arrested and sentenced to prison. That’s right. The system did not distinguish between victims of rape and those who willingly had relations outside marriage.
“Do you want to see her?” I asked.
“I can’t.”
“You would have been so proud. She fought at my side. And she saved my life.”
“Scott, don’t tell me any more. Please…”
“Why don’t you take your family and get the hell out of here? There’s got to be a way out.”
He finally looked at me, backhanded away the tears, and said, “This is my life.”
By late in the day I got called to the comm center and learned that General Keating was waiting to speak to me.
“Mitchell, you make it damn near impossible for me to get your back when you play it this close to the vest. If the president weren’t distracted by twenty other problems, I’d be pulling KP in the White House mess.”
“I understand, sir. And I’ve been running an obstacle course here myself.”
Okay, I was speaking through my teeth, and though I highly respected the man, I wanted to unload on him, too. He’d had no idea what I’d just gone through, but I wasn’t about to cry on his shoulder.
“I’m pulling you back to Fort Bragg. I’d advise you to lay low but I know you don’t work that way, so once you’re back home you’ll be confined to quarters. We’ll put on a show until JAG takes its best shot or you’re last month’s news.”
“Sir, Joey Ramirez is still MIA.”
“I know that, son, and the search will continue. But we’ve got Warris running off at the mouth and trying to ruin your career. I want you out of there.”
“Warris is an asshole. Sir. He’d bitch if you hanged him with a new rope. It’s my word against his.”
“For now, he doesn’t need witnesses, Mitchell. Because I believe him.”
“Sir?”
“Easy, son. I agree. He’s a fool. But I know he’s telling the truth — because I know you. And your men. But between him and the CIA, they’re not going to back off. I’ve got to deal with it.”
“Where does all this leave me, sir?”
“From where I’m sitting, this operation has become a perfect storm of botched communications. And because of the political ramifications in Kabul, as well as here, higher’s out for blood. It’s why they have officers, son. Someone’s got to fall on his sword. Someone will take the fall for this mess.”
“And blood flows downhill…”
“It’s Newton’s law, Scott. Simple as that.”
I closed my eyes and massaged them. “I understand, sir. For the good of the service…”
“That bastard Zahed needed killing, and you gave it to him. You did a fine job, soldier, no matter what you hear, no matter what they say.”
“But you still don’t have my back, do you, sir?”
He took a deep breath, looked torn—
And broke the connection.
By dinnertime the team had packed up the billet. We were being driven to Kandahar, where we’d catch the first of many flights back home.
They’d refused to allow us to participate in the tunnel search, but before we left, Harruck sent a man out to fetch me. The guy led me to a small tent behind the hospital, the makeshift morgue, where Ramirez lay across a folding table.
He’d been shot in the head. Point-blank.
“Oh, dear God,” I said aloud.
“Any other wounds?” I asked one of the other soldiers there.
“Nope. Must’ve caught him by surprise.”
I cursed and rushed out of there.
And all I could see was Warris raising a rifle to Ramirez’s head and pulling the trigger.
I found the punk lying in his bunk, staring at the ceiling. He had no time to get up. I leaned over him and screamed, “YOU KILLED HIM, YOU RAT BASTARD, DIDN’T YOU? YOU KILLED HIM! YOU KILLED HIM!”
I guess Brown had seen me running toward Warris’s quarters and had come after me because he burst through the door and rushed over, believing I was going to strike Warris. He grabbed my wrist and hung on.
Warris started cursing and told me I’d lost my mind and why the hell would he kill Ramirez?
“Because he knew you were going to blow the whistle on all of us. And he probably threatened you, didn’t he? He told you if you talked, he’d kill you, right?”
A guilty expression came over Warris, and he tried to hide it by tightening his lips.
“You killed him!” I repeated.
“Your career is over, Mitchell. It’s all over now. You’re old news. Even the Ghosts are a waste. Every other agency, State, DoD — the entire alphabet tribe — undermines what we do. We’re history.”
“No, you’re history. Count on it!”
I shoved Brown aside and hustled out of the room. I stormed back to the billet, wrenched up my duffel, and lifted my voice to the men. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
But we didn’t leave right away. The guys wanted to pay their last respects to Ramirez, and they all went over to the hospital and did that. I waited by the Hummer and found myself in an awkward conversation with Dr. Anderson.
“So now you go home, and the next Zahed takes over? We have to start from scratch.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Don’t you even care?”
“I care too much. That’s what’s killing me. That’s what’s killing us all.”
EPILOGUE
We weren’t ghosts who returned home. We were zombies. War-torn. Down three men. Feeling little joy in our “mission completed.” I spoke briefly with each of the men, and they shared my sentiments.
Colonel Gordon told me that Warris had friends and relatives in high places, which was why his loyalties tended to lean toward regular Army operations, even though he’d chosen a career in Special Forces. In fact, Gordon said that Warris had even written an article published in
Well, the punk really got a taste of our “special privileges” by spending some time in a hole full of crap. That’s how we prima donnas in SF live the high life.
During one layover, I got a call from Harruck, who told me Anderson had placed the girls in a good orphanage, but then the facility had been raided by Taliban who said the girls had been raped and that they were all going to face charges. Hila was, of course, among that group. Would she spend twenty or more years in jail? I didn’t know, but Harruck said he had a few ideas. He then surprised me: “You were wrong about me, Scott. I’m not a politician. And I’ll prove it to you.”
And then, as we were boarding our final flight back to Fort Bragg, Gordon called again to tell me the spooks were going for a charge of murder.
Apparently, Mullah Mohammed Zahed wasn’t just the Taliban commander in the Zhari district. He was the warlord leader of a network of men — warlords, Taliban leaders, and corrupt public officials — who were part of a massive protection racket in the country. It seemed the United States was paying tens of millions of dollars to these men to ensure safe passage of supply convoys throughout the country.
We imported virtually everything we needed: food, water, fuel, and ammo, and we did most of it by road through Pakistan or Central Asia to hubs at Bagram air base north of Kabul and the air base at Kandahar. From
