Ashley's War (21 page)

At long last they made it to Afghanistan.

It’s so strange, Sarah said to herself, once the plane was on the tarmac. She found the routineness of it all disconcerting. It doesn’t feel like war at all—no one was shooting at our plane when we landed, no bullets ricocheted off the C-17 as we offloaded our stuff. It felt almost normal.

The Soviets built Bagram Airfield in the 1980s, during their war in Afghanistan. Located just sixty-five miles north of the capital city, Kabul, it was their main air base, but after the Russians retreated in defeat it fell into disrepair. The Americans began using the abandoned facility just after they entered the country in 2001, after the attacks of 9/11. At that time the facility was gutted, decimated by its problematic geography: stuck between Kabul, which the Taliban controlled, and the northern province of Panjshir, the last swathe of the country it didn’t. Years of brutal fighting between the Russians and the Afghans—and later the Taliban and the Northern Alliance—had destroyed much of the lush vineyards that once surrounded the ancient city of Bagram.

Over the decade that followed 9/11, hundreds of millions of U.S. and allied dollars poured into the airfield, leading to a construction boom so intense that a Turkish firm built a cement factory on base to keep up with the rapid expansion of hangars, towers, runways, barracks, offices, and support buildings. By the time the CSTs arrived in late August 2011, Bagram had metamorphosed into a city unto
itself, replete with a traffic-clogged, tree-lined main thoroughfare known as “Disney Drive.” The now-massive, nearly six-thousand-acre base had become a military and contractor city, home to a hive of different types of sleeping quarters, from huts and tents to formal dormitories and five large workout gyms, nine dining facilities, two Green Bean coffee shops, two Pizza Huts, two Subways, and a Popeye’s Chicken. The base also offered a top-tier trauma center for treating the most injured troops, and a detention facility to house suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.

Bagram also attends to the emotional needs of the troops by providing two United Service Organizations centers. These were congressionally chartered and designed during World War II to lift the spirits of service members heading into battle and the families who awaited their return. President Franklin D. Roosevelt conceived of the USO in 1941 just as war began to look imminent; three months later Hollywood actor Bob Hope assembled a group of celebrities and together they put on an unforgettable show for airmen based at California’s March Field. Then the war started and so did the massive mobilization of men from across the United States. In 1943, Hope and a few others entertained troops fighting in Europe and North Africa, and so began a tradition of USO tours that has never stopped. Over the years some of the biggest names of their era, from Lena Horne and John Wayne to Lou Rawls, Sheryl Crow, Toby Keith, Ben Stiller, and Stephen Colbert, have taken part in USO tours to support the troops. One of Bagram’s USO centers is named for former Arizona Cardinals football star Pat Tillman, who gave up a promising NFL career to join the Rangers after the attacks of 9/11 and was tragically killed three years later by friendly fire in eastern Afghanistan.

Sarah looked with dismay at the wretched excess of a fortified city soaked in first-world conveniences, smack in the middle of one of the world’s poorest and most conflict-ridden countries. She had been raised by her family to live simply, without unnecessary
creature comforts, and what she saw was demoralizing. She felt disgusted by it.

People here on base are living like pigs, she thought. No wonder they say Afghans resent us. Who wouldn’t?

For the CSTs, like thousands of other troops, Bagram was the final taste of America on the way to war. The soldiers heading to Ranger Regiment would stop there only a couple of days, just long enough to pick up gear, receive briefings, and process paperwork. They’d get their final assignments and—most important of all—learn which CST they would be paired with.

