The Fighters

by C. J. Chivers

  Neff agreed. He and Laney moved through the blast site, tallying the dead. Two were girls, maybe ten years old or a little older. One wore a royal-blue dress with gold sequins in swirls. She rested on her back on bits of straw, eyes closed, streaks of blood clotted beneath her nose, the right side of her dress soaked over a hidden wound. Her right hand was wet with dark blood, as if she had clutched her wounds as she died. The other wore a pink top and pink pants. Her brown eyes were opened, staring blankly at the cold sky. A boy about eight years old was missing flesh from his chin and part of the right side of his head. Two smaller girls were similarly wounded. One was a toddler. Neff kept counting. Shrapnel had cut the throat of a gray-haired woman in a blue dress. The old man who had greeted him at sunrise was dead, too, as was a younger man whose upper forehead had been split. There were more: three young women or teenage girls. He looked at the tangle of bloody clothing for a long while before deciding he could not approximate two of the victims’ ages. It didn’t matter. Not now.

  At one spot a human foot lay alone. It had been sheared neatly from the shin. He had no idea to whom it had belonged.

  Sergeant Laney shared his count.

  “We’re at ten,” he said.

  Neff thought Laney had missed one. He pointed to a limb in the dust.

  “I’ve got number eleven over here,” he said.

  “No, sir,” Laney said. “That’s this guy’s arm.”

  Neff looked again. It was not an adult arm. It was a child’s leg.

  “No,” he said. “Eleven.”

  The two men confirmed the count. Five dead children, two dead adult males, four dead women or teenage girls. Eleven, as best they could tell.

  Neff passed the number to Colistra. Laney called Biggers and asked for a helicopter for the woman in the corner. Somehow she was still alive.

  Mixed among the dead were chests holding the owners’ possessions. It was all familiar by now, the same things the Marines had seen in each impoverished house: carpets, kitchen utensils, jugs of water, small glasses for tea, stacks of cushions and bedding. Afghan soldiers were arranging the bodies in a row and covering them in whatever cloth and blankets they could collect from the piles. After they lifted the body of one woman, they saw her abdomen had been torn open, revealing an unborn child. She had almost carried the baby to term.

  Several Marines swore.

  Neff felt a fresh wave of revulsion. He left the fetus out of his count.

  He was functioning on one level, as an officer in command, staying on mission. On other levels he was switched off. So were the Marines around him. This was the second day of their Afghan war. He found himself grateful to the Afghan soldiers who were tending to the dead, sparing the Marines some of the worst. They’re stepping up their game, he thought.

  Santana was listening to Haji Mohammad Karim, who stood in the mess, demanding the interpreter tell them his words. It created an eerie delay. The old man would shout, and the interpreter would speak softly in English.

  “You did this,” he said. “My family. You killed them. You did this.”

  The Marines were almost as shocked as he was. They did not know what had gone wrong, other than this had been a mistake. At their level they had not been involved in the call-for-fire that had brought the rockets here, and had no authority or leverage to find out more. They had no answers, or at least none of any use.

  Some of them tried to calm the man. “The Taliban did this,” one said.

  The words infuriated the old man. His anger filled the roofless room.

  “You lie!” he shouted. “You lie!”

  Neff felt his own anger rising. The rockets were not supposed to have hit here. This was all civilians, he thought. But he had to lead his platoon. He figured the company and the battalion would admit to the strikes. For now he had to hold his feelings inside. He needed to finish his mission and make sure his Marines were in position. A platoon commander cannot check out, he told himself. The battle was not over. Kilo Company had summoned a medevac helicopter. First Platoon would have to secure its landing zone.

  * * *

  A few hundred yards to the southeast, in Building 316, Niall Swider was taking another turn on post. The wall was head-high. He stood on a stack of two storage chests that allowed him to look over the top. The Taliban had gone quiet around the area where the rockets had landed. But at the blocking position where Charfauros’s squad was holding its lone building, gunmen kept harassing the Marines. Taliban fighters were in buildings to the south, moving from spot to spot, firing as they pleased. Flat ground separated them. Neither side could expect to rush the other and succeed. The two sides traded shots.

