1.
Don't laugh. Shit's no joke. Nonetheless, a snicker escapes. God help me.
What's so funny?
Captain Savagé sits swaying in the back of the truck. A Pogue in his Pogue gear. His call to pile ourselves in here, our own personal armored coffin on wheels, when a simple stroll out the gates would've sufficed. The feeling flashes inside of me in an instant: the love, the hate. The kinda love you have for your enemy. The kinda snapping some dumb grunts do when shit hits the fan. Pissing themselves. Loving it. Hating it. Loving the fear and death so close to you that you taste the ambrosia of life on your lips, that love of life, feeling so alive. While hating that vulnerableness of the self, of the body, the plain meat and bone any of us, how easy it is to undo any one of us, flicker ourselves outta this existence—how you love the enemy you're trying to kill for proving it to you. That's how I hate Savagé. How I love him. I want to bite his throat out then tongue-kiss him simply for registering I had, indeed, yes, laughed, even if the joke's not so funny.
The math, sir, I tell him.
The math?
I suppress a squeal, only barely. You remember The Count, sir? You know, from Sesame Street? One, two, tree—ah, ah, ah?
Savagé puts on this confused toddler face—I fucking swear he looks like a baby compared to me. (Do I really look that old?) I may be only five or six years his senior in age, but I'm not his senior in rank. No sergeant is to an edumacated officer.
What're you getting at, Sergeant Furry?
But soon as I open my mouth to deliver the zinger, the punch—the line snags in my throat. I can't read it, can't remember it. I sit dumb, tongue empty, staring into space.
Savagé raises his eyebrows.
Never mind, sir. I cough and turn my gaze out the window to glare at damnation. You wouldn't get it.
Out the window the world's a sick joke. A pass in review through a graveyard. Sergeant Major's idea. Drop all the bombed-out, blown-to-shit, still-probably-have-somebody's-dried-guts-in-'em Humvees and Em-Wraps and Buffaloes right next to the front gate. A gaggle of vehicular carcasses to remind you what awaited outside the wire. Ten in all. Three missing their front halves: engines, hoods, grills shredded like tinker tape. Another two with splatters of black oil, warped axles, dented armor. Another two completely dismembered into desert-tan chunks. Another with bullet gouges in its doors, spiderwebbed ballistic windows. Yet another with a crushed crew cab and a frayed harness belt. Yet another with burnt-out seat frames and a bubbled black steering wheel as though the hands that died gripping it experienced some superhuman spasm the moment the last breath o' their life done sucked outta their lungs with the blast.
I try to remember but can't. I've lost count of how many casualties this battalion's taken...
I know you've been blown up a few times, Sergeant Furry, says Savagé, laying one of his frat boy smirks on me, but next time you tell a joke, try to remember the punchline, okay?
Aye aye, mon capitaine.
Savagé thinks that, at least, is worth a good-natured snort.
Getting blown up for the nth time—that's what landed me this desk job. Headaches, dizzy spells, fucking goo leaking out my ears stinking like hot bananas; I never told the medics the half of it. Why tell 'em? They only would've sent me home. I don't want to go home. You see how many deployment notches I got on this belt o' mine? Home's a fucking fairy tale. A weekend getaway. A commercial gimmick. A paradise you're saving up retirement for but you know deep down you'll never see. Not with these living eyes in your concussed-to-fuck head.
No one said nothing when the laughing fits began, not even the Sergeant Major. He simply had me reassigned.
Re-tasked.
To a desk.
To the AAJCCC, or Afghan & American Joint Cultural Communications Center, often referred to among staff officers up on the Big Base as the A-Jack Office, and among the black-markered chitter chatter between porta-johns as Jack-Offs Anonymous. The mouthful of an acronym boiled down to a room. In a building. An Afghan building, built by the Soviets back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Three stories of reeking concrete teetering on its foundations all of 200 meters outside the front gate of the Big Base. Though to most Pogues, it might as well have been the dark side of the moon.
Savagé shoots me the rundown: We're liaisons.
Raisins? My hearing's been shoddy for years—a predictable side-effect of frontline service, or so say the docs.
Liaisons!
Our rolling coffin on wheels lumbers away, back towards the warm chow and free wifi only available behind the walls of the Big Base, its front gate still within sight, if not earshot.
Intelligence sharing, continues Savagé, leading me inside the Afghan building. When we get some intel, we share it with the Afghans, and when they get some intel, they share it with us. Through me, or the terp.
We share all our intel, sir?
Ha! Savagé grins me one of his college-boy grins.
Inside the room he greets everyone and introduces me around. I nod and smile like a wet puppy only along for the ride.
You speaking Dari now, sir? Instead of Farsi?
Dari's not much of a stretch, says Savagé. Really just a dialect of Persian.
They know you speak it?
I eyeball the Afghans on their side of the A-Jack Office. The memory of a green-on-green a deployment or two ago shivers down my mind coils...
We had been training Afghan Army then. Teaching every goat-fucking, chai boy-fucking, women-are-for-procreation-men-are-for-pleasure-moron out the mountain boonies how to count. You believe that? Growing up in the poor man's hills, half the recruits had barely attended any madrassa whatsoever. They might've recited Quran passages verbatim (though not understanding a lick of it because if they did understand a lick of Arabic they wouldn't have signed their lives away to a paper tiger army) but ask them to count out ten rounds of AK-ammo and you might as well have been asking them to drop a lecture on the linkages between game theory and mutually-assured destruction. My 13-year-old back in the world whose birthday I forgot could count to ten when she was two, but these 20-something goatfuckers...
Ten rounds—in the mag! I'd tell 'em.
And they'd blink up at me like newborn babes realizing for the first time in their dime-a-dozen lives that such a thing as a number actually existed. (Allah forbid, we ever ask them to write their names...)
So, one day, during rifle training, wearing his Afghan Republic green army fatigues and doughboy helmet, one hashish-bamboozled fuck who couldn't grow a proper beard—he takes his ten-mag AK, which we had loaded for him, and he turns from his targets downrange, points towards a couple of fellow American counterparts, and opens fire.
No need to count to ten with a weapon on full auto.
I look at the Afghans on the other side of the A-Jack Office and I hear those shots again, counting down, echoing from the other end of a once upon a time outpost...
Yeah, they know. Savagé waves at the Afghans.
The Afghans wave back. Grinning and raising their eyebrows. Five of them in green camo (for Afghan army). Two in bluish gray (for Afghan police). Savagé and me—we're already outnumbered. I try to read their faces, but it's like trying to read a map without a compass. Which way East? Which way West? Your needle only spins.
That's mostly it, says Savagé, un-donning himself of his Pogue helmet and Pogue body armor, all of it clean as a whistle. Though Savagé had been in charge of an infantry platoon back before dancing the deployment-disco over to the sandbox, he's in charge of no one now.
Native language skills in an infantry officer? Shit, rip that boy from the line, dust him off, and send him here, with a broke has-been (myself) and a pile of paperwork, so he can raisin with our so-called allies, and we can call it a cross-cultural counterinsurgent success...
