Amber kept moving and studied the men in front of her, watching as they switched from a fast sprint to an unpredictable pattern of running and ducking, using buildings for cover. She had never had proper infantry training, only a half-day tutorial in the CST summer course. The Rangers, on the other hand, specialized in this kind of combat evasion and had prepared extensively for precisely this kind of situation. Guess I am in for some on-the-job training, Amber said to herself with a dose of gallows humor. Imitation is the best form of avoiding a fatality, or something like that, she thought.
And so, when the Rangers zigged, Amber zigged; when they zagged, she did the same. She mimicked every movement they made: they looked up and down the street, she looked up and down the street. They “pied” corners—a technique for rounding a corner in a dangerous situation that minimizes exposure to the body—and Amber pied corners, ducking, crouching, using the compound walls for cover without actually touching them. Her mind flashed back to action films where the hero dodges gunfire while running at top speed. She always wondered how they managed to stay alive, and now here she was doing it herself, in daylight no less. It all felt surreal, as if she were trapped on a film set. Only the sounds and the sights were undeniably real. She was glad to see she was keeping up with the Rangers, and surprised by just how fast adrenaline and the desire to avoid getting shot propelled them all forward in all that gear. Even Jimmie was close behind; all the sprints had served him well.
Holy fuck, Amber, she coached herself as they tore through the village. Just do what these guys are doing and do not screw up.
She kept running. Do not let it be the girl who gets the bullet.
It wasn’t just that Amber didn’t want to get shot for her own sake. She knew that if anyone got hit right now the entire platoon would have to slow down to carry that soldier out. She didn’t want to put anyone at even greater risk than they already were.
Then over the radio she heard one of the leaders congratulate the unit for their part in making the “Mogadishu Mile.” It was a tribute to the Rangers who got pinned down on the streets of the Somali capital city in the Black Hawk Down incident. I gotta hand it to ’em, Amber thought. These guys don’t lose their sense of humor even under fire.
At long last they reached their destination: an American FOB, or forward operating base, where a helicopter could safely land and carry them home. Amber thought the noise of the gate creaking open might just be the happiest sound she had ever heard.
It wasn’t long before she was strapped into a noisy helicopter, the air filled with the smell of sweat mixed with gasoline, dust, and the gun oil CLP. Basking in a moment of pure relief, Amber realized she was ravenous. She promised herself she would always remember to bring a snack on future missions. Then she looked around at all those fighters, the guys she had dreamed of joining, and felt pure joy.
I have gone cliff diving, executed FBI search warrants to drug-dealing gang members, jumped out of planes, she told herself. But nothing matches this high. She imagined she could stay up for two more days if she had to. Going out to get bad men who were killing innocents and fellow soldiers and then living to tell the tale—well, making it to the other side of all that was a drug in itself, and Amber was sure that nothing else, ever, could match it.
Man, these mountains are majestic, Amber thought as the helicopter lifted them off the ground and over the trees that had, hours earlier, held so much gloom and terror. The sun rose in streaks of brilliant orange and red to greet them.
An hour later, back on base, she sat eating a microwaved s’more and listening to the team debrief the mission: what they had done right, what they had done wrong, the information they had gathered. What they needed to do better next time.
“Oh, yeah, hey, CST, good job out there,” the Ranger who led the brief remarked. “You corroborated the fact that we were missing somebody.”
In that moment she felt part of the team. Even if she still had a lot to learn on the job, which she did, she had contributed to the mission. And she had taken fire without crapping herself.
I love this job, she thought as she collapsed into bed that morning.
12
Making a Difference
* * *
There,” the CST pointed. “There he is.”
Sarah Waldman, MP and former Girl Scout who loved sewing as much as survival training, stood before a cluster of surveillance monitors at the operations center. She was pointing to a blurry dot on the screen, an insurgent called “Hamidullah” whom the Rangers had been watching on-screen for more than a dozen hours. Her job was to serve as a second pair of eyes during the daylong surveillance, a backup to the officers and team members whose duty it was to watch every bit of footage coming in. The fact that a Ranger leader had given her this assignment was a backhanded compliment: the monitoring work was tedious and hard on the eyes, but it was undoubtedly important. Sarah was proud to have been asked, and for hours had been focusing intently on the monitor.
In the last few weeks Sarah had swung between epic frustration and sublime fulfillment with her new role. Some nights the Ranger forces brought her out on mission and put her to work; those nights she loved. Other nights they would tell her there was no room on the helicopter or they didn’t need her; those nights she loathed. She spent the down nights strategizing with Leda about how best to argue her case to the platoon’s commanders.
“Give it time,” Leda advised. “CST is entirely new for these guys; let them see what you can do and let your work speak for itself.”
Sitting and doing nothing while her team went on mission was frustrating, but Sarah knew Leda was right.
