IN THE TOC, Larry Kay’s phone rang. It was a battle NCO—a noncommissioned officer—calling from Battalion at FOB Ghazni.
“Hey, Lieutenant,” the NCO said. “You guys need to go back out to the IED site. That crater is pretty big and it needs to be filled. We’ve gotten a lot of complaints from the Afghans.”
Kay’s anger was instant and white-hot. “I’ll tell you what, you can fuck off. I don’t give a shit what the Afghans think. In fact, if they want it filled, they can go out there and fill it themselves.”
Kay hung up, steaming. He knew there was a contractor in Wardak available to repair roads. Dog Company damn well didn’t need to fill what amounted to a freshly dug grave for her own men. But Kay had been in no mood to explain that to the NCO. He predicted the number of minutes until the phone rang again. In about the time it would take for the NCO to notify his XO, it did.
“FOB Airborne, Lieutenant Kay speaking.”
“Larry, did you just tell one of my NCOs to fuck off?” It was the 1-506th XO, Major Rob Smith.
“Yes, sir, I did. We are not going to fill holes less than twelve hours after some of our boys got killed. Especially not that hole.”
Smith’s voice turned sympathetic. “Listen, Larry, I’ve lost men in combat, too. But you have to pick yourself up and move on, continue the mission.”
“Sir,” Kay replied calmly, “Dog Company will not fill that hole.”
Dave and the CI team set up shop in an empty green tent. From what he’d gathered so far, it appeared that were more advanced problems on Airborne than he’d thought. Hill had already fired two local nationals, the dirty terp and the guy walking in rounds. In the old days, Dave imagined Hill and his men would simply have lined them up against a wall and shot them.
In the new Army, however, commanders’ options were limited mainly to kicking suspect locals off their bases, even if caught red-handed. Booted workers often got a new national ID card with a slightly different spelling of their name, hiked down the road, and got hired at another base. Then maybe a couple of years later they’d get caught again. From a counterintel standpoint, it was maddening.
Dave’s plan to interview every local national on the FOB would establish baseline data on them all. These initial interviews were critical, but the approach casual. Kind of a “Hey guys, let’s work together to keep the Taliban from blowing us all up.” No need to trigger tight tribal loyalties that might result in Afghans calling their coworkers and telling them it might be a good idea to call in sick for a few days.
One by one, the local nationals streamed through the tent, where they were engaged in friendly ten-minute chats with the CI team, a bunch of guys who looked nothing like soldiers. Dave and his team kept the questions basic and benign: name, base access info, cell number, what part of the province they were from. It was a good drill, Dave felt, as his next interviewee, Aziz Dalmar, took a seat.
Dave put on his friendliest Gullible American face and said, “We really appreciate the work you do here. We’re just concerned about terrorists working on our bases.”
Dalmar and his brother, Malik, ran the little coffeehouse at the top of the FOB. “Yes, of course,” Dalmar said. “Whatever we can do to help.”
Dave noticed that he spoke excellent English.
“If you know of any terrorists working on Airborne, you can tell us now and we will protect your identity,” Dave said. “We just don’t want anyone to smuggle a bomb onto the FOB. It’s happened at other bases and we don’t want that to happen here.”
His tone said, Rah-rah, we’re all on the same team; his pen jotted cryptic notes.
“I understand,” Dalmar said. “I don’t know of anyone like that, but I will stay alert.”
“Thank you,” Dave said. Next, he thought.
All told, the first round of interviews took a couple of hours. Dave collated the data then fired it over to a Bagram colleague, “Ben Travlin,” a veteran of special operations combat deployments who was generally an amiable pain in the ass if he had not recently convalesced on some Caribbean island somewhere. Dave allowed a couple of hours for Ben Travlin to walk the intel through existing databases then dialed him at Bagram.
“Ben Travlin, brother, what’s up, man? You decided to finally come to work?”
“Whatever, dude,” Ben Travlin snorted. Then he lowered his voice, almost whispering. “We’ve got some good shit for you, man. You’ll be proud. We just have to find a way to get it to you.”
He meant an instantly secure way, Dave knew, and he wished for the thousandth time he had a Bat Phone, or at least a portable cone of silence. “Well shit, son, email it to me pronto. I’ve got shit to deal with here that can’t wait.”
“Okay, I’ll get on it. What’s it like down there?”
“Same ole. Moondust, FOB smells like diesel and shit, and everybody’s tired of dying and bad guys.”
“Yeah man, pretty much the same up here except for everything you just said. The chow hall served lobster last night. Not bad, either.”
Dave laughed, but knew that the disparity between the luxuries of Bagram and Spartan conditions at outlying FOBs were a sore spot for grunts in the field. “Drink a near beer for me, man. When should I expect to see something from you?”
“I’m attaching a dumbed-down version now. Check your secure email in an hour or so.”
“Hey thanks, buddy. Later.”
An hour later, Ben Travlin’s analysis arrived via encrypted email. Dave saw a couple of knocks on some highly placed local national workers. But nothing firm, really. Just shadows and smoke.
17 August 2008
Hill had received some good news: There was an Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) Special Forces team participating in Nomad along with CPT B’s team. The team had agreed to come to Airborne after the op and take custody of any spies rolled up during Dave’s CI hunt. Hill was elated. The catch-and-release detention pattern with Battalion that had plagued the company for months seemed to be crumbling in the face of the deputy commanding general’s FRAGO.
Now, though, there was a task Hill had been putting off: calling LTC DeMartino, his Battalion commander. He was disappointed that DeMartino had not been among those who’d sent messages of condolence after Carwile and Conlon died. Through Larry Kay, DeMartino had requested Hill call him.
Hill grabbed Kay and 1SG Scott, and the three went into Hill’s TOC office. At this juncture, he wanted his leadership in the loop. Scott dialed and put the call on speaker.
Without preface, DeMartino said, “I’m thinking about bringing Second Lieutenant Zach Morris up there to take over 3rd Platoon.”
Hill glanced at Scott and Kay, who both shook their heads.
“Sir, I’d appreciate it if you could hold off on that,” Hill said. “I don’t think it would be good for the soldiers to have a new platoon leader so soon after—”
He couldn’t finish. Hill’s throat closed and he walked out of the room, and out of the TOC. Air, was all he could think. I need some air.
Outside, the wreckage of Carwile and Conlon’s IED-blasted gun truck sat near the FOB gate. A recovery crew had been forced to heave it onto a flatbed and deposit it back on Airborne, where it hulked like a grim monument, scorched and broken.
Hill paced the dirt nearby, searching his brain for the benefit of the doubt. Maybe DeMartino didn’t handle loss well. Maybe he was one of those people who felt uncomfortable in times of high emotion and therefore went straight to dotting i’s and crossing t’s.
It was not urgent that 3rd Platoon get an instant replacement for Donnie Carwile. Months earlier, Hill had reassigned the Shockers’ platoon leader to Battalion’s logistics shop. The platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Kris Wilson, had run the Shockers for weeks before DeMartino sent a replacement.
You could still count the time since Donnie’s death in days.
This wasn’t the first time Hill had felt that DeMartino was tone-deaf when it came to his men. He just hoped his CO would have the respect and compassion to listen to him and not try to fill Donnie’s shoes right away—at least not until after 3rd Platoon had some time to stand down at Bagram and grieve.