Eagle Down

by Jessica Donati

  She woke up the next morning feeling life drain away as reality came into focus. It wasn’t a bad dream. It was real. Matthew’s family treated her like one of their own. His father pushed her to eat. Fisher House was stocked with every type of food and comfort imaginable, but she couldn’t stomach anything.

  “Rose, you have to eat something,” Matthew’s father said.

  “I am eating,” she said with a weak grin, nudging a bag of gummy bears.

  The family of the other air force officer, Forrest, was there too. When the plane carrying them both home got held up in Germany, they all went to the park and lit a barbeque. The strict rules at Fisher House prohibited visitors from disturbing the grieving families. Matthew’s and Forrest’s friends joined them at the park, told stories, and made toasts over beer. Rose spent the day in a fog, hollow and numb, barely aware of her surroundings.

  Matthew and Forrest arrived the following day in identical caskets draped with American flags. The fuselage of the aircraft was otherwise empty, as per protocol. The ramp was lowered and the caskets carried to the waiting vehicles. At the funeral home in Dover, a team was waiting to prepare the bodies for burial. Soldiers often suffered such extensive wounds that their caskets were kept closed to avoid upsetting the families and wrecking the last memories of their husbands and sons. Matthew’s family knew that he had been shot. No one had discussed it, but they all supposed that his body was riddled with bullets and horribly disfigured. Rose didn’t expect to lay her eyes on him again.

  The funeral home called Matthew’s parents: an open casket was an option. Did they want to view his body? They hadn’t prepared for this. But everyone agreed they needed to see Matthew one last time or they wouldn’t believe it was real. At the funeral home, Rose sobbed in the hallway while waiting for her turn to go in. His friends from the squadron were outside. His two-year-old niece approached her with a tissue.

  “I think Auntie Rose is crying!” she said.

  “I think we’re all crying, Mina,” Matthew’s sister said.

  Matthew’s parents went in first. Rose heard his mother wailing. She started to panic.

  “I can’t do this. I can’t do this,” she told herself.

  Someone came to get his sister. Eventually, Matthew’s team leader appeared with another teammate and gently led Rose to her feet and into the viewing room. She walked straight to the other side without looking at the casket, getting as far away from it as possible. Seeing him would take her one step closer to accepting that he was really dead. His teammates steadied her, waiting for her to be ready. Finally, she turned around to face him.

  Matthew’s face was lying below her line of sight, and deep down she knew that he was in there. She forced herself to his side. Then she looked down. It was a shock. His hair had been cut and combed over. He had always had messy hair and a scruffy beard that sometimes caught flecks of dip. Someone had sewn his lips closed. Rose turned to one of his teammates.

  “Nate, it doesn’t look like him,” she said, choking on her words. “They cut his hair, and his hair looks stupid.”

  “Do you need me to mess it up for you?” Nate asked.

  She nodded.

  “Okay, Rose, I promise, before we close the casket, I will mess up his hair for you,” he said.

  She told him that would be perfect. Then they left her so she could be alone with Matthew for a while. She tucked a letter into his pocket along with a small can of dip. A day later, Matthew was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, one of more than twenty-three hundred American soldiers killed at war in Afghanistan.

  CHAPTER 5

  We’ll Play It Safe

  HUTCH

  HUTCH quickly got into a routine at Camp Duskin, the company headquarters known as Advanced Operations Base (AOB) North, on the outskirts of Kabul. He woke early each morning to work out at the gym or run circuits around the small base. By seven a.m., he was done with breakfast and was reading emails, situational reports (SITREPS), and intelligence in the operations center. He was responsible for a vast area spanning seventeen provinces—half the country—and the seven Special Forces teams under his command were spread out.

  His plan was to visit all seven ODAs in his first few weeks there. He had been watching as the security situation declined and felt devastated knowing that so many of his friends had sacrificed themselves to the war in Afghanistan. He knew that his best hope at this stage was to succeed in securing the major infrastructure of the country and avoid losing any major cities. Already, there were two potential crises on his hands.

