War Stories: Anaconda

Esquire ^ | August 2002 | John Sack

[robowombat]

Esquire August 2002 Pg. 116

War Stories: Anaconda

It was supposed to be a basic hammer-and-anvil operation. Friendly Afghan forces would flush the Qaeda from their positions, and the 10th Mountain Division and 101st Airborne would ambush them, and maybe they'd kill or capture bin Laden along the way. But suddenly the Army found itself ambushed and in the middle of the bloodiest battle since Somalia. The inside story of Operation Anaconda.

By John Sack

1. COMPANY C, March 2 to March 3

Imagine this. Imagine you’re a country doctor up in the Adirondacks, and your first patient today is your brother. "I have this cough," he reports, and the X ray reveals he has lung cancer, clearly terminal. Bad enough, but your second patient today is your sister, and the Pap smear shows terminal cervical cancer. And knock, knock, knock on your door come your beloved brothers, sisters, close cousins, come all morning, afternoon, evening, come in the throes of some dreadful disease—imagine it, I ask you. Imagination aside, no doctor in the Adirondacks (or anywhere else in America) has had the unbearable heartache such a cortege would occasion, but in the American infantry lots of medics have had it. In combat, when they hear a cry of "Medic!" "Corpsman!" or "Doc!"—a hysterical cry that like "Help!" "Man overboard!" or "Fire!" pounces on everyone’s senses like a Doberman pinscher, generating adrenaline, dilating carotid arteries, pounding on everyone’s heart like the kettledrums in Day of Wrath, by Berlioz—when they hear a cry of "Medic!" "Corpsman!’ or "Doc!" it comes from one of their buddies, someone they’ve lived with, trained with, partied with, someone they love as they love their blood brothers.

Near the Adirondacks stands the 10th Mountain Division. In one platoon of one company of one battalion of one brigade, the one and only medic is a twenty-one-year-old from Ellenville, New York, near the Catskills: Specialist Eddie Rivera. One day in September, two airplanes hit the World Trade Center, and Rivera watches the TV incredulously, his fingers against his forehead, my head’s still here, my head’s still here, no, I’m not dreaming this, as the two towers collapse, as two towers of ashes supplant them, as ash-plastered people run from the great catastrophe. "An attack on America," the TV announcer calls it, and Rivera at once phones the girl he fell deeply in love with in medic (not medical) school and tells her, "I may have to go somewhere."

UNPROMISING. THAT’S WHAT RIVERA was until three years ago. His parents both Puerto Rican, his skin olive-colored, his hair curly black, his brows black too, his mustache a thin black streak that at one end broke up into shapeless bristles, he usually was a no-show at Ellenville High. At six every day, his mother went to work making knives, and Rivera (an hour later) called up his friends and said, "I ain’ goin’ to school today. You shouldn’ either, come over here." If the truant officer didn’t come, too, Rivera and a half dozen friends would party, drink Bacardi, listen to rappers, and on TV play video games as their cheerless peers sat in accounting, studying double entries. The parties sometimes continued past three, past Rivera’s mother’s return, Rivera’s mother saying, "No tienes tiempo para eso!" "You don’t have time for this!"

But one day Rivera was partied out and, still hungover, showed up at Ellenville High. "You’re late," the accounting teacher said.

"So what? I’m always late."

"We’re taking a test today."

"Oh, no." The test being handed him, the very first question stumped him. Rivera took out his textbook, raised his hand, and said, "What page is it on?"

The whole class laughed, but the teacher didn’t. "You can’t ask me! You can’t look it up!" the teacher cried. "Ten points off!" and the class laughed again. Went ha ha ha, its teeth almost biting at Rivera.

Now, Rivera liked being laughed with, not at. He liked being class clown but not class knucklehead, and he stopped playing hooky, made up his classes, graduated, and joined the American Army.

At medic school in Texas he smelled a few aromas absent from basic in Georgia, aromas like Bath & Body Works. They came from the women soldiers—women soldiers—who barracked upstairs of him and did their exercises beside him, the panty lines pressing against their shorts. He soon went so steady with one, the sergeants discovered her field blanket in his rucksack and his RIVERA camouflage shirt upon her. The sergeants called them Mr. and Mrs. Rivera and said, "You two like being together? All right, go down together," meaning drop to the ground and do twenty push-ups together. A runner-up for Miss San Francisco, Krystal was black, round-faced, long-haired, a girl whose smile melted artillery pieces, and Rivera yearned to spend every day of his life with her. From medic school, Rivera went to the camp near the Adirondacks and Krystal (an army reservist) went to a college nearby, and it’s she who on Tuesday, September 11, Rivera tells presciently, "I may have to go somewhere."

"I’ll wait for you, I promise," Krystal says.