All over Afghanistan the U.S. military’s counterterrorism teams rely on technology to verify and amplify the intelligence gathered and help them “see” what is happening on the ground. Via satellites, balloons, manned and unmanned aircraft, the last decade of warfare has witnessed an explosive growth of visual sensors, “eyes in the skies” that offer a window on sites the American military could not otherwise observe. Air Force magazine called the new intelligence-surveillance-reconnaissance—ISR—“a revolution” that’s changing the way war works by bringing superior technology to the battlefield in ever-more-real time. Or, as General McChrystal’s intelligence chief wrote in 2008, “airborne ISR has become critical to this war because it offers persistent and low-visibility observation of the enemy as well as an ability to detect, identify, and track him” in places where foes can easily “camouflage” themselves among civilians. This revolution began in Bosnia, but came into its own in the years following the initial invasions into Afghanistan and Iraq; by the time CST boots hit the ground in Afghanistan, its impact was visible all across the country. The presence of the sensors lowered the number of casualties by allowing the military to stop attacks before they could occur. They also allowed commanders to get a better sense of where and how the insurgents were operating so when they did pursue them, they could minimize the risks to innocents.
In the JOC, teams of specialists working with the Rangers had been watching Hamidullah most of the day as he got on and off his motorcycle, making his rounds throughout the village, traveling from stop to stop to meet with his contacts. Intel folks understood he was a central figure in a plot to bomb a target in a nearby town center—a high-visibility attack designed to strike a crowded location at a busy time of day and terrify as many as possible. The goal of Sarah’s commanders was to stop him before he struck.
Sarah carefully kept her eye on the blurry figure as it moved through the crowded streets. Finally, she saw Hamidullah stop before one of the biggest and most impressive compounds in the area. The building was built in Alexandrian style and boasted fourteen-foot walls with high towers rising from every corner. The house looked sturdier and more expensive than most in the area, as though it had been constructed from cement, usually imported from Pakistan, rather than the dirt or thatch that covered most houses in the insurgency-controlled rural areas. Most of those homes pr
oved vulnerable to the harsh extremes of the Afghanistan climate, and looked like they might easily give way during even a modest storm. Like many of the compounds in the area, this one housed several extended families behind thick walls that offered privacy by making the house impossible to see from the outside. Inside, a network of narrow lanes connected one home to another, and a series of spacious courtyards provided areas for children to play and women to socialize. The families frequently consisted of one man with multiple wives and many more children, plus assorted visitors. This meant there might be three, four, or five men at home at once, along with at least three times as many women and children.
Minutes ticked by and Hamidullah stood by the door. On the other side of the wall, Sarah could see what appeared to be children playing. Then another figure came out and quickly returned inside, bringing the little ones with him. The children came back out and an adult brought them back inside again. She watched as Hamidullah rolled his motorcycle down the road by the handlebars to the entrance of what looked like a guesthouse and covered it with a sheet. A door opened and he quickly disappeared from sight.
Having confirmed the insurgent’s presence in the compound, a team of Rangers filed onto their helicopters that night. Sarah initially worried she would be held back, since he was thought to be armed and official guidance from the higher-ups required that a CST remain on base if there was arduous terrain or an imminent threat of “contact”—meaning getting fired at or shot. But she had seen the compound Hamidullah entered and so had the Rangers. Kids lived there, which meant women nearly certainly did as well. Her services would be useful. Sarah, like all the CSTs, understood that contact could come at any time on any night, on any mission—they were never safe, and they accepted that. They had come to Afghanistan to do a job, not to be protected from the hazards of the work. This time, she was asked to join the operation.
She now found herself running off the bird with members of the Ranger platoon and walking toward the very same walls the insurgent had recently passed through. Once they reached their destination she waited for the assault team to do its work.
From a hundred feet back she watched as the Rangers cleared the compound and entered the guesthouse. The U.S. soldiers and their Afghan counterparts moved from room to room, silently hunting for explosives, weapons, and intelligence items.
“CST,” she finally heard over the radio. “We need you here.” Sarah and her interpreter, Wazhma, moved inside the compound to the living area and found a woman and children huddled together, nervously watching every move of the men who had summoned her in. Sarah could feel their terror.
She began by addressing the only adult in the room, who turned out to be the woman of the house, Masuda. She sat in the middle of the richly decorated room, surrounded by her seven children. Wine-colored tapestries hung on the walls and the carpets were freshly washed and well tended. She wore a dress with elaborate beading and embroidery running through the fabric. As someone who grew up making blankets and pillowcases, Sarah could appreciate the effort such handwork required. The crisp, loose-fitting gown looked new, not at all like the fading, threadbare dresses covered with old woolen shawls she was accustomed to seeing here in one of the most rural parts of the country. Masuda looked as if she wouldn’t appear out of place in one of Afghanistan’s heavily crowded and rapidly modernizing cities.
Sarah closed the doors to the room so none of the men could see inside, and began speaking in quiet tones, in hopes of calming everyone and persuading them that she would do all she could to keep them safe. She promised that no one would enter or be able to hear their conversation, and she begged the woman to speak freely. The children quieted down and Masuda began to tell her story.
This man you are looking for, she said, invaded our home today. He began banging on our gate this afternoon and demanding that my husband let him in. My husband didn’t answer for a while because he wanted the man to go away, but then the man shouted that he carried guns and explosives and that if my husband didn’t allow him in our home he would simply blow up the door and kill everyone inside.