  Swider held an M4 rifle with a grenade launcher under its barrel. He was waiting for the Taliban to show again when he saw cigarette smoke rising from a shallow irrigation ditch that ran in front of a compound wall. He figured some of the Taliban gunmen were not religious. They smoked just like Marines. And this man had made a mistake. Swider could imagine it. The man must have been crawling through the ditch and now was lying there on his back, smoking, having a break. He had given his position away. Swider aimed his rifle. He figured he’d get this guy. The man popped up in a kneeling position with a Kalashnikov rifle. He wore a white top with a brown vest and ripped off a few bursts. Swider fired back. The bullets impacted in front of the man, just short. The man dropped out of sight.

  Swider was irritated. He’d have to try another way. He looked at the tall wall directly behind where the man was hiding, and had an idea. Ducking from view, he loaded his grenade launcher with a 40-millimeter high-explosive round. He would lob the grenade against the wall, just beyond where the smoke had been rising. It would burst there and splatter the man with fragmentation, killing him in his hiding spot.

  Swider slid the grenade launcher closed. He stood and swung its fat barrel toward the man.

  A bullet struck the top of the wall beside him, dusting him with chips of dried mud. It came from his left, from Building 2. He ignored it, remaining fixated on the spot where he had seen the smoke.

  His left arm went numb. His hand fell off the launcher’s barrel. Something smacked his chest.

  What the fuck, he thought. He had not gotten off his shot.

  His left hand could no longer grip anything. His rifle pointed down. Swider did not feel pain. How had he lost function of his arm? He was perplexed. He turned around.

  “Chief,” he said, “I think I just got shot.”

  “Then get the fuck down,” Charfauros said.

  Swider stepped off the stacked chests and grasped what had happened: The Taliban gunman to his left had been watching him as closely as he had been watching the smoker. The man had made a shot before Swider could. A bullet had passed through Swider’s left triceps, and been stopped by his vest’s ceramic plate.

  It was a wonder he was not dead.

  * * *

  Neff got a call from Charfauros saying Swider had been hit and Doc Harger had examined him. The wound, he said, was a through-and-through. The bullet had entered and exited without hitting bone.

  Neff said he’d try to arrange a medevac. Colistra was on a radio asking for an aircraft. The company now had three wounded people who needed to be picked up: Vuocolo, the dying woman, and Swider. They were in three different spots.

  The woman was growing quieter. Her breath had become faint, though she occasionally mumbled the children’s names. The Afghan interpreter sat beside her, lost in prayer. Santana and the corpsman had moved her onto a litter and continued to work on her. The little girl had returned and was in the room, bawling. Another woman was there, too, asking the Marines not to take the child.

  The wounded woman fell still.

  The Marines lifted her off the litter. She was dead. Afghan soldiers took her body, to bundle it in cloth and rest it beside the others.

  Helicopter rotors thumped to their south. Neff recognized the sound. Black Hawks. They were here to pick her up. Gunfire sounded. Someone was shooting
at the aircraft as it approached.

  We need to reroute the birds, Colistra thought.

  He stepped outside and saw them. There was no longer anyone to treat. He assumed the Taliban had not pulled back. They had used the time since the HIMARS strike to change positions. He radioed to Biggers. “They need to push off,” he said. “She’s gone.”

  The two helicopters kept coming. One was descending, preparing to land beside the compound’s southern wall—the side facing the Taliban. The other banked and circled, firing a machine gun.

  Bullets snapped by. Colistra ran into the open, heading toward where the medevac aircraft was settling, waving his arms, warning the pilots off. Laney ran out, too.

  Explosions shook the ground. Shit, Colistra thought. We’re getting mortared.

  Across the field, Biggers canceled the mission.

  “Abort!” he shouted. “Abort!”

  The gunfire grew. Colistra made eye contact with one of the pilots. He could see the man understood.

  From the south, near Building 316, a rocket-propelled grenade sailed overhead toward Building 284. It exploded by the aircraft. The concussive blast jolted Marines outside the walls.