HE AND HIS WHOLE PLATOON, company, battalion don’t go to Afghanistan, not yet. A country to its immediate north is where they’re deployed, a country known as Uzbekistan. As rich as it is in Asian relics, golden temples, marble mosaics, intricate filigrees, turquoise cupolas, towers, all the marvels of Xanadu, the soldiers immured in their secret camp are of necessity bored, bored, bored. All there’s to do is play spades, crazy eights, and Scrabble and eat Combos from the PX. Never did they salute officers back in the Adirondacks, but they must crisply salute them here in Uzbekistan. So despondent is one lonely soldier that he shoots his brains out and ("Medic!") beomes Rivera’s first case. "Breathe, breathe," incants Rivera. "You’re all right, buddy, breathe," he conjures, his Ringer’s solution dripping into the soldier’s corpse.

Rivera becomes despondent, too. He walks around like an abandoned dog, his head hanging down. He broods that Krystal will slough him off, and either to precipitate this or forestall it, he phones her and says, "I know you miss me—"

"I do. I miss hanging out with you. I miss cooking dinner for you. I miss kissing you, and I miss laying with you."

"But Krystal. I know you’re crying. I know you’re going through heartache. If you’re unhappy, then I’m unhappy too. I don’t know when I’m coming home. Just leave me, Krystal. Do what you want to, and have a good time doing it."

"Stop talking crazy," says Krystal, and Rivera can see her right index finger shaking at him from the Adirondacks. "I want many things, you’re right. But for them all, I want you."

And hanging up, Rivera thinks, As soon as I’m home, I’ll put a ring on her finger. But home isn’t where the sergeant says that Rivera’s assigned. "We got another mission," the sergeant says as Rivera’s hands curtain his eyes, No, I don’t want to believe it. He flies by cargo plane to a camp in Afghanistan, then by Chinook (a long green helicopter, one rotor fore, one rotor aft) to what’s about to be America’s bloodiest battle since Somalia a decade ago. His "aid bag" between his shoulders, he flies by this giant helicopter to Operation Anaconda.

HIS AID BAG. As big as an ottoman, inside it are scissors, needles, catheters, syringes, bags of Ringer’s solution, vials of Nubain—a synthetic narcotic—vials of EpiPen, ketorolac, Rocephin, and Xylocaine, bandages, dressings, cravats, and a few hundred yards of Kerlix gauzes and Ace wraps. As if this weren’t enough, on the previous evening the chief medic stuffed it with many more needles, catheters, et cetera, until the bag weighed forty pounds and Rivera, carrying it, his rucksack, his sleeping bag, his helmet, his bulletproof jacket—his aptly named Interceptor—and his shotgun, needed help to stand up. At two in the morning, sitting on a steel runway waiting for the Chinooks, he griped to his fellow soldiers, "Who do I look like? Hulk Hogan?" He flexed his miniature biceps and said, "Do I look like I work out at Gold’s? Look at this monster aid bag. I feel there’s a child inside it."

At five in the morning came the Chinooks, and with someone's heave-ho he stood up and got on. By now it's six and his helicopter still isn’t at Anaconda’s locale, seventy-five miles south of Kabul. The helicopter’s at ten thousand feet, and Rivera stares out a rare window at snow-sided mountains and at—well, what? camels? gazelles? oryxes? yaks? at animals running down them and, in the valleys, at Afghan people outside their adobe homes. A real nice place, thinks Rivera. It’s sad what’ll happen here. Hey Eddie, he corrects himself as his eardrums detect the Chinooks coming down. Snap out of it! You’re not a tourist today! In one corrugated valley, the helicopters land, sergeants cry, "Get out, get out!" and after saying, "Help me up," Rivera jumps onto the red-colored, snow-covered mud.

It’s chilly outside. The helicopters take off. The plan is, up in mountains are hundreds of Qaedas who our Afghan allies should rout and who the Americans should subsequently ambush. But the first casualty of any war is the Plan. In seconds, a boy in Rivera’s platoon cries, "I see somebody." He then cries, "He’s wearing black," and Rivera, using binoculars, says, "Oh, I see somebody too," a Qaeda, a scared civilian, an anthropomorphic oryx—what? running from left to right forty meters away. Shoot him, is that what these soldiers should do? No one has answered when the black-wearing apparition drops into a little hollow and ffft! ffft! starts shooting at the soldiers themselves. Let’s light his ass up, Rivera thinks, but as soon as the whole platoon and ("Hooah!" the jubilant soldiers cry) two Apache helicopters, two cannon-shooting, rocket-shooting, missile-shooting helicopters, try to light it, boom, near the platoon there falls a rocket-propelled grenade. One, two, three kilometers away high on a snow-sided mountain, unpurged by our Afghan allies, a Qaeda (a man who’s invisible but by inference is Qaeda) has shouldered something like a bazooka, and the foot-long grenade inside it has fallen close to Rivera’s wards. And within minutes from the same unassailable mountain there comes a mortar round, boom, and Rivera hears someone cry, "Doc! Doc! Doc!"

