When the Killer Man Comes

by Paul Martinez

  I was reassured that my trusted friend felt the same way I did, and our conversation lulled as we continued eating. I tried to process exactly how I was feeling. I was conflicted. On the one hand, I would proudly fight anyone, anywhere, for my country, death and injury be damned. On the other, I imagined how I would feel if I had to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair if my legs got blown off by an IED while we were burning cannabis for the DEA. Worse still, how could I reconcile the loss if one of my brothers died doing that?

  “Did you know that back home, pot is nothing more than a petty offense?” I asked Mac.

  “I’ve read about that. Boulder, right?” Mac acknowledged. “How does that work, man?”

  “Denver too, bro. It’s the same as a jaywalking ticket,” I explained.

  “Hmm!” Mac affirmed, nodding to me while he chewed the last of his meal.

  I continued, “Man, I’m not getting my legs blown off for this—”

  Mac, sensing my rising emotion, interrupted me. “I got you, bro; we probably just went after the wrong guy. The poppy is paying the Taliban. That’s what they expected us to find.”

  I nodded my agreement.

  “Let’s get back to the TOC,” Mac said. “Maybe they have a different target line for us.” We were both hoping that we were changing our strategic direction.

  We policed up our trays and empty drinks, and headed back to the TOC. I felt like Mac and I were on the same page regarding the futility of trying to burn up all the sheesh in Afghanistan. I wondered how the rest of my Ranger buddies felt about it.

  When we got to the TOC, the rest of the guys were still filtering in. Our DEA agent was talking with Major Dan and First Sergeant Hutch. Sergeant Reggie had gotten there early, which was his usual practice, and he’d already heard the gist of what we were expecting for this night’s operation. Mac and I drank some coffee and chatted with our team leader while we waited for the official word.

  Sergeant Reggie explained that “someone,” “somewhere” from within the enormous but amorphous U.S. intelligence community had pinpointed the location of a major player in the drug trade. Reggie started passing around maps and aerial photos of our proposed objective area.

  I immediately focused on the photography. They were in “black hot” thermal. This means that they were taken with special cameras that capture images by measuring heat. The hotter something was, the darker it would be. In this case, I could see the black spot at the center of our target compound, with four or five larger, nearly black spots around it.

  I knew from experience that represented the residents of the compound and a cooking fire. I looked at the macro picture, a zoomed-out version of the same image, and started committing to memory the temporary names and numbers we had assigned to the roads. We named the roads after sports teams and numbered the buildings in sequence. This was our normal tactic and was nothing more than an aid to memorization. It was disposable information, and after a couple deployments it was easy to commit what we needed to know to memory and then immediately “brain dump” when the mission debrief and AAR were complete.

  When the TOC was filled up, Staff Sergeant Bill took charge and called for everyone to take their seats while our senior leadership chatted among themselves. The briefing was pretty standard. We had done a similar mission the night before and we were going to do it again.

  After the briefing, we gathered on the concrete pad outside of TOC as we always did, checking comms and doing PCIs (pre-combat inspections) on our gear. Normally I would feel nervous and excited, but also superhuman before a mission. Just the sight of kitted-up Rangers, my brothers and peers, gave me supreme confidence, not to mention pride. Here I was, surrounded by the baddest men on the planet, any one of whom could have been my childhood hero. They were the guys I watched John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, and Lee Marvin portray in the movies I grew up loving. These were the men who bumped back against the monsters of this world. They were noble, selfless, and wickedly determined to visit the ruthless violence of Ranger justice upon our enemies.

  We call sniper work “overwatch.” I said it in every briefing when I explained what I was doing on our mission. I always began by saying, “Rangers lead the way, gentlemen. My call sign is Sierra-One, and my task and purpose tonight is to provide overwatch and precision fires.”

  It was, and still is, the thing I am most proud of: the exhilarating duty to watch over these bloody-handed heroes. It was a dizzying responsibility and still overwhelming for me to think of at times. But this night I felt blank; the normal balance of fear and pride was mute because the mission was different. I know now that this was a survival instinct: my internal system was shutting off unnecessary components to maintain focus on the task at hand.

