Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me. . . .
—Psalm 23:4
DO YOU KNOW ALL the people you love most in the world?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” I answered with a kind of awkward do-I-or-don’t-I-smile expression one often wears in the boss’s office. The boss in this case was CBS News anchorman Dan Rather. We were sitting in his office on the second floor above the newsroom, Dan in his leather chair and me in a straightbacked, stiff, wooden chair in front of his massive desk, discussing my upcoming trip to cover the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan. It was fairly standard practice that a difficult overseas assignment would merit a warmup pep talk from Dan.
“Okay, then write each of them a letter, tell them exactly how important they are to you. Address the letters, seal them up, and leave them in your desk drawer so someone will find them in case you don’t come home,” he said. Then he just let the words hang in the air for a while. If he was trying to get a reaction out of me, he didn’t. I kept my expression calm. Inside, I was wondering how this conversation was supposed to help me. I was hoping to be encouraged, not frightened.
Since there was no natural light in the office, the cavelike darkness often made it difficult to make out all of Dan’s features. In dramatic fashion, it was slightly reminiscent of a scene from The Godfather, dim light, dark wood, an imposing figure behind the desk, and a much-worn trench coat hanging on the door. Instead of a gun or cigar box, however, he kept a Bible on his desk, which left a comparable impression.
“When you go to a place like Afghanistan,” he continued, “you might not come back. That may sound harsh, but it’s true. If you can’t handle that truth, then you shouldn’t go. If you can, go with God’s speed. And remember three more things about Afghanistan. Don’t eat the meat, don’t drink the water, and never look at the women,” Rather said, with a smile growing on the edges of his lips.
“I’m glad you’re going,” Rather said. “Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and reporters gotta go.”
“Reporters gotta go.” I certainly lived by that creed. By 2001 I had established myself as a network fireman, volunteering for every major story, both domestic and foreign. I had worked in both the Miami and Atlanta bureaus covering the 2000 election recount in Florida, the tug of war over Cuba’s Elian Gonzalez, and numerous natural disasters. I had traveled abroad to Iraq, Central and South America, and Haiti. But less than two months after September 11, when the network was seeking volunteers for coverage in Afghanistan, I had hesitated. For the first time in my professional life, I had to ask myself whether the job was simply too dangerous for me, whether I really needed to be in a place actively involved in bloodletting, like Afghanistan in 2001. Without trying to sound morbid, there are reasons to die, causes worth dying for, like family or one’s faith. But did my career ambition require that I take this risk with my life?
I was afraid. Have you ever been afraid? So afraid you couldn’t move? Have you ever been shaken by the kind of fear that makes your eyes water and your nose run? When I was a child, fear would usually take me by the hand and lead me away from danger and difficult situations. Fear, just like anger, was a friend of mine. Now in my early forties I had done a pretty good job of keeping my fears at a distance. Journalists at this stage don’t talk much about being afraid. One of the things that drew me to this profession in the first place was the bravery associated with it. I remembered seeing and reading about reporters who endured threats during the civil rights protest era or those who went on countless patrols alongside soldiers in Vietnam. Those were the risky datelines of their generation, and America was better because of their courage. Now history was calling on my generation. Being a journalist in wartime does not compare to the hardships and risks facing America’s sons and daughters in the U.S. military or the demands heaped upon their families. Theirs is a special calling, but reporting from dangerous places carries its own risks, and a number of journalists around the world have given their full measure in search of truth. So after some soul searching, prayer, and a few intense conversations with family, I put my name on the list of those who would go to Afghanistan.
And after Dan’s “pep talk,” I wrote the letters to my loved ones as he recommended. (They are still in my office desk, and I pray I get to turn those letters into paper planes with my grandchildren someday.) Normally I was excited to go away on big assignments, looked forward to packing my bags, and enjoyed the process of counting out batteries and socks and maps. This time I felt more like I was packing to go to a funeral. I wasn’t excited. I was too nervous to be excited. In the past, my foreign assignments would have been dangerous only by accident. In covering the war in Afghanistan, death wasn’t an accident; it was a consequence. But before my fears got the best of me, I did what I was raised to do: I prayed.