The MRE's are under the coffeemaker, says Savagé.
I remove my body armor—dusty, worn, sweat-stained, blood-stained, still fitted the way a real soldier who wears the shit 24-7 fits it—and I loathe myself. You're a Pogue now, too, Furry, I say to myself. Savagé and me, we're domesticates now with our desks and our hot coffee and piles of paperwork. Pretty soon, I realize, my gear gonna look just as Pogue as his.
I re-sling my rifle over my chest, ready-up-style, suddenly reluctant to sit down, to resign myself to my fate.
This liaisoning with the Afghans the Colonel's idea? I ask Savagé.
Nah, it comes down from the new theater commander—the Three-Star.
Oh, that guy. Counterinsurgency nut, apparently. Too bad counterinsurgency doctrine and regular army hierarchy fit together like a chihuahua and a mastiff—there's just no natural way you're making puppies between the two. Still, everyone from spooks to the Big Cheese agreed: what America needs to win the war is intel. Intelligence, in normal human speech. Human intelligence, to be precise. (That's not a contradiction in terms, even for the military.)
The three things the Three-Star says we need to know:
Who's a bad guy?
What's the bad guy doing?
Where's the bad guy at?
And the Afghans need to be the ones who sift through the faces in the line-up. How else are we supposed to figure the good Indians from the bad ones? (As though there's a difference to a trigger-puller like myself, or rather, like I used to be...)
After giving me a rundown on the radio, and me reminding him I was humping these lugs of communication equipment up and down mountains while he was still a baby sucking his momma's titty, Savagé smacks me on the shoulder like it's all pregame shit-talking.
I know, I know! Just making sure. He sits and opens his laptop. Pretty easy gig though. Not much more to it than this.
In other words: nothing to do but wait for a report to come through the pipeline.
Sometimes, reports come in six an hour, says Savagé. Other times, might be six hours of twiddling your thumbs before anything happens.
They give you work to do while you're here, sir?
Just some PowerPoint slides for the Colonel. Kills the time.
Statistics, graphs, charts, blow-up maps with red and blue copy-paste arrows, current operations, blocs of situation/unit/action taken, small boom-boom flashes for firefights, or IEDs, causalities taken, projections for the rest of summer, ideas, second guesses, hopes, fantasies of who/what/where/when—they're all razzle-dazzle across Savagé's laptop, one PowerPoint slide up after the next...
Data!
The high-ups love their data. Data in their morning coffee. Data on their pancakes. So much data, it's exploding out their blowholes. Data enables command and control. Control of the situation. Control of the war. Measures of progress. Proof they know what the fuck they're doing. Counterinsurgency works, see? Look at the data. Control of this hilltop. Control of these districts, these routes, these people here, but not these people over there, and not so much these other people we don't know what the fuck tribe they are over here, either, but, hey, we've got the data...
I finally give in and sit my ass down beside Savagé. Maybe I play a bit of solitaire on my own laptop... but something about the smell of this room, the building, the stank-dust growing like fuzzy mold on the curtains over the windows, the murmuring of the Afghans on their side of the room, their looks at me, their frowns, one pointing to his eyes—it won't let me settle. A crack runs like a fault line across the ceiling. I wonder if any of those Afghans have ever sat in the same room as a green-eyed black man before, though it says HZL on my expired Michigan driver's license, and GRN on my Army record brief. Growing up where I did, joining the army just to get the fuck outta dodge, you learn real quick so many so-called facts people spew at you don't really do nothing but keep the fact-spewers fat and in charge.
Where can I get a look at the security situation, sir?
Follow me. Savagé closes his laptop, slings his rifle like a purse, and leads me to the rooftop.
2.
The sun blazes radioactive at this altitude, so much less atmosphere, less padding between you and the beyond.
From the rooftop we gaze down upon Maiden Shar lain out before us like a dirty carpet, and haven't I seen it all before...
Streets seething with men in turbans, women in burkas, shod-less children, stray dogs, vendors hawking their wares, donkey carts and fender-less cars and the odd armed security force, anyone's guess who they are. Maiden Shar's not so bad as some places I been, but it's certainly no place to fancy yourself an evening stroll after dark. Our building's the tallest in town, inside of a compound surrounded by ten-foot cement walls that secrete a smell at once both familial and gag-inducing. Shit Piss and Corruption, as Herr once put it upon a time. Our building might be The District Center in new stories, where the provincial governor decrees the will o' the people from his office (though he lives in Kabul and rarely if ever dares to show his face an hour south in these haunts), where the work of governance takes center stage, in reality, it's the police headquarters. The Afghan Army upkeeps a tiny barracks, but it's the police who run the place. Blast walls line the front of the building in case a VBIED sidles up to the gate—thus a blast may be projected outwards, onto the people. Blue plastic bags shred themselves to death in the concertina wire beautifying the perimeter.
I make a mental note for the memoir I always think about writing, and now might actually have the time to, but time works backwards here. The war eats time for supper. No deadline. The tik to the tok of bad guy bodies stacking up in the side panels of ppt files. No end in sight. I return my attention back to the gate-guards and other police patrolling the perimeter, smoking their cheap Chinese cigarettes, chatting with their hands resting on the butts of their AK's.
Overall, pretty piss poor security situation, and I report as much to Savagé.
There's—what?—a hundred armed Afghan police running around this place, sir? And just two of us.
I wish to God I had a platoon of infantry to station at strategic points from one corner of the compound to the next.
Savagé claps me on the back. Sergeant Furry, I one hundred percent agree with you. We'll be lucky not to get kidnapped one of these nights!
The two of us stand on the rooftop, silhouetting ourselves like a couple of fools in the fading dusk, and laugh our asses off.
3.
Overnight, we take turns manning the radio on the American side of the A-Jack Office. A couple of bunks in an adjacent room become our designated nappy-time space.
Two? says Savagé. Or three?
Take three, sir.
I like the way you think, Sergeant Furry. He shoots me a bang-bang with his hand and exits, leaving me alone.
An Afghan captain sits in green army fatigues on the other side of the room. Things stay quiet, aside from an hourly radio check. Our terp, Namir, finally shows up. Namir's one of those Kabuli princelings—fairly Westernized, wants to go to America, looks down on the jihadis in the hills, his own countrymen, who would gut him like a goat without so much as a second thought and laugh about it afterwards. He slips into the room in his too-tight jeans holding his phone in the air like an amnesty flag. Sorry, sorry, he says. Been talking to my girl. His Kabuli princess.
What's her name? I ask him, not giving him another glance from the Guns & Ammo mag I've already pawed three or four times this evening—or morning, as it is.
He waggles a finger at me. Not going to tell you. He flops into an empty chair around the conference table. Not going to let any man speak her name, other than me.
Namir jousts a few words in Dari or Pashtu (I still can't tell the difference) with the captain, then slides into a fetal position as best he can on the leather seat and, like magic, falls asleep.
Sweet dreams.
