Through Weary, Dark Eyes
This story was originally posted, here.
Sometimes, when I look back, remember, it feels like it was a just a dream. Sometimes, it feels like it was just yesterday. But most of the time, it feels like I was someone else, someone I needed to be, and who I am now was simply along for the ride...
My account continues...
Out of the chute, a vast desert opens wide, dotted with prickly vegetation, wide canals, and mud-walled compounds. Through morning haze, jagged mountains loom like the giant, broken teeth of a bear along the Pakistani border.
Nothing matters beyond this point. Survival, keeping each other alive.
Day’s clear--breeze, light and gentle. Columns of black smoke rise into a cloudless sky like some post-apocalyptic movie set. Sometimes, it’s a warning, a signal to those who care that we’re on the move.
We watch them. They watch us. In this place, paranoia is a desirable trait…
Warm wind gusts, drying the sweat dripping from my brows. Cocking my head, I listen for ghosts, for their whispers weaved into currents. But there’s only wind--lonely, whistling.
We break down into two staggered teams of four. The lead element pushes out to my left, I take my team right, off-set, trailing behind the first. It’s a good formation. A flexible formation, easy to maneuver over rough terrain.
We constantly scan the horizon, always alert. Always looking for that one out of place thing--someone paying too much attention, a patch of disturbed earth. Humans follow routine. Doesn’t matter where you’re from--how much money you have. Humans love routine. Predictability. We’ve been here long enough to learn the pattern of living, the pulse of their life-flow. So, that’s what we look for, deviations from the “norm.”
My mouth’s dry, crunching and chewing on gritty bits of sand in my teeth. Sucking luke-warm water from my Camelbak helps a little. Thoughts, insidious and mundane, play on repeat in my head. Left foot-right foot. Right foot-left foot:
…peanut butter jelly sandwiches gotta be the best food ever cold water sounds nice dirt looks out of place wire exposed plants are so fucking thorny they’re staring stop staring glaring at me next step could be my last thrown through air come apart a bullet through the throat would I hear my own choking tourniquet pelvis shatters are they watching us calling ahead to the drone overhead buzzing by no air on station Taliban are locals are Taliban you won’t die here they can’t kill you sweat dripping down my back feel millions of eyeballs on me was that a voice am I hearing things what will going home be like what will death be like hopefully not too painful…
We skirt around abandoned compounds and mud huts, crumbling from years of punishing sun and relentless heat. Ahead, there’s a berm. We’ll take a knee for a few minutes, observe the area around us.
We spread out along its ridge that spans for miles, then disappears in the distance. Looking north, back towards Delmar, I ease myself down onto the baked pile of dirt. The patrol base is lost among the arid, choppy slopes of the landscape. The eighty-foot-tall camera tower lost sight of us a-ways back.
Small talk eases the simmering anxiety of patrols. We joke about what we want our tombstones to say when we die of old age, or if we die in this forgotten place. We play endless rounds of Mary-Fuck-Kill. Tell dead-baby jokes. I’m not sure what’s worse. Telling that kind of joke, or laughing so hard, it makes you cry… We all have a dark humor that keeps us from sinking into self-pity, or worse, fear. Keeps us detached… for now.
The scratchy-static voice coming through my handheld says, “We got a van on the move, five-hundred meters southwest.”
Peering through rifle scope, I spot the 80′s model Toyota van in the distance, zooming down the poor excuse of a road. It looks like a fat bullet. Plumes of dust rise into the air.
Not many vehicles around here. Rare to see one. The ones that exist are held together with rope, whatever else they find. Actually saw that once, the rear axle of a car tied to the frame with rope. The Taliban use vans like these as ambulances, transporting their wounded to secret locations.
Mental note taken, filed “not a threat” as it continues down the road, speeding away. I inhale a lung full of dry air and stand up, throw in another dip, then signal to move out. the further south we go. It’s amazing to see so much lush, green vegetation thriving in pockets the further south we go.
