One Bullet Away

Afghanistan was not only landlocked but time-locked as well. I sat on a metal chair in the TACLOG and flipped through printouts of a CIA analysis of the country. Patrick sat across from me, reading about Taliban battle tactics.

“Listen to this,” I said. “Population of twenty-five million people, but only thirty-one thousand telephones and one hundred thousand televisions. Thirty percent literacy, eight hundred dollars GDP per capita, life expectancy of forty-five years, and the biggest exports are opium, nuts, carpets, and animal pelts. It sounds like we’ll be fighting guys armed with clubs and slingshots.”

“And Stingers. They bled the Soviets white,” Patrick said without looking up from his reading. The Stinger is a shoulder-fired, heat-seeking, surface-to-air missile.

“Yeah, and the ragtag Chechens just kicked that same army in the teeth because the Russians’ tactics and training and leadership suck. I don’t think the comparison with us stands up.”

“Maybe not. I’m just saying we need to remember the history.” Patrick ran through a sketch of the foreign powers that had come to grief in Afghanistan’s mountains.

“In 327 B.C., Alexander the Great comes through the Khyber Pass and gets hit by an Afghan archer’s arrow. He nearly dies. Almost a thousand years later, Genghis Khan imposes his will over this whole part of the world. Who are the only people to pry concessions from him? The Afghans. And then there’re the British. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tony Blair wants no part of this operation. They lost three fucking wars to these people.”

Patrick flipped back through his sheaf of papers and held one up. “Check this out. January 1842. The Brits withdraw from Kabul in a column of 16,500 soldiers and civilians. They’re trying to get to safety at a garrison in Jalalabad, 110 miles away. Guess how many made it?”

“None.”

“No, one. The Afghans slaughtered all of them except one. They let him live to tell the story.

“Christ, and the Soviets,” he continued. “They admitted to fifteen thousand dead in the 1980s, plus at least ten times that number wounded and thousands dead from disease. And that’s only what they admitted. So my point is just that this place has been a graveyard for a lot of guys like you and me, and we owe it to ourselves at least to learn from their mistakes.”

I turned to a report on Taliban tactics. Their technique for moving through a minefield, according to the brief, was to put the unit in single file with the man at the front holding a large sandstone rock. Before each step, he drops the rock in front of him. If it falls on a mine, it will explode in a puff of dust, with the soft sandstone absorbing most of the blast. The point man may be stunned and temporarily deaf, but he will just go to the back of the line while the next guy takes over with a new rock.

The brief also said the fighters never carried any of their own gear — women and mules did that. If there were no women or mules available, they’d do without that particular equipment. The briefer finished with a note that Westerners who worked with the mujahideen in the 1980s said it was almost impossible to launch a coordinated attack with them; they quickly abandoned support positions in order to join in the glory of the assault.

“Death before dishonor.”

“Say again?” Patrick looked up. I hadn’t realized I had spoken aloud.

“Death before dishonor. Marines tattoo it on their forearms, but these fuckers live it.”

Any cavalier bravado I might have had — what Captain Novack would have called my “posturing behavior” — was ebbing away.

“Gents, the order we’ve all been waiting for is on the street.” It was October 7, and I stood at the back of the nightly brief in the wardroom, listening to the ship’s operations officer. He shook a stack of papers and went on. “This is the night’s theater air-tasking order. This document is usually one page of resupplies and medical flights. As you can see, this one looks more like a telephone book. Our neighbors this evening will include B-1 and B-2 bombers, B-52s, and every type of carrier air. Lots of it.”

I had learned earlier in the day that Charlie Company had flown off the Peleliu. Their mission was to secure an airfield in Jacobabad, Pakistan, for use by combat search-and-rescue aircraft. That could mean only one thing: American pilots would soon be in the sky over Afghanistan.

The operations officer continued. “The phased air campaign against Afghanistan begins in about an hour. Tomahawks from the Philippine Sea will be part of the first wave. Now I want to wrap this up so we can all get on deck to watch the show.”

Word had spread quickly through the ship, and dozens of Marines gathered in the dark on the upper decks. One level below, two sailors strummed guitars and sang Bob Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm.”

Patrick saw it first. A distant glow resolved itself into a small orange ball, rose vertically to the top of a haze layer about one finger above the horizon, and then flattened to horizontal flight as the Tomahawk missile disappeared to the north.

We’d been waiting for this moment for weeks. September 11 had been an act of war, but we couldn’t really say we were at war until the United States responded. Now all ambiguity disappeared. As if to confirm my thoughts, the ship’s captain made an announcement over the shipwide loudspeaker that all scheduled events for the next two days were canceled “in anticipation of operational taskings.” We were at war.

10

HIGH ON THE SUNLIT DECKS a week later, just below the signal bridge where the old Navy traditions of flags and blinker lights lingered into the twenty-first century, my troops were kicking my ass on a blue rubber mat. I may have been the platoon commander, but many of my Marines were bigger than I was and better fighters. We passed idle time on the ship by training in the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program, universally known as “semper fu.” My machine gun section leader, Staff Sergeant Law, was instructing.

“OK, listen up, all you pussies who’ve never been in a fight. If you can fuck or play baseball, you can fight. It’s all in the hips.” Law looked more like a librarian than a Marine machine gunner. He described himself as “skinny but fat,” tall and thin but soft. He was one of the platoon’s only combat veterans, with a handful of Balkan firefights in his past. His “skinny fatness” didn’t inhibit his skill as a semper fu artist.

The Marines mimicked Law by slamming someone, preferably of higher rank, to the mat. Having been stomped two or three times in the past hour, I was relieved when one of the company clerks came rushing up the ladder with a message. “Lieutenant Fick, the skipper needs you in TACLOG right away. Important message traffic.”

Captain Whitmer waited in front of a computer. “Nate, I’ve just been called over to the Peleliu for mission planning. I want you and Patrick to come with me. No time for questions right now. Pack a bag for two or three days and be ready to go in five minutes.”

A dry-erase board hung on the wall behind Captain Whitmer. Our current list of missions, under the heading “Be Prepared To,” was written in blue marker: “BPT reinforce USEMB Islamabad, BPT secure forward airfield at Zhob, BPT reinforce Jacobabad.” This mission didn’t sound like any of those. I ran down the passageway to my stateroom and threw my planning paperwork, some workout clothes, and a paperback copy of Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose into my waterproof bag. After closing the door, I realized I had forgotten my plastic Dubuque coffee mug and went back for it. Mission planning meant late nights. I climbed back to the top deck and told the platoon I’d be gone for a couple of days but would be in touch as soon as I knew more.

Captain Whitmer and Patrick were waiting for me. “No helos flying. We’re going by RHIB.”

The Dubuque carried two eleven-meter rigid hull inflatable boats. They were small black craft, grossly overpowered, and usually used to insert SEALs on clandestine missions. We climbed down narrow ladder wells to an open cargo door in the ship’s side. Ten feet below, the ocean foamed past. One of the RHIBs maneuvered off the ship’s beam, and beneath us dangled a rope ladder.

As the boat slid beneath the ladder, we swung our way down and clambered aboard. The RHIB crew seemed intent on showing off their boat’s performance to a group of Marine officers, and we shot away from the Dubuque as if it were steaming in reverse. Open ocean lay ahead. We rocketed along at