The Taliban Don't Wave (35 page)

Some guys would keep busy with chores or the handover; other guys would sit and stare into space, their minds replaying the afternoon over and over again, on a crazy loop. The engineers got back to work on their teardown. They had Hesco walls to repair where the mortars had ripped into them. I wondered how many rounds had actually landed inside the FOB.
It sounded like five, maybe six.

Major Obermann and his CSM had walked over to check in on us. I realized the FOO/FAC had undoubtedly told the major I was losing it. He walked slowly over to me and looked at my bloody side. “Are you okay?” he asked, looking me in the eyes.

“Yeah, I'm good, sir. Thanks. We had at least four rounds land directly in the FOB itself.”

“Inner or outer FOB?” he asked.

“At least four inner, maybe one hit the outer part. We had one KIA, two Bravo, five Charlie, and one Delta. My terp was the Delta, and before anyone could stop his best friend, my other terp, he hopped on the last chopper with him. And my Dari isn't that good. I've been going around all night, talking to the boys, doing a sort of informal decompression, making sure everyone's holding up, but they're good. There's a few guys we'll have to watch, but that's normal. But I tell ya, sir, I've never seen anything like it.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“You would've been proud of them, sir. They were courageous beyond belief, and I think everyone of 'em should be put in for recognition.”

“Well, I'm glad you guys are all okay. Talk to Sean about the recognition part. I'm sorry you took KIA and wounded; it was a terrible day. When we found out you were getting hit, we mounted up and gave chase, and using the grid from the LCMR, we actually found the Taliban mortar tube. I'm not sure—”

“Yeah, thanks sir, the ANA will take it off of you. They like the idea of using Timothy's own weapons against him. Thanks for going out there.”

“You don't have to thank me for that. You did your part, we did ours. Get cleaned up and try and get some sleep.”

“All right, sir. Thanks again for coming by to check on us.” He walked into the CP to find Sean.

I asked around and everyone had had a chance to shower and get cleaned up, so I walked over to my sleeping container and grabbed a towel, soap and, knowing I would need it, a scrub brush. I reached into my rucksack and pulled out my spare pair of pants and a clean brown shirt.

I walked into the small little shower module that had been installed just that afternoon.
Probably right around the time of the mortar attack.
The shower unit was surrounded by thin wooden sheets serving as walls.

I looked into the mirror and sighed at a face I could hardly recognize. My eyes seemed to have shrunk back into my head; my hair was matted with sweat and blood. Salt stains had formed crow's feet around the corners of my eyes. I felt like crying, and suddenly I became very angry. I was angry at the Taliban, angry about the choppers not arriving soon enough, angry that no matter what we did to save him, we couldn't stop that soldier from fading away, right in front of us. I became angry at the FOO/FAC, and then incredibly angry with myself.

I remembered overhearing Hetsa at the end of the Helmand op, bragging to his friends, saying, “So far, we haven't been in a
real
firefight.” This made me mad, so I had taken him to an empty briefing tent and we had a little talk about “How
real
does it have to be before it's real enough for ya?” and “When it is
real
, we won't want to be there!”

I was mad at him and I got the point across, but afterwards, I was ashamed because I realized I wasn't as upset with Hetsa as I was with myself.

I looked at the haggard face in the mirror and my mind started to rage.

Was that on your war to-do list?
Tears began to quickly well up in my eyes.
WAS “HOLD A MAN AS HE'S DYING” ON YOUR STUPID FUCKING LIST? WAS THAT SOMETHING YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO?? WERE YOU “MAKING WAR FUN” NOW? WAS THIS AFTERNOON
REAL
ENOUGH FOR YOU?

I wanted to punch the stupid face in the mirror, so I cocked my fist back next to my ear.

YOU STUPID FUCKING ASSHOLE! You had the balls to shout at Hetsa, but it's you! You, with your STUPID, childish lists and “make war real!” That
was
war, this afternoon, that's what happens! People get ripped apart and they're bleeding to death in front of you, and there's nothing you can do to stop it!

