The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor (59 page)

Specialist Rick Victorino was posted at Camp Lowell that day, so another soldier from the intelligence element, “Red” Walker,
⁵⁷
took the lead in trying to figure out who’d been responsible for the remote-controlled IED attack on Captain Yllescas.

Walker went to talk to an Afghan Security Guard commander stationed by the front gate of the outpost, which was now locked down. “This happened within four hundred feet of the front gate of our camp,” Walker said to him. “That’s not good. You need to find out what’s going on.” The commander showed Walker a voter ID card that one of his guards had found by the rocks near the bridge. The photo on the card was of a man in his midtwenties who had some facial hair. Walker had never seen him before. He asked some of the Afghan Security Guards, but they didn’t recognize him, either.

Around that time, three Afghan men walked by on the road. Walker stopped them and showed them the ID. “You seen this guy?” Walker asked. “No,” they all said, and they walked away. But then one of them came back. “Can I see that picture again?” he asked. Walker showed him the card. “That guy is in the hotel right now,” the Afghan said.

The “hotel” was a local inn/restaurant in Urmul, and Walker, along with the Afghan Security Guard commander, headed right for it. As soon as they walked in, they spotted the young Afghan whose picture was on the ID. Walker’s eyes locked onto his for a moment, and then the young Afghan ran out a door. Before he could make it very far, though, the Afghan Security Guards caught him and then brought him back to the front gate at the base.

Staff Sergeant Carroll thought he recognized the man from earlier that day—maybe this was the guy who had been walking with another guy and then suddenly wasn’t anymore, the one the ANA had cleared before Mazzocchi could talk to him? They sat him on a bench, and Walker, through an interpreter, began asking him questions.

“What’s your name?”

“Amin Shir.”

“Where are you from?”

“Paprok.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to Kamdesh to get my voter ID card.”

“Who do you know here?”

“Nobody.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Three days.”

Walker knew that the insurgent group in the Paprok area, which attacked Camp Keating every now and then, was headed by the local Taliban leader named Abdul Rahman—the other, “bad” Abdul Rahman.

“Do you know Abdul Rahman?” Walker asked.

“No,” the Afghan said, which Walker knew had to be a lie since everyone in Paprok knew him.

Walker now decided to try out the Expray explosive-detection spray,—a three-part, aerosol-based field test kit. He sprayed the contents of the first can onto Shir’s hand, wiped it with a collection paper, and waited to see if the paper turned pink, which would indicate the presence of a specific class of explosives that included TNT. Negative. The intel officer then sprayed the second can on the suspect’s hand and wiped it with a new collection paper. If this one turned orange, it would mean that Shir had recently come in contact with dynamite or another, similar type of explosive.

Walker was in the middle of spraying the third can when the second paper lit up orange.

“Have you handled a weapon or any explosive within the last forty-eight hours?” Walker asked Shir.

“No,” he said. “I’ve never touched a gun, I’ve never touched explosives. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just a farmer.”

The U.S. Rules of Engagement prevented the Americans at Combat Outpost Keating from detaining Amin Shir for longer than seventy-two hours. But the ANA had no such restrictions; its soldiers could hold him for as long as they needed to, and then, if and when they ascertained his guilt, they could give him back to Blackfoot Troop to transfer to the detention facility at Bagram. The ANA troops flex-cuffed Shir, searched and took pictures of him, and placed him in custody.

Walker ordered that Shir first be taken to the aid station, so that Doc Brewer could examine him and attest that he hadn’t been physically abused or mistreated in any way. Brewer wasn’t happy about that; he’d just finished washing Yllescas’s blood off, and he didn’t want to examine the insurgent responsible for mutilating him. But he did it anyway, verifying that Shir had no broken bones or even any bruises.

Walker next took Shir to the outdoor space between the aid station and the operations center, where he questioned him again. Shir’s story had changed: now he said he’d come to Urmul to buy more goats to take back home, because he was a farmer. A little later, he said he’d come to borrow some money to take back home to buy more goats.

