Enduring Freedom, page 13
Two rungs up the ladder.
I’m gonna die today. We’ll fight hard, but it won’t be enough.
Four rungs, hands burning.
I’ll have to kill human beings. Remember what the Army taught me. Put the front sight-post center of his body, breath control—in, out, in—easy trigger squeeze. Drop them. Don’t think, shoot.
Six rungs up.
A chaplain will knock on the door. Mom will see him and cry, knowing her son is dead. She’ll have to tell Krista. And Dad. They’ll be so sad.
He put his rifle up over the short wall at the edge of the roof.
These savages want to kill me because we want school for their kids, want to make this country a little less like garbage?
A leg over the top.
They want a fight? I’ll give them one! I’ll kill ’em all! Come on! Let’s do this!
“I got this way!” Joe pointed to the back of the compound. He took up a position between the mud-brick roof dome and the wall on the edge.
“I got front!” shouted Sergeant Paulsen.
Each would cover his sector, destroy any enemies, and wouldn’t dare turn his back for any reason. All roofs in Farah featured gently sloped domes over each room but were mostly flat, and the Taliban could pop up on any of them.
A quick glance across the motorpool side of their compound and the west wall allowed a partial look into the compound next door. As another burst of machine gun fire went off from somewhere down the street, Baheer hurried across a courtyard between two houses, rushing a girl along. “Baheer, get inside!” Joe shouted. Baheer vanished from view an instant later.
Second Squad’s Specialist Dodge was on the guard platform on the west wall. “I got this side! Cover the south, Killer!”
He’s right! Do your job! Pay attention!
His rifle ready, stock to cheek, he scanned his sector. He was a good shot. He’d shoot any haji coming up with a weapon. Joe panned his weapon along the rooflines. Empty. Empty. Empty.
Movement.
His heart leapt, almost hurt, but it was just an old man with a gray beard walking along his roof.
“Get down!” Joe screamed.
The man didn’t need to be told twice. He turned around and vanished in a second.
“Good.” Sweat ran down Joe’s back. A few more gunshots went off. Still not on them yet as far as he could tell. “Where are they? Come on, you Taliban freaks. I got you.”
A boy, maybe ten years old, emerged on a different roof about a block away.
“Get off the roof!” Joe shouted.
The boy smiled and waved.
“No, no, no,” Joe said. If the Taliban appeared behind the kid, the boy would be killed in the crossfire. Then CNN or some other network would show up with a camera crew, talking about how terrible American soldiers were. Worse, there’d be a dead kid.
“Get down right now!” Joe shouted again, but still the boy waved.
The kid had to get out of the way immediately. Joe bit his lip, wiped his eyes. “O Jesus, please forgive me.” He lifted his M16 and aimed it directly at the ten-year-old boy. “I’m not joking! Get the—”
The boy screamed and scrambled to flee the roof.
“Killian, you good?” Sergeant Paulsen called.
Joe snorted. “Oh, awesome. All clear over here.”
The sound of gunfire had vanished. Farah baked in an eerie quiet heat. Joe continued scanning his sector over the top of his rifle, and very slowly, almost against his own will, he relaxed. His breathing and heart rate slowed. His whole attention had been focused on shooting any hostiles that showed up, but now other thoughts wandered in.
“Hey, Killer,” Cookmaster said from below. He held up a can of Mountain Dew. “Thirsty?”
Joe was thirsty, now that he thought about it. Cookmaster tossed up the soda, and nothing had ever tasted so good.
Somehow the attack hadn’t reached them. He was still alive. Everyone remained at their improvised battlestations for another hour before returning to what passed for normal at the Unsafe House.
Farah, Afghanistan
July 23, 2003
Through a slow, brutally hot July, the soldiers’ empty existence dragged on, reduced to guard duty, attempts at sleep, constant hunger, swatting flies, sweat, filth, and fear. The Farah Flu ripped through everyone’s guts.
At a nightly meeting, they’d learned that the near attack on the Unsafe House had been foiled by the local Afghan police, operating on orders from the Farah provincial governor. The police intercepted and stopped two Taliban pickups. There were no survivors.
