The Taliban Don't Wave (38 page)

“Motherfuck—aaaggghhh!” Stamps was screaming like Icarus falling from the sky.

WHAM!

Dust kicked up all around him as he crumpled into the dirt on his side. I heard all the air shoot out of his lungs as he was winded like never before. Someone had apparently given him a healthy shove over the wall as well, and he'd landed just as hard as I did.

“Who in the
hell
is pushing people over there?” I shouted.

“Max gave you guys a shove, sir. He thought you needed—” Carns started to answer.

I cut him off. “Max didn't give us a shove, he freaking
launched us
! Max, you lunatic, stop pushing people over! No one needs your help!”

Stamps is moving, that's a good sign.
Max had apparently seen both Stamps and me with one leg on each side of the wall, and good Samaritan that he was, he thought we were stuck so he gave us a push to help us over. It was a miracle both of us hadn't been paralyzed. I ran over and asked Stamps how he was doing as I scanned down the alleyway and high walls for Timothy.

“Pretty terrible. How about you?”

“You've gotta be
alive
to feel terrible,” I said with a big grin. “Don't worry, we'll jump Max on his way to evening prayer and kick the snot out of him! C'mon, we gotta get up and catch Carns. He's only five feet tall; Max will throw him over like it's a midget-tossing contest!” Carns had gotten propped up on the wall with Max's help, and just as I said that, he shrieked violently as Max went for a three-peat and tried to push him to his death. But this time Stamps and I were underneath Carns just enough to catch him and break his fall.

“Max, you son of a bitch!” I cursed. “What did I say about shoving people?”

I could hear a disembodied voice from the other side of the high wall reply questioningly, “Stop . . . doing . . . it?”

“Ding ding ding! Now find a way around the wall and get over here!” Stamps and I started to brush the dust off of ourselves, and when we looked at each other we started laughing.

“What is it with this place?” I asked them.

“Whaddya mean, sir?” Carns asked.

“Why in the hell is
everyone
trying to kill us? The coalition, the ANA, hell,
even
the Taliban! I mean, we're nice guys, we're easy to get along with. Why can't they just invite us into their homes for tea and crumpets and get to know us a bit? Then they'd realize ‘Hey, these guys are all right! Why
have
I been trying so hard to kill them?' ”

“Can't we all just get along?” Stamps asked.

“That's what I'm talking about!” The fall on my head made me wax philosophical. “I've looked into the heart of darkness, boys, and do you know what was there?”

“A mirror,” Stamps said with heartfelt conviction.

“Exactly!”

“Are you guys okay?” Carns asked, certain that we'd completely lost the plot.

“Never better,” I said. “C'mon, let's go find the ANA.” Stamps and I faced the front while Carns walked backwards to cover our six as we walked toward the suspect compound. The ANA had just started to clear it and we could hear some shouting. We arrived and watched as they collared some civilians and put them into the middle of the compound.

I asked Shamsallah what had happened and he said his men had been shot at from this compound. So the ANA did a surprisingly good search of it, but came up empty-handed. Shamsallah shouted back at the civilians, not too worried if they were upset or not, and then started to collect his men to leave.

We walked outside of the compound and I noticed an Afghan male (in the fighting age bracket) about thirty feet away, just watching us. Something seemed very odd about him. He was slowly walking toward us, and I immediately began to fear he might be a suicide bomber, waiting for enough of us to leave the compound before he charged us.

I was just about to say something when a couple of ANA walked out of the compound. One of them spotted the civvy at the end of the alley, brought his AK to bear on him, and started shouting at him. Stamps, Carns, and I took up firing positions and we all took a bead on him.
Was I right?
The ANA soldier shouted at the man, who started walking toward us. He was bringing a potential suicide bomber in danger close to us!
GEEEWWWW!

“Stop! Stop! Max, tell him to stop!” I shouted, pointing my rifle at the civilian. Max relayed my orders, and the ANA and civilian just stared at me.

“Max, get him to lift up his shirt. Tell him to show us his chest and his back.” Max translated, the civvy lifted up his shirt to show us a bare chest and back, and then lowered his shirt.
False alarm, but there's no harm in being cautious, not after today.

