The Infection

FLASHBACK: Sergeant Toby Wilson

Combat Outpost Sawyer had all the beauty of a heavily fortified shantytown. But the mountains were breathtaking. This was the roof of the world.

Afghanistan, land of the Afghans.

As the Bradley topped the crest and drove along the escarpment, Sarge, sitting in his telescoped seat with the hatch open, got his first good look at the outpost that was just another island in a vast archipelago of little firebases scattered across the mountains.

The soldiers here called it Mortaritaville.

Sawyer lay perched on the valley’s long slope, a sprawling little compound of sandbag bunkers and huts and tents around which sturdy timber walls and rows of C-wire had been erected. From here, on the ridge, it appeared tiny and weak.

Sarge whistled. The base had been poorly sited. A series of ridges commanded the base. From there, Afghan fighters could drop mortar rounds right into the middle of the compound and then drop behind the ridge, disappearing from view. The nearest helicopter support was at least twenty-five minutes away. No wonder the boys here were reported to be so fatalistic, living in this remote place in almost total isolation, with an enemy that could strike from anywhere at any time.

The Bradley began to catch up to a “jingle” truck, a high-axled vehicle painted in bold and bright colors and jingling with hundreds of shiny bangles. Luridly painted female eyes stared at him from the rear bumper, as enigmatic as a cat’s. The truck was open in the back and several men sat inside wearing the baggy trousers and loose tunics typical of Afghan men.

Smiling in the dust cloud raised in the wake of their truck, Sarge waved.

The men glanced at each other until one of them nodded, apparently giving permission to another man to wave back shyly.

There we go, Sarge thought. We’re making progress now. Salaam, bud.

Hares scattered from the road, taking refuge among the rocks.

These men were elders and their retainers from one of the villages in the valley, on their way to attend a pow wow at the base. For several years, the Pashtuns in this wild region of Nuristan Province, so close to the Pakistan border, had welcomed the Americans. The land here was heavily forested, mostly conifers; while a majority of Afghans scratched out a living in farming and herding, the people here had been timber cutters since the days of Genghis Khan. They sold timber to Jalabad, Mehtariam, Pakistan. The jingle truck Sarge was following, in fact, was probably filled from top to bottom with firewood most days. The Taliban were oppressive and bad for business, so the people here celebrated when the Americans threw them out. Soon, however, Kabul began to enact laws restricting trade with Pakistan. The locals grumbled, but cut the Americans slack as the Americans were building roads and schools and regularly sending them gifts—school supplies, milk, prayer rugs.

The Taliban remained active in the area. The region was a corridor for insurgents crossing over to and from Pakistan. Inevitably, the locals got caught in the crossfire. The Air Force dropped a smart bomb onto a village and missed the target, a mid-level Taliban commander, by ten minutes, instead killing thirteen civilians, including several children. As a result, the locals threw their support to the insurgents against a foreign military they now saw as infidel occupiers. Fighting raged in the valley for the past six months, accounting for thirty percent of all combat in the brigade. The Afghan National Police station in the closest village to the east had been attacked so many times that the police were permanently demoralized. Without local support, the Americans controlled nothing outside their compound.

And so this meeting had been brokered in an attempt to stop the fighting.

Two Bradleys loaded with heavily armed combat infantry were sent to the base as a demonstration of strength. Sarge was glad to be in the point vehicle. For most of the trip, he was able to enjoy the beautiful scenery rolling by without eating the other vehicle’s dust.

The truth was he loved Afghanistan and had even learned to love its people. The Afghans lived close to life and death. This was one of the places of the world where it was still common to see nomads living off the land. It was a very old place. Numerous armies had marched through it—Greek, Persian, Indian, Mongol, British, Soviet. The Afghans had beaten the British and the Soviets and had nothing to show for it; centuries of warfare had impoverished the country, and many people here lived as they had for thousands of years, in ignorance and poverty.

Sarge had grown up in Los Angeles searching for something he could not name. He spent his teenage years gang banging on the city’s hard streets as a corner dealer and later as muscle. He killed a boy three days before his seventeenth birthday, but they never caught him for that. A month later, his girl dumped him and he smashed windshields in a drunken, brokenhearted rage all the way up two blocks of Hillcrest until the cops finally showed up. He took a swing at one and they did a Rodney King on him. In court, he was given a choice of prison or the Army.

Two years later, he was deployed to Afghanistan. Found himself sitting on a Bradley, watching M1 Abrams tanks drive across fields of poppies overlooked by the wild mountains of the Hindu Kush and endless blue sky.