Days later, I left for Russia and traveled from there to the capital of Tajikistan for the long car ride to the Afghanistan border. I met up with a few journalists from other news organizations, and we took a short ride on a raft across the Amu Darya River. It felt a bit like traveling backward in a time machine: thirty-six hours earlier I had been in a fine Russian hotel near Red Square and then aboard a jetliner from Moscow. Suddenly I was floating across a fairly deep river, with strangers, on a motorized raft. No one said a word, which is unusual for a group of journalists. Usually there is at least one person in these groups who wants to share how much they know about the place we’re going to. But except for the two Russian guides who spoke no English, no one on the raft had ever been to Afghanistan before. It’s one thing to be scared. It’s another to see it in the eyes of everyone around you. I had been to the developing world before, but as we floated to the shoreline, Afghanistan looked like a place struggling to reach developing-world status. I could see mud huts and decades-old vehicles. A stench of burning charcoal was in the air, and men huddled around small campfires were cooking what appeared to be goat.
My only instructions were that an Afghani would meet me on the shore to take me to the CBS compound. I walked up the riverbank carrying my own gear and dragging two cases of equipment for the crews. At this point I was more of a packmule than a journalist, bringing in fresh supplies. I guess I was expecting the kind of welcome greeting I would have gotten at an airport, a nice man holding a sign with my name on it. What I got was a thickly built bearded Afghan man with a Kalashnikov rifle on his shoulder, carrying a CBS mailbag. He looked like he was in a bad mood. I put my right hand to my heart and said, “Hello, sir, I’m Byron Pitts.” His expression didn’t change. He didn’t move, just looked right through me. I stepped forward and extended my hand and repeated, “Hello, sir, I’m Byron Pitts from CBS News.” That got his attention. He took two steps forward and pushed my chest with both hands. I hadn’t come across that greeting in all the books I had read about Afghanistan. More than surprised, I was puzzled as to why this man was touching me. About that time, he took another step and pushed me again. I looked around and saw other Afghan men standing and looking at us. The other journalists had filtered away. Then I looked down and realized that I was standing on the edge of the riverbank. If he pushed me again, I would fall into the water. When he reached up to push me one more time, I grabbed his hands and pushed him back hard. I was half expecting him to raise his weapons. Instead, he smiled. I guess I passed the test. He turned and gestured toward his ancient Russian pickup truck. As I got into his truck, I thought about how unfamiliar this environment was, how aggressive this culture was, and how careful I would need to be.
CBS News had a base camp in northern Afghanistan, in an empty stretch of windswept land masquerading as a village called Khoja Bahauddin (we pronounced it Hoja-Baha-Who-Dean). The region looked like one of those planets from an early episode of Lost in Space or the way the Old West might have looked long before it was settled. Living was hard: the place was dry and dusty, with most of its people living at different rungs of desperation. On windy days some of us would joke about the time and money Westerners spent on exfoliates and such to clear up their skin. Spend a brief time in Khoja Bahauddin, and the mixture of desert sand and Mother Nature would buff your skin to a baby-soft shine. Spend too much time, and you could age dramatically. We would meet men in their thirties, windblown and sunburned, who looked to be in their seventies. We were indeed foreigners in a foreign land. Language seemed the least of our barriers.
Before 9/11, most Americans knew little and perhaps cared even less about Afghanistan. The United States had shown passing interest in the region during the 1980s when the country was at war with the Soviet Union. September 11 changed all that. Osama bin Laden had claimed responsibility for the terror attack on the United States, and his organization, Al Qaeda, had ties to Afghanistan and its ruling Taliban party. While the Taliban ruled, a tribal militia group called the Northern Alliance had been battling for control, region by region, for years. Their commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud, was assassinated two days before the terror attack in New York. Now the Northern Alliance had a friend in the United States.
