by Liz Thomas
Thirty minutes later they were on the ground and rolling toward another hangar. Kip opened his window and saw a familiar sight for him, Servicemen, armed with M-16’s lining the tarmac, and occupied towers keeping watch over the surrounding area.
Once inside the hangar and the jet came to a stop, everyone stood and started to gather all of their belongings.
“Fella’s,” Lydell said. “I have arranged for the ground crew here to unload all of our gear and get it to the show pavilion. We can all grab a bite to eat, then we need to gather there for set up and practice at seven tonight.”
Kip looked around at Jack, Stabbs and Lock. “You heard the man. Do what you want until seven, but be there and don’t be late.”
“Uh, Actually, Kip,” Lydell interrupted, “There are restrictions on your movement. I’ve been asked to inform you all not to leave the compound. If you leave it, there is almost a one hundred percent chance that you will not get back on.”
Groans went out throughout the gathering.
Of course, Kip thought. How could I have forgotten to warn them? No one but me has been here before.
“That’s right,” Kip announced. “Seriously guys, this is a really dangerous place. Stay together at all times. Kapeesh?”
Jack spoke up: “Well, that’s easy for you to say, Kip, you’ve got your piece of…” and Jack looked at Annie and swallowed, rethinking his wording. “You’ve got a lady friend to keep you company.”
Kip looked at the faces of all of them gathered before him and Lydell.
“Believe me Jacky,” Kip said. “This is nothing like the U.S. You’re not going to party here like you do in New York. You don’t just call up some girls and pull an impromptu. Becky and Becky are not here. Deal with it. You leave this secure compound and you may not come back alive.”
Jack looked at Stabbs and Lock, narrowing his eyes. Then he turned back to Kip.
“What the hell makes you the expert on protocol here, Kip?” Jack said.
Kip looked over at Annie and took a deep breath. “Because I have been here before Jacky. Okay? In a former life I was a Marine. I spent my fair share of time here, and have seen everything Afghanistan has to offer. And I can tell you that what it has to offer is a lot of pain. So let’s avoid that, Okay? Let’s just go by the book, something we all, including me, have a problem with, I admit. But here it is crucial.”
Jack looked again around to his band mates. “No shit, Kip? You were a Marine? And you have been here before?”
“That’s no shit Jacky,” Kip replied, looking again at Annie.
“Well, slap my ass and call me Sally!” Jacky said. “Kip was a fucking Marine! Doesn’t that explain a lot?”
Kip laid his eyes on Annie once again, making sure she understood what he was trying to do. This was as much about opening up with the guys as it was about opening up with himself.
“Okay, why don’t you all come with me to the officers club and I’ll fill you all in on my past? How is that?” He looked at Annie again. The question was for him as much as it was for them.
“You know I’m game, Kip. Let me get settled and take a huge… uh, piss, and I’ll join you directly.”
A young corporal stood beside Lydell and motioned Jack to follow him to their quarters. Jack, Stabbs and Lock all followed him. Kip and Annie and Lydell followed them, and Sparks limped behind.
When the sergeant took Kip to his quarters, He mentioned to Annie that the female barracks were across the tarmac, and he would take her there directly.
“Uh, Sergeant Dale?” Kip asked. “I’d prefer that she stay with me here.”
“That would be highly irregular sir.” The sergeant said looking between the two.
“Never the less, it’s kind of important.” Kip said. “She is my biographer. She needs to note everything about my life. You know how it is, right?”
Sergeant Dales shook his head. “Actually, no, sir I don’t. The women stay over there, we stay over here. That’s just how it is.”
“Well, yeah, but, she’s not military, right?” Kip said. “Rules don’t really apply here, see?”
The corporal shook his head and looked down at his way too shiny combat boots. Kip followed his gaze and realized this guy had probably never left the compound himself. A newbie, no doubt.
“Look, Dale,” Kip said. “I can see you’re still learning the ropes here. But I have been here many times before. I can assure you you’re not going to get into trouble by letting me keep her here with me. I won’t let that happen, got it?”
