The Taliban Don't Wave (11 page)

“Holy shit, who cut it?!” the engineer angrily asked, holding up the severed string.

“Take a SWAG [scientific wild-ass guess], Sergeant. I know better than that. My friends over here,” I nodded toward the Afghans, “not so much.”

“Well . . . um . . . see that they don't do it again!” was all he could muster.

“How do you say ‘no promises' in Pashto? Well, do your thing, we'll plug our ears and cover you . . . from over here. Break a femur!” I said, slapping him on the back. I had nothing but respect for IED/UXO bomb-disposal guys. They were batshit crazy, no two ways about it. I'd only ever de-mined a culvert once as an assault pioneer in Kabul, and I never wanted to do it again. Longest hour of my entire life!

I looked over at Fourneau and shouted, “Anything going on?”

“Negative, sir,” he shouted back. “No movement by the wall or at the compound. But the kite has been lowered.”

“Figures. Thanks, Fourneau. Stay frosty!”

The engineer sergeant went back to his Bison and started collecting his gear. Warrant Longview and Hetsa walked over to our group, and the Wizard gave me a big smile.

“Fifty bucks, eh? You sure you can afford it, what with your new baby and all?” he asked.

“You know me, Warrant, I'm like Fred Flintstone—bet . . . bet . . . bet,
BET, BET, BET !
” I said as I shook him by the shoulders.

We had a good laugh as the tension of the last few minutes slowly bled out of our systems. I asked Hetsa to go keep Fourneau company as he covered our western flank.

“Thank God they stopped,” I told the warrant and Reg, meaning the ANA, who had been about to give chase down ambush alley.

Before they could say anything, we heard a Ranger truck horn blaring angrily behind the Bison at the back of the convoy. Reg, the Wizard, and I peeked around the LAV to see what was going on. I grabbed Lieutenant Aziz and Ali and started to walk past the row of LAVs toward six or seven ANA Ranger trucks, with the lead vehicle's horn blaring away.
How terribly rude.

Aziz walked up to the lead truck and gave the driver a blast of crap. The driver quickly pulled his hand away from the horn, but beyond that, seemed fairly unrepentant.

Aziz spoke with Ali, who then turned to me saying, “He says they must get by. They have to be in Masum Ghar before night. They must pass. We must move out of the way to let them pass.”

“I take it these are the outgoing guys?” I asked Ali, as the ANA driver shot me a stinkeye from hell.

“Yes, sir, they are Captain Stephens's ANA, and they really want to leave.”

“Yeah, I gathered that. Please ask them to stop honking, and to sit there for a minute. I'll be right back.”

The engineer was standing next to us at his Bison, getting his kit all laid out, ready to do his job. “Hey, Sarge,” I said. “I know you just got here, and I don't want to rush you, but how long do ya figure?”

“Shit, sir, no way of knowing that. Screw 'em, they'll just have to wait like everybody else!”

“Okay.” I looked over at the ANA convoy. It would soon be last light, so they really did have to get going soon.
What to do . . .

I realized that we couldn't move the Canadian vehicles into the ditch so that the ANA could pass; if they rolled over, everyone inside would be crushed. Besides, there was a reason the Canadians were on the road. They had an elevated position so they could engage the enemy from farther out and hopefully kill him long before he could get close enough to kill us. And if they moved, the ANA in the trucks would drive right over top of the IED.

This would make a good training scenario for back home.

Reggie walked over and said, “Hey, just tell them to hold it. Just
order
them
to sit still and wait!”

I looked around to make sure he was saying
order them
to me, and not to Aziz.
Nope, he meant me.
I leaned over and whispered to Ali, “Don't translate this for Lieutenant Aziz.” Ali quickly nodded, smart enough to know this wasn't a conversation we wanted Aziz privy to.

“Reggie,” I sighed, “I can't order them to do jack shit. OMLT doesn't give them orders.”

“Why not?” He asked incredulously, “Since
when
? Stephens
always
told them what to do—all the time! It was like they were
his
company. Just order them to . . .”

