The Persian glumly shook his head.
“Last night didn’t end well for your mortar crew,” he said. “I felt the Americani shells shaking the earth. They’re strong.”
“Don’t talk about what you don’t know,” Zar snapped. “Even as we speak, my brave warriors are preparing to slaughter them.”
My warriors? the Persian thought. This idiot is taking action on his own? I hope Balroop hurries with his plan.
CRUZ STOOD OFF TO ONE SIDE as Binns aligned the seventeen-man patrol. All wore Kevlar vests and midcut helmets with ear cups, wireless headsets, and boom mics. Clipped to the nape of every vest was a small antenna that broadcast its location. Most carried the M27 automatic rifle with a suppressor, a thirty-round magazine, laser-sighting tools, and a Leupold variable-power scope, permitting every rifleman to hit an enemy skull at six hundred meters. In addition, the patrol included a two-man 7.62mm machine-gun crew, two 40mm grenadiers, and two snipers. Adding up the weight of the armor, weapon, ammo, and hydration packs, each Marine was carrying about eighty pounds.
Cruz thought the grunts looked like sixteenth-century French knights, cloaked in heavy armor yet lacking horses. Walking in eighty-degree temperatures was an exertion; jogging was torment; sprinting was out of the question. Every step of the way, the patrol’s location was tracked at the ops center, allowing the mortars to continuously adjust their aim points. Massive amounts of explosives waited on call to incinerate or blast apart any enemy. The age-old tactic of fire and maneuver to close with the enemy had morphed into applying an accurate, intense volume of fire, followed by more fire.
At point was an engineer, Corporal Atsa Wolfe, a Navajo with a broad bronze face and unruffled manner. Rifle slung across his back, he was fiddling with the dials and headset attached to his PSS-14 mine detector. Behind him stood Sergeant Ashford, sniper rifle cradled in his arms.
“I keep you from being blown up, bro,” Wolfe said, “and you keep the shooters away from me.”
“I’ve been waiting four years for this, Wolfe,” Ashford said. “I got you covered.”
The CIA team had slipped into the middle of the column. Richards was carrying a standard automatic weapon, and Eagan had slung over his shoulder his sniper rifle with the monstrous sight. Stovell, in his Abercrombie-tailored utilities, had no weapon. Instead he was carrying a stiff-sided knapsack with a zippered front and a miniature satellite dish.
The fourth member of the team was wearing US Army Ranger cammies that hung loosely on his slender frame. Clean-shaven and grinning hugely, he playfully patted Stovell on the head and stood behind him in the column. It took Cruz a few seconds to realize this was Tic, the interpreter. Since this wasn’t the time for introductions, without speaking Cruz quietly joined the line, rifle in hand and on his back a compact digital radio with a three-foot whip antenna.
Seeing this, Binns drew Cruz aside.
“Excuse me, sir,” he said tensely, “but I don’t want you carrying that radio. It’ll draw fire. I got all the freqs covered. And another thing—outside the wire my Marines call you Cruz. The Talibs know the word for captain.”
“I carry my own comms, Sergeant,” Cruz said quietly, “and my own rank. Tell the devil dogs to call me Captain Cruz. I want the muj to know I’m coming for them.”
Binns sucked in a breath.
“Sir, this is my patrol. You’re making me look bad.”
Bad beats dead, Cruz thought. But he’d pushed this far enough. He looked at Binns and said nothing.
“So that’s how it is,” Binns said to show his defiance.
“That’s how it is.”
As he cleared the wire with the sun full in his eyes, one sniff told him he was in some backcountry. He smiled. He shouldn’t call it “backcountry,” but it was true. Whether deployed in the farmlands of Colombia, the Philippines, Iraq, or Afghanistan, the smell was the same. He breathed in the mixture of wood cooking fires, smoldering garbage pits, and shit decaying in the damp earth. In any backcountry, the same families talked to each other daily, decade after decade. Within a small community, the first rule was to take care of your own and not piss off your neighbors. This was the Green Zone, miles of flat fields, acres of tall corn and still more acres of brilliant poppy bulbs, green tree lines, deep canals and shallow ditches, thick-walled compounds, and sullen tribal clans. Taliban territory. If the Marines stayed for a hundred years and spent a trillion dollars, that wouldn’t change. Cruz accepted the hostility as he did the wood smoke, a fact of life.
