Unspoken Abandonment (10 page)

March 18,
2003
:

Before we started shift tonight, the squad got some very scary news. Two hours outside of Kabul, in an area where we are always on missions, an American vehicle was hit in a convoy. There were four troops in the vehicle, and it was most likely a Special Forces team. Two of the troops are alive, one is dead, and one is unaccounted for.
“
Unaccounted
for
,
”
“
missing,
”
“
being taken,
”
however you want to word it, it
i
s
our worst fear here. I hope he is found soon, but if he does no
t get out alive, I hope he dies quickly. Being taken by these animals is horrifying. Torture, beatings, and behe
adings are
almost a complete certainty
.

When we a
re
on patrol
in the city, we stay together and stay very close. If you become separated from your team and find yourself alone, you might find you
rself with a bag over your head and
on A
l Jazeera
for the whole world to see.
Inside Camp Eagle
, it
is fairly safe from this thr
eat as it is in the surrounding area.
It
i
s when you leave the relative safety of the city where the real threat comes. Firefights happen every day in the rural areas
,
a
nd if your team is overrun, you a
re
done
. There is just no other way to put it.

Every time we load into an SUV or a HUMVEE and roll past the gate, I think about that tank that stopped us. It happened so
quickly
that
none of us saw
the situation
coming,
and yet it happened
.
The situation
practically appeared from nowhere
,
and
within seconds
,
we were over our heads in a situation with very few options. I still wonder constantly what their intentions were. I half think that if they were really intending on taking us, they would have. They would
n
o
t have cared two shits about us calling anything
in;
they would have just done it. However, that thought does
n
o
t calm the fear that
,
even if
for
just
a few moments, they had complete control over my life. The fate of whether I lived or died sat right in their hands, and I was completely powerless to do anything about it. It all happened
without the slightest hint of a warning, and could happen again in just the same way.

The rest of the midnight shift in the OP was very quiet, and gave me a lot of time to think about what I just wrote. It
i
s an amazing way to put your life into perspective and realize just how very fragile
your existence
really is.

March 19,
2003
:

The war in Iraq is getting very close to
commencing
, and things are getting very tense around here. Security is increasing, and rumors of various attacks are flying around Kabul. Attacks against coalition forces have been on the rise lately, but the word is that they are going to start hitting us very hard in pro-Taliban areas. We have also been hearing about thousands of Pakistani trained, pro-Taliban, jihadists crossing the border into Afghanistan to begin attacking American forces. We
ha
ve been hearing
intelligence reports
that these jihadists have been training in urban assault and warfare, mountain fighting, and
how to use
explosives. These rumors do
n
ot sit well when I know
we
a
re not far from Pakistan
,
and our compound is right along the main route from Pakistan into
the downtown
Kabul
.

The soldier that went missing y
esterday was found this morning
and sadly,
he was
not alive. He was found about a mile away from the point of attack, and they said it looked as though he died fighting. He fought to the very end. As sad as that seems, it beats
the shit out of the alternative of being captured.

After shift, we had to go out on a foot patrol in the city. It was the same deal as always, four three-man teams loaded into t
hree
trucks. We got to our area and left one team to guard the vehicles while the rest of us broke off to our assigned zones. Today, we were in an area with a lot of shops
,
shitty little businesses, a lot of cars, and
mobs
of people. We were assigned to patrol this district because of recent information that this area may be the target of attacks against American interests. We
ha
ve been
to this area many times before
and
have always found it to be
very American-friendly. Most of the stores have signs in English and American flags
waiving in their entrances
. A lot of the signs try to integrate
“American” any chance they get. They use,
“American movies,” “American Coffee,” etc
etera. They just want our money;
they do
n
o
t care about us.

Today wa
s
eerily
different. The American flags are all
removed
, the signs have absolutely no English anymore, and every hint of American support is gone. This made us all think that the threats may be very real
.
If the
locals are
willing to pass on the chance to make a dollar, there is
definitely
something to worry about. None of them want to be the one store with an American flag in the window.
Being the only store showing American support
would be just begging to be bombed.

Regardless of the threats, today went very well. No one was hurt and nothing significant happened. Every time a patrol or mission ends
,
and I
safely return to
the
compound, I just can
not help but feel like I a
m tempting fate every time I leave.