Must be an easy gig for a terp, I figure. Better than sleeping in a truck out in the sticks listening to a bunch of dumb grunts talk about how we oughta just the nuke the whole country back to the Stone Age, feeling your bowels loosen the second a shot fired in anger flies your way... that unmistakable sound... and at the same time the adrenaline ratcheting up your spine and that second, that moment, that epiphany, stretching out into an hour, days, an eternity's worth of mad-minute-shoot-everything-radios-blaring-word-salad-you-were-fighting-at-long-last-you-had-an-excuse-to-fucking-shoot-somebody feeling you never truly want to let go of, which nothing in your whole long sorry-excuse-for-a-life afterwards is ever going to live up to...
I sigh and flop Guns & Ammo on the desk and open my laptop to wallow in Platoon or The Deer Hunter or We Were Soldiers, to stage an Alamo against the nagging sense that this, this, is what retirement looks like, when a tickle zaps me in the nose. I sneeze. Snot and spit spray through the air, mingle with the phosphorescent light outta the ceiling, bloom this nimbus, this particle-motion dance, before dispersing into ether, as though they never were, and in their wake, comes a pounding into my head.
Shit... I rub my temples in little circles. Goddamn artillery barrage. Fucking shock and awe. Hollow thumps-thumps out of my grenadier's tube. Your teeth clacking once your rounds find their target...
The Afghan captain peers up at me. Then, he rises. For fuck's sake... He loops two fingers through the handles of two dingy glass mugs, grabs a tin teapot, and crosses under the fault line in the ceiling.
Beard clipped. Irises like obsidian. Boots black with an admirable shine. Chai? he says, grinning a handsome set of white teeth.
Uh... I glance over at Namir—his drool like glacial runoff down the arm of the conference chair.
Khob, I say, not quite recalling whether that meant yes or good but wishing it meant leave me the fuck alone and go back to your own side.
Ha! Beyä! Beyä! Lotfan benschined.
The Captain sits down beside me.
Glorious. I slap my laptop closed.
Assef, says the captain, meaning himself.
Furry, I point at my rank and name.
Foo-ry?
Furry.
Ah. Sar-jint—yes?—Fury.
I roll my eyes and sneeze again and ugh does my head feel like ballsacks.
Captain Assef pours out his green-brown chai, careful to hold the lid as he tilts.
Thanks, haji-man.
Neh, neh... manana, corrects Assef.
Manana then.
We clink glasses and sip, God-knows-what floating around in our cups. But once those floatees touch my lips, the sweet steaminess soothing the pathways of my nostrils, the hotness plunging down into my belly, the pressure in my head suddenly takes a bench seat.
Assef reads my face. Mmm-mmm, hmm?
Mmmmm, I say, sipping more. Khob.
Kh—ob, Assef repeats, accentuating that back-of-the-throat hocking.
Kkkkh—ob, I repeat back.
Kh—ob.
Kh-kh-kkkkkkkhh—ob.
M-mm, Assef waves his finger. Kh—kh—khob. The sound rolling ever so pertly out of his mouth.
Khob.
Ah! Ah-ha! Assef points and claps.
I smile and sip. Khob. The heavy pain in my head turns to air, if not downright clarity, with every fresh sniff and swallow.
Khob.
The word alone makes me giggle like some pony riding bare-butt down a rainbow.
Assef giggles, too.
Just then a garble of Pashtu blares outta the radio on the Afghan side of the room. Assef hustles over and answers, scribbling his haji-script right-to-left across his clipboard.
I station myself in front of THE MAP.
THE MAP stretches floor-to-ceiling on the American side of the room. All who enter the A-Jack Office bow in humility before THE MAP—upon which every outpost, base, checkpoint or otherwise friendly position in Wardak Province has been painstakingly denoted in blue dots. Confirmed attacks in red. Ring Road, a black artery leading to and from Kabul, slices the province in two. Swirls of brown contour lines dominate all else—mountains upon mountains, some mere hilltops, others 10,000-foot monoliths rocketing 4,000-feet from valley floor to summit. I offer myself to THE MAP. I stand before it in awe and humility, with my own black pen and green notepad, waiting.
Assef barks, Ho, into his radio and marches over. Uh, polize. Zang! Zang! Pikoo. Pikoo.
Okay. Someone's shooting at someone?
I give Namir's chair a quick kick. His highness only snorts and rolls over. These night shifts must be eating into his beauty sleep.
Ee-see, ee-see. Assef points at a cluster of blue dots on THE MAP, about ten kilometers to our southwest. I squint for a name: Hasankhel?
Hasankhel, yes. Uh, tofang—zang! Eh, mmm, te'däd... Ah! Assef writes 2-0 on his notepad and shows it to me.
Twenty.
Too-wenny. Toowenny Taliban. Tofang! Tofang! Ee-see.
Where are the Taliban—uh? What few lingual scraps Savagé left with me come throttling back into my brain: Kojā Taliban?
Neh, hits na. No—Tali—ban. Assef makes a brush with his hand.
What?
Eh... du-du-du-du-du-du-da!
I recognize, and miss, that sound. Machine guns.
Vroowooosh! Assef mimes firing a shoulder-launched munition.
RPGs. Writing it down.
O-kay?
Okay. Are any police hurt? Y'know, Ah! Ah! Ow! Hurt?
Eh?
Damn, what's that word for wounded? Reaching into my cargo pocket, yanking out Savagé's handwritten notecards. Ah... Äyä kodäm talafät dar pay dasht?
Eh?
Jesus. I'm going to get back at Namir for this one. Um... pikoo, pikoo. Polize! Ow! Ah! Ah!
Ah! Ah! Ne, ne, ne. Polize okay. Zang—mmm. Assef makes an abrupt swipe.
I interpret: the firefight is over.
Assef gives me a thumbs-up. O-kay? Grinning.
Okay. A giggle leaps from my lips before I can catch it. I clear my throat and swallow it back down and mutter something appropriately deep-throated and manly. Watch out, watch out. Lemme in here. I record Hasankhel's coordinates, then march to our radio on the American side. I fight the near-irrepressible urge to giggle again, slap myself in the cheek once, twice, with the handmike, Assef watching on, while I key the mike, and report, Cowboy-two-five, this is Chieftain-seven, over.
Chieftain-seven, this is Cowboy, gooooo ahead, over.
Situation: two-zero Taliban attacked Hasankhel police outpost—break. Activity: the police returned fire, then the Taliban broke contact—break. Location, prepare to copy: whiskey-charlie... four-fife... eight-seven... one-two... niner-tree—break. Unit: Afghan police—break. Time: zero-one-thirty hours local—break. Equipment: Taliban attacked with AK-47s, RPK's and RPG's. How copy, over?
I breathe and thank whatever Lord above the giggles like a bad case of heartburn seem to be passing.
Cowboy repeats my entire situation report back to me.
That's a good copy.
Raaaaawger, Chieftain. Was that fucking fobbit yawning? Good to know. Y'all have a splendid night out there, ooooover.
