The Watch (26 page)

I’m not sure I’m following you, Sir.

This is personal, First Sarn’t.

I consider this for a moment without saying anything. Then: What if we don’t hear from Battalion about the drone today?

Well … then I guess you’ll have to send someone out to make sure she isn’t strapped with explosives.

And if she’s clean?

Sorry—what was that? he says distractedly, flipping his laptop open.

What should we do if she turns out not to be a suicide op?

We’ll still need to find a way to get her out of our hair, First Sarn’t—after grilling her thoroughly for intelligence, that is.

That’s when I ask: Could we not simply give her the body, Sir?

I’m met with an angry exclamation from Connolly, who glares at me.

And what would you suggest I tell Battalion? And what about Brigade, and Bagram, and the clowns in Kabul? Do you want the whole fucking chain of command to come crashing down on our heads?

Couldn’t we just send photographs? Why do they need the corpse?

Connolly gazes at me for a long moment as if composing a suitable response. At length, he says: The powers that be in Kabul have made a big deal out of the prospect of displaying the body on television. They don’t want people to question its authenticity. Nor do they want to deal with the kinds of questions that have arisen in the past regarding the credibility of their claims about the deaths of key insurgents, who then turn out to have survived after all. The government is weak, and they’ll use anything they can to project their strength.

But he’s already beginning to rot, Sir, I point out. I doubt he’ll be any good for displaying on television in another day.

It isn’t up to us to interfere, he says firmly. We have our orders.

He returns to his papers, then pauses abruptly and slams his laptop shut. What’s with all these fucking questions, Marcus? You’re
not a novice, you know how these things work; there are things we can and can’t do in this situation. Our freedom of action is strictly circumscribed.

We stare at each other without moving.

Then he sits up very straight with his head tilted back to take me in as I look down at him from a height. Abruptly, he says: You’re looking ragged around the edges. It’s affecting your judgment, quite obviously. Why don’t you get some sleep?

I nod slightly.

Just do it, he urges.

LIEUTENANT’S JOURNAL

One.

Two.

Three.

Four … in five seconds I will have turned twenty-four. Yet another year added to my life. I hold up a mirror to my face. Below the wall of forehead, the eyes crouch warily. Stone-gray gaze, eyelids rimmed with red, lashes bleached by dust, mouth encircled by grime. Taut, thin lips, distant, long gaze. God of memory, god of longings: grant me the gift of rest.

It’s night outside, a foggy, dust-smeared darkness. The wind whips the earth into shades, the desert hides in shadows, there’s dust, dust everywhere.

Dust clouds, dust moon, dust senses.

In the beginning, I wanted to make a difference. Dreamed we were a force for the good. Believed we could change this world: change it
through the power of intention, goodwill, language. That was before survival became paramount. The mere act of staying alive. Alive: that single, most dangerous word. Dangerous, yes. We are never entirely ourselves until we contend with the length of the night, the fact of its finitude, its protean, distinct shades, its inevitable end.

Absent star. When I look at myself in the light of day, I appear very different, even to myself. But in the darkness of the night, this is what I am.

And so the moments pass, dust stirs the plains, the mountains hem in air. Twenty-four years. A window to a view that no longer exists. A calm, peaceful landscape. Sunlit stream winding through green Burlington hills. Graveled driveway, cars parked in front of the house. Dad with his sleeves rolled up, on his way to the tennis court, looking back over his shoulder and waving me good-bye.

I’ve changed so much, who would’ve thought it possible? I, who used to believe I’d never change. Look at me now: I’m a stranger to myself. Bearer of the dead. My eyes close, but sleep does not come.

D
AY
.

Dawn. The silence is absolute. For an instant, the fog parts to reveal the plexus of huts and tents huddled in the half-light. Otherwise everything around me, this translucent, swirling haze, is bathed in tints of violet. Even the barren landscape assumes carmine shades. I’ve never lost the love of landscape that you planted in me, Dad. It’s sustained me in the most extreme situations and places. One day I’d like to pass that on to my children.

