The Last Platoon

by A Novel of the Afghanistan War (retail) (epub)

  Jennifer picked up Josh and hugged him tight. She knew no deployment was ever short. Some like Sanchez would come back messed up. They’d call late at night, drunk or high, and Cruz would try to straighten them out. She shook it off.

  “No wild stuff over there,” she said. “You’ve had your wars. Don’t try to impress anyone. Promise there’ll be no last hoorah. Remember what really counts. We need you back.”

  “No pain on this op, Jen,” Cruz said. “My job is to make sure the sentries stay awake. I’m just the night watchman.”

  2

  Mission Approval

  Secretary of Defense Michael Towns had a few minutes to reflect during the short drive to the White House. Eight months into the top job at the Pentagon, he still couldn’t predict what President Dinard would do next. The only habit of POTUS was no habit. A creature of impulse, he agreed one day and reversed direction the next. This was the third time Towns thought this decision was firm, only to be summoned at the last minute. Glancing at his talking points, he could think of nothing new to add. This meeting seemed gratuitous; a short phone call would have sufficed.

  When he entered the Situation Room in in the basement level of the West Wing, he was again struck by its tiny size. Over the terms of seven presidents, the room had never been enlarged. That a dozen principals had to squeeze around the rectangular mahogany table gave intimacy to discussions among the most powerful persons in the world. On this breezy April afternoon, there was ample room because President Paul Thomas Dinard liked small, short business meetings.

  Only the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Advisor were waiting. Towns had barely exchanged pleasantries when POTUS walked in. Gesturing for them to remain sitting, he theatrically strode to the electronic screen showing a large map of Afghanistan. A blue symbol near the bottom of the map was blinking on and off.

  “That’s Helmand Province?” he said. “It looks like the end of the earth. You sure about this, Professor?”

  Towns disliked the title. While his PhD in astrophysics from MIT impressed POTUS, Towns took pride in how he had built a world-class company specializing in miniature satellites. Before every launch, he ensured that two separate teams had examined the risks. Although he hadn’t served in the military, he had double-checked this operation in the same thorough manner. If he showed the slightest hesitation, POTUS would cancel the operation.

  “The Taliban are close to capturing the provincial capital, sir,” he said. “The task force can prevent that.”

  The president sat down at the head of the table and pressed his fingertips together.

  “Our country beat the coronarvirus in nine months,” he said. “That was tough, but I got it done. You Pentagon guys have been stuck in Afghanistan for twenty years! What’s this going to cost me?”

  Dinard saw himself as the CEO of the world’s largest business. In his mind, the federal budget was his budget.

  “Our request for Afghanistan is seventy-five billion,” Towns said. “The task force doesn’t cost extra. I’m testifying before the Senate tomorrow.”

  “Don’t give those pricks an opening,” Dinard said.

  By long-standing tradition, the Pentagon avoided domestic politics. Unlike other cabinet members, the Secretary of Defense did not participate in political campaigns. Dinard resented that. He couldn’t understand why the generals didn’t openly support him. The troops were the opposite. They loved it when he visited, flocking around him to take selfies, laughing at his quips. Hell, he thought, the brass should take a lesson from the troops, God bless ’em!

  He waited several seconds, determined to elicit some token of loyalty from his Secretary of Defense. Finally, Towns nodded in agreement.

  “I’ll be careful, sir,” Towns said.

  Satisfied Towns was in line, Dinard looked down at his briefing notes. Tapping the paper for emphasis, he pointed at Admiral Bernard Michaels, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

  “Admiral, you sure we have to send troops?” he said. “We can’t just bomb the bastards?”

  The trim four-star, sitting erect in his uniform with six rows of campaign ribbons and no combat experience, was an accomplished bureaucrat, thoughtful, reserved, and confident. He rarely smiled and spoke as solemnly as a prophet. His staff referred to him as Moses. He’d been over this ground in two previous meetings and kept his reply short.

  “I’ve checked with our commanders, sir,” Michaels said. “Air support is too episodic. Artillery will provide the Afghan soldiers with covering fire twenty-four hours a day. They won’t get to the provincial capital without it.”

  Towns sensed an opening to appeal to the president’s vanity.