“We
advise
them, Reggie, we don't
order
them to do anything. If we always took over and told them what to do, we'd be here for the next hundred years. Besides, it's their country, not
ours.
They're going to do whatever they want.”

“Yeah, but just tell them this is a Canadian operation, so this is a little piece of Canada and they have to do what they're told.” Reg was starting to get a bit choked up by my apparently negative attitude.

I had always been told back in Canada that a huge part of the OMLT job was having to explain to the battle group types what the ANA could and couldn't do, and more importantly, that the OMLT wasn't meant to be bossing them around. Their own officer corps and NCOs (non-commissioned officers) did that. We
advised.
We
mentored.
Period.

I ignored Reggie and asked Ali to please tell the outgoing ANA to sit tight for a minute, as I walked back to join the Wizard next to the lead LAV.

“What was that all about?” the Wizard asked, as Apache helicopter gunships screamed over Route Kelowna on their way to the firefight in the north.

“Holy . . .” I said, looking at the choppers going balls out to get into the fight, probably trying to save our fellow Canadians. “We're in the war now, aren't we?”

“No doubt. What did those guys want?” he asked, nodding toward the Afghans.

The warrant's voice was drowned out as the seven ANA Ford Rangers zoomed into the ditch and blew past us, kicking up dust, not overly concerned with ruining the poor engineer's concentration as he tried to defuse a bomb!
Dickheads!

Reg shot me a look that said
I told you so
, but I wasn't about to start ordering the ANA around, and I was surprised by Reggie's accusation that Stephens had been doing just that with his ANA. I told the warrant what Reggie had said about the outgoing OMLT captain.

“I was going to tell you, sir, when I had the chance, but I wanted it to be just you and me.”

“Is it true?” I asked, not wanting to believe it. We weren't
supposed
to be in command of the ANA!
I thought everyone knew that!

“I've been reading Warrant Joe's handover notes, you know, Captain Stephens's 2 I/C, and he said stuff like, ‘If your captain thinks he's on his company commander's course while he's over here, get a grip of him quick, because we're not supposed to be ordering the ANA around.' So yeah, I guess it's true.” The warrant seemed as disappointed as me. But maybe Stephens had had no choice. If he didn't direct them, either there would have been no patrols, or there would have been the risk of friendly fire.

After the dust had settled from the ANA flying past us in the ditch, the engineer began his methodical task of locating the IED. We all watched in silence and wished him good luck.
Ballsy!

We kept our eyes on the compound and the wall, but Timothy seemed to have packed up shop and lit out.
Seemed to.
You could never let your guard down or get complacent. One of the Paras' favourite sayings was “complacency kills.” We would relax and let our guard down only when we were back in our shacks on the base.

Everyone in 72A knew that when we were outside the wire, we stayed switched on at all times. It was hard, and in the terrible heat one's mind tended to wander, but you just got back on track and watched your arcs of fire (where you're told to watch—between one o'clock and eleven o'clock, for example), ready to engage; always trying to find potential choke points, ambush points, places where IEDs might be hidden. The list was endless. No wonder everyone was tired after a patrol. It was mentally exhausting. And the ever-present fear of a gruesome death lurking around every corner probably didn't help much either.

After about forty minutes of waiting, the engineer spoke over the radio to say he had found the IED, but that it was too dangerous to move, so he was going to BIP the device right there. He spent the next ten minutes rigging up his C4 explosives to the shell, and then told everyone to get behind cover. We all got into the ditch or behind some walls, everyone in the LAVs battened their hatches, and the CP was advised that there was going to be a controlled explosion. After they acknowledged, the engineer strung out his detonation cord from the IED, joined us in the ditch, and then gave a countdown.

“Moment of truth, Warrant. Get your fifty bucks ready to hand over!” I put my right finger into my ear. Before we left the FOB, I had put a good-luck earplug into my left ear, knowing I wouldn't have time to put it in when the fun and games started. Then I cranked the volume to high on my earpiece, so I could still hear the radio traffic. I made that my SOP from then on.

“Bite me,” the warrant haughtily snapped back.

“Hey, Sergeant,” I said. “What type of IED was it, anyway?”

“Howitzer shell, but I'm a little busy right now, sir!”

