I call the military press office and they’re in the dark about the blast as well. “We’re not giving out any information at this time,” says Staff Sergeant Johnathon Burgett, in a lovely, honey-dipped Tennessee accent. But Aasif gets a source telling us there’s been a big blast at the gate of Camp Integrity. Everybody turns to me.
“Integrity is run by Blackwater, right?” asks Bob.
“They call themselves Academi now,” I say.
“Whatever,” says Bob. “You’ve fucked half the mercenaries in Kabul, you’ve got to have a source.”
The room goes quiet. Nobody likes that I’ve dated contractors. Two, to be specific, though one was more serious and the other was more casual fucking. It’s none of their business, none of anybody’s business, but it got around. Even military folks tend to hold mercenaries in contempt. And then Bob realizes before I do that maybe some ex of mine is dead, killed in the explosion.
“I’m sure all the Blackwater guys are fine,” he says.
“They subcontract the outer ring of security to Afghans,” I say.
Bob looks disappointed. “Of course they do,” he says. “Those fucking cockroaches. With their fucking high-speed gear and their cool-guy shades and their wizard beards. So how much are they getting paid to have Afghans take the risks for them?”
“At least it’s not civilians,” Denise says.
“You know they finally sentenced the Blackwater guys in the Nisour Square massacre. Life for Slatten. The other guys got, I think, thirty years . . .”
I ignore them, mostly. But it occurs to me that I could dial Diego’s phone number. At least, the number I think is still his, if he’s still in country, or in Kabul. More likely, he’s out doing counternarcotics work in God knows where. Or on one of his R&Rs in the backwoods of Chile, drinking maté and pretending not to be out of his goddamn mind. “I’m not a normal person anymore, Liz,” he told me once. “And I don’t want to be.”
I pull out my phone. We hadn’t closed things off in any real way, we just slowly stopped talking. He was always off in a different country anyway, doing work he claimed was “like James Bond, but boring.” When I’m reporting on something like this, something that matters, it makes it easier if I can become nothing more than a pane of glass, the medium through which people can look out the windows of their normal lives and see what’s happening over here. Diego complicates things, raises up emotional turbulence, changes the weights and measures of what I think is important and worth telling. But if he’s in country, he’ll know something.
I dial his number. The phone rings and rings, but he doesn’t answer, and I’m not sure if I’m disappointed, or happy, or worried. I end up heading to Integrity on the back of Omar’s motorcycle, cold wind whipping my head scarf as we head out to the base. Camp Integrity. Sometimes I’m not sure if the U.S. government is just trolling us when they name these things. What else would you name a giant 435,600-square-foot compound run by the most notorious mercenary outfit of the modern wars? Blackwater, Xe, Paravant, Academi. They secured a $750-million contract in 2012 for “information” related to the counterdrug effort in Afghanistan, and they’ve been running Integrity ever since.
When we were dating, I once asked Diego how the drug effort was going. He pulled out an iPad and showed me a graph tracking opium production against the price of wheat over the past ten years. When the price of wheat was high, opium production went down. When the price of wheat was low, opium production went up. Along the graph were little markers indicating various points at which the U.S. launched multibillion-dollar counternarcotics efforts. They didn’t seem to have had the slightest effect on overall production.
“So what’s the point of what you do?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “We affect things on the margins. What kind of narcissistic asshole would think he could do more than that? But, hey, there are lives in those margins.”
I rolled my eyes.
“You ever known a heroin addict?” he asked. “I mean, you ever seen it?”
“Sure.”
“The shit is evil, Liz. Pure evil, no lie.”
“And Blackwater pays well,” I said.
“It’s Academi now,” he said, and sighed. “Nobody ever asks a homicide detective if they’re going to end murder. The question isn’t whether we can win. It’s whether it’ll be worse if we stop fighting.”
Afghan police stop us as we approach the blast site. There are a couple of NDS pickup trucks, two unmarked white vans, an MRAP in overwatch, a lot of people standing around with guns, a few interested onlookers. Inside the ring of police I can make out some damaged blast walls, but can’t actually see much else.
“No good shot,” Omar says. “But . . . I can work magic.”
He gets off the bike and starts walking the perimeter. I head into the crowd and ask people what happened. A couple of people give me the same story—one big boom, then some smaller booms, maybe grenades, and small arms fire. An assault, not just a suicide bombing.
“Dead bodies?” I ask.
Heads nod yes. I’m exhausted, and though this should be exciting, I don’t care. Three bombings in one day. Does it mean anything? Yes, no, who knows? I call Diego again. This time he picks up.
“What do you expect me to tell you, Liz?” he answers, sounding frustrated and hostile.
“That you’re okay,” I say.
“Oh,” he says softly. “I’m okay.”
Around me, the crowd is thinning. There’s little more to see here. Little point, even, to having come. Omar will get decent shots but nothing to beat his work from the earlier bombings. Those are the photos that will run.
“Well then,” he says. He sounds tired, or sad. There’s something there. “Thanks for thinking of me.”
“Diego . . .”
“What, you want a quote?”
I sigh. “I could do it off the record . . .”
“How’s this?” I hear him shuffling through papers. “Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob
