We found Aziz and Ali, who had remembered to wear his armour and helmet, and we took off at a quick march, heading down the slope, toward the main gate. I told Ali to tell Aziz everything that I knew about the situation so far. Aziz had only two questions: “Why are your snipers not killing them?” and “Why are they just watching the Taliban as they plant IEDs?”
“I don't know,” was all I could come back with, “but I'm going to find out.” As we marched, I gave the command post our patrol composition and ETA to the site. Aziz had roped about thirty men into today's rescue op. I looked at the sketch again: the IED was almost perfectly in line with the smoke IED from yesterday. Someone had said Timothy was a creature of habit, and that could be both good and bad for us.
“Where you off to today, sir?” one of the young guys on the gate asked as we stormed past him.
“Another IED, same spot as yesterday. Same ol', same ol'.”
“I hear that! Stay safe.”
Just as we were about to exit the concrete barriers, Major Bane's voice came over the radio. He ordered my call sign to “go firm,” so I called the patrol to a quick halt and we found some cover around the barriers. I wasn't sure why he stopped us, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt; surely he understood we were now in a life-and-death race to save the children. They must've seen something . . . .
“Seven Two Alpha, this is Two-niner. We think we've got eyes on the triggerman, about fifty metres to the west of the device, wait . . .” West? Didn't he mean east? But more importantly, does he really think I'm going to be able to catch this FAM? Does he have a blocking force set up behind the triggerman, one I haven't been told about?
“ Two, we think we've got him spotted; suspicious FAM to the east. You will divert your group from the haystack and capture him, over.” What? Had he lost his freaking mind?
“Seven Two Alpha, how do you suggest I capture a FAM wearing only man-jammies when I'm carrying almost a hundred pounds of gear, in fifty-degree heat? Every second we waste talking, the kids who are playing on an IED-infested haystack get closer to being killed, over!”
I couldn't believe it—some guy in an air-conditioned office was telling me what to do out on the ground, and he actually thought somehow I could capture the FAM? We didn't have enough men, we had no element of surprise, we had no one waiting behind him to capture him, and we were debating this as kids were playing on an IED haystack! Absolutely insane!
Major Bane's voice came back over the net, “Two, uh . . . you will . . . use the element of surprise and flank him, and then you will . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Seven Two Alpha, we have NO element of surprise! The second we crested that slope down Sper to the west, every Taliban and his dog knew we were coming! They have dickers, correction, spotters, all of the time, just watching us. That's what they do! There is no element of surprise, and I can't catch a guy wearing pajamas who's got a fifty-metre head start on me! I'm not that fast! There are children, children, playing on a haystack with a big, fuck-off IED right in the middle of it! I'm the commander on the ground, it's my call, and I'm going after the children! Seven Two Alpha, out!”
Over my PRR, I angrily ordered, “MOVE OUT, double time! Get to those kids and get them off that haystack! NOW!”
The warrant and Hetsa were already up in front of the ANA, and with that order, they cut loose and took off at a dead sprint. It was one of the bravest things I would see during the entire war. They knew, as I did, that they were covering the ground first, and the Taliban easily could've planted IEDs to try and kill anyone attempting to save the children. The children were being used as live bait. We all knew that, but the lecture I gave them both the day before about “letting the Afghans go first to clear the route” was thrown to the wind because now there were children's lives at stake, and they cared more about the children than they cared about themselves.
No officer could've been more proud of his men. I would have put them both in for medals later on, but little did I know that my time in Afghanistan would be cut short. And afterwards, well, who would take any medal recommendations I made seriously? It was a terrible injustice to these men.
We all knew (well, everyone on the ground knew) that it was now a race to see if we would get the children off of the haystack in time, or if the Taliban knew the jig was up and would decide to kill the kids just out of pure spite—a common situation in Afghanistan.
Our column strung out as the faster ones amongst us overtook the slower in the ditch, everyone racing toward the haystack. I could see it now, with the kids still on it, and I was terrified we wouldn't get there in time. I was sprinting with everything I had; I knew I would never forgive myself if anything happened to those kids.