They would also be introduced to the Joint Operations Center, or JOC, a wartime nerve center where they received an overall intelligence brief on the kinds of missions that lay ahead and the various threats they would be facing. Most of the bases where they’d be serving would have them. At the start of America’s decade of war, bureaucratic barriers prevented vital information from reaching troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. This information blockage was part of what McChrystal had tackled as JSOC commander. No central system existed to collect, collate, and coordinate the intel that was daily being uncovered in the increasing number of special operations raids on insurgent networks. This meant valuable information remained in offices, buried under stacks of reports, stuffed away in desk drawers, or, worse, consigned to the trash. Often it never reached the people on the ground who might best understand it and be in a position to use the many details it held—down to the smallest nuggets of data that could save lives. The JOCs were born to improve the flow of information by building local structures and systems in which intel could be gathered, shared, and acted upon in real time across special operations units and top-secret government agencies. These high-tech stations could be found in various regions of Afghanistan, sitting in the middle of towns and villages that regularly lost electricity—if they had it at all—and often had no running water. By the time the CSTs arrived, the JOCs played a central and vital role in the wartime landscape.

Sarah had never deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan before, and she marveled at the humming electronics hub that had eyes all over the country. She counted thirty TV monitors and well over one hundred computers. At each station sat delegates from a slew of government agencies, each with its own acronym. In shifts that ran all day and all night they pored over every iota of intelligence that came through, and interpreted and then distributed it. Sarah worked to learn the place’s language: There was the TOC, or Tactical Operations Center; CFSOCC, Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command; BUBs and CUBs, Battle Update Brief and Commander Update Brief, respectively.

Kate, in the meantime, was astonished that senior commanders in charge of the special operations battlefield had taken precious time away from organizing and leading the fight to greet the CSTs when they reached Bagram. It appeared that the women’s arrival in Afghanistan was new and unusual enough to justify this special, high-level welcome. She didn’t imagine that many of the other enablers got the same kind of attention, and she took some comfort from the support the program received from these men, most of whom had spent the past decade in battle, either here or in Iraq. If it turns out that everyone else hates us, at least the guys at the top see the value of having us here, she thought.

Leda, still recovering from her pre-mission training injury and operating from her computer back in Virginia, had written up her suggestions for the CST pairings and submitted them to the sergeant major overseeing the program from JSOC’s headquarters at Fort Bragg. She wanted to pair the least experienced soldiers with the most experienced ones, so the veterans could coach the newbies through the tactical and cultural challenges they would face. The role of officer in charge temporarily fell to Anne Jeremy, and now, with everyone gathered together in Bagram, she shared team assignments with the few who hadn’t already received them.

“Ashley and Lane,” Anne said, “you’ll be going down south. I’ll
join in a few days, as soon as I finish the paperwork I have to do here.”

She was headed to Kandahar. Ashley was dejected when she heard the news, and while she said very little, she was unable to hide from her colleagues the anxiety she felt. It was written all over her face.

Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, was the Taliban’s home turf, site of Mullah Mohammad Omar’s 1996 political coming-out as the movement’s leader. As the Taliban fought its way northward and took control of most of the country, including the capital city, Kabul, Mullah Omar remained in Kandahar and led his new government from his compound in the south.

It was from Kandahar Airfield (KAF), where Lane and Ashley would be stationed, that the Taliban staged their last stand against the Americans in November 2001, before they were routed and forced to retreat into the valleys and villages along the border with Pakistan. The insurgents spent several years regrouping after the first phase of the war ended and gradually reemerged to fight with formidable power once more. Now, ten years on, they had demonstrated to their enemies, the world’s most sophisticated and powerful militaries, that they did not need to control the physical bases to control the actual narrative. The Taliban knew they simply had to outlast and outblast their opponents, and assassinate the civilians they suspected of working with the Afghan government and the foreigners who helped to support it. The Taliban’s escalating ability to kill and injure Afghan civilians and launch spectacular attacks on U.S. and NATO troops was part of the reason that President Obama had announced the surge in December 2009. By the time the direct action CSTs arrived at Bagram in the summer of 2011, the battlefield they would join with the Rangers had become vastly more dangerous and unpredictable. Kandahar had become one of the most notorious hotbeds of the insurgency, home to a nearly endless number of IED attacks that claimed the lives and limbs of American service members.