SIX HUNDRED METERS EAST OF THE FIREBASE, Hassan squatted in the warm, thick foliage, safe from the thermal imagery that relied upon a significant temperature difference between the heat of a human body and the surroundings. When Hassan had fought the Marines years ago, he had learned to shoot from the far side of irrigation ditches and use the tree lines to escape. Now the Marines were back, and Zar had selected Hassan to conduct the first strike.
Together with porn and snuff videos, the Taliban watched Hollywood war films and copied American techniques. Hassan had watched Platoon four times, memorizing how Sergeant Elias had inspected his squad before each patrol, correcting the slightest errors. Now Hassan lined up his five fighters. None wore a helmet or an armored vest. Speed was their advantage. Shoot and scoot.
The oldest, Alam Shah, stood first in line, his teeth yellow from neglect, military fatigues baggy and his shalwar kameez shirt soiled from not washing his left hand after wiping his ass. Slow thinking and stubborn, he was Hassan’s older cousin. Hassan tapped at a rust spot on Alam’s SKS rifle. Alam shrugged and continued to chew a mouthful of sunflower seeds.
Following him came tall Ajbar, cradling his glistening PKM machine gun, his kufiya turban tightly wound. When Hassan moved up in rank, he wanted Ajbar to be his successor. But he feared Zar or the Quetta shura would choose Alam. Replacements and promotions were based upon family ties and clan loyalties.
Ibir, a teenager from Hassan’s village, was next in line. He was grasping the stock of an RPG, or rocket-propelled grenade launcher that looked like a rifle with a giant onion bulb at the end of the barrel.
Behind them, Ala was fidgeting like an restive puppy. Hassan planned to keep the son of Nantush, a wealthy khan, out of the fight. Last in line was Yakoz, an itinerant worker from Farah Province, grinning absently under his threadbare pakul, the flat gray woolen Pashtun cap. He carried the sturdy AK-47, with magazines stuffed into a Soviet-style green chest harness.
Hassan watched the firebase, stroking his thick beard as he swept his binoculars back and forth. An hour after daybreak, he saw a line of figures exit the wire, heading south. He gestured to his companions and they slipped down an irrigation ditch. They paused in the ditch to take off their sandals and put on the Skechers dangling from their shoulders. Then they set off to intercept the American patrol.
THE MARINES PLODDED ALONG at a slow pace, with Wolfe moving the mine detector back and forth like a pendulum, his eyes focused on the ground, looking for wires or scuff marks. They would head southeast until reaching the wide canal about a kilometer away, then turn north and meander back to base. With a UAV buzzing overhead as a scout, the ops center was monitoring the route. Cruz hoped that any lurking Taliban would have the sense to fall back and avoid being trapped. That way, he’d protect the base and return to Pendleton without writing a single letter.
He swept his gaze across the flat terrain. Tall, thick mud walls, sun-bleached to a light brown, encased one-story farmhouses scattered randomly across the fields. Straight lines of verdant trees and underbrush marked the main irrigation sluices running from the canal to the east. He viewed the countryside as a maze of traps and escape routes for the muj. Stands of beeches with dark, heavy leaves provided concealment from thermals and overhead cameras. Disease spores infected the hardy hybrid trees on the banks of the ditches. As their limbs rotted, thick vines snaked from one tree to the next, weaving an impassable tangle. The Talibs knew every opening and back trail, enabling them to slip down a di
tch and minutes later pop up in some scrub growth a quarter of a mile away.
On this warm April morning, the emerald-green fields were ablaze with poppy bulbs in white, ruby, and regal purple colors. Small bands of laborers were moving among the poppy rows, grim bearded men with whipcord sinews, accustomed to walking ten or more miles each day with a long, easy gait. They wore shapeless long-sleeved shirts that draped down to their knees, baggy pants, and sandals. Every boy or man was a watcher, a dicker, an informant eager to report the route the infidels were taking.