  The helicopter lurched forward and pulled away, just above the ground. Gunfire followed it, then subsided. The aircraft banked and settled near Biggers to pick up Vuocolo.

  The Taliban had missed. The Marines were listening to the Taliban on their radio frequency. A frustrated commander berated his fighters.

  Neff called to Second Squad in Building 187 to give an update. “Everybody’s dead,” he said. He was spent but could not dwell on what had happened. The second day in Marja was ending and Kilo had not seized the bazaar and bridge. The company was low on water and ammunition. It would try again in the morning. The dead Afghans were arranged in a row in the compound’s one intact room in a mix of white sheets, blue sheets, and gray and green blankets, many of them stained. Neff did not know what Kilo would do with them. Its mission was still the bridge. He gave instructions for the bodies to be guarded, and headed back to the support-by-fire position to plan for the next day.

  Across the field, Biggers and his command group were moving west to the compound where Third Platoon waited with much of the company’s equipment. The Marines would form strongpoints for the night.

  * * *

  Inside Building 187, by darkness, Neff remained in a methodical state of mind. The day had been a horror. Someone above the platoon had made a grave mistake. He had not joined the Corps to do such harm. He sat with Colistra to vent. What the hell? That was crazy. But Neff also knew his platoon was blameless. He needed to keep his Marines focused and sharp. He thought back to his training and how more experienced infantry officers had told him of his duty to stay on top of his platoon and to look after its well-being. Kilo’s first big fight was already gaining a grim nickname: “The Valentine’s Day Massacre.” As shocked as he was, and no matter his preference for being understated, he knew he had to be a presence.

  First Squad was tired, and a few of its Marines were dirty with blood. They were scattered inside the building. Neff trusted Laney and allowed the night’s business to be done: issuing new ammunition, cleaning weapons, discussing the next day’s missions, assigning Marines to watch. But he made the rounds, looking at each man. Hey, what’s going on? How you doing? Do you need anything? Talk to me. Do you have what you need?

  Activity continued as the hours moved toward dawn. Late that night a helicopter landed near Building 316. Swider walked on and was flown away to have his bullet wound treated. More helicopters arrived later still, leaving food, water, and ammunition in a field beside the compound where Captain Biggers and Second Platoon had fought. It would be too dangerous to retrieve the supplies by day, so weary Marines passed the last hours of darkness lugging all the crates, jugs, and boxes into a compound before the sun rose and the gunfire resumed.

  The Marines guarding the bodies of the civilians had no food and little water. They had been sent to the shattered building so quickly that they left behind their backpacks with their supplies. It was a forlorn and eerie place, packed with dead animals and the family that had perished. The wind blew. The night was frigid. The Marines on guard huddled in the cold, night-vision goggles on, parched and famished until Afghan soldiers gathered the last eggs of the chickens killed by the rockets and cooked a meal to share.

  In Building 316, Charfauros, like Neff, stayed awake. The Taliban had attacked his squad from three directions during the day. He was edgy, even though he saw no movement through his goggles, and the buildings across the canal seemed deserted. The opposing gunmen had disappeared. Charfauros had a feeling why: Around Kilo Company, beyond the range of a rifle shot, Afghans were mourning. Over the wind, in the blackness, he could hear women wailing.

  * * *

  Neff and his Marines were ready the next morning for a repeat push. Captain Biggers was returning with more Marines and Afghan soldiers to try again.

  The Taliban waited along their route.

  Biggers led a widely spaced column, walking from west to east. At the first long field, the canal ran parallel to its southern side. The field was coated in fine white dust, resembling confectioners’ sugar, that silhouetted every man.

  Gunmen opened fire from the opposite side of the canal.

  From where he waited, Neff heard Kalashnikovs and PK machine guns, then American weapons replying. Marines in the kill zone were pouring fire into vegetation on the far side of the water. They suppressed the ambush as other Marines ran for Building 318, the compound to their east, and returned the favor.

