“Any ELINT cuts from that sector?” Stovell said.
“Routine transmissions,” Ahmed said. “The only structures are a madrassa for juvenile Talibs and a mosque with five internet connections. It’s a hike to get up there for prayers. Totally isolated.”
“But no calls for jihad?”
“Not a peep.”
“Any firefights?”
Ahmed pointed over to the artillery fire control section.
“Check with the gunny,” he said.
Stovell picked up his folding chair and plopped it down next to Gunnery Sergeant Maxwell, the artillery ops chief. Captain Lasswell put aside her laptop and joined them. The map on the electronic screen was speckled with the orange dots of on-call fire missions.
“Looks like you two,” she said genially, “are communing with AFATIDS. Can I help?”
The program called Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System recorded data about every fire mission conducted by any US unit in Afghanistan.
“I don’t see any activity in Q5F,” Stovell said. “Can you pull up all the missions fired since you landed?”
Maxwell, balding and tending toward a potbelly, grinned, glad to show off his skills. In response to three keystrokes, several dozen small crosses popped up, scattered on either side of Route 11 leading to Lashkar Gah.
“The ANA call in five to eight missions a day,” he said. “Three shells here, ten there. To get to Lash, they’re clearing by fire, mostly blind.”
“Careful, Gunny,” Lasswell said. “Let’s not speak ill of our ally. Those askars have a reason to avoid a real fight. If they’re killed, their families are cut adrift.”
She abruptly stopped. Stovell was regarding her with mild amusement.
“Oops,” she said. “Sorry, Mr. Stovell. I forgot that you know ten times more about this stuff.”
“Nonsense,” Stovell said. “It’s good you haven’t lost your empathy. I’m called Stovell, by the way, never Mister Stovell.
He pointed at the Q5F sector.
“Do you have any historical data? Old patterns?”
Lasswell hesitated, knowing she should ask the XO before proceeding. But she wanted to impress Stovell. She looked at the ops chief.
“What do you think, Gunny? Will Hal object?”
“We’ll get some bitching, ma’am,” Maxwell said.
“Hal is our pet name for higher headquarters in Kabul,” Lasswell explained. “They monitor us twenty-four seven. Confirm this, tell us that, blah, blah.”
Maxwell had been busy at the keyboard. When he hit Enter, they looked at a screen with a few crosses.
“No missions in Q5F in the past year,” Maxwell said. “Not a single one.”
In the chat box on the screen, a message was flashing: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
“That’s Hal,” Lasswell said. “Some bored watch officer four hundred miles away asking an inane question. We’ll ignore him.”
“How far back can you trace the data?” Stovell said.
“MARCENT in Tampa,” Lasswell said, “has the records. I have a friend there.”
She swiftly opened a classified internet chat room. After ten minutes of back-and-forth, the locations of 3,845 fire missions sparkled like red embers across the black-and-white photomap of Helmand.
“That’s the entire laydown for 2014,” Lasswell said, “the year we pulled out.”
A few mouse clicks brought into focus the canals, ditches, tree lines, paths, and compounds in the four square miles surrounding the firebase.
“Look at those red crosses in Q5F,” Maxwell said. “That sector was smoking hot.”
Lasswell placed the cursor on a cross, clicked, and scanned the format.
“Troops in contact,” she read.
She shifted to another cross and clicked.
“Another TIC. HIMARS and fixed-wing,” she said. “April, 2014. One Marine KIA.”
Maxwell squinted at the sitrep.
“There’s cross-talk about not hitting that mosque,” he said.
“That place been checked out?” Stovell said.
Lasswell glanced around before shaking her head.
“That’s out of our lane,” she said.
“Easy fix, ma’am,” Maxwell said.
He called over to the sergeant controlling the Common Operational Picture displayed on a blown-up photomap.
“Bro,” Maxwell said, “can you pull up the Afghan patrol routes?”
A young sergeant tapped a few keys, and a dozen squiggly blue lines popped up.
“That shows their GPS tracks,” Maxwell said. “No ANA patrol has gone into Q5F.”
From behind them, the watch officer loudly cleared his throat. Coffman had stridden out of his office, red-faced.
