“I just needed to see you,” he says.
“So is it over now, the ban on talking to your own wife?” she asks.
“No, not really. I have to leave camp for a few days. When I come back, hopefully it will be over.” He tries to sound optimistic, though even he doesn’t believe what he’s saying. On a scale of one to ten, he’d put his own credibility at zero.
“And the reason you’re leaving—the usual?”
He smiles ironically. It’s a reference to his work’s usually secretive nature, a little inside joke between them. She never asks if it’s dangerous; that’s another part of their agreement. No need for her to worry. Until now, despite being in the middle of a war zone, he’s been a desk officer whose most serious threat is arthritis in his shoulders.
He nods, suddenly getting a lump in his throat. “I have to run. We’re leaving now.” She stares at him, and once again he can feel the distance that has come between them. “I love you,” he says. “I hope you know that. Whatever happens.”
He sounds choked up. Confused, she stares at him. Concern spreads across her face, and she opens her mouth to say something. He cuts off the connection. He doesn’t want to hear what she has to say. He doesn’t want to answer her questions, because he can’t. He’s afraid he’ll start to cry.
He grabs his equipment, which is always packed and ready to go in one corner of his office. In one hand he has his automatic, while the other holds his helmet with the infrared binoculars attached. He’ll put the helmet on later. He leaves his office, crosses the square, and heads toward the soldiers who are ready to go. The rain has stopped. He notices that the temperature has dropped below freezing. The clouds have dispersed, and the moon is coming out.
Removing his equipment, he places it by his feet and looks at the soldiers.
“I’m going with you,” he says in a loud, determined voice.
GRAY ZONE
1
The APCs crawl across the asphalt on Highway 1. Steffensen has ridden here so many times before, but always on his way to meetings. Never into war. Deep into night, the moon shines like unpolished silver on the flat desert landscape, but the horizon’s saw-toothed mountains are too far away to be visible in the moonlight. The faded Milky Way, which smolders like phosphorous fire during the new moon. Steffensen spots a satellite crossing the firmament. For a moment it seems closer, a more positive sign of life than the highway’s few oncoming cars, which immediately dim their headlights and pull to the side to let the rumbling procession of military death machines pass. A pair of camels bob by outside the closed bazaar, which is silent. Maybe some nomads on early business. They pass the ramshackle bridge over the Helmand River.
Steffensen and the chaplain stand together in the open hatch. Not by choice—they accidentally wound up in the same vehicle. “Who do we have with us?” Steffensen asks. He realizes that Møller probably knows the platoon better than he does.
“There’s the sniper, Eigil Kaurason, we’ll definitely need him. Then there’s his spotter, Karlsen. Viktor, the sergeant. The medic, Simon. Adam. Hannah. I think she’s taken a kind of leadership role. The one with the camera—they call him Sidekick. His real name is Andreas. Sørensen is a sweeper. Sylvester, another sweeper. A few more I don’t really know that well. Gustav, Dennis, Mathias, and—” He stops, searching for a name. “Årslev? No, he’s one of the ones who died. I’m not on top of all this. Sebastian, I think.” He counts on his fingers. “Including you and me, we’re fifteen altogether.”
I need to pull it together, thinks Steffensen. I can’t just stand here, for Christ’s sake, and let some chaplain take control of my men.
Thinking about Karen again, he starts to feel overwhelming guilt. And sorrow. When they see each other again, will he be a different person? Will she still love him? Will she even like what she sees? His life will be overshadowed by shame. They’ll have to move. He won’t be able to show his face in Rønne. The political party he has belonged to for a generation supports the war. But even they won’t support him.
The convoy of armored vehicles stops abruptly. Steffensen hears voices in the distance. One by one, the APCs are emptied, except for the gunners, who continue searching into the moonlit night, their infrared binoculars glued to one eye. Steffensen crawls out of the hatch and walks up to the APC at the head of the line. A group of men stand there, with Andreas in the middle; he looks confused. Steffensen walks over to them, with Møller at his heels. No one even notices they’ve arrived.
