The report said that Matt’s route clearance team discovered an IED on the road and they had stopped to disarm it. That they successfully used the robot, disrupted the device, searched for others but found nothing. That just as they had remounted and moved a short way up the road, a second device detonated as Matt’s truck drove over it.
General Byers told Jenny that Matt was targeted, they were sure. It wasn’t an accident, or the general chaos that struck Fye. Matt wasn’t just unlucky. Two Army vehicles had driven over the device, but it wasn’t triggered until the JERRV arrived. The explosive charge was massive, meant to kill the indestructible EOD truck. They were looking specifically for Matt’s team.
The report said the JERRV’s doors were locked and damaged, and initially Matt and his team were trapped. But the soldiers in their convoy attached chains to the back hatch and successfully ripped it from its hinges. The chains didn’t snap, they made it to Team Tripwire. The report said their vital signs were checked three times—by the medics in the convoy, by the helo crew, by the surgeon at the hospital—and there was never any hope. The three had died instantly, they had died midsentence, just as the autopsy showed.
Another EOD team from the Marine Corps then responded to the scene and did a complete workup. The blast was so large it had thrown Matt’s JERRV into the air and dropped it on a mud wall. They found evidence in the crater in the road. They found a command wire running between the road and the hide the ambushers had used. They found a battery there, other evidence too, and because you couldn’t see the road from the battery, they knew multiple attackers had set up the shot. There had to be a spotter and a triggerman at least. General Byers gave Jenny a map that showed everything, where Matt’s truck was hit, the security arrangement, the qalats and walled compounds, the command wire, the triggerman.
The report said that they had found a water bottle at the firing point, and that it was covered in fingerprints and DNA. That they had used the biometrics database to find the triggerman.
The report said they knew who killed Matt. They were actively monitoring his area, they were searching for him at that very moment, and when they found him, they were going to kill him.
IT WAS ONLY a couple of weeks later that Schottzie got a text.
The text said: Spec Ops targeting op, 3 High Value Targets KIA, positive biometric match to Tripwire evidence.
Schottzie smiled, just a little.
I got a similar text at the same time, from an EOD brother on the inside, who still had access to the real-time communiqués of the war.
All my text said was Call me. It was like that message in front of the Christmas tree months before. My hands shook. I did.
“I thought you’d want to know,” my brother said. “They got the guy who killed Matt.”
My head swam. Lowering Matt into the frozen ground. The lucky who lost their legs. JIEDDO said, to win the war we had to move Left of Boom. They said the evidence is how we would come to know him. The battery and the command wire and the water bottle went into the black hole, and some analyst had put it all together. A pop from the biometrics database. Who worked all night while the TIC lights strobed? What grainy photo did they use? A task force, a contractor, a trigger pulled, a sparkle on the forehead. Did they read Matt’s name in the MC-12 during the mission? Did they remember why they hunted?
I thought about Jenny and her three little girls and whether this news would bring them comfort. At the memorial wall weeks before, we had spoken every name, and now Matt’s killer had a name as well.
For my part, I never cared as much about the actual name as the certainty it conferred. That name, whatever it was, represented specificity, the discrimination of one target over another, the knowledge that the system had worked and that the right man had been identified and hunted and killed. So I had to ask:
“Did we just get the spotter and the triggerman?” I said. “Or did we finally break through and get the Engineer?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “How can you really know for sure?”
The Engineer’s brother is dead, and so is mine, and now, perhaps, he too. I would never know for sure, but we have learned that the point is this:
Some people are worth killing more than others.
EPILOGUE
THE GHOSTS IN THE WOOD behind my home are not of the wood, they are of me, and I am the one who takes them there.
I cut a path in that wood. It is a young wood, not yet second growth, and the stands of green ash and thickets of sassafras swarm so tightly that the way was nearly impenetrable before I labored days with axe and handsaw and great long-handled loppers to cut a trail through.