“I guess it’s good news that the local police decided to side with our allies in the new Afghanistan central government,” Sergeant Cavanaugh had said.
Although conversation about the incident had died down after a few days, Joe couldn’t stop thinking about it. Despite their substantial weapons and ammunition, the Unsafe House would have lived up to its name if the Taliban had come in force. It was not a very defensible position. A few grenades lobbed over the walls from the street, one truck ramming through the steel gate in the front wall. They would have been overrun quickly. I owe my life to the Farah police.
He also couldn’t stop thinking about that boy on the roof. Why didn’t he just get down when Joe told him to? Couldn’t he hear the gunfire? Now he probably thought an American soldier had tried to shoot him. Would the boy ever forgive him? And why should he? I’m a soldier in an occupying army, and I aimed an M16 at him.
Sergeant Paulsen, PFC Baccam, and Corporal MacDonald all said he’d done the right thing. Even Specialist Shockley had said Joe’s actions were consistent with all his military knowledge and experience.
“Whatever, Shockley,” Mac had said. “You’d probably have shot the kid.”
What Joe didn’t tell anyone was that he couldn’t get the incident out of his head, even when he slept. Twice, he’d dreamed about that day on the roof. But in both dreams, the boy wouldn’t get down. In both dreams, Joe had shot him. It made no sense. It was just a stupid dream. But each time, the kid’s chest exploded, and he screamed, and there was so much blood.
During the day, there wasn’t much to keep his mind occupied. Guard duty seemed infinite. Sitting or standing on that concrete platform quickly became boring. Position One, by the front street and main gate, was the least boring of the guard posts. Sweating there on a 120-degree afternoon, Joe heard barking. Down the street some boys laughed and threw rocks at Almost Dead, the scruffy old dog that lived on the garbage pile in that section of the street.
“Hey!” Joe shook his rifle, careful not to point it at the boys. “Leave that dog alone! He’s officially under the protection of the United States Army!” The boys scattered. Almost Dead sniffed around the trash a little before settling back to sleep.
An hour later, a barefoot boy and girl, perhaps siblings, played on the other side of the street between the ditch and the wall. The boy dragged a shoebox by a piece of yarn, perhaps pretending the box was a truck or train.
The girl, in her ragged dress, followed him. She didn’t even have a box, only yarn. These were their only toys.
Joe’s parents hadn’t always had much. His dad had been laid off when Joe was six, and the family had struggled. Since Dad had left, Mom was challenged with the budget. But whatever the trouble, he and Krista had always had more than a box and yarn.
Their parents should have worked harder. But even as he thought it, he knew that was stupid.
There was a certain comfort in staying mad at these people. The anger would help if the Taliban finally did attack and he needed to shoot them—to kill them.
But Joe knew that unlike his mom and dad in America, these kids’ parents didn’t have many jobs available. He’d been told about how evil the Taliban had been. They wouldn’t have let their mother get a job or even leave the house. Before that, the Soviet Union had devastated this country. Joe had seen their land mines at Kandahar and their abandoned military vehicles on the way to Farah. Whatever problems haji had, at least some of them weren’t their fault.
Staying angry and hating these people didn’t help that day on the roof. And if he really wanted to get payback on all Afghans, why was he still freaked out thinking about that boy he’d had to aim at?
“You kids like candy?” He waved a couple of Jolly Ranchers around. What is the Dari word for “gift”? Something like “Baksheesh.”
The boy left his sister by the opposite wall and crossed the street. Joe tossed him the candies. “Enjoy, kid.”
The boy ran back. He and his sister examined the gifts, talking it over. They unwrapped them and took cautious licks. A second later they both smiled big.
Joe gave a thumbs-up. “You like?” The kids laughed and vanished through a door behind their wall. “Good luck, poor kids.”
A while later near the end of his guard shift, Joe’s stomach heaved. He leaned over the wall, wincing, the mud-brick hot on his chest and arms. He gagged a little.
“Are you fine, Killian?”
