Outlaw Platoon

by Sean Parnell

  Later that night, after they’d untied me, I had left the chow hall alone. Baldwin had been lingering in the shadows, clearly waiting for me. He had stepped up to me. “Lieutenant Parnell, you are a member of this platoon now. Don’t fuck it up.”

  As I got to know and understand him, I realized that Baldwin was the platoon’s voice of wisdom. He possessed more life experience than the rest of us, and he had a measured, analytical mind that I had come to rely on. He had also already deployed to Afghanistan once before and had seen combat, which made his tactical knowledge indispensable.

  My other squad leaders, Staff Sergeants Campbell, Sabatke, and Waites joined us to discuss our course of action for the night. The three men could not have been more different. Tall and athletic, Campbell stayed within himself and was hard to get to know. Sabatke was a human tempest who blew through life fueled by a raging inner passion. While serving in a mechanized unit, he’d had “SABO” tattooed in a half circle over his belly button. A sabot is a type of antiarmor round Bradley Fighting Vehicles carry that uses kinetic energy to destroy its target. After dropping the “t,” it had become his nickname, and few were ever as apt.

  Waites was a leadership challenge. He was never quite in sync with the other leaders in the platoon, and his negativity tended to cause issues in training exercises. During his first deployment here, his unit had not fired a shot. As a result, he considered any preparation or training for that sort of eventuality to be a waste of time. He seemed unable to process the fact that perhaps the war had changed since his last deployment. Since we’d started patrolling, I’d had to watch him carefully.

  Waites stood off a bit from our group and stared off in the distance. Campbell moved next to me. Sabatke stood alongside Baldwin. They made an unusual pair. Baldwin’s face was round, Sabatke’s narrow. Baldwin stood half a head taller than Sabo and had at least forty pounds on him. Sabo was all muscle and sinew barely containing his pent-up energy. Baldwin looked like the neighbor everyone loved to barbecue with.

  Some men are born warriors. Their spirit and their character are forged for the fight. That was Sabo. Others pick up arms because they see no other solution. They wield their swords to protect those they love, spurred by their sense of purpose and idealism but taking no pleasure in it. When the threat is defeated, they return to their homes, shed their uniforms, and return to their lives. That was Baldwin. Together, they formed the yin and yang of my platoon: the born soldier and the born citizen soldier.

  Usually, in such moments, the banter between us would fly fast and furious. Right now, with the men nearby and Afghan Border Policemen lurking all around us, my squad leaders kept their game faces on. When alone together, they were irreverent, sometimes vile and always funny. But in situations like this, I knew I could trust them to be consummate professionals.

  We quickly discussed plans for the evening. The men were tired and hungry. They’d spent the entire day on the road, and some hot chow would have done wonders for their morale. But before we could eat and clean up, we needed to establish a security plan for the platoon.

  While the men kept about their tasks, the squad leaders and I decided to walk the fort’s perimeter. We’d get a sense of its true defensive capabilities and figure out how best to add our firepower to the mix.

  “Watch your step, sir,” Campbell warned me as he pointed to the ground. “Shit mines everywhere.” Sure enough, piles of human crap dotted the area. We had to zigzag around them as we scouted the terrain. We soon realized that the fort lacked even a single outhouse. The border police had been using some of the ruined buildings as latrines, but now they’d reverted to a more primal state and went wherever they pleased. Beyond the smell, the filth created significant health risks for our men. As we walked, I thought about how we could mitigate them without offending the Afghans.

  We climbed onto the fort’s ramparts to get a good look around. Baldwin used his tactical expertise to point out weak spots in the defenses, and we put together a plan to strengthen them. Each Humvee would be driven to a specific firing position around the fort in such a way that their heavy weapons could cover one another should we be attacked.

  Truth was, the Salvation Army could have defended this mesa top even if no fort existed. Our biggest concern was the Afghan Border Police. How loyal were they? After some of the things Captain Canady had told me about them before we’d left Bermel on this mission, I knew enough to be on guard.