“Fuck, man, you must know where it is.” Hannah is speaking.
Andreas seems totally lost. Steffensen can see how tired he is. He watched his comrades die, and the effect of the adrenaline shock has long since abated. Now comes the reaction.
“Schrøder,” he mumbles. It’s the only word they’ve heard him say for the past few hours. “Schrøder,” he repeats.
To the west they can see Girishk’s scattered lights; they must be about six kilometers from the city.
“We’re standing here, ready to shoot—and you can’t remember where it is?” says Hannah.
“Calm down,” says a tall, dark-haired guy with a full beard. Steffensen recognizes him as the soldier who shot the wounded fighting dog in the ruins of Naib Atmar’s compound. In his mind, he goes through the list of names Møller gave him. It could be any one of them. Adam, maybe?
“There aren’t even any numbers on the houses out here, are there? These fucking qalats all look alike. Give him some time.”
The tall guy with the beard leans over Andreas. “Can you remember the gate? Was there anything special about the gate? Or what about outside the walls? Was there anything you noticed?”
“Come on, Andreas!” Hannah again, her voice impatient. They’ve stopped using his nickname.
“Hey, relax, okay?” Adam slaps Andreas’s shoulder encouragingly. “It’s all right, Andreas. We’ll figure it out.”
Now they all join in.
“Maybe we drove right by it.”
“We need to go back and retrace our steps, this time with the floodlights on. It was on this side of the bridge, right?”
“Of course it was on this side of the bridge. It has to be.”
“Fuck, man, if we turn on the floodlights, they’ll see us coming. Then they’re forewarned.”
Hannah cuts to the chase. “We’re going to destroy them anyway. Come on—let’s get going!”
They walk back to the vehicles and hop in. Steffensen is just one of the group now. No one has asked him about anything or even looked at him. All he feels is relief. The APCs turn, slowly driving back the way they came. Their floodlights are on, scanning the walls of the widely dispersed compounds. There’s no sign of life in any of them. If they’ve posted guards, they’re well hidden. The bridge across the Helmand River appears. They stop again to consult.
“We must have turned around too soon. Come on, Andreas. How far did you go before coming back to the bridge?”
Clearly, they all feel powerless. Steffensen senses something anticlimactic. They might have to go back unsuccessfully. Or is their adrenaline level so high that they just have to hurt someone? Is that how these men are thinking?
Can he join them in killing innocent people? Maybe he’s failed as a leader, but he still has some sense of responsibility. He’s not here to just shoot anyone. He’s here to bring his soldiers home again, not only alive but also as people who can stand up for their actions.
Excuse me, says a voice inside of him, what is it you’ve done so far? The mayor, the farmer, the interpreter, those children?
He can’t stop thinking about it. Will it ever stop? He can only imagine Karen’s reaction when she hears about the dead children. Will she be accusatory or understanding? Will she say that’s just what happens in war? Or will she give him a strange look and tell him that he’s become someone she no longer recognizes?
Something inside him hopes for the latter. He doesn’t want her simply agreeing with everything he does. Otherwise,
he’ll never find his way back again. But back to what?
Two voices are speaking inside him, but he no longer knows which of them is his.
2
For the second time, they pull away from Girishk. This time they drive faster and then slow down. Once again everyone stares at the qalats. Seeing the dense clay walls glide by in the floodlights makes Steffensen realize how unwelcoming this country is. Every home is a fortress and, like all fortresses, also a prison. The Afghans have locked themselves into a prison of eternal war and thrown away the key.
The qalats become more dispersed and farther from the road as the convoy heads out into the desert.
“Schrøder! Schrøder!” A voice rises above the din of the engines. The heavy vehicles stop. Bathed in floodlight, a slender tower sticks up over one wall. That’s what Andreas is pointing at.
“Careful! There might be sentries!”