Joe opened his eyes, dry heaved one more time, and stood up straight. “Hey, Baheer.” He shook his head. “What did you say?”
“You do not look OK.” Baheer smiled. He was holding another cloth-wrapped bundle and had probably just come back from the bazaar.
“Oh, just the noonday nausea,” Joe said. “Couldn’t really eat breakfast, and I just couldn’t stand another MRE, er, a field ration, for lunch. Especially not in this heat. After a while the hunger changes to a kind of sickness, makes me feel like I’m gonna throw up.”
“This is not good,” Baheer said. “You should eat.”
Joe shrugged. “I’m getting used to it. There’ll be another square of imitation-meat lasagna tonight.”
Baheer reached into his bundle and pulled out some kind of naan wrap. Squinting in the bright sun, he held the sandwich up toward Joe. “You have this. Feel better.”
This guy was too nice. “I can’t take your food, man. The Army takes care of me. More or less.”
“Please eat it,” Baheer said. “It is no problem. These are very little money. Little boys sell them around the bazaar. It is some chicken and beans, good things, inside the naan. It’s fresh. You eat this. Why not? I have more.” Baheer opened his bundle a little and showed him a few more of the wraps and a bag of dry rice.
First Sergeant Dalton would be mad if Joe accepted food from Baheer. But, then again, First Sergeant Dalton was sitting on his butt in the air-conditioned Tactical Operations Center, the TOC, sipping an ice-cold soda ration, not out here roasting in the sun.
“OK.” Joe reached down and grabbed the sandwich. “Thanks, man.” He bit into the wrap and closed his eyes. The chicken was flavored with some glorious spice he’d never tasted before, and the beans filled it all out, balanced by the crunch of lettuce or some kind of vegetable, all wrapped up in the warmest, softest naan he’d ever had. “Oh.” Joe spoke with his mouth full. “Tashakor. This is the greatest thing, man. Tashakor so much.”
“It is good, yes?” Baheer asked.
Joe leaned forward against the wall and devoured the sandwich. “Yes. You have no idea how good real food tastes right now. Tashakor.”
When it was gone, Joe grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler and chugged half of it down before wiping his mouth. Baheer just kept watching with a big smile. Joe pulled a Jolly Rancher out of his pocket, hoping it wasn’t too melty. The hard candies held up OK in the heat. “All I got to pay you back is candy,” he said, tossing it to him more carefully than he had the first time.
Baheer caught the candy. “Tashakor. But you do not need to pay back. Is baksheesh. Is gift.”
“Well, sorry, then,” said Joe. “Because your gift was a heck of a lot better than mine.”
From down the street came the rumble of a jingle truck. Shorter than a semi, these cargo trucks hauled shipping containers in big open-top compartments behind the cab. The Afghans painted or carved elaborate designs and pictures on the sides of them. Flowers. Arabesque swirls. Even pictures of fighter jets. Hanging from the bottom edge of these trucks, on all sides, was a curtain of jingling chains. The guys sometimes argued over whether these chains were a decoration like the artwork on the trucks, or if they were supposed to help keep the dust down. Regardless, someone had called one of them a “jingle truck” and the name stuck.
Baheer moved out of the way as the jingle truck rolled to a stop in front of their compound, the driver waving to him. Joe pulled a small handheld Motorola radio from his pocket and hit the transmit button. “S-O-G, S-O-G, this is Ernie Pyle, over.” On unsecured channels when anyone with a similar model civilian radio could be listening, they were careful to use code names.
“Pyle, this is S-O-G,” Sergeant Paulsen radioed back. “Go ahead, over.”
Joe hit the transmit button. “S-O-G, Ernie Pyle. Got a jingle truck parked out front, over.”
“Roger that. I’ll let leadership know. S-O-G, out.”
“This truck? It is here for you?” Baheer asked.
Joe supposed some of this fell under Operational Security, or OPSEC, but the presence of the truck was no secret. “Yeah, these guys ship in our food and supplies from our bigger bases.” First Sergeant Dalton would probably yell at him for mentioning that food sometimes came on these trucks, but where else would they get their supplies? “In a little bit some of my guys will check the truck over for bombs. Check to make sure the shipping container is still sealed and hasn’t been tampered with. Then we gotta unload.”