Tears spilled down my cheeks as my fist shook next to my ear, waiting for my inner voice to shut up long enough for me to punch the mirror as hard as I could. My head twitched involuntarily to my right and my eye caught something written on the wall. I glanced over at the wooden panel and saw handwriting on it. It said: SHOWER INSTALLED ON NOV. 17, 2008, DURING A MORTAR ATTACK.
The civilian engineer must've written that.
He must've been putting the shower in when we got hit.
I slowly lowered my fist and began to breathe in, shallowly at first, but then more deeply.

I had found a marker pen that afternoon to put “T”s and “M”s on the foreheads of the wounded, so I reached into my pocket and pulled it out. With a quivering hand, I slowly added in block letters underneath his line, 1 x VSA, 2 x B, 5 x C, 1 x D.

My anger subsided and I felt more tired and empty than I had ever felt before in my life. I slowly got undressed and turned on the shower. I washed my body with soap, and panic began to rise up in my throat when I couldn't get the bloodstains off my leg.

I suddenly became afraid that I was going to have a major freak-out when a serene inner voice reminded me that I had brought along a scrub brush. I grabbed it and started roughly scraping off the dried, crusted blood.

I got dressed in clean clothes and walked back to the ISO container. I saw Warrant Smith on the way and asked him how things were going. He said fine and just sort of looked at me. I realized I was holding the bloody clothes from this afternoon; I didn't know what to do with the pants. No amount of scrubbing in the little tub we had was going to get the blood out.

He said that after a big incident like today, “You can put your pants into a black garbage bag, and then request fresh ones from the store back at KAF.” He ran and found me a garbage bag, and handed it to me. I thanked him, put the pants and shirt into the bag and hid it out of sight, behind the container. I walked into the CP to see if I could help, but Sean had everything well in hand. I was grateful that he was there, because I was feeling pretty done in. After that day, I wasn't good for too much.

That night we talked about the next day's plans. The battle group was heading back, the engineers had done their work, and the necessary kit had been dropped off. I took a deep breath and asked Sean if they were still going to take away our LCMR, after we just took four mortar rounds in the middle of our FOB.

“That's the plan,” Sean said, and tried to quickly change the subject.

“Even though the guy shouting, ‘Incoming!' had saved our lives. And the only way he could possibly know we had incoming was because he had a fucking LCMR, to read its radar screen and then shout out his warning.”

Sean looked at me patiently, “Rob, we've gone—”

Shut up, Rob, you're not helping. And besides, this isn't something to be argued about in front of the guys; morale already got the boots laid to it today.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. I wasn't angry anymore, just really tired, and contrary to my character, my GAFF (Give a Fuck Factor) was at an all-time low.

Sean continued on with the briefing, and once we were satisfied that all the points had been covered, we went our separate ways. I grabbed a coffee and headed outside.

I found the guys just hanging out, so I would join one group and then go over to another. Someone asked, as a joke, if I had been scared and I said, “Absolutely terrified. I was praying under the flatbed, praying because I didn't want to die.” I looked at the group of guys and said, “There's nothing in our training that prepares us for a day like this. Oh sure, at the TCCC course they'll lay out a dummy and pour out cans of tomato juice around it so we can recognize how many litres of blood a guy's lost, but they can't make us ready for a day like this. There is no
ready.
”

The guys were nodding their heads, but I didn't want to bash the CF; that wasn't the point of my speech. I wanted to get something through to them.

“That's why it's so important that you guys talk amongst yourselves. You've got to vent what you've seen here today. It was horrible and gross, and I don't know about you, but since it happened I've been angry, sad, mad, I've felt sick. But that's all normal. What happened today, that's
not
normal. What happened today is so far outside the width and breadth of normal experience that there's never been anything in your life to prepare you for it. Maybe you've seen car accidents or been hurt, but you've never seen anything like today. But what you guys have to do is be there for each other when you need to talk. You need to tell yourself it's okay if you were afraid, okay if you were terrified, okay if you felt sick, or angry, or full of rage. That's all normal.”

I realized I was blathering so I summed up. “You guys did great, today—every one of you. But like I told somebody earlier, don't feel like you've got to figure it all out today. Allow yourself some time to make peace with it. I'll see you later.”

I walked away and went back to the CP to watch some TV. The boys were watching
Dexter
, and I'd never seen it before, but I found it quite good. In hindsight, I don't imagine a trauma therapy specialist would recommend watching a television show about a good-hearted serial killer after the day we'd just had.