“What do you mean you’ve been here many times,” The corporal asked. “I was told this was the band’s first time in country.”
“It is the band’s first time in country. But not mine.” Kip rolled up his sleeve, holding his arm in front of the corporal’s face. Dale took in the U.S.M.C. tattoo, bordered by the barbed wire and carried by a bald eagle.
“I see sir,” the corporal said.
“I was here at the start of this war that you’re finishing up,” Kip said, placing his hand on Dale’s shoulder. “You have my respect, devil dog.” Kip smiled at him. “Look, we’re only here for a few days. No one will know that she’s here but you and me, and of course, her.” He jerked his thumb toward Annie, who gave him a quick, all-tooth smile and a small, yet exaggerated curtsy.
“Look,” Dale said. “I don’t care that your lady friend stays here. I just don’t want any trouble.”
“No trouble, I swear,” Kip said. “Look, what if I give you the numbers of a couple of Becky’s back in the states?”
Annie looked horrified. She punched Kip in the arm. Corporal Dale noticed.
“Where are you from Corporal?” Kip asked.
“Jersey, sir.”
“Well, there you go then. The Becky’s are in New York. Just a hop, skip and a jump,” Kip said.
“They’re hot?” The corporal asked.
“You ain’t seen hotter. Especially here,” Kip answered.
“Deal then.” Dale said. And he stuck out his hand to shake. Kip took it.
“Thanks for trusting me, corporal,” Kip said, and the corporal turned to go. “Hey, Dale,” Kip called after him. Dale turned. “I mean it. Thanks! Listen, you need a job when you get out, give me a call, Okay. I’ll get you a card from our manager, Lydell.”
“No shit?” corporal Dale asked.
“No. No shit at all. I mean it. I help those that help me,” Kip said. Annie nodded behind him.
The corporal smiled and turned to walk away. Then Kip and Annie entered their room.
At precisely nineteen hundred hours, or seven PM as Lydell would call it, Kip stood on the prefab stage staring at Lock and Stabbs. Annie, Sparks and Lydell sat in the front row seats of the empty makeshift concert arena in the middle of the tarmac.
“Where the hell is Jacky?” Kip asked.
Stabbs and Lock looked at each other and then back at Kip.
“He should have been back by now, Kip. Fuck, I am getting worried,” Stabbs said.
“Back from where?” Kip asked the two.
Stabbs and lock looked at one another again, trying to goad each other into telling the truth. Finally Stabbs broke.
“He left base, Kip. Said he was going to find the nearest whorehouse.” Stabbs said.
“Are you shitting me?” Kip yelled. “Fuck me! Do you fuckers know where we are? Did you not hear the debrief when we landed? This is not fucking Lincoln, Nebraska! Jeezuz fucking Christ!”
“Come on Kip, You know Jack. He hasn’t followed a rule since he stopped sucking his mother’s tit.” Lock retorted. “He’ll be along any moment.”
“The fuck he will!” Kip screamed. “Even if he isn’t dead, separated from his head somewhere, he may never get back onto base. He has no credentials. He ain’t got shit!”
Sparks, Annie and Lydell stood and approached the stage.
“What is it, Kip?” Lydell asked.
Kip spread his arms. “Jacky’s gone off fucking base!” Kip sa
id.
Kip saw Corporal Dale traversing the makeshift concert arena and called out to him. He changed direction and approached Kip.
“Corporal, one of the band members has left base,” Kip said to him. “We need to send out a team to find him.”
The look in the corporal’s eyes went instantly to horror. Kip realized instantly that not only was he a newbie, he had never been off base himself.
“Dale, can you check the gates for any word? And please notify the base commander.”
Dale nodded and took off in a sprint.
Kip paced the stage and ran his fingers through his hair. This was not good.
As corporal Dale left the command center Kip was outside the door. “Dale,” he confronted him. Dale stopped, surprised.
