The Only Thing Worth Dying For

by Eric Blehm

  Five minutes later, Ken rushed into the ruins carrying his aid bag. He got out his stethoscope and performed a full medical assessment on Wes; like Mag, he was most concerned with the proximity of the wound to arteries.

  As he was being examined, Wes suddenly understood the seriousness of the situation: God, I’m shot in the freakin’ neck, he thought. It can’t be this simple. Where’s all the blood? How much longer do I have? I feel fine. I can’t be fine! I’m shot in the freakin’ neck!

  “It’s all right, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Looks good,” said Ken. “A lot going on in this area. Don’t want to move you unless I’m sure. Let’s get you bandaged up.”

  But when Mag tried to help Wes out of his shirt, he said, “Don’t worry about taking my shirt off—just slap something on there.”

  “No,” said Ken, “we’ve got to get your shirt off to bandage this.”

  “Don’t cut it off. I can get out of it. Then I can walk off this hill.”

  “You can walk to the truck,” said Ken. “It’s parked over by the northern wall.”

  Once Wes was properly bandaged, Ken helped him stand, and Wes moved unsteadily to the truck parked in the dead space right below the ruins, supported between Ken and Mag.

  “You got my shirt, right?” Wes said, as they helped him lie down in a cradle of rucksacks and gear.

  “What is the big fucking deal about your damn shirt?” asked Mag.

  “There’s a bullet hole in it. That’s my souvenir. Don’t lose it, okay?”

  Mag shook his head. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep it safe.”

  Mag drove the truck down to compound one, parked, and climbed in back, where Ken was continuing to monitor Wes.

  “Hear that?” Mag said to Wes. It was quiet. Completely quiet. “Sounds like somebody got that motherfucker for you.”

  When Amerine came off the hill a few minutes later, Wes was still lying in the bed of the truck by compound one, being tended to by Ken. Two of Bari Gul’s trucks, sent over by JD, were just pulling up to take Wes back to Shawali Kowt, where a helicopter would medevac him once it was dark.

  “You doing all right?” Amerine asked.

  “I’m doing all right,” Wes answered, groggy from the shot of morphine Ken had given him. “Have fun in Kandahar. Sorry I won’t be here to help.”

  “We aren’t going anywhere for a while. When the Taliban surrender, our mission will shift to counterinsurgency—and that’s going to be for the long haul. Get fixed up and maybe they’ll let you come back and join us.”

  Wes smiled at that and gave Amerine a thumbs-up.

  The sky was shifting to the milky blue that preceded dusk as the trucks drove away and Amerine climbed back to the open courtyard of the ruins. Guerrillas were positioned along all four walls, and at the crater Alex was requesting a Spectre gunship to fly reconnaissance come nightfall. In the southwest corner, a team of guerrillas manned the PKM machine gun pointing toward the bridge. Mike and Mag were in the center of the ruins, directing guerrillas as they set up for the night.

  Everything is looking good, thought Amerine as his radio crackled to life. It was Fox. “Okay, we need your honest assessment,” Fox said. “How are things there?”

  “We’re in a good position,” Amerine said. “We’re solid. Once it gets dark, we’ll bring JD’s split team over. We control the whole area from this hill.”

  “Roger,” said Fox.

  In spite of Wes’s wound, it had been a successful day. The bridge was secure, and they controlled everything north of it for several miles. Across the fields, the sun was setting, prompting Amerine to give JD a warning order to prepare his team to relocate to the ruins. Amerine began to discuss the delegation of duties with Mag and Mike: Once ODA 574 was together in the ruins, Alex and Dan would alternate shifts controlling the AC-130, while the rest of the men would switch off on security, using their night vision to keep watch over all avenues of approach.

  Another radio call interrupted.

  “Texas One Two,” said Fox, “I need you to pull your forces off the hill and move to the support-by-fire position.”

  “Let me reiterate,” Amerine responded. “Everything is under control here. I think we really need to stay put. The helicopters bringing in your staff tonight will be landing north of our position. This was the axis of attack last night. We need to control the bridge.”