Over the course of the night, my mind kept wandering back to the wounded soldiers.
Had I done everything right? Maybe I should've needle decompressed that guy anyway . . .
I caught my mind going onto a negative-loop feed and decided to take my own advice. I did my best to push the thoughts to the back shelf and give myself time to sort everything out. I told myself that
I did the best I could, with what I had at the time.

I went to bed that night and was sound asleep when someone slammed the metal door to the container as they left to go on radio shift.

KRAANG!

Warrant Smith and I shot up in perfect unison and stared around blindly in the dark.
Were we being mortared again? What was . . . ?

“It was the door,” he said, and went back to sleep.

My heart raced for a good ten seconds and then I lay back down and stared at the bunk above me. I wasn't sure if I could handle another day like today.

Chapter 18

The next morning, Warrant Smith and I walked around the FOB and found that five rounds had actually landed inside FOB Mushan itself, with a sixth one just on the other side of the western Hesco wall.

I looked at the warrant. “That's really accurate for them, isn't it?”

Warrant Smith had been to the Stan five times before, so his experience and advice were not to be questioned when he said, “Yeah, not bad, but I suppose they had five good days of practice before they got it right.”

I walked over to the leaguer to say goodbye to Major Obermann and my friends from Mike Company. They all wished me luck and then mounted up to head back to Sperwhan. I found Sean and the rest of the OMLT boys who would be going back and told them thanks for everything. I found Big Joe and thanked him again for saving my life. He told me to shut up.

Sean asked if I needed anything and I asked him again to pester the battle group lieutenant colonel to try and get the LCMR back. He said he'd try, but no promises. During the night, the engineers had created a dummy LCMR on the rooftop of Moosh, just where the old one had been. And to their credit, it looked just like the old one, except it was made out of wood, fibreglass, and Hessian sack. But for some reason, I didn't think it would work quite as well as the original.

The convoy began to head to the west before it would turn north to the dry riverbed. I jogged back to the FOB and said good morning to the guys. I was the new OC, Warrant Smith was the 2 I/C, and also there were Stamps, Iropolous, and a bunch of guys I'd never worked with before: Carns, O.B., Simmons, and Pastel.
Pastel?
He'd worked with me in the bunker on that Afghan. I looked at his shoulder—
now
he had his medic patches on.

I apologized for ordering him around in the bunker. If I'd known he was a medic, I would've deferred all of the decisions to him as the expert. He laughed and said, “No problem, sir, you were making good calls, so I didn't feel the need to step in.”

It was just a small comment, but it got me square in the chest. Up until he said that, I didn't know if I was making the right calls or not, and I was trying hard to quash the self-doubt that comes after a terrible day like that. But when he said that, I felt ten times better—about a lot of things—and even though he was just making conversation, it meant a lot to me.

I talked for a few minutes with our new interpreter, a young guy called Max (no relation to the Max(s) from Masum Ghar). It seemed that the anglophone in charge of giving Afghans English names—being too lazy to pronounce their real ones—had decided that every other interpreter should be called “Max.”

This Max was scheduled to leave on the convoy today, but he got roped into sticking around when his boss called him from Masum and told him he couldn't leave because we'd lost Omer and Hussan yesterday in the mortar attack. So if he still wanted a job, he had to stick around. And he was
none
too happy about it.

He asked if he could speak with me privately, so we walked over by the generator. He leaned forward conspiratorially, and looked over his shoulder before he spoke.

“Captain Rob, I do not wish to stay here. I want to leave. I have worked hard and I was told I would be done here yesterday, and now I want to go.”

“Yes, you were told you could leave, but that was
before
both of my other interpreters got hurt in yesterday's mortar attack. So you understand how that changes things, just a little bit, right?”

“Yes, but I do not care. I want to leave.”

“Okay, but you understand they'll fire you, and you won't have a job with the Canadians anymore, right?”

“Yes, I do not care. I want to leave.”

He'd obviously made up his mind, but I had to have at least one interpreter. As good as Warrant Smith was (and he was certainly very good), he wasn't fluent in Dari or Pashto, and I had to have someone who could speak both.
Okay . . . I hate to use Dark Jedi mind tricks, but he's left me no choice.

