Enduring Freedom, page 21
“In a perfect world, maybe,” Mac said. “But these Russian mortars were made with the cheapest communist labor on the orders of a government who didn’t care anything for the workers or anyone else. They’re old. This fuse, and some of the others, are corroded, even cracked. Do you want to bet your life that trying to force these old fuses out won’t set them off?”
“We do have a problem,” Joe said. “I’ll radio for—”
Mac slapped Joe’s hand away to prevent him from reaching his little civilian Motorola.
“No radio signals down here!” Mac said.
“Come on, Corporal,” Baccam said. “It’s not even a tactical radio. Not high powered or anything. No way it could set off any—”
“Oh, did you learn that in your Army class about handling crappy, worn-out, twenty-year-old Soviet explosives?” Mac asked. “I must have been on a special work detail the day they taught that class. I say we follow Corporal MacDonald’s Explosives Handling General Order Number One. Never assume everything is safe, especially when you’re in an underground ammo dump in Afghanistan where if anything goes wrong you could be instantly vaporized in the biggest explosion this war-torn province has ever seen.”
Joe shrugged. “So basically, what you’re saying is, no radios down here.”
Minutes later, up on the surface in bright sunlight, Joe and Mac talked with Sergeant Paulsen, Sergeant Hart, and Staff Sergeant Cavanaugh.
“Well, the safest way to ship them is to take the fuses out,” said Cavanaugh. “We don’t want a mortar with a fuse shifting around in the back of the truck and blowing the whole thing up. These drivers are trusting us.”
“The drivers are Baheer’s family,” Joe said. He surveyed the empty field around the entrance to the tunnel. “Or at least that’s the plan, if the trucks ever get here. Not like we’d want to put any drivers in danger, but he and his family haul a lot of stuff for us, and they might feel pretty disrespected if we tell them they have to haul dangerous fused mortars.”
Mac pointed at the crowd of Afghan men thirty yards away. “The workers who will be hauling the stuff out of the cave are trusting us, too. I say we remove all the fuses that come out easily, but if they’re stuck, we don’t try to force them, risking an explosion. If they’re stuck, we should leave the fuses in.”
“I’m with that plan,” said Sergeant Paulsen. “That way, maybe the fuse gets bumped on the truck ride. But maybe not. On the other hand, if we try forcing those bad-shape fuses out, we’re certainly messing with them and risking an explosion.”
“Leaving the bad ones in is the best of two bad options,” said Sergeant Hart.
Joe shook his head. Here they were, talking about the odds of least casualties in the event of an explosion, with Baheer’s family deemed the most expendable in the present situation. “Why don’t we call EOD down here to blow everything up in place?” Joe asked. “That way we don’t have to risk anyone.”
Sergeant Paulsen pointed to a bunch of nearby compounds. “Detonating everything in that cave would set off an explosion big enough to level all those houses. Plus it’s underground. So we wouldn’t just be dealing with the explosive yield of all the weapons down there, but the explosion would expand underground, building up pressure, until finally all the dirt above the cave blasted up into the sky. We’d be raining down rocks and bricks and who knows what else on everyone who lives around here.”
Cavanaugh looked around. “Where the heck are those THT guys? This is supposed to be their mission. I was told we were here to provide security and that’s it. They said they’d be running everything.”
Sergeant Paulsen shook his head. “You won’t want to hear this, but they said they were worried, with all these Afghan workers around, that their covers would be blown.” He pointed to the THT guys about a hundred and fifty yards away sitting on their pickup in the shade of a distant wall. “And they took our only interpreter.”
Cavanaugh bit his lower lip and blew out through his nose. “Absolute morons,” he whispered. He was quiet for a long moment. Finally, he nodded, coming to a decision. “Mac, we go with your plan. Paulsen, Hart, you help me supervise the loading of the trucks up here. Remember, part of our mission is to make sure nobody runs off with any ordnance. Mac, Killer, you supervise the workers down there. Keep them going. Killian, you’re good at talking to these people. I need you to go down there and explain to the Afghans our plan for the mortars with bad fuses.”