The only sound in the room came from one of the older boys, who was sniffling loudly between bouts of tears.
Finally my husband had to let him in. What were we going to do otherwise? So he came into our house and demanded that we feed him. We prepared dinner for him—I made everything we had so that he would be full and then leave our house—and served him in the main house, because he insisted. But he wouldn’t leave even after my husband pleaded with him to go. And then you came.
Sarah asked Wazhma to stand watch and left the room to confer with the Rangers. She and her fellow CSTs had heard this story of the “unknown intruder” frequently, and many times the facts proved it false. But tonight, Sarah thought, this woman’s story added up. She learned that the Rangers had quickly identified Hamidullah by the bounty of guns, ammo, and grenades he wore strapped to his person. The only question was whether the other man present had been acting as his accomplice. Sarah conveyed to the Rangers everything she had learned from Masuda, explaining how the entire family had been held hostage for much of the day. Her account backed up the intel the Rangers had gathered, and it all led to the same conclusion: Masuda’s husband had nothing to do with the insurgency and no connection to the would-be attacker. They just happened to live in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Sarah returned to the room with the tapestries to reassure the family that everything would be okay.
Finally relaxed for the first time that evening, Masuda stroked the arm of one of her sons, who was clutching a doll that Wazhma had given him. She described how a Taliban-allied network was running rampant throughout the region. Her husband made his money as a contractor for the Afghan government, which meant he earned coveted dollars that came from the Americans. This association with well-funded foreigners meant she lived with the constant fear that her home and family members would be a target. Sarah and Wazhma sat quietly speaking with her and the children until a soldier’s voice crackled through the radio.
“CST, time to move!” As she filed out of the compound behind the Ranger unit in the courtyard Sarah saw Hamidullah. She thought of all her fellow soldiers who had been injured and killed in her two months on the ground at the hands of men like this one. Sarah and Wazhma then heard a voice come through Hamidullah’s radio. It was now reaching very different listeners than the men on the other end of the connection expected.
“Where is Hamidullah?” the voice called out. Sarah knew enough rudimentary Pashto to understand.
Silence.
“Hamidullah, where are you?” came a second voice.
“He’s not there,” said a third man.
Finally one of the Afghan interpreters had had enough.
“Hey, Taliban: don’t you worry about Hamidullah,” the translator said, interrupting their conversation. “We got your guy.”
The entire crew ran even faster than normal back to the helicopters, knowing they could still get blown up anytime on the way home. They called for air support to stand guard on the way out to protect them as they ran to the security of their lift back to their base. Sarah found the roaring of the bird’s engines oddly comforting: a soothing white noise against which she could empty her thoughts. Staring at the insurgent, Sarah wondered about the endlessness of it all, and the barbarity. If this man and his brethren had found the Americans before they captured him he would have beheaded them all and posted the video on YouTube for all the world to see. She had heard the voices of his fellow insurgents on the radio, men who no doubt were already forging plans for their next attack. She hoped Masuda and her children would stay safe.
In a few days, Sarah would turn twenty-four in this remote valley of Afghanistan. Her birthday would also mark the tenth anniversary of Operation Enduring Freedom, the official name for the military campaign that began in October 2001, weeks after the 9/11 attacks. Back in those dark days, Sarah sat with her father on the steps leading into thei
r kitchen watching the TV blare news of the fight. She knew she would always remember the day America went to war, because in the middle of it her mother entered the room carrying a big yellow ice cream cake with a smiley face on it and belted out “Happy Birthday” to her girl. Now, ten years later, she was living in a spare outpost on the front lines of that very same war with a team that was tracking down insurgents. Instead of ice cream with her family she would share a hot chai and a CrossFit workout with her CST partner Lori. She wasn’t complaining; she had chosen to be there. But life here was so different, and few back home could understand just how, or why.
She wondered where she would be next year. Would she make it to twenty-five? Sarah had told her mother little about what she was doing, but enough for her to understand its gravity and seriousness, and to be prepared in case something happened. Back in New York, Sarah’s mother was composing a note for her daughter.
At 3:31 am they placed you, a purplish pink beautiful baby girl with dark hair on my belly. Daddy cut your cord and set you free to the outside world. What a magic, miraculous moment your birth was. As I was holding you and being wheeled to recovery, I was in awe of this new chapter of my life. I remember asking God to help me. I put you into His hands. Now more than ever, when I get scared or concerned about you, I think back to that moment. I think of God holding and keeping you safe because I can’t. It gives me a sense of peace and calm.
You have made me the happiest mother on earth. Even though I can’t give you a birthday hug, I know you can feel it in your heart as I can feel it in mine.
Continue to do the good work you have been doing on your missions. You are making a difference.
Back in Kandahar, Ashley too had just celebrated her birthday. She, Lane, and their bunkmate Meredith, who had first shown them around their rooms, had grabbed a couple of spoons and shared a Funfetti “cake in a jar” with frosting that Meredith’s younger sister had sent from Illinois. Then they smoked a hookah in their room.
Ashley's War Page 21