Now I walk that path in all seasons, I walk it alone with the ghosts of my dead brothers, and I tell them stories, and point out each item of significance, and note each change from one felled tree to the next.
Be careful when you walk here, I say, this where the sharp stump of young ash pokes through; it could snare a foot or ankle and trip the unaware. And here is the last vestige of a two-thumbs-thick sassafras trunk; oh, you should have smelled it when I cut it down, sweet and oily and fit for old-time tea.
And if you ever get lost, I say, just follow the trail of dismembered wild grapevines, each guillotined shoulder high, their fat woody foundation cut out from under them, leaving the bulk orphaned in the canopy above. The wild grape so terrorizes the wood, attacking only the oldest and tallest trunks, it’s as though some nameless malignant gardener planted them at the base of each grand tree. See, here is the maple I saved from that choking viny infestation. This one lived. And that elm. And another ash farther in. They lived because I lopped off the strangling vine and withered the grape’s leafy blanket and gave them a new chance to find the sun.
This is what I tell myself.
I walk my path and show the grapevines to ghosts, because my friends are at war thousands of miles away or dead already because of it or bound in wheelchairs and propped on unsteady metal poles. They cannot walk the path with me, so like a museum tour guide with no patrons, I show it to myself.
And here was where I found piles of ancient sheet metal that crumbled to red dust as I cleared them. And here you can see what remains of a farmer’s furrows, diverting rainwater through the clay-heavy soil to the remnants of a shallow retention pond beyond. Each year the depression fills a little more with layers of leaf crop, so that now it is more marsh than watering hole, but you can still find the bermed banks among the honeysuckle bushes and nearby, growing feral, the odd apple tree that has far outgrown its fruit, and see how the pond bed has filled with cottonwoods, the only tree that can survive such persistent wetting.
The sheet metal and furrows and shallow marsh and sparse untended apple trees, now stretching to the sky like their maple cousins, are all the evidence you will find that farms once covered my island where my house and wood now reside. But the orchards proved unprofitable, the land more valuable abandoned, and so the wood came in and slowly undid generations of labor as it retook the soil for itself. Now it is all I can do to keep the worst of the wild grape off the mightiest elms and oaks along my path. Kill this one to save another. Save that one but not another. I can’t clear the whole wood, I know; one by one I do what I can.
In winter the snows come and turn the wood into a web of black wet trucks and white-lined branches, and the wind scours the forest clean like an astringent that scalds your red face raw. In spring the mud and mire overtake, but the observant can find the path by following the cookie crumb trail of just-exposed deer droppings. In the summer the sun will bake the path hard, and a fair wind cools, and every weed and twig must grow grow grow to form a knee-high net that tangles every step.
But in the fall the ground cover falls away, and the insects are gone, and the ash yellows and the maples become red and gold, and my wife Jessie says she loves me and she will now come with me since it’s her favorite time to the walk in the woods. I hold her hand, and she smiles at me, and she knows the ghosts walk with us,
even in the brilliant sun. But we can almost forget it on such a day and anyway, if the ghosts are in my woods, then they are no longer shut tight with us in our home.
When I’m alone, it takes me only a few minutes of brisk walking to get to the back of our property, but once you break through the last thicket, a new country is revealed. I remember the day I cut that final section of path and saw it for the first time. The land opened to brush like a hedge, then tangled scrub, then stunted oaks covered in gout-like puffs and tumorous spiny galls. Behind them lines of tall pines, and farther on cedars rose and blotted out the sun, leaving mold and moss and the decaying limbs of their neighbors below.
The gunshots of hunters rang. A snowmobile track crashed through from one side, then an uneven path broken by muddy pools ready to suction off an unwary boot. I considered, standing at the edge of my yellow wood.