“Kabul just called,” he yelled. “Who the hell’s searching through back files?”
Lasswell raised her hand.
“My bad, sir,” she said. “I got a little sidetracked.”
Noticing that Stovell was in the room, Coffman decided to play it deftly, administering a measured reprimand to show that he was a hands-on executive.
“Well, no harm done this time, Captain,” he said in a paternal tone. “But let’s remember we’re a firebase, not a library.”
Stovell spoke up an amiable tone, clear enough for the staff to hear.
“The fault lies with me, Colonel,” he said. “I regret if I’ve offended you. It’s been my experience that research pays off.”
Coffman’s face lost color. Stovell’s challenge caught him off guard. He thought of saying, This is my command. But that would wreck any future with Stovell Industries.
“We each have a mission, Mr. Stovell,” he said formally. “Unfortunately, I also have to deal with Kabul. Let’s try not to rile up higher headquarters.”
He forced a smile and headed to his office. The staff turned back to their duties, murmuring among themselves. Maxwell looked at Lasswell.
“He’s a cool dude,” he whispered, “backing the colonel down like that.”
Stovell had resumed studying the photomap.
“Q5F is as quiet as a tomb,” he said. “The ANA avoid the sector, and the mullah at that mosque is not railing against us infidels. Why do you suppose that is?”
“The dog that didn’t bark?” Lasswell said.
“Bravo, Captain,” Stovell said. “I’d have missed it if the gunny and you hadn’t checked the records. Did I hear you’re going to business school?”
“Yes, sir. Stanford.”
“One of my companies is in Palo Alto,” Stovell said. “I’m thinking of moving out of there, though. It’s an odd culture, with its post-nationalist world view.”
He handed her a business card.
“You have command experience,” he said. “I have a few managerial slots you’d find challenging.”
“Thanks, sir,” she said. “Can I say how weird it is meeting you? I mean, one wrong step out here and it’s all over.”
Stovell smiled tolerantly.
“Owning Apple,” he said, “didn’t prevent Steve Jobs from dying at fifty-six. Life should be an adventure, not a catered safari.”
“Well, I guess your perspective is different, sir, having been in Force Recon and all…”
Stovell laughed.
“I was never in Force. I was a misplaced 6800 clerk! Eagan and Richards saved me on that op. If you’re puzzled about my presence here, remember your Eliot: ‘The end of our exploring is to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.’”
33
The Sappers
When the suicide boy had detonated his belt of explosives that morning, Zar was hiding in a copse of trees six hundred meters away. Kneeling next to him, a Taliban camera crew recorded the blast and quickly headed to Lashkar Gah to distribute the video.
Zar and his gang drove a few kilometers north, dismounting twice to push their bikes across narrow footbridges. Under the overhang of trees along a canal bank near the mosque, Zar turned off to the righ
t. His four companions continued straight ahead, walking their bikes across a field laced with deep furrows. When they reached the mosque, they parked their bikes in the courtyard.
Zar pushed his Kawasaki down a steep gully, pulled back the green netting over a cave entrance, and puttered down a dank tunnel supported by thick wooden beams. He parked in the center of a cavernous dirt cellar beneath the mosque. On a sturdy bench were heaped hundreds of zip-locked plastic bags, each filled with a kilo of black tar heroin. The lab was a mess of dented barrels, sliced-open sacks, soggy tubs, open jugs of precursor chemicals, sweaty laborers, dirty shovels, slushy wheelbarrows, a press machine, twisted hoses, bare light bulbs, and a sputtering generator. The actual conversion of the wet opium into heroin was done outside in vats heated by propane-fueled fires.
The Persian was waiting in the cave. Since his youth, he had been overweight, unathletic, fanciful in dress, and plodding in his studies of the Qu’ran. He had advanced by choosing a career in accounting. No man, no matter how ferocious, could bend the truth of numbers. A kilo of heroin, costing him $3,000, would sell for $12,000 to middlemen in Iran. After all payouts, he calculated his uncle and the Republican Guard would net at least $40 million for investing $15 million. The ISI and the Taliban would split about $45 million. His commission might be as high as $4 million. There was one step to go—moving the product out of the lab, despite the drones overhead.