Baheer looked from the truck to Joe and back. “So many soldiers. You all must need many trucks.”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “And most of the time, like today, they show up right when I’m about to come off my guard shift, so instead of sleeping, I’ll have to help unload.”
Baheer looked at the truck again. “That is bad. I am sorry to hear this.” He turned back to Joe and held up his bundle. “I have to go now. May I go back here later to practice my English?”
Joe laughed. Only a month ago, he never would have imagined voluntarily hanging out with an Afghan. But Baheer seemed cool. “Sure. I’m stuck up here a lot, so I’m not going anywhere.”
Baheer smiled and nodded, but remained a moment longer. “Killian,” he said. “You be OK.”
Joe watched him until he vanished inside his own compound next door.
“Here to relieve you, Killer,” said Second Squad’s Specialist Ingram.
Joe heaved on his armor, the vest’s stiff fabric scratching his bare arms. He climbed down from the guard platform, heading back to his rack to drop off his vest and helmet.
His squad knew the drill by now. They said nothing and went out to the front courtyard to deal with the jingle truck.
“Real steaks, you guys!” Cookmaster said. “No fake-meat T-ration lasagna tonight. I bought Afghan potatoes! We’re gonna eat like kings!”
“Finally,” said Specialist Shockley. “I’ve never been so hungry in my entire life.”
After the Mighty Quinn and Z had gone out and made sure the truck was free of bombs, the driver backed it into the compound. Cookmaster checked the number on the jingle truck’s seal. “This is the right one!” He cut the seal and unlatched the steel doors. “Steak, here we—” He opened the door. “Go-aaaggck!” His eyes watered. He gagged, face red.
The stench hit the guys like a sick sour-sweet boiled vomit wave. Cookmaster jumped off the truck and dry heaved, spitting into the rocks. “Truck’s from Kandahar. The driver never turned the reefer unit on. All our fresh food, including the steaks . . .”
“Wasted,” Mac said.
They formed a human chain and unloaded MREs, T-rations, and several pallets of bottled water. The afternoon heat and the rotted meat crushed them.
“Gotta tap out for a minute,” PFC Zimmerman said, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. “Too hot. Gonna pass out.”
“Hey!” Cookmaster shouted from inside the truck. He returned to the door, lowering the rag he wore over his mouth and nose. “We got mail!”
Several giant orange mail bags came off the truck, and the unloading went more quickly.
There was nothing better in the world than mail call. Joe had three letters. One was from Mom, which shared mundane news about work, Riverside, and the extended family. There was a letter from Dad, which Joe looked at for a long time. In the past he would have wanted to burn the thing right away. He’d been so angry when Dad moved out, when he’d started dating right after the divorce. But a couple of weeks ago, as he scrambled up that ladder to the roof, machine guns going off right down the street, he’d been sure he was going to die.
It was a lot harder to stay angry. It was as if his energy needed to be devoted to staying alive, so he had less to spare for anger, especially over the past. But he wasn’t quite ready to open the envelope from his father. He stuffed it into a pocket in his rucksack.
Krista had sent a padded envelope with a letter.
June 10, 2003
Dear Joe,
I miss you. Hope you’re OK and getting through this war the best you can. It must be so hard. We’re all thinking about you. Mom acts fine, but I know she worries. Don’t worry about her. She’ll be OK.
I know you don’t care about high school or sports right now, but we’ve been practicing in a summer league, looking pretty tough for volleyball this fall.
She was wrong. Joe did want to hear about volleyball and other normal things. Anything but guns and guard duty and . . . fear.
That’s so dumb to write.
Sorry, brother. I don’t know what to say. You’re in a war! Even after you enlisted, I never believed this would happen.
He thought about that all the time. He was supposed to be in college, studying to become a journalist. Instead he was here, sitting on this bunk next to his rifle in the crushing heat, desperate for letters.