Realization hits me like incoming: we're not going to do jack shit. The Afghans aren't going to do jack shit. The District Center, the Big Base across Ring Road—everything remains quiet as the night before Christmas. No alarm bells. No quick reaction force. No hooves on the housetop. Higher-up takes the report, copies it down, files it away, and that's that. Attacks like these? They're a dime a dozen this time o' year. Some yokels shoot at us (call 'em Taliban if you want), and then they break contact and disappear into the hills and villes. No way is anyone waking up outta their nice warm hooch, gearing up, and going out to chase after shadows till dawn.
A giggle spurts out of me right as I'm keying the handmike for a reply.
Say again, Chieftain?
Uh—nothing. Disregard, Cowboy. Chieftain, out.
The handmike finds its own way back down to the desktop. Freed, my hand rises to my throat. Where's it coming from—this laughing? Why? Will it ever go away? I return to my desk, my punishment, my only excuse for wearing the uniform anymore.
Chai? say Assef, refilling my cup.
Khob, I say, and sip.
4.
Rise and shine, buttercups. The next morning, after only three hours sleep, Savagé informs me our own S-3 will be coming down from the Big Base to meet with General Bazir, the provincial police commander, and—the man explodes into the room. Throwing open the doors. Barreling in belly-first. A small skein of police henchmen in tow.
Sergeant Furry, meet General Bazir.
I gotta say: Man's got swag. The General in his gray uniform and shiny black boots and white moustache and thrown-back shoulders. He immediately starts shouting at every other Afghan in the room. Button up those pants! Put out that cigarette! Stop eating with your fingers and use a fork like the Americans do! or whatever he says; Savagé gets no chance to translate. In the next heartbeat, The General's grabbing my hand and shaking my arm out of its socket, rattling on in Dari towards Savagé. Then he laughs like a cartoon character, perfuming all the air about with his camel breath. (I learn later that The General finds it just the funniest thing in the world to hear an American prattle on in Dari, like discovering a talking monkey at the zoo.) Little do I realize I have just pressed flesh with my first (former) Northern Alliance commander. No lie, Bazir's a once-upon-a-time real-deal warlord. Now, he wears a floppy police cap and what hair he's got left blooms white about a shiny dome. Still, everyone calls him The General, though no such rank exists within the Afghan police corps.
Where's Colonel Mirzak!?
One of The General's henchmen scurries out of the room. Comes back. Nobody's seen the Colonel.
The General storms out, a clusterfuck of gray uniforms at the door hurrying to keep up with him.
There goes the real say-so in Wardak, whispers Savagé to me. Or at least that's what Mirzak said.
Who's this Colonel Mirzak, sir?
Trust me, you'll know him when you see him.
Within an hour, our own S-3, Major Hoobah, materializes in the doorway. Morning, men! No, no need to get up on my account. As you were. He makes himself at home, setting his helmet on the conference table, right as The General comes bowling back in. I think the ceiling might crumble under the attaboy's and shoulder-slaps firing off between the two, but they soon get down to business.
Major Hoobah talks about recruiting numbers, locations of checkpoints, how many swinging dicks show up for work, how many actually don't, Namir and Savagé both busy as bees translating.
How can you catch bad guys if half your men aren't accounted for? says Hoobah.
The General replies, My men are on duty even when they are not at their post. They are policemen! They are always on duty!
And on it goes, translator to the translated, round and round in circles. The conversation ends in the middle of nowhere, though that doesn't surprise anyone, least of all Hoobah. He smiles his tight Ohio farm boy teeth and smacks The General's shoulder like an ol' football buddy, all the while flipping through PowerPoint print-outs, gesturing towards the hard black ink of numbers, the kaleidoscopic circles of data sets, the bullet-pointed lists of funding requests, while The General grins along, return-smacking the Major's back and practicing his English. Good to kn-oow! Yes, very right. Tank you for in-form-eeng me. I have to go, translates Namir.
Not staying for lunch? says Hoobah.
No, says Namir, for The General. He says he has important business to attend to.
And The General leaves the room in a fuss, much as before, barking through his walkie-talkie. Hard to believe the man ever stays still more than a minute. Then again, maybe that's a survival tactic. Can't be too cautious in this era of suicide bombers and satellite-targeted-drone-operated-smoke-em-if-you-got-em-assassination missiles.
Did they say they were bringing chow for us? asks Hoobah.
Namir asks Captain Assef. Assef says he'll go see. Savagé snags chow hall plates and utensils from a desk drawer. In the meantime, my gums tickle for a dip, but I'm trying to cut back. A little fresh air and a smoke (nicotines by other means) are in order. Excuse me, I say, and likewise undress myself of the room.
Outside, under the poplars whose green leaves twiddle and cast dappled sunlight over a ditch brimming with torn cardboard, crushed plastic bottles, and dried shit, I light up. The traffic circle in the middle of Maiden Shar swirls with cars and jingle trucks. One of the police guys at the gate tips a smile at me. I give him a half-hearted smirk in reply and turn away, counting on one hand the years till I hit 20 and can, officially, retire—white sands, baby, as if. Just then Koshan of the scraggly beard and stork-neck, whom I recognize from Bazir's retinue, ambles up to me asking for a light.
I oblige.
Koshan speaks English surprisingly well, on top of Dari on top of Pashtu on top of a little rusty Russian, not to mention Urdu, but I suppose that's why they inaugurated him as the communications officer for the district.
I make polite chit-chat, ask him where he's from.
Kandahar. His voice grates like a chainsaw. God knows how many packs the guy inhales a day. Izza ah... very bad place, yes? It has manee, manee Taliban. In dee, uh... sit-tay, yes? In dee city, the Taliban come up with dee, uh, motor-see-call and they shoot. Bang, bang, you know? At thee, uh, police station, they shoot and then go away. Very fast.
Huh.
Yes, itza very dane-jer-us place. Here, ee-see, uh, in Wardak, not so dane-jer-us. Uh, outside, you know? In Kandahar you cannot go outside to, uh, dee cigarette?
Smoke?
Yes, smoke. In Kandahar, you cannot go outside to smoke. Itza very dane-jer-us place.
Bad guys everywhere, huh?
Ee-yes, everywhere. Some very, very bad men. Koshan scratches his featherless-neck. He grins at a thought in his head and starts speaking to me at length, often chuckling in a resigned sort of way to himself, about how whenever he needed to get any raw-dio equipment, he had to bribe some government official for it. Everywhere in Afghanistan, there is bribes and kho-uption says Koshan.
It is thee way of theengs, yes?
First, he's gotta get the paperwork to request a new raw-dio, and that requires going to the resident file keeper, who possesses the only working printer in the district, and paying 12,000 Afghanis to the file keeper for the ink and paper—for the favor, see? Then to submit the paperwork he's gotta pay 5,000 Afghanis to the office clerk in the police headquarters, so the office clerk will take the paperwork to the supply officer who, in turn, will sign the paperwork to authorize the need for a new raw-dio, but only if he finds another 20,000 paperclipped to the backside. Not to mention any drivers or other policemen who expect a hefty tip for transporting said raw-dio to its designated unit. Koshan sighs. He says something to the effect that he can't blame anyone, really. How's a man supposed to make ends meet, huh? Put food on the table for his family when what meager wages you're paid often come late, if not short?