  “Roger, understood. Move your men.”

  Amerine stared at the radio, shaking his head. Fox’s order was a cliché right out of Vietnam, where soldiers would sometimes seize terrain from the enemy during the day—incurring great loss of life—only to be ordered to withdraw, thus giving it back to the Vietcong that night. ODA 574 had taken this hill and suffered a single, non-life-threatening casualty. Now the lieutenant colonel wanted to pull the team back? Tactically, this was the only terrain from which to fully control the bridge, and Amerine knew that Fox understood this. The only reason he could guess for Fox’s order was that he believed they were too far out front—that it was too dangerous.

  Of course it’s dangerous, thought Amerine. Does he understand we’re fighting a fucking war here?

  “Bad news?” asked Mike.

  “Fox wants us to give up the hill and move back to JD’s position.”

  Mike shook his head, while Amerine thought through his options and concluded that everything was rapidly going to shit. Worst of all, there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it. He was a professional soldier, and he would not disobey this order, because it was neither illegal nor immoral. The lieutenant colonel had the tactical authority to move ODA 574 wherever the hell he wanted. If Amerine expected his own men to follow his orders, he had to follow those of his superiors—but he didn’t bother to hide his displeasure from Mike and Mag.

  “Can you believe this shit?” he said.

  Mike shook his head again, and Mag said, “This is about as fucked as it gets.”

  “Yep,” said Amerine. “Fucked up as an Afghan convoy.”

  The assault team—minus Wes—begrudgingly packed up their gear, to the confusion of the guerrillas. Without an interpreter, there was no way to explain why the Americans were walking away from the place they’d fought so hard to occupy.

  As the men transferred the equipment from the ruins to their trucks parked at compound one, they noticed a vehicle coming toward them from the direction of the support-by-fire location. It was Casper, being driven by one of Bari Gul’s guerrillas.

  “Sorry, skipper,” Casper said to Amerine, getting out of the passenger seat. “I thought you were too far forward here. It just isn’t safe. I was talking to Fox and told him you don’t need to be here. Better to pull back because these guerrillas, they’ll run if push comes to shove.”

  Amerine couldn’t help himself. He began to laugh, then stifled it. Had Casper spooked Fox into moving the team?

  “Sir,” Dan said over the radio, “we’re standing by here at the support by fire—you’re coming to us. Is that affirmative?”

  “That’s affirmative,” said Amerine. “See you in a few minutes.”

  The assault team drove back across the fields just as darkness fell, taking a right turn onto the main road, then a left through the gap in the berm that led to the rear of JD’s position. Mike hadn’t even killed the engine before Amerine was out the door and stomping up the berm, where Ronnie, Victor, Brent, and Dan had formed a perimeter around the machine-gun emplacements. Though the captain rarely displayed emotion, he was now visibly angry.

  “Take a walk, sir?” JD said when Amerine reached him.

  “Let’s,” said Amerine.

  They walked a short way down the ridge, where Amerine unloaded a string of scathing curses. JD stood with his arms crossed, nodding his head and listening.

  Abruptly, Amerine stopped and smiled. “I feel better,” he said. “Would you like to add anything?”

  “You about covered it. Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  “All right
then,” Amerine said with a laugh. “Let’s see what’s next, right?”

  Fox was standing on the berm when they got back. “Was he here the whole time?” Amerine asked JD.

  “He’s been here,” said JD. “He came forward with Casper when the shooting started, and he’s been hanging back and observing. Bolduc and Smith are back at the Alamo with some G’s.”

  “Thanks for diverting me.”

  “Part of my job, sir.”

  “Sorry, Captain,” said Fox, stepping up to them. “It just didn’t feel right to me. The guerrillas might have left you. We’ve got good fields of fire on this side of the bridge from here.”

  Not trusting himself to be civil, Amerine just nodded. He could see that Fox was struggling with what to say: Perhaps he was considering an apology or a further explanation of his decision. Amerine waited in silence.

  A call from Smith came through the lieutenant colonel’s radio: “Task Force Dagger is ordering Texas One Two to regroup in Shawali Kowt.”