I’m gonna die today. We’ll fight hard, but it won’t be enough.
Four rungs, hands burning.
I’ll have to kill human beings. Remember what the Army taught me. Put the front sight-post center of his body, breath control—in, out, in—easy trigger squeeze. Drop them. Don’t think, shoot.
Six rungs up.
A chaplain will knock on the door. Mom will see him and cry, knowing her son is dead. She’ll have to tell Krista. And Dad. They’ll be so sad.
He put his rifle up over the short wall at the edge of the roof.
These savages want to kill me because we want school for their kids, want to make this country a little less like garbage?
A leg over the top.
They want a fight? I’ll give them one! I’ll kill ’em all! Come on! Let’s do this!
“I got this way!” Joe pointed to the back of the compound. He took up a position between the mud-brick roof dome and the wall on the edge.
“I got front!” shouted Sergeant Paulsen.
Each would cover his sector, destroy any enemies, and wouldn’t dare turn his back for any reason. All roofs in Farah featured gently sloped domes over each room but were mostly flat, and the Taliban could pop up on any of them.
A quick glance across the motorpool side of their compound and the west wall allowed a partial look into the compound next door. As another burst of machine gun fire went off from somewhere down the street, Baheer hurried across a courtyard between two houses, rushing a girl along. “Baheer, get inside!” Joe shouted. Baheer vanished from view an instant later.
Second Squad’s Specialist Dodge was on the guard platform on the west wall. “I got this side! Cover the south, Killer!”
He’s right! Do your job! Pay attention!
His rifle ready, stock to cheek, he scanned his sector. He was a good shot. He’d shoot any haji coming up with a weapon. Joe panned his weapon along the rooflines. Empty. Empty. Empty.
Movement.
His heart leapt, almost hurt, but it was just an old man with a gray beard walking along his roof.
“Get down!” Joe screamed.
The man didn’t need to be told twice. He turned around and vanished in a second.
“Good.” Sweat ran down Joe’s back. A few more gunshots went off. Still not on them yet as far as he could tell. “Where are they? Come on, you Taliban freaks. I got you.”
A boy, maybe ten years old, emerged on a different roof about a block away.
“Get off the roof!” Joe shouted.
The boy smiled and waved.
“No, no, no,” Joe said. If the Taliban appeared behind the kid, the boy would be killed in the crossfire. Then CNN or some other network would show up with a camera crew, talking about how terrible American soldiers were. Worse, there’d be a dead kid.
“Get down right now!” Joe shouted again, but still the boy waved.
The kid had to get out of the way immediately. Joe bit his lip, wiped his eyes. “O Jesus, please forgive me.” He lifted his M16 and aimed it directly at the ten-year-old boy. “I’m not joking! Get the—”
The boy screamed and scrambled to flee the roof.
“Killian, you good?” Sergeant Paulsen called.
Joe snorted. “Oh, awesome. All clear over here.”
The sound of gunfire had vanished. Farah baked in an eerie quiet heat. Joe continued scanning his sector over the top of his rifle, and very slowly, almost against his own will, he relaxed. His breathing and heart rate slowed. His whole attention had been focused on shooting any hostiles that showed up, but now other thoughts wandered in.
“Hey, Killer,” Cookmaster said from below. He held up a can of Mountain Dew. “Thirsty?”
Joe was thirsty, now that he thought about it. Cookmaster tossed up the soda, and nothing had ever tasted so good.
Somehow the attack hadn’t reached them. He was still alive. Everyone remained at their improvised battlestations for another hour before returning to what passed for normal at the Unsafe House.
Farah, Afghanistan
July 23, 2003
Through a slow, brutally hot July, the soldiers’ empty existence dragged on, reduced to guard duty, attempts at sleep, constant hunger, swatting flies, sweat, filth, and fear. The Farah Flu ripped through everyone’s guts.
At a nightly meeting, they’d learned that the near attack on the Unsafe House had been foiled by the local Afghan police, operating on orders from the Farah provincial governor. The police intercepted and stopped two Taliban pickups. There were no survivors.