The patrol cut through a long field where three men and two boys were lancing tiny slits in the bulbs. Their soiled dishdashas were splotched with dabs of the dung-colored opium tar, and their hands were black from dropping the poppy resin into their small sacks. They sullenly ignored the few courteous salaams from the Marines. One pointed at the plants crushed under the boots of the Marines and shouted angrily. In response, Ashford grinned and squirted another dab of the pastel-orange Silly String he was using to mark the route for those following.
Upon reaching a row of columnar junipers dense with the green growth of spring, Wolfe stopped. On his tablet, the patrol route was superimposed in red over a digital photomap. Although the route ran straight ahead, Wolfe turned slightly left. Binns called a halt and darted up.
“Wolfe, the fuck you going?”
Wolfe pointed to hoof marks in the mud.
“Following the sheep,” he said casually. “Same general direction.”
“No,” Binns said. “Stay on the GPS track. Go through the bush. You got the ECM on, right?”
“Yeah,” Wolfe snapped. “But Sergeant, don’t tell me how to do my job. We have sheep back on my reservation. I can spot any cover-up of an IED and move faster.”
“Hell yes,” Ashford chimed in. “Why hack through this shit when we don’t have to? Wolfe knows the drill.”
“Ashford, shut the fuck up,” Binns said. “Wolfe, we’re not following sheep. Get back on track.”
Cruz didn’t intervene. He felt old. He had witnessed hundreds of such disputes on patrols. Wolfe was probably correct, but Binns had the rank and responsibility.
The patrol moved ahead, breaking brush and hacking at vines, plunging into a chilly chest-deep creek, scrambling in sopping cammies up the far bank, following the Silly String through more broken scrub before stomping across another field ablaze with bulbs of brilliant magenta and deep burgundy. Again a small band of laborers refused to respond to polite salaams. The patrol wound through the next tree line, across the next field, and the next.
Most fields were about an acre, the size of a football field. Rows of tangled trees and thick shrubs clung to the edges of the irrigation ditches and larger canals. Scattered haphazardly amongst the fields were walled compounds. Inside each, three or four adobe or cement one-story buildings with flat roofs sheltered a dozen or more members of an extended family. A few courtyards boasted shade trees with bark tough enough to survive the nibbling of the goats, sheep, and cows herded inside each night. Some compounds boasted a refrigerator, and most had television sets. Electric power was provided via a single strand of heavy wire, supported by short, thick poles running across the fields from one compound to the next. The government in Kabul provided the dams, generators, and the transmission wire, while the Taliban collected a thin tax of a few dollars per month from each farmer. Entrepreneurs from India had delivered cheap cell phone service and for the first time in eight years, the Taliban had ordered the service shut down at night because the americanis had returned.
As the Marines passed, children ran out to gawk, while the older boys and men peeked over the walls. The Marines were using their telescopic sights as spyglasses. When a man’s head popped up over a wall, an exasperated Marine sighted in and mockingly yelled, “Bang, bang, you’re dead, motherfucker.”
“Knock that shit off,” Binns yelled.
By midmorning, the sun was searing and the Marines were sweating profusely. Cruz checked the time. In the past hour, they had covered half a mile. At that turtle pace, they’d finish the route in eight hours. Each Marine was carrying a CamelBak holding six quarts. They’d be out of water before returning to base. They had hydrated well the night before, so he wasn’t too concerned.
Half an hour later, they struck a stream too deep to wade across. Binns called a halt to let Wolfe and Ashford search for a fording point. The Marines knelt or sat in line, none venturing outside the lane marked by the string. As they had crossed the fields, Tic the terp had sauntered along like a tourist, greeting the lancers in Pashto, waving with a map in his hand, and occasionally scribbling a note. Some nishtgars had looked startled, while others had laughed.
Now Tic, squatting on his haunches near Lamont at the rear of the column, was waving at some workers, who were yelling back angrily. One threw a rock at Tic, who wagged his finger and seemed to repeat what he had said.
“What’s that about?” Lamont said.
“They’re asking why we’re here,” Tic said. “I tell him to burn their poppy.”
“You don’t have to jerk them around,” Lamont said.
“It’s my job,” Tic said.
Lamont gestured with his sniper rifle toward the laborers bent over in the fields.
“Whoa. I thought you were one of them,” Lamont said. “You American?”
“I’m whatever Stovell wants me to be,” Tic said.