March 20,
2003
:

Tonight was the deadline for Saddam to leave Iraq, and that deadline came at one thirty in the morning, Afghan time. For the last week, we
ha
ve been
receiving
more and more reports
involving
threats to
various
American
interests
in Kabul
,
as the impe
n
ding war in Iraq looms closer
. Since nothing big was
actually
happening, I assumed it was all bullshit.

Around three o’clock in the morning,
it was very quiet in the OP
,
until
the sky lit up
with a bright white flash
to my east
. Seconds later, I heard a massive explosion that shook my entire OP. Within a minute, the north gate reported an orange streak over the compound, traveling towards the east. As he was calling this out on the radio,
there was
another huge flash and powerful boom to the east. Almost immediately after, I saw two orange streaks followed by another flash and two explosions. The explosions were about a half mile to our east, and they were very powerful.

Situation reports started coming in from other compounds in the area, and I heard that HIG fighters were firing rockets over our compound and towards a compound
just blocks
from ours. The
rockets
missed their
intended
target
s
, but completely destroyed a shopping district less than
one
half of a mile from our north gate. Because it was so late at night, there were no fatalities, no American injuries, but several civilian injuries.

After shift, several of us were assigned to patrol the area that was hit by the rocket attack. The impact of the rockets turned about ten buildings into piles of rubble. We were supposed to stop people from looting the shops that had been
leveled
, but we did
n
o
t
bother
to
stay very long
.
Upon our arrival,
th
ere was nothing left to protect, and
we found e
verything was either blown apart or burned
prior to us getting there
. W
hat little had made it through
the explosion
was pr
obably already stolen throughout the night.

It was a very nerve racking night. It
i
s amazing how a three minute rocket attack can get your adrenaline so jacked up that it takes hours to settle down, and when it finally does, you just crash.

March 21,
2003
:

The war in Iraq is in full swing, and bombs are falling
all
over Baghdad. Ground troops are already fighting in southern Iraq
,
and we
a
re hearing that there have already been Marines killed in action. I have no idea on any specific details, that
is just the little bit that we ha
ve heard.

The compound’s commander decided to play it safe and ha
d
every soldier
on the compound assigned to
a fighting position tonight. We ended up with nea
rly triple the normal man-power. T
he wall
was
lined with machine gunners, MK19 fully automatic grenade launchers, and AT4 rocket launchers. The night went without a single incident. I think it would take just one look at that wall to realize it was
n
o
t worth attacking tonight.

Around six thirty in the morning, I was pulled off the wall to go on a mission with
the rest of the squad
. We were heading out with
a team from another unit and two
Intel
guys. We had no idea where we were going, what we were doing, or what was about to happen. We were just told to get our gear and move our asses. This was really very strange.

The two
Intel
guys with us were both Americans, but they each had a long beard and wore local civilian style clothes. These are the kind of guys that run around the city, making and
keeping contacts, and gather
all of the intelligence which we end up hearing
in our nightly reports
. Always listen to the street because the street never lies, and these guys are listening. It
i
s their job to know who
i
s planning on doing what
,
and
then they are tasked with
making sure it never happens.

We rolled out of the compound, and hauled ass through the city. As the driver weaved through
the stream of bicycles and shit
box cars, we were final
ly briefed on our mission. The I
ntel guy riding in my vehicle told us there was reliable information that a small group of Al Qaeda fighters were stockpiling weapons in a remote village about thirty miles east of Kabul. The
obtained
information also hints that there may be two high ranking Al Qaeda officers who have been causing a lot of the recent problems in the area.

We were heading to that village to take the
Al Qaeda officers into custody
and
to
seize the weapons cache. We were told, “Try to take them alive, but a fight is a fight, and you guys do whatever you have to do.
Just try to take them alive.
”

We got to the village, and
we
quickly located the Al Qaeda safe house
using the information provided by informants
. There were very few people milling around, and it seemed as though no one was expecting us. The safe house was a small
, two-
room shanty wedged between two shops, and it was very easy for us to secure.

The entry team stormed in, and we easily controlled everyone in the room without a fight. There were nine Afghans in the shack, all living off of blankets or makeshift cots. The
Intel
guys quickly learned that five of the people inside were locals sympathetic to the Taliban’s cause. The other four were Al Qaeda members known to the
Intel
guys.