NO, NOT THIS SOON, Rivera thinks, but he runs toward the "Doc!" while the boy who’s shouting it runs to Rivera. In all this platoon, there’s no one who’s less of a brother to Rivera than this Private Horn. Just after training, he joined the platoon in Afghanistan, and Rivera’s only encounter with him was "Hey, I’m your medic. If anything’s wrong with you, tell me." Today there’s nothing terminal wrong with Horn. A piece of the mortar round grazed him, his shin started bleeding, his pants became bloody. Off comes Rivera’s aid bag. Swiftly, Rivera cuts open the red-stained pants, looks at Horn’s minor wound, and says, "You’re all right." He swathes it in Kerlix and says, "How you feelin’?"

"I’m good."

"You’re lucky."

"I’m ready to go."

"Then go," says Rivera with a big-brotherly slap on Horn’s other leg, and Horn returns to the uninterrupted battle.

A battle it is. To the platoon, from the distant mountain, the bullets, grenades, and mortar rounds come. The dirt kicks up as if underneath is a new volcano announcing itself. A bullet bounces off a boy’s rifle barrel, sending sparks like a children’s sizzler, and the boy bitches, "My fuckin’ weapon got hit!" A boy who’s a Muslim but even more an American prays, "Hey, Man Upstairs? If it’s my time to go, I want to go fightin’!" At what, they don’t know, but the boys fire guns, machine guns, and, in time, mortars ("Adjust! Two hundred meters left! Adjust! Go back fifty meters!") in the mountain’s direction. Also firing are the Apaches, but no one in this platoon is now shouting "Hooah." On everyone’s face, Rivera’s included, is an It’s-game-time mien. Anaconda! We aren’t playing soldier! We can get hurt, very hurt!

And three soldiers are. No soldiers in this platoon, but in one that landed synchronously a hundred meters away. As its medic it doesn’t use Specialist Rivera but Specialist Miranda, but among the three soldiers stumbling down to Rivera is, you guessed it, Miranda. Once, near the Adirondacks, Rivera borrowed Miranda’s cell phone and, in one month, talking to Krystal long distance, ran up a $2,000 bill, and he’s been lavishing a third of his salary paying off Miranda. And now his creditor teeters as though he’s drunk and says not "Doc!" but "Eddie! Oh, help me!"

"Oh, shit! What’s wrong?"

"I don’t know. My back."

"That scares me," Rivera says. His friend can’t be moved from the incoming fire if his spinal cord’s hit, but Rivera runs fingers on Miranda’s bulletproof jacket—Miranda’s Interceptor—and says, "There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s all right." But on Miranda’s seat there’s blood, and as Miranda screams, Rivera rips open his camouflage pants, pulls out a piece of a mortar round, a sharp piece as big (or small) as one of Miranda’s teeth, says, "It ain’t too bad. You’re all right," and, giving the souvenir to Miranda, replaces it with sterile stuffing, with Kerlix. He then finds a scalloped hole in Miranda’s right hand, some shrapnel having passed like a dumdum bullet in one side and out the other.

Then boom! A mortar round scores an ear of one of the two other casualties.

THE TWO OTHER CASUALTIES. Besides Miranda (who swathes his right hand himself), there’s Sergeant Abbott and Sergeant McCleave. Abbott’s the sergeant for the other platoon, where, at his instigation, everyone addresses everyone else as Brother. "Brother, can I have some polish?" "Brother, you need any cocoa?" McCleave has the cot right next to Rivera back at their base camp. Moving in, he said to Rivera, "Thank God! I’m sleepin’ nex’ to my medic!" and Rivera said playfully "Well, I hope your feet don’t stink." The mortars now chasing them, the two medics and the two sergeants run and stumble to a safe haven behind a small knoll, and Rivera starts ministering to Abbott and McCleave. Abbott’s got a piece of a mortar round in his triceps, and Rivera treats it by the book, wrapping it in Kerlix while saying, "You’re all right," but it’s impenetrable what’s wrong with McCleave. On his clothes is no blood, but in back of the knoll he sits as though wearing a sign saying HOMELESS. He stares as though waiting passively for a clink in his dented tin cup.

"Sergeant McCleave," says Rivera. "What’s wrong with you?"

"Who...are...you …?" McCleave doesn’t say it, just looks it.

"Sergeant McCleave! Please tell me! What’s wrong with you?"

"Where…am…I…?"

"Sergeant McCleave!" Rivera screams, shaking him vigorously.

Some slobber comes to McCleave’s lips, and he says audibly, "I...don’t…know…."