“I guess it’s good news that the local police decided to side with our allies in the new Afghanistan central government,” Sergeant Cavanaugh had said.
Although conversation about the incident had died down after a few days, Joe couldn’t stop thinking about it. Despite their substantial weapons and ammunition, the Unsafe House would have lived up to its name if the Taliban had come in force. It was not a very defensible position. A few grenades lobbed over the walls from the street, one truck ramming through the steel gate in the front wall. They would have been overrun quickly. I owe my life to the Farah police.
He also couldn’t stop thinking about that boy on the roof. Why didn’t he just get down when Joe told him to? Couldn’t he hear the gunfire? Now he probably thought an American soldier had tried to shoot him. Would the boy ever forgive him? And why should he? I’m a soldier in an occupying army, and I aimed an M16 at him.
Sergeant Paulsen, PFC Baccam, and Corporal MacDonald all said he’d done the right thing. Even Specialist Shockley had said Joe’s actions were consistent with all his military knowledge and experience.
“Whatever, Shockley,” Mac had said. “You’d probably have shot the kid.”
What Joe didn’t tell anyone was that he couldn’t get the incident out of his head, even when he slept. Twice, he’d dreamed about that day on the roof. But in both dreams, the boy wouldn’t get down. In both dreams, Joe had shot him. It made no sense. It was just a stupid dream. But each time, the kid’s chest exploded, and he screamed, and there was so much blood.
During the day, there wasn’t much to keep his mind occupied. Guard duty seemed infinite. Sitting or standing on that concrete platform quickly became boring. Position One, by the front street and main gate, was the least boring of the guard posts. Sweating there on a 120-degree afternoon, Joe heard barking. Down the street some boys laughed and threw rocks at Almost Dead, the scruffy old dog that lived on the garbage pile in that section of the street.
“Hey!” Joe shook his rifle, careful not to point it at the boys. “Leave that dog alone! He’s officially under the protection of the United States Army!” The boys scattered. Almost Dead sniffed around the trash a little before settling back to sleep.
An hour later, a barefoot boy and girl, perhaps siblings, played on the other side of the street between the ditch and the wall. The boy dragged a shoebox by a piece of yarn, perhaps pretending the box was a truck or train.
The girl, in her ragged dress, followed him. She didn’t even have a box, only yarn. These were their only toys.
Joe’s parents hadn’t always had much. His dad had been laid off when Joe was six, and the family had struggled. Since Dad had left, Mom was challenged with the budget. But whatever the trouble, he and Krista had always had more than a box and yarn.
Their parents should have worked harder. But even as he thought it, he knew that was stupid.
There was a certain comfort in staying mad at these people. The anger would help if the Taliban finally did attack and he needed to shoot them—to kill them.
But Joe knew that unlike his mom and dad in America, these kids’ parents didn’t have many jobs available. He’d been told about how evil the Taliban had been. They wouldn’t have let their mother get a job or even leave the house. Before that, the Soviet Union had devastated this country. Joe had seen their land mines at Kandahar and their abandoned military vehicles on the way to Farah. Whatever problems haji had, at least some of them weren’t their fault.
Staying angry and hating these people didn’t help that day on the roof. And if he really wanted to get payback on all Afghans, why was he still freaked out thinking about that boy he’d had to aim at?
“You kids like candy?” He waved a couple of Jolly Ranchers around. What is the Dari word for “gift”? Something like “Baksheesh.”
The boy left his sister by the opposite wall and crossed the street. Joe tossed him the candies. “Enjoy, kid.”
The boy ran back. He and his sister examined the gifts, talking it over. They unwrapped them and took cautious licks. A second later they both smiled big.
Joe gave a thumbs-up. “You like?” The kids laughed and vanished through a door behind their wall. “Good luck, poor kids.”
A while later near the end of his guard shift, Joe’s stomach heaved. He leaned over the wall, wincing, the mud-brick hot on his chest and arms. He gagged a little.
“Are you fine, Killian?”
Joe opened his eyes, dry heaved one more time, and stood up straight. “Hey, Baheer.” He shook his head. “What did you say?”
