Tears rolled down Abdul Wali’s cheeks as he reached out to hug Dan, shattering whatever stoicism Dan had left in the face of what he saw as a horrible injustice. Dan cried harder, tears of anger and sadness. His heart was bleeding.
Jim came into the room, speechless with grief. He hugged Abdul Wali, too, and kissed him. Abdul Wali couldn’t fathom why this was happening. As they were leaving, he plaintively raised both of his hands in the air, asking, “Wailay? Why?”
When Jim and Dan returned to the courtyard, the infantry soldiers of Tribe 34 surrounded them, asking them to sign their metal weapons’ magazines and cloth lambda patches with marking pens and take photographs.
“Sir, this is fucked up,” said Dan’s gunner, Bartlett.
“You guys have to do the best you can with what you have here,” Dan told him.
It was time to go. Dan and Jim walked out of the qalat toward the waiting vehicles. Jim was keenly aware that the rifle and pistol he wore had no magazines, a glaring sign of dishonor.
Outside the gate, the dozen arbakai who guarded the qalat were standing in two rows in formation, with Sadiq and Zia Ul Haq between them. All of them were crying. Jim shook each man’s hand, and embraced him, and then turned to go.
Solheim was watching, with a pained look on his face.
“You have had quite an impact on these guys,” he told Jim. “They are really going to miss you.”
“Yeah,” Jim said.
Last of all, Jim said goodbye to Ish. He grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him.
“I love you,” Jim said.
“My brother, please,” Ish said. His voice trailed off into nothing.
Dan and Jim rode enclosed in separate armored vehicles that carried them down the road, through a gate, and inside the thick walls of FOB Fortress. Dan was let out next to a helicopter landing zone. He had been ordered not to speak with Jim, and watched as Jim and Kirila climbed out of the other vehicle some distance away.
The faint whirring of helicopter blades sounded down the valley. It was a sound that had always got Dan’s adrenaline pumping. But this afternoon, as the thumping of the blades grew louder, Dan felt numb, drained. The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter circled and dropped down onto the landing zone in a cloud of dust. A helmeted crew chief got out. Dan watched as Jim picked up his bags and started walking toward the chopper, his hair and clothes blown back by the rotor wash—out of earshot, almost out of sight.
Dan felt a pang of anguish. This is unreal. How do I show Jim: I am here, let’s not give up, we accomplished the mission? In an instant, it came to him.
In one swift movement, Dan threw back his shoulders and came to attention. Then he raised his hand in a crisp salute and held it, his eyes riveted on Jim, who was about halfway to the chopper. It was Jim’s practice when leaving places to never look back. But at that moment, something made him turn around. His heart froze.
Dan!
Jim dropped his bags. With his weapon slung over his shoulder, he raised his hand, and for several seconds he returned Dan’s salute.
CHAPTER 33
“ANN, IT’S OKAY NOW.”
Chevy was calling me from the front seat of the truck driven by the big-bearded ASG commander.
“You can sit up!”
I hesitated for a minute, and the truck came to a stop. Just as I was getting up from the footwell, the door opened. It was Abe. We were outside COP Penich on the road, at a spot where Abe knew the cameras positioned on the camp could not see us.
“Come on!” he said, taking my arm.
We ran together to the white ALP pickup truck. One of the arbakai from Chowkay riding in the back with an AK-47 flashed me a big grin. I climbed into the backseat and Abe took off driving, with Shafiq beside him.
I felt giddy. I was escaping the Americans, surrounded and protected by Afghans. The sense of safety and freedom I felt was almost indescribable.
Behind us, Azmat drove another ALP truck filled with arbakai from Mangwel.
Shafiq’s radio crackled. It was Azmat, speaking to him in rapid-fire Pashto.
“There are big Army guys at the police checkpoint in Mangwel!” Abe told me. “The only way to bypass them is to go through Kawer,” he said.
A few minutes later we wound into Kawer, and found Niq Mohammed’s arbakai lining the roads. Then Niq himself appeared, smiling broadly. His face alone was immensely reassuring to me. The irony that this former Taliban commander would fill me with a sense of security was so striking it made me laugh.