Something is hanging from the tower’s crossbeam, though it’s hard to tell what it is. Skins from slaughtered animals? Simon aims his binoculars at the tower. His face freezes. His mouth tightens into a thin line and he looks down.
“Are there sentries?”
Speechless, Simon shakes his head. The men hop out. They get their gear ready and quickly move toward the large metal gate that blocks the entrance to the qalat. A heavy chain with a padlock holds the gate’s two wings together. Mathias and Gustav attach an explosive device and race away. With mouths open and their hands over their ears, they wait for the detonation. A blast rolls out across the desert.
Steffensen realizes how cold-bloodedly and routinely they work. If there’s any adrenaline running through their veins, you can’t see it. Suddenly he feels proud of them, a feeling he has never known before. He knows—not from experience but because it’s his duty to know—that the rush of adrenaline will come as soon as they step into the qalat. They could be facing a labyrinth of buildings and interior courtyards with plenty of opportunities for a deadly ambush.
You can always decide the whole battle by pulling back and calling for air support. How many women and children are in the buildings? That wasn’t a consideration he gave any thought to when he ordered the bombing of Atmar’s stronghold. He has paid for it ever since—and he’ll keep on paying for it. This time is different. He has been told specifically that there will be no air support; they have to fight until they’ve taken out the last adversary. And if they’re using women and children as shields? Can they make their own life-and-death decisions? Can they determine the extent of what in cold military terms is called “collateral damage”? He doesn’t think so, and that’s why he came with them.
Should he participate in the attack? Should he fight alongside the men he knows deep down inside are no longer his? He trained many years ago—and at that time the Danish army didn’t train in quelling rebellions or guerrilla warfare. Instead, they were preparing for a massive Soviet invasion of land troops, and their only task was to hold on until help came. Defend Køge Bay from a seaside invasion. He takes a deep breath. He has to join them, right at the front, where it really matters, even if he’s in the way. Which he probably is.
Along with the others, he storms through the bombed-out gate, blown off its hinges and lying in pieces inside the courtyard surrounded by rubble. He isn’t only running through a gate: he’s leaving behind an entire lifetime. At this moment, he realizes that with crystal clarity.
They encounter no resistance. No flash from any muzzles. No nerve-wracking rattle of a Kalashnikov. The qalat must have been evacuated long before their arrival. No one is waiting for them.
No one living, that is.
As they pause, looking around vigilantly, they spot them, row after row, floor after floor, phosphorescent green, not because they’re emitting heat in an infrared sight, but because their naked bodies, covered in frost, are reflecting the moonlight. They’re hanging from the tower in nooses wrapped around the crossbeams at one end and beneath their arms at the other, four or five to a row, three rows, one above the other. The frozen bodies sway slightly, back and forth, and there’s a faint clinking sound when they bump into each other, as if their dead cells have already started to crystallize. In the release of death, their large, muscular bodies have lost all their hard edges. They look softer. Dark stripes run down from their necks or from holes all over their bodies, where the frost has collected in thick layers; it’s the coagulated blood from their fatal wounds.
The soldiers standing in front of the tower of death stiffen, as if the frost has entered their blood and turned them into pillars of ice. Recognizing their dead comrades, they gasp all at once. No one is thinking in this moment. In battle, when they’re fired at, they don’t lose their cool, but now they’ve been fired at by a weapon of unknown caliber. Not only their training, but also their survival instinct, fails them. They’re powerless. They’ve entered a gate and there’s no way back.
An unexpected sound startles them. No more than the scrape of a foot, but in the frozen night’s breathless silence, even the scrape of a foot sounds deadly. Instantly they’re professional soldiers again. They spin around.
A burka-clad figure stands at the other end of the courtyard with a child clutching the hem of her tentlike dress. The child’s feet are naked on the frozen ground.
3
The first to react is Steffensen. His speed surprises even himself. He doesn’t shoot. He runs out into the middle of the courtyard and, spreading out his arms, places himself in front of the soldiers.
“Don’t shoot!” he yells.
