NO REGRETS ~ An American Adventure in Afghanistan (4 page)

“Sounds wild. How do I get there?”

“Just head straight down Disney until you see a minefield on your left. The bazaar is right across the street from the end of the minefield.”

Disney was the main road that ran down the middle of Bagram. It was named after Army Specialist Jason Disney who died when heavy equipment fell on him in the early days at Bagram Airfield. The bazaar was at the end of Disney off to the left-hand side directly across from a minefield. Actually, it was surrounded on three sides by minefields.

Afghanistan is one of the most mined countries on the planet. The Soviets laid mines. The Mujahideen laid mines. The Taliban laid mines. In Bagram, the Soviet-laid mines were used to protect it and other strategic locations from insurgent Mujahideen, while the Mujahideen (Muj for short) and the Taliban-laid mines were used to deny access to the airfield. BAF is the obvious entry and staging point for an invasion. Obviously, mines didn’t work against the Americans. The U.S. military was able to move right in, remove mines from the airfield, and make it operational in a matter of hours. We, the U.S. military, are skilled mine removers. We simply send in an Aardvark and roll over the mines. Blowing them in place. The Aardvark is a huge armored mine removal vehicle. It actually looks like a gargantuan aardvark. The U.S. landed a couple of these massive machines, cleared the immediate area around the airfield, and started landing troops and supplies. In a few short days, we had possession of one of the most important pieces of real estate in Afghanistan.

I was a little freaked out about walking past minefields, but I was bored out of my mind. The bazaar would, at the very least, give me a couple of hours’ worth of diversion from the tedium of waiting for my supervisor to show up. I started down Disney towards the front gate of BAF. As I was meandering along, I noted that every compound within BAF had its own ring of defenses. Hesco barriers were thrown up with machine gun emplacements pointing towards Disney all along the way. Hesco barriers are large modular cylinders that are used to provide cover from enemy attack. They’re usually filled with sand or gravel and sometimes topped with barbwire or gun emplacements. The idea of multiple compounds within BAF seemed strange to me. If it came down to insurgents attacking each of these compounds, we might as well give up the ghost and leave the place. The insurgents would need an army of twenty to thirty thousand fighters to get inside Bagram. If all of these gun emplacements were ever used, it would mean that Bagram had been overrun. It made no sense. I thought it a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars. Paranoia was definitely trumping common sense and tactics.

At the end of Disney, I came to a minefield complete with little red triangles with “MINES” stenciled on them. Out in the minefield was a dilapidated Soviet tank. One of those little buggers that the Soviets used during World War II. It was old and rusty, and the tracks had all been blown off. The tank had been demilitarized by blowing out the end of the gun tube. It was a surreal scene with minefields as far as I could see, and dead Soviet vehicles littering the area.

The bazaar was laid out in the middle of all of this war detritus. It filled an area the size of a football field. I must have walked through fifty stalls. There were pirated DVDs from Pakistan with the latest Hollywood hits. Some of these movies weren’t released in Stateside theaters yet. Bootleg brand-name wrist watches were everywhere. There were tents full of carpets from Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and China priced anywhere from twenty-five bucks to a few thousand U.S. dollars. Statues and jewelry were spread about on tables. Glass cabinets full of sapphires, emeralds, tourmaline, and even diamonds were practically around every corner. There were even a few antique Brown Bess muskets and hundreds of other antique firearms. Some of the muskets were decorated with tribal markings. I even saw a Blunderbuss or two. The coolest thing about the bazaar was the haggling. The Afghans’ starting price was usually two to three times value. The target price was at least 50 percent below that asking price.

As I was walking around the bazaar, I felt more than heard an explosion. It shook me to my core and damn near made me shit in my pants. My initial instinct was to tuck, duck, and roll, that is dive for cover. I froze in place as I immediately noticed that no one else moved an inch. No panic. Nothing. Not a reaction anywhere. I was flipping through some bootleg DVDs when the explosion went off. I looked up out of the corner of my eye. No one paid attention to the explosion. To my right, there was a beautiful petite Hispanic gal. She didn’t seem concerned. “Well, if that little bitty gal ain’t gonna freak out, I’ll be damned if I’ll make a fool of myself,” I thought. I went back to sifting through the DVDs, as if all was right in the world. I was freaking out on the inside, though. “What the fuck is going on here and why aren’t these people jumping for cover?” Outside, I was the picture of calm.