Joe frowned. “Roger that, Sergeant, but I don’t actually speak Dari or Pashto. A few words maybe, but I don’t have the first clue how to talk about fuses or mortars. Maybe Baheer will be coming with his family’s trucks.”
“Just do it, Specialist!” Cavanaugh shouted. “We don’t have time to wait for the trucks and hope your friend comes along. We’ll start stacking the stuff up here, ready to go on the trucks when they arrive. I’ll try to get the THT interpreter down there, but in the meantime, just do your best.”
Joe and Mac waited until they were down in the cave before they said anything. It wouldn’t do to complain in front of their squad leader.
“Over six years in the Guard,” Mac said. “My enlistment expired back in December. I’m involuntarily extended. And in all my time serving, this here is the dumbest situation I’ve ever been stuck in.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Joe agreed. “Pantomime how to defuse, or I guess when not to defuse old mortar rounds?”
That is exactly what they did. “Hey!” Joe shouted. “Rafiq! Rafiq!” He slung his rifle on his back to free up his hands, and he picked up a mortar. “OK. If the fuse comes out easy—” He unscrewed the fuse from a mortar that looked to be in good condition. Then he gave a thumbs-up. “That’s good. Good. But”—he found a crappy-looking one and began to twist the fuse but grunted and pretended the fuse wouldn’t budge—“if the fuse won’t come out, we leave it in there. You understand?”
The Afghans looked at him like he was crazy. And he was. This was a crazy stupid situation. He heard Mac trying to explain the same thing to the workers deeper in the cave. It took about three more tries, three more ridiculous pantomimes, but finally one of the workers near him smiled and nodded.
“Bale!” the man said. He demonstrated the concept, talking it through to the others in his language. Another worker brought an older-looking mortar round to him, made a minor effort to unscrew the fuse, and then appeared to ask the man for his opinion.
“Nay,” said the man.
The bad mortar was passed along the human chain with its corroded fuse still installed.
They understood. Joe let go a sigh of relief. We might just survive this after all.
The work went smoothly, until an Afghan man in a Western suit and tie showed up. Someone said he was one of the governor’s men. Immediately he started talking to Joe, unloading an urgent stream of words that Joe couldn’t understand.
“I don’t—” The man kept talking, gesticulating more intensely. Joe tried again. “I don’t . . . I can’t understand you. Ingleesi?”
Mr. Angry Suit stopped one of the workers who had been passing along an old mortar with the fuse stuck in it. He tried to twist the fuse out. When he couldn’t, he pointed at it, saying something loudly and making a motion like the fuse and round should be separated.
“No, we’re not going to do that,” Joe said. “It’s more dangerous to try to force out bad fuses than to leave them in and—” Angry Suit shouted. Joe took a step toward the man. The Suit carried no weapons. He didn’t seem to have any of the governor’s armed guards with him. “I don’t know who you are, and I don’t care who you are connected with.” Joe pointed toward the exit. “Get out of my mission!”
Next to Joe, a worker tried to unscrew a fuse and found it stuck.
He slammed the thing down repeatedly on a four-foot stack of mortars. Bang!Bang!Bang! Like a hammer.
“STOP!” Joe screamed. His heart pounded as he watched the fused mortar that could have—should have—blown up the whole cave. “This mission is over! Everybody get out of here! Now!”
The Afghans seemed to understand that much, and the group filed back up to the surface.
Mac walked beside Joe, blinking in the bright sun outside. “Did that guy do what I think I saw him do?”
“Yup.”
Both Joe’s team leader and squad leader asked him what was going on. He no longer cared how much trouble he would be in for not answering or obeying orders. He said nothing, but started his march across the dirt field.
“You going to chew out the THT idiots?” Mac asked, trying to keep up.
“Yup.”
“Oh, I am so right with you,” said Mac.
Nobody knew what any of the THT guys ranked. That was a part of their stupid wannabe spy program. But since Joe was only a specialist, it was a good bet they all outranked him. Practically everybody outranked him.
