The Taliban Don't Wave (26 page)

The ANA then decided that if they continued patrolling through the fields, sooner or later they might actually come across the Taliban. And since no one wanted that, they decided to stick to the main north-south road. So that's what we did. We left the fields and dirt paths and began marching only along the road, and never left it once. If the Taliban were going to plant IEDs anywhere, it would most likely be on the main road, but that thought never crossed the ANA's collective mind. I politely mentioned it to Captain Shafig Ullah, who merely replied,
“Inshallah.”

After about five klicks, Rich's ANA officer, Captain Ghias, had had enough. He radioed for a truck to come and pick him up. After ten minutes a Ranger pulled up beside him, and he lazily chucked his Dragunov sniper rifle in the back and hopped into the box.
Must be nice!
He waved at Rich and offered him some prime real estate next to him, but Rich angrily shook his head no and continued marching with the ANA of Third Company.

I asked if anyone needed water, and Hetsa said he'd gone dry. I reached into my day sack and gave him some of my spare bottles and, for a morale booster, a bottle of Gatorade I'd brought along from Sper.

We came across the American convoy from the east, which I had affectionately labelled Spec Fire Force Five, and I politely asked if they could spare any water.
Maybe I shouldn't have taken the piss if I was going to beg them for water later.
They took one look at us, and then offered us all we could carry. We thanked them and topped up our CamelBaks and water bladders.
Damn good of 'em.
Despite my apprehension about their spec fire, I loved the Americans, I really did. Sure, everyone knew they would try to kill you from time to time, but on the modern battlefield, you just came to accept that.

But they would also sacrifice themselves to save you, and they certainly brought a lot of toys to the party, and because of that, most of the other coalition countries were extremely jealous of them. The Americans never rubbed your face in this, but you always knew that you were the poor kid on the block compared to them.

But if it wasn't for that Apache the day before, Rich and his team would've all been killed, no question. We asked the convoy for water, but they also offered us food. If we had needed ammo or grenades, they would've just handed that over as well, no questions asked. They were just like that; they would literally give you the shirts off their backs. Many Americans later told me they were happy to have allies they could trust in Afghanistan, unlike in Iraq, where they felt like it was only the Brits and Aussies who really watched their backs.

Around dusk we entered the town next to FOB Bermuda. Some guys said we'd marched close to twenty-eight klicks, other guys said it was more like twenty-three, but regardless, we'd hiked well over twenty klicks, each soldier packing on average a hundred pounds of kit, in forty-degree-Celsius heat. Shots had snapped and cracked around us all day, and once again 72C, a.k.a. call sign “Because I could not stop for Death,” had almost met a horrific end, only this time at the hands of our allies.
Feel the love!

We set up in an abandoned school until our recce element could find the exact location of the FOB. Rich and I walked into the school and found thousands—literally thousands—of man-turds in neat rows in every single classroom. The civvies apparently used the school as a community toilet. I was amazed by the tight rows and patterns they had somehow managed to maintain. Laddah, the medic, walked over and said, “Well, we can't stay here tonight; we'd all get sick.”

I snapped back with, “Thanks, Tips!” and instantly regretted it. The heat was really doing my nut in, but that was no excuse for being a prick. I apologized to him and he said to forget it.

Soon our recce team came back to the school and led us to the Brit FOB on the outskirts of the ville. We must've been quite a sight. We were dirty, dehydrated, tired, hungry, angry, and armed—a somewhat dangerous combination. The Brits greeted us warmly, happy to see ground troops after a month of being cut off. They took us upstairs and showed us to our room, a big, thirty-by-thirty-foot cement floor. No beds, no blankets, but we weren't expecting any. We'd been cut off from our vehicles all day, so we had no sleeping bags or warm kit. I had my toque, dry shirt, and gloves from my day sack, and that was it. And when you'd been sweating bullets all day in plus-forty heat, and the temperature dropped to near zero at night, that change was absolutely devastating. As our OMLT unit's self-appointed “morale officer,” I took it upon myself to sort us out for the night. I dumped my kit in the corner and went to find the Brit in charge—a sergeant wearing an Airborne shirt. That was a welcome sight; I knew the Airborne Brotherhood always took care of its own.