Longview and Hetsa began shouting as they sprinted, and made sweeping motions with their arms in the air, getting the kids' attention, and then terrifying them as the Canadians ran at them, shouting and hollering. The kids leaped off the haystack and ran into the village. Better scared than ripped to shreds!
“They're off the haystack!” Longview said breathlessly into the PRR.
“Thank God, Warrant. Good work! You boys got some damn wheels on ya! Start to get a cordon set up; I'm right behind you.” I pressed the battle group pressel. “Two, Seven Two Alpha, we've secured the IED, the children are safe. We're setting up a cordon now, over.” I looked to the east to see if I could catch a glimpse of the alleged triggerman. High walls and village huts completely obscured my view of the spot where he was supposed to be hiding. How could he be the triggerman if he couldn't see his IED? How would he know when to detonate it? With remote viewing? The CP acknowledged my transmission, but that was it; they failed to mention if the Canadian engineers were en route to the IED. Strange.
The ANA began to filter in and Lieutenant Aziz put up a loose cordon, but somehow managed to cover both ends of the roads and major pathways leading up to the haystack. It was a marked, noticeable improvement from yesterday's cordon. Baby steps.
I radioed the snipers to ask if they had eyes on anyone suspicious: FAMs, people a little too interested, whatever. They came back with a negative and told me they'd continue to observe. I got out my FMP and, using a cheat sheet, I quickly wrote up the IED contact report and sent it over the net to the CP.
I advised Aziz that he should get his men to pull back from the IED, with cover from a blast and access to the paths and roads, and once everyone was in as good a position as they'd ever get, I suggested that we head east to see if we could find the FAMs. He agreed, so the lieutenant, around fifteen ANA, Fourneau, and I marched off between the village walls to try to find them. And there they were—two teenagers, bearded and in man-jammies, hanging out on a rooftop, watching our every move.
But were they really the triggermen or just bored kids? I asked Aziz if we could give them a GSR test and he thought it was a good idea, so he shouted at the kids to come down off the roof. They were casually searched but the ANA found nothing, certainly no incriminating detonators. I gave them both the GSR test. Both tests came back negative, but Aziz still felt they might be the triggermen, so he took them into his custody and sent them back to Sperwhan with a few of his soldiers acting as guards. I didn't recall this scenario coming up with Captain Stephens, so I wasn't sure how the Canadians would take to ANA bringing suspects in to their base. I felt a courtesy radio call to the CP couldn't hurt.
I called it in and said the ANA had taken a few detainees suspected of involvement with the IED, but they were Afghan detainees and the Canadian OMLT team had nothing to do with them. I suddenly realized I'd said the D-word—detainees—and the CP immediately came back with, “Detainees, or persons of interest?” I sheepishly responded, “Persons of interest; not, I say again, NOT detainees.” Our radio traffic was monitored in KAF, and I'm sure the moment I said the D-word, alarm bells went off all the way to my nation's capital.
Canada did not take detainees. There had recently been a political uproar about whether or not Canadian soldiers h
ad handed suspected Taliban detainees over to the Afghan government, who then allegedly tortured them for information. So we were no longer allowed to say “detainees.” We now only took “person(s) of interest.”
We rejoined the ANA and the rest of 72A by the haystack, got behind some cover, and hunkered down in the hot sun to wait. And wait. And wait some more.
I was sweating terribly, but at least this time, I wasn't alone. Our little jaunt had taken the wind out of almost everyone's sails. But the heat problem was greatly compounded by the fact that Ramadan, the month of religious fasting for Muslims between dawn and dusk, had begun. The ANA, in accordance with their religious beliefs, were not eating or drinking anything between first and last light. None of them were allowed to drink any water, even in the incredible heat. We felt truly sorry for them, and only snuck a sip of water when we were sure none of them would see us.