The lead THT guy, Jase, had been lying on the hood of their pickup, his back on the windshield. He sat up and smiled. “Hey, Killian. How’s it going with—”
Joe cursed him out. “I don’t care what you morons rank! I’ll knock out all your teeth right here!” His anger gave him more courage than he otherwise would have possessed. He was grateful for Mac’s presence by his side. “You put us on this mission, and then you take the terp away so that I have to pantomime how to handle explosives! I’m stuck in a shouting match with one of the governor’s guys because you completely worthless moronic brain-dead incompetent freaking cowards of nonsoldiers took away my interpreter!”
“Hey, easy there,” Jase said. “It was too high profile for us to be over there. The workers would start to recognize us as—”
“No Afghan is stupid enough to believe you white, non-Pashto-speaking idiots are anything other than Americans! You are not spies! You are worthless!”
Across the field, Mr. Angry Suit was arguing with Staff Sergeant Cavanaugh.
“You pull something like this again, I swear I will knock you out. I will beat you unconscious. They can court-martial me!” Joe said. The THT guys were weaker than he thought, saying nothing, even though he was way out of line. “Where is the terp now!?”
“We sent him back to the PRT,” Jase said. “We didn’t think we’d need him anymore.”
Mac cursed and took a step forward, but Joe stopped him. At the edge of the field, Baheer’s family’s jingle trucks rocked along the bumpy road, rolling closer. Joe whispered a little prayer of thanks. “No, hold on, Corporal. We’re in luck. For once.”
Please be in one of those trucks, Baheer. Please, please, please. Come on, buddy, you gotta be there.
As Joe and Mac approached the crowd around the trucks and cave entrance, they began to slow down. The three drivers were out of the trucks. Baheer was nowhere in sight.
“Oh no,” Joe said. “We’re screwed.”
But then the passenger door on the blue jingle truck opened, and his Afghan friend climbed down and raised his arms in a stretch. Joe had never been so happy to see an Afghan before in his life. “Baheer!” he shouted and waved. “Just the man I wanted to see! Come on, buddy! You’re drafted. I need an interpreter or people are going to start to get hurt.”
“Of course, I am happy to help,” Baheer said, as Joe put his arm around his shoulders and guided him toward the work site. “I was hoping you would be on duty today.”
“Yeah, well I wish I wasn’t,” said Joe. He told Baheer about his problems with the THT guys and a lack of an interpreter.
“I think I understand,” Baheer said. “I will try to talk to this man in the suit, but he looks very angry.”
Joe stayed by Baheer’s side as he talked to Angry Suit Guy. The two of them rattled back and forth very quickly in their language.
“Chi mega?” Joe asked what the man said.
Baheer frowned. “He is from the office of the Farah Province governor. He thinks we must remove the fuse before we put the . . . the little bombs on the truck.”
“Yeah, I understood that much,” Joe said.
“He was the one who contacted the bearded Americans about this cave of old weapons,” Baheer translated. “He wants to know where those men are now.”
Joe put his hands on his hips. “Next time, do not deal with those men. They are fools.” Joe patted his uniform. “Come to the soldiers in these uniforms. We will try to help you.”
After Baheer’s translation, the man laughed and started to calm down. “I told him also,” said Baheer, “that the trucks belong to my family, and we support your idea about the fuses.”
The man said something else and then reached out to shake Joe’s hand.
“He accepts your plan,” Baheer said.
Joe shook the man’s hand. “Yeah, Baheer. I kind of figured that out, too.”
A few minutes later, Baheer had fully explained and made sure every Afghan understood the method for moving the UXO. Finally, the chain of workers was back at it, and gradually the trucks began to fill up, ready for their convoy to the munitions destruction point near Herat.
“This is a good day,” Baheer said. “A good mission. These weapons might have been taken by the Taliban. Soon all these bombs and bullets will be gone, and will hurt no one.” He smiled. “I’ve heard on the radio that this is happening everywhere. Americans getting rid of all these old bombs, even clearing minefields. Thank you for this, my friend. My country can have a chance again, because of you soldiers.”