"Sergeant McCleave!" says Abbott, the shrapnel-suffering sergeant. "Tell the doc what’s wrong with you! Or you’ll die!"

Or you’ll what? As slowly as worms, these words wend their way to McCleave’s addled brain. "My hand…my back….."

Rivera rips off McCleave’s gloves and says, "Good." He looks at McCleave’s Interceptor and says, "Good." He cuts McCleave’s pants, and on both of McCleave’s legs, both upper and lower, he sees dozens of holes from the same indiscriminate mortar round that hit Miranda and Abbott. Now, shrapnel is painful wherever it is. Unlike a bullet, it enters red-hot, and it starts burning the flesh, fat, muscle, nerves of the boy who haplessly caught it. McCleave’s state of shock isn’t in any way overwrought. He can’t raise either leg, so Rivera props each leg on his knee like a two-by-four that he’s sawing as, with his hands, he wraps on the Kerlix, lest his good buddy bleed to death and, at their camp, his cot right next to Rivera’s become unoccupied.

By now Rivera’s the only medic in either platoon, or so Rivera reasonably believes. But now from the other platoon, a hundred meters away, a hundred meters of bullets, grenades, and mortar rounds raising divots, there comes a cry of "Doc!" and Rivera, as intuitively as a champion sprinter at the cry of Go, commences a deadly hundred-meter dash. I'm running, he thinks philosophically—running for my life for someone else’s life.

HE’S SCARED. He runs anyhow. He pants, being ninety-two hundred feet high. In front of him—ffft!--some bullets raise dust like the bubbling mud at Yellowstone. Do any grenades come in? Do any mortar rounds come? If so, Rivera doesn’t register them. The finish line, no frangible tape, is a pile of rocks behind which there lies the boy who cried, "Doc!" and Rivera dives at him like someone stealing second. He also dives at two soldiers he hasn’t expected: the battalion medic (a boy who’s wounded) and the battalion doctor, a major amazed to be at such remove from a MASH. Rivera’s hundred-meter sprint wasn’t in vain. The medic and doctor both have lost their aid bags, and at these guardian rocks the Kerlix, et cetera, is all in Eddie’s monster. Thank God I stuffed it, Rivera thinks.

The casualties (by now there are two) are one boy who’s saying, "I can’t see!" and one boy who’s gasping, "I can’t breathe!" and, with Rivera’s aid bag, the doctor treats both. "How you doin’?" Rivera asks them—asks, asks, even shouts from a hundred meters to the two sergeants and Miranda "How you doin’?"

"We’re all right."

"Just lay low," Rivera shouts, aware that if one of them falls asleep, his breathing might stop and he’ll die. While shouting, Rivera’s thinking, Oh, God, will these casualties ever end? No, they won’t, for in this other platoon another mortar round just fell and the radio operator cries, "Doc!" The boy, PFC McGovern, is Rivera’s phenomenal friend, phenomenal since each of his legs seemed wired to a separate cerebellum. "McGovern! What’s wrong with you? You got two left feet?" Rivera agonized on countless occasions as McGovern tripped over his cot, the MRE box (meals ready to eat), or even the crack in the floor, spread eagling. "McGovern!" Rivera agonized. "Did you not see it?" "I seen it! I thought I’d get over it!" But now (it’s just about noon) no fault attaches itself to McGovern as he lies sprawled, both feet, both legs, both arms full of fiery shrapnel.

"It’s burning!" McGovern cries to Rivera.

"What’s burning worst?"

"My feet!"

Rivera takes off McGovern’s left boot, left sock. McGovern’s left foot is a shrapnel-studded caveman’s club, and Rivera instinctively shields his eyes.

"What is it? What is it?"

"You’re all right man," Rivera says, his hand raised, his fingers apart, a gesture meaning Easy. It’s all right, his head turning toward the battalion medic, his lips pantomiming, Oh, fuck. He wraps McGovern’s foot in Kerlix, but the Kerlix becomes blood-red, and he unwraps it and rewraps it in Kerlix, then Ace. "I know this hurts," says Rivera. "But you gotta try to wiggle your toes."

"I can! But they hurt!"

"I know they hurt, buddy."

"Oh, God! I can’t take it!"

"But you’ll be all right." But McGovern screams, and Rivera takes out his Nubain, injecting a minimal milliliter. "The pain, this’ll get rid of it," Rivera says, then starts on McGovern’s other foot, his legs and arms.