The Persian greeted Zar by gesturing at the bulging pile of plastic bags.
“Three hundred kilos,” he said, “and you bring four riders on motorcycles. With this much on their backs, they’ll look like camels. It’s impossible!”
Zar pretended indifference, as if the problem was easily solved.
“No motorbikes. I’ve decided to put forty kilos in an old car,” he said. “It will go first, followed by a pickup with the rest. If anything goes wrong, we lose only the car, a small loss.”
“A small loss?” the Persian said. “You’re putting tens of millions in two vehicles? This is insane! Emir Sadr promised dozens of couriers, with no package over ten kilos.”
“I have to keep my mujahideen here to fight the infidels,” Zar said. “They can’t be sent off carrying a few kilos.”
“Each kilo is worth more than two of your fighters,” the Persian said. “You are risking too much!”
When Zar did not reply, the Persian pushed further, delighted to have his tormentor at a disadvantage.
“You promised the farmers would cooperate,” he said, “but some are still holding out. I have one million yet to spend!”
Zar tried to push off blame.
“The Baloch are telling the farmers that you will run away,” he said, “because you fear the americanis.”
The Persian looked from the muddy floorboards to the crusted tubs and the careless piles of his precious heroin sacks. He rubbed his forehead. Disorder depressed him.
“That’s nonsense,” he said. “Emir Sadr assured me that you would drive out the infidels.”
Zar stood erect, inflating his chest.
“I will, inshallah.”
Exasperated by Zar’s excuses, the Persian pointed up at the wooden beams above them.
“They’ve arrived.”
“Good. I hope they prove worth it,” Zar said.
He pushed open a trap door and emerged into the prayer room of the mosque. Spread on top of the polished mahogany floor were dozens of brightly colored prayer rugs. AKs, PKMs, RPGs, sandals, Skechers, boots, and a few pairs of dress shoes lay scattered about. To the Persian, this was evidence of more disorder, caused by sloppy minds.
At one end of the room, a dozen Taliban, in shalwar kameez and turbans, sat barefoot, sipping tea. At the other end, Tulus was talking to a slender Asian in black pajamas. Behind him squatted his two companions, similarly dressed with black bandanas around their foreheads.
“This is all the shura sent?” Zar said.
“They know what to do,” Tulus said. “Their leader Quat speaks some Americani and no Pashto.”
Zar looked at Quat’s battered face. The other two were in their twenties, but Quat was over forty, with a broken nose and black eyes appraising as a hawk. Pointing at Zar’s face, Quat frowned and spoke softly, pausing between each word.
“Your beard,” he said, “not work in the bush.”
Quat ran his palm over his bald head and down his hairless cheek, making a slithering movement with his fingers. In the jungle, a hunter must glide like a tiger, with no beard to be caught in the vines. Zar took this as an insult.
“A movie ninja,” Zar said in Pashto, drawing back his arm to slap the insolent little man.
Quat, slender as a bamboo shoot, dropped into a fighter’s crouch. Zar hesitated. With his mujahideen watching, he wanted to strike the insolent Asian. Yet the man stood there composed, almost contemptuous.
Tulus put his hand to his swollen lip. Good, he would enjoy seeing Zar beaten. But he had his orders from the shura. He stepped forward and spoke in English to Quat, who quickly responded.
“He wants to recon the base,” Tulus said. “And he needs to know the weather, day and night.”
“All right, I’ll show it to him,” Zar said. “The other two stay here.”
Tulus spoke briefly with Quat.
“His men will not sleep indoors,” Tulus said. “He will find them a place by the canal and return.”
Taking their sneakers and AKs, the sappers left. The Persian remained in the background, scarcely noticed. Tulus kept his head down, tapping a toe on a soft rug.
“What else?” Zar snapped.
“The journalists in Lashkar Gah are circulating the video,” Tulus said. “Soon the internet will show the martyr, may Allah welcome him. As you instructed, we announced he killed four infidels.”
He waited until Zar sensed there was more and nodded for him to continue.
“Nantush called,” Tulus said.
“Here? You talked to him from here?”
Tulus was unfazed by the angry tone. Low-level Taliban weren’t on the americani watch list.