How much does the actual radio cost? I ask him.
Um, no-theeng, no-theeng. You Americans give it, yes?
5.
Back in the A-Jack Office, chow's arrived: basmati rice with goat stew slathered overtop; some chopped onions and tomatoes and cilantro for a burst of freshness; and a bowlful of the yummiest drippiest sour yogurt you ever smacked lips on. I sit down to my plate ready to get my munch on when Major Hoobah, talking to his fellow, if subordinate, officer, Savagé, says, Oh! So, you wanna follow in your old man's footsteps, is that it?
Pretty much, sir, says Savagé. My dad was CIA 25 years. I figured a commission in the army would better my chances with HR.
Did I mith thomething? I mumble through a forkful of goat rice and yogurt.
I was asking Simon here why in the hell he decided to study Farsi of all things, says Hoobah.
Why'th that?
They speak Farsi in Iran, says Savagé, bouncing his eyebrows.
I swallow. Well, that explains everything.
Thinking outside the box! says Hoobah. We're not fighting the commies any— but Hoobah cuts himself off. His eyeballs zap across the table, towards Namir.
Namir sits alone on his side of the table, shoveling one handful of food after another into his piehole like his momma taught him to.
He looks up to see three Americans eye-fucking him, our steadfast forks in our hands. He makes a face halfway between go-fuck-yourselves and mystic trance, one cheek a'bulging with goat meat.
Namir eats on, like a pro, nary another glance across the table.
Hell, when in Rome! says Hoobah. The Major casts his fork over his shoulder and starts eating with his hands, too.
Savagé glances at Hoobah now hunched over his plate like swine at the trough, at Namir trying not to laugh at Hoobah (and spitting greasy grains of rice in the process), at me with my own plastic fork I hold in my hand as though it is the final bastion of freedom, at Hoobah again, still struggling to prove his cross-cultural bona fides, and he sighs, and he sets his fork etiquette-style to the lefthand side of his plate before dipping those paper-pusher nubbins of his into his food and ever-so-deftly balancing a great edifice of rice and stew onto his fingertips. He only makes it halfway to his mouth before the walls of Jericho come tumbling down all over his lap.
6.
The worst part of this gig, I'm beginning to learn, isn't so much the elbow-rubbing with the locals, or the sleep deprivation, or the frustrations of not understanding one language from the next, but the near constant proximity of higher-ups, brass, occupational ball-breakers, people with careers to worry about, corporatized soldiers climbing that Ladder O' Success one rung at a time. Nary a day passes in this place without some bigwig happening by. But this first, third, or whatever day of the week it is, this day takes the topknot. The Three-Star himself descends from Kabul as on a cloud, a drenching of colonels and captains in his wake. Special Forces with their long hair and beards show up. Afghan commandos with scars on their faces. Bazir and his retinue. A handful of French officers, who're helping train the Afghan army. A dozen different translators. Everyone and their mother-in-law stands smooshed inside the A-Jack Office, caterwauling in a multi-dialect din around the conference table. Maps lie strewn left and right. Radios bleeping. Hand-chops flying this way and that. Last night, the district governor's son was kidnapped.
Hoobah, Savagé, Assef, and me stand crammed into a corner.
Where's Colonel Mirzak? murmurs Savagé to Hoobah, who murmurs to Namir, who murmurs to Assef, who, being Af. Army, has no fucking clue, but passes the message down to Koshan, who whispers in Bazir's ear, who then adds his own bark into the clatter.
Where's the Chief Detective!? We can't solve a crime without the Chief Detective! Get Mirzak in here immediately!
A few policemen wedge themselves towards the door and out.
Then the Three-Star, the meanest mug in the lot, slams his fist on the table and the room silences.
He opens his fist.
Friends, allies, soldiers, our mission is to— and it's remarkable. A thing of beauty, really. The man is so to the point he goes past it several times. His terp (an expensive one by the looks of his three-piece suit) is a marvel of a translator to keep up with such a commanding, such a soul-stirring speech. We must find the perpetrators of this heinous kidnapping. No stone must remain unturned. No house unsearched. No vehicle unstopped and its occupants un-frisked. We must bring every last one of these terrorists to justice. All we need to know is—where are they? Where are the bad guys at?
The Three-Star's translator turns to address the Afghans in the room specifically. The colonel in charge of the Army looks to General Bazir who looks to the other Afghan colonel in charge of the commandos who looks to the Special Forces who look to the French who look back to the colonel in charge of the Army, who replies to the translator for the Three-Star:
What?
What does he mean what? says the Three-Star. Point to us on the map where the bad guys are at. Where do they live? Where are they hiding the district governor's son?
The question bounces around the room, meeting with one set of empty hands after the next.
But who are the bad guys? says the Three-Star. Where are they? Will someone please tell me who these people are?
But, as the terp issues and re-issues the Three-Star's edict, chopping his own hand through the air so many times you'd think he's the one with the stars on his chest—I don't know what comes over me—I snort-laugh into my sleeve.
Savagé throws a frantic glare at me. But I snort-laugh again, and only just manage to stop the next outburst by stuffing my fist into my mouth.
The caterwauling and hand-chopping takes over the meeting once again, and that alone saves me.
Emuthe me, I blurt, fist in mouth, shuffling for the door. Shit, do I need a smoke...
Captain Savagé follows me out. Sergeant Furry, you alright?
Alright, sir. I roll my shoulders, clear my throat, and light up, exhaling sweet carcinogen. The fit leaves me, wholly and satisfyingly, like urine. Just too stuffy in there with all that brass.
No worries, says Savagé. I had to get outta there, too. You know... He glances over his shoulder. That terp, the one in the suit?
Yeah?
He is not accurately interpreting what the Three-Star is saying.
My cigarette almost drops out of my mouth.
He's twisting our commander's words. Giving orders to the Afghans that the Three-Star isn't even giving!
Well, you gotta say something, sir!
How can I? He's the Three-Star's favored terp.
Favored terp?
Yeah, him and the Three-Star are like best buddies. They go everywhere in country together.
They're friends?
My staff buddy up at battalion told me that the Three-Star trusts his terp even over his own advisors. He thinks he's getting the real picture of what's happening on-the-ground from an Afghan. I mean, I didn't quite believe it when my staff buddy told me, but now that I've seen it, heard it...
What do we do?
What can we do? If the Three-Star won't even listen to his own advisors, you think he'll listen to me? Especially when I try to tell him he's being manipulated? You think his terp's just gonna sit there while I try to disenfranchise his ass? Shit, sergeant. Gimme a cigarette.
I light the college-boy's smoke for him. He probably holds onto some idea of this war still being winnable, poor thing. To assuage him, I say, Damn, sir. Sounds like the puppet's playing the puppeteer.