"THE ENEMY," CRIES AN UNDAUNTED sergeant, "wants us to sing the 10th Mountain Division Song!" Around him the soldiers start it: "We are the 10th Mountain Infantry / With a glorious history…" Booooom! Its the Air Force, thank God, but all the American soldiers recoil as a cargo plane metamorphosed into a bomber drops one of its one-ton bombs on the mountain that all this affliction comes from, on the cloud-covered heads of the Qaedas. As anyone would, as soon as the Qaedas hear those horrific bombers approaching, they go with lock, stock, and barrel (rifles, launchers, and mortars) into their caves, go, if they technologically could, into the fourth dimension until the bombers depart. But during every lull, Rivera runs to his patients in both platoons, asking them, "How you doin’? Are you awake? Now, don’ become sleepy on me! Don’ fall asleep! You need some water? Here, have some water. Man, you’re all right. Man, you’re all right. You’re gonna make it," at times thinking privately, Is he all right? Is he gonna make it? I don’t know.

"Doc," all Rivera’s patients ask, "when are the medevacs comin’?" The boys mean, When are the choppers coming to carry us out?

"They’re comin’. They're comin,’ says Rivera while thinking privately, When are the medevacs comin’? He radios battalion, "Polar Bear? When are the medevacs comin’? When are the QRFs"—the Quick Reaction Forces—"comin’? Where’s our help? What’s takin’ time? We got to get these casualties out!" On this wide-ranging radio, the officers at battalion can’t say, "They’re tryin’! The medevacs, tryin’! The other companies, tryin’! But the LZ’s too hot! The landing zone’s inaccessible!"

Then booooom! The soldiers cringe, the bombers conclude, the Qaedas, unchastened, undismayed, come from their caves, their rifles, launchers, and mortars coming, too, and "Incoming!" the soldiers shout. To shield him, Rivera lies on top of McGovern, the boy with wounded feet, legs, arms, the boy benumbed by Nubain, he puts his head on McGovern’s and hears him say "Please please please." Then boom, a mortar round hits First Lieutenant Maroyka. Then ffft, a bullet hits Specialist Almey, a boy who played basketball with Rivera, shooting, shooting the ball like some repetitive plastic toy. Then boom, a mortar round hits Major Byrne, the doctor far from a MASH and, with Rivera, the last intact practitioner here. Then boom, another mortar round hits the battalion medic, this one from two feet away. Then ffft—

It’s midafternoon and it’s still going on. How many soldiers in two platoons of Company C of the 1st Battalion of the 87th Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division of the American Army were hit? Restrict yourself, the Army adjures me, to "Casualties were light," "were moderate," "were heavy."

Casualties were heavy.

I TELL PEOPLE, "YOU’RE ALL RIGHT," thinks Rivera. But who’ll tell me I’m all right? It’s moratorium time as the bombers inconvenience the Qaedas, and all right he’s certainly not. Rivera’s worn out. His day began at two this morning and he hasn’t eaten since then. He’s hardly had water, either. His face is charcoal-colored due to close mortar rounds, and on his hands there’s blood, other people’s ectopic blood. On all three browns of his camouflage clothes is this same inappropriate red. If someone cries, "Doc!" Rivera expects to run up and treat him. But can he? Whatever I have, I’m about to lose it, Rivera thinks. What am I even doing here?

And then Rivera remembers the World Trade Center. Remembers the flaring fires like Zeus’ lightning bolts. Remembers the businessmen (My God! How desperate were they?)—businessmen and businesswomen throwing themselves to the plaza, eighty floors below. The towers collapsing, the ashes supplanting them, the ash-plastered people running away. The people doing the rounds of the hospitals asking "Did you see this man?" "Did you see this woman?" And hearing repeatedly, "No, I’ve not."And never discovering them. And never burying them. It’s not two platoons, it’s not sixty people the mourners sought, thinks Rivera. It’s three thousand people! As bad as Anaconda is, Rivera thinks, We’re better off. We’ll never ask, "Did you see my mom?" "Did you see my dad?" "Did you see Krystal?"

He thinks of the wife who must have asked, "Did you see Steve?" Steve was the paramedic at a Harlem station in New York City who, after medic school in Texas, Rivera did six weeks of training with. "Do you want to do an IV?" "Do you want to do an EKG?" Do you want to, Steve always asked, and Rivera always said yes. Now Rivera has heard that on Tuesday, September 11, the North Tower collapsed on Steve, the deed of the organization on the mountain in Rivera’s plain sight. And now Rivera remembers why he’s here. It’s for the three thousand dead. It’s for their bereaved, to let them know they’re avenged. It’s for the heroic paramedic at the Harlem station, Rivera apostrophizing him, "It’s for you. We’re gettin’ ‘em for you, Steve."

It’s then that Rivera hears, "Doc!"