“Don’t worry. Every day there are many calls at the mosque,” Tulus said. “Nantush lost a second son in the martyr’s bombing.”
The news brought Zar up short. He frowned as he reflected back.
“I saw confusion after the bomb went off,” he said. “He’s upset. It will pass. May Allah welcome his son. Don’t answer if he calls again. It’s a waste of your time.”
“Nantush, uh, needs three kilos of heroin,” Tulus said reluctantly. “Otherwise, the takfir working for the infidels will arrest him. In return, Nantush is offering you the harvest from five jeribs.”
“That stupid farmer asks too much,” Zar said.
Tulus glanced at the Persian, who grimaced. Zar couldn’t move the heroin he had, and yet he was ranting against Nantush, who had helped him.
“We come out far ahead,” the Persian said. “His jeribs will yield six kilos of heroin and you’re giving him only three.”
Zar was embarrassed to be bargaining about a farmer.
“Give him one kilo,” he said, “provided he blames the americani for the boy’s death and arranges for the press to view his son’s body.”
Tulus pawed at his lip to remind Zar of the slap.
“He is my uncle,” he said. “He works hard and worships Allah. Only one kilo?”
Zar waved his hand impatiently.
“I have no time for this,” he said. “Your job right now is to ride with us and tell me what the Asian says.”
34
The Second Death
Tulus followed Zar outside, where Quat and two Taliban were sitting astride motorcycles. Only the Vietnamese wrapped a balaclava around his face to conceal his features. The five crossed the canal and drove a kilometer south to the knoll where earlier that day Zar had watched Cruz’s patrol. It was now midafternoon, and the sun’s low angle clearly silhouetted the outline of the firebase to the west. Quat heard the mosquito whine of a drone
circling above them.
“They see us,” he said, “but do not shoot?”
“We are safe,” Tulus said. “No weapons.”
“A strange way to fight,” Quat said. “Can you stir them up?”
Zar considered the request. Amongst the harvesters in the fields, he had stationed a few armed teams. He knew he would be placing them in danger, but he wanted to show off. The Taliban shura in Quetta had paid dearly to hire this strange Asian. He estimated it would take the drone ten minutes to locate any shooters. Zar turned to Tulus.
“Call Habullah, Abdul Salam, and Rasha,” he said. “Tell them their teams are to fire a few bullets at the base. Then hide the weapons and leave quickly.”
Tulus punched in one of the hundred channels on his ICOM.
“Three ducks fly over the field,” he radioed. “They lay fifty eggs and leave quickly.”
AT THE FIREBASE, Sergeant Ahmed’s intel section intercepted the childlike code and ignored it. Over their ICOMs, the Talibs regularly conversed with farmers, exchanged curses with Afghan soldiers, and talked in senseless riddles to mask an occasional genuine order.
THE FIRST GANG OF FOUR TALIBS, particularly bold, waded up an irrigation ditch to within three hundred meters of the firebase. The foliage from the overhanging trees screened them from the drone circling at five thousand feet. A hundred meters behind them, the second gang hid along the edge of a field while the laborers, who had been scraping opium teardrops onto their flat putty knives, skittered away. The third gang was hiding still farther back in a tree line.
Among the three groups, they had two RPGs, a half-dozen AKs, and one Russian PKM machine gun. Because the laborers walked where they pleased, the range to the base from these three firing positions had been paced off. This allowed the RPGs to be elevated at the correct angle to hit the base. Still, the Marine artillery crews were sheltered behind heavy earth berms, and the sentries on the perimeter were standing watch from inside deep bunkers. There were no obvious targets, and the shooters were aiming into the afternoon sun.
Habullah’s gang, nearest the base, braced the stocks of their AKs into the dirt and pushed the barrels into the air. As soon as the first rocket was fired, the riflemen squeezed off a few bursts that quickly emptied their twenty-round magazines. The PKM crew aimed at the artillery tubes. The heavy slugs fired at a slow cyclic rate that sounded like hammers beating on iron pipes. After a few seconds, the other two gangs joined in. The shooting lasted less than twenty seconds, followed by the usual hoots of “Allahu Akbar” as the shooters slipped away. The attack was over before the sirens on the base sounded a warning.
The Last Platoon Page 16