I looked Max straight in the eye and said, “Did you know the other OMLT guys found an interpreter hanging from the lamppost, here in the local bazaar?” I wasn't lying; that was completely true—he was a terp working for the CF who'd been murdered and strung up by the Taliban.

“No, I did not know that.” The grotesque image was now firmly planted in his brain.

“You can leave, Max. I can't stop you. Nor would I even try. But how were you planning on getting back home to Kandahar city? By
taxi
?”

“Yes, I was going to take a taxi.”

“Did you know that most terrorists around the world use taxis to supply them with information? Taxi drivers quite often work for the terrorists.”

“I . . . I did not know that.”
Good, good. Let
The Fear
flow through you.

“And Max, what do you think they will do to you, if they capture you?”
You're a bad man, Rob Semrau.

“I . . . I do not . . .”

“I would really like it if you could stay, Max, at least for a little while. Omer will probably be coming back in a few weeks. Can you please stay just until he comes back?”

“I . . . yes. I will stay until he comes back.”

“Thanks, Max. Let me know if you need anything.”

Master Yoda's voice began to echo in the back of my mind:
If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

But I also remembered the sage words of a dying Vulcan: “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few . . . or the one.” And I don't speak Dari, Pashto, Farsi, or Uzbek! I only speak some Québécois—and Canadian Farmer!

That afternoon, Captain Ghias got a cellphone call from an NDS spy, who told him a famous Taliban mullah would be preaching at the local mosque in Mushan village and stirring up the good citizenry to acts of violence.
I didn't think spies were supposed to discuss things of that nature over a cellphone whose signal could easily be intercepted, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.

Ghias and Max then approached me and said the captain wanted to do a major operation (involving his entire company) early the next morning: an old-school “snatch and grab” on the mullah, who was stirring up trouble. I said the OMLT was always game, but how would we find him in that huge village? It was spread out all over the place, to our south and west. How could we find him in all of
that
?

Ghias looked at me like I was a pure idiot. “He is a mullah, is he not?”

“Yes, that's what you just told me,” I replied.

“Well, tomorrow is Friday. He will be preaching in the biggest mosque in Mushan, the one in the south end. We will go while it is still dark, wait outside the mosque, and grab him when he comes to preach. Simple,” he said with a big grin. Granted, the plan was a stroke of genius for its simplicity, but things had a nasty way of going south in an awful hurry when you worked with the ANA.

Yeah, right—simple! Nothing could ever go wrong with that plan! His followers wouldn't try to kill us when we kidnapped him. The ANA couldn't possibly get lost on their way there. The Taliban would never plant false information and then set us up in a four-sided ambush. Like the captain said: simple.

I discussed the ANA plan with Warrant Smith, who said, “I'm glad tomorrow's your turn to go on patrol.”
Thanks.
But then he suggested we stick Stamps up in the northwest sangar with an amazing piece of kit called the “Coral Sea.” Why was it called that? No idea. But the etymology of the name wasn't the important thing. What did matter is that it could pick out a heat source the size of a kitten from about a kilometre away. If anyone was setting up in the pre-dawn mist to brew us up, Stamps would spot them miles away.

The Coral Sea machine was a big boxy thing that weighed around fifteen pounds. You were meant to look through it like binoculars, but it was so heavy and ungainly that you had to prop up your elbows on something before you could hold it up to your face. And from the heat waves it put off, you could rest assured you were getting a healthy dose of cancer-inducing radiation. But we were willing to trade off a brain tumour for a modern-day crystal ball that could keep us alive in the here and now.

I radioed Sperwhan to tell them the plan and to request UAV support. To actually have an unmanned drone flying high above us, giving us real-time int on what was happening on the ground, would be an incredibly valuable asset. And if we were really lucky, it might even be armed with Hellfire missiles, to rain down the pain on Timothy.
Do I dare to dream a dream?

But I had no illusions. It was highly unlikely we'd ever get the UAV. We'd never gotten one before, ever. That is to say, our OMLT team had never gotten one. Not at Sper, not here in Moosh. I don't think any of the other OMLT commanders had ever gotten one either. UAVs were a battle group asset, and apparently, the battle group needed them more than we did. But I'd put up the request almost twenty-four hours in advance, so who knew.
Hope in Afghanistan springs eternal.