RIVERA SPRINGS UP. He starts running. In his own platoon a mortar round’s burst, and he must retrace his bullet-pelleted hundred-meter dash. He succeeds. The source of the "Doc!" is Sergeant Wurtz, a boy he’s played one-on-one basketball with, Rivera teasing him, "You cannot play me, Sergeant Wurtz. You’ll lose." "We’ll see." But now Wurtz is lying supine as if he’s been grievously fouled, his combat boot off, his foot above him, his hand holding it as if, if he carelessly let go, it would fall off. He’s rocking like a child’s seesaw, screaming, but as Rivera wraps his Kerlix, another mortar round comes in, the Qaedas are zeroing onto them. On one pogo-stick leg, Wurtz hops, hops, in Rivera’s embrace to a safe haven higher up, the Kerlix trailing behind him. "Oh, fuck," says Wurtz, gasping. "I thought I’d blown off my foot."

"It’s all right."

"I don’t know. It’s burnin’ like hell."

"Shrapnel’s hot."

"Is my foot ever gonna get better?"

"Sure, it’s gonna."

"Am I ever gonna get outta here?"

"Sure. You’re gonna be playin’ basketball next week. But," says Rivera, "you’re still never gonna beat me."

The two take refuge behind some rocks. The day’s last casualty is the radio operator for Rivera’s platoon, Specialist Stanton, a bullet in his right foot, and Rivera helps him hop to the wounded ward on the invaluable rocks’ safe side. The ward looks like Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents, minus any of Herod’s assassins. "Doc," a number of innocents say. "I can’t feel my arms," "I can’t feel my legs."

"They’ll be all right," says Rivera, concealing that this means damaged nerves.

It’s now six o’clock. Night’s coming on, the dark’s coming on, and the temperature’s dropping toward twenty. Rivera’s polypropylene coat, polypropylene gloves, polyester sleeping bag—Rivera’s "snivel gear"—isn’t with him, Rivera (like most soldiers) having shed it this morning on exiting the Chinook. It’s many kilometers away (if it were nearer, he’d give it to patients anyhow), and all Rivera has on is T-shirt, shorts, and four-colored camouflage clothes, just what he’d wear on an Adirondack dog day. He shivers. To listen to, his teeth could be a train on irregular rails, rattling. He lies down with two patients, keeping them warm and, at least slightly, himself warm, too. It’s a three-soldier night.

"THE NIGHT BELONGS TO us," the American Army says. American soldiers have NODs, night optical devices, the world around them as bright as twilight although it’s a worrisome bilious green, and the Qaedas don’t have them, not yet. Tonight what the Qaedas can see are the flash, flash, lightning flash of America’s bombs, but not America’s infrared lights, lights in a druid circle, lights the American soldiers meticulously laid out. The lights encircle the LZ, landing zone, for the medevacs, if the medevacs actually come and if, by tomorrow, the casualties will be en route to Frankfurt or Washington, D.C. And lo! at eleven o’clock appear a couple of angelic medevacs that the Qaedas, unable to see, apparently hear. The Qaedas launch a Stinger missile, and, to avoid it, the medevacs disappear again, none of Rivera’s patients aboard. "I can’t believe this," says Rivera, though not to his anxious patients. "They," the Qaedas, "aren’t gonna let us leave! At dawn they’re gonna be shootin’ again!"

He prays for the first time today. In his pocket, he clutches a little white cross. "Whoever dies wearing this," the cross’s embossment says, "shall not suffer eternal fire," and, as one hand clutches it, the other crosses himself and Rivera prays, "Lord, if I can’t make it out of here, please take care of my mom and dad and please take care of Krystal. Krystal," Rivera continues, hoping she’ll hear him as God just did, "whatever we do, to do it together’s better. If we were poor, were dressin’ in rags, were sittin’ in cardboard boxes, we would be happier together. I love you." It’s then that the medevacs return, take on the prostrate patients like McCleave and McGovern, take off, and it’s one hour later that the Chinooks return, their rotors (thinks Rivera) glistening in the full moon like the pearly gates. They take on the walking wounded like Miranda and Abbott, then all of Rivera’s platoon, platoons, then with an exultant roar take off, Rivera whispering "Thank you, Lord," and saying aloud, "We made it! We made it!"

An hour later, Rivera is in his quiet, lightless, motionless tent. He sits at the stove, letting the warmth like a bowl of hot soup saturate him, then has a bowl of hot soup indeed, in thirty hours his first nourishment. On his cot he just passes out, but rest for the weary isn’t his. "Get up! Get up!" a soldier surprises him at a god-awful reveille. A soldier from Company B, he’s scarcely known to Rivera. "Get up!"

"Get outta here," Rivera mutters.

"Get up!" says half of Company B, assembled at Rivera’s cot. "We were at the radio yesterday, listenin’ to Company C! It was like the Superbowl!"

"What was?" Rivera mutters.

"You!" say the soldiers of Company B. "You saved the whole company! We don’t know how you did it! We call you Superman!"

AS SOON AS THE TELEPHONE’S UP, Rivera calls Krystal. She says, "Hello?"

"Hey, baby."

