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This is the moment that I close this door. I tell a lie. My girlfriend died—the Burka-wearing one. Now is the wrong time. I’m a mess. Not well enough to get entangled. Anything.
Words are clogging in my throat; the wrong words. I swallow them back. I nod, hoping my eyes don’t scream too loudly.
“Always.”
FOUR
Barrett
September 20, 2011
Dove is at the highest point in our overwatch formation, on an outcropping above my head, when the call comes through the Porta Phone.
“Pack up shop and go back to the insert point,” McVay tells him.
“Uhh…what?”
“You heard me.” McVay is an asshole. “Get moving.”
Over the mountain peak. Back to the field we ID’d back at base as our entry and exit point.
Dove doesn’t tell McVay that the highest of all our high-value targets— a top-ranking al-Qaeda officer we’ve code named Ugly Fuck—has just shown up in the village down below us. Dove himself has not yet noticed this.
We’ve been waiting on Ugly Fuck for weeks up here in the barren Hindu Kush, a stark, 25,000-foot-elevation mountain range between central Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. Two of our team’s best assaulters have been on the ground for the last four days, but we got no warning about Ugly Fuck’s appearance, so they clearly didn’t have the intel for it.
Ugly Fuck is on a tall camel, fifth in a long caravan of rocket mortar and AK-bearing beasts that’s trickling into one of the most Taliban-friendly Pashtun villages.
During the thirty minutes I use to photograph Ugly Fuck’s bearded mug and document his location, Dove struggles to signal me. I don’t notice the pebbles he’s lobbing at my head because my mind is in the game.
I pull some pale, dry-looking faux grass from my pack and stuff it in my camo cloak, then start the slow scuttle to Breck, due west and a little lower down the barren mountain face.
I don’t want to risk electronic comm, not yet, and this is how we’ve planned things.
Dove is at the top left of our square, and I’m at the bottom left. Since Dove has comm on this mission, I’ll rendezvous with Breck at the bottom right point of our square. Breck and I will make a plan, which Breck will take up to the square’s top right corner—Bluebell—while I go up to Dove. Who, if things go correctly, will make a call to base to coordinate a backup plus withdrawal.
If we’re on our game, this should be achievable in less than twenty minutes.
About the time Breck is laughing silently at the big, awkward bush scuttling up to him, Dove, whose sole mission at this point is telling us we have to leave, is finding my spot empty.
After a couple minutes, Breck and I determine a course of action and part ways, me returning to my spot, from which I’ll head up to Dove, and Breck picking his way up a cliff face to inform Bluebell of our plans.
The square can work a variety of ways, but in this situation, this is our plan. McVay or not.
As it happens, I’m the last man back to my spot—after hiking up to Dove’s spot, where the two of us traded deets. While I get back settled, Dove calls McVay and the rest of the head shed, seeking official permission to take out our HVTs and put in the order for a withdraw. From that point on, the four of us Operators communicate with hand signals.
Unless the group of Taliban in the village square stops logging equipment and something changes, Bluebell will take out Ugly Fuck. Breck ID’d two other high value targets, so Dove’s asking the head shed about those guys. If we get permission to eliminate them, Dove will take one and I’ll take the other.
I’ll fire first, then scramble up toward Dove. He’ll fire shortly before I reach him, and we’ll head over the mountain’s peak toward the withdraw point, while Breck hikes up to Bluebell and the two of them will scurry up behind us.
Three near simultaneous shots from three coordinates should confuse the enemy, and assuming our backup arrives in the prescribed timeframe, those guys can keep Taliban reinforcements from coming up the other side of the peak and spilling down over the summit onto us.
We’ve got a bunch of backup ready and waiting by a chopper for this very thing back at base, a mere thirty fly minutes away.
As I await Dove’s go-ahead and watch Ugly Fuck and Co. unload their weapons, I start thinking about my brothers. I’ve got this bad feeling that the call Dove got was about one of the twins. They’re still fucking teenagers, and both of them have cancer. I haven’t seen them since February, right after Kelly was diagnosed. I did a cheek swab test in April to see if I could donate bone marrow to help cure one of them, but I wasn’t a match for either of my little brothers.
Now the transplants are done. The boys are hanging in there. I try to call when I can, but we’ve been out here doing this for coming up on two months now. I asked the head shed for a short pass home, but since both boys are doing okay, they didn’t want to grant it yet.
I look down at Ugly Fuck and hope the satisfaction of eliminating such a piece of shit will seem worth it if something happened to either of my brothers.