Joe thought for a moment about how, when he first arrived in Afghanistan, he believed the whole place was worthless, its people ignorant savages. And he had hated his mission of reconstruction. He’d been wrong in his life before, but never had he been so completely wrong. Baheer wasn’t saying those things just to butter Joe up, or because Baheer wanted something. He meant them. Sure, Joe wasn’t out here hunting the Taliban, looking for firefights. But he could be proud of his mission. He’d help take thousands of uncontrolled, dangerous weapons and explosives out of the world today, making Afghanistan a little safer for Afghans and Americans. He’d almost died in the process, but the mission was worth that risk.
“Thanks, Baheer,” Joe said, patting his friend’s shoulder. “You really saved us on this one. I owe you.”
Farah, Afghanistan
March 19, 2004
Spring had arrived, and with it slightly warmer temperatures, but it seemed to Baheer nothing could warm his spirits. He had once heard Killian complain about not having a life. At the time, he hadn’t understood, but Baheer knew now what he meant. Baheer prayed, ate, went to school, worked on the farm, worked for the family truck business, studied, slept a tiny bit, and then it all repeated.
The trip to school used to be something he looked forward to with excitement. Now he simply rode his bike, his eyes fixed on his wheels churning the muddy road below. Months ago, he’d given up hope of ever seeing Mystery Girl again. Thoughts of her used to make him smile, but now he was certain his letter had caused some terrible trouble for her.
I’m a fool! I’ve ruined her life! There are rumors of girls being so severely punished for much less an act than accepting a letter from a strange boy.
He worried in this way every time he passed the twisted tree by the irrigation canal, a canal now full of water from the winter rains. In one place, the ditch was overflowing, flooding the road ahead with a massive puddle at least fifteen centimeters deep. People had tried to place rocks and shovel sand beside the canal to contain the water, but all they’d done was create a path of stepping stones, which was his only chance of passing through without getting wet up to his ankles. He slowed and stopped the bike.
There was Mystery Girl, carefully making her way along the path, risking glances at him, and smiling a little.
Impossible! Is it really her? After so many months? But of course it was her. He’d thought of her face and those magic eyes so often that he’d recognize her anywhere.
When she saw Baheer coming, she stepped up the little slope to the twisted tree, turned over a stone between two of the tree’s roots, and placed a paper under it. She did it all so smoothly and gracefully that she hardly stopped moving. Baheer walked his bike slowly, waiting for her to get far enough away. Then he pretended his bike had a problem and stopped next to the rock to check on it. When he was sure he was not being watched, he lifted the stone, snatched up the paper, and stuffed it into his pocket.
She’d written back! How was he supposed to wait until he could be alone to read the letter? Throughout the school day and then later on the farm, every so often, he would touch his pocket to check if the paper was still there.
That night, with his flashlight under his blanket, Baheer opened the letter. She had folded it impossibly neatly and had also drawn flowers on the four corners and red curved lines from each flower to the other. Baheer felt embarrassed. His clumsily folded letter had no such decorations and was garbage compared to hers.
Hey Mystery Guy,
It has been very long time since I have seen you. I am sorry. Soon after the bomb at the United Nations, my father told me not to go to school from tomorrow. My mother asked, “why?” He said that today one his friends had told him that Taliban has sent threats of killing girls or spreading acid on their faces if they go to school. That night I cried till morning.
Baheer looked up from the letter, his hands shaking. Why? Why every time there was something good, did the Taliban have to try to destroy it? He really wanted to kick every harami talib in his back. Baheer remembered the saying of Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon Him): Acquiring knowledge is compulsory for both men and women. How did men make threats like this and still call themselves Muslims? Baheer continued reading.
For a long time I begged my mother to try to convince my father about school. She promised to do so. But she tells me, with my father, Patience. Yesterday, I went to my father before he would leave to his shop in early morning. I told my father that I won’t leave going to school even if these monsters tear me into pieces. He did not agree first, but when my mother told him to change my school to the one newly build close the boys’ school, he nodded. He transferred me in one day through his connections in the Education department. Last night, he allowed me to go to school and that I should only go to school and return straight back home.