“Allo, mucker,” I started off with, slipping into my best cockney and Para slang. “We've tabbed over twenty K to git here, mate, and we've got no warm kit, yeah? It's turnin' Baltic and we're absolutely gippin'. We had to dump kit and go OTR back at nutter central. Now things've gone Pete Tong and our jack wagons can't git to us, yeah? You've probly sussed we're completely chinned, Hank Marvin, need some serious gonk, and just wanna get our fat swods down, an' maybe have a lie-in on the 'morrow, and I don't mean a furry thing with claws! Can ya screw the nut for us, mate? An' where's a colonial git take a slash round 'ere?”

“Course mate, no worries,” he said. “How many are yuh?”

“Sixteen mate; cheers for that!”

“Right, two shakes an' we'll sort ya out.”

“That's absolutely pucker, mate; good on ya, cheers. Name's Rob,” I said.

“Daz; no worries. You meat and veg?”

“Aye mate, 2 Para. Did a stint and got kicked out when they sussed me mum and dad were married and
not
first cousins!”

“Ha! Figures, mate. Wait one, I'll be right back.” Daz took off and collected some of the lads and spread the word to collect some warm kit for us. One of the guys, when he found out we'd marched with no follow-on vehicles or warm kit, said, “That's a bit schoolboy, innit?”

“Oi!” I shouted from behind Daz, who got out of the way so I could address the ignorant git. “Fuck me, mate! We just tabbed over twenty klicks through multiple Timothy contacts to get here! We had a choice between packing water and ammo, or warm kit! And since we figured youse twats would actually like some company, we chose the ammo!”

“Yeah right, sorry mate,” he quietly said. Daz then sent them off, and ten minutes later the Canadians had more than enough warm kit to get us through the night. I took the massive haul upstairs and said, “The good book doth verily say, ‘Ask, and ye shall receive,'” and like Père Noel, I began handing out softy jackets, long-sleeved tops, fleeced bottoms, thick socks and gloves, watch caps, and toques to all the good little children. To top it off, Daz walked upstairs with a five-by-five-metre-square sheet of Hessian sack that would cover all of us quite easily. We donned our warm kit, and went downstairs to talk with the Brits and grab some fresh soup and crackers.

After we had eaten our fill, Rich and Major Hobbles told me over a warm cup of joe what had actually happened that afternoon, before Rich started “panicking” on the net. He and his ANA had broken off to the west, that part I knew. But Rich, who would surely be one of the lone survivors of a zombie apocalypse, had a bad feeling just as he was about to walk between two buildings. So he peeked around the corner just in time to see an American Humvee, with some young kid up in the turret, swing its mounted light machine gun around and open up on Rich and his ANA. The major cut in to say that apparently the gunner was a seventeen-year-old reservist, who wanted to be the first kid on his block with a confirmed kill. He saw brown troops and probably figured anyone brown had to be Taliban, even though they were in ANA uniform, wearing helmets, with badges and flags on their sleeves, etc., etc.

Rich picked up the story again, in his Cape Breton accent. “Well, the ANA don't stand for that kind of nonsense.” So the Afghans, having been shot at countless times before and therefore possessed of much more clarity of mind, decided they'd been fired on too many times by white folk and began to shoot back. Joey from Podunk, West Viriginia, in the Humvee turret, shouted “Hot damn!” and really started to pop some caps at the ANA. Then the ANA started manoeuvring to get better firing positions on the Humvee they
knew
was occupied by Americans! Poor Rich was losing his mind, because he was trying to get everyone to stop firing on each other, so he shouted it out over the net.

“But Samroo,” he mocked, “goes ‘doo, doo, doo, we're not shootin' at no one round here, yuk, yuk' and does nothing to help!”

“Hey Rich,” I smirked, “I'll tell ya what: take out your compass and shoot a bearing of twenty-four hundred, then march on it until you find somebody who gives a shit!”

Major Hobbles cut in and said, “I decided I couldn't leave it to Rob, obviously, so I looked and quickly realized there were American Humvees much farther back, way down the line outside the village. So yes, where Rob was, no one was shooting, but four hundred metres back, out of view, was Joey from, where did you say? Podunk? Anway, he had decided he wasn't getting the kill tally he wanted with his M240 belt-fed machine gun, so he swung it out of the way and was about to bring his 40mm grenade launcher to bear on friend Richard, when I jumped up, ripped Joey out of the turret, and shouted, ‘You killed a lot of good people with your fucked-up fire mission!' and then literally made him cry.”

