killed only a hundred and fifty enemy fighters in nine months?
“What about our casualties?”
“Forty-eight American KIA. About a hundred thirty wounded who needed evac out of theater. Some have come back, fortunately.”
They talked for a while about the tactical situation, and then Wells casually asked about drug use in the brigade.
“I hope I don’t come across as naive, but I don’t think there’s much of it,” Brown said. “I do worry about the ANA. Walk through the Afghan tents on base, you’ll smell hash and pot. Nothing we can do. Those guys have their own command-and-control and I’d catch all kinds of crap from my higher-ups if I tried to interfere. No doubt some of my guys have picked up bad habits from the Afghans. But mostly these are solid kids. And the ones going outside the wire, they know it’s bad for readiness.”
“So you’ve never heard about any kind of large-scale smuggling? Opium or heroin?”
“No.” Brown frowned. “Have you?”
“Not really. Just that a soldier on the plane over mentioned it. And, of course, this province is one big poppy farm.” Wells didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t see an alternative.
Brown looked at his watch. “Hate to pass on dinner but I have an eight p.m. pretargeting meeting and I have to talk to my XO.”
“So overall what do you think of our chances, Colonel?”
“Not touching that, Mr. Wells. Not with a ten-foot pole. I may have gotten stuck commanding the maxivan brigade, but I’m still hoping for a star.” He nodded at the door. “One of my sergeants will find you a rack.”
Wells saluted. “Good to meet you, Colonel. Can I ask you one favor?”
“What’s that?”
“You won’t interrupt me tomorrow when I start to roll.”
“Will it be that bad?”
“Nothing your guys don’t already know.”
Brown considered. “Let’s do it. Long as you don’t tell anybody to shoot me.”
NOW WELLS STOOD on the podium as the soldiers on the airfield cheered. But their applause fell off fast. No doubt they were expecting Wells to mouth the usual cliches. Good. He’d surprise them.
“Thank you, Colonel, for those kind words. You made me sound a lot more heroic than I am.” Pause. “What the colonel didn’t tell you is that it was the New York City police who shot me back in Times Square.” Polite laughter. “Anyway, I want to thank you all for being here. Now, probably I should give the talk you’re expecting. Tell you how you’re all heroes, everyone back home is grateful to you. Throw in a bunch of cliches about how you’re building a new Asscrackistan.” A murmur went through the crowd as Wells offered the forbidden word.
“But you deserve more than that. You deserve the truth. So first let’s talk about the Taliban. We tell folks back home they’re brutal, uneducated, hate women, they won’t let kids go to school. And that’s true. They’re bad guys. But then we say the Taliban oppressed the Afghan people and we’ve set them free. We are saving Afghanistan from the Talibs. And you know the reality is trickier. You know that around here, most people support the insurgents, or at least don’t oppose them.”
“Bull,” a soldier near the front yelled.
Brown stepped forward and waved his hands sideways like an umpire calling a runner safe. “This man’s come a long way to talk to us. Let’s show some respect.”
“I’m not saying that’s true everywhere. Not in Kabul, at least among the educated people who don’t want to get whipped for watching television. But plenty of these Pashtuns, they’ll happily raise that white Taliban flag. If we hadn’t invaded after September eleven, the Taliban would have taken complete control of this country. They had the Northern Alliance pinned practically back to Tajikistan. And you can believe me on that, because I was here. And if we left tomorrow, the Taliban would take over around here pretty damn quick.”
“So what do we do?” the soldier yelled. “Pull out, let them have their way?”
“I can promise you that won’t happen. The powers that be have decided that Afghanistan is too important to be left to the Afghans. I guess we could come in here with a Vietnam-size force, a half million guys, and own the place. But that’s not happening either. We don’t have the money or the stomach for that war. So we’ve got limited options. Believe it or not, I think the plan the four-stars have come up with isn’t too bad.”
“Can you explain it, then?” somebody yelled from the safety of the middle of the crowd. “Because I don’t get it.” A few soldiers laughed. Wells was glad to see them loosen up.
“Put a bunch of guys into Helmand and Kandahar to kill any Talib dumb enough to come at us. Push their midlevel commanders into the mountains, so the SF can pick them off with minimum civilian casualties. Use drones to get after the high-level guys in Pakistan, make them negotiate with us. And I mean negotiate, not surrender, because they aren’t surrendering. Basically get them to see that they can’t have the whole country, so they might as well join up with the government and get what they can.”
“What about destroying them?” the soldier yelled.
“Destroying them isn’t going to happen. Let me tell you something. You should be proud of the fact that you’ve put these guys on their heels even a little bit. The Russians couldn’t, and they had way more men. Now I want to talk about what’s going on back home. Ninety percent of Americans can’t find Afghanistan on a map. They think about you twice a year, Veterans Day and Memorial Day. You see it when you’re on leave. You go to a bar, guys buy you a round, ask about what you’re doing. But if you tell them, their eyes glaze over. It’s too far away, confusing. Plus, they’re ashamed to hear about it because they’re getting drunk in college, mommy and daddy paying the bills, and you’re putting your butts on the line for them every day. They don’t want to think about it. They just want to buy you a beer and tell you you’re a hero.”
“Amen!” somebody yelled.
“And let me tell you, it sounds cheap when they say it, but they’re right. You are
“Hoo-ah!” someone cheered. The chant spread through the crowd, melding, until two thousand voices shouted as one:
Wells looked out at them. For the first time, he understood the lure of politics. He had connected with these soldiers. Roused them. For a moment, he felt a thousand feet tall. And he came to the hidden point of the speech, the reason he was here.
“Hoo-ah. Yes. But there’s one more thing to say. I know you care about your fellow soldiers. I see it. I heard it just now, when you brought your voices together.”
Another cheer.
“But not every soldier is worthy of the name. Some guys don’t respect the uniform. I’m speaking from experience here. Once I was one of you. Before I was in the agency, I was a Ranger. And I feel duty-bound to say this to you. If you see guys crossing the line, dishonoring your service, you have to stand up to them.”
The crowd, so enthusiastic a few seconds before, turned sullen. No matter. He pushed on, hoping someone on the field understood what he was saying.
“I’m not talking about crying to your sergeant because somebody steals your flip-flops in the shower. I’m talking about the guys who are taking out their frustrations by shooting locals, smuggling drugs. If you’re going to be safe outside the wire, you have to be able to trust the soldiers in your unit. Soldiers who behave that way are soldiers you can’t trust.”
Wells looked over the airfield, hoping for nods, signs of life. But his sermonizing had taken the air out of the crowd. He’d taken his shot and he’d have to see whether anything came of it.
“Anyway. That’s what I’ve got. I wish I could sing, or play the guitar. Do something to put a smile on your faces. But believe me, you don’t want to hear me sing. If anybody wants to hear about how I got myself shot by New York City’s finest, or anything else for that matter, come on over to the trailer where I’m staying and I’ll tell you. I might even have some beer over there, the non-nonalcoholic kind. First come, first served.” Wells looked at
