by Sean Parnell
“What do you mean, sir? Isn’t it obvious? The government’s violating the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. It has a captive monopoly and can cross subsidize to expand into other business areas, undercutting the private corporations that compete in those areas.”
Government waste was one of Pinholt’s biggest pet peeves. So far, he’d managed almost an hour’s rant on the post office. I was impressed.
“Sir, look: not privatizing the post office is just bad fiscal policy. They’ve got seventy billion in unfunded liabilities, they’re running billions in the red every year in a business where everyone else is in the black, and they compete unfairly against UPS and FedEx.”
“They deliver the fucking mail, Pinholt. My shit gets from point A to point B quickly, and that’s all I care about. What more do you want?”
He ignored me. “The post office is tax-exempt. That’s one advantage. It is free of SEC reporting requirements. Its accounting procedures would trigger an IRS investigation in any other American corporation. The postmaster can go to the U.S. Treasury and borrow money whenever he wants, at rates no private company could ever get.”
“So?” I asked, goading him. Pinholt had the heart of a warrior but the mind of an economist. I loved to provoke him, as he usually had very well thought out opinions. Plus, the more I got to know him, the more I realized he was a case study in contrasts, and that intrigued me. He was a Texas native who spoke without an accent. Dallas born and raised, he hated the Cowboys and loved the Don Shula–era Dolphins. He was a buttoned-down conservative who didn’t touch liquor, didn’t smoke or even drink caffeine, but in his spare time I’d catch him listening to hippie rock like Phish. He had a thing for opera, too.
“So?” he said in surprise. “Even with all those advantages the post office is a huge drain on the taxpayers! Even the European Union’s privatizing their mail delivery. Think about that. All those socialist countries are going that route, while we let the federal government mismanage a business that would otherwise make billions. And those billions would be taxable. Instead of a drain on the budget, mail delivery could be a revenue enhancer.”
With nothing else to do but talk or debate, those long vehicular patrols were like college road trips with heavy weapons.
We came to a slight bend in the road. “Hey, watch out, Pinholt.” I warned. He was drifting a bit again, distracted by our conversation. This happened a lot. “Don’t try to kill us twice in one day.”
That annoyed him, “Come on, sir. That’s getting old already.”
“Hey, you almost drove us off a cliff. You’re never going to live that down.”
Earlier that day, we’d had to negotiate a treacherous mountain trail to get into this valley. It wound down a cliff in a series of switchbacks so sharp that our Humvees couldn’t take them without our drivers executing three-point turns. On one, Pinholt had edged the nose of our rig over the cliff, shifted into reverse, and gunned the gas. Unfortunately, our rigs had been beaten up by months of hard use. The transmissions, which had not been designed for all the weight our armored Humvees now carried, sometimes stuck or jammed. In this case, ours didn’t move out of drive. We lurched forward and almost went over the edge. The rig teetered on the brink as we all started to scream at Pinholt. I grabbed my gunner, Chris Brown, and yanked him inside the rig out of fear he’d be thrown clear if we did go over. Not that it would have mattered. The valley floor was at least five hundred feet below us.
Truth was, I was impressed by how Pinholt came through in the clutch. He stayed calm, shifted gears again, and waited to hit the gas until he was absolutely certain the transmission was functioning properly. When he heard a soft thunk as it finally shifted into reverse, he eased off the brake and backed us away from the brink.
We’d been harassing him unmercifully ever since.
“Gettin’ old, sir,” he said again.
“Tell you what, I’ll lay off when you give me my MREs back.” Pinholt knew I was a picky eater. Before leaving on patrols, he made a point to purloin my favorite MREs—meals, ready to eat—and hide them, just to get a rise out of me. We’d had a running battle for weeks over this.
“I’ll think about it, sir.”
“You’re a hell of a radioman, Pinholt. But I swear to God, you drive like a blind old lady.”
“Awww, sir, cheap!”