So I began writing this journal for you, Dad. You said I would need a place to bury the graveyard that war becomes when the dreams of glory dissipate. I remember clearly when you told me that. We were walking down the long, planked pier, the still waters of the lake on either side of us. The pier seemed to go on and on, the water was an
even-tempered blue, the lake sky-colored and sky-shaped. You said: I’ve never understood your commitment, but I respect you, so I’ve accepted it. I said: Thanks, Dad. You said: Time is what is left when we decide to start living, Nick. I want you to come back to us alive.

I remember looking up suddenly when you said that. Something had startled me—not what you’d said—and at first I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then I noticed: In the clear light, the sky seemed to have no beginning, the lake no end. There was no line on the horizon.

Before we turned around and walked back, you asked me what was going to be the most important thing for me on this deployment.

My answer, the same as it ever was: Winning the war and bringing my men back alive.

You said: Always remember that experience is an arch. That’s from Tennyson, by the way.

I remember smiling as I replied: In the army we call it the steep learning curve. You go from innocence to experience. Then from experience to more experience. In other words, from shit hole to shit hole in an endless procession of shit holes, if you’ll excuse my French. From one …

Problematic situation to another?

Exactly. Yes.

We laughed together at the way you’d deflected the possibility of more profanity by finishing my thought. But when we reached the end of the pier, you held me earnestly by the shoulder and said: This country is broken, Nick. We’ve been lied to and robbed blind and left to the mercy of swindlers. I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt as depressed. No—not even during the Vietnam years. We’re desperately in need of heroes, Nick—of good, honest, hardworking leaders. We need men like you to come back and rebuild what’s been destroyed.

I remember the long silence as I looked at you with sadness.

You’re looking to us to come back and rescue the country, Dad?

I am. I don’t believe war solves anything, Nick—and these wars in particular are like gaping wounds. They’re draining us of our lifeblood.

N
IGHT
.

So: this journal is where I put down my most private thoughts, Dad. It’s like the little compartment the others carry around in their heads where they stow away all their thoughts and emotions until such time as they can bear to safely unpack and dwell on the nightmares, the sadness. Dave Hendricks says it’s the first thing he does when he’s back Stateside, even before he meets the family. He locks himself up in a dark room and lets go slowly … He opens the box.

Me? I prefer the white page. No dark rooms for me. No shut containers in the mind.

No cigar box like the one that Connolly has in his desk drawer that he flips open every time something goes very, very wrong.

I write down my thoughts instead. I live on the page. This is home for me now: my true home. And that St. Louis apartment with the Ikea furniture and Em’s collection of quilts and all our books from Vassar and on … that’s fiction. It’s a movie, a different life that featured some other man who shared my name and body for a time. He’s gone.

He’s been gone for a while now.

N
IGHT
.

The long stare. The eyes that take on a life of their own. Emily remarked on it the last time we were together; she kept telling me to look at her and not past her at some gray distance. Where are you, Nick? What are you thinking of? And then, later, when the shock of our separation finally hit with full force: You chose to break away, Nick. You had a choice. You should’ve known that this could end.
I tried to explain it to you, but you were always somewhere else. I could see it in your eyes. You were miles away. What happened to you? Do you like the way that sand tastes?

Miles away. I’m twenty-four, but I’ve aged so much. My eyes are holes where light no longer penetrates. What did she expect? I’m no longer who I used to be. I’ve seen my core break away.

I close my eyes, just for tonight. The sun still sleeps for me where she wakes.

Why didn’t you wait for me, Em? I see your face in the sand everywhere.

Tonight I’ll dream of you. Outside there’s a sickle moon. A glitter of yellow scales on my bed. Tonight I’ll plunge into my labyrinth.

D
AY
.