  Though rounds had cracked past helmets and thudded into dirt beside the Marines, no one was wounded. The company regrouped, faced the bridge, and kept walking, winding its way behind Afghan homes, which shielded the Marines from further gunfire. Soon Neff saw the first of the troops striding into the compound of poppy plants where Vuocolo had been wounded the day before. They did not hesitate. The Marines pressed farther north, up a low hill, within sight of the bridge.

  Second Platoon, with a machine-gun squad and a contingent of Afghans, began its assault. Its Marines entered the last set of homes before the bazaar.

  At last the Taliban put up its defense—the battle Kilo had been expecting for weeks. They had built several bunkers and fought back, spraying the Marines with fire. The Afghan company commander was looking over a wall at the maneuvering troops. A bullet slammed into his face. He went down.

  The helicopters were ready. Neff saw a plume of the red-smoke grenade on the edge of the fight, marking where the casualty was waiting. A Black Hawk landed and flew away with the man. He was alive.

  Cobra attack helicopters began strafing the main bunker. Second Platoon crossed the distance to the bridge, throwing smoke grenades to obscure its rushes, and reached the road with minesweepers and an explosive ordnance disposal team, then went across. The Taliban withdrew. The bridge was under Marine control. The shooting subsided, reduced to occasional harassing shots.

  Some of the Marines had barely eaten or slept in two days, and most of the supplies that the transport helicopters had left had not been distributed. Inside Building 284, where Marines from First Platoon and a detachment of Afghan soldiers were guarding the bodies of the Afghan family, there was no water. Two Afghan soldiers ventured out with jugs to collect water from a canal. Neff was one building away, watching over the bazaar, when he heard a single shot, followed by shouts.

  “Fucking ANA got hit!”

  An Afghan soldier was down in the field. The other was dragging him. Neff, the corpsman, and a team of Marines ran out to help. Laney threw a smoke grenade. The wounded Afghan was a rifleman the Marines affectionately called King, for the gaudy gold necklace that he wore. He had been shot through the throat. They removed his helmet. It was full of hot blood. A team of Marines surrounded the man to protect him, looking for the shooter as others pulled him inside. There was little to do. King was unresponsive, struggling for breath on the fl
oor, his necklace slicked with blood running from a large wound.

  Neff figured the shot had come from about three hundred yards away. Whoever had done that probably was not using a Kalashnikov. Hell of a good shot, he thought.

  King’s labored breathing stopped. The corpsman worked a few minutes more before saying what everyone knew. King was dead.

  That night King’s body stayed in the open-air compound just outside where the Marines slept. His Afghan friends visited him to pray, weeping quietly. Neff tossed and turned a few dreary hours.

  * * *

  Two days later, on February 17, First Platoon made its first major move. Its original positions were no longer necessary. Kilo Company held the bridge and the bazaar, and the rest of the battalion was pressing closer to the croplands. The battalion’s other rifle companies were approaching slowly, searching for hidden bombs as they moved, anticipating ambushes. But most of them—including an engineering unit to build a walled outpost beside the bazaar—would soon be inside Marja’s green irrigated zone, allowing Kilo Company to relocate its forces.

  The day before, Colonel Christmas had flown in and walked with Captain Biggers and an infantry squad to Building 284, where Christmas sat with Haji Mohammad Karim to offer condolences and disburse a payment for each of the dead. The battalion had owned up to the strike as a mistake. Christmas told the grieving elder that the mishap would be investigated and that the Marines would help bury the dead wherever the family wished.

  Haji Mohammad Karim’s anger was no longer visible. Twelve of his relatives were dead, lined up in a room across the courtyard, wrapped in blankets and sheets, and under the guard of foreigners whose errant firepower had killed them. He was powerless, subdued, and solemn. He sat on a carpet in the ruins with a quiet dignity. The girl who had survived the rocket attack was beside him. Through an interpreter he accepted the money and asked that his relatives’ remains be transferred to Lashkar Gah, away from this place. Marines stood on watch outside. The dead animals on the ground were beginning to decay. The colonel said he would arrange for an aircraft to fly the bodies out.