You can say that again.
Damn, sir. Sounds like—
Make way!
We make way as the Three-Star marches out. The meeting's adjourned. The Three-Star and his entourage pile into their black, armored SUVs like clowns at the circus. The doors slam shut, tinted windows up, and off they roll back to Kabul, leaving only a billow of dust in their wake.
Came, saw, departed.
7.
They find him yet, sir?
Find who?
The district governor's son.
Oh! I have no idea. That was so yesterday.
Crisis begets crisis in the A-Jack Office, or maybe it's just how we react to everything as though we could fix everything that ails this country in one fell swoop.
After asking Savagé about the kidnapping, Assef, wearing an indecipherable look on his face, brings another intel report under the fault line, and that's when all hell breaks loose.
Savagé translates the report while I send it to Cowboy, then he asks for General Bazir, but The General's back home in Kabul at this late an hour. His next in command grumbles out of his bunk in the back room, but by then it's already too late. Word's gotten out. The Maiden Shar mosque has been threatened with a suicide attack. Where the threat comes from, if it's truly credible or not, when the attack might occur—none of that matters. Maiden Shar goes berserk. The streets, usually dead this time of night, erupt with people, cars, police trucks flashing their strobes. General Bazir materializes—the white hairs of his moustache poking every which way. He begins shooting off orders like a commander in the throes of a desperate battle. Savagé and me become assembly line workers, transmitting report after report up to Cowboy. Though the only response we receive is a Raaaaawger, Chieftain. Cowboy, out, which pisses Savagé off to no end.
Next morning we slump our tired selves back inside the Big Base for a shit, a shower, and a shave. But first, Savagé's got half an idea to burst into Cowboy's command post and lend them an earful.
Even the mullah was standing in front of his mosque screaming!
I know, sir.
Saying that if the mosque blew up, so would he!
Damn straight, sir.
But before we can get to Cowboy, we run into one of Savagé's staff buddies, and—why, no, he never heard a thing last night. The whole town went berserk? You don't say. Nope, no one up on the Big Base heard anything. Was it credible intelligence? Well, the mosque's not blown up after all, is it?
Afghanis just got their pannies in a twirl, says his staff buddy. You know what your problem is, Savagé? You listen to intel too much. Hell, half our problems in this country are cuzza intel. Half the intel we get is usually wrong, or plain made-up, and when we do get good intel, it usually doesn't tell us half of what we need to know!
I've never seen a man straight-up de-flate right in front of me before, as though Savagé realizes, all at once, deep down in his marrows, that there's just no winning this fight...
But hey, says his staff buddy. Buck up! I'm about to get my usual omelet—protein!—then hit the gym. Wanna join?
I have to avert my face and grab the nearest tent support. Thinking of all the Pogues around the world, their omelets and ice cream and data pancakes and gym hours inside one Big Base after the next from here to Timbuktu. Afghanistan? Iraq? Kuwait? Qatar? Korea? No more than a military vacation to most of 'em. Bonus points on their evaluations. Well done, meritocratic bureaucracy. Touché, professionalism turned careerism. I try to hold it in, try so hard I'm squealing like a puppy's chew toy.
What's the matter with him? asks the staff buddy.
Just... one too many deployments, says Savagé.
8.
Koshan slumps into the A-Jack Office the day after the suicide bombing that never was. An anonymous tip apparently called that intel in. Osama bin Laden called it in, for all anyone knows. No one's gotten any sleep. Koshan and Savagé start to chat.
I sit and stare at the fault line in the ceiling, wondering if my ex might take me back though she's already remarried, when Savagé yanks me out of my stupor.
Hey, you wanna come upstairs with me? Koshan says Mirzak wants to talk to us.
I've already heard the stories concerning one Colonel Mirzak... allow me to outline them in bullet-point fashion:
• born in Jalrez to a tribe nearly wiped out by the Taliban,
• spent the better part of a decade in Pul-i-Charkhi prison (you think CIA-waterboarding is bad?),
• possesses two dots tattooed on his left hand between his thumb and forefinger (evidence that he was, indeed, imprisoned, at one time),
• and, while in prison, tortured.
The only thing I know about people who've been tortured is to look out for the look. An ex-spook-turned-contractor from Iraq once upon a midnight dreary told me, It's like they been places most people never been. Places inside themselves. You especially gotta watch out for anybody held in solitary confinement... Stripped-naked fuckers, tased fuckers, pissing-and-shitting-themselves fuckers. They can't never unlive it, you know what I mean? It's like every day they wake up and they gotta remind themselves it ain't real anymore.
I've never stepped foot in any of the rooms upstairs, too freaky quiet compared to the normal war-business hubbub downstairs. The governor's office looks empty and dark at the end of the hall, door ajar. No lights in the hallway. Savagé leads me to the third door on the right. He knocks, once, then we slip in.
Takes a second for my eyes to adjust. Sunlight slices into the room through a set of heavy curtains. Smoke hangs in horizontal layers. Mirzak's face is turned, staring at a blank spot on the wall, cigarette perched between his fingertips, but he looks up once he sees us come in, and for the flash of a breath his owl-eyes touch a slice of sunlight, and those deep browns blaze gold, and it feels as though I am stepping into a place no one steps out of unchanged.
Savagé introduces me. Mirzak's hand swallows my own, a grip like death at the bottom of the ocean, death in a cold alleyway, raped in the ass, and bleeding. Mirzak gestures for Savagé to sit in the padded chair in front of his desk. I sit on the threadbare sofa to the side, hoping the scuffmarks in the sofa's wooden arms aren't from some unlucky soul's handcuffs, but what else do so many souls have to live for in a country like this one but luck? Fresh smokes are passed out, and lit, though General Bazir chastises everyone else for smoking indoors. Seeing my cancer stick burn away, Mirzak gestures hospitably towards an ashtray next to the sofa. I dab my ashes, realizing only after the fact that the 'ashtray' is actually a rusted-to-shit Soviet-era rocket propped upright with a hollow bowl in the tip.
I don't catch the whole conversation, only what Savagé translates or manages to remember to tell me afterwards, which suits me fine. I don't want to be in this room, breathing smoke, watching this shifty guy smile, nod, shrug, intermittently suck on his butt, exhale long trails while scouring Savagé's soul with those gold-glinting googly eyes of his.
Mirzak wants to know if Captain Savagé heard about how he caught a Taliban commander this morning.
Captain Savagé did not.
You never received a report? says Colonel Mirzak.
No.
Interesting, but not surprising.
Who is this Taliban commander you caught? says Savagé.
He is the one who kidnapped the governor's son.
Really? You caught the kidnapper?
Yes, would you like to hear the story?
He would indeed.
Mirzak grins like an oil slick, his black leather jacket creaking as he ashes his cigarette. He explains he's known about this Taliban commander for many, many years, but he's never been in possession of any evidence to charge him. Ghulam Muhamed, he says his name is.