Lamont walked into the bushes and unzipped his fly. He had barely begun to pee when a clod of dirt hit him in the back. He whirled around to face two boys who were chucking more clods at him and shaking their fists.
“They’re telling you to squat,” Tic said, laughing. “A mal doesn’t piss standing up. Not to worry. Eagan will pop them for you.”
Eagan idly gave Tic the finger and continued to glass the tree lines. Tic laughed and walked away.
“That’s one strange dude,” Lamont said.
“That fucker’s a lot smarter than you or me,” Eagan said. “Paid more too.”
“What’s he really do?” Lamont said.
“Like he told you, he screws with their minds.”
Taking advantage of the halt, Stovell had unzipped his pack and taken out a computer that roamed the radio frequencies. Through relays, the intercepted data flowed to a cryptology center back in Virginia. From there, vectors and clues were sent by text and voice back to Stovell.
“Fort Meade identified one short burst from our target,” Stovell said. “He’s about three miles northwest of here, using Silent Circle encryption.”
Richards was kneeling a few feet away.
“Can Meade break it?” he said.
Stovell shrugged. “You want Langley to assign a high priority?”
“Let’s save that chip for later,” Richards said. “How you coming, Tic?”
Tic, who had spread out his map, grinned.
“The lancers think I’m working for the Baloch. I’m warning them they’d better get paid now.”
He poked his finger at a few dots along their patrol route.
“I told them the Marines plan to spray the poppy. Most workers laugh. They don’t care because their poppy’s been bought. The guys who threw rocks? They’re upset because their harvest hasn’t been sold yet. That means our target hasn’t finished buying around here.”
He put away the map as Cruz and Binns came up.
“Op center’s picking up heavy ICOM chatter,” Cruz said. “Dickers reporting our route.”
“Sergeant Ahmed says he’s hearing crap about crows and kites and bags of flour,” Binns said. “The Talibs have eyes on.”
Binns moved off and Cruz stayed with the CIA team. With Stovell shielding him from the workers in the fields, Tic dug a small hole with his knife, inserted a black metal disk that looked like a hockey puck, and filled in the dirt.
“A pressure plate,” Richards said. “We get a radio signal if someone steps on it. It gives us direction of movement.”
Tic was again yelling at the
laborers.
“Stirring them up? Cruz said.
“Correct. Get them worried about selling their poppy,” Stovell said. “Our target might come up on the net and talk too long.”
“I don’t want you to endanger my people,” Cruz said.
Stovell pointed at the patrol route outlined in blue on Cruz’s handheld display.
“Skipper, you know you’re going to get hit,” he said. “Our team makes no difference.”
Cruz kept his eyes fixed on the laborers.
“I hate the Green Zone,” Cruz said. “Lost too many good devil dogs in these fields. We thought we could change those people, win them over.”
“Did you really believe that?” Stovell said.
“The generals believed it,” Cruz said. “I’m just a grunt.”
“Democracy was never the future for these tribes,” Stovell said. “We’re antibodies in this culture. You were sent on a fool’s errand.”
“We should be careful what we say,” Cruz said. “The troops might get the wrong idea.”
Stovell smiled.
“In Helmand, heroin rules,” Stovell said. “Our generals know that. So does every grunt after his first patrol. Still we fight on, year after year.”
“Yet you’re here, and you don’t have to be.”
Taking no offense, Stovell laughed.
“I find the chase challenging,” he said. “Don’t forget—I was a corporal before my corporate days. John Richards was a staff sergeant back then.”
“And Eagan?”
“He’s why I’m still in one piece.”
23
A Deadly Engagement
Wolfe and Ashford returned from their recon, cammies dripping and water sloshing from their boots.
“We can cross a hundred meters upstream,” Wolfe said.
The patrol followed the squirts of Silly String along the bank to a spot where a herd of sheep had trampled down the underbrush. In brown, slow-flowing water up to their knees, the Marines waded across. When he reached the edge of the next field, Wolfe abruptly stopped. The warning needle on the metal detector had jumped into the red, and the warning buzz was screeching like a zipper being jerked back and forth. He knelt and gently probed with his hunting knife until he exposed a nine-volt battery the size of a cigarette pack, with a thin wire attached to its positive pole.
The Last Platoon Page 11