We all had a good laugh at Rich's expense, ate some more soup, and then hunkered down for the night. For someone not used to the OMLT and its ways, it would have been a strange sight—sixteen soldiers, many of whom had almost been killed a dozen times over, wearing borrowed clothes and using their tac vests as pillows, lying side by side, laughing and farting, under a big burlap sack.

I joked and said, “Everyone, hands above the Hessian, please and thank you!”

Rich shouted out, “Remember everyone, what happens in FOB Bermuda
stays
in FOB Bermuda!”

“The hell
it
does!” everyone shouted back.

Chapter 14

The next morning, Major Hobbles was told by his boss that where the ANA went, the OMLT would follow, and mentor accordingly. So our major explained we'd just been signed up to join our ANA as they were about to cross the desert to get back to the ANP station in Lashka Ghar. We would've been ambushed and IEDed to hell if we had tried to go back the way we'd just come, so that left us only one choice: we'd have to cross the desert to the east, then loop back up to Lash.

In the dead of night, our sec-for guys pulled up to FOB Bermuda with our RGs, so 72A and 72C would be losing their drivers and gunners to the RG convoy, while the warrants, captains, and some of the other lads would be accompanying the ANA as they did their Cannonball Run through the desert.

We said goodbye to our wheelmen and automated turret gunners and were about to leave the FOB when Warrant Longview had a sinking suspicion. He went back upstairs and found that Fourneau had forgotten his day sack and Hetsa the spare barrel for his C9. Hetsa's sin against the gods of war, forgetting his spare barrel, was actually a chargeable offence, but the angry father said he'd deal with it properly when we all got back to Sperwhan.

We thanked the Brits for their hospitality, and I collected and checked off every single piece of warm kit once it was returned to me. Not that I thought anyone would steal from our kind hosts, but when you're that tired, you just forget things like that. We policed up our gear and marched out the front gate and travelled back to the school of a thousand turds. We muckled onto our ANA compatriots, and then Rich, Smith, Longview, and I hopped onto a big ANA deuce-and-a-half truck and sat down for the most bone-jarring ride of our lives. The Cannonball Run had started, and just like the movie, it wasn't funny.

The big trucks fired up their engines, and after a few backfires, things kicked off. We travelled out of town and then passed through a stream, in which we promptly got stuck. The driver spent the next thirty minutes rocking back and forth. We offered to get out and push, but the offer was graciously declined. Hours passed before all of the trucks in the long ANA convoy made it through.

Then we passed into the beginning of the desert, and the trucks all got stuck at different points in the fine red sand. Hours passed again and soon it was dusk. We'd get stuck, rock back and forth for half an hour, and then slowly move along, until we got stuck all over again. All I'd had to eat was some beef jerky the warrant's girlfriend had sent over from Canada. It was a godsend. We'd been driving in spurts and stops for almost ten hours now.

It took so long because the ANA considered themselves a warrior caste, and manual labour (i.e., digging out a stuck truck) was beneath them. So they would wait until the truck could rock itself out.

Finally, one after another, most of the large trucks all became stuck in a row, so we dismounted and sat back to watch what quickly became the new gold standard for what a gong show looked like. The ANA shouted, screamed, cursed, and finally sat down in the dirt and pouted.

I looked over at Rich and Warrant Smith, who were putting their night-vision goggles onto their helmets.
Good idea.
Every one of us was exhausted from the long, boring, painful ride and we just wanted to curl up and go to sleep, but we had a desert to cross before we could rack out. I looked at my watch, it was now 2345 hours.
Nice.
We had left FOB Bermuda around 0800 hours.

Major Hobbles got out of Colonel Morris's truck with the ANA elite and walked over to speak conspiratorially with Rich and me. “Don't make it obvious,” he whispered, “but walk slowly to the front of the convoy. Once you're there, do a head count, and then make a mad dash for it, up the mountain to the north, and down the other side, where some ANA trucks
should
be waiting for you. If you don't get on them, you'll be left behind, like the rest of the ANA.”

Rich and I just looked at him for a few seconds before I finally said, “You're not joking, are you, sir?”

“Absolutely not. Run up the mountain, it's probably about six hundred metres, and on the lee side, there'll be a bunch of ANA trucks, but there won't be enough room for everyone. So it's first come, first ‘don't get left behind in the middle of a godforsaken desert.' I'll meet you on the other side. Good luck.” He turned and walked back to his truck.