  On most missions you knew it was worth getting your legs blown off because you were stopping the guys who made and emplaced IED’s, trafficked in people and weapons, brutalized women, and killed indiscriminately. But this operation took a bigger leap of faith than that.

  In Afghanistan, food crops aren’t worth the water it takes to grow them because Pakistan dominated the Afghan market with much cheaper imported food. There was almost no way to make cash from your crops unless you grew hemp or cannabis. So many of the farmers grew crops just for subsistence and grew cannabis for the money they needed to make a living.

  I was scared, to be sure: that was a given anytime you’re in country. No one isn’t afraid of being maimed or killed or of losing their brothers. This mission was happening, and I had better do it right, just like I had better do it right every night. If I made a mistake it was unlikely that I would pay the price; it would cost someone else instead. That was unacceptable to me. Even though I found this mission distasteful, and one that went against my personal morals and ethics, I had a higher moral imperative to keep faith with my leadership and to make sure I overwatched the platoon and had their backs.

  I looked around at the men in 1st and 2nd Platoons and thought that every day we were closer to the boiling point that would officially kick off the fighting season. We were going back to the outskirts of Kandahar, maybe 10 klicks from where we had been the night before. I hoped tonight we wouldn’t be the casualties that precipitated this year’s fighting. We had already drawn first blood on the enemy in the city, and if I knew one thing, it was that they knew SOF (Special Operations Forces) had a vested interest in shaping the area to set the conditions in our favor when the fighting season did begin.

  This time, we were going against our SOP (Standard Operating Procedure), and we weren’t being quiet about it. Our cunning enemy wasn’t going to come out and fight us any longer. They could just wait and work behind the scenes until the American and ISAF troops withdrew. (ISAF was the International Security Assistance Force—the NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan.) We had to make ourselves an irresistible and easy target. At least we would have the full complement of Task Force Merrill taking the fight to them.

  We loaded up on our Chinooks, and my apprehension melted away. Our platoon motto, “With it or ON IT,” was our mantra, and it gave me a goal to focus on. There was no home, no politics, no quitting, no second-guessing—just inertia. We were now as unstoppable as gravity. The birds taxied to the runway, and the engines throttled all the way up. Their tremendous power made the airframe shudder, and soon we were airborne and momentarily weightless.

  Once airborne, I pulled out a small map I had made of the target area and a red pinch light (the kind you put on a key chain) and studied the route we would take once we were on the ground, noting the prominent intersections and the building where we thought we would find our heroin grower.

  Our flight to the objective area in our Chinooks was pretty standard—if you can call roaring over the Afghan countryside at 175 knots—almost 200 miles per hour—in the middle of the night in blacked-out birds standard. It was a quick flight, probably less than 30 minutes, and each of us was alone with our thoughts and our mental preparation for the mission ahead.

 
By the time we landed, I was fully in the zone. It felt like a low boil of anger mixed with glee, but tamped down by the iron discipline the Ranger Regiment instilled in us.

  The birds pitched as they dropped below the treetops, landing with a lurch in a rough field not yet readied for the coming growing season’s crops. I followed the rest of my chalk off the Chinook’s back ramp, racked a round into the chamber of my M110, and started walking so fast my shins burned before we hit the wood line and picked up our infiltration route to the objective area.

  When we got to within 50 meters of the compound, we established our standard security cordon around the target area while the assault force headed for the compound. The assault team conducted a surreptitious breach of the compound, defeating a chain and padlock and slipping through a vehicle gate. Once the assault team had the main house under their guns, Zeke activated his bullhorn and began his scripted instructions.

  “Inside the house. American forces have you surrounded. Come out with your hands in the air.”

  It was a simple script, but who the heck knows what he was adding to the loud torrent of the five languages he spoke. It must have been compelling, because soon the man of the house, along with what seemed like a dozen children and half as many wives, staggered out. You could see they had dressed hastily.