  “Sir, the Taliban promised to reduce the violence. Instead, they’re trying to capture a major city. They’re breaking the deal they cut with you.”

  “You see it that way, Security Advisor?” Dinard said.

  The National Security Advisor, sitting in a wingback chair, bobbed his head. An extroverted retired Air Force officer of enormous girth and bellowing laugh, Richard Armsted had parlayed his bonhomie into a mega lobbying firm before joining the administration. He possessed a courtesan’s sense of flattery, effortlessly adjusting to Dinard’s erratic moods. To keep him in his place, Dinard called him “Security Advisor.” Armsted was the third to have that title.

  “You’re right to teach the Taliban a lesson, Mr. President,” Armsted said.

  Pleased to be judged correct, Dinard turned to Towns.

  “OK, Professor, but don’t get sucked in deeper,” Dinard said.

  Towns nodded. As Secretary of Defense, he saw his job as preparing for the high tech wars sure to come in the 21st century. His task was to wean the services off vestigial habits, like building aircraft carriers that could be sunk by cheap drones. To Towns, Islamist crazies were not the main enemy. Afghanistan was a tiny part of the Pentagon’s budget.

  “We’re sending a small force, Mr. President,” Towns said, “with a strictly limited mission, the same as we’re doing in Syria and Africa.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t go south,” Armsted rumbled in a voice sounding like a trombone.

  His tone put Towns on guard. POTUS didn’t touch liquor, but did imbibe pleasure in pitting his appointees against each other. As National Security Advisor, Armsted popped in and out of the Oval Office several times a day, rarely providing Towns with any feedback.

  “You know something we don’t?” Towns said.

  “Helmand’s a long way from anywhere, that’s all,” Armsted said. “Not to be a nitpicker, Admiral, but to open that road to the capital, what’s the distance?”

  “Twenty miles,” Michaels said.

  “That’s not much,” Armsted said. “That should take less than a week, right? I mean, even Afghan soldiers can walk three miles a day. Hell, I do that on the treadmill in an hour.”

  The gratuitous remark seemed deliberately challenging. Towns tried to deflect it.

  “We don’t place a time limit on our objective,” he snapped. “The enemy gets a vote.”

  The press lauded Towns for his epigrams, but their pedantry irritated POTUS. He leaned forward, assuming the scowl that had delighted his reality TV audiences. It was time to deliver a hard business truth.

  “Professor,” Dinard said, “I need a number, not a philosophy.”

  Towns flushed, but knew better than to reply. Dinard turned to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

  “Admiral, before I agree to a project, my engineers give me a completion date,” he said. “What’s yours?”

  Admiral Michaels tried to balance his answer.

  “A week seems reasonble, sir,” he said. “But as the Secretary said, we shouldn’t limit…”

  Dinard cut him off with a thumbs-up gesture. Here was something concrete to grasp.

  “Excellent!” he beamed. “Get it done. One week!”

  POTUS extended his arms, dispensing a farewell benediction. Armsted bobbed in agreement, his mas
sive frame shaking the sturdy Doyle chair. The meeting was over. Towns walked out sensing that more than one deal had just been struck. POTUS had the maddening habit of disapproving while approving. Dinard had agreed to launch the mission, and then set a deadline for withdrawal.

  Armsted remained behind, waiting silently while Dinard drummed his fingers and scowled.

  “Security Advisor, that was good work on your part,” Dinard said. “They’re not going to string me along.”

  “I’m sure that’s not their intent, sir,” Armsted said. “It’s the military mindset at work. They believe that conditions on the ground are more important than deadlines.”

  “I don’t care what they believe. I want that task force out of there in a week.”

  3

  The Wild Ox

  The tan Toyota Hilux sped down the center of the two-lane dirt road, forcing donkeys, tractors, and worn-out cars to give way. The thick, unkempt black beard of the driver identified him as a mujahideen, an everyday sight in Helmand, a province controlled by the Taliban. His plump passenger with smooth cheeks and a trim beard wore the tightly bound black turban common among mullahs.

  “We’ll collect from twenty farms today,” the mujahideen said, “starting with the largest.”

  Mullah Khan was tapping the screen of his iPad.