I returned to Captain Ghias in his CP, where I opened up my map to discuss the plan. And after some good mentoring, we had the line of departure established, the routes we'd take into the objective, the cut off/blocking positions for his different platoons, and his best platoon under Shamsallah designated as the grab team. Timings were agreed upon, we covered the pertinent actions-on (“What to do if . . .” scenarios), and after we were both happy with the plan, I went back to my command post to send it up the chain.

It was Simmons's turn to go on patrol, so he would be my fire-team partner for the big mission. That night we checked our batteries, cleaned our weapons, and put infrared (IR) glow sticks on the backs of our helmets, so anyone wearing a set of night-vision goggles could see us. We then handed out IR glow sticks to all the ANA sergeants, CSM Shamsallah, and Captain Ghias, who finally decided this mission was important enough for him to come and join us.

I was concerned with the ANA's ability, or more accurately, their
inability
, to see well at night. I'd heard back in Canada that the ANA couldn't see at night, and I thought it was twenty-first-century racism.
They can't see at night? Why, because they have brown skin? Get real!
But we'd tried a night patrol earlier in Mushan, and I'd seen the First Company ANA in action during low-light and night conditions back at Sperwhan, and I found out to my surprise that it was very much the truth. If there was no moon or it was obscured, then they really
couldn't
see, at all.

To a man, I believed they had a vitamin A deficiency, which was something easily attributable to their diet of rice, some onions and tomatoes, and naan bread. Every blue moon they would eat mutton or beef. But the whole time I was in the Stan, I'd never once seen a carrot. So the thought of sixty ANA soldiers stumbling around behind me in complete darkness, with their fingers undoubtedly on their triggers, as we possibly strolled into a Taliban ambush, was somewhat disconcerting.
Yeah, but what're ya gonna do?

We woke up at 0300 hours the morning of the op and went about our work in total silence. Well, Simmons and I did. The ANA were stumbling, turning on flashlights, speaking too loudly, giggling. Shamsallah, who knew the score, was running around and delivering vicious kicks to his soldiers' butts, trying to get them to shut off their flashlights to save their already trammelled night vision, and to stop shouting so loudly everyone in the nearby village could hear us. As an added bonus, Captain Ghias would be leading the patrol—for the first and only time.

Simmons and I cracked all of the IR glow sticks, handed them back to the Afghans, and made sure ours were squared away tightly on the back of our helmets. We had our night-vision goggles (NVGs) attached to our helmets and, once lowered, they covered our non-dominant eye (the eye we didn't use to shoot with). The IR glow sticks, although invisible to the naked eye, brightly lit up the back of our heads when viewed through NVGs.

I met again with the warrant, who told me that the battle group had finally come through for us: we'd finally be getting a dedicated UAV for a mission. My friend Nick back at Sperwhan put the word up to KAF, and someone there deemed our snatch and grab important enough to justify sending us the UAV asset. We could expect it in half an hour, which was right around the time we'd be needing it. The warrant wished me luck and then went in to man the radio and be the critical link between me, Sperwhan, and the UAV operator in KAF. We were good to go.
All right, thumbs up, let's do this!

Everyone had their magic IR glow stick, the ANA were in the proper order of march, and we even set out on time, but as one could reasonably expect, things started to quickly go wrong.

The ANA patrol column quickly became dangerously spread out (their guys were talking and smoking until Shamsallah caught them and hoofed them in their shins), and Ghias got lost about fifty metres outside our FOB's main gate. I had looked for a reference point the day before, and knew we needed to march toward a high wall off to the southwest. So I had put that bearing in my compass, and when Ghias covertly approached me to ask for directions, I checked my compass and quietly (so he wouldn't lose face) pointed him in the right direction. I radioed Stamps, who was on the PRR, and asked if he saw anything through the Coral Sea. He had no visible heat signatures on his scope, anywhere, so we were good to go. In the sangar, Stamps was also standing right next to a .50-cal heavy machine gun, ready to bring the hurt to Timothy if need be.

We continued on, with Ghias, me, Simmons, Max, and Shamsallah up at the front of the column, acting as the combined recce/HQ element, when we came up to the wall I was using to steer us in. I lowered my NVG and peeked around the corner.
Nothing.
No one was stirring in the village, no DEWS brayed, no village dogs barked to give away our position. Everything was on the up and up.
Huh. Imagine that!