  Zeke was generally shy and reserved—he was barely old enough to buy beer in the United States—but he had been on countless missions and took charge of his role with confidence. He commanded the women and children to go to one end of the walled-in courtyard and the men to go to the other. It only took an instant to verify the ages of the younger males, a twelve-year-old and a fourteen-year-old, both of whom we deemed non-threats. The father would be the one we were interested in, and his sons were sent to the women-and-children side of the courtyard.

  When we were planning the mission, Marc and I agreed we couldn’t both be on the ground and cover everything we needed to, so we split up. He had my favorite job, proactively roaming our immediate area by hunting in the gaps in our outer cordon. I was going to do my work from a second-story rooftop in our target compound. We could cover everything, and if we stayed on top of it, we could support each other. It wasn’t easy spotting for your sniper partner from a distance, but we knew from our training that it could be done.

  We were on opposite ends of our cordon, and I called Marc to let him know I was moving. “Sierra-Three, Sierra.”

  “Go for Sierra-Three,” Marc called back.

  “Roger, I’m climbing.” This was my way of telling Marc that I was leaving my position on the ground at the cordon to go inside the compound. Once there, I planned on using a ladder or stairs to get to the rooftop. I continued: “When you get down here, you’ll see that Two-Gun has moved off the MSR. You’ll see them hidden under the cypress trees. I’ve got visibility to 1,200 meters, but your shots should be inside of 500 meters.”

  I gave him a few more landmarks and distances, so he had a rough sketch of the area: an intersection at 200 meters, a house at 350 meters whose occupants seemed to be awake, a heap of dirt that could be a fighting position at 100 meters. If he had to flex in that direction in a hurry, these details could get him into the fight faster.

  “Copy all,” Marc replied.

  I made my way to the breach. Tonight we were dealing with a big compound with an accommodating roof. It would afford me the longest views and bit of room to move and take cover if they bombarded us with RPGs. I paused at the gate and in a low voice called out, “Friendly, coming in.” We wore noise-canceling amplified earphones that made whatever I said sound like a shout.

  The young Ranger on the other side of the wall answered my password with “Come on in.”

  He may have been a teenage private on his first rotation to Afghanistan, but he was still 300 pounds of bulletproof plates and hard Kevlar knuckle gloves, and he had a grenade launcher, a tomahawk, and a machine gun. (Our M4A2 rifles have full auto instead of burst—another perk of being in the Ranger Regiment.) I knew that all he did was work out and drill to exhaustion day in, day out. It was a steep learning curve to go from recruit to Ranger, and for most people the first 18 months in the Ranger Regiment are a grueling blur of pain and trial. I gave him a nod as I walked in.

  When I entered one of the compound buildings, I did a double take. There were six large tarps covering what had to be five massive piles of what appeared to be at least a million dollars’ worth of heroin.

  Maybe we’re on to something, I thought. Maybe the intel was right this time and we’re taking down a major drug supplier and cutting off the Taliban’s cash source. I shook my head and started climbing up to my vantage point. The flat terrain meant I could see 360 degrees and make out the glow of Kandahar City proper on the horizon. I keyed my radio and called Marc. “Sierra-Three, I’m up, send a laze,” I said, asking him to help me see where he was by sending a laser point from his rifle.

  I didn’t bother identifying myself; Marc would know who I was from what I was saying to him.

  A Green Infrared laser beam shot out from the west from Marc’s weapon-mounted laser, and I traced it back to his position.

  “Sierra-One, you got me?” Marc asked.

  I shone my own laser over his, swiping up and down, as if nodding with a 1,000-meter-long beam of green light. It was all the confirmation he needed, and we blinked our lasers off almost simultaneously.

  Moments later, I heard a commotion below me. I climbed down from my perch and joined the assault squad. They were gathered around the piles I’d passed earlier. But it turned out the tarps weren’t covering heroin poppies: they were covering hashish. This guy was just like the farmer on the mission the day before, growing the stuff to make a living, not to supply the Taliban.