We were assigned to the northern region of Afghanistan. Our job was to file news reports on the efforts by the Northern Alliance to push their way south to the capital city of Kabul, while they engaged in all-out combat or minor skirmishes with the Taliban fighters. We would get daily briefings from our colleagues at the Pentagon about the major movements of the battle, but we mostly relied on our local interpreters to tell us how close we could get to the front day to day. We filed regularly for the CBS Evening News and The Early Show the next morning. One day we reported on the fierce battle for a village. Another day it was the reopening of a village bazaar, where people could shop for goods and men could shave their beards. Other network teams were coming into Afghanistan from the east and the south. We were all hoping to meet in Kabul, where many of us naively thought the war might end.
To travel abroad for a major news organization is something akin to being a part of a traveling circus, a rock band, or a very large family. Engineers, technicians, photographers, producers, and editors—these are the people television viewers never see and rarely hear about—are all separated from their loved ones for long stretches of time, often longer stints than the on-air reporters. Their days can stretch from dawn until bedtime—preparing for daily assignments, coordinating the teams, and keeping in communication with headquarters. Back home, assignment-desk and logistics folks make it all work. Add to it the bad food, poor sleeping arrangements, bouts of dysentery, plus the occasional burst of gunfire and explosives. No one was under any illusion that this was a vacation in paradise.
On big overseas stories, technicians traveled from around the world, so we were sometimes meeting for the very first time. Francesca Neidbart, a sound technician from Austria, was partnered in Afghanistan with her cameraman husband, Alex Brucker. I had never met Francesca until I actually bumped into her one night inside the compound near the kitchen. She’s a beautiful woman, with olive skin and thick black hair; I thought she was an Afghan woman roaming around after dark and remembered Dan’s warning, “Never look at the women.” Here was a woman with her hair uncovered. I panicked, bowed my head, and backed out of the room like an uncoordinated at the moon-walk. I knocked over a case of water, which knocked over a stack of pots and pans. The loud chain reaction woke up the entire compound. On top of all the built-in stresses, we were living on top of one another and couldn’t escape for a moment’s peace.
Leading the CBS operation was a legendary producer named Larry Doyle. If John Wayne had ever worked as a network producer, he would have trained under Larry Doyle. The kind of rugged toughness that Wayne symbolized in Hollywood, Larry, a captain in the U.S. Marine Corps during Vietnam, commanded in the field of journalism. He had nearly translucent, penetrating blue eyes, a voice like Humphrey Bogart, matched with thick, wavy black and silvery hair, and a solid frame. Larry was a mess of contradictions. If you saw Larry at work, he was almost always disheveled, like a guy who didn’t care about his appearance. He had a perpetual three o’clock shadow closing in on four o’clock, usually a cigarette and a Heineken in hand, deck shoes, and an untucked open shirt. But if you met Larry at a social event outside work, at a colleague’s party or at dinner, he would be dressed to the nines. In such settings he was a guy who seemed very fashion-conscious, with a wardrobe of delicate fabrics, like silks and linens. It was clear that besides the valuable experiences he had picked up in various war zones, he had also done quite a bit of shopping. He staffed the Afghanistan office, as he had other locations, with beer, cigarettes, candy bars, beef jerky, and the best local drivers and interpreters around.
During one innocent moment when I first met him, I asked Larry, “Do we have anything besides beer? I don’t drink beer.” He never answered, just stared a hole in my head with his bright blue eyes rimmed with heavy bags from a lifetime of little sleep. I finally got the message, opened a beer, and shut up. Less because of the age difference and more because of his demeanor, Larry was like everyone’s favorite uncle on the road, a bit dangerous, worldly, protective, and wise. As a relatively young correspondent, I worked with Larry in Afghanistan, Iraq, Central America, and throughout the United States. He was at times a friend, a parent, a coach, a confidant, and on occasion a pain in the butt. Each and every time he was what I needed. He was a truth teller on those days when the truth was not particularly pleasant to hear. He taught me to never go into a story with preconceived notions; always have a plan of escape and a backup plan. He taught me the meaning of professional loyalty. If it is a bar, a knife fight, or a trip to Afghanistan, you want Larry Doyle on your side. For all the weeks we were in Afghanistan, he made my top-ten prayer list each and every night. “Lord, thank you for Larry.”
