Lions of Kandahar (9 page)

“Will your people remember your names? Do you want to live under the heel of Taliban rule again?” Then I bellowed, “You are the Lions of Kandahar! You are the protectors of southern Afghanistan! We have fought and bled with you many years. Will you not fight with me now?” My Afghan comrades, dressed in fatigues and sitting cross-legged on the floor, seemed fixated on what I was saying.

“No country has ever helped Afghanistan like America. Did we not help you defeat the Russians?” I asked.

Then I told them this was their chance to get
badal
, or revenge, for what had happened to Shef’s team and heal an open wound. That’s what they desperately wanted. Narrowing their eyes, they grunted and nodded.

Ali turned to Shinsha.

“Wali na?”
he said.

Now came the hard part. We had to figure out how to tell them about the mission without giving up too much detail. I figured we could give them just enough information to shape their ideas into plans we had already made, making them think that it was their plan. If it was their plan they would keep it quiet, knowing that a slip of the tongue would tip off the Taliban. Loyalty in Afghanistan can be bought, and we knew the Taliban had spies in the Afghan Army. Hell, we knew there were Taliban at the firebase. We just didn’t know who they were. I explained that none of the soldiers could leave the base, all the weapons needed to be locked away, and all cell phones and the barracks office phone had to be confiscated.

Shinsha asked us to leave. He wanted to talk with his commanders dispersed around the room. He knew I spoke some Pashto; this was his subtle way of being polite. We ducked out of the hut. When we returned, they agreed to join the mission and to all of my requests.
We ended up with a volunteer force of almost sixty soldiers and nearly ten solid leaders out of more than one hundred ANA. The rest of the unit was getting ready to go on leave.

In the meantime, Jared had talked again to Bolduc and knew a little more about the operation. The planners back at KAF wanted us to block Taliban escape routes out of the district, which I preferred to tagging along with a Canadian unit for the whole operation. We would need to sneak into the district to retain the element of surprise and initiative.

Briefed on the basics, and with the Afghans ready, I approached Jared about the trip back to KAF, where we would be brought into the complete plan for the operation. Jared had commanded my team several years earlier when he was a captain and remained in good standing with the unit—he got the “wink, wink, nod, nod” from the operators when they heard about his return. He stood six feet tall and was in good shape. Although he was an avid runner, he also lifted weights and his build was far from the average buck-o-five runner stereotype. Personable, confident, with strawberry blond hair and a fierce red beard, he was a welcome returning addition to the deployment. The million-dollar words that astute men picked up in their work with high-ranking officers sounded strange in his thick West Virginia accent. He, like many field-grade officers at that time, had only one rotation in Afghanistan (some had none), but he made up for it by being smart, easy to work with, and open to suggestions from his team leaders.

Not long after Jared’s return, in true Charlie Company fashion, all of the detachments had demonstrated their support for him by attaching their team stickers to the bumper, window, and tailgate of his red Chevy 4×4 pickup truck, along with other vehicle adornments thoughtfully selected in honor of his well-known fondness for hunting. Intertwined among the parachutes, swords, skulls, and arrows were stickers attesting to an affiliation with PETA, anti-gun slogans, a colorful rainbow, and a “Vote for John Kerry” swatch.

Jared was housed in the base commander’s room I had occupied the year before when there was no company commander on that side of the compound. He made a point of telling me how very much he appreciated my fixing up the room for him. I refrained from noting that the joke was on him. The room was directly across from the operations center. His room would be the first stop for every issue and every question anyone had. Seldom in years past had I had a complete night’s sleep.

In any event, it was only fair. I and another team leader, Matt from ODA 333, also known as 3X, had played several good jokes on Jared in the past, most recently a dinner we and our wives had shared at a nice Japanese steak house. That night we told the owners that it was Jared’s birthday and we wanted to make a really big deal about it. When the time was right, the owner broke out the party hat and had the entire staff sing him “Happy Birthday,” along with the rest of the restaurant for good measure. Jared wore the hat and went along with all of it to keep from insulting the owner and everyone else, despite the fact that it was nowhere near his birthday.