Later that night, I found out that the explosion was a controlled detonation or “controlled det.” These “controlled dets” were announced over the “Loud Voice.” The “Loud Voice” was a warning system used to announce alerts, attacks, and controlled detonations to the base. I’d heard the “Loud Voice.” However, I didn’t know to pay attention for things like controlled detonations. When I heard that explosion, my first thought was that we were under attack. Nope, it was just Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) doing its thing. KBR had failed to warn me about controlled dets or the “Loud Voice.” I guess they figured it was more important to talk about spiders and vipers than freakin’ BIG BOOMs blowing my day apart.

The next morning, I was awakened by a guy yelling my name.

“Dave Kaelin? Is there a Dave Kaelin in here?”

I sat up and yelled, “Yeah, right here.”

“Hey, I’m Rob Oliver.”

“Okay,” I answered expectantly.

“I’m your supervisor. Sorry about last night. No one told me you’d arrived. We’ve been waiting for ya.”

Awesome, I think to myself. “Well, looks like KBR is just as disorganized as the Army. Surprise.”

Rob smiled at me. “Dave, let’s get you out of here and into your five-star accommodations.”

“What kind of shit hole are you dumpin’ me in?”

“You’re getting Hooch 21, nine lovely roommates and all the privacy of a prison cell. Pray no one snores.”

A hooch, also known as a B-Hut, is a 10′ × 20′ structure made of low-grade Pakistani plywood. The Army calls them non-permanent structures. They’re intended to last a few years. Afterwards, the Army either tears them down because the need for the base has come to an end or the base has become a long-term affair or a “permanent” base with more hard structures like the Army barracks and offices Stateside. The hooches are open bay. No walls. No privacy. Most of the denizens of “Hooch City” purchased colorful, thin bedspreads which the Afghans sold at the bazaar. Five of these bedspreads hung over 550 (parachute) cord were enough to create a privacy wall. Looking inside the hooches, it was like peering into a gypsy camp. Ten people in each hooch cramped inside 60″ × 108″ curtained cells. Despite the makeshift cloth walls, there wasn’t a lot of privacy or personal space. I could hear the guy next to me breathing and on more than one occasion, I rolled over and elbowed the guy in the next cell.

After I deposited my bags in my hooch, Rob took me to the office at which I’d be spending twelve hours a day for the next year. He sat me down and explained the contract details. We were tasked with taking over the Bagram Property Book Office. At that time, there was a group of California National Guard soldiers running the office. All of them had attitudes about being deployed. With that in mind, they weren’t exactly performing their duties in a professional mindset. The officer in charge was an Army warrant. He had deployed with an Army sergeant first class and four Army specialists. The sergeant first class, a guy named Ortiz, spent most of his time complaining about being away from his wife and kids. He hadn’t been opposed to taking that monthly National Guard paycheck during peacetime, but when the call came to be deployed to war, he balked. “Dave, it’s not my job to save these idiots from themselves,” was how he put it to me. It’s not that I disagreed with that sentiment but he’d enjoyed the peacetime pay and benefits while he could. To balk in times of difficulty, i.e., war, was tantamount to cowardice after getting fat and happy on the Army dime in peacetime.

My job as Rob put it was to get on the “Box” and make it my own. The Box is what we called the Army’s property inventory and control software system (SPBS), which was used to track all equipment in an assigned area. It was a stand-alone unit meaning that it was not connected to the Internet or to the Army’s central databases back in America. We were the primary means of overall accountability for the combat mission in Afghanistan. We were to take over the mission from the military and provide a professionally-run property accountability and asset visibility operation. That meant we had to ensure that all of the units’ combat equipment stayed on hand and provide the commanding general of the Combined Joint Task Force 180 (CJTF-180) with complete visibility of all assets on the ground. I had to keep track of thousands of rifles, pistols, missiles, assault weapons, Hummers—any authorized combat equipment—and ensure that each one was on hand and functioning properly. Rob would transmit this data once a month or so to the commanding general via a military liaison or in-person. I knew where all my units were and had a listing of all authorized equipment on hand or on requisition that I updated consistently.