We stopped briefly so Niq could climb into the back of Azmat’s truck and escort us through the area. Members of three arbakai forces were now part of my getaway.
To skirt the U.S. patrol in Mangwel we drove along a dirt road nicknamed “Sleepy Hollow” that hugged the Konar River, and then passed through Chamaray. From that point, I knew no one would stop us. The trip itself became a blur, as my mind, free from worry about the escape, was not yet able to fathom our catastrophic loss.
We continued along the river toward the partly collapsed, V-shaped bridge called Zire Baba. From there, it was only another twenty miles on the hour-long journey to the thronging city of Jalalabad.
AT ABOUT FOUR O’CLOCK, Imran heard a knock on the door of his room at COP Penich. It was Dan.
Imran rushed to him and they hugged each other, crying a little.
“How in the hell did you get Ann out of here?” Dan asked.
Imran started telling him the story, when suddenly Solheim and McCafferty burst in the door. They walked straight back to Ish’s room.
“Is Miss Tyson there?” Solheim asked.
“Who?” Imran said.
McCafferty pushed open the door to Ish’s room. It was empty.
“Oops!” he said. “She’s gone.”
`“Where is she?” Solheim demanded.
“I have no clue,” Imran said. “She was talking with her sponsor, I think.”
“Did you see her sponsor?” Solheim asked.
“No, I didn’t.”
Solheim threw an accusing glance at Dan.
“Don’t look at me!” Dan said. He knew he should shut up, but he couldn’t resist. “You know Jim—if he’s good at one thing, it’s making things happen. He is always two steps ahead of you.”
With a look of irritation, Solheim turned and left. Imran later heard he and McCafferty had gone to check the Penich surveillance cameras to try to find out whether I was still on the camp. They found nothing.
“Get some chai going,” Dan said after they left. “I am going to pack my stuff and come back.”
In an hour or so, Dan returned. He and Imran spoke and drank chai into the evening as they waited for the helicopter that would take Dan to the base at Jalalabad.
“They can think whatever they want,” Dan said of his commanders. “But you know, and I know, and the people we worked with know, we have been honest with our country and tried our level best to win this war that has gone on for eleven years.
“When we infilled in Chowkay, they didn’t give us a dime. My guys were freezing; the Afghans in the tents were freezing. Our lives depended on the guys up in the OP [observation post] at night when it was raining,” he said. “What we did in Chowkay would have taken other teams years. But now the Afghans have seen what the Americans did to us. Trust is gone, and security will go bad.”
Dan poured Imran some more tea.
“It will be a little while before I drink chai with you again,” Dan said.
Soon it was time to go. Azmat and Niq and several of the arbakai came to say goodbye.
The helicopter was inbound. Imran and Dan walked together to the landing zone.
Dan watched the chopper flying up the valley and shook his head.
“Look at that. How many attacks have we been in and asked for air and never got it?” he said. “They didn’t support us, but now they are bringing in separate birds for me and Jim.”
Tears again started streaming down Imran’s face. “You know, if I could have done anythi
ng for you, I would have done it,” he said.
“I know,” Dan said over the noise of the helicopter landing. “Be strong. We will get you out of here.” Then he hugged Imran and walked to the aircraft.
Imran watched the helicopter until it flew out of sight, and then returned to his room for another long, lonely night. Roberts would not give him back his phone, so he could not call his family. Imran was doubly isolated, because Roberts had ordered all the U.S. soldiers not to speak with him.
The next morning, military investigators scoured the camp. Imran packed his bags, quietly wrote his resignation letter, and walked to the operations center to give it to Roberts.
“There is only one thing I am going to ask you,” he told Roberts. “Take care of those guys for us, the ones who stayed in Chowkay,” he said.
As he prepared to leave, Imran heard a knock at his door. It was one of Roberts’s soldiers—Spec. Trevor Iler, who worked in the operations center. A lanky and soft-spoken twenty-three-year-old from McBain, Michigan, Iler never went on combat missions, but he did the best he could at his administrative job.
