The orderly poured into a chipped china cup. The tea was dark and sweetened with goat’s milk. My gloved hand was clumsy, so I cupped it like a softball. I drank the tea quickly so that I could get back to work without offending the major. My first two missions couldn’t be delivering ThighMasters and drinking tea. An unearthly wail broke the silence as a muezzin called the faithful to morning prayer. Panjgur wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t quite friendly either. We were a long way from the
Staff Sergeant Law had his Marines in place, and Patrick’s platoon manned positions all around us. The teams on the perimeter called back and forth on the radio, pointing out Pakistani army positions. I scanned the horizon through my night vision goggles, looking for the telltale flashes of firing rifles. Nothing. I spoke to the Cobra gunship pilots who orbited farther out past the airfield fence. They, too, saw nothing amiss.
With Bravo Company’s perimeter in place, an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team moved cautiously to the Black Hawk, dropping red chem lights behind them to mark a safe path of retreat. After they checked the helicopter for booby traps, a specially trained suspension team got the wreck ready to move. They wrapped long nylon straps around the fuselage, joining them at the top with a loop and a hook. If the Black Hawk couldn’t be lifted out, we planned to use incendiary grenades to burn holes in the cockpit and transmission, then blow the tail boom off with a strip of explosives. But the straps were attached without trouble, and the empty Super Stallion came in for the pickup.
The pilot slowed to a hover over the Black Hawk, and a cloud of talcum-like dust engulfed the CH-53 — the same sort of brownout that had caused the initial crash. Every few seconds, a rotor or piece of fuselage would peek from the cloud to reassure us that it was still flying. After a tense minute in a hover, the CH-53 went around while Marines untangled the sling, which had been twisted by the rotor wash. On his second pass, the pilot lifted the CH- 53 out of the dust cloud with the Black Hawk hanging beneath it and lumbered off to the south. The eastern sky was just beginning to lighten.
I made a radio call and Law’s Marines collapsed their perimeter. Patrick’s platoon also pulled back, and we all converged on the runway. The Cobras made a low pass down its length to remind us we weren’t alone. With lowered gray noses, they looked like sharks slashing through the dawn sky. The two Super Stallions roared in low and settled on the pavement. Patrick and I did a final sweep to ensure that we had all our men and were the last aboard the helicopters. The tail ramp was already rising as we threw our packs in and scrambled behind them. I looked at my watch. It was five A.M.; we had been on the ground exactly forty-two minutes.
In the light of the rising sun, we flew over a snow-white desert studded with piles of red stone. Jagged mountain ridges rose straight up, so that the helicopter alternately seemed to soar and then to scrape past with rocks just outside the open doors. When the pilot called “Feet wet” over the Arabian Sea, we pulled the magazines from our rifles and relaxed. Ninety minutes after takeoff, we settled onto the
I slept through the afternoon, exhausted more from the adrenaline than from missing a night’s sleep. Around four o’clock, Patrick shook my shoulder. “The commandant’s flying out to the ship to have dinner with us tonight. You may want to clean up and get ready.”
I sat up, momentarily lost in the whirlwind of the past twenty-four hours. General James L. Jones was the four-star general in charge of the whole Marine Corps. I didn’t think he’d come from Washington to congratulate us for picking up the Black Hawk. Instead, he’d probably come for a pep talk. Some future mission, but what? The only uniform I had aboard was the desert camouflage I had worn all night, so I climbed from the bunk and wore it into the shower to scrub out some of the grime.
A few minutes before six, Patrick and I walked to the wardroom together. The officers around us were nattily dressed in freshly starched uniforms with polished rank insignia. By comparison, we looked ratty in dirty field cammies with dull brass. Our only consolation was that we’d been earning our combat pay while the other guys had been ironing and shining.