If a unit did not have its complete complement of combat equipment, it was our job to liaise with the general staff (G4-Logistics) of the Task Force and with the Department of the Army
⁷
to expedite that equipment to the unit on the ground. The guys on the ground didn’t have time to wait on the Army bureaucracy. If they didn’t have the equipment, they couldn’t fight the war effectively. Rob and I were one of the cogs in the large bureaucratic wheel of the war machine.

One of the most important pieces of our mission was ammunition accountability. The Army ran through ammunition in Afghanistan like a fat man drinks water in the desert. It’s a constant flow. My job was to ensure that ammunition was being properly controlled and that none of it was lost. A stinger missile lost on the battlefield is a huge deal. One stinger can bring down a Chinook full of up to forty Special Operations soldiers. No one wanted to be the guy who allowed that to happen. Rob and I were one of the checkpoints in the road to prevention of that kind of tragedy.

Once I was firmly entrenched in the position, I did my best to ensure that we brought no unnecessary madness to the processes. I was always mindful of a maxim of Nathan Bedford Forrest: “Get there firstest with the mostest.” If I was slowing the combat guys down, the infantry, artillery, and Special Forces guys who were out there fighting in the hinterlands couldn’t fulfill that maxim. That might contribute to mission failure or worse. My ineptness or incompetence might contribute to the unnecessary death of a soldier or marine. That wasn’t something that I wanted on my conscience. I took that attitude with me to every position in which I served in Afghanistan.

In most contracts we worked 12/7s meaning twelve hours a day, seven days a week. It took time to get used to these long days. Unlike most of KBR, I sat behind a desk with a computer. I spent a lot of time screwing around on the Internet. When a customer came in, I helped them. If there were no customers or documents to process, I cranked the tunes and read a book or surfed the Net for news or whatever. There was no Facebook to while away the hours in 2003, though I did spend a lot of time on Kentucky Wildcat websites arguing over the qualities, or lack thereof, as regards Tubby Smith and “Ball Line D.”

After Rob gave me the rundown of the office and filled me in on the Army team, he introduced me to people around the office. Rob was the first guy on the ground for our piece of the contract. He was a retired Army chief warrant officer. The guy was more knowledgeable and more professional than any warrant with whom I had worked in the Army. He was a pretty humble fellow with a quick wit and ready smile, but skinny as hell. Afghanistan didn’t help in that area at all. If you liked eating greasy fried chicken every day of the week, the Bagram dining facilities are wonderful places. If you were accustomed to good food and variety, you were probably not going to be eating at every meal. I think Rob skipped a lot of meals.

Rob was easy going, didn’t stress over bullshit, and kept the KBR bureaucratic turds off of my back. More importantly, he maintained excellent relationships with the Army guys with whom we had to work. Because of Rob, we always enjoyed outstanding rapport with our military counterparts. He even got on with guys that he hated.

I wasn’t like that. I let it out. If I didn’t like you or thought you incompetent, you knew it. Which brings us to Chief Warrant Officer (CW2) Lansing. I had a love/hate relationship with this guy from the moment that I met him. When Rob introduced me to him, I immediately thought to myself, “Fuck! It’s Fire Marshall Bill!” The guy resembled and sort of acted a bit like the insane character portrayed by Jim Carrey in the ‘90s TV series
In Living Color
. He looked like he was on the far side of seventy years old but he was probably in his mid-forties. He was a pain in the ass, and he didn’t particularly like the idea of turning over his operation to a bunch of “greedy fuckin’ contractors.”

Lansing’s crew consisted of five of those California National Guard guys. None of whom were exemplary soldiers. They were all bitter about their deployment to Afghanistan and like many a National Guard soldier, they were ill-trained and out of shape. They wanted nothing more than to be home in the States, and for this nightmare deployment to be over. That attitude showed in their work ethic, their customer service, and the general organization of the office. The place was a bloody mess. Afghanistan is dusty. Everything and everyone gets dirty despite your best efforts. That said, have a little pride. The office was a cave when I arrived. There was no real filing system. Documents and equipment were stuffed in any hole that was open. Finding anything was a challenge. If I asked for documentation, it took hours for them to locate it. After a few days of working in their lackadaisical lunacy, I screamed, “Fuck, dudes. This place is a pig sty!” That didn’t go towards making me popular with “the team.”