The CBS compound was guarded twenty-four hours a day by a dozen armed Afghanis. In the middle of this desolate, poverty-stricken region was about an acre of expensive, high-tech equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus a significant amount of cash. We were a potential target. But the guards never traveled with us on any of our assignments. After several days in the country, the storyline and the war forced us to head south toward central Afghanistan. That meant leaving the comfort and security of our compound behind. I left with Larry, cameraman Mark Laganga, and CBS radio reporter Phil Ittner, along with three drivers and an interpreter. For our team, getting to Kabul meant traveling over two hundred miles of open desert, through small villages and scattered towns, with more than a few pitched battles between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban along the way. The challenge was to stay close enough to track the ongoing battle but far enough away to keep safe. We often talked about the pros and cons of carrying a weapon for our own protection, but we were observers of this conflict, not participants. Having a gun might have emboldened us to take an unnecessary risk. We always felt safer with some proximity to the troops, because without weapons or the protection of military forces, as journalists we were fully exposed to the violence of the region. There was also the fact that we were known to carry supplies and money. Bandits were about as common as rocks. Every day we made a threat assessment before we ventured out to shoot our story. How close could we get to the violence without getting caught in the crossfire? How dangerous were the roads?
One day we woke up early, packed, and were headed down a road that we knew to be a shortcut to the next village. Suddenly a local farmer shouted to one of our interpreters, telling us to stop. The road had been filled with landmines by the Taliban. We couldn’t see the mines, but we trusted his word and turned our vehicles around. It was difficult to comprehend that we were just a shout away from almost certain catastrophe. We were relieved to be alive but angry that our own interpreter had not known the terrain well enough to protect us. We were paying him not just to speak the language but to guide us where we needed to go.
About two days out from Khoja Bahauddin, we were standing on the wrong side of the Kokcha River and needed to cross. The only way seemed to be by horseback. We had too much gear and too few vehicles to handle the weight. We were at risk of sinking into the muddy bottom. To make matters worse, it was growing dark. We had to reach the nearest village, on the other side of the river, before nightfall. It never failed to happen that the darker it became outside, the shadier the characters would become around us. Our interpreter told Larry the mood along the riverbank was changing. Some of the new arrivals at the river were debating whether to rob us.
That’s when we heard a voice in the distance. “Larry! Larry Doyle, is that you, mate?” The voice came from an Australian journalist named Paul McGeough, who was sitting alongside the riverbank. He recognized Larry from a previous encounter, on a trip to Iraq. McGeough quickly assessed our problem and called in some support vehicles to help us across a shallow stretch of water. We soon learned that Paul had just endured what we all feared as journalists, an attack that left three of his colleagues dead. The night before, Paul had been with a group of journalists traveling with a Northern Alliance commander. The group was ambushed by Taliban fighters. Of the six journalists, three were killed and three survived. Paul was one of the survivors. He was headed out, not for home, mind you, but just for some other part of Afghanistan.
“Never leave a story on a bad note,” McGeough said. Paul and Larry greeted each other with great affection, like long-lost brothers. Clearly, Paul needed the emotional support after his ordeal. After introductions were made, we quickly decided that Paul’s story should be part of our report for the next night’s CBS Evening News. We interviewed him right where we found him, by the side of the river.
(The CBS Evening News, November 12, 2001)
Today, United Front Soldiers counted their bounty after the bloodiest weekend in this war so far. In what seemed like 72 straight hours of rocket launches, attacks, and counterattacks, much was gained here and much was lost.
These were the rocket launchers and rifles, boots and sleeping bags, taken off the bodies of Taliban soldiers killed in battle.
[Byron speaks with commander]
“Your tanks killed 27 Taliban soldiers.”
This tank commander boasted of running over 27 wounded Taliban soldiers. “It was easier,” he said, “than taking prisoners.”
There were prisoners and prized trophies. This letter was taken from a dead Taliban soldier written on the stationery of “The Islamic Front,” one of bin Laden’s terrorist cells in Pakistan.
[Byron, with interpreter]
“I know they are bombing on you. So be strong. I know God will protect you.”
For the first time, civilians in Northern Afghanistan were allowed back into villages once controlled by the Taliban. Cross the Kokcha River, they were told. It’s SAFE to go home.