But there was another, more personal reason for Ashley’s anxiety.
She would be going to war with Lane, a fellow Guard member, not Amber, her summer training course and PMT partner with whom she had expected to work. CST assignments were, as it turned out, changing constantly based on the needs of the special operations teams, and Anne warned the girls they were likely to change again in the future. The one comfort Ashley had clung to—that she would serve with her close companion—was now gone. She told Lane as much as they waited at the airfield for the plane to take them down south.

Lane, for her part, felt guilty about disappointing Ashley, though of course she had had nothing to do with the decision. She had not gone out of her way to be warm and fuzzy to anyone that summer. No one would ever call her mean-spirited, but she shared Amber’s no-bullshit demeanor; in fact, she was even more blunt and uncompromising when she encountered something she disagreed with. Part of it came from the way she was raised, with a lot of responsibility, little parental supervision, and only her brother and her track and field coach to lean on. But another part of Lane’s toughness and uncompromising attitude stemmed from her rape experience. She had remained true to the vow she made after “coming out” to her fellow Guard members about the incident: she would never allow herself to be victimized or taken advantage of again. She didn’t care who it was; she never was going to “tone it down” or stay “nice” and quiet in the face of something she believed was wrong no matter how insignificant. But Lane also felt protective of Ashley, not only because she was such a good person, but because she represented a kind of wholesomeness that Lane had never known. Ashley came from a supportive, loving family, and had a marriage that inspired every CST who met her and Jason. Lane wanted to see all of that goodness remain unsullied through the ugliness of war—as much, she admitted to herself, for her own sake as for Ashley’s. So, however her new teammate might feel about working with her, Lane bucked herself up and embraced the role of the NCO determined to protect
her officer, a second lieutenant with the angelic smile and kind heart. She knew Ashley felt unsettled about Kandahar
and
about her, and she promised to watch her partner’s backside when things went haywire, as she was sure they would.

In fact, things were going haywire everywhere. That month, August 2011, when the CSTs were joining their new teams, was shaping up to be among the deadliest for U.S. forces since the war began. Along with the Americans who perished in the Chinook helicopter crash, more than fifteen soldiers had been killed in action in the southern provinces of Kandahar, where Ashley and Lane would be, and nearby Helmand. A number of other Americans had given their lives in eastern Afghanistan, where several CSTs would be posted. The women had arrived in Afghanistan at a particularly deadly period in the long war. The handover of security responsibilities from NATO to Afghan forces was just getting under way, and President Obama had announced plans to bring the war to its close, beginning with a major drawdown of troops by the end of that year. Bin Laden was dead, and most Americans rarely thought about the fact that their country was at war. “We take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding,” the president had said a few months earlier. “Even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance. These long wars will come to a responsible end.”

But for the newly minted CSTs the war was just about to begin. And if that month’s casualty count was any indicator, a bloody fight awaited them.

Kate, who had been so offended by the critical response to her writing at the end of CST selection, wrote a poem to mark the beginning of her deployment.

We are living in a cloud of dust

Like a fog that settled in when we weren’t looking and won’t move on

The further out the thicker it appears, and the only way you know you are in it is the grit in your eyes and the film coating your mouth.

I feel like I am on a moon or stuck in a book with lots of meaningful buildings and scenery, but all the people walking around are just characters that hold no sway in the plot,

Like a dreamscape that is a staging area between two worlds.

All of my history lies behind me, but perhaps my defining moments lay ahead.

Perhaps, indeed.

B
y the next evening the paperwork was finished and it was at last time to go to war.

During the flight to Kandahar, the routineness of it all impressed Lane, just as it had Sarah a few days earlier. After ten years in Afghanistan the air system ran smoothly; the CSTs hopped on the hour-long flight between the two rapidly growing military outposts just as easily as travelers on the other side of the world boarded a Delta Shuttle to travel between Washington, D.C., and New York. To make things even stranger, there were civilians on board their flight from Bagram. When the plane touched down, Ashley and Lane hugged the other CSTs on the flight headed to their own bases, then stepped out onto the tarmac.