Shir also added that he actually did know someone in the area by the name of Hamid,
⁵⁸
a laborer who worked at Camp Keating. Walker asked Sergeant First Class Shawn Worrell, who was in charge of the day laborers, if he knew a Hamid. Worrell said yes, and he went off to find him. Walker then had Shir blindfolded and brought Hamid in to see him. “Do you know this man?” he asked him.

“I’ve never seen him before in my life,” Hamid said.

Walker handed Amin Shir over to the ANA soldiers, who put him in a cell while the intel specialist contacted his chain of command to commence the process of taking an Afghan detainee into an American holding facility. Then he went back to ask Worrell if he could talk to Hamid again. “Of course,” Worrell said. But it turned out that Hamid was no longer at the outpost: he had vanished and was gone forever.

Walker eventually theorized that Shir had come to Urmul and linked up with Hamid three days before he set the explosive. At some point, Hamid described Yllescas to him. The day before the attack, Shir was seen loitering on the concrete bridge near the entrance to Camp Keating (not an uncommon practice for locals), where he confirmed Yllescas’s identity by his headscarf, body size, stature, and gait. That night, with the moon at low illumination, Shir crouched by the northern side of the landing zone and then walked around to the wooden bridge.

Based on the size of the area destroyed, and judging from the firsthand accounts of the soldiers who had witnessed the blast, the IED might have contained ten pounds of explosive material. Walker speculated that Shir might have been able to store an IED that small in his pocket, and that when he took it out by the northern side of the landing zone, his voter ID also fell out. It was dark enough that he didn’t notice it.

This was all theory, circumstantially buttressed by some eyewitness accounts, but Walker became entirely convinced that Amin Shir had targeted for assassination the man who’d become the greatest threat to the insurgents’ influence in Kamdesh.

It was noon in Killeen, Texas, when Dena Yllescas’s cell phone rang. She had just finished nursing their baby girl, Eva.

It was the rear detachment notification captain calling. “Your husband has been injured,” he said.

For some reason, Dena didn’t believe him. She thought he was joking. “Are you serious?” she asked.

“Yes, I’m serious.”

He began giving Dena some phone numbers. She was numb, and her hand was shaking. “Rob was hit by an IED,” he told her. He was in critical condition at Bagram Air Force Base. She was stunned. She hadn’t even known there
were
IEDs in that part of Afghanistan. The captain began listing her husband’s injuries, a litany that seemed never-ending and that caused Dena to deeply desire that he shut up: she didn’t want to know.

Within hours, Dena’s home was overflowing with friends who had heard the news. Another friend had picked up Rob and Dena’s daughter Julia from school and taken her to play with her own kids. Dena’s sister-in-law Angie had meanwhile volunteered to fly to Texas from Nebraska to get Julia and Eva and bring them back to her home, where she would take care of them while Dena went to be with Rob, wherever that ended up being.

When Julia finally got home, Dena pulled her into her bedroom. “Daddy’s been hurt,” she told her. “But doctors are taking very good care of him. We need to say lots of prayers for him.”

Lieutenant Colonel Markert called Dena a couple of times that day to give her updates and answer any questions she might have. At about 11:30 p.m. in Texas, he called again, and she asked him if she could speak with the doctor who was caring for her husband. “I’ll have him call you as soon as he can,” Markert said.

On the first night that Amin Shir was being held at Camp Keating, Mazzocchi went to talk to an angry Commander Jawed, who felt responsible for what had happened.

“I’m going to avenge Yllescas,” Jawed bitterly declared, “by drowning Shir in the river.”

Mazzocchi told him to calm down. “Shedding more blood won’t accomplish anything,” he said. “We should honor Yllescas by trying to pursue our goals in the valley just as he did.”

Jawed remained upset, however, and he insisted on talking to Shir. Mazzocchi accompanied him to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid. He was also curious to see what Jawed might get out of the man. Most U.S. Army soldiers—Mazzocchi included—were prohibited from directly questioning enemy prisoners of war.