"Oh my God! Are you all right?"

"I’m all right."

"You don’t even know. Someone called from the 10th Mountain Division. He said they’d heard a medic was hit. How bad, they didn’t know, but I was cryin’ like crazy. I called your mom, and she was cryin’, too. She called the Red Cross. But they knew nothin’, so I watched the TV news, and I just knew you’re in Anaconda. I was scared."

"Baby, I wasn’t hit. But now I know: I don’t want to live away from you. As soon as I’m back I want an apartment with you. I want to live with you, I want to marry you, and I want to have babies with you."

"Slow down," says Krystal, laughing through tears. "I’m not ready for babies yet."

"I don’t care what you’re ready for. As soon as I’m home I’m makin’ babies."

"No you’re not."

"Oh yes I am."

"Wait till I finish school," says Krystal, still laughing. "Then we’ll start doin’ other things. I’m so glad you’re okay."

"Oh, baby, I still can’t believe it. All day we’re takin’ fire. All day my buddies gettin’ hurt. All day my buddies tellin’ me, ‘Help me, Doc.’ And you know what? I helped them. I was scared, and I didn’t know if I’d get out, but I helped them. All that stuff that I thought I’d forget, I remembered. I did what I was taught to do. I can’t believe it," and Rivera, tears in his eyes, slams his fist on the telephone table. "But baby, because I helped them, they didn’t die! All of ‘em, they didn’t die!"

II. COMPANY B, March 3 to March 10

THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD GO I. No one, but no one, thought this in Company B as it listened in distant tents to the "Superbowl" and the vicissitudes of Rivera’s buddies. Why, these were B’s buddies, too! Were boys who B had partied with in America, had played dominoes with in Uzbekistan, had slumped on red canvas seats with on the plane to Afghanistan! All day, B sat entreating its lieutenants. "We gotta help ‘em! We gotta join ‘em!" One lieutenant had a friend who'd died at his desk at Cantor Fitzgerald, a desk in the airplane’s flaming path in the north tower of the World Trade Center. On each of his hand grenades, the lieutenant (a former broker, too) had written his friend’s five-syllable name—STERGIOPOULOS—with a Magic Marker, and B entreated him, "Please! Just get us a Chinook!"

"No, the LZ’s too hot."

"Then land the Chinook five miles away! We’ll walk in!"

"No…"

The next day B got its Chinooks. Quite typically, B has three platoons, and in the avenging lieutenant’s platoon is a boy who saw the events at the World Trade Center in real life and not on TV. He was on leave in Paterson, New Jersey, fifteen miles away, and was asleep when his brother awoke him. "Come upstairs."

In his boxers the boy went upstairs, looked out the window at New York City, and said "Holy shit! What happened?"

"The building fell down."

"Holy shit!"

The boy’s name is PFC Shkelqim Mahmuti. Born in America to Albanian parents, he’s a Muslim like them. Even before the Towers fell down, a Muslim was often picked on in America. In grade school, in high school, his coevals laughed at Mahmuti, "Ha-ha! Pork is good for you! Fuck Mohammed!" Later, at United Parcel, the other drivers said to Mahmuti, "What are you? Muslim?" "Yes." "I’ll be watching you." All this discrimination would cease when he joined the American Army, Mahmuti thought. It wouldn’t.

His face was dark, his nose was sharp, his brows were a Mesopotamian’s: thick, black, unbroken. A hood is what these features meant to many policemen in Paterson, and Mahmuti at age fifteen in fact dealt marijuana, cocaine, crack, in New Jersey. He was often arrested, and in April last year, telling himself, I gotta change, he needed a half dozen waivers from three courts to join the American Army. He took basic training in Georgia, took graduation leave in New Jersey, saw the great tragedy in New York, and one week later joined the 10th Mountain Division at its frantic camp near the Adirondacks, frantic due to his sergeant’s announcements of "Here’s your packin’ list!" "Here’s your malaria pill!" "Here your orders!" "We’re leavin’ tomorrow!" Were leaving to Asia, leaving to fight the—Muslims. One fellow soldier asked him, "You know what side you’re on?"

"Yeah. I know what side I’m on."

It wasn’t the Muslim side, Mahmuti sincerely believed. He believed he could aim, fire, and kill a Muslim even if, as he also believed, the Muslim would go to paradise while all Mahmuti’s fellow soldiers went to Muslim hell. In his own pocket, the Koran said, "Lo! The worst of beasts in Allah’s sight are the Unbelievers," but also the Koran told how Muslims killed Muslims without the Koran’s complaint. Nor did Mahmuti’s parents demur at Mahmuti’s killing another defender of Allah. "Don’t sweat it," Mahmuti’s father phoned him. "To say this isn’t easy for me, but if you must kill him, kill him."

"It’ll be him before me, Dad."

