The Fifth Act, page 2
And now we were about to run this place—or at least a corner of this place—by running Khost. But I was going to tell him that I wanted out, that I wanted a life outside these wars.
Again, I felt sick. Try as I might to rationalize it away, leaving the war meant betraying my best friend. It meant leaving him to fight on his own.
Every person who has fought in these wars and left them has had to declare the war over for themselves. Peace never arrived for us at a negotiating table or a surrender ceremony. There has been no single peace; rather, there have been tens of thousands of separate peace deals that each of us who walked away from the war had to negotiate with our own conscience. Like any peace deal, some have proven more lasting than others.
When I arrived in Khost that night, a raid was in progress outside the base. Because Jack would soon be taking over the unit, he’d tagged along as an observer. We kept odd hours back then. We’d wake up in the early afternoon. We’d go to sleep in the early morning. In the center of Khost Base was a little tiki bar, a Margaritaville transplant with a thatch roof and bamboo-legged stools. I perched on one of the stools and waited for the raid force to return. Not long after midnight, a convoy pulled into the motor pool. When the engines shut off, I could hear laughing and joking. Cleary, no one had gotten hurt. Maybe they’d even captured or killed their target. The Afghans left for their side of the base, and one by one the half dozen American advisers filtered past the bar, stripping off their body armor to reveal their sweat-stained uniforms.
I remained relatively new at the CIA. I’d met a couple of the other paramilitary officers at Khost before, but most I hadn’t. Jack was quick to introduce me around. He was all jokes, recounting the particulars of the raid with the others—talking about who had jumped up on what roof, or had dipped around what corner, as they collectively chased their target down. Watching him, I could tell how much he’d missed this after his year at Langley. I could also tell how much he was looking forward to his time out here, running the vast CTPT in Khost, going out on raids like this almost every night. When he introduced me to the others, he said more than once, “Ack’s gonna be deputy when I head out here.”
Before too long, things at the bar wound down. One by one, everyone dispersed to their respective rooms for some sleep. That’s when I asked Jack if he had a minute. There was something I needed to talk with him about.
“Can’t it wait until morning, Ack? I’m beat.”
I told him it couldn’t.
SCENE III
The Colosseum, Rome, in the morning
I watch Kabul fall in my mother-in-law’s kitchen, on a Sunday. I speak to Nick shortly thereafter. He tells me he’s raising money to charter private flights out of Hamid Karzai International Airport, or HKIA. Do you have any ideas on how to raise half a million dollars in a hurry? . . . None come to mind. I ask how many flights he can get with all that money. Just one, he explains, an Airbus A320. How many does that carry? About 150, he says. I do the math, calculating dollars per seat—trying not to remind myself that the real calculation being made is dollars per life.
The calls keep coming in.
Another friend calls, a former Marine turned businessman. One of his investors, a wildly successful tech entrepreneur, has a desperate request. He’s long sponsored the Afghan all-girls robotics team. He needs to get them out, whatever the cost. I put him in touch with Nick. The entrepreneur commits to funding half a flight. Other commitments soon follow. Within hours, hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone to a first A320. The money seems to flow from everywhere—from Eric Schmidt, from the Rockefeller Foundation; people want to help.
That Thursday afternoon, I leave on vacation with my family.
When I land Friday morning, the problems have piled up. The issue now isn’t flights but access to the airport itself. No one can get inside. The Biden administration has ordered the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit to secure HKIA. Which they’ve done, to great effect. The North Gate, the West Gate, the Abbey Gate, they’re all closed. When Jack returns my call about our buses going through the Unnamed Gate that night, I’m standing in the Colosseum gift shop with my two sons, who both want the same toy gladiator souvenir, and there’s only one left. They’re arguing as I answer the phone.
“Hey, man. What do you need?”
“Hey . . . hold on . . .” I run out of the shop. “Sorry, we’ve got these four buses and we need to get them to the airport tonight. I’m told your guys are holding security on the Unnamed Gate. We’re planning to get there at 0330. Can you tell them to open the gate for us?”
“There’s a lot going on right now,” he says. “Do you even have a tail number for this flight?”
“Not yet.” I had already talked to Nick about getting the tail number, and Nick had explained they wouldn’t know that until the A320 was in the air. I tell this to Jack, assuring him that I can get the tail number soon. If he had that, would he be able to help us through the Unnamed Gate?
“Who’s even on these buses?” he asks.
I mention Ali’s family, the all-girls robotics team, journalists, activists.
“All right, but any Americans?”
I explain how a non-Afghan passport holder will be riding in each bus—we have four journalists: two Americans, a Canadian, and an Australian, who’ve volunteered to ride in the buses to help them through the Taliban checkpoints—but the four of them will be staying in Kabul. Only Afghans are flying out.
“And who are you working with on this?”
With each question, Jack’s skepticism only grows thicker. I tell him about Nick, the Rockefeller Foundation, and our private donors. I promise I’ll get him the tail number he wants. I’ll send him the manifest of everyone on the flight. If he has all of that, will the guys at the Unnamed Gate let us through tonight? “I really need your help.”