  The Taliban were threatening Kunduz province in the north, where the capital was surrounded and had come under heavy pressure in the spring. The team stationed at Camp Pamir at Kunduz Airfield had little control over the situation because restrictions kept them confined to the base. The 10th Special Operations Kandak commandos, their Afghan partner force, responsible for the northeast, were nowhere to be seen because they were constantly engaged elsewhere. They were spread out across the several provinces, guarding roadside checkpoints or buildings because the government didn’t trust the regular army or police. The Taliban were gradually picking them off, and it was contributing to a serious downturn in morale. The commandos, who didn’t believe in Washington politics and simply didn’t understand the logic for withholding air support, were angry that the Americans had stopped reinforcing them on the battlefield. The dynamic was becoming a real threat to the mission across the country, not just in Kunduz.

  The second major problem was in Nangarhar province, in the east, where a group that had pledged allegiance to Islamic State was gaining ground. The team based at Camp Fenty at Jalalabad Airfield was skeptical of this news; they thought it was the same old militants that had just rebranded. The Islamic State affiliate popped up as US troops were leaving in 2014; its brutal punishments and executions near the border with Pakistan made headlines. It was led by former members of a Taliban group in Pakistan known as the Tehrik-i Taliban. But the Afghan government was playing up its presence to draw resources from Washington, where some were already making comparisons to Iraq. The group’s influence was limited, but the association with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was powerful.

  Hutch advised the captains to be creative and find work-arounds, to think in terms of economic potential. He privately thought the Afghan army ought to scale back to the key highways and cities it could control. But that wasn’t an option. The headline “Afghan Government Cedes Control of 66 Percent of the Country” would not sit well in Washington. Hutch still thought the Special Forces could have impact. Col. Johnston, the battalion commander, had assigned Hutch to AOB-North at the last minute, precisely because of Hutch’s intimate understanding of the country’s tribes and politics. The south was more violent, but they didn’t expect to have teams out on the front lines because of the restrictions on US operations. And ultimately, losing Kabul would be worse.

  TINA WAS BUSY unpacking their furniture and boxes into their new home, a detached five-bedroom house in Southern Pines, North Carolina. The picturesque town, set in a forest of tall, slender pine trees, was worthy of its name. An old railway chugged through the center of town. American flags were draped in many front gardens. It was popular with soldiers that were looking to escape the sprawling malls in Fayetteville, which was closer to Fort Bragg.

  Hutch was in touch daily. Tina’s only stipulation, when he was deployed, was regular check-ins.

  “I just need proof of life,” she would say.

  He could tell her all about the deployment when he got home. She just wanted to know that he was safe, and if he was in danger, she had to know when the danger had passed. It was that simple. Life went on at home without him. The girls were starting their new school soon and complained every day about missing their father.

  “I know,” she told them. “I miss him too.”

  Tina had terrible headaches and nausea and was short of patience with just about everything. She knew that Hutch was in deployment mode an
d tried not to bother him with her concerns. But she hadn’t been feeling well for weeks now. What was wrong with her? She had close friends who provided moral support, but nothing seemed to help.

  She was a seasoned unpacker. It was a necessary skill in a military wife. But now that she was sick, boxes sat around the house. The furniture waited to be put in position. It was sad not having Hutch around. She had got used to him being at home. Now she noticed all the behind-the-scenes stuff he used to do. Turns out the trash didn’t take itself out. How had they managed three deployments in a row?

  Tina tried to keep to a schedule of seeing friends. Some of them were in the army, others were outside the circle. It was good to get a break. The moms organized playdates in different places, to keep each other entertained. One day, a friend came over and asked how she was feeling. “Bad headaches, nausea, sadness,” Tina said.

  “Could you be pregnant?” she asked.

  Tina’s friend went to the store and returned with a pregnancy test. Sure enough, it showed positive.

