I ran halfway down the ridge toward our Humvees, calculating what needed to be done before the sandstorm hit. The Kurds must have seen the storm coming, too, because they had already dismounted the fifty-cals and removed the whip antennae, sparing them from what was to come.
“Can you lead us in?” I said to the older Kurd, when I was sure we were far enough down for the jihadis not to hear us.
“What?”
“Through the dust storm. Can you lead us?”
“You can’t see,” he protested. “You can’t breathe. It will—”
“We’re going. That’s not the question. Do you know Sinjar well enough to lead us to your friend once we get there?”
He stared at me for a moment, and I could feel the dust starting to whip up against my skin. He nodded.
“I’m going to calculate the course. Winch the Humvees together,” I yelled to Boon over the rising wind, “with the Kurds in front.”
I ran to the low point in the ridgeline where the Humvees would crest. The whipped sand was already abrasive, but I pulled out my compass and took a reading on the exact line we’d need to take to hit Sinjar. As I turned to leave, I heard shouting, and I saw one of the jihadis pointing toward me. His comrades looked right at me, then signaled to their friend. He turned and ran the other way, following them toward what must have been shelter.
I turned and ran back to the Humvees. The sky was turning dark with sand as I yanked open the bulletproof door and leapt in beside Wildman, who had taken the wheel. We had half a minute, maybe less, before we’d be blind. I radioed the compass reading to the Kurds, and they started up the slope. They weren’t pulling us; Wildman was steering and giving our Humvee gas, but the winch line was short, and it was a lurching ride as the two vehicles fought each other.
“Keep her steady, cowboy,” I said.
The storm hit us ten meters from the top of the ridge, turning the air to sandpaper. We had to make it past the boulders while we could still see where they were. After that, it was open country. As long as we stayed relatively on line, and the sandstorm wasn’t too strong, we’d make it into Sinjar. We pushed forward as the world collapsed. The light was brightest in front of us, but the light was getting smaller as we drove toward it, the sand rising like the mouth of a million-toothed monster closing from all directions, trying to trap us inside.
“Hell yeah!” I yelled as we hit the top of the hill in a brownout, a hundred decibels of abrasion on the vehicle’s skin. If it had been a regular car we would have been airborne, but the Humvee lumbered over the crest like a beast, crushing rocks beneath it, and barreled down into the storm, the sand lashing our windows with a vicious scraping sound.
The Humvee wasn’t airtight. There was flying sand inside, and it hurt. I popped my desert goggles over my eyes, then rewrapped my black turban around the rest of my head. The other Humvee was no more than three meters in front of us, but we couldn’t see it at all. The biggest danger was ramming them from behind, and we almost did that three or four times, but without the tether, there was no way we’d stay together in the storm.
“You’re cut,” Boon yelled into my ear above the screaming wind. “Give me your arm.” He turned on the Humvee’s interior compartment light.
I looked down. I had a slice in my desert camo. Something in the storm, like a sharp rock, must have sliced me as I ran. Boon reached across the Hummer’s cramped interior and tore off the sleeve for access, then slathered a disinfectant inside. I could see the gash now, and I felt the pain.
“It’s going to need suturing,” Boon said.
“Now? You must be joking.”
“Afraid not,” he said, as he reached for his med kit. Boon had been a surgical medic in the Thai Special Forces, and he’d even graduated the U.S. Army Special Forces 18 Delta course at Fort Bragg. They took a few foreign soldiers each year from partner countries.
He placed a gauze pad over my gash. “Hold that,” he shouted as he pulled out a roll of hundred-mile-per-hour tape, known to civilians as duct tape.
“What are you doing?”
“Patching you up,” he said, winding the duct tape around my wound, hands oscillating with every bump we hit.
“Bugger!” Wildman yelled, skidding right as a structure reared up suddenly at our six. I didn’t remember any structures.
“What is going on, driver?”
“I believe we are in Sinjar, sir!” Wildman said in a mock British officer’s accent.
The storm had engulfed us so completely. Our headlights were on, but they weren’t helping. I couldn’t even gauge our speed, except that structures seemed to be rising from the brownout and whipping past us, far too close.
“Bugger,” Wildman yelled again, as he clipped a building and sent the Humvee lurching onto two wheels. He hit the ground with a thud, the winch jerking us forward like a water skier at the end of the line, almost smashing me into the windshield.
The storm was clearing. I could see the rear lights of the Kurd’s Humvee, weaving in front of us at the end of the tether. They were speeding up and starting to whip us from side to side.
“Take it slow,” I yelled into the headset, but they were already rounding a corner too fast, flinging us into a building as Wildman battled for control. We scraped concrete, and the whole vehicle shuddered against the centrifugal force, but Wildman managed to straighten her out.
“Slow down,” I yelled into the headset again.
Two blocks on, blue patches started to emerge in the sky, and the wind began to die. I looked at my taped-together arm in the morning light, gave Boon a thumbs-up, and looked back just in time to see a one-story building with an open rolled metal door looming in front of us. We slammed inside at fifty kilometers an hour, Wildman and the Kurds pounding the brakes and fishtailing to a stop a meter from the back wall. Behind us, the barn doors slammed shut, plunging us into darkness.
It was suddenly quiet, except for the sawing of the wind outside. Then I heard the scurrying.
“What is this place?” Boon said. I heard a bullet being chambered and knew it was Wildman.
“Stay calm,” I said. I took off my goggles and licked the sand from my teeth. I flexed my arm. The tape was tight, but I could move it in a firefight.
The lights came up. We were in a small warehouse full of bedrolls, water, and other detritus of despair. About thirty people lined the walls, silently staring at us. I counted. Eight of the men were armed.
The older Kurd stepped out of his Humvee. For a moment, everyone waited, and then a man rushed him. They embraced. The old Kurd began to speak rapidly. Finally, he turned to us.
“It wasn’t safe in the Humvees outside,” he explained. “They would have marked us immediately, and it would have given this place away. There are . . . religious police. Spies and thugs. They are checking everywhere. I don’t know how much longer . . .” He stopped, looked at the man beside him, and gave him a hug.
“Who are they?” I asked.
“Refugees,” the Kurd replied. “Kurds and Yazidis. They will be killed if ISIS finds them.”
“We have to help them,” Boon said.
My first thought was, No, we don’t. That isn’t our job.
But then I thought of something Boon had said to me, back in the African jungle. I couldn’t remember where or why, but I remembered his words. We’d been talking about Buddhism, I realized, but why?
Monks are judgment without action, Boon had said. Soldiers are action without judgment. A mercenary has the privilege and the burden of both.
As an army officer, I was trained to never question orders, no matter how questionable. A soldier’s ethics were never marked by the wars he fought in, only the way he fought them. But now I could pick and choose my missions. Mercenaries have to own their ethics, unlike soldiers. Many didn’t give a shit, but I did. Or was trying.
“We’ll see what happens,” I said, turning to Boon. “We’ll make this right, if we can. But right now, I have to take a shit, and then we have a job to do.”
It was my old standby. The job. I’m just doing a job. Instead of turning away from it, I turned to the old man. “Please tell me they have plumbing in here,” I said, but I already knew the answer from the way he was shaking his head.