In a few days, summer will end. I know why I’ve become so conscious of time, Dad. I’m afraid of not being able to see my son again. It keeps me up at night, and then in the morning I don’t want to get out of bed. Even the relief of having survived another twenty-four hours can seem ephemeral. It’s almost easier to walk over to the wire and watch those formidable mountains sweep their shadows over us. Strange how alien the mountains appear, and the desert as well, with its different coldness. Featureless landscapes. Futureless deathscapes. Still, you get used to them after a while.

Although, when I come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I was near a forest.

Or a river, for that matter. A garden, a pond, a park, a lake.

We’ve heard rumors of orchards hidden deep in the mountains, and groves of mulberries and grapes. Also stands of holly oaks and cedars, giant spruce and cypresses. When I gaze at the wild, jagged rock faces that loom over us, it seems improbable. But then again, fruits are among the main exports of this parched, dust-choked land, especially melons and pomegranates.

And grapes. Fourteen different kinds, can you imagine?

As for melons, our ANA Uzbeks assure us that the best kind are not from Kandahar but from Ashkalon farther north, where, two thousand years ago, the Greeks led by Alexander—whom they call Iskander—is said to have introduced them from Macedonia.

Alexander’s spirit still straddles this place like a colossus, by the way. When I think of the armies he led back and forth over the mountains—in winter, no less—in pursuit of the Persians and the local tribes, I am left, quite frankly, speechless. There is such a thing as military genius, I suppose. Sobering to think that we do not—emphatically—have anything to compare by way of leadership.

N
IGHT
.

What else can I tell you about the nature of this place?

In the desert there are hyenas and jackals. We hear them call at night, but I’ve never seen them myself. The gray wolf used to be common here—it’s the same species as the ones back home—but the Taliban hunted them with Kalashnikovs, and now there are hardly any left.

And then there are the birds. Yesterday I took a picture of a hoopoe, a striped yellow-beige bird the size of a magpie, with a flamboyant black-tipped crest and an attitude to match. And Sergeant Espinosa tells me there’s a goshawk scoping out the watchtower with an eye to building a nest. I’ve seen it once or twice myself, a lean rust-brown female with sharp yellow talons. She swoops down every morning from some high perch in the mountains.

I’d like to get up to the mountains myself sometime. As a matter of fact, we’re going to have to do it sooner or later: it’s part of our mission to set up a string of outposts. We plan to piggyback from valley to valley, getting to know the local shuras and enlisting their help against the insurgents.

Our Uzbek ANA tell us they’ve heard that the Pashtun women go unveiled in the mountain valleys. Also that djinns occupy the highest peaks. And that the pillars of dust that race across the plains are devil-possessed. And the foggy evening coolness is the breath of the dead.

For all these reasons and more, when one of the Uzbeks finds a fragment of pottery in the sand, he promptly buries it again because of the black spells it is said to cast. For the rest of the day, he stands shivering with his spade in a corner of his tent. That is the caliber of the men we are working with. The army brass who send them to us claim that they are highly trained. I hope you smile when you read this, Dad: it’s meant to make you smile.

N
IGHT
.

So I was reading the book you sent me,
de Vigny’s
Servitude and Grandeur of Arms
, and came across this passage you’d underlined (for me?): “Modern men—men of the hour in which I write—are skeptical and ironical about everything else besides. But each becomes serious the moment its name is mentioned. And this is not a theory, but an observation.—The name of Honor moves something in a man which is integral to himself …”

And then again, on another page: “This strange, proud virtue is animated by a mysterious vitality, and it stands erect in the midst of all our vices, blending so well with them that it is fed by their energy.”

I wish I could tell you that’s the sort of war I’m fighting, Dad, but I don’t know, I really don’t know, and to lie to you in this journal would be like lying to myself—and where would that leave us? We’re using unmanned drones to fight against a bunch of illiterate peasants with bolt-action rifles, and that leaves a certain taste in the mouth that’s very far from the glory of Alexander’s campaigns, if you know what I mean. Or even Napoleon’s, for that matter.

D
AY
.