Operation Dark Heart (20 page)

In the convoy, I took the last vehicle. The intelligence personnel took the first vehicle, and I put the two new FBI guys and John Coleman, an FBI agent who had come in with us from Kabul, in the second vehicle since Brad and Kent had the least experience. I figured that if something went wrong, I’d be the guy in back doing command and control.

We headed over to ISAF headquarters to meet up with the intelligence folks. We generally staged our convoys in their VIP parking lot, which annoyed the hell out of them, but what were they doing to do—shoot us?

We stopped briefly at the bazaar on the ISAF grounds in between the Afghan and ISAF checkpoints, where you could buy everything from eighteenth-century muskets to the latest pirated DVDs. Walking around the colorful, noisy event, with its carnival atmosphere, it was easy to forget there was a war on. Nevertheless, I pulled the new FBI agents back to reality with a safety-and-operational-review tactics brief, going over how to drive inside the city and then the driving techniques when we hit the open road. Hit it full blast, I told them. I gave them radios and my handle, which was “Fox.” They chose handles for themselves. We also went over emergency reaction drills if a vehicle was hit by an IED.

“We’re going to stop first at the Italian PX,” I told them. “I need to pick up some cigars.” The Italian compound was just north of Kabul, and I had promised cigars to a number of folks, including Kate. Our late-night cigar breaks were continuing, and I certainly didn’t want to run out of them. I was still mulling her massage offer, but the opportunity hadn’t come up to take her up on it. She was back stateside on home leave, and I wondered what would happen when she got back.

Brad turned out to be a cigar smoker. “This is great,” he said, “buying Cubans legally.”

From the Italian compound, it was only a five-minute drive over to the Russian tank graveyard, so I took them there. It was kind of a rite of passage for new members of the LTC—a reminder that in our testosterone-fueled combat atmosphere, it was important to stay humble.

It was a stunning sight, especially the first time. The graveyard sat up on a high plain that overlooked Kabul against a backdrop of brown and gray rock mountains. Faded green Soviet vehicles—T-64 and T-72 tanks, BMP armored personnel carriers, BRDM armored cars, and more—were stretched out on a tan, flat plain as far as the eye could see. Row after row of them. The numbers were in the thousands … it boggled the mind. Some were obviously shredded from being destroyed in combat, others you had to walk right up to to find the combat damage, but all were dead hulks in fading green paint, rust, and covered, increasingly, with graffiti.

The first time I had visited the graveyard, it looked like a vision from hell. It was a 120-degree day, and the green hulks seemed almost translucent from the heat waves coming off the vehicles. In the backdrop, three dust devils, spread almost equally apart in a steel blue sky, slowly turned above Kabul.

It was no less spooky today.

Many of the tanks had golf-ball-sized holes with the telltale melting marks around them of a direct hit of a shape charge—likely an RPG—that burned through the 10-inch steel and turned the interior of the tank into hot gas and shrapnel. It would have been an ugly way to die.

The Soviets were just one of many empires over the last several hundreds of years that had attempted to occupy Afghanistan and had left in defeat. All that was left were these weapons rotting in the desert. The huge amount of waste stretched out before us was dizzying, and it served as a strong warning to would-be invaders of what could lie ahead.

It was hard to imagine all the wealth the Soviets wasted here, I thought as we roamed around the wreckage, the FBI guys taking pictures. (We also had weapons at the ready; I’d been shot at on a recent trip there.)

The haunting landscape was a stark monument to Soviet misjudgment—a nine-year conflict that killed 14,000 Soviet soldiers and God knows how many Afghans. The Soviets were finally driven out by the Mujahedeen, backed by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim nations.

It was a vivid example of the kind of trap that Afghanistan could become—and had become—to great nations that sought to conquer it. To have invested so much energy, resources, and blood for a large, landlocked piece of real estate that, in the end, meant nothing.

