The Valley (4 page)

“Roger, sir.”

“Ask your questions, talk to everyone you need to talk to, and write it up straight. Do not be ignored.”

“I won't, sir.”

“But do not get in their way, and do not fuck up their operations. Do the job, write the fifteen-six, and come back here.”

—

The S-1 shop door was padlocked. Everyone back in their bunks playing Xbox and watching movies on their laptops, or at the FOB gym.

Black turned his key in the padlock and pulled open the door. He wove his way through desk-shaped shadows to his own area, at the rear. The place of honor.

He clicked on the desk lamp. A smart-alecky friend had sent it to him in the mail as a joke, after he'd been given the S-1 desk job. It was a little music box number with a painted lamp shade that rotated when you turned it on, wraparound scenes of glorious south Pacific locales crawling around its surface in tacky Technicolor. He tossed the map into the pool of rainbow-hued light and only at that moment, with a faux island ditty tinkling softly at him, realized that he was still clutching in his other hand the manila envelope he had taken with him to Gayley's office.

He tossed that to the side and bent down over the map.

He'd been in New York City years before. He remembered the feeling when he first stood beneath the Trade Center, his brain processing that this thing he'd read about and imagined was real, enormously, almost frighteningly real. That was how he felt looking at the map of the Valley, seeing this almost mythical place in specificity, in actual topographic representations, in symbols and annotations proving its existence, looking back out at him declaring
I am here.

It turned this way and that like a serpent as it rose through the mountains. Vega was not the only American presence there.

Down at its mouth lay another outpost. Combat Outpost Arcturus. Some officer was on an astronomy kick, apparently, when the names for the Valley posts were assigned. Somewhere in the sheaf of paperwork Gayley had given him he had seen it noted that soldiers called the place COP Heavenly.

I'll bet.

Vega was a few miles further in beyond Arcturus. There were no other posts on the map. Vega was the limit of the American advance.

The Valley kept winding its way onward and upward, terminating—just as lore had told it—in a narrow pass several miles beyond the outpost. That would be the Pakistani border, roughly. The precise location of the frontier was a little hazy in the Nuristan mountains. No one who lived there, it seemed, had ever really needed to know with precision.

He put the map aside, out of his sight in the shadowed part of his desk, and switched on his computer. While it warmed up he considered the unlikelihood of him being selected for this particular job. About Gayley's admonitions.

His civilian e-mail account came up. He opened a blank message and sat a moment, thinking, before typing in a subject line:

The Final Insult

The recipient was a trusted friend whom Black had known since they were both civilians fighting for slots at the Army's Officer Candidate School. They'd gone through training together, but they never saw each other anymore. He was the one who'd sent the lamp when Black had come to FOB Omaha. It arrived without a return address, as befit a package from someone who was increasingly disappearing into the world of classified military operations.

The friend was a highly intelligent wiseass who liked to be entertained and preferred witty banter to plain speech. This could be wearying, but having few American friends on the FOB, Black was usually happy to oblige. Chances were slim he would get the message in time, but if he did, the guy might have some useful advice.

As you are a connoisseur of bureaucratic inanity you will appreciate this. As a perfect cap-off to a stellar military career, your intrepid correspondent will be leaving Forward Operating Base PastGlory to venture alone into the broad sunlit uplands of neighboring Berzerkistan, where he will be welcomed warmly by the hale lads of the 44th Foot and regaled thereby with tales of ales (drank back home) and males (military-aged) over which and whom they have prevailed; and where he will also put the Fifteen on the Six, having been selected as fit for this singular duty by the great churning motherwheel of Army
bullshit
human resources efficiency.

If I put in words the triviality of the subject matter, you would cry.

Wherever you are on the Earth's many lands, may you be drunk and insufferable. Or killing bad guys.

Care of

He pulled the map of the Valley over and extracted a grid coordinate.

Oscar Zulu 36119 81534. God save your spleen.

Yours from the Land of Mediocrity,

—Lord of the Files

Good enough. If his friend got it, he might actually be amused enough to reply.

He had just sent it when his desk phone jangled. He picked it up.