“Move,” screams an excited voice. To his surprise, Steffensen recognizes it as Hannah’s. “It’s a suicide bomber!”
For a moment he expects to be riddled with bullet holes—they’re so wound up. He raises his hands preventively, and then he turns around and walks over to the petrified woman and child. The child stares down at the ground. Steffensen doesn’t like what he’s about to do, but he has to do it. He grabs the burka. If it’s a suicide bomber, it’ll happen now and his life is over. If it’s just a woman, he’s guilty of a serious violation. But that’s the least of his problems.
With one swift movement, he pulls the burka back over the head on what he hopes is a woman. He’s amazed at how light the fabric feels. To his relief, he’s staring into a woman’s face. He barely manages to see her hard, angular features before she hides her face in her hands and falls to her knees before him. A black ringlet falls down into her face. The child stands silently beside her. He can see that it’s a boy. It’s difficult to determine children’s ages in Afghanistan, but he estimates the boy to be about seven or eight. The child is wearing nothing but a thin kirtle.
Later, Steffensen is convinced he saved the woman’s and child’s lives. He’s sure that the soldiers would have shot and that they would have felt nothing when they lifted up the burka to find they had taken the life of an innocent woman.
Afterward, Hannah gives the order to ransack the qalat. The buildings are empty; they just need release. They feel more despair than rage, and sometimes despair can be more dangerous.
They kick in doors they could easily open and blast through walls they could walk around. The qalat echoes with shots and explosions, as in a larger operation, but the only battle is the one they’ve brought with them. And then everything is quiet. Soon there’ll be the rapid change from night to day, which they can never get used to. The sun will rise, and its rays will melt the frost on the faces and naked bodies of the dead. The warmth won’t bring them back to life; it will only accelerate the putrefaction process, bearing witness to another kind of life, one that they neither belong to nor have any power over.
They need to cut down the dead, although they don’t have time to bring them back to camp. They’ll have to radio for help. They’re on Schrøder’s trail. He can’t get away. Otherwise the sight facing them will sear their corneas and spread like an infection to their brains. His dead body is the only cure.
There are no ladders anywhere, so they crawl
up the wooden tower’s rickety scaffolding, now filled with both the living and the dead. Viktor is first, followed by Adam and Sylvester. They disperse onto each floor, where they cut the naked bodies free and hand them down from one open embrace to the next, until the chaplain and Sørensen carefully lay the bodies on the frozen ground in a row that seems endlessly long. Mads, Årslev, Lasse, Nikolaj, Daniel, Clement, Troels, Iraq Robert, Joakim, Jonas, Jannick, Aske, Tobias. Names, once upon a time. The heaviest and coldest things they’ve ever felt. The dead’s hair is green with frost, which has also created ice crystals on their once-moist corneas. Brushing off the crystals, they try to close their fallen comrades’ eyelids; they want to escape these blank eyes that have seen something they, too, will one day see, these eyes that refuse to tell them about it. Because the dead’s eyelids are frozen solid, they have to leave their strange, constant stare, one beyond all questions and answers.
Despite the cold, no one is wearing gloves, and afterward they don’t regret it. There’s a farewell in their touch.
Andreas films everything. First the cutting down of the dead, then the brief red light of morning falling on every one of the frost-covered faces, the first crystals melting as if life is returning, and the eyes that are still open until the chaplain closes them, one by one.
Møller stands up to say a few words. He calls them dragon slayers again. “It’s important at this moment of overwhelming sorrow to remember who we are.” He has talked about the Devil’s face before. Now he calls Schrøder the Devil. “He’s been living among us,” he says, “and we didn’t know his name. He hid among those we thought were closest to us.” He draws parallels to the terror network back in Denmark and reminds them that they aren’t here on a lonely mission of vengeance. They’re here on behalf of their whole nation. Back home it’s all still guesswork. No one has been caught in the act. But they’ve seen the enemy, and now they know his face. Then he recites the names of the dead.
The First Stone Page 26