  They hadn’t planned for another baby. It would come as a surprise to Hutch as well. But Tina knew that he was under pressure at work, and she was aware of the life-or-death decisions he might have to make. What was she going to say, “Oh, by the way, I had to deal with morning sickness today”? She was excited to be expecting but decided to wait until Hutch had settled into his job before telling him the news.

  BACK AT CAMP DUSKIN, Hutch was absorbed in the question of how to prevent further security losses considering the various challenges they faced—limited troops, ever stricter rules guiding their operations, and a lack of access to financial resources. The ODAs were all on autopilot; many of the guys were on their fifth or sixth deployment. He didn’t have to worry about them. But he was frustrated, especially in light of the triple attack in August that had included the truck bomb in the city and the suicide attack at Camp Integrity, the Special Operations headquarters in Kabul.

  Col. Johnston visited from Bagram Airfield and sat down with him to review their limited options. Col. Johnston had deployed to Afghanistan more often than anyone—making trips every year since 2002. Hutch could talk to him freely and respected him immensely. The teams also saw the battalion commander as someone they could trust. They agreed that the priority was to secure Kabul’s highways to try to prevent the insurgents from bringing in enough explosives for another truck bomb. They would have to renew efforts to get the Afghans to improve security along Highway 7, the heavily trafficked road that ran east from Kabul to Pakistan.

  Kunduz was a more intractable problem. One of the Taliban’s most successful commanders, or shadow governors, was making rapid gains there, and the battalion was unable to get approval to run missions with the commandos to beat them back. Mullah Akhund Salam, Kunduz province’s longtime shadow governor, was among the first field commanders to have pledged support to the new Taliban leader, Mullah Mansour, in August. His backing was crucial at a time when the Taliban was recovering from the embarrassment of admitting that its supposed leader had been dead for years.

  Mullah Salam’s story was common in a war that had comprised many twists and turns over the decades. The CIA arrested him in a joint operation with Pakistan’s intelligence agency in 2010. Pakistan released him three years later as part of a deal to free high-level prisoners to advance peace talks. He returned to his post as shadow governor in Kunduz, despite assurances from the Taliban to the contrary.

  In early 2015, Mullah Salam had taken advantage of the void left by the withdrawal of foreign troops to launch relentless attacks in the province’s districts, driving army and police forces to retreat to large bases. The Taliban seemed to be consolidating in rural areas around the provincial capital, also named Kunduz, ahead of an assault on the city, the ultimate prize.

  The abusive and deeply corrupt provincial government accelerated the Taliban’s rise in the province under Mullah Salam’s leadership. For example, locals turned to the insurgency to sort out legal disputes because provincial judges were known to be corrupt and could extort bribes for years before ruling on a case. The Taliban demanded a flat tax of around 10 percent from residents who lived under their control, but they did not take bribes. In some parts, they even administered services paid for by the US-funded government, such as education.

  The Taliban were also able to capitalize on resentment toward the US-led coalition, which had committed some of the worst errors of the war in Kunduz. In 2009, German colonel Georg Klein called in a US airstrike on stolen fuel tankers, mistaking villagers crowding around the vehicles for Taliban. The airstrike killed over a hundred civilians, including many children.1 And local police units set up by US Special Forces during the VSO were problematic. Instead of securing villages, the groups acted like local gangs and were used by their commanders to prey on locals and settle scores.

  TINA, back in Southern Pines, waited for the right moment to tell Hutch they were expecting a baby. It was easier to cope with her exhaustion now that she knew about the pregnancy. And communication was so much better now than it had been in the past, when Hutch might have been offline for days. Still, she had to break the news at some point. Once it seemed that Hutch was settled, she decided to announce it.

  “So, I’m pregnant,” she said, trying to suppress a grin, over FaceTime.