Jared was a good commander and had a real concern for the soldiers and their well-being. I liked that you could get into very heated debates over issues with him and things never got personal. That was what made Jared an exceptional officer. He understood everyone had a voice and a perspective or opinion. He also understood that at the end of the day everyone wanted to do the right thing.

An in-depth planning session began over routes and execution for the convoy movement back to KAF. We agreed to leave that night and go through the city, instead of around it. Traffic would be light and no American units had been down the road for months, which we hoped would throw off the Taliban. Speed was also good security against car bombs, and we knew we could hustle on the paved road.

By nightfall the GMVs, masquerade jingle trucks, and ANA pickups were lined up at the gate. The jingle trucks derived their name from the hundreds of dangling bells, chimes, and decorations that
ring out for good luck from local trucks as they lumber along rutted dirt roads.

Brian started our truck and looked at me to give the order to move. Brian and I had served in the same units before Special Forces and went through the Special Forces Qualification Course together. Needless to say, when Brian became available for selection to a team, I fought hard to get him, and he joined the team not long after I did in 2005. Brian knew me. It was not a secret that I would never follow my men into combat, I would go first everywhere, unless my team sergeant said otherwise. I couldn’t stomach the idea of one of my men being hurt or killed when I should have been out front for him. Brian believed in that philosophy as wholeheartedly and as deeply, if not more so, than I did. I think that’s why he soon made sure he was the driver of the lead truck, my truck. He analyzed every trail, road intersection, and ditch as carefully as any of his beloved NASCAR drivers would study the day’s track and took infinite precautions all along the way. On many occasions I have personally attributed my survival to him and his finely honed instincts for keeping us alive in that truck.

During his off-duty hours Brian lived for NASCAR. He knew the drivers, their statistics, the tracks, all of it. I think he was drawn to the challenge of individual competitiveness and the technical expertise it required. He lived simply, but he was very complex and technically adept. I admired and appreciated him for everything that he was. He had his own workshop at the firebase, which looked like a super-villain’s lair with antennas, handsets, and cables covering the little table. If we weren’t on a mission, he was in there tinkering, building “stuff the Army should have.” He treated everything as a no-fail event. When it was time to communicate with others, you did it, period.

Brian was the team’s senior communications sergeant; if he set up your radio, you knew it would work. But as key as that role was, Brian was much more than just my senior communications guy; he
was a close advisor and friend. Between Brian, with his lean build, reddish hair, and freckles; Smitty, our intelligence sergeant; and me, you would have thought we had an Irish team. Brian could not grow a beard to save his life, but with his mustache and soul patch, he reminded me of Doc Holliday in the movie
Tombstone
. He was, in a word, meticulous. He was also was my version of MacGyver. He could take gum wrappers, a Coke can, a AA battery, aluminum foil, and electrical tape and make a radio that would work from the two ends of the earth.

We liked to joke about Brian’s likely formative years in an old woman’s home because he was so anal. Everything had a place on Brian’s planet and it better be put back there, properly, if he even let you borrow it in the first place. Lord help you if it wasn’t. Despite that, Brian was one of the most easygoing members of the team. Yet he had a ruthless streak when it came down to the art of “business.”

As I said, I had a Super Bowl–caliber team. Brian is the best communications specialist I have ever seen in my fifteen years in the military. He took his job and responsibility to move, shoot, and communicate to another level. He and Smitty were a deadly combination in any room takedown.

A simple man, Brian was never distracted by the normal worldly allures of fancy cars, motorcycles, money, or women. Like most of the guys, he was a deeply devoted family man. He took his family as seriously as he did his job. It was a trait that I held in the highest regard and encouraged other team members to emulate.

Our gypsy caravan entered the sleeping city through a section of the bazaar. During the day, all the shops were crowded with people and overflowing with everything from hanging meat and carpets to household goods. At this hour, the market was deserted, and the numerous shuttered shops were good cover for anyone watching our movements. The cars, trucks, donkey carts, and burned hulks of old
Soviet military vehicles parked along the road provided easy places to hide roadside bombs.