  I could hear First Sergeant Hutch becoming animated. He wasn’t happy about what was going down. Major Dan and our RTO (Radio Telephone Operators) were working their radios, trying to get to the bottom of what was happening. It was clear to me they were angry that we were sent on another mission where the DEA had lousy intel.

  I tried to stay out of it. My job was to look out, not in, but it took discipline to stare out into the quiet, empty night instead of focusing on the bustle and noise inside the compound walls. As I remembered our previous mission, I admit that I wasn’t looking forward to spending another day with the desert sun beating down on me in the hopes the Taliban would roll in on us.

  I wasn’t going to have a hand in burning this farmer’s cash crop, but I also wasn’t looking forward to spending another day next to a smoldering pile of plant matter, either. And I certainly wasn’t looking forward to dragging my ragged nerves and exhausted body through what was certain to be an IED-littered landscape the following night to get to our exfil spot.

  If I knew anything, it was that the Taliban would wise up to us and ambush us on the way out, or that we would hit an IED.

  It didn’t take long for our orders to come down from headquarters. Just like our last mission, KAF ordered us to burn the hashish. Despite last night’s trial-and-error efforts, we still had no idea how to do that quickly or effectively, but we started in anyway. The assault force scavenged some gasoline from one of the farmer’s sheds and went to work on the massive pile of drugs.

  By now I was getting frustrated, and I assumed we would be fighting a pile of mulch instead of Taliban. This wasn’t what I’d signed up for, and it wasn’t what Rangers came to Afghanistan to do.

  Suddenly, 2nd Platoon’s Sergeant Pack came across the net.

  “Break, break, break; all copy.” He didn’t have to use his call sign: by this time we all knew our platoon sergeant’s voice.

  “We will exfil in 5 mikes,” he began. “Assault,” he continued, referring to everyone inside the compound, “start breaking down your positions.”

  “Break”—he paused to follow radio protocol. “Outer cordon, you’ll lead us to the HLZ with Stryker, break.”

  I joined the Rangers to get my gun into the fight, but I
have to admit I wasn’t disappointed we were pulling out of there. Two nights, two busted missions where what we were told would be there wasn’t, so we punted and ruined some guy’s life. I just wanted this bogus mission to be over.

  I pulled out my tiny map to confirm we would move west.

  “Two-four,” Pack ordered. “We’ll pick up you and your gun to the west. Everyone else collapse on Phase Line Broncos, over.”

  I put away my map and climbed off the roof of the house. Then I headed to Phase Line Broncos, the north-south running road that ran along the western side of the target compound. From there we cut west through fields and irrigation canals until we came to a flat open spot the Night Stalkers had preplanned.

  As I sat on the hard canvas seat of the 160th SOAR Chinook during our exfil, I couldn’t forget that sinewy and leathered farmer. His darkly tanned skin showed a long life of brutally cold winters, blistering summers, and harsh desert sun. But it was his eyes—set deep in his almond-shaped face—I’ll never forget, showing first bewilderment, then resignation, and ultimately hatred.

  He didn’t look like a bad man, and he seemed a bit old to be a fighter. Nothing we knew, nor anything we learned about him that night, connected him in any way with the Taliban or of being responsible for any violence against coalition members. And I didn’t come to this conclusion alone. I’d overheard some of the conversation between First Sergeant Hutch and the DEA agent we escorted to the target. Hutch wasn’t happy with what the DEA had us do, and he explained why in purple words. It confirmed my worst suspicions, and I realized why what we were ordered to do sucked so bad.

  We had been ordered to burn all 20 tons of the cannabis pulp that the farmer and his family had processed throughout the winter. They had watched somberly as all the capital they were depending on for the coming season’s supplies and equipment went up in smoke. We had accomplished our “mission” that night (as other Rangers had done on other nights working with the DEA), but what had we really accomplished?