  Hutch was too surprised to say anything for a moment. They hadn’t planned another pregnancy. But he immediately felt excited. The two girls were growing up fast, and it would be fun to have another baby. Tina’s mom and sisters could help out with childcare if necessary, but he’d be home before the baby was due. They chatted excitedly for a while. He wished he could be there with her, to talk everything through in person.

  When Hutch put down the phone, he tried not to think about the other concerns that bubbled up. Like what if he didn’t make it home?

  Tina felt guilty as they hung up. She had a close friend that had been trying to get pregnant without success. It was intimidating, starting from zero again, now that the girls were nearly teenagers. But she was happy. Knowing that Hutch would be home before the birth, she started to feel more relaxed about this deployment. He seemed to be in a safe place for a change. She could get through this. The months ahead were mapped out until his return: a trip to see her sister in New York, another to go apple picking with the girls, a high school reunion at Christmas—and soon after that, Hutch would be home.

  A WEEK OR SO LATER, the team at Camp Pamir called Hutch to report that trouble was flaring in Kunduz. Fractious ethnic divisions in the Kabul administration had been playing out between appointees to the local government. Afghan police who were loyal to one power broker or another were rumored to change clothes at night and attack rival checkpoints. The Afghan commandos were the only force likely to defend the city in the event of an attack.

  In recent days, the Kunduz team, ODA 3111, had started to receive reports of a large number of Taliban amassing in the district of Chahar Dara. Insurgents supposedly accompanied by foreign advisers from Pakistan had planned a large-scale attack on the city. The governor was rumored to be out of town after being bribed to let the city fall to the enemy.

  “This feels credible,” the captain told him. “Something is about to happen.”

  Hutch suspected the reports of hundreds of Taliban fighters amassing around the city of Kunduz to be exaggerated—experience had taught him to be wary of the local tendency to inflate numbers. It was probably just Afghan math. It was mid-September, too late in the year for the Taliban to stage a significant attack. He thought they would continue to consolidate their position in the districts and position weapons in the city for an assault the following spring. Still, it was best to be cautious.

  “Okay,” he told the captain. “We’ll send another team to reinforce you. It’s probably nothing, but we’ll play it safe.”

  He ordered air assets and a team based at Bagram Airfield to relocate to Kunduz to act as reinforcements in case anything happened. The troops ar
rived at Camp Pamir the following night, with six Romanian Special Forces and nine infantry uplift personnel. By the time the soldiers had landed, the city was already on the verge of collapse.

  Footnote

  1 Klein was promoted to general in 2013, despite the grievous error. Lawyer Karim Popal, who represents an Afghan man, Abdul Hanan, who lost two sons in the strike, has taken the case to the European Court of Human Rights. The plaintiffs accuse Germany of failing to adequately compensate the victims, who were paid $5,000 each.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Fall of Kunduz

  DR. MASOOD NASIM was covering for a vacancy as medical director at the trauma hospital run by the French aid group Médecins Sans Frontières in Kunduz in September 2015. He was a slight man, with dark, piercing eyes and aquiline features, and had worked for the group for four years. He was usually based in Kabul, but his family lived in Kunduz, where his wife taught at the local university. He now regretted not moving them all to the capital.

  He anxiously watched his wife and the children squeeze into their Toyota Corolla with his uncle’s family. The entire city of Kunduz was in a state of panic, and about a third of the population was on the move. The Taliban were rumored to have gathered huge numbers of forces in the districts and were preparing to attack the city that night. Civilians were packing up their cars and fleeing in droves. Many government offices and police stations had already been abandoned.

  He hoped it wasn’t too late to get his family to safety. Most people were evacuating to neighboring Takhar province, where aid groups provided tents and food. Dr. Nasim was lucky: his family was from Takhar. He planned to drive his wife, their children, and his uncle’s family to stay with relatives there. They locked up the house in Kunduz, not knowing if they’d see it again. He planned to sleep in his office at the hospital when he returned to the city. Médecins Sans Frontières staff had performed more than twenty-three hundred surgeries since the start of the year, a record, and he knew the coming days would be even worse.