[Byron on camera]
But safety is a slippery word in war. Sunday night six journalists accompanied a United Front commander to survey a town that had just been declared safe. Three of the six journalists were gunned down. Shot to death as they scrambled for cover.
[Byron interview with Paul McGeough of the Sydney Morning Herald]
“Suddenly we were being fired upon from three sides.”
Paul McGeough is one of three journalists who survived.
[More interview with McGeough]
“We were ambushed. And probably the nastiest thing of all, the bodies were looted by the time we got to them this morning.”
McGeough admits he GAINED a story but LOST three friends.
[More interview with McGeough]
“But if you combine the losses on both sides on that ridge last night, apart from the media, there were 110 people killed.”
What do you take from what you lived through?
“Thank God I’m alive. It was very scary and it doesn’t make me want to pack up and go home. But it makes me, it makes me . . . I want to be close to someone.”
Gains and losses. On one weekend in one nation at war. Byron Pitts, CBS News.
That night over hot tea and two fried potatoes cooked with oil on our hot plate, the five of us ate. Larry had convinced Paul to join us. We were glad to have his company and his knowledge of the region. Now, five of us were slowly moving south toward Kabul. Every day was physically draining. We would work eighteen to twenty hours a day, with very little sleep. We used bottled water and wet wipes for hygiene. There was not much food. Some days we would climb for hours on the dusty hills to get a better view of the battle. Our vehicles were often breaking down. Three of us would have to hold up the truck while a tire was being changed. One night we’d sleep in an abandoned building, another night on the rocky ground under the stars. Then there was the constant stress of wondering if the Taliban would overtake us or if bandits might find us. On a night when we finally found shelter from the cold in an abandoned schoolhouse, we were in desperate need of a good night’s sleep. It didn’t take any time for all of us to fall into a sound sleep. But when we were startled awake by a scratching sound, our first panicked thought was that it was an intruder. Mark Laganga saw it first—a large rat. Mark sarcastically suggested we catch it and eat it. Phil and I were in the room with it and wanted no part of the hairy creature. Larry ended the discussion.
“That rat lives here! We’re the intruders. Quit your griping and get some sleep!” Later that night, he whispered to me, “If you want to switch places with me, you can.” We all got a big laugh out of it, which we needed as much as sleep. It made us feel normal and gave us something else to talk about for a few hours at least.
Eventually, Paul would leave us, after he filed his share of stories and could end his trip on a good note. We parted ways as Paul waited in an open field to catch a ride from a Russian-made helicopter, north toward the Tajikistan border. As we pulled away, Paul waved good-bye. A single black bag hung from his shoulder. All he needed he could carry on his back, like a seasoned war correspondent.
A few weeks into the Afghanistan trip, I came down with a wicked bout of dysentery. I could not keep anything down and spent most of the day on my back or in the makeshift bathroom Laganga had rigged up. We affectionately referred to him as McGyver. (For the uninitiated, that’s the name of a nineties’ TV show about a guy who could get himself out of the most dangerous situations with as little as a toothpick and a piece of string.) Laganga could fix anything. There were not many restrooms in northern Afghanistan at the time. Mark took four pieces of tin, a milk crate, a shovel, a coat hanger, and a roll of toilet paper, and built a toilet—with running water, sort of. Although there was not enough tin for an actual door, Mark came up with the idea of a red bandana. If the red bandana was hanging on a hook in front of the bathroom, that meant no one should walk in front of it lest they and the person inside be surprised. When I was sick, that bandana was always in use. After about four days on my back on a cot, Larry tracked down a local doctor who spoke English. Actually, he was a veterinarian, but desperate times called for creative measures.
“Mr. Byron, what seems to be the problem?” the doctor asked, with a gentle bedside manner that surpassed plenty of American doctors I had encountered. I explained my symptoms. “What medicine do you take, Mr. Byron?” he inquired. Each of us had been issued a supply of Ciprofloxacin in the event of a bacterial infection. The bottle said take two tablets per day. I remember the doctor back in the States insisting I take no more than the prescribed amount each day because of side effects.