The wardroom lights were dimmed. A long head table lined the far wall, with a dozen round tables in front of it and name cards at each place. The tables were set with silver, china, and maroon tablecloths. The BLT platoon commanders sat together at the front center table. Since alcohol was forbidden on the ship, we sipped apple juice and talked while waiting for the commandant to arrive. Conversation centered on the absence of Alpha Company’s lieutenants, who were ashore at the airfield in Jacobabad.
“That place is a shit hole,” VJ proclaimed, having just returned from ten days there. “Hot, dusty, smoky, no chow, no showers. Fucking spies everywhere. The security situation is a joke — we’re covering with a company what a battalion could barely handle. If someone wants to hit us there, they can.” Patrick and I leaned in to listen. We were next in the rotation to take over security at the base.
“Attention on deck!” Conversation ceased, and everyone sprang to their feet.
“At ease, gentlemen. Please take your seats,” General Jones said. He and Colonel Waldhauser sat together at the head table. Throughout the dinner of steak and shrimp, we stole glances at the general. He was tall, easily the tallest man in the room, and wore the Marine Corps’s new digital-pattern camouflage uniform. We’d been away from home for a long time, emotionally as well as physically, and it was strange to see this newcomer among us. He’d been in Washington only a few days before and would be there again just a few days later. He seemed like an ambassador from another world.
And yet he fit right in with us. Instead of a long and politically correct monologue, he stood up after dinner and told a story about a combat deployment of his own, many years before.
“You’ll be spending the 226th birthday of the Corps out here. My favorite Marine Corps birthday was also spent in the field — 10 November 1967 as a lieutenant with my rifle platoon in Vietnam. We mushed a bunch of field ration pound cakes together to make a cake, drizzled chocolate on top, and sang ‘The Marines’ Hymn.’ Unfortunately, it was the monsoon, and we couldn’t get the candles lit, so we went back to our fighting holes and continued killing Vietcong.” The Marines in the room cheered.
Before sitting down, General Jones looked straight at our table of lieutenants. “Mark my words, gentlemen,” he said. “Your time is coming.”
12
STEPPING OFF THE C-130 in Jacobabad reminded me of every description I’d ever read about another generation of Marines arriving in Vietnam. Only five days after the commandant’s speech, it was Bravo Company’s turn to secure Shabaz Air Base at Jacobabad, in central Pakistan. Even in November, the sun was so hot I watched dark sweat stains spread across the tops of my tan boots. Sandbagged bunkers ringed the tarmac, and fuel trucks, Humvees, and helicopters were crammed onto every square inch of pavement. Adjacent to the runway stood a metal hangar painted in a splotchy brown camouflage motif. Staff Sergeant Marine and I walked toward it.
Inside, government-issue cots filled half the space. Men slept, their eyes shielded from the light by bandannas and T-shirts. Assault rifles lay within easy reach under the cots. Ponchos hanging from parachute cord provided minimal privacy. It looked like a refugee camp. The other half of the hangar was divided into separate briefing areas, with maps, charts, and rows of metal chairs. Our footsteps echoed through the silent hangar, and no one moved as we walked the length of the room to the doorway on the other side.
I squinted in the bright sunlight. Behind the hangar were a dozen low, white stucco buildings. South of them, stone aircraft revetments were built at random. Neat rows would be more vulnerable to aerial attack. But what interested me was to the west, back across the runway from the hangar. The town of Jacobabad stretched from smoggy horizon to smoggy horizon. It sprawled in a vaguely menacing third world way, with boxy water towers and television antennas sticking up from the alleys. The dusty brown construction blended with the smog. Marine and I walked the whole perimeter of the base, filling Alpha’s old positions with our Marines and plotting mortar targets in case we had to defend the field.
Tucked behind one of the revetments was a black Chinook helicopter, propped forlornly on a pile of cinderblocks, missing one of its landing gear. I pointed it out to Staff Sergeant Marine. “That’s the Sword bird we heard about. Lost a wheel taking off out of Mullah Omar’s compound. Looks like it should be sitting in a front yard in West Virginia.”