“I don’t care if Roberts doesn’t want me to talk with you,” Iler told Imran. “They can’t charge me with anything for talking to an Afghan. That is our goal here,” he said.
Imran invited Iler in, and then Iler began to cry.
“Whatever they did, they did,” Iler said. “But I always wanted to earn a lambda patch. I never had the chance.”
Imran thought for a minute. Then he reached onto the shoulder of his jacket and pulled something off.
“Bro, here is my ghairat patch,” he said, handing Iler a red, green, and black badge with the gold Pashto letters that meant “honor.” It was a patch prized by arbakai as well as Jim’s men.
“This was the most important patch to Jim,” Imran said, placing it on Iler’s right shoulder. “If he knew you were this kind of guy, Jim would have given it to you. I will tell him what you said.”
“Thank you,” Iler said. “I will never forget you.”
Iler and another soldier helped Imran carry his bags out to the gate. On the way, Imran saw Roberts. He had a parting shot, and he took it.
“I know you don’t like me,” he told Roberts, looking him straight in the eye. “But there is something I want you to know: I don’t like you, either.”
Then Imran went on his way, headed for Jalalabad.
ABE DARTED IN AND out of the Jalalabad traffic, his torso almost immobile as his hands flicked left and right on the steering wheel. He passed bicycles and flatbed trucks and brightly painted rickshaws in streets lined with sundry shops. Then we drove down a narrow side road and pulled up to the blue metal gate of the Khans’ large Jalalabad home. It swung open, and we drove into the inner courtyard.
Jalalabad was not a safe city—there were frequent explosions and other insurgent attacks, such as a bicycle bomb detonated just down the street during one earlier visit. But behind those high walls I felt protected from such dangers. What I feared most was that the U.S. military would somehow track me down. I listened intently to the vehicles passing on the street below, my ears alert to anything that sounded like a military patrol.
Abe led me up a long staircase from the entrance to a hallway and Ish’s bedroom, where Ish’s wife greeted me warmly. After Abe left, she and I sat on pillows placed on the carpet and drank tea as her three-year-old son Haroon played nearby. I was acquainted with Ish’s wife, having spent a day with her there soon after the birth of her second son, who tragically died of illness as an infant. With an almond-shaped face and pale skin, she was gentle and slightly frail but had a happy disposition. As I spoke to her using my basic Pashto, she sensed I was upset and urged me to rest. Soon Abe’s mother and sisters arrived and spread out a plastic sheet on the floor, then served a meal of flatbread, chicken stew, yogurt, and spinach. Ish’s wife brought me a plastic bucket of warm water to wash in, and a matching green and magenta dress and pants in the Jalalabad style—more fitted than those worn by rural Konar women. I showed them photographs and videos I had taken of Ish and Abe in Chowkay, and saw the pride in their faces as they watched them.
Amid this outpouring of hospitality and kindness, though, I fell suddenly and violently ill, vomiting into the Afghan-style toilet in Ish’s room several times before I finally fell asleep, exhausted.
The next morning, I woke up nauseous but knowing clearly what I had to do. First, I had to back up all my notebooks, tapes, and photographs so that no one could stop me from telling the story of what Jim and his teams had done. After that, I had to comb through my materials and get rid of anything that could possibly be detrimental if it fell into the hands of the military.
Imran arrived from COP Penich, and he and his younger brothers started scanning all of my notebooks while I backed up photographs and tapes on external hard drives—a process that would take us several days. I also started sorting through electronics and papers, burning in a blazing furnace on the roof any material that might be used against them. We took precautions to keep me hidden from the U.S. military—switching out SIM cards on phones whenever I made a call, and avoiding using the Internet. I moved between Abe’s house and that of another relative in Jalalabad several times, riding in the backseats of various cars covered from head to toe in my blue burkha.
Sometime that afternoon, we got word that Jim was disarmed and under escort at Bagram, and under a direct order to have no contact with me.
A COLD WIND WHIPPED at Jim as he rode in the Black Hawk helicopter on the long flight to Bagram with Lt. Col. Corley, who was assigned to escort him everywhere.
When they landed, Jim was driven directly to a room at the back of Camp Montrond, the SOTF-E compound at Bagram. His guns, knife, and other gear were taken away—he could no longer protect anyone, not even himself.
“You need to get cleaned up right now,” Corley said. “Here are some scissors,” said the balding and heavyset lieutenant colonel, handing Jim a pair of shears and following him into the bathroom.
As Corley watched, Jim stood in front of the mirror and slowly began cutting off his long, graying beard.
With each snip, Jim felt his honor falling away, and struggled to keep his hands from shaking. It was the ultimate act of submission. He made a ragged mess of his beard and then picked up a razor and scraped the rest of it off. Looking at himself in the mirror, he barely recognized the person in the reflection. It was not only demeaning; it was the beginning of the obliteration of his identity.
“Now get in the shower,” Corley demanded, handing Jim a uniform, T-shirt, and size thirteen boots—clown-like because they were too large.
Jim took off his clothes and felt the water running over his body. Then he dressed and returned to his room, which adjoined Corley’s, and sat down numbly on the bed.
Soon afterward, the command doctor arrived.
“I have to ask you some questions,” he said. “Are you going to hurt yourself, or others?”
“No,” Jim replied, although his mind was screaming otherwise.
After that cursory encounter, Corley took Jim to see Linn, who was waiting in his Camp Montrond office with the command judge advocate, or JAG.
With perfect hair and a pressed uniform, Linn struck Jim as a Captain America type of officer. The meeting was extremely formal and by the book. The JAG read Jim his rights again. He advised Jim that he was confined to Camp Montrond and Corley would escort him at all times—he could not go to the bathroom without informing Corley. Moreover, Jim was forbidden to speak about the case or to have any communication at all with me. He was ordered to stay at least fifty feet away from me at all times.
Linn advised Jim again of the allegations against him: alcohol and drug use, misappropriation of fuel, misuse of government funds, and an inappropriate relationship with me.
Afterward, Jim returned to his room and tried to sleep.
The next day he was isolated and alone. The silence in the small, seven-by-ten-foot room was deafe
ning, and the loneliness painful. His head was throbbing from a headache. He took out a dark blue bound journal and started writing to me, citing a Pashto proverb that we had often shared.
“Behind the door, behind the mountain,” he wrote. It meant that even if I were just on the other side of the door, my absence felt as though I was far away behind a distant mountain.
BACK AT THE QALAT in Chowkay, the new Special Forces team was facing a virtual mutiny, as it further alienated the Safi tribesmen who were loyal to Jim and outraged after watching how the U.S. military had removed him from command.
As soon as the armored vehicles pulled out with Jim and Dan, the arbakai swarmed around Ish.
“We’re done,” they said. “We’re not doing this anymore.” Sadiq was particularly angry, and wanted to lash out.
Ish appealed to them all to stay on. It took great fortitude for Ish to do so, because he hated being there himself, but he did it for Jim.
“It’s the right thing to do,” he urged. “Stay for now.”
Reluctantly, they agreed.
But Capt. Fleming and his team so mistrusted and neglected the Afghans living with them that the situation quickly deteriorated. They immediately broke all of the basic rules that Jim had drilled into his men for securing themselves in the qalat. Fleming’s team was keeping a distance from the Afghans, refusing to place trust in them, and failing to provide for them.
The first night, Ish bought a lamb and had it cooked for the arbakai, and stayed up with them talking until two in the morning to try to calm things down. But Fleming and his men, fully geared up in body armor and wired up with tactical intrateam radios, stayed up on watch all night.
“They didn’t do anything but pull guard all night long because they were so scared and uptight,” observed Ghulam Hazrat, one of the mercenaries, who remained at the qalat with the team for a few days. “No human being could possibly love those new team guys, they were like morons,” he added. “We were so used to Jim. Every morning we would wake up for prayers and Jim would be in the qalat hugging us and greeting us. Jim and his men were like Pashtuns and acting normal.”
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