BANG! Rocks and dust flew outward from the explosion in all directions.

We peeked over the top of the ditch to see grey smoke billowing out of the hole where the howitzer shell, the
smoke-
howitzer shell, had been.
C'mon, big money!

“Huh,” I said, in my best smug voice. “I wonder what that amazing grey,
smoke-like
substance wafting lazily out of the shell could be? Oh what, pray tell, could it
possibly
be?”

“How many times has that smart mouth of yours got you into trouble?” the warrant asked with absolutely zero trace of a smile on his salty face.

“Too many times to count. Now pay up, Marky Mark!” But I wasn't really going to take his money. I remembered what Lieutenant Winters said in
Band of Brothers
: “Don't ever put yourself in a position where you can
take
from the men.” I agreed with that sentiment.

“I'll get you when we're back in Sper; unlike you, I'm not a compulsive gambling alcoholic, so I don't carry copious amounts of money around with me on a patrol.”

“Hey, you never know when we'll be OTR [on the run] for our lives, a battalion of Taliban hot on our heels, and the only thing that's going to save us is my hundred Yankee dollars for a taxi ride into KAF!”

“Mr. Engineer,” I said, speaking to the sergeant before the warrant could get out of earshot. “Well done. But for the record, would you say that was a smoke shell, or an artillery shell?” The warrant started walking away. I shouted after him, “Hey, Warrant, you gotta hear this!”

“It was definitely a smoke shell, sir.”

“Thanks for that. But good job out there, and I'm sorry about those ANA pricks; nothing like helping a guy concentrate, eh?”

“Sad as it is, I've had worse. Yeah, let's mount up. See you back there.”

“Yep, first beer's on me. Well,
near-
beer, of the decidedly non-alcoholic type.”

I walked over to Lieutenant Aziz and said, “Now that they've blown up the IED, and since we still have the LAVs to provide us with covering fire, if we follow this wall here,” I showed him the point on my highly detailed satellite map, “I think we could sneak up on the Taliban behind the wall. What do you think?”

“No, I do not think so,” he said through Ali, who looked a bit embarrassed.

“Okay . . .”
Mentor, Rob, mentor.
“Can I ask why not?”

“I think they would have left by now, so we might as well leave.”

“Well, that may be the case, but we could at least go and see where they were setting up, to see what they could see.”

“No, that would be too dangerous. Many times, they plant IEDs at their trigger places,” Ali said for the good lieutenant, “and they
hope
we will come and see where they were.”

“I see. So, that's it then . . . we might as well head back?”

“Yes, let us go back now,” Aziz said, and started to walk back down the ditch toward Sperwhan, speaking into his radio.

I was a bit frustrated, but I didn't want to get into an argument with him in front of his men, and certainly not on our first patrol. Especially since he could've made a lot of excuses for not coming out to play guns.
So I guess I should be grateful, really.
I thought to myself,
WWDCD, Rob?
What would Don Cheadle do?

I looked over at the big hole in the middle of the road. Even though it was only a smoke shell, if Timothy had detonated it when a driver—or worse, when someone on foot—passed over it, it still could've ripped their legs off.

I talked over the PRR. “All right boys, put your out-of-office messages on, shut down your computers, kill the office lights—we're heading home.” I knew the warrant was still watching his arcs, but this was Fourneau and Hetsa's first real patrol, first IED, first shooting, first BIP, first come-on—hell, it was their first tour! So I said over the PRR, “Stay switched on boys, this is the most dangerous time, when we head back in to the ranch.” I didn't want to play the part of Captain Obvious, but this was one of the most dangerous times on a patrol: when we could see the barn, and all we thought about was getting back to our stable.

I spoke over the battle group net. “Two, this is Seven Two Alpha, we've closed the book on this one, our call sign is coming back to Sperwhan Ghar now, over.”

“Two, roger, good work, see you when you're back, over.”

“Alpha, roger out.”
Not a bad day out,
I thought to myself. We stopped an IED from hurting anyone, we didn't get suckered in by their come-on, and we let them know we'd respond quickly to try and kill/capture them. All in all, not a bad day's work.