Gayley. Calling with word on the transportation situation.

“Sir?”

“Ground convoy. They don't like flying helicopters into that place unless someone's dying, and not even always then.”

“Okay, sir. When do I go?”

“Tomorrow night.”

He'd wanted more time. But Black knew better than to say nothing, or splutter
sir?
or otherwise register his dismay.

“Roger that, sir.”

“I know,” Gayley said, reading his thoughts. “Their resupply convoy only makes runs up there once a week on Sundays.”

It was Saturday night.

“They leave from Three-Four-Four's headquarters at seventeen hundred. Take tomorrow off and get your gear ready. Be there with your stuff no later than sixteen thirty.”

“Roger, sir,” Black replied. “Sir, does that mean—”

“Yeah, it does. You're gonna stay out there a week.”

This time Black lapsed into silence in spite of himself. Gayley did too. Black wondered if he was reconsidering the decision to send him out there.

It was the colonel who finally cleared his throat and spoke.

“Use this opportunity, Lieutenant. Do this thing right. It may not seem like much of a job, but do it right.”

“I will, sir.”

“Maybe this can be a first step to feeling good about your service again.”

Black had to squeeze his eyes shut to clear the vision of beating Gayley's face in with the telephone receiver.

“Thank you, sir.”

He couldn't believe he got the words out.

“And, Lieutenant?”

“Sir.”

“Stay low.”

Gayley hung up.

Less than twenty-four hours. Black wasn't worried about his gear. His stuff was clean and maintained. But there were a couple people he was probably gonna want to see.

He gathered up the map and the 15-6 paperwork and reached to turn off his computer. He paused.

There was one more e-mail that had been sitting unopened in his inbox since he'd returned from leave. He knew the sender but he hadn't opened it. Its entry sat sandwiched in bold text among the rest of his already-read messages.

Subject: ?

He stared at it only a moment before clicking off the computer and heading out.

He stopped at a nearby Porta-Potty, stuffing the papers under one arm and stepping inside. There was graffiti scratched on the wall, of a type that was scratched on the wall of every portable restroom on every base in Iraq and Afghanistan. Black could just make out today's entry as he stood in the dim light.

CHUCK NORRIS DOESN'T FEEL SORRY FOR YOU.
HE ONLY FEELS SLIGHTLY LESS CONTEMPT AFTER
HE ROUNDHOUSE KICKS YOU IN THE BALLS.

B
ack at his quarters, Black opened the padlock and hasp and pushed through into darkness. He lived in a one-story Afghan building that predated FOB Omaha, constructed villa-style around a large courtyard with doorways running along its inside perimeter, opening onto trees and shade. Upon finding a secluded structure already conveniently divided into small- to moderate-size stone rooms perfect for one or two people to live in, the officers and senior sergeants of Black's unit had immediately taken the place over for themselves.

Rough and hazardous electrical wiring had been run to each room, plywood doors hastily installed where there were none. A fire pit and lawn chairs soon sprawled beneath the trees. It was good living as far as deployments went. The junior enlisted soldiers, who lived in noisy open barracks bays, called it the Senior Dorm.

He switched on the light and checked his watch. It was still early evening. He hauled a rucksack from his black Army-issue trunk and shoved several changes of underclothes and an extra uniform into it. Taking up his rifle and pistol, he disassembled each and gave them a careful once-over. Both were clean inside. He moved quickly and mechanically, oiling the weapons and wiping down his ammunition while his mind traveled.

When he was finished he checked the time again. Still early. He peeled off his fatigues and switched into his “PTs.” The physical training uniform. Even in the cooling weather these consisted of simple black shorts and a gray T-shirt with ARMY printed on them in reflective lettering.

Black preferred running at night. He stuck to the edges of the base, where he was farthest from civilization and closest to the dirt berm that ringed the FOB. On a clear night there were many stars to see, and if there was moonlight the hulking shadows of the mountains as well, rising above the barrier. Occasionally, if it was dark and clear enough, he would see a point of light here or there on the lower slopes, and would wonder:
Our guys or theirs?

