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In the immediate aftermath, NATO decided to send in soldiers to check the buildings for survivors. However, the ‘soldiers’ were actually Special Forces from several different countries, including Sweden. The search-and-rescue was a convenient excuse to do a sweep for bad guys without infuriating the local populace, who had grown sick and tired of our presence.
I was put on overwatch – the term for when a sniper supports ground troops in the line of fire. I went up on the roof of a four-story building so I could watch over the other guys as they went door to door.
My job was to protect the soldiers, no matter what.
It didn’t quite work out that way.
The street was basically deserted. When NATO troops came around, the locals tended to scatter.
I was looking through my rifle scope for threats when I saw a woman exiting a doorway in one of the ruined buildings.
She was in her late teens, maybe early 20s. She wore a long, flowing black robe with a black hijab, or headscarf.
At that point in Afghanistan, the government was secular, and the dress codes weren’t rigidly enforced. So while you saw plenty of hijabs, they tended to be colorful – red, light blue, purple – and women’s robes were generally more form-fitting.
A young woman wearing severe black clothing was a potential red flag. It suggested fundamentalist, possibly extremist beliefs. Plus, her robe was so tent-like that it could have easily concealed a gun or a bomb.
The key words, though, were potential red flag… suggested… possibly extremist beliefs… and could have concealed a gun or bomb. Nothing was conclusive.
“This is Overwatch One,” I said into my radio. “I have a young woman on the street, 200 yards from the convoy.”
I focused on her face through my scope.
She looked terrified.
Then she moved beneath her robes. In the slits for her arms, I caught a half-second glimpse of what I thought was a dull green cylinder. Then it disappeared again under the black cloth.
“She’s got something,” I said, my heart suddenly thudding twice as fast. “Might be an RKG Russian grenade.”
RKGs were hand-held cylinders about two feet long. They were designed to be anti-tank weapons, but they could just as easily wipe out a squad of soldiers.
“You said an RKG?” a voice asked over the radio. I recognized it as the NATO commanding officer of the mission, a Brit.
“Yes. Can you see her? Can anyone confirm the RKG?” I asked.
“Negative.”
Despite the blazing hot sun, cold sweat beaded on my back as I continued to watch her through the scope.
She wasn’t moving. Her face was terrified, and she was frozen in place.
I silently pleaded with her to turn around and walk away.
The officer’s voice spoke over the radio again.
“Take her down.”
Shit.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t killed before. I’d already shot a Taliban firing mortars at the base on my second day in-country. And six months before I’d deployed, I’d killed a neo-Nazi extremist back in Sweden after he stabbed five people and threatened to blow up a bank. It had happened in the next town over from Linköping, where Special Forces was headquartered. The police in the small town hadn’t been equipped to handle the situation, so they’d called us in.
Both deaths had been entirely warranted and just part of my job… but the first time I’d killed someone, it had fucked me up for a couple of weeks.
The second time was easier. It only messed with me for a day or two.
So it wasn’t the killing that gave me pause.
It was the fact that the target was a woman…