And that thing he’d been searching for? He’d found it.

The column followed the jingly truck into the base in a blinding cloud of dust. The men piled out of the truck. One hoary specimen, his eyes white with cataracts and sporting a long white beard, scowled at everything. The Colonel and his staff emerged from a large tent set up for the meeting and they shook hands all around. The old man with the beard stood off to the side, refusing to shake. Noticing Sarge, he spat and said something in Pashtun, ending with Yabba dabba doo!

Sarge knew the expression but had never heard it spoken. It was Afghan slang, roughly translating as, “falling crates that knock down houses.” During the invasion in 2001, the Americans dropped boxes of food onto the villages, and some of them landed on huts and destroyed them, a perfect little parable of the trouble with good intentions.

One of the other Afghans, the man who had waved to him from the back of the truck, laughed and said, “Do not take it personal. He thinks you are Russian. He thinks you are all Russians.”

“He’s got a long memory,” Sarge said. “Maybe he thinks I’m British.”

“Ha. Perhaps. English and Russians alike died here. I hope you will do better, my friend.”

“Inshallah,” Sarge said. If God wills it.

The Afghan laughed with feeling. “There is a path to the top of even the highest mountain,” he exclaimed, quoting an Afghan proverb. Then it was Sarge’s turn to laugh.

More jingle trucks pulled up to drop off more village representatives. The squad in Sarge’s Bradley dismounted in full battle rattle, showing off their firepower to the Afghans. The place was suddenly swarming with locals and heavily armed soldiers in a melee of salutations and small talk. The Colonel ushered them into the big tent for tea, and then it was quiet again in the compound.

A dollar got you fifty afghanis, the local money. Sarge had seen a lot of Afghanistan and particularly enjoyed visiting the larger bases that had a market day where you could buy local food, crafts, anything. He loved the food, especially the rice pilau, and ate it the way the Afghans did, using naan flatbread as a utensil to scoop the food into his mouth. But in these smaller bases, there was nothing to buy. And nothing to do except duck bullets.

Sarge talked to Devereaux about the base and its vulnerabilities for a few minutes, and then decided to join a few of the base’s soldiers sitting and smoking on buckets and ammo crates in the protective shadow of a concrete bunker. This little nook apparently passed for the base’s lounge.

“Welcome to Mortaritaville,” one of the soldiers said. “Got any cigarettes?”

Devereaux did, and they all got along fine trading jokes and war stories and cutting into MRE pouches looking for candy. Sarge found a comfortable spot on the ground with his back against a wooden bin holding water bottles. The soldiers were already laughing at Devereaux. The boys in the squad called him “the Afghan” because he loved to tell big stories. The smallest firefight became an epic starring him and the Bradley. Sarge loved this part of Army life. Shooting the shit and occasionally busting balls.

“Black and white don’t matter to me, Sarge,” Devereaux was saying. “I wouldn’t mind being a black dude like you if there weren’t so many fucking douchebags. I’d rather be white because there are more white douchebags than black douchebags, and so the odds of somebody being a douchebag to me are less being white. Does that make any sense?”

“At least you’re not a jinglie,” another soldier said to Devereaux, referring to the Afghans. “Everybody’s a douchebag to the jinglies. This place has been douchebagged since the dawn of time.”

Sarge laughed.

The meeting dragged on all day until the Afghan leaders piled into their jingly trucks and started the drive back to their villages. They were smiling when they left, which the soldiers took as a good sign. Word went around that the Colonel had made good progress in getting the locals back on their side. Sarge understood that he and his boys would stay the night, and then rejoin his unit near Mehtariam tomorrow morning. The valley filled with a familiar mechanical sound and he looked up, shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare with his hand, to see a pair of Chinook helicopters pounding air, escorted by a single Apache attack helicopter.

One of the Chinooks wobbled and abruptly fell out of the sky, crashing into the mountainside moments later and breaking into pieces as it rolled into the trees.

“Whoa,” Devereaux said to one of the base’s soldiers. “Did you see that?”

The soldier shook his head in wonder. His nose wrinkled and he said, “Man, that smells funny.” Then his eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed screaming.

“Medic!” Sarge roared, kneeling next to the man to check his vital signs. “We need some help over here!”

But soldiers were falling everywhere onto the crushed stones, screaming.

The Colonel came running out of the tent.

“We’re under attack! Get to your posts!”

The Apache veered and collided with the other Chinook, bringing them both down onto the mountain in a spectacular, hundred-yard-long eruption of dust and stones.

The soldiers were falling and lay on the stones screaming, their bodies taut with pain.