The lessons for Americans were all around us. By October, I had been there for almost four months, and had come to realize that Americans needed to maintain a small, agile footprint; to remain above the tribal entanglements and work to show the Afghans the path to a peaceful, prosperous society. We could help them along that path, if they so chose. Or, we could contain them should they choose not to go that route. It was up to them.

We’d already made so many mistakes here. Working with the Muj to expel the Soviets but then looking the other way as, next door, Pakistan developed its nuclear capability and nurtured groups like the Taliban and other terrorist groups right under our noses. Underfunding pro-Western groups like the Northern Alliance as well as Ahmad Shah Massoud, the “lion of Panjshir,” and hyperfunding radical Islamists like Hekmatyar, who would take it upon themselves to shell Kabul after the Russians had left, simply to prove the point that their belief in Mohammed was better than any other Islamic sect. Kinda like if the Baptists one day decided they didn’t like the Mormon approach to Jesus Christ and decided to shell Salt Lake City—not acceptable in our Western culture but fully acceptable in Afghanistan’s tenth-century take on the world.

This would have to change if there was to be any real progress. We could help shape that change—creating economic incentives and cultural benefits—but it was hugely important that we not become a central component in the change. Or in ten years, we might see a large plain filled with Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and Hummers.

After one last look, we hopped back in our vehicles, took a dusty back road to the New Russian Road, and headed back to Bagram.

I had just let down my guard after the usual tense race into town when the IED went off, and I could see the mushroom cloud. It was a grayish tan billowing cloud rising over the horizon, set against the mountains and a crystal-clear blue sky, over the adobe-style mud huts that made up the village of Bagram. I could see it to my right, out of my window.

Mushroom clouds are never good, I found myself thinking. I could feel the concussion like a force—a wave of some sort.

There was nothing between us and the threat ahead except a lot of hysterical Afghans. We were totally exposed, stuck behind a pileup of Taliban taxis and a truck and hemmed in on either side by the mud huts and shops of Bagram. There were no alleys nearby, but even if there were, there was no way I was going to take the convoy off the main road and trap us in an alleyway—the perfect kill zone.

I thought fast. It was important that we keep the vehicles running and not move too far from them since it’s faster to escape by vehicle than on foot. Out of our trucks, we set up a perimeter with overlapping fields of fire to cover 360 degrees. Upfront, the ***** guys took 90 degrees on either side of the vehicles, as we had rehearsed. The FBI guys took 120 degrees—from the other car back to my vehicle. I got out of the left side of the Toyota and took the remaining area.

We struggled to say focused, surrounded by confusion and hysteria. To maintain concentration, I literally had to take a step outside myself.
This is Tony playing me in a movie,
I told myself. It was a way of detaching to get over the shock of what had just happened. Don’t worry. It’s just a movie.

Over the noise, I shouted for the DIA guy who had been in my backseat to call the base and tell them an IED had gone off outside the gate and that we were stuck. I heard snatches of what he was saying into the sat phone, giving them our convoy number and asking for help. I glanced over. I didn’t like the look on his face. Whatever they told him, it wasn’t good news. I started watching the roofline and looking in every window up ahead.

Then I saw them.

Dark, shadowy figures on the roofs and in windows on the left, holding Kalashnikovs. Maybe a dozen. I couldn’t tell for sure.

I pointed to the FBI guys to look up. I could see them tilt their heads up and then look back at me, fear dawning.

The gunmen could advance toward us, we couldn’t move away from them, and they were too far away for us to take a shot at them. Besides, there was the danger of hitting a civilian.

It was the longest five minutes of my life.

They seemed to lie in wait, biding their time, waiting for us to move closer so they could get a better shot. We were trapped farther down the road in that sea of humanity, and I knew they would realize this shortly and begin moving in our direction.
Where the hell was help?