He continued to slowly walk over to us, then the ANA soldier nearest to him ran over and roughly shoved him against the wall.

“Max, what's going on?” Stamps asked.

“This ANA soldier is saying this is the man who was shooting at him, he recognizes him!” Then the soldier looked at the suspect's feet and added, “Besides, he is wearing Taliban shoes.”
Right, Taliban shoes, okay. They're sponsored, or what?

But we'd heard of insurgents checking out their handiwork before. At the Panjway bazaar, an IED maker planted his bomb and detonated it at the first patrol he saw. As the patrol was collecting its wounded soldiers, the bomb maker strolled right in to the middle of the incident scene and started taking pictures of his handiwork with his cellphone! Maybe this guy here was doing the same thing, getting a battle damage assessment.
I sure as hell thought he looked guilty of something when I first saw him.

Shamsallah came out and shouted at him, then took some zap straps off of his tac vest, spun the suspect around, and strapped his hands together behind his back. The man was protesting the entire time, but his cries fell on deaf ears.

Suddenly a door across the alley from the suspect compound opened up, and seven boys and girls, from ages five to fifteen, bomb-bursted out the front gate and swarmed on the fighting age male, who was obviously their father.

A hellacious cacophony of tears and wailing ensued, as the children obviously thought this would be the last time they'd ever see their father on this earth. A woman wearing a burka ran out and latched onto the father, but Shamsallah roughly shoved her aside as he led her husband away to the FOB. But you could tell by the sound of their wailing they thought he was going to be summarily put up against a wall and shot.

But I knew what would happen. We'd take him back to Mushan where Captain Ghias would ask him questions, I would hover in the background to make sure he had water and wasn't roughed up or put in stress positions (the ANA never did that anyway), and then after four hours of letting him sweat bullets, the ANA would send him back home with a
And don't do it again!
speech. We had no evidence (except the ANA soldier's eyewitness testimony), but there were no courts to hear the case, no prisons to hold him, no means of transporting him. There was no system whatsoever for dealing with terrorists or criminal suspects. So he'd walk.
In about, oh, four hours.

I called Max over and said, “When we've walked away a bit, tell the family that he will be returned to them, unharmed, in four hours. They are not to worry—he'll be fine and he'll come back to all of them in four hours. Please go and tell them that.”

As we walked away I saw Max approach the distraught family and pass on my message. They calmed down a bit, but not much.
Well, they'll see.

As we walked down the road back to the FOB, Warrant Smith's voice came over the PRR net. “Seven Two Charlie, Mushan, be advised, we have a VIP in Mushan, waiting for you to get back from patrol, over.”

Crap, seriously? I didn't hear a chopper come in. What if it's a general and I haven't shaved? I've got a full beard
. . . I saw a flash of red from around the corner of the FOB, right where we'd be entering the base.
Red? Why the . . . ? Wait a minute, Warrant Smith just got a parcel from home, I bet. . . .

“Warrant, this VIP—does he by any chance say, ‘Ho, ho, ho!' and give out presents to all the good boys and girls?”

There was hesitation before he responded. “Maybe . . .”

I started to laugh. As we rounded the corner into the FOB, bringing in our person of interest, all of the Canucks were covered in dirt after getting pushed off an eight-foot-high wall, we'd run like idiots through a ditch as bullets whanged all over the place, I had taken three rounds right over my head, women and children wailing—and now this!

My weird-shit-o-meter just spiked into the red. To say the moment had become surreal didn't do it justice.

Santa Claus jumped out from behind the corner of the Hesco wall and was shouting, “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas, children. Here, take a water!”

Warrant Smith was dressed up magnificently as Santa: black leggings covered his brown desert boots, he wore bright red pants and a red shirt stuffed with a pillow (covered by his body armour and tac vest because—technically—Santa
was
outside the wire), and he sported a bushy white beard and flowing red pointed cap as he handed out water bottles.

We all burst out laughing at the sight of him; everyone, that is, except the person of interest, who probably thought this was the way we started all of our interrogations. I could just hear his thoughts:
The infidels and green Christians are trying to break me mentally by having this . . . thing . . . with a white beard offer me water!