The late-afternoon sun perched atop the ridgelines, spilling red-gold light across the valley. We sped along, each Humvee topped by an armored turret with a heavy weapon mounted inside. Our five machine guns and one automatic grenade launcher gave our gunners ready access to more firepower than any other platoon from any other war. Our dads in Vietnam could have used this much heat. When combined with the thirty men and six vehicles we had, Outlaw Platoon possessed muscle, mobility, and numbers to handle almost any challenge. Even if we got in over our heads, we had my radios. With them, I could call in artillery, unleash helicopter gunships, or target satellite-guided bombs on our enemy.
In the month since we’d arrived in country, the enemy had remained elusive and we had yet to encounter them in a stand-up fight. Yet the hills had eyes. I had a nagging sense that we were always being watched. Studied, really. We were the new kids in town, and they knew enough about the U.S. Army to know that units, like people, have their own quirks. Some are disciplined; some are lax. Some are aggressive; some are timid. Until they figured us out, they were content to observe. But sooner or later, I knew they would pick a time and place to give us our first test.
The road curved slightly as it followed the lip of the wadi. As we came around the bend, I could see our destination rising out of the valley floor along the horizon. A hundred and fifty years ago, the British had constructed a redoubt atop a sheer walled mesa that dominated the entire southern half of the valley. From the base of the mesa, the slate-colored cliffs rose almost straight up for a full kilometer before flattening to a narrow plateau. The mud walls of the old British fort ran along the edge of the plateau. Medieval-style towers abutted the walls at regular intervals.
This was Bandar, the most important coalition base in the area. It towered over the valley road, affording the soldiers atop it a clear view of the traffic moving below. Because of that, it was a natural choke point, one that was virtually impregnable to attack thanks to its thousand-meter cliffs. No insurgent force could ever scale them—hell, not even the Rangers who’d taken Pointe du Hoc on D-Day could have climbed them under fire.
We drew close, and our drivers eased off the gas. We reached an intersection and turned toward the mesa. The road narrowed and entered the northern cliff face. We could see how long-dead British engineers had blasted through the sheer rock to build the track up to the fort. It would be an impressive feat today, let alone in the 1850s.
“Pinholt,” I said as we stared at the steep road ahead.
Before I could continue he interrupted me. “Sir, I know. I know.”
We stopped, and one of my men jumped out to guide us forward. As we inched along, the clearance between the cliff on one side and the sheer drop on the other diminished until we barely had a meter on either side of us. I would not have even been able to open my door if I had wanted to. Pinholt stayed on the ball and did a good job.
The track snaked up the mesa, making regular forty-five-degree turns, until we reached the fort’s front gate. The original entrance had been destroyed long before and had been replaced by strands of concertina wire stretched across a metal-framed gate. A rusted conex box had been placed nearby to give the guards cover from the elements. I saw no fighting positions nearby, but in the distance a Soviet-era ZU-23 double-barreled antiaircraft cannon stood silhouetted against the twilight sky.
A teenage Afghan Border Policeman (ABP) wearing a green camouflage jacket, khaki pants, and a Chicago Bulls 1990 National Championship cap stepped out of the conex to greet us. His AK-47 dangled carelessly at his side. Flecks of rust marred its
receiver; the magazine was dinged and scuffed. Ancient gear, poorly kept. I made a note of that.
Our ’terp, Abdul, spoke a few words to the guard, and he waved us through the entrance, pulling the gate open as he eyed us with interest.
We rolled into the fort. As we passed the ZU-23, I could see it was but a rusted hulk. There was no way it could be returned to firing condition. Hell, it had probably been there since the Reagan era.
Here and there, Afghan Border Policemen stood with their weapons slung haphazardly. Some smoked home-rolled cigarettes. All of them looked stupefied with boredom. They stared at us as we passed as if we’d come from a different planet.
Neglect and age had combined to leave the fort in a state of near ruin, something we could not detect as we made our approach along the valley’s floor. Now we slid by crumbled guard towers, their wooden frames jutting out of the hardened mud like ancient bones. A few old buildings still had enough walls and roof left to be used to store equipment and supplies in. The rest of them were of little use to anyone except, perhaps, military archaeologists. The outer wall had many gaps, which had been haphazardly screened with strands of concertina wire. If it hadn’t been for the thousand-meter cliffs, the place would have been a catastrophe waiting to happen.
