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“Parachute! Parachute!
Parachute! Dr. Marcus, come quick!”
I made my way outside, aching to high heaven all the way. I resolved to have another shot of that
opium soon as I returned, but for now it was all eyes upward, straight at the clear blue, cloudless
skies. What could we see? Nothing. Whatever had landed was down, and I stood there trying to
make them understand I needed to know if there had been a man on the end of that parachute,
and if so, how many parachutes there had been. Was this a drop zone for my buddies to come
right in and get me?
The upshot of this was also nothing. The tribesmen simply could not understand me. The kids,
who I detected were the ones who had actually spotted the parachute, or parachutes, were just as
mystified. All the hours of study we had done together had come to nothing.
There was a sudden conference, and most of the adults upped and left. I went back in. They
returned maybe fifteen minutes later and brought with them all my gear, which they had hidden
away from the eyes of the Taliban. They gave me back my rifle and ammunition, my H-gear
(that’s my harness), and in its pocket, my PRC-148 intersquad radio, the one for which I’d lost
the little microphone earpiece. It still had its weakish battery and its still-operational emergency
beacon.
I was aware that if I grabbed the bull by the horns and went right outside and let rip with this
communications gear, I would once more be a living, breathing distress signal, which the Amer-
icans might catch from a cruising helo. On the other hand, the Taliban, hidden all around in the
hills, could scarcely miss me. I found this a bit of a dilemma.
But the rearmament guys of Sabray also brought me my laser and the disposable camera. I
grabbed my rifle and held it like you might caress a returning lover. This was the weapon God
had granted me. And, so far as I could tell, still wanted me to have. We’d traveled a long way
together, and I probably deserved some kind of an award for mountain climbing, maybe the
Grand Prix Hindu Kush presented to Sherpa Marcus. Sorry, forget all that, I meant mountain
falling,
the Grand Prix Hindu Crash, awarded unanimously to Sherpa Marcus the Unsteady.
Outside, I put on my harnesss, locked and loaded the rifle, and prepared for whatever the hell
might await us. But with my harness back, I was not yet done with the kids. That harness
contained my notebook, and we had access to the village ballpoint pen.
I marched them back into the house and carefully drew two parachutes on the page. I drew a man
swinging down from the first one. On the second one, I drew a box. I showed both pictures to the
kids and asked them, Which one? And about twenty little fingers shot forward, all aimed directly
at the parachute with the box.
Beautiful. I had intel. There had been some kind of a supply drop. And since the local tribesmen
do not use either aircraft or parachutes, those supplies had to be American. They also had to be
aimed at the remnants of my team. Everyone else was dead. I was that remnant.
I asked the kids exactly where the chutes had dropped, and they just pointed to the mountain.
Then they got into gear and raced out there, I guess to try and show me. I stood outside and
watched them go, still a bit baffled. Had my buddies somehow found me? Had the old man
reached Asadabad? Either way, it was one hell of a coincidence the Americans had made a
supply drop a few hundred yards from where I was taking cover. The mountains were endless,
and I could have been anywhere.
I went back into the house to rest my leg and talk for a while with Gulab. He had not seen the
parachute drop, and he had no idea how far along the road his father had journeyed. In my mind,
I knew what every active combat soldier knows, that Napoleon’s army advanced on Moscow at
one mile every fifteen minutes, with full packs and muskets. That’s four miles an hour, right?
That way, the village elder should have made it in maybe eleven hours.
Except for two mitigating factors: (1) he was about two hundred years old, and (2) from where I
stood, the mountain he was crossing had a gradient slightly steeper than the Washington
Monument. If the VE made it by Ramadan 2008, I’d be kinda lucky.
One hour later, there it goes again.
Bang!
That goddamned door went off like a bomb. Even
Gulab jumped. But not as high as I did. In came the kids, accompanied by a group of adults.
They carried with them a white document, which must have looked like a snowball in a coal
mine up here where the word
litter
simply does not exist.
I took it from them and realized it was an instruction pamphlet for a cell phone.
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