“That’s not how it’s working, Ack.”
The line between us grows tense.
He answers, “I’ll see what I can do,” and hangs up.
My two sons come barreling out of the gift shop, each with a gladiator souvenir in their hand. My wife tells me the salesperson managed to come up with one extra.
SCENE IV
Washington, D.C., 2021
I was having lunch with Roya Rahmani, the Afghan ambassador, on the day President Biden announced the US withdrawal. She and I had become friends over the past couple of years and would periodically catch up over a meal. It was a simple coincidence we had lunch scheduled for that day. Her phone was ringing constantly as we stepped into the dining room of her residence. With a hospitality typical of Afghans, she sat us down at what turned out was a meal for one, as in observance of Ramadan she would not be eating. Then, as a steward brought my first course, her phone rang again. This call she had to take. It was the foreign minister. She excused herself as the two of them crafted a statement for her to deliver to the Biden administration. So I sat alone, picking at the vegetables on my plate, in what felt like a dream.
Two days later, I went for an early morning run with Jack. As we passed by the fenced-off Capitol and down along the National Mall, I recounted my lunch, how odd that moment had felt, and said, “I can’t believe that’s going to be my memory of how it all ended.” Jack laughed, and with a doomy pragmatism predicted that the war wasn’t going to end with a salad at the ambassador’s residence and a news conference by the president; it would end as it began: in blood.
Jack reminded me that removing the 3,500 US troops from Afghanistan was, in military terms, what’s called a “fighting withdrawal,” in which an army leaves the field while still in contact with the enemy. Of all the maneuvers an army can perform (advance, flank, defend, etc.), it is widely accepted that a fighting withdrawal is the most complex and difficult because you are neither attacking nor defending, and so are exceedingly vulnerable. Unlike the withdrawal from Iraq, in which US troops could drive through the desert into Kuwait as they did in 2011, and unlike the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, in which they could drive across a then-shared border, US troops were marooned in Afghanistan, reliant on what were then three principal US-controlled airstrips (Bagram, Jalalabad, Kandahar), making their journey home all the more perilous.
Afghans have a long memory. During my service there, elders often pointed not just to where they’d fought the Soviets, or to where their great-great-grandfathers had fought the British, but even to the ruins of the fortresses where their ancestors had fought the armies of Alexander the Great. Perhaps the most famous fighting withdrawal in Afghan history came at the end of the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1842. That conflict began with a resounding British victory, in 1839, and the installation of a sympathetic government; but that government collapsed, leading to an uprising in Kabul. Like the United States and our allies, the British found themselves geographically marooned, and secured favorable terms for withdrawal from their adversaries, but when their column—around 16,500 soldiers and camp followers—left the gates of Kabul on their way to Jalalabad, the Afghans descended, slaughtering all except one: army surgeon William Brydon. When Brydon—the original Lone Survivor—arrived on horseback at the gates of Jalalabad, near death himself with part of his skull sheared off, a sentry asked where the army was, to which he responded, “I am the army.”
Although the Soviet army avoided this fate a century later, the regime it left behind fared little better. Mohammad Najibullah, who the Soviets installed as president, was able to hold on to power for over two years after they left. As the Soviet Union collapsed, so too did their financial support of Najibullah’s regime. He was soon deposed and eventually found himself at the end of a Taliban executioner’s rope when they took control of Kabul. Which begged the question of how long the United States would support the government of then-president Ashraf Ghani. One year? Two? Three? What would be the “decent interval,” to borrow Nixon’s phrase from our calamitous withdrawal from Vietnam?
As Jack and I ran, we discussed this history and other complex aspects of America’s withdrawal: how many senior members of the Afghan government possessed dual citizenship and would likely depart the country, leaving behind less capable subordinates to fill critical positions; the challenges of collapsing more remote outposts; and whether the State Department would expedite visas to those Afghans who’d thrown their lot in with their government and with us.
Jack concluded, “America might be done with Afghanistan, but Afghanistan isn’t done with America.” In his view, my lunch at the ambassador’s residence wouldn’t mark the end of the war at all. Not for me. Not for anyone.
That day at lunch, after finishing her call, the ambassador had apologized for being so inattentive. She confessed that she’d had an agenda item we hadn’t gotten to discuss. She wanted some advice, as she was considering writing a book. Like the millions of Afghan girls the United States was now in the process of abandoning, her story was marked by war and overcoming an oppressive version of Islam championed by the Taliban, a personal journey that led to a final chapter in which she was appointed as the first female Afghan ambassador to the United States. My advice to her was to keep notes, and that she might not be ready to write the final chapter yet. Because she may not be remembered most for having been her government’s first female ambassador, but rather for having been, as it relates to America, its last.
SCENE V
Gladiator school, Rome, in the afternoon
Nick has questions and Jack isn’t answering his phone. Nick wants to know if our convoy has been cleared to enter the Unnamed Gate; if so, he wants to know what time we should arrive; he also wants to know if the charter flight has been cleared to land. He’s asking questions that I don’t have the answers to.
So I call Yeti.