  “That will please the shura,” the mullah said. “We’re behind schedule, Zar.”

  “Don’t provoke me, Persian,” Zar said. “The shura told me to help you, not to listen to your whining. It’s you who’s working too slowly, not me.”

  They passed an abandoned police station, a scruffy, unpainted concrete building surrounded by a decaying dirt berm and a tangle of rusty barbed wire. Near the sagging main gate, the drooping leaves of the marijuana plants begged for water under the hot sun. They rode in truculent silence for several more minutes until Zar’s cell phone rang. He answered with a grunt, listened, and smiled.

  Rounding the next bend, Zar saw a van and two motorbikes parked off the road. Two Talibs in Levi’s, T-shirts, and Skechers, with AKs strapped over their shoulders, were rummaging through thin plastic shopping bags. The portly driver stood next to his van, looking at the ground. A woman in a full black burka was squatting in the thin shade of the van. Her husband, wearing work boots and a red-checked turban, stood beside her, clutching the hand of a frightened ten-year-old boy. A few feet away, two young men were kneeling in the dirt, their arms tied behind them.

  Zar pulled over and got out. As usual he was wearing a white Western shirt, an affectation that displayed the girth of his chest. Even at a distance, he wanted everyone to recognize the new Taliban chieftain.

  “Well done!” he shouted.

  The young Talibs smiled and bowed slightly. The Persian looked at the dejected prisoners.

  “Do they work for the Baloch?” he said. “Are they buying poppy?”

  “Persian, with you everything’s money,” Zar snorted. “No, they’re army deserters.”

  He picked up a broken tree branch, walked behind the two men, drew back the stick, and swung down. Thwack! With a gasp, one of the prisoners pitched forward and lay groaning, his face in the dust.

  “You’re askars, aren’t you?” Zar shouted. “You defied the Prophet! You are takfir!”

  Thwack! Thwack! The long tail of Zar’s turban swayed in rhythm with his strikes. With each blow to his ribs and kidneys, the prisoner screamed.

  “We did nothing wrong,” he shrieked. “We sold our bullets to the mujahideen in the market. We want to go home. I am Pashto, like you.”

  “Do the other askars want to leave Lashkar?”

  The soldier nodded.

  “We haven’t been paid in two months,” he said. “The people avoid us.”

  Zar kicked the other prisoner once, twice.

  “Where were you going?”

  “Turerah.”

  His voice sounded soft and dull, without hope. Zar could barely understand the word.

  “Turerah? That’s Tajik! You don’t even speak Pashto. You’re a puppet paid by Kabul!”

  From several kilometers to the north, they heard the deep bark of a PKM machine gun, followed by a sharp explosion. The two Talibs exchanged an excited glance.

  “You’ll get your chance,” Zar said. “Soon people will know you fight under Zar.”

  Zar’s forehead was indented with an ugly black callous from touching the ground in prayer five times daily for thirty years. He was proud that the scab marked him as a pious man. But while other Taliban gangs were fighting, he had to help this Persian. He felt this assignment from the shura was beneath the dignity a true warrior of Allah. As he tapped his scab, an idea came to him.

  He knew the mullahs in the rahbari shura, safe in Pakistan, called him araia unbzat, the Wild Ox. Well, how could he be smart? He’d never been to school. But he was the best wrestler in Helmand. And so what if he couldn’t control his temper? No one insulted him twice.

  He dimly connected two ideas. The shura had entrusted the Persian to him. Now he would demonstrate his total dedication to Allah. When the shura saw that, they would appoint him as the emir, the absolute ruler of Helmand.

  He strode to his pickup and pulled out his small white battle flag, with its jihadist fealty verse inscribed in black Arabic symbols: “I bear witness that there is no deity other than Allah and that Muhammad is his servant and Messenger.” After smoothing it into a long strip and wrapping it around his head as a bandanna, he gestured at the older of the two Taliban guards.

  “In battle, half of victory lies in the enemy’s fear of you,” he said. “Bring over your camera.”

  In a baldric slung over his right shoulder, he carried a curved saif with an engraved ebony handle. Zar drew out his sword and held it aloft, the razor edge of the blade glinting.