The Afghan animal doctor asked how many pills I took per day, and when I said three, he asked with a puzzled look on his face, “Why just three, Mr. Byron?” When I explained the concerns raised by the American doctor, he burst out laughing.
“Oh no, Mr. Byron, this is Afghanistan! Don’t worry about side effects. Please take eight pills tomorrow.” With that, he shook my hand. “You will feel better in a few days, Mr. Byron, I promise. Inshallah [God willing],” he said, as he left my side. Sure enough, two days later I was up and running, as if I had never been sick. In good shape for the head-on collision that was about to occur.
Like many things in Afghanistan, driving seemed like another test of manhood and another needless escalation of tension. In a convoy of vehicles, drivers would take turns jockeying to be in the lead. On narrow dusty roads, drivers were often blinded by the dust created by the car in front of them. Larry had arranged for a convoy of Toyota-style pickup trucks to take us south. I ended up in a burgundy vehicle, in the hands of a teenage driver with a collection of bad local music. Funny thing about teenage drivers around the world; they are all about the same, hard of hearing and fearless.
Our vehicle was about fourth in line when my young driver decided it was his turn to lead the pack. So he dashed out into oncoming traffic to make his way to the front. Most drivers coming toward us just moved aside and honked their horns. However, the driver of an approaching large truck with people piled on top did not appear willing to concede the road. In my calmest East Baltimore tone, I whispered to the driver, “Hey, brother, do you see that big truck?” I quickly assessed that the young man spoke no English, and I took a different approach with more attitude and bass in my voice. “Yo, man! Do you see that big-ass truck?” He looked at me and smiled. He didn’t understand a word I said, but he seemed to enjoy the panic in my voice and on my face. He turned his attention away from me toward the road and waved his hand at the truck, like a guy waving a fly off the windshield of his car. The truck driver apparently did not take kindly to the gesture. Just as we were about to hit the truck head-on, both drivers gave just a little bit but a little too late. We collided. Not a full-on front-end collision, but the front-right corner of our truck hit the front of their vehicle, which was about twice our size. Our pickup did a 180-degree spin and was thrown into a ditch, facing the direction we had come from. The bigger truck came to a stop on the opposite side of the highway. A passenger hanging off the top of the truck was thrown into the desert.
Dazed and grateful, I was still conscious, with a fast-moving headache that started at the back of my neck. I waited for the dust and sand to clear. Thank God we were both wearing our seat belts. As I lay there, the driver began yelling and pulling at my seat belt. Did he think I was injured? Perhaps he was trying to help me? Then I realized he was not clawing at my seat belt. He was trying to climb over me. His door was jammed. To hell with the American, he was trying to get away. About that time I noticed the driver from the truck and a few other men running toward our vehicle with pipes in their hands. They were yelling. I couldn’t make out the language, of course, but their volume suggested they urgently wanted a conversation with my driver. By the time the men got to our vehicle, the driver was out the door and running down the road. All I could see was the bottom of his shoes and a small cloud of dust. Larry and Mark ran to see if I was okay. I was shaken a bit but otherwise fine. We repacked my gear into one of the other vehicles. When we inquired about the driver and his car, one of our interpreters said, “Do not worry. Local justice.” With that, we moved on.
The pace of our travel was determined by the progression of the Northern Alliance push to the south. Some days they would gain several square miles and any handful of villages. The next day they might lose a third of it, as the Taliban would push back. That give-and-take of war dictated our timetable and our travel schedule. We knew that a major battle would eventually take place in the large city of Konduz, currently a Taliban stronghold. The Northern Alliance had to take control of it to secure a major supply route to the south. We traveled through a series of nameless villages on our way to Konduz. Tribal clans ran each town, and we needed to get permission for safe travel or an overnight stay.