After Jawed had finished yelling at the prisoner, Mazzocchi fed him questions to ask Shir: “Why did you do it? Was it because you wanted to defend the valley? Was it because you wanted to defend your family? Why?”

“I don’t have any money,” Amin Shir said. “They paid me a lot of money for one day’s work. I just wanted to make some money.”

“Who paid you?” Jawed asked him.

Shir paused.

“Bad people from the Mandigal shura,” he said.

So Shir wasn’t an insurgent mastermind—he was just a dumb kid trying to make a little cash in a land of scant opportunity. Hobbes had been proven right yet again.

Shortly after midnight, the surgeon called Dena Yllescas. “How much detail do you want?” he asked.

Everything, she told him. Her imagination had been getting the best of her.

Rob Yllescas had arrived at Bagram approximately four hours after the explosion, he said. He had already had his third surgery. His right leg had been amputated just below the knee, and his left leg had been taken off at the knee. He also had a fracture in his left femur, at the hip. More information came in the next day: Rob was in stable condition and would be flown that day to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, and from there to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Markert called and told Dena that some of his colleagues had seen him and said he looked 100 percent better. When Dena explained to Julia that they’d be staying at Walter Reed for a while, the seven-year-old said, “That means daddy has an injury.” Julia seemed to connect Walter Reed with Yllescas’s friend Ryan, who had been injured in Iraq, spent time at Walter Reed, and had an arm and a leg amputated.

“Yes, Daddy has had an injury,” Dena said.

“Did Daddy’s legs get chopped off?” Julia asked.

“Yes, baby,” Dena told her. “Daddy lost his legs, but he is still Daddy, and he loves you very, very much.”

Tears welled up in Julia’s eyes. “Is Daddy still going to be able to wrestle with me?” she asked.

“Yes, baby,” Dena said, “he will be able to do all of the things he used to do with you. But it will take a while before he can do them again.”

Julia thought for a second.

“But Mommy, Eva won’t know Daddy,” she said.

“You mean, she won’t know him without his legs?” Dena asked.

“Yes, Mommy.”

“Baby, Eva won’t know any different, and Daddy will love you both just like he did before,” Dena said. “You know how Ryan has a metal leg? Well, Daddy will have two metal legs.”

Julia scrunched up her face. “Well, I’ll be painting those legs peach,” she declared.

The mood at the outpost was bleak. Feelings of rage, sorrow, loathing, xenophobia, inadequacy, depression—every possible emotion came over the men of Blackfoot Troop. Everyone knew that the best-case scenario was that Yllescas would lose both legs, and that the worst-case scenario was far more probable. Members of Task Force Paladin, formed to combat the growing threat of IEDs, flew in from Bagram. The newcomers transferred Amin Shir to Forward Operating Base Bostick and then to the detainee holding center at Bagram.
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The day after the attack on Yllescas, Mazzocchi and Meshkin demanded to meet with the Kamdesh shura; there were a lot of questions that the elders needed to answer, they thought. The elders said they were too scared to come to Camp Keating, but eventually a large group of locals met with the Americans at the Afghan National Police station in Urmul.

Meshkin and Mazzocchi took the lead: What was going on in Kamdesh? Who had organized the attack? Why hadn’t the Americans been warned?

The elders said they were sorry the attack had occurred, but they insisted they had no information to share, and the more they were pressed, the quieter they got. To Mazzocchi, their response was telling—an admission of guilt. They clearly
had
known that something was going to happen and hadn’t done anything to stop it, but they also wanted to make sure they would keep receiving development funds.

“Captain Yllescas had been calling for you to meet with us for weeks,” Tucker said. “It’s comical to me that you have agreed to come down here only now that something bad has happened. As of now, all projects are on hold. We give you all this money and get nothing in return. We know you have the ability to stop the violence, the madness, the chaos. But you don’t care! And if
you
don’t care, it makes it hard for
us
to care.”