  When we regrouped back at my Humvee, darkness had fallen and the men had finished their work. Some were eating MREs, others were playing cards next to their rigs. Pinholt sat in his driver’s seat, eating beef stew while reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I was pleased to see that all the men assigned to pull security were alert and eyeballing the border cops carefully.

  Our platoon sniper, blue-eyed, blond-haired Sergeant Wheat, was waiting for us at my rig, a piece of straw dangling out of his mouth. From southern Louisiana, Wheat had spent most of his life hunting, fishing, and camping. His natural outdoorsman skills had helped earn him the highest score in his sniper school class, an exceptional achievement. It was one of the army’s toughest courses. He had told me once that when his enlistment was up, he planned to go home to Louisiana and become a horse farrier.

  Before I could say hello to Wheat, a hulking figure materialized out of the darkness. The sudden arrival startled me, and when I turned to meet the person, I found myself facing the tallest Afghan I’d ever encountered. At least six foot five with powerful shoulders, he wore a tan headdress and khaki man jams, which look like a knee-length nightshirt with baggy pants. He sported a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses tucked into the collar under his chin. I guessed he was around forty years old. We stared at each other, my surprise at his presence evident on my face. His was expressionless.

  Abdul stepped up next to the Afghan and said, “Lieutenant Parnell, this is Major Alam Ghul. He is the commander of the border police here. The major would like to meet with you.”

  Part of my job as a platoon leader included working with local Afghan leaders. The nature of the war here required us lieutenants to be warrior-diplomats, a challenging task for somebody like me who had been eating Christmas cookies in Pittsburgh four months before and had never left North America. The army counted on us to be emissaries and power brokers in moments like these.

  “Where and when would he like to meet?” I asked Abdul. Abdul looked at the major and, to my surprise, spoke to him in Farsi. Here on the border, the people spoke a diverse array of languages, including Pashtun, Dari, and Wazari. Abdul spoke them all, plus a little Arabic, which made him invaluable when we tried to connect with the locals. I hadn’t known he spoke Farsi as well.

  “The major would like to meet you now in that building,” Abdul replied after listening to Ghul’s answer. Our ’terp gestured to the concrete cube I had noticed earlier.

  I turned to my squad leaders, “Okay, what’s the play, guys?”

  “Might as well do it now. Everything’s under control here, sir,” said Sabatke.

  “Okay. Who wants to go with me?”

  Baldwin waved his hand. “I will, sir.”

  Wheat, who was leaning against my Humvee whittling a horse out of a piece of wood with a Gerber knife, asked, “Sir, y’all gonna need some extra guns with ya?”

  I thought that over. The Afghan police were notoriously corrupt and easily compromised. Al Qaida and the Taliban routinely infiltrated their ranks. More than once, an operative within an Afghan police unit had launched a surprise attack against U.S. troops.

  It would have been good to have Wheat and a few others inside with us. Wheat was a lanky character, skinny and unassuming. But he was a rock in a crisis. I never saw him lose his cool, and he had a thoughtful way about him. Taking him would have been the safe thing to do. Yet the major would have probably seen that as a sign of distrust, and that would not have helped get our relationship off to a good
start. We would be in the area for the next year. I had to set the tone right away.

  “No, thanks, Sergeant Wheat. I appreciate the offer, though.”

  “Roger that, sir! Just holler if ya need me.” He patted his rifle. “I’ll be raght here.”

  Major Ghul put his hand on Abdul’s shoulder and spoke to him. Our ’terp nodded and said to me, “Lieutenant Parnell, the major hopes that you will eat dinner with him tonight.”

  “Please tell him I look forward to that,” I replied. A local meal was customary during these types of leader meetings. They were also famous for getting young lieutenants dreadfully sick. I was going to need Cipro and lots of it. I’d found out right after my arrival in Afghanistan that Cipro was the antibiotic of choice for dealing with the parasites in the local food our American stomachs have a hard time dealing with.