Says Mirzak: Ghulam Muhamed, he is ex-Morality Police. From Talib-days, yes? He used to whip people in public for not growing big enough beards. But, even then, Ghulam Muhamed, he was not an unreasonable man. If people had problems, they would go to him. Sure, he could be cruel, but he'd fix things for people, and people remember that about him. They remember: Ghulam Muhamed, he fixes things.
Now, when you Americans invade, and Talib government falls—what does Ghulam Muhamed do? He gives up his guns. No one asks him. He does this on his own. He sees the writing on the wall, yes? Karzai, government people, big American general, everybody flies down from Kabul in fancy helicopter to preside over the great Ghulam Muhamed turning his weapons in. Everybody happy, no? Ghulam Muhamed retires from public life. He starts a little business down in Chak fixing cellphones and satellite dishes and things like that. Ghulam Muhamed, he fixes things, yes? But then, you know what happens? All of a sudden, last spring, his house, which had been in his family for generations, it is ransacked by your Special Forces! Big night raid. Lots of shooting. Many, many people down in Chak, they are very, very upset. You hear about this?
No, says Savagé. He never heard of it.
Interesting, says Mirzak. But not surprising.
What happened after the raid?
Bazir happened.
What do you mean Bazir happened?
Mirzak leans forward. His voice lowers to a growl.
Bazir, him and Karzai, they go way back. Bazir become police chief after Americans take charge. He expands the police force. Hundreds more police. All of them Sayyaf militia guys. With Bazir it is always tribe first, country second. Then Bazir puts his cousin Mozafaruddin on the ballot for district governor. He makes sure only Sayyaf militia guys, cops and so on, vote in last year's election. Now, Mozafaruddin is governor.
Mirzak gestures in the direction of the empty office down the end of the hall.
Many, many Wardak people, they are very, very upset about this. But what can they do? Bazir, early on in the war, he buys cheap farmland and sells it to you Americans to build your Big Base. He's on contract. He, and his brothers, they sell fuel, gasoline, trucks, laborers, everything to you Americans. Bazir is a very rich man. You Americans make him rich. You did not know this?
No, says Savagé.
Interesting, says Mirzak. But not surprising. Last spring, before the election, a rumor starts going around that Ghulam Muhamed wants to run for governor. He wants to run against Mozafaruddin. Only this is no rumor. Ghulam Muhamed says as much. He makes a big announcement that he's coming out of retirement by popular demand! The Kabuli government is corrupt! He begins campaigning around Chak, even right here in Maiden Shar!
Bazir, you understand, he thinks this is not such a good idea. So, Bazir, what does he do? He calls up the American staff officer on your Big Base, name of Carr? Lieutenant Carr?
Yes, says Savagé. Carr is—or he was, but he's not here anymore. He redeployed back stateside.
Well, you know what Bazir says to Carr? He says, Lieutenant Carr, you are a very smart man. You know what you are doing. I like the Americans and I have some secret information I want to give to you. Do you know what it is? It is about this Ghulam Muhamed trying to run for governor. Ghulam Muhamed, he is a bad guy. He will always be a bad guy. Somebody should take care of this bad guy, don't you think? Next thing you know...
Special Forces raid the house, says Savagé.
Yes.
And they take Ghulam Muhamed out of the picture.
No.
No?
No. The Special Forces, they don't kill Ghulam Muhamed. They don't even kidnap Ghulam Muhamed. They kidnap his son, Rahul. You know where his son is now?
Where?
Guantanamo.
(No translation required.)
Next thing you know, says Mirzak, I begin to hear whispers about Ghulam Muhamed getting his old gang back together, planning attacks on police, on Americans. He's getting in touch with bombmakers from Pakistan. Why do you think we have so many IED's in Wardak now, hm? Now, the governor's son is kidnapped! Mozafaruddin's son! Bazir's beloved nephew! Kidnapped in broad daylight in the middle of Kabul—well, at least, for a few days.
They found him? says Savagé.
He will be found, says Mirzak. Soon.
Soon?
An uncanny glint flickers out from Mirzak's eyes, the kind of look that makes you think he could murder the two of us right here in this room and do it with a smile on his face.
You know how I catch Ghulam Muhamed? says Mirzak. I drive to his house, in Chak, in my car instead of a police truck, so no one is alerted. I knock on his door. When he answers, I pull out my gun and—
Mirzak jumps from his chair and points a six-cylinder pistol right at Savagé. I have no idea where the pistol came from, but I'm dropping my smoke, rising onto my feet, raising my own weapon, as Mirzak shouts at the top of his lungs, Put 'em up! Put 'em up, no? That's how you Americans say it, yes? Put 'em up!
Savagé sits eyes frozen wide his white palms stuck up in the air like a goose caught in the headlights (instead of reaching for his own weapon).
Before I can even take proper aim, Mirzak drops his pistol on the desk and flops back down in his chair and lights another smoke like nothing just fucking happened. Grinning like a fucking cuckoo. Fucker even turns to me and winks.
Savagé lays his palms down and tries to laugh it off, coughing out a belated exhale.
Only reluctantly, do I resume my seat and my smoke, though I keep my eyes on Mirzak and my firing hand on the pistol grip of my weapon.
Then I drive Ghulam Muhamed here, continues Mirzak. I give him my phone and I tell him he's not getting out of jail until Bazir's nephew is back home. I tell him he can make one call. He makes one call. (No, I have no idea what he said, I wasn't listening.) After his call, he hangs up, and he says to me that Bazir's nephew will be back home by sundown. I say good. You can go home when the boy is home. Just like that.
Just like that, repeats Savagé, to me.
Only thing... adds Mirzak, tapping a finger on the desk. Only thing is that Ghulam Muhamed will need to stay in jail, which means I've lied to him.
You won't let him out?
No. And you know what this means? This means he will want to kill me, if he ever gets out of jail. Unless, or until, his own son is returned to him.
From Guantanamo? says Savagé.
From Guantanamo, repeats Mirzak.
I can't help you with that, says Savagé.
I didn't think so, says Mirzak. But I thought I'd ask, just in case.
Savagé says, If Ghulam Muhamed's son is in Guantanamo, he must be a really bad guy.
Mirzak shrugs, those googly eyes of his lay a second too long on that pistol of his on the desktop.
Was Ghulam Muhamed's son affiliated with al-Qaeda? asks Savagé.
Al-Qaeda? Mirzak lays a mock-surprise, or perhaps a genuine one, who could tell, on his face. No, no, no, he says. There are no al-Qaeda in Wardak. Just some thugs, some preachers, some Talib with family ties to Kandahar or Quetta.
Savagé asks if there have ever been al-Qaeda in Wardak.
Mirzak frowns, then shakes his head, swirls of smoke billowing from his brow. He explains how the Taliban are bad guys, yes, even before they let al-Qaeda set up shop in this country. But the Talibs, nowadays, they are changing. Regrouping. Rebranding themselves. And no matter how much I might loathe the Taliban, they are still part of Pashtun, if not Afghani, identity. They will never completely go away. The only thing someone like me can do is... keep fighting.
