they proceeded forward. In all directions, the terrain had a sameness, wide fields with orderly rows of startling bright poppy bulbs separated at straight angles by the green lines of scrub trees and thick tangles of bush and vines that grew along the banks of the irrigation ditches. The patrol was never out of sight of one or two compounds, each protected from its neighbors by high mud walls compressed hard as rock by decades under a searing sun. Tribal shuras and Taliban judges settled the constant disputes about the property lines. Most compounds were built on sites chosen by forbearers a century ago. One might be constructed alongside a canal, another near some tractor path, and a third in the shelter of an oak stand. Every compound served as an enemy observation post. So Cruz wasn’t surprised by the radio burst in his earpiece.

  “Wolf Six, we got dickers to the east giving us the evil eye,” Ashford said. “They’re on bikes on the other side of a canal, some with balaclavas wrapped around their faces.”

  Cruz was accustomed to seeing Taliban hovering at a distance. They reminded him of Western movies where the cavalry ride along, nervously eyeing the Comanche keeping pace on the ridgeline. The watchers, well inside kill range, knew they were safe. With no weapons visible and no uniforms, the presumption of innocence provided them sanctuary.

  Eagan, several feet in front of Cruz, zoomed in on the group.

  “Those are nice wheels,” he said. “That’s a command group. Smudgy with the sun behind them, but the one with the wild beard might be that commander, Zar. I can drop him.”

  “Not a sound idea,” Cruz said. “Every muj has a wild beard. So do a few farmers.”

  “Target of opportunity,” Eagan said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “No,” Cruz said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  ZAR HAD ASSUMED A CASUAL POSE, one leg draped across the saddle of his glistening black Kawasaki Ninja. He propped his elbows on the handlebars and looked through his binoculars at the infidels. Zar loved motorcycle flicks. His flash drives included Brando in The Wild One, McQueen in The Great Escape, and Gibson in Mad Max. His companions were shifting uneasily, aware of the Marines glassing them through their rifle scopes.

  “They won’t fire,” Zar said confidently. “I can see their leader giving orders, the short, thick one with the antenna sticking up. And…”

  The sudden jabbering and yelps of the others cut him off. He swung his binoculars and focused in on a bare, ugly white ass shining across the fields at him. Before he could react, one of his companions
hopped off his bike and returned the moon.

  “Enough!” Zar shouted, upset at humanizing the enemy.

  He eased the bike into gear and his party slowly trundled down the slight rise into the tree line where their camera crew was hidden.

  CRUZ WAITED TOLERANTLY while Mad Dog Doyle pulled up his trousers amidst cheers from his comrades.

  “Dial it down, devil dogs,” Cruz said, “and lock in. Sooner or later, we’ll make contact.”

  They continued on in file and were within a field’s length of the compound when the funeral procession emerged. A shrouded body lay on a rope bed carried on the shoulders of six males dressed in clean cotton trousers, loose shirts, and rough sandals. A few younger boys scampered alongside, while what appeared to be the family walked behind the bier.

  Wolfe paused and pressed his throat mic.

  “Six, we still going to search the compound?”

  “Affirmative,” Cruz said. “Wait until the body passes.”

  THE WOMEN IN FULL BLACK CHADORS, sobbing but no longer wailing, had said goodbye at the gate. Once at the cemetery, the men would dig the grave, lower the corpse, fill in the dirt, heap on rocks to prevent scavenging animals, string colored cloths on rope lines, kiss Nantush on his right cheek, and disperse to work in the fields. The presence of the halek from the madrassa frightened them all. Nantush had promised they would not be harmed, but none fully believed him. Still, what choice did they have, with Zar somewhere out there watching them?

  Trailing a few feet behind Nantush, the boy felt calm, sleepy, tired. When he saw the Marines, they looked as big as giants. Through his heroin haze he knew enough to be scared. He tugged at Nantush’s hand.

  “God is with me, isn’t he?” he whispered.

  An agitated Nantush pried loose his hand.

  “Yes, yes, Allah awaits you,” he said. “Do as I say.”

  The pace of the procession was faltering.

  “Keep moving,” Nantush urged the pallbearers.

  He shifted his gaze between the ground and the Marines, gauging the distance, measuring the space. Then he lost his nerve. He grabbed the boy by the shoulder and shoved him forward.