He completed a lap of the base and trudged out across a boardwalk made of wooden pallets to the shower trailer behind the Senior Dorm. When he returned he put on jeans, a polo shirt, and a light black coat. Cramming a baseball cap on his head, he headed out into the night.

Wearing civilian clothing on deployment was, of course, a blatant violation of regulations. But Black had realized some time back that if you wear street clothes and act natural, people don't look too closely. They just assume you are one of the vaguely civilian defense contractors—private security forces, weapons systems technicians, other more opaque occupations—who mingled freely among the base's military population. He only did it at night. He wasn't likely to be recognized in the part of the base he was headed to anyway.

He stayed off the main thoroughfares. At night, life on the FOB retreated to the chow hall, the gym, and people's “hootches”—Army-speak for the hasty and improvised spaces that soldiers spruced up and lived in while deployed.

He caught dim glimpses of little makeshift worlds as he passed behind rows of shipping containers, cut across motor pools, and weaved through the hodgepodge of temporary structures and tumbledown Afghan buildings, occupied and rendered haphazardly usable for work or living, that made up the various neighborhoods of the base. It was like traveling through a town using only backyards and alleys.

Here an awning made of tarps, beneath it a wedge of light showing a hootch hung in tapestries and strung in white Christmas lights—an all-season favorite—while the scent of incense and sounds of psychedelic rock drifted out into the night. There the echoes of laughter and video game destruction. Over there the orange points of cigar tips hung in the shadows of a homemade back porch.

He walked a long, meandering route, occasionally passing soldiers in T-shirts and camouflage pants, smoking and stubbing the ground with boot toes or jamming a finger into an ear while they tried to connect a call on a satellite phone—a rare treasure. After fifteen minutes his sneakers crunched onto a thick layer of gravel and he emerged from between a shipping container and a blast wall into stark light. He was on the far side of the base, at the “market.”

A square one hundred feet on a side was lined on all four sides with large white trailers, shoulder-to-shoulder, featuring the usual deployment concessions. Barber trailer, two walk-up fast food stands (Nathan's and McDonald's), sewing shop, standard local schwag store—vendors from Turkey selling vaguely Persian rugs and tapestries for soldiers who felt the urge to go local—and a walk-in Green Beans Coffee trailer. Four portable stadium floodlights bathed the place in halide.

There was another market on Black's side of the FOB, but he avoided that one. Many of the interpreters and other foreign nationals who worked on the base lived on this side of Omaha, which made the crowd more interesting anyway. Black headed for the coffee shop.

It was spacious, as far as these things went. A raised trailer on wheels with a wooden deck built around it by some industrious National Guardsmen. Outside, soldiers and civilian contractors lounged at picnic tables. Inside was a full coffee counter and a side room with another four little tables.

He trudged across the gravel and stumped up the steps, past laughter and cigarette smoke. He wasn't even all the way through the door when a voice sang out, filling the small space.

“Breedman!”

Kourash, the Afghan proprietor, greeting Black as he always did. Fiftyish, hair silvering, animated. Grew up in Kabul and still had his family and kids there, but had chased the good American money to the Nuristan plain. Passed the security clearance and got a job at the Green Beans. They had met when Black first came to Omaha several months before. Black was fairly sure “
breedman”
meant some form of “lieutenant” in Pashto.

Kourash hurried around the counter, pulling him into an embrace.

“As-salamu alaykum,
my friend,” he said, using the Arabic greeting favored by Muslims worldwide regardless of their native language.

Peace be upon you.

He stepped back and smiled at Black, placing a palm over his heart.

“Alaykum salaam,”
Black replied, looking down and grinning in spite of himself.

Kourash's brow furrowed and he spoke accusingly.

“My friend, where are you?” he asked. “I am not seeing you since . . . one month! Always I am wondering where are you?”

Black explained that he had been in the United States on leave for a couple weeks.

“Okay, this is good. I am afraid maybe you leave Omaha, maybe to fight in the towns or the hills.”

“You know I don't do anything like that.”

“Yes, thanks God. So you come in!”

He ushered Black forward and slipped behind the counter.

“Your usual?”