“Holy shit,” Sarge said, and ran for the Bradley.

He sat in the commander’s station, panicking, his heart pounding against his ribs. What had happened to those men? Were they dead? If this were a biological or chemical attack, weren’t they all exposed? If the Taliban did this, the gloves would come off. They were begging the world’s best military for wholesale extermination, and they would get it.

After waiting for several minutes, he shifted into the gunner’s seat, working the periscopes to scan the heights for possible enemy attack.

The screaming stopped. Sarge almost cried with relief. After several moments of pure silence, the compound filled with shouting voices. Sarge sat for three hours, talking occasionally to the commander of the other Bradley on the radio, trying to find out what he could. Martinez and Thompson, the driver and the gunner, did not return. He assumed the worst.

Somebody banged on the side of the Bradley.

“You in there, Sarge?” It was Devereaux. “Answer me, goddammit!”

Sarge popped the hatch and emerged blinking into the late afternoon air.

“I’m here,” he said. “I’m okay. How about you? Your boys okay?”

His comrade nodded, his eyes glazed and his face pale.

“We’re managing,” Devereaux told him.

“Where’s my crew?”

“They’re down, Sarge.”

“Goddammit,” Sarge said fiercely.

Devereaux added, “They’re still putting everybody in that big tent where they had the meeting. The base suffered twenty percent casualties from whatever the hell just happened.”

One of five men was down. It was incredible.

“What’s our alert status? Why is everybody walking around?”

“The Colonel just dropped security to thirty percent,” Devereaux said. “I heard somebody say they heard the RTO tell the Colonel that this is happening everywhere, and the Colonel is figuring it’s not an attack. Right now he’s arguing with the Captain over whether to send a unit out to look for survivors at the place where those helicopters crashed. The Captain is refusing orders. He doesn’t want to go. Says we might still be attacked.”

“What do you mean, ‘everywhere?’” said Sarge. “You mean the whole country?”

“INCOMING!”

Soldiers were running everywhere, seeking cover. Devereaux ran and dove into a mortar pit, leaving Sarge to look for the source of the fire. The mortar round fell short, exploding just outside the base’s timber walls in a flash followed by a giant cloud of smoke and dust. A machine gun began firing on the rocky heights, sending plunging fire into the compound. Small arms fire flashed across the distant hills. Sarge flinched as he heard the first hissing snap and twang of bullets flying past his ears.

He climbed back onto the Bradley, lowered himself in and began working the control handles to maneuver the turret and align the rig’s cannon with the MG position at the top of the ridge.

It’s the locals, he realized. They fell down screaming too and they think it’s us who did it to them. Christ, there are seventy thousand NATO troops in the Sandbox and nearly thirty million Afghans. Twenty percent casualties would be fourteen thousand NATO troops but six million Afghans. If they think we did it, we’re toast. They slaughtered the goddamn Red Army for a fraction of the offense.

He fired, sending rounds arcing to crash into the heights. The MG fire stopped.

Big Dog 1, this is Big Dog 2, come in, over, he heard over the radio.

“I’m here, Big Dog 2, over,” he said, scanning for another target.

“The Mark 19 is down!” somebody yelled outside.

Mortar shells were bursting in the compound. A rocket propelled grenade hit the Bradley—an amazing shot—and glanced off before bursting in the air, raking its armor with shrapnel.

Big Dog 1, we’ve got reports of fire from the police station. Can you confirm, over?”

“Identified,” he said into the mike. “I’ve got hostile fire from the ANP station, Big Dog 2. The insurgents have taken the building, over.”

They’re all yours, Big Dog 1. Happy hunting, out.

He fired the cannon, dropping a score of rounds onto the building, which crumbled under the fire in a massive cloud of smoke and dust.

“Target,” he said.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

“Big Dog 2, this is Big Dog 1, over.”

Then he saw. The Afghans were sending plunging fire down into the tent where the fallen soldiers had been placed. The radio filled with angry voices.

We need fire on that fucking hill!

The human condition is to survive. When a man is just surviving, he has been carved down to the animal he once was. And animals only think of their own survival. It is all about fight or flight and a lot of times the animal in you wants to run blindly to safety. What makes a soldier a good soldier, Sarge knows, is when he is properly trained to control these impulses. What makes a soldier brave, even noble, is when he is willing to sacrifice his own safety for his fellow soldiers.

Soldiers were running into the open to draw fire, trying to distract the insurgents away from shooting at the tent, and were getting cut down. Sarge counted three bodies writhing on the stones bleeding and a fourth lying completely still. Another soldier was standing in the open on a carpet of spent brass and links, firing steadily into the hills. It was Devereaux.