After a week of sleeping under the stars fewer than fifty miles from Konduz, we found comfortable indoor accommodations just in time for Thanksgiving. It was a compound that had been abandoned by a local doctor fleeing from the Taliban. Relatively speaking, it was a nice two-story mud structure. There were multiple bedrooms because the doctor had multiple wives. No beds, no furniture, but we each carried our own cots to our own private rooms. Generally, we did not allow ourselves much time to think about our families back home. But it was a holiday, and I think we were all a bit melancholy. Mark was the most recently married. He decided to make Thanksgiving a special meal. Mark spotted a bird, which we believed to be a duck. While we worked, the household cook killed it, plucked it, and grilled it. Add some rice and beans, and we were ready for the feast. We were thrilled, because it was different from the goat, rice, or noodles that we ate most days after we ran out of beef jerky and Vienna sausages. Yet it was like a bad picnic. The duck was dark, stringy, and kind of bloody, not really cooked all the way through. No one complained. It was as close to home as we could get.
It was a nice respite but a brief one. The Northern Alliance was moving, and we had to move with them. Konduz was a few hours away; the battle was now imminent. Leaving after sunrise gave us ample time to make the trip in daylight, if there were no delays, no transportation breakdowns, and nothing unexpected happened. But we had to decide if we were going to push into darkness. Larry, who had been on the most overseas assignments, had a few basic rules that he insisted upon for safety. Never travel alone, never flash money in public, and never travel at night. But if we did not get to the outskirts of Konduz in the next few hours, we ran the risk of missing the action entirely. We took a vote, and there was unanimous agreement to push the limit of daylight and get to the next location in time to make air. Our maps indicated that a fairly routine trip was ahead of us. If everything went right on the road to Konduz, we would make it before nightfall. Unfortunately, very little went right.
Our interpreters provided a handmade map, which indicated a well-traveled road leading to Konduz. What our map failed to show was that the primary route, a narrow gravel road through the region, had recently been destroyed by the Taliban. We had to turn our convoy around and return to the last village to ask for help finding the best way south. The villagers put us on a road that was traveled more by animals than vehicles. The craters and rocks were hell on our trucks’ transmissions and tires. Of the five vehicles we started with, three broke down by midday. Two of the drivers refused to leave their broken-down trucks, and another driver abandoned us when he grew frightened by the unfamiliar route. In the next village, we downsized our gear, leaving behind water and some of our camping equipment. We bought another truck for cash and picked up a cocky sixteen-year-old driver who was willing to make the trip. Despite the language barrier, negotiations always came down to the number of one-hundred-dollar bills we were prepared to hand over.
We had lost a few hours, and it was now closing in on the afternoon. Mindful of the time pressure, with our new driver and a not-so-new vehicle, we set off on our way. We were still on a back road without any map to guide us. I was in the front car of the caravan, with the new driver and an English-speaking guide. Laganga was in the middle vehicle, with one of our original drivers and the fixer/cook/handyman. Larry was riding shotgun in the third vehicle, with a driver and our interpreter. The three vehicles stayed in contact by handheld radio. The road was more like a dirt path, carved by nomads, merchants, and drug dealers. Since it was too late to turn back and too dangerous to stop, we kept going amid growing darkness. No one in my vehicle spoke. The only sounds were loud Afghan music and the occasional groan from a pothole. Then without warning the driver slammed on the brakes. He spoke and gestured to the guide, who then turned to me with a pained expression.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
Through broken English, he explained that we had mistakenly driven into an area marked for landmines. During the war in the eighties the Russians had left an estimated seventy thousand landmines in northern Afghanistan. Someone would have to lead us out. I relayed the information by radio to Larry and Mark.
“Any volunteers?” I asked, hoping humor might disguise my fear. My request was met with dead silence. Then Larry spoke up.
“We’re paying the guide to guide, so goddamn it, get out of the truck and guide!”
And so he did, on foot. He was a middle-aged man, with a thin frame buried beneath oversized clothes and a face worn by years of conflict. Guided by the headlights of our pickup and the words of the Koran, we crawled along this way with our guide, the human bomb-sniffing interpreter walking in front of three vehicles for about thirty minutes. The cars were barely moving, but we soon reached the end of the minefield. Before we could celebrate safe passage, our teenager driver had stopped again. This time he was pointing out of the car and shouting. It turned out we were completely lost and most likely in territory controlled by the Taliban. Not good news. The guide, who had just recovered from his hazardous duty outside the car, now explained that a house off in the distance to our right should be off to our left. In all likelihood we were driving on the wrong side of the nearby mountain. We had little time to figure out how it happened because he could see shadows moving about in the house and was convinced that they were Taliban fighters. I delivered this alarming news to my colleagues in the other two vehicles. As I was explaining our current dilemma, those shadowy figures off to our right (most likely a good half mile away, although it looked closer) jumped in the vehicles outside the house and appeared headed our way.