I have heard that, past the wall of undergrowth, a maze of trails leads to coyote dens and deer hides and creeks that have no name. I have heard there is a deep pond guarded by a thick wall of cattails and swarms of thirsty mosquitoes claim it for their own. I have heard the swamp is growing, that groves of massive drowned willows bulge into the sky like great mastodon skeletons, their bare bones infested with metastasized wild grapevines so pervasive and hungry you wonder if the leg-thick tendrils are reaching for you.
I have been told all this but never seen.
For then I heard my Jessie calling to me, calling me to come home. So I turned back and retraced my steps and some of my ghosts followed me but some carried on alone.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
OVER THREE AND A HALF years of writing and editing, I am indebted and grateful to many.
To everyone who agreed to speak to me for this book, especially Jenny Schwartz, Grandma B, Bill Hailer, Dan and Nicole Fye, Chris and Cathy Frost, Pete Hopkins, Sarah Soliman, Zac Crush, Ben Cook, and Chris Schott, plus Hayes, Gene, and M——, who requested anonymity due to the nature of their work.
To my EOD brothers, whose input and feedback kept me in line: Josh Tyler, Landon Phillips, Dee Downing, John Ismay, Stephen Phillips, and Jason Knapp. To Matt Higgins, for the conceptual breakthrough. To Rick, for technical background. To Mick Cochrane, Janet McNally, and Eric Gansworth, the creative writing faculty at Canisius College, for camaraderie and commiseration. To Jim Holstun, who constantly filled my reading list. To Jessica Shearer, for getting me to finally read Moby-Dick, and to Jack Kenney for explaining what it means.
To US Navy Captain Jane Campbell, the Director of Defense Press Operations in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, who authorized interviews with active duty members of the military during the research phase of this book, and to all the local Public Affairs offices that arranged the interviews.
To my fellow writers who are also my first readers: Aaron Gwyn, Matt Gallagher, Matthew Hefti, Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, and Chris Chivers.
To my agent, Bob Mecoy, for perseverance, and to Cal Barksdale, who is the kind of editor every writer wants to have, a dispenser of tough love always in the service of the book’s potential.
To my parents, for letting me escape to write in their house. To my children, who waited far longer than they anticipated for our family’s traditional post-writing celebration vacation.
And finally, to my first and best reader, my primary investor, the love of my life, Jessie.
GLOSSARY
abaya (Arabic)—a large dress that leaves only the hands, feet, and face exposed
abu (Arabic)—father of, typical start of Al Qaeda nom de guerre
ACOG—advanced combat optical gunsight, popular among soldiers
Agha Sahib (Pashto, from the Arabic)—honorific for a military commander
albuyah nasiffah (Arabic)—literally, explosive container. Common expression for IED.
Allahu Akbar (Arabic)—God is great, the typical war cry of mujahideen
ANAL—ammonium nitrate and aluminum, a type of HME
ANCOP—Afghan National Civil Order of Police, an elite “surge” police unit, compared to regular Afghan National Police
ANFO—ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, a type of HME
ansar (Arabic)—helper, slang for foreign fighters in Kosovo in the late 1990s
AO—area of operations
ASP—ammunition supply point, a bunker or other storage area for ordnance
baba (Pashto)—casual honorific for a grandfatherly old man
BAT—biometric automated toolset, a camera and laptop system to enroll people in a biometrics database
BFM—basic fighter maneuvers
bingo—pilot slang for the minimum fuel necessary to land safely
Bone—slang for B-1 bomber
BUFF—big ugly fat fucker, slang for B-52s
CAG—Combat Applications Group, the official name for the Army’s Delta Force
Caiman—a type of MRAP
casevac—casualty evacuation. In common usage, the transportation of patients via vehicles on the ground.
CEXC—Combined Explosives Exploitation Cell, the central crime lab in Baghdad and Bagram, where all IED evidence went
CIDNE—Combined Information Data Network Exchange, pronounced “Sydney.” The main database for IED post blast reports.
CJSOTF—Combined Joint Special Operation Task Force, pronounced “See-Ja-So-Tiff.” Multinational, and included members of all branches of the US military.