“I need cammies, and a weapon,” Kip said firmly. “Body amour if you can spare it.”
The corporal shook his head, wide eyes and unsure of how to handle this situation.
“Come on, Dale. You know I can handle this. I want to find my friend.”
“Sir, I have informed the Camp Commander of the situation,” Dale said. “The gates have been notified. When your friend comes back, we’ll let you know immediately.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Kip asked.
The corporal said nothing.
“So, there will be no search party?” Kip asked.
“Not at this time, sir,” Dale answered nervously. Dale knew this would be an unacceptable answer. He himself would have found it unacceptable had it been one of his buddies.
“Then at what time?” Kip asked, knowing the answer. Dale did not come up with one.
“Corporal, no Jacky, no concert, you know?”
“I know sir. Look, I am just following orders, as always,” Dale said.
Kip looked up at the sky, trying to calm his anger that this conversation was going nowhere.
“Okay, corporal, Let me appeal to your more basic instincts. Jacky is my friend. Although I know he is a pain in the ass and usually out of control, I take his friendship very seriously. If I am not supplied with what I need to go find him, I am going to have to let the camp commander know that you let me keep a woman in my room. Does that motivate you?”
Kip knew that a small infraction like letting Kip keep Annie in his quarters was really no violation at all. But he also knew that the corporal had told several larger lies to cover it up, and when one lie is unraveled, all of them would unravel. True to Kip’s prediction. The corporal became very nervous.
Ten minutes later, Kip was in the corporal’s quarters, wearing desert camouflage fatigues and with a fully loaded rifle upon his back. He wore a utility belt with extra magazines and two hand grenades attached to his harness. The corporal told him the best way to get off base without much fanfare. And thirty minutes after that, Kip was standing outside the gate blending in with the other armed guards that were there. Kip was well trained in evasive tactics. One second he was there, the next he wasn’t.
Kip knew Jacky would be in the nearest whorehouse. And, of course, I know where it is.
It took him a few minutes to get his bearings, after all, it had been several years since his last jaunt around the base.
Soon he forgot he had ever left. He knew the danger here was twice that of most other marines, since he was alone. He had no back up. If something went wrong, he had no one to rely on to cover him. But the adrenaline he felt overwhelmed the fear and he continued on.
Within the hour he was standing at the double wooden doors of a plain building on the corner of a nearly deserted street. The Afghans, hypocrites that they were, denounced prostitution, and stoned women accused of it when it suited their needs, but ignored the whorehouses just like every other society on the face of the earth.
Kip lowered his rifle and back into the door. Inside he found squalor and walls plastered with magazine tear outs of Hustler and Penthouse, even Playboy pages. One the far wall was a window into another room with an old bearded man sitting at a desk, watching porn from a beta VCR. The video was something from the nineteen eighties. Kip approached the man and slapped a photograph on his desk. The man took his time to draw his attention from the small television screen, but when he did, he quickly scanned the picture of Jack and looked up at Kip slowly.
Kip spoke in Pashto, the official Afghan tongue. “Have you seen him?”
The bearded man nodded.
“Is he still here?” Kip asked him, again in Pashto.
The man shook his head. “Taken,” he said in accented English.
“Where to?” Kip asked him. This time in English.
The old man shook his head and turned his attention back to the television.
Kip reached into his cargo pocket and pulled out about fifty one hundred Afghanis, the Afghanistan currency. This equaled about one hundred dollars US. If Kip knew anything about the Afghani people, it was that money talked to them.
The old man slowly looked at the money on the desktop and then looked up at Kip. He shook his head and ran his thumb across his neck, mimicking the act of beheading.
Kip knew that if he had put more money down on the table, the man would have spilled everything he knew. But he had no more. This is all he could scrounge out of Corporal Dale.
Last resort then. Kip unslung his rifle and pointed it at the man’s head. The old Afghan man recoiled, sliding back in his chair, which was apparently absent one wheel, the way it wobbled.
“Tell me!” Kip demanded.