Jack and Yeti work together. Yeti—as his name infers—is a bit of a giant. Before he played spook for the CIA, he played offensive tackle for a nationally ranked college football team. From his alma mater to the agency, he has many game-day stories he could regale you with, but he never would; he is modest to a fault, self-deprecating, and one of my favorite people. Like Jack, Yeti and I met in a training course years ago.
I explain the situation to Yeti and that Jack isn’t answering his phone. Yeti offers to drive into the office to see if he can help. He also offers to send our manifest to the chief of Eagle Base, the main CTPT base in Kabul.
My family’s tour that afternoon is finishing as I get off the call with Yeti. My wife and daughter have planned an excursion, and I’m in charge of the little boys. We have an activity planned. My wife has signed them up for gladiator school.
A taxi drops me and the two nine-year-olds off in a dusty, suburban corner of Rome. The school is advertised as having two sessions a day, in which the children will learn about Roman weapons and armor and then play gladiator with other children in a historically accurate reproduction of a gladiator school, or the ludus gladiatorius. Their website shows a green lawn, smiling faces, and staff who are happy to instruct your child in the finer points of mortal combat. When I push open the front gate, the reality is a cluster of one-story cinder-block buildings tousled with faux-thatch roofs built around an abandoned dirt courtyard. This is the ludus, and it appears deserted.
Our taxi has sped away; otherwise, I might’ve doubled back for it. I’m left to poke around inside. Then, out from one of the block houses, Claudio, the lead (and only) instructor, crosses into the center of the dirt courtyard. “Where are my gladiators?” he says with a ring announcer’s panache. In each hand he carries a Roman short sword, the gladius. He clangs the two unsharpened blades together as if trying to detonate sparks. Both boys reach eagerly for the swords. “Ah, not yet,” says Claudio. He thrusts both blades into the dirt so their upturned handles seduce the boys like an Arthurian legend—now he’s really laying on the showmanship—and holds up his index finger. “First, you must learn.”
Claudio’s jogging shorts and tank top reveal his muscled legs and arms. Like a man in a bar before a fight, he sizes up me and then the boys from head to toe. He ducks into one of the block houses. He doesn’t rummage around for long. When he reappears, he is dressed in leather calf-high sandals and an above-the-knee tunic belted at the waist. He hands each of the boys an identical crimson sackcloth tunic in their size and then offers me one in mine.
I explain that I’m not fighting today, only watching.
Claudio looks at the boys, who look at me. All three of them are disappointed. I hold up my phone. I’m expecting a call back from Yeti, and I explain how after that maybe I’ll get in the ring for a bit. Then Claudio helps me out: “Come on, boys, leave your papa to his calls. Around the ludus! Warm up! Five laps!” Off they go running.
As I sit on the bench watching the boys do their laps in the dust, I’m taken back to when I’d told Jack I was done with the wars. That next morning, we had gone on a run. The night before, Jack had asked that I at least consider making one final trip with him to Khost. He asked that I sleep on my decision. So I agreed. When we met on the airfield for our run, it wasn’t long after dawn. He confessed that he hadn’t slept much. I confessed the same. We started out at a slow, silent jog.
“What would you even do?” he asked after a while.
I described to him a year-long job in politics that I’d been offered. After that, I wasn’t entirely sure.
Cargo planes roared into the airstrip. A helicopter heaved up a dust cloud in the pastel distance. Static electricity crackled from its blades. We used this noise as a cover for our silences. Eventually, I told him that I hadn’t changed my mind, that I wasn’t coming with him to Khost. The silences became longer the farther we ran.
Eventually, he said, “I vouched for you.”
“I know.”
“You leaving so soon calls my judgment into question.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not going to defend you.”
I didn’t have to ask, Defend me against what? I knew exactly what he was talking about. Our culture—the special operations culture I had aspired to be part of for so long and within which, up to this point, I had thrived—placed a heavy emphasis on personal reputation. This goes back to Willy asking Jack whether I was “a piece of shit or a good dude.” There was and never would be any in between, not for me or anyone else. What Jack was telling me was that my decision to leave so precipitously—and particularly to leave him in the lurch in Khost—would probably cast me out of the “good dude” category, at least in the eyes of many. And he wasn’t wrong. I knew some would view it that way. Most painfully of all, him.
We made a single lap around the airfield before quitting; it’s the only run we never finished.
A year passed before we spoke again. Jack deployed to Khost without me, and it was only when he returned after a successful tour there that we gradually began to pick up our old habit of running together. We never spoke of my decision to leave. It remained buried between us: the right or wrong of it, the how and the why. We simply decided to let it go.
The boys have finished their laps around the ludus. Claudio passes each of them a juice box to cool off before he places a wooden sword in each of their hands. They begin a series of drills. Claudio chants, “Strike! Block! Recover!” as the two of them thrust clumsily at each other. When their energy lags, Claudio encourages them more earnestly. When this no longer works, he steps into one of the cinder-block huts with its shabby thatch roof. Then, from a constellation of concealed speakers around the arena, the theme from Gladiator begins to play. The strident melody. The epic drums. “Come boys!” he shouts. “Again!” And so they go on: strike . . . block . . . recover.
