News From the Red Desert (28 page)

The five Chinooks had carried 150 men. This was too large a group to manoeuvre quietly as one. She had not been told any of this, but the plan was for the company to divide into five 30-man teams and radiate out from a common point. The men had been briefed in detail and they all knew their assignments. Each of the teams had a junior officer and a senior NCO leading it. The lieutenant colonel commanding the operation had his own team and additional signalmen, but the assumption and expectation was that the manoeuvre teams would remain substantially autonomous. Local initiative and improvisation were the essence of SF OPS, as every public affairs officer told every journalist every chance they had. They reached a rendezvous that looked no different to Deirdre than any other part of this parched terrain, and the five teams headed off on five different compass bearings. No words were exchanged. Every man in each of the five teams felt more comfortable in the smaller groups. Company-sized formations of SF were training and administrative structures only. Putting 150 SF on the ground in one spot was unprecedented in these men's experience.

Deirdre was waved forward with the team that included the lieutenant colonel and Lattice. She did not approach either of them. She stayed in the middle of the column and did her best not to puff as she walked. They were following a trail that was so narrow it could be imaginary. The soldiers around her —she had to remind herself that that was what they were, in their shawls and caps—seemed to relax a little, now that
they were in a smaller group. They walked faster, too. Open air, un-uniformed, bearded and unquestioned: this life offered those things as recompense for what it asked.

The trail headed uphill. Because it had presumably been made by normal people, she expected that the slope would ease off; normal people do not walk up fifty-degree inclines. It did not, and this made her wonder whether the path had been made by the lead man in the column. She decided not to think any more about where they were walking. She lifted her eyes from the ground and looked up the column. She could see the general at the head, and the colonel behind him. The general was making a point here, she realized. He was breaking trail, and going so fast the kids in the rear could barely keep up. The sweat stains running down the shawls in front of her were deep and black and the odour of men formidably sharp. They did move quietly; the constant barking she had heard from every other infantry NCO out on patrol was absent here.

They reached the top of the ridgeline and finally took a knee. The men dispersed into a defensible circle and Deirdre remained in the centre. The general looked over his shoulder at her. She nodded at him. He did not appear to notice. He turned back to the colonel and the two of them looked at a map. Then they set off again.

As the sky had darkened, Deirdre had expected the platoon sergeant to lead the patrol toward a bivouac, probably prepared by an advance party, with a defensive perimeter and possibly some hot food. They just kept walking. They had been walking for seven hours and now they followed a trail lit by the moon. They made almost no noise. The men in the lead wore night vision goggles. When they turned to look behind them, she caught their distorted faces in the moonlight and shuddered. What the Afghans must think when they see these men, moving through the night so fast and then disappearing without noise. As she thought these words she realized that that would probably be the lede of the piece she
would write about this patrol. Kenwood would like it. Then she tripped on a tree root that everyone else had stepped deftly over and she told herself to concentrate on the matter at hand.

As they climbed the side of a steep river valley, they did not slow their pace. She had not exchanged a word with anyone since the general told her to throw her gear in the truck. She'd worried that she had packed too lightly, but now she wished she'd brought half as much as she had. It was all she could do to keep up. The men around her carried thirty-kilo packs, plus weapons, ammunition and radios. Even the general.

Just when she was starting to conclude that they were going to walk all night, the column halted. Without a word, the men dispersed around a small clearing on the ridge. Some of them unrolled sleeping bags, others crept farther uphill and downhill—sentries. Someone tapped her shoulder and pointed to the base of a tree. He said, “No lights.” She nodded. She unrolled her ground mat and placed her thin sleeping bag upon it. She crawled into it, her clothes still on. She looked around the moonless dark. She could not see anyone else. She listened for any sound of the bearded men all around her, but all she heard were night insects.

It was 0400 when a booted toe nudged her and all the men around her were rising and folding their sleeping bags into their packs in one easy movement. The faintest light showed on the eastern ridgeline. She did as they did and within a few minutes of opening her eyes she was also ready to move out. Every eye in the platoon, as well as the general's, was upon her.

Someone handed her an energy bar. She took it gratefully and began eating it as they set out. She was cold at first, but with the movement she warmed quickly. General Lattice fell in beside her, letting the lieutenant colonel lead today. Or more accurately, feeling comfortable leading the patrol from back here.

“Good morning, General,” she said.

“Good morning, Ms O'Malley. Did you sleep well?”

“Excellently, thank you. Yourself?”

“As well as I needed to.”

“Ah. Warrior monk. Three hours a night. Boiled rice and hot water.”

“Less sleep than that, in the field. And more protein and calories than that, too.”

“Do you prefer it out here?”

“To desk work? Of course.”

“How much time do you spend in the field now?”

“Since the last promotion? Hardly any. It was easier in Iraq, for some reason.”

“Where are we going?”

“We're making high-density patrols through the Panjwai. The whole group.”

“Your men look as ferocious as the Pashtun.”

“That's the idea.”

“You think the regular army guys aren't considered ferocious, in their body armour and shaved faces and sunglasses?”

“I'm not interested in how they are seen. However it is, it doesn't seem to be helping them.”

“I heard your men speaking Pashto to one another last night. Was that for me?”

“They weren't trying to impress you. They probably just didn't want to be eavesdropped on.”

“They resent having a journalist along.”

“They resent having a general along.”

“Which of us is the bigger issue, do you think?”

“Oh, me, by far.”

“Why do they resent having you along?”

“Because they know I'm not here to help them with their work.”

“Why are you here?”

“No reason good enough to justify making them suspect my motives.”

“Is it because I am here?”

“You wouldn't be here if I hadn't decided to come along.”

“Why?”

“That wouldn't be fair to anyone, least of all, you.”

“You don't think it'd be safe?”

He laughed harshly. “For whom?”

“So why the beards and the Afghan clothes?”

“It sets them apart.”

“From regular army?”

“Yes.”

“Don't the Taliban know perfectly well who is American and who isn't?”

“Of course.”

“So why the Pashto speaking and the shameez wearing?”

“It's symbolism. Soldiers love symbols.”

“What does it symbolize?”

“That we're aware this place is not America, that we're interested in how people think here. That we have our eye on the long game, too.”

“Is that how the villagers around here receive it when they see you coming through their doors in the night?”

“The night raids are different. They're done by dedicated teams from Bagram and KAF. We're not those guys.”

“These guys here aren't. But surely you are. The night raid teams work for you.”

“Yes, they do. But they won't win the war. These guys will.”

“You think you're going to beat the Taliban?”

“It would be impossible to ask anyone to risk their life to that end if that wasn't going to happen.”

And then he nodded to her and ran forward. The team was approaching another ridgeline. The lieutenant colonel was looking at a map and clearly had something to say.