In front of me, I saw one of the ***** guys suddenly stiffen. Barely visible, two Humvees—machine guns manned and ready and a Mark 19 grenade launcher mounted on top—loomed in the distance, coming out of the Afghan-controlled gates of Bagram. Out of the windows, I could see an MP yelling at the Afghans, getting them out of the way as the vehicles made their way slowly toward us. Drivers looked up, saw what was coming, and jumped into cars and trucks to creep out of their path. Pedestrians retreated to the side. Bicyclists picked up their bikes. Inch by inch, the traffic cleared just enough for the Humvees to make their way through. It was an agonizingly slow trip toward us, as the MPs shouted and waved at the crowd.

I made a circular motion with my finger to my convoy. Mount up! Let’s go! They got the message and hopped back in the trucks, M-4s pointing out the windows. We moved forward, weaving over to the right where the traffic was thinner. They finally reached us. One pulled up parallel to me.

“Sir, you guys all right?” a sergeant shouted.

“Fine,” I said. “We appreciate you coming out to help us.”

“No problem,” came the reply. “Anybody behind you?”

“No,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “We’re going to follow you back in.”

I looked up. The figures had faded away. What saved us, I realized later, was that the blast had gone off too early and the traffic had compressed so quickly, we hadn’t had a chance to move into their kill zone. They screwed up. Otherwise, we would have been dead.

It was time for king crab, and I didn’t care how rubbery it would be.

Never a dull moment. Never a dull freakin’ moment.

12

AL QAEDA HOTEL

“I’VE got something for you, shipmate.”

With a slight grin, Dave was standing, sentinel-like, just outside our HUMINT tent getting printouts off the network printer, as I was passing by.

“I hope it’s some of that Starbucks coffee you just got,” I joked. Starbucks was the coin of the realm in Bagram. In all of Afghanistan, for that matter. Elixir of the gods compared with the tree bark the military poured. I always donated the Starbucks I got in care packages to Dave’s mess—and we all shared in the booty.

“Even better,” said Dave, a glint in his eye. “My foreign analyst has found some significant intel you’d be very interested in. She’s found a spot where there is real potential. I’d like her to brief you on it.”

“Sounds promising,” I said. “When?”

“How about right now?” He paused. “There’s a spot she’s calling the ‘Al Qaeda Hotel.’ ”

Whoa
, I thought.
This must be good
.

“Let me grab my mug, and I’ll meet you at your tent.”

I met Captain Knowles and Dave at his office tent. She had gathered her briefing materials, and the three of us went into the big briefing room of the main tent.

Dave and I sat down, while Captain Knowles put some maps on the table and then positioned herself by our big map of Afghanistan on the wall, which also showed its eastern border area with Pakistan—often called Pakistan’s “lawless territories”—and for good reason. The FATA, or Federally Administered Tribal Area, was where bin Laden had escaped to in 2001. It was an area that Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, an expert on the Taliban and al Qaeda, would later call a “multilayered terrorist cake.”

“Based on ******* analysis, we’ve identified three primary centers of gravity for known and suspected al Qaeda and Taliban operatives in Pakistan,” Captain Knowles told us in her flat foreign accent. Attractive, with bright, intelligent eyes, she was a waif-thin brunette who bicycled everywhere in Bagram. More important from our perspective, she was extraordinarily gifted in her intelligence work. *** ******** **** *** * ****** **** * *** **** ******** ** *** *** ******* ******* ***** ** **** **** ** **** ***** and I had the distinct impression that most of the ***** at Bagram had figured out by now who I was. The **** military was a small world.

Captain Knowles pointed at the wall map and moved her hand down. “The three known centers of gravity are ****** to the south …” She moved her hand up slightly. “Wana, here in the center of the Pakistani territories …” She pointed farther up. “And ******** up here.”

I had a feeling this was leading up to something very interesting.

“We have the best intelligence,” she said as she turned and gestured toward the map on the table, “on Wana.”

I squinted to focus on the very small spot on the map.

“Wana?” I had heard of it, but it never really stood out in the jumble of facts, locations, and events that I had been trying to familiarize myself with since coming to Afghanistan.