“Serena Hotel,” The man said in English, heavy with dialect.
Kip backed away. “Thank you. No one will know you told me.” Kip scooped up the fifty one hundred Afghanis and Jack’s publicity picture, as he backed out of the door, rifle aimed at the old man’s head, he nodded.
Kip knew where the Serena hotel was. He had been there before, several times clearing it from Taliban and other radicals. It was only three blocks over.
Kip used combat ready tactics as he travelled alone through the city streets. The city was busy, but, as per usual, no one seemed to pay any attention to him. To the locals, the presence of US forces had become a normal part of the surroundings. It was a testament to the general population that, even though terrorist and Taliban forces had carried out numerous attacks per day, the people seemed to go on with their everyday lives. Ignoring the dangerous, and embracing the abnormal.
Kip scanned the rooftops as he went, looking for lookouts and snipers. He ducked down into alleys and crossed streets quickly, taking cover behind ruined cars and shattered corners.
Soon, he was standing across the street from the Selena Hotel. He used his rifle, even though it had no scope, to scan the rooftop. He saw movement in several locations, mostly guarding the side and back entrances. He decided to go through the front, waltz through the lobby and use the same measures to find out where Jacky was being held. So he did.
Kip crossed the street in a flash and crashed through the front doors. He rolled into a sitting position and aimed his rifle where he knew the check in desk was to be. Another bearded old man stared at him quietly from behind the desk. He held a rubber stamp in his hand.
“You need a room, soldier?” he asked in near perfect English.
“No,” Jack said scanning the room for snipers and standing. “I need a man.”
“No.No.No.No. We don’t do that here.” The old clerk said. “You get out. Get out now!” The old man started to come out from behind his desk. Kip pointed his rifle at him and the man stopped holding up his arms.
“It’s not that!” Kip said. “It’s not what you think! I am looking for someone. Kip held up his picture. “Have you seen him?”
The old man scratched his beard while he craned his neck forward and looked at Jack’s picture. Then his eyes flew wide. “I don’t want any trouble here soldier!” he yelled.
“Where do I find him?” Jack demanded.
The old man slowly backed behind the desk again, shaking his head.
“You won’t have any trouble.
Just tell me where he is!” Kip demanded again.
Then the old man did something that would haunt Kip for the rest of his life. His hands disappeared behind the desk and came back up holding an AK-47. Kip pulled the trigger and the man fell back behind the desk.
“God damnit!” Kip yelled. Then he took tactical position again. The rifle shot would draw curious innocents and determined not so innocents. Kip moved forward and rounded a corner into a hallway. He remembered that every time he cleared this building he ended up routing Taliban from the basement. He decided he would start there and work his way up. He bolted to the end of the hall and took the door on the left. The stairs led down to a false landing, turned and went down more to the basement door.
Something was wrong. There was no one guarding the stairwell. Perhaps he was wrong about the basement? Or even wrong about the building? If that was the case, he was a civilian who just murdered an Afghan citizen. Shit! I could have just started an international incident!
Kip started to doubt himself then shook the thought out of his head. NO!
Jack was here. He had to be here. And so what if he did start an international incident? Friends are friends. He’d clear this up later.
Kip crept down the stairs slowly until he was at the basement door. He slowly pushed it open and peeped between the door jamb and door. What he saw made him cringe and gave him relief all at the same time.
Jack was there, tied to a bed frame. The memories came flooding back to him of his own torture. He blinked them away, taking heartfelt relief in the fact that he hadn’t just killed an innocent man upstairs.
He pushed the door open further and pointed his rifle through. He scanned the room. Only Jack was visible. But he knew from experience that he would never be left completely alone down here. Someone had to be nearby.
Kip cautiously entered in a crouched position, pointing his rifle in all directions. He crossed the floor to where Jack was tied up.
“Jacky?” Kip whispered. Jack did not answer. Kip reached out and touched his chin, shook his face slightly. “Jacky, wake up.”