Larry screamed into the radio, “Go as fast as you can!”
In the desert, “fast as you can” sounded more impressive than it was. We moved at a crawl. The scene would have been comical if it wasn’t so frightening. We were in a high-speed chase on an Afghan desert road, but we would have moved faster by foot. The terrain seemed to change with almost every heartbeat. One moment we were in a wide-open area, the next driving down a narrow path with only a few inches on either side of the doors. Not enough space to even open the doors but positioned perfectly to be ambushed. At other turns, we were forced to drive forward a few feet, make a hard turn in the direction we just came from, in order to eventually go forward. It felt as if we were rats in a maze. I have never been more frightened in my life. Then my fear turned to anger. I had promised my wife and children I would do nothing foolish that would risk my life and their future. Eventually, anger turned to sadness. I was about to die. It had happened before in this lawless, forsaken country. Why shouldn’t it happen to us? Journalists had no protection here.
Then I began to think about Larry and Mark. What about Larry’s wife and children? What had we done? As we bumped along, I actually began to cry. Quietly, with my head down and my fingers in a death grip on the driver’s seat in front of me. The paralysis of fear was setting in. I was giving up. I had stopped looking out the window or communicating with Larry and Mark by radio. I should have been helping to navigate our path or offering words of encouragement. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. Eventually, I closed my eyes and tried to pray. I was so afraid that I could not remember a single Bible verse, even my mother’s favorite prayer. So I forced my eyes open to look out my window and see if the end was near.
It was then, for the first time, that I noticed the sky. It was clear. The stars were bright and we were in a valley. It was a breathtaking sight. And then it hit me like a blow to the chest. The Scripture began ringing in my ears. It was Psalm 23:4-6.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
In the time it took to say those words, a peace I had never experienced before came over me. In an instant, I felt safer than I had ever felt. I began to realize that nothing Larry or I or Mark or the drivers might do right at that moment would necessarily make a difference. If it was God’s will we die, then we would soon be dead. But if it was God’s will we live, it would not even matter if the men chasing us caught us. My heart stopped racing. I stopped panting. I wasn’t in danger. I was in God’s hands, and I knew that was more than enough. What power comes from the sort of peace that no man can give and no man can take away.
The car chase went on for about forty minutes. As it happened, the men in the vehicles behind us never got close and eventually turned away. When we finally made it to the safety of our next desolate accommodation, I did not share my spiritual moment with Larry and Mark. Instead, Larry offered me more earthly solace, a shot of whiskey. Mark gave me one of his cigarettes. I gulped down the whiskey, lit and smoked the cigarette. Looking on in amazement at his colleague who does not drink or smoke, Mark jokingly said, “Byron, at this rate we’ll have you snorting cocaine soon.” We burst into laughter and then took care of the work that needed to get done. Within a few hours we were all asleep.
We would have other terrifying days and nights in Afghanistan. Not long after the battle of Konduz, a Swedish journalist was awakened by bandits storming a compound packed with journalists in the city of Taloqan. He was shot and killed. Our team was sleeping about one hundred yards away. The screaming of his friends woke us up. We spent the rest of that night comforting one another and talking about how soon we could go home. The next morning nearly everyone in the compound packed their gear and joined a caravan headed north, to leave the country. We had all agreed the story was no longer worth the risk. In all, eight journalists were killed in seventeen days in Afghanistan, including those who had traveled with our friend Paul McGeough. It was a staggering casualty rate for journalists working in a war zone.
When soldiers return home from war, they talk about their comrades, their brothers in arms. Theirs is a bond formed in mud and sweat and sometimes blood. For the rest of my life, I will have that bond with Larry Doyle and Mark Laganga. We don’t talk much anymore, but we don’t have to.