We thanked Santa for his gift of water as he escorted us back into the FOB, a crate of water in one hand, an RPG rocket launcher in the other. His wife had sent him the Santa outfit and he thought he'd surprise us and get us into the Christmas spirit of things. The person of interest hadn't taken his eyes off of Santa. He was probably afraid if he lost visual contact with the creature in red, then the dark magic spells that it was surely casting would begin to take effect.

We walked into the FOB as Shamsallah escorted the FAM to the outer perimeter. He wasn't allowed to come into our base to see the layout or assess our security measures.
Give him a little time to sweat. To fear the creature with the long white beard! I'll take him some water in a minute.

We dumped our kit and sat in the shade of the Talibucks Coffee Shop and laughed about the patrol.
Most definitely one for the OMLT yearbook!

Warrant Smith went back into the CP and came out again, carrying his red sack full of goodies. He approached Shamsallah and, speaking through Max, he explained who-knows-what for ten minutes, and then Smith went to the northwest sangar and climbed the ladder up into the tower.

Shamsallah started bellowing in Dari to his men, and after a few minutes, they were all lined up in three neat rows, standing at attention. The CSM went to the front of the parade and started speaking in a loud voice. I called over Max and got him to translate what was being said in real time.

“He says someone is going to come and explain the Christmas to them. This is a Christian holiday and it is very important to all Christians. We have Eid—Christians have the Christmas—
so pay attention
!” For some reason he kept calling it “the” Christmas. Then Shamsallah took a few steps back, as if signalling something to happen.

Perfectly on cue, Santa Claus started bellowing, “Ho, ho, ho!” from the top of the sangar as eighty pair of Afghan eyes shot up toward the strange sounds coming from it (not everyone was on that patrol, so they hadn't been greeted by Smith all dressed up). Santa, having a hard time because of his girth, struggled to pass between the sangar sandbags, but finally squeezed through and started to climb down off the CP roof. He hopped onto the Hesco wall, then onto a small sandbag wall, then landed with a THUD in the dust. He walked confidently between the rows of ANA and began handing out candy canes from his sack. The ANA clearly didn't know whether to crap their pants or go blind. This was really putting their weird-shit-o-meter into the red.

After Santa had passed in front of every single Afghan and made sure they all had a candy cane, he stood at the front and began to explain what Santa was and how he operated. The warrant gave a very tight, accurate synopsis, and waited while Max translated.

Santa was still up at the front, explaining some last-minute details about chimneys and cookies, when two ANA soldiers in the back started giggling to themselves. Our other terp, Omer, had actually come back to us (another Christmas miracle!) on one of the drunken Russian subcontractor chopper drop-offs, so he was translating for me as Shamsallah marched over to deal with the snickering troops at the back.

Shamsallah walked up to the two soldiers and started delivering vicious kicks to their rear ends, hoofing them over and over again, shouting in Dari. Santa tried not to notice, since he was still talking about Yuletide cheer in front of the good little children, but the shouting of Shamsallah and the screams of his men were hard to ignore.

Omer asked if I would like to know what Shamsallah was shouting about, and I would've been a liar if I'd said I wasn't a
little
bit interested, so I said, “Sure, what's he saying?”

Omer began to translate but had to pause as Shamsallah continued to lay into them with roundhouse kicks to their asses. “He is saying: ‘You two . . . idiots . . . How dare you . . . speak . . . while Santa Claus is talking . . . When Santa talks, you will listen!'”
Awesome! They were being ass-kicked for disrespecting Santa Claus!

Santa finished his speech and the ANA were dismissed. As they were leaving, Smith put his company sergeant major–mentor hat back on and said, “And don't forget, put your candy cane wrappers in the garbage when you're done!”
Fantastic!

We had a lot of fun that day. It turned out to be a good day for the person of interest as well. I went out with Captain Ghias as he asked his questions, and after ten minutes, he was convinced his soldier had fingered the wrong guy in the line-up. So he let him go, after only a thirty-minute stay on the outer perimeter of FOB Mushan.
New record. Woo-hoo! Truly, Santa's Christmas spirit was infectious!