We parked outside the only modern structure within the fort, a single-story, double-cubed concrete building with a few undersized windows. A pair of exhaust vents stuck out on either side of the door, and a smear of black soot streamed up from them along the concrete wall.
This would be our home for the next few days. Our battalion had deployed to this part of Afghanistan for one purpose: to control the border with Pakistan. The mountain caves around here were the insurgents’ equivalent of forward operating bases. Pakistan was their safety zone, where they would resupply, rearm, and train between missions into Afghanistan. After sneaking across the frontier, they’d reoccupy their cave complexes and use them as springboards to launch attacks against coalition bases or units. Then they’d escape across the border to start the cycle all over again.
Recently, the insurgents in Pakistan had grown more ambitious. Instead of being content with attacking local forces here along the frontier, they were now trying to infiltrate deeper into central Afghanistan. They had established “ratlines” consisting of caves, safe houses, friendly villages, and secondary trails that now stretched all the way to Kabul. After years of relative peace in the Afghan heartland, the violence that flowed from the ratlines was threatening to destabilize the government and posed a significant threat to all we’d accomplished in country since 2001.
Our job was to stanch the flow of enemy troops and supplies into Afghanistan, and Bandar was one of the key bases to support that intent. From there, coalition troops could patrol the surrounding area and establish checkpoints on the road leading into Pakistan. Controlling the enemy and securing the populace are the aggressive keystones of any successful counterinsurgency operation. By getting out there and actively patrolling, we could disrupt the ratlines and force them to react to us.
Clearly, none of that was happening here at Bandar, manned by a battalion of Afghan Border Police. Everything we’d seen here suggested that the men were stagnating behind their dilapidated walls. No doubt Lieutenant Colonel Toner had known that, which is why he’d sent us down here. Perhaps, he thought, a U.S. platoon could instill a fighting spirit in the ABP.
I dismounted from my Humvee into a chilly evening wind that made me grateful I had my neck gaiter and gloves on. The sour stench of human filth lingered in the breeze. Up and down our platoon line, my men climbed out and went straight to work. I stood and watched them, marveling at the fact that they’d been on the road all day without a break or decent chow. Now, at a moment where they could let their hair down and relax, their sense of professionalism kept them focused. Team leaders barked orders. Some men stood guard while the gunners began cleaning their weapons. Pinholt and the other drivers went about checking the oil, transmission fluid, and coolant levels of their respective vehicles. Other men poked their heads under the vehicles to see if anything had been damaged by the rough terrain we’d encountered earlier in the day. Nobody stood around, smoking and joking. For a young leader like myself, it was a beautiful thing to see.
All of twenty-four years old, I had been Outlaw Platoon’s leader for about eight months now since joining the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment (2-87). Our battalion was famous in the army and known as the Catamounts since it fought the Germans in Italy at the end of World War II. Outlaw Platoon was part of 2-87’s Blackhawk Company, an easily identifiable nickname over the radio.
I’d learned a lot in a short amount of time, but that had given me just enough knowledge to know that I didn’t know anything. As a leader responsible for every American in the platoon, plus Abdul our interpreter, I had to project confidence around my men at all times. Truth was, half the time that was the last thing I was feeling inside. I had come to know my men and their families. I knew that their wives and parents, children and friends had entrusted with me the safety and well-being of their loved ones. A year before, I had been a partying college student, obsessed with The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter books. Getting to class and writing papers had been pretty much the limit of my responsibilities. Now I was a leader in a combat zone, entrusted with the role after the army had invested millions of dollars in my training. Any decision I made could have unseen consequences. I second-guessed myself constantly, concealed it from the men, and did my best to absorb every lesson thrown my way.
