The Only Thing Worth Dying For (16 page)

“I think we’re going to be here with Haji Badhur and his pirates for a while,” Amerine said.

“Pirates is right,” grumbled Mike, still bent about his missing gear. “Froze my ass off again last night.”

Turning their attention to the river and the road running next to it, they watched Haji Badhur’s men load weapons from the lethal-aid drop onto trucks outside Karzai’s compound. A truck carrying what appeared to be a farmer and his boys pulled up; they emerged armed with rifles and drove away. Would-be guerrillas arrived on foot and by donkey, carrying away tightly rolled carpets that concealed an AK-47 or two. Arming the Afghans was the first step in building the insurgency, and it gave Karzai a chance to inventory his gathering forces.

By twelve, business was booming at what Dan dubbed the grand opening of Uruzgan’s “McWeapons” franchise, and most of ODA 574 had climbed onto the roof of the largest building in their compound to observe the rush.

“They’re coming out of the woodwork,” said Mag.

“It’s a good sign,” Amerine said.

“Any idea how many guys so far?”

“Not certain, but more than a couple hundred,” said Amerine. “Some of them might be coming solo to arm a group. Might be a lot more.”

“You know,” said Mike, “they’re just coming and going. I’m not seeing much of a force gathering behind Hamid.”

“I noticed that, too,” said Amerine. “Either his clout is still in question, or they’re just too wary to stick around. I’ll feel out the situation when I meet with him in a bit.”

JD and Ken climbed up.

“Got some news,” said Ken. “Miles, one of the Delta operators, has a bad case of dysentery—fever, cramping, can’t eat, and liquids are pouring out of him as fast as we can pump them in.”

“Are we talking medevac?” asked Amerine.

“He says no way,” said JD. “He wants to gut it out.”

The men laughed, then paused as a young Afghan crossed the courtyard, reached up, and handed Amerine a folded piece of paper.

“Well,” said Mike, “we’ve got a long way to go before we’re ready for any kind of combat operations. If you’re gonna have the shits, this is a good place for it. We’re not going anywhere for a while.”

“Not so sure about that,” said Amerine, holding up the paper. “Just got word from Hamid that there was an uprising at Tarin Kowt during the night.”

“Wait a minute,” said Dan. “Isn’t that supposed to be
our
job?”

“Exactly. Somebody jumped the gun,” said Amerine as he climbed down off the roof. “Consider this a warning order: We might be rolling out of here.”

“Rolling out of here on what?” said Mike after Amerine had left to talk to Karzai.

“I will
not
get inside another meat box like the last one,” said Ronnie. “I’ll ride on top if I have to.”

Amerine entered Karzai’s compound, where four simply dressed old men sat on the ground admiring the AK-47 assault rifles cradled in
their laps. Toward the back of the courtyard, more than a dozen Afghans wearing colorful long shirts or embroidered robes mingled round an opened crate of machine guns. Standing a few feet from them, Karzai was speaking with Casper.

Karzai smiled broadly when he saw Amerine. “Jason,” he said, “you received my message?”

“Yes,” said Amerine, nodding at Casper. “Is the news reliable?”

“Yes. These men”—Karzai motioned to the large group—“are elders from Tarin Kowt. They report that the Taliban governor—a very bad man—and his personal guard were killed in the uprising last night. The governor was hung in the street. Other Taliban have been driven out. The citizens are guarding the city. They wish for me to return with them and break the fast of Ramadan tonight with leaders from the rebellion.”

Amerine studied Karzai’s face. If the coup had taken place against Karzai’s orders, he would have been angry. He recalled Karzai’s phone call with his supporters in Tarin Kowt a few days earlier, in which they’d told him that the people there wanted to rise up. Amerine had strongly advised against it.

“They could wait no longer,” Karzai said.

Amerine decided then that Karzai must have known all along that the people of Tarin Kowt were going to revolt. He must not have understood the repercussions—that the Taliban would send forces to recapture the town and likely increase their presence in Uruzgan. Or perhaps he was alarmed at the Northern Alliance’s succession of victories in the north and feared they would beat him to Kandahar. Regardless, the more dire issue was that ODA 574’s long-range plan, to take Tarin Kowt themselves once the team had built up and trained a guerrilla force of hundreds, was now back to the drawing board.