“The Afghan” is going to have one hell of a story to tell if he survives this, Sarge thought. He continued to rain suppressing area fire onto the enemy positions along the ridge.

The radio steadily filled with traffic.

We got hostiles identified in the open to the north and east. They’re crossing the minefield, over.

The insurgents were launching a full-scale attack, spending their first wave on the minefield. Two additional waves followed closely on the heels of the first. Then it would be hand to hand fighting among the hooches. There were hundreds of insurgents in the assault.

Combat Outpost Sawyer was very close to being overrun. Sarge could hear the distant voices shouting, Yalla yalla! One of them cried Allāhu akbar, and the rest took up the shout. The volume of fire intensified. Hand grenades began bursting near the bunkers.

Jalabad says we’re getting zero air support, over.

“Medic!” a man was screaming.

Enemy in the wire, we got enemy in the wire, over.

A line of claymores exploded, sending geysers of dry earth and splinters of wood soaring into the air. The soldiers were retreating and blowing up everything behind them.

Sarge could not move the Bradley. He was not a mobile cannon, but instead a pillbox, his own personal Alamo. He scanned his forward sectors, looking for targets, but the air was filled with smoke and dust. Small arms fire crackled around the bunkers. He saw a fireteam abandon a burning building and fall back to the next defensive line.

Grenades began bursting around his rig. Sarge realized that the Bradleys were now in front of the Americans’ position, not behind. A Molotov cocktail streamed high into the air and landed on the rear of the turret, shattering and flaring to life.

The first insurgents came into view, firing AK47 rifles and crouching low as they ran.

Sarge opened up with the Bradley’s M240 machine gun at close range and cut them down. Small arms fire rattled off the vehicle’s armor. He saw an RPG team set up near one of the hooches, pointing at the other Bradley. He quickly switched back to the cannon and armed it.

“On the way,” Sarge hissed, pressing the firing switch on the right control handle. The insurgents exploded in a series of bursts.

As his visibility deteriorated, he kept it hot with the cannon, trying to stall the insurgents’ advance.

We got air support.

It was a single Apache helicopter flying through a hail of fire, dropping Hellfire missiles onto the insurgents running in the open towards the flaming base. The soldiers cheered. Its missiles spent, the helicopter began to set up its first strafing run.

Every man living in this valley must be here, Sarge thought, trying to wipe us out over a horrible misunderstanding. And with the insurgents caught in the open between Bradleys in front and the Apache behind, we’re going to wipe them out over that same misunderstanding.

This was war.

The fighting raged into the night. The soldiers shot flares and exchanged fire with the insurgents in streams of tracers. Sarge spent the night in the gunner’s station, pissing into a plastic bottle and dying for a glass of water. Outside, the wounded screamed and screamed. By the time dawn finally came, the surviving insurgents had melted away into the dark. More than a hundred bodies carpeted the rocks and were stacked around the scorched and broken bunkers.

The dazed survivors stumbled among the ruins of the base. Sarge found Devereaux and the other boys of the squad, all of them miraculously unscathed, and bear hugged them. Devereaux told him the Colonel had gotten orders to shut the base down and bring everybody to Jalabad, where local American forces were consolidating. He found out that his crew was still in the tent and that they remained catatonic but were otherwise unharmed in the fighting.

“This entire country must hate us right now,” Devereaux said. “How do you come back from that?”

“Welcome to the suck,” Sarge told him, but the old Army complaint rang hollow. He started walking toward the big tent, wondering what was going to happen next. The war had suddenly changed. Quite possibly, so had the world.

Twenty yards from the Bradley, an insurgent lay dying on the ground, silently praying and choking on his own blood. It was the laughing Afghan who had waved to him from the back of the truck and translated the old man’s curses.

Looking at him, Sarge raged at the waste of life.

“We didn’t do this to you,” he said. “Before you die, I want you to know that. We didn’t do it. All of this fighting was for nothing.”

“God hates you,” the man said. Then the lights in his eyes went out.

Several weeks later, as Pittsburgh burns behind him in a ruined America, Sarge will think about his comrades serving overseas. Only a fraction of the military deployed abroad had been brought home after the Screaming. He will wonder how they are doing over there, the thousands that were left behind in the wild parts of the world. He will wonder whether the boys in the Sandbox ever made it home. Whether they are now shooting at Americans instead of Afghans. If he ever sees them again, he will say, “Pa khair raghla.” Thank God you arrived safe and sound.