COIN—counterinsurgency
COP—combat outpost
CT—counterterrorism
DEVGRU—Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the official name for SEAL Team 6
dhabihah (Arabic)—in Islamic law, the approved process for slaughtering animals
DShK—large 12.7mm Soviet machine gun, the counterpart to the American .50 cal machine gun
Eagle—slang for F-15C fighter jets
emir (Arabic)—commander
EOD—explosive ordnance disposal
FN-SCAR—a new advanced rifle
FOB—forward operating base
fobbit—slang and derisive term for a soldier that never leaves the base, the subject of David Abrams’s novel of the same name
golden hour—in the field of emergency medicine, the idea that a patient’s chance of survival drastically increases if they enter surgery in less than sixty minutes
H&K 416—a rifle popular with special ops
habibi (Arabic)—someone you like, used between sweethearts or adults to children
helicoptera (Pashto)—helicopter
HESCO—large expandable containers made of fabric and wire mesh. When filled with dirt, they form effective barriers against bullets and detonations. HESCO is the name of the British company that produces the barriers.
HIIDES—handheld interagency identity detection equipment, a device that collects and matches iris scans, fingerprints, and photos. The precursor to the SEEK.
HME—home-made explosives
Hornet—slang for Navy F-18 fighter jets
ICOM—a type of radio often used by insurgents
Identity Operations—the US military’s process for determining and confirming who people are
IED—improvised explosive device
ifranjiah (Arabic)—a board game, also known as tables, and similar to backgammon
imam (Arabic)—a worship leader in a mosque
Inshallah (Arabic)—literally, if Allah wills it. A very common phrase.
ISR—intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, often (but certainly not always) from a UAV
J2—the intelligence section of a joint military unit, comprising members of multiple branches of the military
JDAM—joint direct attack munition, a smart bomb
JERRV—joint EOD rapid response vehicle, pronounced “jerve”
JIEDDO—Joint IED Defeat Organization, pronounced “Jie-dough” or “Ji-E-dough”
JOC—joint operations center
JPEL—joint priority effects list, the consolidated list of targets
JS
OC—Joint Special Operations Command
JTAC—joint terminal air controller, the airman or soldier on the ground responsible for calling in air strikes
KAF—Kandahar Air Field
kariz (Pashto)—underground canal and irrigation system, and a great place to hide IEDs
katibat (Arabic)—brigade, mujahideen term for an independent company of soldiers under a single commander
kuffar (Arabic)—infidels
laarey (Pashto)—truck, from the British
lala (Pashto)—older brother
LZ—landing zone
M4—the standard US combat rifle
M9—the standard 9mm pistol
malem (Arabic)—teacher
MC-12—a type of spy aircraft based upon the civilian Beechcraft King Air
medevac—medical evacuation. In common usage, the transportation of patients via aircraft, usually helicopters.
MICLIC—mine-clearing line charge
MIMID—a type of mine detector
mines (Pashto)—landmine, but used for any kind of IED
mIRC—Mardam-Bey Internet Relay Chat, a civilian Internet chat capability developed in 1995 but currently used by the US military to establish real-time secure chat rooms
MRAP—mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle, distinguished by the V-hull that deflects blast from below
muezzin (Arabic)—a man who sings the Call to Prayer from a mosque’s minaret
mujahideen (Arabic)—those engaged in jihad. Singular is mujahid.
NAI—named area of interest
ODA—Operational Detachment Alpha, a Special Forces A-team trained to partner with indigenous forces
ODIN—Observe, Detect, Identify and Neutralize, a task force in Iraq and Afghanistan
OGA—other government agencies, sometimes a euphemism for the CIA, sometimes used when the speaker really doesn’t know the specific intelligence agency (NSA, DIA, etc.) in question
Paladin—the counter-IED task force for Afghanistan
patu (Pashto)—a wool blanket, often worn as a coat or slept in
PID—positive ID
All the Ways We Kill and Die Page 31