  “Like you, I pray five times each day,” the frightened Pashtun prisoner pleaded. “There is no god but Allah!”

  “Ask his mercy,” Zar said, “when you see him.”

  He rolled up his sleeves, straddled the soldier, and jerked him up so that his face pointed at the camera.

  “Turn on the camera,” he said.

  Zar waited until he saw the small red light flick on.

  “This is the fate of all takfir,” he shouted. “Allahu Akbar!”

  With one powerful slice, Zar slit the prisoner’s throat. As the blood spurted out, he jerked back the severed neck so that the wound gaped open like a second mouth, garish and vermillion. He set to work as he did with a sheep, hacking deeply, snapping the spinal cord and twisting off the severed head. Dropping the body, he smiled wolfishly at Mullah Khan.

  “Hey, Persian, you’re related to Tajiks, right?”

  Mullah Khan, his face drained of color, struggled to answer.

  “I am as Pashtun as you, a Mashwani descended from Umra Khan, the Napoleon of Afghanistan.”

  Zar shook his head.

  “That was a century ago,” he said. “You fled to Iran. Watch. This is how a Pashtun mujahideen deals with Tajiks.”

  Zar reached for the other prisoner, who snarled and lunged forward, trying to head-butt him. Startled, Zar stumbled back, losing his balance. Realizing he looked foolish on camera, he jumped on the prisoner and drove the knife deep into his neck. The blood spurted upward like red water from a fountain. After a few spastic kicks, the Tajik sagged and the stream of blood subsided into a trickle. Zar hacked and hacked at the tendons until a small vertebra snapped. He grabbed an ear to wrest the head free, but it stubbornly clung to the body by a clump of skin. Another backhand slice and the head popped loose.

  Zar rose erect, blood-smeared hands raised holding the heads by their hair for a closing frame shot, red rivulets splatting into the dirt. Feeling the thick, rich blood splattered across his face and shirt, Zar sensed—no, he knew—this was his moment. It had been fifteen years since Zarqawi had beheaded an americani in Iraq and ten years since al-Baghdadi had burned alive a Jordanian pilot in Syria. Now the world was witnessing All
ah’s protector in Helmand. Zar too would be a legend.

  In the background, the Persian stood stock-still, stunned by the savagery. The camera continued to record the scene.

  “Behold the wrath of Allah!” Zar yelled. “We drove Alexander the Great from our land, and the Russkis, and the americani! No one can seize Helmand from us!”

  Zar threw aside the two heads.

  “This is the fate of all invaders!” he said. “The dogs eat them!”

  To give time for Zar’s blood lust to subside, the Persian bowed and backed away. He tried to calm himself by estimating the profits he would soon gain. But he felt a deep unease. Why had the shura entrusted $100 million to this blood-soaked illiterate intent on resurrecting a ninth-century caliphate, one dripping head after another?

  4

  Shakedown

  Nantush squatted next to an irrigation ditch, idly poking a stick at goat turds, pushing them downstream toward his neighbor’s melon patch. From inside the compound, he heard his wife yelling at the little ones to herd the cows out to graze. He looked at his fields where the long-stemmed poppy bulbs were bursting open in a profusion of scarlet, pink, white, and purple. His older sons and daughters shuffled past him, fiddling with their cloth poppy sacks and short, sharp knives. He watched as they entered the nearest field and began to lance the side of each egg-shaped bulb.

  Every slice was razor thin, deep enough for the sap to ooze out. Over the next few days, the sun would bake the resin into muddy blisters, and the laborers would return to snip off each teardrop of pure black opium. Like thousands of other farmers, Nantush hired nishtgars—migrant laborers who were mostly Taliban. They slept on the ground in makeshift lean-tos, rising each morning to collect the raw opium, one snippet after another. Nantush could see the wisps of their breakfast fires out in the farther fields.

  He leaned his back against the hard compound wall of baked mud and straw. In early April, southern Helmand Province was hot but bearable. Despite his torn brown tunic and soiled turban, he looked vaguely like a Western tourist catching the sun’s rays, content in his moment of comfort. He daydreamed of his wealth from this poppy harvest—a color television, a new tractor, and a Honda motorcycle.