All Amerine could read when he made eye contact with Karzai were good intentions.
Still
, he thought,
he has no idea how fucked we could be because of this
.

“What do you intend to do?” he asked Karzai.

“I must join them in Tarin Kowt.”

Amerine had expected to maintain a low profile for weeks, if not months, during which time ODA 574 would arm, organize, and train
Karzai’s followers. Did Karzai not understand that a battle was imminent in Tarin Kowt?

He asked to speak to Karzai in private. Casper followed them into the house.

“There will be a counterattack,” Amerine said away from the other Afghans.

“Yes,” said Karzai. “But I must go to the governor’s palace and meet with the leaders of the uprising right away.”

Amerine understood that Karzai had, after all, been lobbying for the anti-Taliban Pashtun to rise up. What kind of a message would it send if he now left them to face the Taliban’s reprisals alone?

“Okay,” Amerine said. “Do we have vehicles?”

“Not at this time,” said Karzai. “But we will have transportation.”

“How many men can we expect to join us?”

“Those who took weapons today returned to their homes. There are a few remaining, but Haji Badhur’s men will accompany us on the drive. We will have many men in Tarin Kowt.”

“Translators?”

“Not yet,” said Karzai. “But in Tarin Kowt that will not be a problem. I will translate in the meantime.”

After nearly an hour of planning, Casper leaned into the conversation. “Skipper,” he said to Amerine, “we have to get moving.”

Since the spook wouldn’t be involved in the fight, Amerine didn’t even acknowledge the comment. He did, however, note the paradox: Risk-averse throughout planning, Casper seemed suddenly gung-ho about engaging the enemy.

“Gather around!” JD bellowed to ODA 574 when Amerine returned to the compound. “Captain has some information to put out.”

The men stopped what they were doing and formed a circle around Amerine.

“All right,” said Amerine. “I know we were just getting settled here, but we’re leaving in three hours. The people of Tarin Kowt
killed their Taliban governor last night, so that speeds things up for us. We’re going to help the locals hold the town. Karzai is getting vehicles—it’s a four-hour drive, and there are some twenty villages on our route that
should
be on Hamid’s side. That said, Alex, let’s get some air to escort us.”

“Question, sir,” said Alex. “What
is
the route?”

Unbuttoning the flap of a cargo pocket on his pants, Amerine pulled out his survival map,
¹
which he’d folded so that Uruzgan Province was on one side and Kandahar Province on the other. He traced the route with his finger for the team to see.

“Hamid says we’ll head north along the river to Deh Rawood and then cut east through these mountains to Tarin Kowt. All our maps are fucked—we don’t know if these roads still exist, so we’ll play it by ear, but this is the basic route. I expect a counterattack in Tarin Kowt within twenty-four hours. Hopefully we’ll get there before that happens.”

Mike said, “What happened to the hundreds of guys who picked up weapons today?”

“They disappeared back into the mountains,” said Amerine. “It was understood that some of them were being armed to protect their villages, but it appears that Hamid is still lacking credibility or there would be
some
guys hanging around looking for something to do. Hamid says he’s been promised all the men we need in Tarin Kowt once we get there.”

“That sounds familiar,” said Dan.

Amerine checked his watch. “Okay, it’s 1500; Hamid says he’ll have vehicles at 1700.”

While the men got to work, Amerine huddled with JD and Mike to look over the proposed route. With a mechanical pencil, Amerine drew a circle around Haji Badhur’s Cove and wrote K in the center, for “Karzai.”

“This is where we fall back to,” said Amerine. “Right now it’s the only place that we’re sure is backing Hamid. The rest of the south is a question mark.”

They looked at the dime-size circle.

“Damn,” said JD. “Pretty lonely down here.”

By sunset, a ten-vehicle convoy of 1970s-style station wagons, 1980s minivans, and modern Toyota trucks, plus one small shuttle bus, lined up on the main street of Haji Badhur’s Cove. Two pickup trucks that had arrived from Tarin Kowt and were full of guerrillas armed with RPGs and assault rifles would lead the convoy back to the capital of Uruzgan.

Amerine, Mike, and Alex piled into a Toyota king cab pickup behind the guide trucks; behind them, Karzai and the CIA team—including Miles, who was kitted out for combat while hooked to an IV—boarded the bus, and Ronnie climbed on top of it. Behind them, the rest of ODA 574 crammed into another king cab.