I looked at Rich. “This is all
your
fault.”

“My fault?” He took a step back. “How the hell is this
my
fault?”

“Don't make me say it. It's bad luck to say it,” I sighed, looking at the ground.

“No, I
want
you to say it!”

“Fine. You're call sign ‘Bad Karma,' call sign ‘Sand in the Teeth of Death!' You're marked to die! Every time I'm near you, bad things start to happen!”

“Well, I hope you've been keeping fit, 'cause that's a tall mountain, and this soft sand is going to be a bastard to run uphill through.” Rich was looking up at the slope.

“I was genetically designed at the super-soldier in vitro facility to exceed normal human standards,” I smugly replied. “Plus all of those augmentations . . .”

“Good to know, Dingo! C'mon, let's go tell the guys,” Rich said, and slowly walked back to our little circle of Canucks. After a bunch of “What?” and “No way!” and some “Fuck offs!” thrown in for good measure, the boys collected their kit and we began nonchalantly strolling to the front of the convoy.

I looked at Longview. “Wizard, use your dark magic to cast a cloaking spell over us, so the trolls can't see us!” He just smiled and shook his head. “Thankfully I've got a plus twenty-six rating for my warrior stamina, so I should be okay,” I said, not really believing what was about to happen.

Once there, Rich did a head count and said, in his deep Cape Breton accent, “Right, boys. The major wasn't joking. Once the goddamn savages see us sprinting up the mountain, they're going to know the Canadians have been told something they haven't, so they're going to give chase! We'll stick together, but keep an eye on each other, and make sure no one falls back. 'Cause I'm not going to lie to you . . .
if
you fall behind, you're probably going to be raped—”

“Nice,” I said.

Rich kept rolling. “I know, I know, this is pretty hard to believe, even for the OMLT. But if you don't want your ass to be the size of your mess tin, stick with me. Good luck, and I'll see you on the other side.” He turned around, and started three-quarter sprinting up the mountain. I fell in beside him, and like a morning PT session with the officers in the front and the warrants in the back, we took off, running up the hill.

I felt like Indiana Jones, sprinting away from the angry natives at the start of
Raiders.
The ANA quickly figured out something was up and started honking their truck horns, sounding the alarm because the Canadians were escaping from Stalag Luft Siebzehn. In my mind I could hear Alsatians barking and angry shouting as spotlights swung around, trying to get a lock on us!
Halten sie! Halt!

“We've been made! Run for it!” I shouted and began laughing hysterically when I heard truck doors slamming and angry shouting as the Afghans began to figure something was up. We had a good head start, but soon two full companies of ANA were running to catch us, shouting at us the whole time, and quickly closing the gap as we ran up the mountain. We had almost a hundred pounds of gear on; they had maybe ten. It was a race we probably weren't going to win.

“Rich,” I said between quick breaths, “you're a fast guy, you'll probably catch up. Step over to the side, go firm, and lay down covering fire! Put some rounds over their heads! Make 'em eat sand and buy us some time! I'll try and hold a truck for you, but no promises . . .” I laughed.

Rich wasn't smiling; in fact, he didn't seem to be having any fun at all as he said, “Don't tempt me. I'll do it! I swear to God, I'LL DO IT!”

After a few minutes we slowed down to a quick jog. We had no choice: with every step we sank almost eight inches into the loose sand and our column was beginning to string out. I looked for Longview and found him right behind me, not even winded. I had forgotten he was carrying his own day sack and Fourneau's forgotten one, so I stepped out of the column and together we carried the extra day sack between the two of us. We each held an end of Hetsa's “forgotten” spare barrel, which we had shoved through the day sack straps. I thought of the powerful scene at the start of
Uncommon Valor
, as the American reconnaissance teams were sprinting to get to the choppers as Charlie gave chase.
But these are our allies we're running away from! The guys we're supposed to be mentoring!

I looked over at Longview. “Still thinking of letting our forgetful friends off easy?” I panted.

“Absolutely not! I wasn't too pissed before, but I am now!” he snapped.

I looked at my watch. It was now 0003 hours (three minutes past midnight), October twenty-fifth—my birthday.

“Well, that's just great,” I panted.

“What's that, sir?” the Wizard asked.

