One Bullet Away

So much for a peaceful world. I remembered the day at OCS when the embassies in Africa had been bombed. I had been so naive. That afternoon, I’d still believed in the so-called peace dividend. Now my generation had its own Pearl Harbor, and I was an infantry lieutenant in the Marines. I could have been in medical school or wearing a suit to work. How could I have done this to my family? I wondered how many Marine infantry lieutenants in December 1941 had survived to see 1945.

I always did my best thinking outside on the deck. Fresh air, wind, and a view — even of only a dark horizon — brought me back to reality. Skippy peanut butter and CNN in the wardroom were of great comfort but disarmingly artificial. The wardroom was, for me, always in San Diego. Ten thousand miles from home, I would eat dinner and then open the hatch, fully expecting to see the lights of Coronado off the stern. But tonight there were no lights at all. I imagined the dozens of blacked-out American warships and, beyond them, the coast of Pakistan. A few hundred miles beyond that, across the mountains and deserts, was America’s newest target: Afghanistan.

* * *

Afghanistan was not only landlocked but time-locked as well. I sat on a metal chair in the TACLOG and flipped through printouts of a CIA analysis of the country. Patrick sat across from me, reading about Taliban battle tactics.

“Listen to this,” I said. “Population of twenty-five million people, but only thirty-one thousand telephones and one hundred thousand televisions. Thirty percent literacy, eight hundred dollars GDP per capita, life expectancy of forty-five years, and the biggest exports are opium, nuts, carpets, and animal pelts. It sounds like we’ll be fighting guys armed with clubs and slingshots.”

“And Stingers. They bled the Soviets white,” Patrick said without looking up from his reading. The Stinger is a shoulder-fired, heat-seeking, surface-to-air missile.

“Yeah, and the ragtag Chechens just kicked that same army in the teeth because the Russians’ tactics and training and leadership suck. I don’t think the comparison with us stands up.”

“Maybe not. I’m just saying we need to remember the history.” Patrick ran through a sketch of the foreign powers that had come to grief in Afghanistan’s mountains.

“In 327 B.C., Alexander the Great comes through the Khyber Pass and gets hit by an Afghan archer’s arrow. He nearly dies. Almost a thousand years later, Genghis Khan imposes his will over this whole part of the world. Who are the only people to pry concessions from him? The Afghans. And then there’re the British. I wouldn’t be surprised if Tony Blair wants no part of this operation. They lost three fucking wars to these people.”

Patrick flipped back through his sheaf of papers and held one up. “Check this out. January 1842. The Brits withdraw from Kabul in a column of 16,500 soldiers and civilians. They’re trying to get to safety at a garrison in Jalalabad, 110 miles away. Guess how many made it?”

“None.”

“No, one. The Afghans slaughtered all of them except one. They let him live to tell the story.

“Christ, and the Soviets,” he continued. “They admitted to fifteen thousand dead in the 1980s, plus at least ten times that number wounded and thousands dead from disease. And that’s only what they admitted. So my point is just that this place has been a graveyard for a lot of guys like you and me, and we owe it to ourselves at least to learn from their mistakes.”

I turned to a report on Taliban tactics. Their technique for moving through a minefield, according to the brief, was to put the unit in single file with the man at the front holding a large sandstone rock. Before each step, he drops the rock in front of him. If it falls on a mine, it will explode in a puff of dust, with the soft sandstone absorbing most of the blast. The point man may be stunned and temporarily deaf, but he will just go to the back of the line while the next guy takes over with a new rock.

The brief also said the fighters never carried any of their own gear — women and mules did that. If there were no women or mules available, they’d do without that particular equipment. The briefer finished with a note that Westerners who worked with the mujahideen in the 1980s said it was almost impossible to launch a coordinated attack with them; they quickly abandoned support positions in order to join in the glory of the assault.

“Death before dishonor.”

“Say again?” Patrick looked up. I hadn’t realized I had spoken aloud.

“Death before dishonor. Marines tattoo it on their forearms, but these fuckers live it.”

Any cavalier bravado I might have had — what Captain Novack would have called my “posturing behavior” — was ebbing away.