My night-vision goggles allowed me to peek into doorways and backstreets as I scanned for danger. Small white dots from our rifles’ laser sights traveled from alleyway to alleyway and darted along the buildings. We could see the Afghan National Police checkpoint ahead and flashed the infrared (IR) signal to them. I had no trouble making out the Afghan policeman’s broad grin under the green glow of night vision as we passed. He gave us the Hawaiian shaka, the familiar thumb and pinkie hand signal.

We rolled into the first straightaway and as soon as the last vehicle passed the police checkpoint, Brian floored it. The support company mechanics, huge fans of NASCAR, had manipulated the governors so our trucks could accelerate and maintain incredible speed with their supercharged diesel engines. I felt safer traveling fast, especially as we approached a particularly nasty section of the city known as IED Alley.

About 70 percent of all suicide bombers and IEDs hit along this stretch of road inside Kandahar. Just seeing it made my butt pucker. Scars from the attacks pocked the pavement. Big, deep holes that could easily shatter an axle or bust the trucks’ suspensions forced us to slow down. If we could just make it through this stretch and reach the city outskirts, we should be okay.

As we slowed to avoid a pothole big enough to swallow our truck, the radio crackled a warning: “Motorcycle at three o’clock!”

I spotted the bike running parallel to the convoy on a side street. Suicide bomber? Or a tail to help his buddies set up an ambush? It was two a.m., so it was unlikely he was out getting milk.

Bill came over the radio and said the motorcycle had shot down an alleyway toward the convoy. I tightened my grip on my rifle, ready for the motorcycle to cut out into our path. A warning burst from an Afghan soldier’s AK-47 broke through the rumbling of the engines. I just caught the back of the bike as it darted down the alley away from
the convoy. Maybe the rider was just a civilian who wasn’t paying attention and now had to change pants. If he had been a suicide bomber, he would have kept coming.

We crossed under the concrete arches that reminded me of the McDonald’s logo, which marked the official entrance to the heart of the city. I finally exhaled as we reached the dark highway leading through the city and picked up speed. There are no bright streetlights lining the avenues of Afghan cities. Power lines hung in a thick crisscross above the dusty road. The squat tan buildings passed by in a blur as we raced toward the airfield. We soon saw its bright lights glowing in the distance.

We neared the bridge where the Taliban patrol had disarmed the guards two days earlier. The convoy came to a rolling halt and I asked the ANA soldier if there had been any trouble. He shook his head no. He had his weapon and there were now two other guards joining him.

We drove through the first Afghan security gate on the north side of the base, where the Afghan Army had a compound. The guards greeted us with smiles. The jingle trucks peeled off as we continued deeper into the airfield. The coalition gate was protected by menacing sandbagged machine-gun nests and two concrete towers bristling with machine guns. My truck slowed and I waved to the guard. No response. The gate stayed closed, which was strange. We were in clearly marked American gun trucks.

“American. Open the gate,” I yelled to the ISAF guard.

A voice on a muted bullhorn ordered our Afghan soldiers to surrender their weapons and move into the razor-wire containment area where Afghan workers and drivers are searched before starting work on the base.
What?

“Hey, partner, what’s the problem here? We’re Americans and they’re with us!” I was completely confused. We were American soldiers, in American uniforms, riding in American gun trucks, and we
were being denied entry to the very base that the United States had seized and established. These Afghans weren’t civilians—they were Afghan government soldiers accompanying a Special Forces team. I wasn’t going to put these Afghan soldiers in a containment area like common criminals or pets to wait until we returned. I got out of my truck and walked toward the guard.

“Hey, partner, what’s the problem here?” I repeated.

The guard took a step back behind a small concrete barrier and moved his weapon to the low ready position.

“What the
fuck
are you doing?” I growled.

I demanded that the sergeant of the guard come out and talk with me. No one responded. Now I was really getting pissed. I could see them on the phone following their long list of protocols, trying to get their superiors on the line. Finally, the sergeant of the guard came to the window of the bunker and demanded—not asked—that I surrender my ID card.