Black's usual was black coffee. The place sold every kind of dandyish drink you could find in an American chain shop, or at least powdered deployment versions of the same. He felt sheepish ordering the cheapest thing on the menu all the time, but he couldn't bring himself to order a Triple Chai Smoothie in a war zone. He nodded.

Kourash plied him with questions and dawdled over fixing the coffee. The place was empty except for a couple of young soldiers slurping confections over a table in the other room.

The older man placed the coffee in front of him and refused his money, as usual. Black tossed it all into the tip jar, as usual. He checked his watch. Still a little too early in the evening to make his stops. He was figuring he would sit and read awhile when a thought occurred to him.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Kourash looked at him as though to say: Of all the questions, that one is the only foolish one to ask.

“What do you know about the Valley?”

The older man looked at him blankly. Black pointed through the windows of the shop, in the direction in which they would have seen the mountains if it had been daylight.

Kourash's brow furrowed again. He made quotation marks with his fingers.

“You mean ‘the Valley' the valley?”

He said a name in Pashto that Black did not recognize.

Black nodded.

“Why?”

“I'm going there. I have to take a trip there for a week.”

Kourash's face darkened and he peered at Black closely. He turned and hollered something in Pashto at a tiny door that led to a tiny walk-in storage closet, which doubled as the shop's office.

A younger Afghan man emerged and took over the counter. Kourash came out from behind it again and hustled Black into the side room, where the soldiers had just finished their drinks and were slinging rifles over their shoulders to go.

They sat. Kourash leaned in over the table.

“Tell.”

Black explained about having to do a short investigation at a very small American base there. Kourash folded his arms and listened intently. When Black finished, Kourash leaned back and blew out a slow breath, looking at his friend and shaking his head slightly.

“What?” Black asked.

“This place, these valleys, this is very . . .”

He trailed off, searching with his hands in the air.

“What is the word when never they are with the world today, everyone is yesterday? Behind?”

“Backwards.”

“Yes, this. This place is very backwards. Very old. ‘
Kafiristan.'
You know this name?”

Black shook his head.

“
Kafir.
‘Unbeliever.' All this place, Nuristan, it is the last part of Afghanistan to accept Islam. Always before they call it Kafiristan. Land of infidels, because the old peoples there, they would not come to Allah.”

Black hadn't known any of this.

“Now they come to Allah, a long time before the Taliban. But the Talib, they hate these peoples. They still see them
kafir,
infidels. They do not trust. They want this land very much for the Talib.”

Kourash frowned.

“So they fight, and now you are here and fight. Taliban want you to go away.”

That much Black knew. There was a knock-down drag-out going on between Americans and Taliban forces, all through those mountains, with the tribal people there fighting the Taliban or fighting the Americans or caught in the middle—more or less. Individual people choose individual sides for individual reasons.

“My brother, if you go here, you do not . . . do not get—”

He stirred the air, murmuring possibilities.

“Into . . .”

“Involved?” Black offered.

“I think. You do not go in this war.”

Black made calming hands.

“I'll mostly be sitting around the outpost.”

“I pray this. These peoples, these
kafir,
they do . . . the fight. I know this word. Fight the blood.”

“Blood feud?”

“Probably this,” Kourash said, leaning in and pointing at Black. “The families, the tribes, when they fight with each other, the fight may be a hundred years. Brother to brother fight, and his sons, and his sons. They never forget. They are very old peoples. And they hate the Talib.”

He leaned back.

“Too many enemies.”

He threw his arms up as though confronted with a puzzle too complicated to solve.

“
Big
mess!”

“Okay.”

“My brother. You do not know the enemy, you do not know the friend. You do not go in between these peoples and their enemy.”

“Like I said, mostly I should just be on the outpost. I don't think I have to get into any of that.”

“Thanks God.”

Time to get moving. Black thanked Kourash and assured him again that he would be careful, suffering through another embrace.

Outside the crowd had thinned. It was getting later. He cut across the gravel yard and disappeared through a gap in the trailers. It was time to go see the acquisition specialist. Which sounded like an official military title but wasn't.