At full strength, an infantry platoon consists of four squads of nine men each. On top of those thirty-six soldiers, we had a medic, two forward observers (FOs), a two-man 60mm mortar team (casually attached), our platoon sergeant, and the platoon leader. So by the book we should have had forty-three men. But that was almost never the case. For the past six years the army had been strapped for men because of the constant deployment cycles. We usually patrolled with about thirty men, which amounted to roughly four undermanned squads loaded into six Humvees.
The squad is the heart of a U.S. infantry platoon. Divided into two fire teams and usually commanded by a staff sergeant, the squad balances firepower with flexibility. When moving in combat, for example, a squad’s fire teams can bound forward one at a time while the other one provides covering fire for them. Each fire team carries three M4 carbines, a grenade launcher, and an M249 squad automatic weapon (SAW) light machine gun that can carry two hundred rounds and blow through them all in a matter of seconds. Usually, a squad also has a designated marksman, a sharpshooter armed with the venerable wooden-stocked M14 rifle from the Vietnam War era. The M14 used a larger bullet, the 7.62mm, and had greater hitting power at longer ranges than our M4s.
The first three squads were what we called maneuver or line squads. Number four, our weapons squad, included our platoon’s heavy weapons, such as the mortar, the machine guns, and the Mark 19 grenade launcher. In any platoon, the most important leaders are the sergeants who lead each squad. They are usually experienced, dedicated noncommissioned officers who have spent their entire careers in the infantry. For a young lieutenant still trying to find his way, such leaders are pure gold. A good platoon leader is one who will let his sergeants mentor him. I was lucky to have three outstanding squad leaders and several top-notch young team leaders.
“Lieutenant Parnell?” I turned around to see Abdul walking toward me. He wore ACUs, body armor, and a green Russian-made chest rig for his extra AK magazines on his slight frame. He held his rifle with deft professionalism. Earlier, I’d seen him helping check out our lead Humvee, his mop of black hair bobbing under the rig’s hood. Unlike the other ’terps at Bermel, Abdul shared the workload.
“Yeah, Abdul?”
“Would you like me to go find the base commander?” he asked, his eyes dark and expressive. He offered an easy grin that never failed to set me at ease.
“Thank you. That’d be great.”
An Afghan Border Policeman strolled by, regarding us curiously. I nodded at him, and he returned my cautious greeting. He took a few more steps, then stopped and dropped his trousers. Right there in the open, he squatted and relieved himself.
The men of my platoon paused in their work and took notice. A few lost their composure and gaped. The rest put on their game face, turned away, and returned to the tasks at hand. The border cop finished his business, wiped himself with his left hand, and continued on his way.
That was an unexpected cultural moment.
I watched the Afghan depart and could not help being proud of my men for their reaction. Though we had been in country for only a few weeks, it had already become very apparent that we had to be very careful with our reactions to some of the things our Afghan allies did.
Staff Sergeant Phil Baldwin, my second squad leader, approached. Six foot four and built like a fullback, Baldwin cut an imposing figure in the growing darkness. At thirty-four, he was the second oldest member of our platoon. He had joined the army in 2001 after watching the towers fall on 9/11 on TV in his house in small-town Illinois. It had been no small sacrifice for his family; Baldwin had been a dispatcher for a railroad company, earning a formidable salary. He had enlisted as a private, which had cut his income by about 80 percent. Had he been a single man, such a reduction might not have seemed so significant. But Baldwin had married his high school sweetheart, Regina Sechrest, some years before, and they’d had two children together. When Baldwin was assigned to our parent unit, the 10th Mountain Division, Regina had given up her career so they could move to Fort Drum, New York. To survive on his meager income, the family had auctioned off most of their possessions, including Regina’s childhood bedroom set.
The first time I met Baldwin, I didn’t know what to think of him. The men had caught me at the end of our last major field exercise before we left for Afghanistan. I was fresh from Army Ranger School and had become their platoon leader only three days before the start of the exercise. They had pinned me down, tied me to a stretcher, and scrawled “CHERRY” on my forehead with a Sharpie. In triumph, they had carried me to the colonel’s outhouse and left me propped against it.