  Abdul and Major Ghul walked ahead of Baldwin and me as we made our way toward the concrete building. I kept my head down to negotiate around the shit mines. As I did, I noticed that the major was wearing Birkenstocks.

  An odd choice of footwear out here in the middle of nowhere.

  Abdul opened the main door to the concrete building and let the major step inside. We followed close behind. Before Abdul had even shut the door, the smell assailed us—a combination of BO, rotting hay, feces, and mildew that overpowered our noses. I had to tamp down my first impulse, which was to bolt back outside. But that would have been a bad diplomatic move, especially considering how many eyes were now riveted on us.

  We’d entered the fort’s main barracks. Border cops lived here in rickety cots stacked four high against the walls with hardly any space between their rows. There was no concrete or wood floor, just hay-covered dirt mixed with what looked like goat shit. At least I hoped it was from goats.

  Most of the cots were occupied. Some of the Afghans were huddled under burlap blankets, trying to sleep. A few were drinking tea. In one corner, the cots had been pushed closer together to make enough room that a group of police could play a dice game on the ground.

  When we entered, the game stopped, and the Afghans regarded us with dark eyes freighted with suspicion as we picked our way to a Hobbit-hole sort of door in the left-hand wall. We walked by a couple of cops sitting next to a woodstove. One had a home-rolled cigarette in his mouth, and as Baldwin and I approached, he exhaled a wide plume of smoke in our path.

  We reached the door. It was narrow and only about five feet high. After Abdul opened it, Baldwin had to duck low to get through it. The door opened onto a set of rotting wooden stairs that led down into pitch darkness. Baldwin and I exchanged nervous expressions, and I sensed we were thinking the same thing.

  Are we gonna get beheaded on Al Jazeera tonight?

  We couldn’t refuse to go down. Despite my limited experience, I had enough cultural sensitivity to realize to do that would have been insulting to Major Ghul. Mission first. Men always. The infantry’s unofficial creed.

  Cautiously, I put one boot on the stairs and started down into the blackness after Baldwin.

  Two

  Prisoner of the Divide

  The steps creaked like something out of a bad horror film. Silence took hold of our little party as Baldwin’s bent frame melted into the darkness. I put a gloved hand against the concrete wall, using it as a frame of reference. After a few more feet, the concrete gave way to rough-hewn rock. We were descending into the mesa itself.

  At the base of the stairs, a dim corona of light appeared at the edge of the wall to our left. A few more steps, and we reached a dirt-and-rock floor perhaps ten or fifteen feet under the main barracks. Major Ghul waited for us to gather. Satisfied, he led us into a narrow chamber dominated by a small fire pit in its center. Flames crackled beneath a black cauldron that hung from a metal rack. Two motionless figures sat Indian style on the far side of it. Both had shiny AK-47s in their laps, hands on their pistol and fore grips as if ready to spring into action. Behind them, next to crates of rocket-propelled grenades, an RPK light machine gun leaned against the wall. A belt of ammunition was coiled around its barrel.

  I second-guessed my decision to leave Sergeant Wheat with the vehicles.

  Small carpets and sleeping mats covered portions of the floor. A single lightbulb dangled overhead, attached to an electrical line that disappeared into the ceiling next to the vent for the cooking fire.

  We moved deeper into the room. Major Ghul gestured for us to take a seat. I picked out the least filthy carpet in sight. Baldwin picked one next to mine as Major Ghul walked around the cooking pit and settled down between the two motionless figures.

  I found myself seated directly across from one of the Buddhas. Baldwin sat opposite the other one. Abdul took a position on a mat between us and the Afghans. Our bridge. Without him, we’d be dead in the water right now.