“You do not look OK.” Baheer smiled. He was holding another cloth-wrapped bundle and had probably just come back from the bazaar.
“Oh, just the noonday nausea,” Joe said. “Couldn’t really eat breakfast, and I just couldn’t stand another MRE, er, a field ration, for lunch. Especially not in this heat. After a while the hunger changes to a kind of sickness, makes me feel like I’m gonna throw up.”
“This is not good,” Baheer said. “You should eat.”
Joe shrugged. “I’m getting used to it. There’ll be another square of imitation-meat lasagna tonight.”
Baheer reached into his bundle and pulled out some kind of naan wrap. Squinting in the bright sun, he held the sandwich up toward Joe. “You have this. Feel better.”
This guy was too nice. “I can’t take your food, man. The Army takes care of me. More or less.”
“Please eat it,” Baheer said. “It is no problem. These are very little money. Little boys sell them around the bazaar. It is some chicken and beans, good things, inside the naan. It’s fresh. You eat this. Why not? I have more.” Baheer opened his bundle a little and showed him a few more of the wraps and a bag of dry rice.
First Sergeant Dalton would be mad if Joe accepted food from Baheer. But, then again, First Sergeant Dalton was sitting on his butt in the air-conditioned Tactical Operations Center, the TOC, sipping an ice-cold soda ration, not out here roasting in the sun.
“OK.” Joe reached down and grabbed the sandwich. “Thanks, man.” He bit into the wrap and closed his eyes. The chicken was flavored with some glorious spice he’d never tasted before, and the beans filled it all out, balanced by the crunch of lettuce or some kind of vegetable, all wrapped up in the warmest, softest naan he’d ever had. “Oh.” Joe spoke with his mouth full. “Tashakor. This is the greatest thing, man. Tashakor so much.”
“It is good, yes?” Baheer asked.
Joe leaned forward against the wall and devoured the sandwich. “Yes. You have no idea how good real food tastes right now. Tashakor.”
When it was gone, Joe grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler and chugged half of it down before wiping his mouth. Baheer just kept watching with a big smile. Joe pulled a Jolly Rancher out of his pocket, hoping it wasn’t too melty. The hard candies held up OK in the heat. “All I got to pay you back is candy,” he said, tossing it to him more carefully than he had the first time.
Baheer caught the candy. “Tashakor. But you do not need to pay back. Is baksheesh. Is gift.”
“Well, sorry, then,” said Joe. “Because your gift was a heck of a lot better than mine.”
From down the street came the rumble of a jingle truck. Shorter than a semi, these cargo trucks hauled shipping containers in big open-top compartments behind the cab. The Afghans painted or carved elaborate designs and pictures on the sides of them. Flowers. Arabesque swirls. Even pictures of fighter jets. Hanging from the bottom edge of these trucks, on all sides, was a curtain of jingling chains. The guys sometimes argued over whether these chains were a decoration like the artwork on the trucks, or if they were supposed to help keep the dust down. Regardless, someone had called one of them a “jingle truck” and the name stuck.
Baheer moved out of the way as the jingle truck rolled to a stop in front of their compound, the driver waving to him. Joe pulled a small handheld Motorola radio from his pocket and hit the transmit button. “S-O-G, S-O-G, this is Ernie Pyle, over.” On unsecured channels when anyone with a similar model civilian radio could be listening, they were careful to use code names.
“Pyle, this is S-O-G,” Sergeant Paulsen radioed back. “Go ahead, over.”
Joe hit the transmit button. “S-O-G, Ernie Pyle. Got a jingle truck parked out front, over.”
“Roger that. I’ll let leadership know. S-O-G, out.”
“This truck? It is here for you?” Baheer asked.
Joe supposed some of this fell under Operational Security, or OPSEC, but the presence of the truck was no secret. “Yeah, these guys ship in our food and supplies from our bigger bases.” First Sergeant Dalton would probably yell at him for mentioning that food sometimes came on these trucks, but where else would they get their supplies? “In a little bit some of my guys will check the truck over for bombs. Check to make sure the shipping container is still sealed and hasn’t been tampered with. Then we gotta unload.”
