Alex Berenson: The Shadow Patrol

TWO HOURS AFTER LEAVING Forward Operating Base Jackson, the convoy reached Hamza Ali. On the monitor inside Fowler’s truck, low brick buildings replaced empty fields. “Dismount in two,” Sergeant First Class Nick Rodriguez, the platoon’s senior enlisted man, said.

Sergeant Coleman Young — one of the lucky guys, the ones who slept — grinned at Fowler. Young was squat and muscular and as close to a friend as Fowler had in the platoon. “Been watching that screen for us? Worst TV in the world. You know watching it makes no difference as to whether we hit a bomb. You do know that, right?”

“You missed out today.” Fowler didn’t mind the ribbing. Not from Young.

“Yeah?”

“Two crazy Afghan chicks getting it on. Behind the burqa, you know.” Behind the burqa had become a catchphrase for 3rd Platoon. It meant everything and nothing.

The Stryker stopped. “Ramp down in fifteen,” Rodriguez said. “Blue”—American soldiers—“left and right, so keep those safeties on.”

Fowler made sure his Kevlar vest was tight and checked his rifle. He stretched his legs and wiggled his toes inside his boots three times, right, left, right , his end-of-ride ritual. The Stryker’s back ramp cranked down, kicking up gray-brown dust. One by one the men stepped out. “Back to reality,” Young said.

“This is reality?”

“I hope not.”

The school was newly built, two stories with real windows and a chimney pumping a stream of black smoke into the sky. “Hamza Ali Primary and Secondary School,” a sign read in English. “Funded by United States Agency for International Development.”

“Your tax dollars at work,” Fowler said.

“Not my tax dollars. Fowler, even you must know you pay no taxes as a member of the military serving in a war zone. You keep all twenty-five grand this year.”

“Plus all the chow I can eat.”

“Lucky you.”

“Heads up,” Rodriguez shouted to the platoon. “Let’s go!”

Rodriguez directed eight guys to stand sentry. The rest followed him and Lieutenant Tyler Weston, the platoon commander, to a dirt field behind the school. The low sun stuck in their eyes and turned them into teardrop shadows.

Weston had taken off his Kevlar and was wearing only his uniform. Soldiers called the practice bucking . Officers bucked at these events to prove that they trusted their Afghan hosts. Fowler thought bucking was idiotic. But then, he wasn’t an officer, or much of a soldier either. He’d realized after a few weeks that he didn’t belong in the Army. He got rattled too easily. He wasn’t a coward, not exactly. He went outside the wire like everybody else. But he was scared a lot. The fear slowed him down. And being slow was dangerous. The guys who separated themselves from their fear, who moved fast and sure, those were the guys everybody leaned on. Fowler didn’t like Rodriguez, the platoon’s senior enlisted man. But he knew Rodriguez was a better soldier than he’d ever be. The Army had trained Fowler how to move, handle a radio, strip a rifle, but all the training in the world couldn’t strip the fear from his heart.

So Fowler thought, and not for the first time, as an Afghan man stepped forward and shouted, “Welcome, soldiers! Welcome, America!” He went on in Pashtun for a couple minutes, baka-baka-baka . The platoon didn’t have an interpreter along, so none of the soldiers knew what he was saying, but the Afghans seemed to like the speech. When he was finished, Weston and Rodriguez stepped forward, holding a black bag. Weston opened it, tossed out a half dozen soccer balls.

“The United States is pleased to present this gift to the schoolchildren of Hamza Ali,” Weston said. He chipped one of the balls toward the school’s back wall. Two boys took off after it.

“How is this nonsense winning a war for us,” Young said under his breath to Fowler. “Giving them soccer balls? While they kill us with IEDs. Killing me softly .” These last three words delivered falsetto.

“With his song.”

“Cracker boy knows the Fugees.”

“Cracker boy, that’s a compliment, ’cause I can roll.”

“Tell yourself that.”

“You think you’re cool because you know the Fugees, Coleman? Everybody knows the Fugees. My grandma knows the Fugees and she’s been dead five years.”

“I am the stupidest black man in the world, coming over here to fight this war. My uncle got two fingers blown off in Vietnam but at least he got drafted. What’s my excuse?”

Fowler was spared from answering when two men and a boy stepped out of the school’s back door. One man had thick black hair and wore a powder blue warm-up suit. The other carried a canvas bag and a sledgehammer. The boy was shirtless and wore nylon pants, canary yellow emblazoned with white racing stripes.

“A sledgehammer,” Young said. “Stupid Afghan Tricks. Oh, yes .”

Without warning, the boy sprinted toward them and launched himself into a cartwheel and then three backflips. The man in the tracksuit followed with flips of his own. He finished beside the boy, picked him up, casually threw him in the air. The boy landed cat-quick and danced in a low furious whirl, kicking out his legs, the fabric of his yellow pants catching the sun. When the boy finished, the man raised his hands and said, in English, “Please welcome to Parwan”—he tapped his chest—“and Khost.” He pointed to the boy. “Famous father-and-son acrobat. Please like show.”

“How about some applause,” Sergeant Rodriguez said. The soldiers clapped as Parwan unzipped his jacket, revealing a tight black T-shirt. Afghan men insisted on modesty for women but showed off their own bodies at any provocation, Fowler had noticed.

When the applause ended, the man and the boy walked to opposite sides of the field. They turned and faced each other like cowboys about to duel. Then they sprinted at each other. Just before they were about to collide, Parwan ducked low and his son jumped. He flipped over his father’s head and landed and spread his arms wide like an Olympic gymnast. Pure energy. Even Young clapped, though as a rule he was impossible to impress.

Parwan and Khost bowed to the crowd. The second man stepped forward and spun the sledgehammer over his head, an Afghan Thor. The hammer was handmade and brutal, a dull silver log flecked with red spots that hinted at a thousand atrocities. When he was finished showing off the hammer, he reached into the canvas bag and pulled out a board laced with nails.

Beside him, the boy leaned backward until his palms touched the ground. His head was upside down. His skinny stomach arched high into the air. The man lowered the board onto the boy’s naked belly — nails first. The crowd was silent now. The man picked a flat brick out of the bag and placed it atop the board. He knelt and held the board steady as Parwan picked up the hammer—

“Oh, no,” Fowler said involuntarily—

And brought it down onto the brick. Which snapped gunshot loud. The nails quivered. The boy’s stomach trembled. Parwan dropped the hammer, raised the two halves of the broken brick. The boy stood. A dozen crimson spots flecked his stomach, an instant case of chicken pox. Otherwise he didn’t seem hurt. He touched his fingers to his stomach and raised them to show their crimson tips and kissed them. Father and son stood side by side and bowed as the men in the audience roared their approval.

“How do you win a war against people who break bricks on their kids for fun?”

Fowler had no answer for that.

THEN THE SHOOTING STARTED.

A short burst of AK fire, five or six rounds, a soft popping from the northwest. Sound traveled easily in the air here. Not much ambient noise. Fowler figured the shots were a way off. The threat wasn’t immediate, if it was a threat at all. Fifteen seconds later a single shot followed. Then silence. Weston and Rodriguez murmured to each other. Rodriguez ducked his head to his shoulder, murmured into his radio. “We’re taking a walk,” he said to Fowler and the rest of 1st Squad. Fowler wished that they would let the Talibs come to them for once, instead of the other way around. But Rodriguez wasn’t asking his opinion.