They knew that we were Canadians and therefore (in their minds) good Christians one and all, but that our faith didn't require us to fast during this period. But I had said before to my team that in a show of solidarity we would always do our best not to drink or eat in front of them, out of respect for their faith. I asked Ali if the Taliban were observing Ramadan. He said they believed that because they were waging jihad (holy war ordained by God) against the infidel, God did not require them to observe the traditional fasting or abstaining from liquids between dawn and dusk.
Everyone tried to find some shade, but we were exposed, with only a few walls and one tree providing anything that could help block the sun's burning rays. The warrant and Hetsa covered the north end; Fourneau and I were on the south. I radioed the command post to ask when the engineers were coming and was told that the engineers and QRF out of Masum were tasked out, and wouldn't be available to us.
I wanted to ask “Since when?” and “Doing what, exactly?” I could only guess what was happening. It was now close to eleven and the sun was blistering hot.
I knew guys were going to dehydrate quickly in this heat, so I told Longview and Hetsa to come and join us at the base of a large tree. It was the only shade around for two hundred metres. I set us up so we would cover all of the cardinal points, then we sat down and waited for the Canadian engineers to finish up their task and come and help us out. But nothing happened. It was now 1200 hours and we'd been waiting almost an hour and a half. We had told all of our jokes; we'd taken the piss out of each other, as one does; Fourneau and I debated whether or not the three Star Wars prequel movies rightfully belonged within the sacred halls of official canon or were merely blasphemous aberrations; but now the waiting was just getting stupid.
I asked over the net about our chances of someone, anyone, turning up any time soon, and the sergeant manning the radio in the CP, apparently without any malicious intent, asked me right back if we could requisition the ANA engineers to come and take care of it. What ANA engineers? Did he mean the guys who sweep Route Kelowna? Are they even remotely capable of taking care of something like this? But at this point, it was worth a shot; the heat had grown almost unbearable and we were sweating the water out faster than we could get it in.
I asked Lieutenant Aziz if he could call in the ANA engineers. He put in the request through his HQ, waited about fifteen minutes, and was then told they were on their way. Gods of war, may your hammer be mighty! About freakin' time!
I had never (in all of the time I had spent in two different armies) seen or experienced what was about to happen next. It began when the ANA engineers actually turned up. Hey, that's great! But they were four hundred metres away, and they began very slowly and methodically minesweeping the road. Oh, that's bad. Lieutenant Aziz, who I would quickly realize was not the most patient man in the ANA forces, lost his temper and began shouting at them to “Come over here! The IED is right here!” Hey that's great! You tell 'em, Aziz. Let's get this cake and ass party over with!
But they rudely ignored him, and continued slowly sweeping Route Brown. Oh, that's bad; he's not going to like that! But in all fairness to the engineers, that was probably what they were trained to do. There could have been secondary devices: you can't just rock up to an IED all willy-nilly. But you didn't have to be a cultural expert to understand that Aziz had just lost a serious amount of face and felt incredibly slighted by the fact his engineers had just blanked him completely, and carried on methodically with their minesweeping.
So now he totally lost it, and angrily marched over to the IED haystack. Crap, I thought to myself, he's not really going to climb onto it, is he? That's suicidal! He leaped on top of the haystack like a man possessed and I shouted, “Take cover!” as we peeked over the wall to watch him as he fired up his best Stompin' Tom impression. Geeewwww!
He was angrily smashing his feet up and down, on top of an IED, and shouting like an old man who just missed his bus. It's an IED barn-stormin' hoedown!
I radioed the snipers to let them know, just in case they were wondering, that yes, that was my ANA lieutenant jumping up and down on the haystack, and no, I would not be joining him any time soon! They laughed and told me to keep my head down.
Now my Dari wasn't that good, but I had always been a keen student of non-verbal cues and subconscious body language, so I think I got the gist of it. As he flailed his arms and violently cursed, I think it went a little something like, “It's over here, you sons of braying donkeys! I'm standing on it! Quit dicking around and get over here and do your damn job!” or words to that effect; only, of course, in Dari. Ali kindly translated for me, and I was pretty close. “Yeah, I gathered he's upset, yeah.” We had all taken cover behind the nearest mud wall, rightfully afraid his lack of patience would quickly be the hideous, exploding death of him, and equally afraid his severed head would soon form a flying meat torpedo at over two hundred kilometres an hour!
They say God loves fools and children, but hates the poor, bloody infantry, so I thought for sure Aziz's number was up. But the higher power decided it wasn't his time, and mercifully chose to ignore his apparent death wish. To be fair to Aziz, it was really, really hot, and all of our tempers were a bit frayed, but still! To date, that was one of the craziest things I'd ever seen. I didn't know it then, but I would soon see worse.
The IED never went off. The engineers casually walked over toward Aziz as he continued his IED hoedown, contested who was stupider, and then Aziz sullenly stomped back over to us, unfazed and unrepentant. The engineers shook their heads, and a young guy with them (who was either the most qualified or, more likely, the bravest) walked over to the haystack, gave it a few passes with his antiquated mine detector, casually brushed the hay aside, and found the IED. We sunk a little lower behind our cover, afraid, as we had been with Aziz, that parts of the engineer's exploding body would make deadly projectiles. I couldn't help but sneak a peek; it was like watching someone's house burn to the ground. You hated yourself for watching, but could easily justify it by saying you had to walk the dog anyway, so there you were.
The engineer calmly tied a long piece of 5/50 parachute cord around the end of the IED, walked ten feet away, and gave it a healthy tug. GEEEWWWW!
Not on my how-I-wanted-to-die-in-Afghanistan list: by an engineer's lifeless head turning into a meat bowling ball and ripping off mine. But I guess the Force was strong with him because he managed to survive.
He then strolled over to me, as I gently shook my head in reproach, unable to help myself. I knew enough to know that was not really how it was supposed to be done, but he was still alive, so what did he care? He stuck his hand out toward me, palm up, and asked for something.
Ali translated and told me he wanted to borrow my Leatherman tool to cut something. Before I knew what I was doing, I reached around my back to my belt, pulled out the tool, and handed it over to him, thinking he needed it to cut off his string. It was good string, and I was sure that stuff wasn't too easy to come by at the Masum bazaar. Besides, it was closed on Fridays.
He marched back to the IED with a sense of divine purpose i
n his stride, walked right up to it, located the red and yellow detonating wires sticking out the top of the device, and then deftly snipped them—with my Leatherman tool! Gaahaaaa!
“What the fuck?” the warrant shouted. We all looked at each other, in a state of total shock.
What in the hell was going on today? Were we in Bizarro Land? Had the world gone mad? Did the normal rules of IED physics and common sense no longer apply? The young engineer picked up the heavy IED—it was a forty-pound, brand-new pressure cooker—and removed its lid. Two things were clearly evident: it had a remote-controlled detonator on top of it, and Timothy's local RadioShack had let him down by selling faulty electronics. The detonator had failed to trigger the device.
The engineer, bless his socks, obviously thought I would like a closer look at the device, which he thought he had rendered inert (was it?), so he manhandled the IED over to me and loudly dropped it at my feet with a dull, sickening thud. GAAHAAAA!
I knew it was some sort of weird, tribal acceptance thing, or more like an Afghan man test, so I tried my best not to flinch, quickly looked it over (without moving my feet an inch or even touching it), asked Fourneau to get a picture for the OMLT yearbook, and then calmly said, “Great, well done. Now get it the hell away from me!” Ali translated and the engineer smiled, handed me back my Leatherman tool, picked up the IED, and roughly slung it over his shoulder like a sack of wool.
Even though it was pretty clear he had been trying to slip the surly bonds of earth, I still had to admire his sand. I asked Ali to tell him that the next time I saw him, I would give him a Leatherman tool: with the caveat that he didn't use it to snip anymore detonating wires! The engineer smiled and asked me to promise. I gave him my word and then he strolled away with the IED. I felt bad for the ANA. They wanted to do the job, but they had none of the necessary tools. Imagine trying to be an engineer without a tool like a Leatherman? When he was twenty feet away I began to breathe normally again and asked Aziz if he'd like to head back in.
The Taliban Don't Wave Page 11