  There was a chill in the air, thanks to the wind whistling through some ventilation slits cut into the top of the outer walls. Each gust made the lightbulb overhead sway back and forth, causing the shadows around us to dance.

  I shucked off my helmet and body armor, grateful that I had put on my winter boots. At least my feet would be warm. Next to my gear, I propped my rifle on its bipod—within easy reach, of course.

  Major Ghul spoke to us. When he finished, he offered a sad smile. He had white teeth, something that was almost unheard of around here.

  Abdul translated for us: “Sir, the major wishes to apologize for having to meet in this basement. He said his house is much nicer than this place, but it is too risky for him there right now, so he sleeps here at Bandar.”

  “Why too risky?” I asked.

  “Sir, he says he has received night letters for many weeks now.”

  Night letters. Death threats from the local enemy forces.

  “Abdul, tell him I understand and appreciate his circumstances.”

  “Yes, sir,” Abdul replied. Before he could speak to the major, I added, “And ask him who these other guys are.”

  Abdul and Ghul spoke for several minutes. As we watched them, Baldwin whispered to me, “Those guys look hard core.”

  The one across from me appeared to be about fifty years old. Granite face, cold eyes; he stared at me with intensity. These were different men from the other border police. They carried themselves with more pride and possessed an air of professionalism I hadn’t seen here.

  “He says these two men are his bodyguards. He keeps them with him at all times since he began receiving the night letters.”

  Major Ghul said something else. Abdul listened, then translated. “Both men fought with the Mujahadeen against the Russians in the 1980s.”

  They were survivors, lifelong warriors who had been fighting in these mountains since before I had even been born.

  Abdul continued, “They were also in the civil war in the nineties, after the Soviets left.”

  I thought about that. It was so far out of the realm of my own experience. Back home, friends came and went. A few from my childhood remained, but none of them was in close contact with me anymore. I felt a bond with the soldiers of my platoon, but I’d been with them only eight months. Here, decades of violence had forged lifelong ties that defined much of Afghanistan’s social fabric. Looking at the men across from me, their faces bathed in firelight, I felt out of my depth.

  Both men rose to their feet. Baldwin and I did the same and shook their outstretched hands after taking our gloves off. Though their palms felt like sandpaper, there was a warmth in their greeting that I had not detected when we first arrived. The one directly in front of me even attempted a smile. It made him look like a piranha.


  As we sat back down, Major Ghul motioned to the cauldron between us. One of his bodyguards leaned forward to stir its contents. The sight flashed me back to high school English class in Pittsburgh when we read Macbeth. I could almost see the passage about the witches in their cave, huddled around their pot. “Double, double, toil and trouble . . .”

  Something was cooking. The brew inside the cauldron simmered, filling the chamber with the smell of meat that at least partially concealed the more unpleasant aromas lingering in this man-made cave.

  At least, I hoped it was meat. I was going to need a triple dose of Cipro after this.

  Captain Canady had done his best to prepare me for this moment. Before we had left Bermel, he had taken me aside and explained the basics of interacting with our Afghan allies. There was a subtle dance at play with every interaction between our cultures. As Americans, we’re blunt and get straight to the point. The Afghans are more nuanced. Small talk here is an art form. It can go on for hours before anything of substance is brought up. But within the small talk, the Afghans often drop hints as to what they’re really after.

  “Lying is a part of their culture,” Canady had told me. “There’s no stigma to it; it is expected. Don’t trust Ghul, and be careful what you give him. But remember, he’s the power broker around Gamal. Maybe even more than the mayor. We need him on our side.”

  Before reaching the old fort this evening, we had stopped at the Gamal district center—a collection of about a dozen buildings thirty minutes north of Bandar—and met the mayor. He was an ancient man, stooped and sedate. We had spent the morning with him making small talk until we finally got around to discussing the school project the 173rd had started in the area. I had promised that we would see it through to completion, and the mayor had appeared very grateful to us. The playbook Captain Canady had given me had worked perfectly.