But—Mirzak points two fingers across his desk. If you want to find real al-Qaeda, look in Pakistan.
Pakistan is technically our ally, says Savagé.
Mirzak laughs.
Savagé laughs, too.
I don't know what the hell they're talking about.
Savagé coughs, stubs out his smoke. He asks Mirzak if he thinks we're wasting our time going after the Taliban.
Mirzak shrugs. You are the good guys, yes? He spins his pistol across the desktop; it bobbles around once, twice, before sliding to a stop with the barrel pointed at me. And good guys need bad guys, no?
9.
Two?
Yeah, two.
Where are they?
On their way home.
How many wounded?
Four.
Four!?
Fucking four.
I thought they were driving skeleton crews to minimize casualties?
Exceptions to the rules.
Fuck, sir.
They didn't even get out and clear the sides of the road like they were supposed to. Too much of a hurry.
Six total. That's a platoon down a whole squad. A quarter of their strength—gone. One bomb.
One.
Savagé marks THE MAP. One more red dot, grid point, instance of an enemy attack. One more sacrifice, an ass-reaming, somebody's mistake. One more set of chaplains to deploy across the continental United States and associated territories to knock on a front door and there deposit the awful news of a grateful nation. THE MAP tells no stories, hums no ancient tunes, pats no shoulders. Who died and for what? What history wrought in these ruins here? What forgotten capital rendered unto dust there? A map of that sort might tell us how to win this war, or at least how to quit while we're ahead.
But any one of us can feel the truth, feel it in our sore soles and bad backs and pained consciences: it's too late now. The war's become what it is: an institution unto itself. Like one of those self-eating serpents: our own need to consume undoing our very intentions. Early on in this war, we just took too big a bite to chew, and now, look at us choke.
Maybe there's some truth in that, or maybe Savagé and me—maybe we're just plumb wore out. A coupla pencil pushers ashamed of our undirtied uniforms, of our unbecoming of our truer selves by these piles of paper, by the very wood in these fucking desks we hide behind. A hole opens up in us, like it does whenever someone on your own side bites the big one, takes that one-way ticket. It hits you in the gut, digs its nails into your lungs, and never lets go. No matter if it's the fourth, fifth, sixth, sixtieth time it's happened, or the first.
I wish I could go back to the line, croaks Savagé.
Me, too, sir.
Only your own guys and the bad guys to worry about. Clear. Simple. Good. Bad. Us. Them. That's it.
The problem with me and Savagé? We know too much. We aren't grunts anymore. And we know too much.
10.
Bazir stands up top of the roof. Purpling gloom all around. Only the silhouette of him in his police hat. The shadow-puff of smoke from his cigarette. One star, maybe Venus, winks awake outta the ether. The man o' the hour stands overlooking Maiden Shar with his henchmen. He waves down at me and Savagé as we climb into our armored coffin on wheels for the all of 60-second ride back onto the Big Base. I wave back. What else a has-been like me supposed to do?
Someone, a deployment or two ago, had left a pocket Quran, half-English, half-Arabic, in the drawer of one of the desks in the A-Jack Office, and because of it, Assef ended up giving me a parting gift, though he hadn't intended it as such.
It had been an hour or two from midnight, the night prior. I was bored. I rummaged through the desk drawers and found, lo and behold, the pocket Quran. I opened the little leather-bound book and flipped through. Allah forbading this. Allah granting that. Every other sentence seemed to promise hellfire for unbelievers. The story of Cain burying his brother Abel after watching two crows scratch at the dirt. Me and Assef were the only two in the room. I did not realize he had been watching me intently the whole time.
Eventually, he rose, marched under the fault line, smiled understandingly, and opened his hand for me to give him the book. A look more serious than any I had ever seen on him suggested I best not refuse.
I gave him the book.
Assef pressed it between his palms, walked over to the corner of the A-Jack Office, stood on a chair, and placed the book on top of a stack of papers on a shelf, nearly touching the ceiling, thereby rendering the book the highest object in the room.
I like to think it'll stay up there.
Savagé doesn't look so good. Can't believe we've been in this country ten years already, he says. Ten fucking years. It's like a bad joke.
The poison o' this war's dripping from him as from an open wound.
I reach across the seat in our bouncy coffin on wheels and touch my forefingers to the corners of his mouth. He stares at me—only a little weirded out—as I push those corners up, and then, God help me, it's too late.
Stop the truck!
Hey, what's his problem?
Stop the truck! orders Savagé.
Outside the truck, on my knees in the dirt. A wrecker's lifted this final blasted-to-shit truck off its back and set it lightly, gingerly, on the ground, like a baby in a cradle. Alongside all the other babies no mother gonna coo to anymore. The boneyard for the broke-dick armored vehicles meant to protect us, warn us against complacency, instead turns to embrace the newest among them like an old friend.
What the fuck? says somebody, I don't know who.
What's one more broke-dick sergeant?
Savagé shakes me trying to get through to me. Sergeant Furry? Sergeant Furry!? Snap out of it!
But in all those multicolored faces staring down at me, ranks and races of every sort fighting and dying for whatever it is they see fit to fight and die for, I see only last week's PowerPoints: graphs, frequencies of IED incidents, casualty figures, effective or noneffective occurrences, totals, 12-month moving averages, lethality statistics, all of it—by the numbers.
The numbers for Afghanistan, at the time, are:
• 16 Killed-In-Action in April, 114 wounded
• 28 KIA in May, 156 wounded
• 32 KIA in June, 123 wounded
• 66 in July,
• and so on...
Numbers on heads, on chests, on breasts. There goes number one, donning their gear. There two, standing in a guard tower. There three, shoving their mouth full of buttered-up data pancakes. There's four, heading to the latrine to jerk off. There, five, six, seven, all driving down the valley of the shadow of death together. There's 16 studiously cleaning their carbine. There is the total, the pie chart, in the news, on a newspaper sheet. Read the words. See the face. Follow the numbers. Look, learn, know that, yes, indeed, there is some fighting going on somewhere. Quantify it, control it. Click on the boobtube, see their photograph, a picture of them in uniform, read their number, their rank and name—and say, yes, indeed, there is some fighting going on somewhere. By the numbers, count the sacrifice.
Is he having a heart attack?
Why won't he stop laughing?
Is he sick?
He's barely breathing.
Somebody call a medic!
Medic! Medic!
What the fuck happened to him!?
I don't know, says Savagé, and he looks so sad up there with the sun haloing his face, I feel sad for myself. I don't know, is all he keeps saying. I don't know.
My abs clank like armor plates. Blood-tears balloon up and scrape down my face. I bite my lips, trying to hold it in, but they split, and they also bleed, and the taste of it is something good in my mouth, and finally a voice sounds out between a howling wilderness of gasps, and it is not my voice but someone else's.
Wait, wait, wait! He's trying to say something.
Sergeant Furry? Sergeant Furry? Hey man, blink if you can hear me.
What's he saying?
One.
One?
Two.
Two?
Tree.
Tree?
Ah. Ah. Ah.