  “Say that again?” Fox said. “They want the ODA to consolidate back in Shawali Kowt?”

  “Roger,” said Smith.

  “All right,” said Fox, taken aback. “But radio them again for clarification. Make sure they understand we’re asking the team to pull all the way back to Shawali Kowt.”

  Fox contemplated how he might challenge this order: Hey, there’s nothing illegal, immoral, or unethical about pulling us back to the town. Maybe they know something we don’t know.

  “Okay, this doesn’t make any sense,” he said to Amerine, “but Task Force Dagger wants all of us to pull back to the Alamo.”

  In spite of Amerine’s simmering anger, he found himself amused by the irony. “No, it doesn’t make any sense,” he said flatly.

  “Well, they’re ordering us back,” said Fox. “We have to go.”

  “Yep,” said Amerine.

  The team drove their trucks to Shawali Kowt in silence and parked at the base of the Alamo. Getting out, the exhausted men leaned against the vehicles, awaiting orders. Nobody on ODA 574 had gotten more than a couple of hours of sleep in the past forty-eight hours, and they were dirty, tired, and bitter about having been pulled off the hill.

  “What’s the call, sir?” JD asked Amerine.

  “Since we don’t control the bridge, we’re running the same risk of a counterattack. We’ll keep the entire team on the Alamo tonight. Reestablish the perimeter and put some of the boys to bed.”

  While the men retrieved their rucksacks from the trucks, Smith came down from the Alamo to tell Dan he was having trouble reaching Task Force Dagger. Actually, he was unable to reach anybody via satellite, and he thought Dan, who had a reputation for being able to “make commo” when others failed, might be able to figure out what the hell was wrong. Dan followed him back up to the command post on top of the hill.

  Remaining where he was, Amerine pulled out his map and erased the circle he’d drawn around the bridge earlier that day. Fox drove up with Casper, avoiding eye contact with Amerine as he walked back up the Alamo.

  Soon, Dan returned with JD, who reported that the team was positioned for the night. The net was down—a satellite glitch, Dan informed Amerine. “Smith got the message to pull back from Task Force Dagger. Clear as day, he heard them say, ‘Pull back.’ Then they lost the connection and could not reconfirm. It’s still down—I couldn’t make commo.”

  “Oh, and Bolduc says some Taliban were in the orchards across the river trying to sneak over here.” Dan pointed south. “Says it was a flanking maneuver and he took care of it with some guerrillas.”

  JD snorted. “Did anybody hear about any flanking going on?”

  Amerine and Dan shook their heads, as did Brent and Mag, who had come down for more gear. “Fox never mentioned it,” said JD to Amerine. “Sounds like bullshit—he’s trying for medals.”2

  “Anyway, let me know when commo is back up,” said Amerine. To JD he said, “The team needs sleep. We’ll go to thirty percent immediately. Make sure they’re straight on the alert plan if the Taliban come across the bridge again tonight.”

  “How do you want to do it, sir?”

  “You want me to take first shift, or you?” Amerine asked.

  “I don’t care,” said JD. “Why don’t you get some sleep since you’re smoked.”

  “Okay,” said Amerine. “Thanks.”

  Amerine was pulling his sleeping bag out of his rucksack at the top of the Alamo when he was joined by Charlie.

  “Just wanted to give you a pat on the back,” the spook said. “You’ve got to be pretty pissed off right now, eh, Jason?”

  “Livid,” said Amerine.

  “Well, I thought I’d fill you in on a few things. First, when the Taliban came over the bridge last night, it wasn’t a big coordinated counterattack after all. It was a defensive move on their part, at least at first. Some of your guerrillas crossed the bridge on their own, and the Taliban handed them their asses. That’s what started it.”

  “You know who it was?”

  “Haji Badhur,” said Charlie. “Him and his men—they came forward from Damana. We think he wanted to pillage those villages on the other side of the river. After he saw you guys spank the Taliban when you first got into town, he thought they’d all retreated. Easy pickings.”

  “Ha! Sounds completely in character for that pirate,” said Amerine.

  “Yep. But the bigger news is that Hamid was on the phone all day again, that big conference where the Afghan bigwigs are meeting in Germany, and they’re still pushing for him to lead this country after this is all over.”

  “I can’t imagine a better man for the job.”

  “There’s more,” said Charlie. “Hamid is expecting a big delegation from Kandahar tomorrow.”

  “Here?”

  “Sometime in the morning or afternoon Mullah Naqib, an intermediary for the Taliban, is coming over from Kandahar to do a face-to-face with Hamid. We’re thinking they might be ready to hand over the city.”

  “Wow.” Amerine unbuttoned his cargo pocket, removed the map, and showed it to Charlie, using a red-lensed flashlight to highlight the overlapping circles he’d been plotting, like some bizarre Venn diagram, to document Karzai’s campaign. He’d drawn the first circle less than three weeks before, when they’d arrived in Haji Badhur’s Cove; after the Battle of Tarin Kowt, Karzai’s support had tidal-waved across the tribal belt. Based on Northern Alliance and American victories in the north and overwhelming support for Karzai in the south, Amerine and Charlie deduced that Taliban leaders had realized they were all but finished.

  “Wow,” Amerine said again. He thought of Wes riding away in the back of the pickup with a hole through his neck. “Wes might be the first SF guy shot by the enemy in this war.”

  Charlie nodded. “He might be.”

  “Seven years ago, almost to the day, I had to medevac half my platoon in Panama. That time it was rocks instead of bullets. I swear I’m some kind of widow-maker.”

  “Ah, that’s bullshit,” said Charlie. “But I wouldn’t mention it to anybody else.”

  “Oh, I won’t.”

  Amerine sat down on his sleeping bag in a low spot east of the mortar pit, ripped open an MRE pouch, and took a few bites of cold beef stew, washing it down with big gulps of water from his canteen.

  “In Somalia I lost a good friend,” Charlie said, sitting down next to him. “There was nothing anybody could have done to change that—except maybe to have skipped the war. Wars are always the same. Good people die, get hurt, get crippled. All you can do is what you think is right in the middle of the chaos.”

  JD walked up. “Security is set,” he said, taking a seat on the ground.

  “Let’s hope it’s a quiet night,” said Amerine.

  “Heard you talking about Somalia,” JD said.

  “You were there?” asked Charlie.

  “Yeah,” said JD. “I went home early before my tour ended to attend a medical course, but in Somalia I was the TC
* of my Hummer during patrols…You know, sat in the passenger seat beside the driver. Anyway, a week after I left, my old crew ran over a mine. It killed the guy that replaced me. Bob Deeks, I’ll never forget his name; died on March 3, 1993—three, three, ninety-three. Bothered me for a long time. Still does.”

  “Somalia,” he said after a moment. “What a fiasco. At least now we’re in a war that makes some sense.”

  The three sat in silence for a while, then Charlie stood up. “Well, if I don’t see you later tonight, I’ll see you somewhere down the road. I’m heading home.”

  “Home?” said Amerine.

  “Got some stuff going on with my family. It’s an emergency. I’m going to hop on one of the helicopters that’s bringing in Fox’s staff,” he said, shaking their hands. “I’ll catch you guys later.”

  After Charlie was gone, Amerine told JD, “Indications are only getting stronger that Hamid will be the interim leader; they’re working out the final details tonight in Germany. It’s not official yet, but Hamid is almost guaranteed to be named the chairman of a transitional government. The Bonn Conference has created a timeline. Within six months, Afghanistan will have a Loya Jirga and then, in two years, a presidential election.”

  “So Hamid is going to get his Loya Jirga.”

  “That’s all he wanted.”

  “God help him if he’s elected president,” JD said. “He’s too good a man for those political games. They’ll eat him alive.”

  Once JD left, Amerine finally lay down in his sleeping bag and was a second shy of nodding off when Dan strode over to tell him commo was up. “You are going to love this: We got a message from Task Force Dagger asking for awards recommendations from all the Fifth Group elements in theater. They want them ASAP.”