Karzai told Amerine that the Afghans talking in a group nearby owned the vehicles and intended to drive them, a detail that didn’t bode well with the Americans: Nobody trusted the drivers to react calmly if they drove into an ambush or were stopped at a Taliban checkpoint. Amerine balked, but Karzai explained that there was no other option—in Uruzgan, vehicles are hard to come by and the Afghans would not relinquish theirs. The team could have bought its own trucks in Pakistan and had them airlifted with the weapons the night before, but Karzai had wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible and promised to acquire trucks for ODA 574 in-country.

Now, with no choice but to take what were essentially taxis—and without time to recon the route—the team drew up a plan. In the event of an attack, the Green Berets would commandeer these vehicles, fight off the enemy, then retreat with Karzai back to the last rally point. After regrouping, they would retreat to the relative sanctuary of Haji Badhur’s Cove, which they suspected would eventually be overrun by a large enemy force. They would call in airpower to defend the village while preparing to be extracted from the country.

While going over this plan, the men reminded each other of the agreement they’d made back in Uzbekistan regarding the “never leave a fallen comrade” creed. In JD’s words: “If I’m killed and we’re going to be overrun, don’t die trying to bring back my body. Save yourselves and tell the story.”

To avoid that outcome, ODA 574 had enlisted the help of a pair of F-18s to fly the road ahead of the convoy. At 30,000 feet the planes were invisible from the ground, but their advanced optics could identify approaching vehicles and roadblocks.

The route followed the Helmand River fifteen miles north to Mullah Omar’s hometown of Deh Rawood. There the convoy would turn east and drive for another thirty miles across a small mountain range to Tarin Kowt. Karzai estimated that it would take them four or five hours to travel this distance, an indication that the roads in Uruzgan would live up to their reputation as the worst in Afghanistan.

Once under way, Amerine began to identify rally points—a hill, a
wadi
,
*
a stone hut—every mile or so, relaying the information to the other team members via radio and entering their coordinates into his GPS. For the first hour, just as Karzai had told them, there were no checkpoints or traffic. The recon jets spotted nothing up ahead, and the convoy advanced unimpeded over the narrow, spine-jarring roads. Soon after dark, they followed the river past the rusted-out remains of a Soviet tank that had been pushed onto its side and was now part of the earthen wall flanking the dirt road. “Mines,” muttered the driver of Amerine’s truck in a rare use of English as they pulled off and drove next to the road for a quarter of a mile. They passed other remnants from the Soviet army, detoured around landslides, and dodged loitering goats that didn’t flinch at car horns or the sound of bullets fired into the air.

After two hours, the road took them into Deh Rawood, past neighborhoods, shops, and restaurants with small wooden tables and chairs stacked in front. It was early in the night, yet the town was almost completely dark, as though windows had been covered to black them out. Scanning the road ahead with their NODs, the men saw no one—not even a dog or a goat.

Amerine read the town’s name on his GPS, savoring for a moment the depth of their infiltration and feeling the hair on the back of his neck tingle.
Just cruisin’ through Mullah Omar’s hood
, he thought.
Ain’t no thang.

The convoy continued east out of Deh Rawood, through villages where the vehicles’ headlights shone on rectangular metal signs bearing the stenciled names of past humanitarian projects—a well dug by UNICEF, the ruins of an abandoned Red Crescent clinic. Finally they crossed the mountains that formed a giant ring around Tarin Kowt Valley. Even though it was 11
P.M
. as they rolled into the capital of Uruzgan Province, Tarin Kowt seemed almost too quiet, appearing to be as deserted as Deh Rawood.

Everything was desert-colored, brick and adobe. From one block to the next, it all looked the same. The string of vehicles zigzagged over narrow dirt roads through a honeycomb of mud-walled compounds, deep into the town where they finally saw life: a young man holding a kerosene lantern. He pushed open the metal gate of a compound and ushered in the two trucks carrying the Americans and the shuttle bus, while the two escort vehicles remained idling on the road outside.

Ronnie slid off the top of the bus and, with the rest of ODA 574, formed a perimeter around it, weapons at the ready. JD had Mike and Mag check the place out, as they’d done their first night in Haji Badhur’s Cove, but in this case they were near the center of a much more populated area, with blocks and blocks of neighborhoods linked by a maze of roads. They couldn’t just toss a grenade over a wall and run into the mountains.