“Not exactly how I thought I'd spend my thirty-fifth birthday: sprinting up a mountain getting chased by Eurasian sodomites, and trying to get a seat on a truck so I don't get left behind in a freakin' desert!” I laughed.

“Yeah, I suppose not. Oh well, what're you gonna do? Happy birthday, though.”

“Thanks. We're almost at the top. How ya doing?” I asked.

“Yeah, fine. I hope those trucks are there, waiting for us,” he said.
Yeah, me too!

We quickly crested the hill on the double, and there they were: five Ford Rangers, about four hundred metres down in a small valley. I turned to face our escape committee and shouted, “There they are, boys! Go all out now; give it all you've got!” Then I put on my best Arnold accent and yelled, “
Run!
Get to tha choppah!”

The warrant and I stepped to the side and waited until our last straggler caught up, just as the fastest ANA reached us at the crest. They had finally caught up and were trying to pass us as we sprinted down the mountain to get to the trucks before they filled up. I grabbed an Afghan soldier by the scruff of his shirt, trying to slow him down and use him to pull me a few feet at the same time. He angrily swung his fist and knocked my hand off.
Hey pal, you just made “the list!”

Our fastest runners had made it to the Ford Rangers. “You guys in the trucks,” I panted over my PRR, “get 'em turned around.” The trucks were facing
into
the mountain and that wouldn't do us any good. By the time they got turned around, the evil dead would've swarmed us.

The warrant turned on his best parade ground voice (which was incredibly loud) and shouted, “Move it! I said, MOVE IT!” to our slowest guy. I counted heads and realized it was just the three of us left; everyone else had mounted up in the Rangers. Finally we ran up to one of the last remaining trucks with any space on it and I shouted over the PRR, “That's it! We're all on board, tell your drivers to go!” The Canadians began pounding on the roofs, shouting, “Go, go!” to their ANA drivers, who probably didn't speak English but got the idea.

The Rangers churned in the deep sand until they got some traction and began blaring off into the desert. A few Afghans made wild-ass leaps, trying to make it into the trucks before it was too late. Some guys jumped and latched onto the tailgates and tried to pull themselves up. I couldn't quite see from my angle, but it looked like one of the guys trying to pull himself on board just got his fingers rifle-butted by a fellow Afghan.
Did that really just happen? Seriously?
The warrant and I reached over to our clinger-on and helped pull him in.

“
Tasha-koor, tasha-koor.
” He thanked us in Dari, smiling gratefully.

“
Salaamat baashaid
,” I said back, placing my right hand over my heart.

Longview looked at me and grinned. “Some night, eh sir?”

“Definitely one for the OMLT yearbook! The boffins back home should make a training scenario out of that!” I laughed. The poor ANA continued to stream down the mountain in droves, racing to get one of the last seats, but they were too late as our trucks pulled away into the night. Some hung their heads, others cried out in anguish and cursed us as we left them marooned in the desert to an unknown fate.
Probably a long freakin' walk!

We drove for an hour, not sure where we were heading, and not really caring. Sheer exhaustion had set in and we all began to fall into a fitful sleep, until we'd smash a rock or hit a bump and get violently jarred back awake.

After an hour of driving in what felt like circles, our vehicles stopped on a hilltop and formed a leaguer. We had some good over-watch from the position, and as long as the sentries didn't fall asleep, I thought we should be okay.

Adam Khan, my ANA company's PKM gunner, turned up and rallied us to help him collect some tumbleweeds to make a fire. It had turned Baltic cold and we were still covered in sweat from our run up the mountain. Soon a good-sized fire was blazing away and I began to double-tap—my head started nodding as sleep tried to crush me.

The next thing I knew, Adam Khan was brushing smouldering ashes off of my fat swod because I'd just fallen face-first onto the outer edge of the fire. I smiled at him sheepishly and said, “
Tasha-koor, kaakaa.
”
Thanks, uncle.
He grinned and went off to find more tumbleweeds for the fire.

We got shoulder to shoulder with each other, just like it said in the winter-warfare manual, and although it was a bit
too
close for us alpha-male types, it was no good. All of us began to shiver uncontrollably. I had put on my toque, gloves, and dry shirt, and held my sweat-soaked combat top up to the fire to dry it out, but it wasn't enough. The wind was really picking up and we were on top of a large hill, so that didn't help.