Baheer looked from the truck to Joe and back. “So many soldiers. You all must need many trucks.”
“Yeah,” Joe said. “And most of the time, like today, they show up right when I’m about to come off my guard shift, so instead of sleeping, I’ll have to help unload.”
Baheer looked at the truck again. “That is bad. I am sorry to hear this.” He turned back to Joe and held up his bundle. “I have to go now. May I go back here later to practice my English?”
Joe laughed. Only a month ago, he never would have imagined voluntarily hanging out with an Afghan. But Baheer seemed cool. “Sure. I’m stuck up here a lot, so I’m not going anywhere.”
Baheer smiled and nodded, but remained a moment longer. “Killian,” he said. “You be OK.”
Joe watched him until he vanished inside his own compound next door.
“Here to relieve you, Killer,” said Second Squad’s Specialist Ingram.
Joe heaved on his armor, the vest’s stiff fabric scratching his bare arms. He climbed down from the guard platform, heading back to his rack to drop off his vest and helmet.
His squad knew the drill by now. They said nothing and went out to the front courtyard to deal with the jingle truck.
“Real steaks, you guys!” Cookmaster said. “No fake-meat T-ration lasagna tonight. I bought Afghan potatoes! We’re gonna eat like kings!”
“Finally,” said Specialist Shockley. “I’ve never been so hungry in my entire life.”
After the Mighty Quinn and Z had gone out and made sure the truck was free of bombs, the driver backed it into the compound. Cookmaster checked the number on the jingle truck’s seal. “This is the right one!” He cut the seal and unlatched the steel doors. “Steak, here we—” He opened the door. “Go-aaaggck!” His eyes watered. He gagged, face red.
The stench hit the guys like a sick sour-sweet boiled vomit wave. Cookmaster jumped off the truck and dry heaved, spitting into the rocks. “Truck’s from Kandahar. The driver never turned the reefer unit on. All our fresh food, including the steaks . . .”
“Wasted,” Mac said.
They formed a human chain and unloaded MREs, T-rations, and several pallets of bottled water. The afternoon heat and the rotted meat crushed them.
“Gotta tap out for a minute,” PFC Zimmerman said, leaning forward with his hands on his knees. “Too hot. Gonna pass out.”
“Hey!” Cookmaster shouted from inside the truck. He returned to the door, lowering the rag he wore over his mouth and nose. “We got mail!”
Several giant orange mail bags came off the truck, and the unloading went more quickly.
There was nothing better in the world than mail call. Joe had three letters. One was from Mom, which shared mundane news about work, Riverside, and the extended family. There was a letter from Dad, which Joe looked at for a long time. In the past he would have wanted to burn the thing right away. He’d been so angry when Dad moved out, when he’d started dating right after the divorce. But a couple of weeks ago, as he scrambled up that ladder to the roof, machine guns going off right down the street, he’d been sure he was going to die.
It was a lot harder to stay angry. It was as if his energy needed to be devoted to staying alive, so he had less to spare for anger, especially over the past. But he wasn’t quite ready to open the envelope from his father. He stuffed it into a pocket in his rucksack.
Krista had sent a padded envelope with a letter.
June 10, 2003
Dear Joe,
I miss you. Hope you’re OK and getting through this war the best you can. It must be so hard. We’re all thinking about you. Mom acts fine, but I know she worries. Don’t worry about her. She’ll be OK.
I know you don’t care about high school or sports right now, but we’ve been practicing in a summer league, looking pretty tough for volleyball this fall.
She was wrong. Joe did want to hear about volleyball and other normal things. Anything but guns and guard duty and . . . fear.
That’s so dumb to write.
Sorry, brother. I don’t know what to say. You’re in a war! Even after you enlisted, I never believed this would happen.
He thought about that all the time. He was supposed to be in college, studying to become a journalist. Instead he was here, sitting on this bunk next to his rifle in the crushing heat, desperate for letters.
