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ba-
aaaa...baaa...baaa.
And the tinkling of the little bells. It provided a fitting background chorus to
a decision which had been made in fucking fairyland. Not on the battlefield where we, like it or
not, most certainly were.
Axe said again, “We’re not murderers. And we would not have been murderers, whatever we’d
done.”
Mikey was sympathetic to his view. He just said, “I know, Axe, I know, buddy. But we just took
a vote.”
I motioned for the three goatherds to get up, and I signaled them with my rifle to go on their way.
They never gave one nod or smile of gratitude. And they surely knew we might very well have
killed them. They turned toward the higher ground behind us.
I can see them now. They put their hands behind their backs in that peculiar Afghan way and
broke into a very fast jog, up the steep gradient, the goats around us now trotting along to join
them. From somewhere, a skinny, mangy brown dog appeared dolefully and joined the kid. That
dog was a gruesome Afghan reminder of my own robust chocolate Labrador, Emma, back home
on the ranch, always bursting with health and joy.
I guess that’s when I woke up and stopped worrying about the goddamned American liberals.
“This is bad,” I said. “This is real bad. What the fuck are we doing?”
Axe shook his head. Danny shrugged. Mikey, to be fair, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Like
me, he was a man who knew a massive mistake had just been made. More chilling than anything
we had ever done together. Where were those guys headed? Were we crazy or what?
Thoughts raced through my mind. We’d had no comms, no one we could turn to for advice. Thus
far we had no semblance of a target in the village. We were in a very exposed position, and we
appeared to have no access to air support. We couldn’t even report in. Worse yet, we had no clue
as to where the goatherds were headed. When things go this bad, it’s never one thing. It’s every
damn thing.
We watched them go, disappearing up the mountain, still running, still with their hands behind
their backs. And the sense that we had done something terrible by letting them go was all-
pervading. I could just tell. Not one of us was able to speak. We were like four zombies, hardly
knowing whether to crash back into our former surveillance spots or leave right away.
“What now?” asked Danny.
Mikey began to gather his gear. “Move in five,” he said.
We packed up our stuff, and right there in the noonday sun, we watched the goatherds, far on the
high horizon, finally disappear from view. By my watch, it was precisely nineteen minutes after
their departure, and the mood of sheer gloom enveloped us all.
We set off up the mountain, following in the hoofprints of the goats and their masters. We
moved as fast as we could, but it took us between forty minutes and one hour to cover the same
steep ground. At the top, we could no longer see them. Mountain goats, mountain herders. They
were all the goddamned same, and they could move like rockets up in the passes.
We searched around for the trail we had arrived by, found it, and set off back toward the initial
spot, the one we had pulled out of because of the poor angle on the village and then the dense fog
bank. We tried the radio and still could not make a connection with home base.
Our offensive policy was in pieces. But we were headed for probably the best defensive position
we had found since we got here, on the brink of the mountain wall, maybe forty yards from the
summit, with tree cover and decent concealment. Right now we sensed we must remain in
strictly defensive mode, lie low for a while and hope the Taliban had not been alerted or if they
had that we would be too well hidden for them to locate us. We were excellent practitioners of
lying low and hiding.
We walked on along the side of the mountain, and I have to say the place looked kind of
different in broad daylight. But its virtues were still there. Even from the top of the escarpment
we would be damn near impossible to see.
We climbed down and took up our precise old positions. We were still essentially carrying out
our mission, but we remained on the highest possible alert for Taliban fighters. Below me,
maybe thirty yards to my right, looking up the hill, Danny slipped neatly into his yoga tree,
cross-legged, still looking like a snake charmer. I got myself wedged into the old mulberry tree,
where I reapplied my camouflage cream and melted into the landscape.
Below me on the left, same distance as Danny, was Axe with our heaviest rifle. Mikey was right
below me, maybe ten yards, jammed into the lee of a boulder. Above us the mountain was nearly
sheer, then it went flat for a few yards, then it angled sharply up to the top. I’d tried looking
down from there, so had Murph, and we were agreed, you could not really see anything over the
small outward ridge which protected us.
For the moment, we were safe. Axe had the glass for twenty minutes, and then I took over for the
next twenty minutes. Nothing stirred in the village. It had now been more than an hour and a half
since we turned the goatherds loose. And it was still quiet and peaceful, hardly a breath of wind.
And by Christ it was hot.
Mikey was closest to me when he suddenly whispered, “Guys, I’ve got an idea.”
“What is it, sir,” I asked, suddenly formal, as if our situation demanded some respect for the man
who must ultimately take command.
“I’m going down to the village, see if I can borrow a phone!”
“Beautiful,” said Axe. “See if you can pick me up a sandwich.”
“Sure,” said Mikey. “What’ll it be? Mule dung or goat’s hoof?”
“Hold the mayo,” growled Axe.
The jokes weren’t that great, I know. But perched up there on this Afghan rock face, poised to
fend off an attacking army, I thought they were only just shy of grade-one hilarity.
It was, I suppose, a sign of nerves, like cracking a one-liner on your deathbed. But it showed we
all felt better now; not absolutely A-OK, but cheerful enough to get to our work and toss out the
occasional light remark. More like our old selves, right? Anyhow, I said I was just going to close
my eyes for a short while, and I pulled my camouflage hat down over my eyes and tried to nod
off, despite my pounding heart, which I could not slow down.
Around ten minutes more passed. Suddenly I heard Mikey make a familiar alert sound...
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