Some fields are full of crops. Corn, cotton, tomatoes, watermelons. But most are filled with the dried husks of last year’s poppy crop. Dead stalks up to my waist, snapping and breaking as we push through. You can see the scored top of the plant, little wolverine slashes that leak out the sap used to make opium.
We walk through fields mostly, staying off roads and well-worn footpaths. The Taliban, or whoever they threaten or pay, target obvious routes. So, we always walk through areas that hardly get walked through.
Some are barren, hard as a city street. Old farm plots. Long mounds, beaten down by the seasons, stretch across, tall enough that after a while--usually every two steps--it gets tiring constantly stepping over them. We leap over another canal, eight-feet deep--three, maybe four-feet wide. Not easy when you’re loaded like a pack mule, and short like I am.
Then we cross over into a field full of Marijuana. Huge plants as tall as us, some over our head. A field of bud in the middle of Afghanistan. It’s surreal, but it sure does smell good.
The locals don’t always appreciate that we do this, walk through their fields, or barge in to randomly search their homes. I understand their attitudes towards us more than I admit to myself, their distrust of us. The outright spite. I understand it more than someone who’ll never experience what war is, because it’s always easy to say what you’d do when you don’t have to do it. A village elder told me once, that after we left, the Taliban would remain, because that was their home, not ours.
But, some like us being here. Tell us they feel safe, that in the few short months begin there, we’ve pushed out large elements of Taliban that used to run the show. I wish I could say it would stay that way…
Up ahead, the mid-point village lines a side of the road. We form back up into a staggered column, stepping out of the fields and onto the road leading into the village. Young boys tend a herd of goats trailing in our wake. Villagers are out.
Human activity is a good sign, usually means the Taliban isn’t in the area, people aren’t afraid of a confrontation. We’re on pace for good time, sitting at the two-hour mark. We’ll start heading west soon.
As we approach, locals meander from the inner bowels of the village, filing out of their compounds and huts, curious about the brutish humans walking along their pockmarked dirt roads. We’re spectacles wherever we go, because most of the Afghanis living way out here don’t care about technology like we do. Clocks hardly exist, just the movement of the sun, the moon and the stars.
Men--young and old--leer at us through weary, dark eyes. No women. Odd, but not uncommon. Still though, a red flag raises in the back of my mind. Keying my handheld, I relay what I’m seeing, what I feel. Everyone’s on the same page. We always are. Neck hairs bristle. A subtle shift occurs, preternatural perceptions gained from past experiences. Primal instinct, like when an animal feels threatened by something lurking in the dark. We’ve learned to trust those instincts. Something’s off…
We set up a hasty vehicle-check-point along the road. It’s like fishing, setting up a check point like this. You cast your line out, see what you get. Since our interpreter stayed back with the A.N.A, we can’t communicate with the villagers the way we want to.
A wide canal along the side of the road separates us from the village and growing crowd of villagers. They stare me down as Marines hand out bottles of water and snacks to children brave enough to approach us. I wave, scanning faces in the crowd. My friendly gesture unreturned, I can’t shake the feeling we’re not welcome.
Body language, facial gestures, demeanor, that’s what we’re trained to pick up on. My internal radar pings. Someone jokes about these guys being Taliban, standing there, watching us. Then someone jokes about a report we got a few days earlier, about a stolen, Russian-made 82mm mortar system in our AO, and how it would suck if we started getting mortared. We have a good laugh about that.
A Marine peers through his rifle scope, surveying the other side of the plain we’re about to cross. Another Marine, a big ol’ country boy from upstate New York, spots red flag number two.
He gazes through his scope. “Hayes, that van we saw earlier is parked by that compound over there.”
“Shit dude,” says the first Marine, “there’s a guy standing on the roof.”
Red flag number three.
“…And he’s got binos…”
We’re being actively spotted. Rules of engagement state we can target active spotters, but at over nine-hundred meters away, across a wind tunnel, an accurate shot’s unlikely.
Now we know we’re walking into an ambush…
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Previous Posts:
Dawn Patrol- Part 1
Conquering Fear!
Once a Marine, Now a Psychedelic Explorer
The Science Behind the Trip