But one doesn’t know, does one? till the Moment of Truth, the unpredictable confrontation on Muslim turf.

To kill the Qaedas was what every soldier brooded about as, on the first night of Anaconda, the casualties came in. Mahmuti’s sergeant, Sergeant Fuentez of San Antonio, prayed: "Take care of us, Lord. I’ve got these young soldiers with me. Guide me so I can take care of 'em." But the Lord isn’t the only presence the soldiers count on. The next day, the sergeant wears on his helmet a G.I. Joe, a doll his son mailed from Texas, and, while walking to the Chinooks, the whole platoon devoutly touches it. "He’ll take care of us," say the soldiers, then the Chinooks take off, and the soldiers applaud and say, "Yeah." "One hour," the helicopter pilot says.

"Any way we can get there in thirty minutes?" asks Mahmuti.

At two in the afternoon, the Chinooks drop onto the same corrugated place that Rivera’s did, and the sergeants cry similarly, "Getout!" With rapid heartbeats the soldiers do. But now the Qaedas on the grim mountain are (to trust the American Army) dead, dispatched by white lightning bombs, or (to mistrust the American Army) alive on snow-crusted trails into Pakistan, and the Chinooks take off, the platoon’s exposed, and for the moment no one’s shooting at it. Lest someone does, it starts digging what it calls Ranger graves, which are foxholes one foot deep. His digging done, Mahmuti lies in this shallow grave, the sun setting, the evening constellations setting, the Qaedas (if any) firing no bullets, grenades, or mortar rounds, but our Afghan allies firing tracers of red, orange, green, and blue at (if any) the Qaedas, and the American Air Force bombing them. At two in the morning, Mahmuti rises like Lazarus and, with his platoon, walks east until dawn, then west until noon. To quote no lesser enthusiast than Irving Berlin, This Is theArmy, Mr.Jones.

At last the durable order comes to Mahmuti's platoon, Dig in on top of this small-sized hill.

A small-sized but oh-so-steep-sided hill, a hill for alpinists with rope. His helmet, Interceptor, rucksack, and rifle encumbering him, Mahmuti (with his platoon) climbs up, the gray shale crumbling underfoot, turning into gray dust. On top of the hill, surprise—the Qaedas rematerialize, the Qaedas start shooting at the startled platoon from God knows where. And ffft! ffft! from somewhere below the Americans come the Qaedas’ bullets, then boom! boom! come the Qaedas’ notorious mortar rounds. The first of them falls where the soldiers just were. Mahmuti thinking, Holy shit! We could’ve been dead! On the hilltop, most soldiers look for the Qaedas, shouting, "I don’t see ‘em," but some soldiers in this sudden baptism of fire just cower behind boulders, among them the soldier who in the Adirondacks asked Mahmuti, "You know what side you’re on?"

Mahmuti is looking for the Qaedas. So is his Sergeant Fuentes. Borrowing someone’s binoculars, the sergeant suddenly cries, "I see ‘em!" Some with Russian rifles, some with Russian mortars, the Qaedas all are competent soldiers, staying apart. All are standing, walking, or running in the old corrugated valley below the Americans, reversing yesterday’s hierarchy and, in consequence, reversing yesterday’s odds, for now it’s Americans sitting pretty and Qaedas sitting ducks. "You see 'em?" the sergeant asks a heavy-machine gunner near him, "No, I don' see 'em."

"One’s over here. Two’s over there. And one's runnin’ toward those trees."

"I still don’ see ‘em." The gunner fires blind and kkk! the cartridge sticks. "It’s jammed!"

"Damn." The sergeant turns to another gunner. "Shoot this way!"

"Where’s he at?" asks Mahmuti. He lies by the sergeant, excited.

"Son, hold these binos. I’ll shoot tracers, that’s where he’s at." On one knee, the sharpsighted sergeant fires at a Qaeda eight hundred meters away, and the second machine gunner fires that way. The sergeant fires at a Qaeda six hundred meters away, and (the gun functioning now) the first machine gunner fires that way. The sergeant then fires at a Qaeda five hundred meters away, the Qaeda who’s running toward trees.

"I’m ready to cover your fire,"says Mahmuti.

"All right, Mahmuti." It’s five o’clock,and Bob (the big orange ball) is setting before them. In the valley, the Qaeda’s shadow is longer than the Qaeda himself. The two rifles almost touching, the sergeant fires once and Mahmuti twice. The first bullet hits the Qaeda’s chest, the second two hit his stomach, and he falls down undisguisedly dead.

"Holy shit!" says Mahmuti.

"We got him! We got the bastard!"

"That’s good fuckin’ shootin’, Sarge."

"Good shootin', Mahmuti! I'm proud of ya!" The sergeant shakes hands with Mahmuti, shakes hands energetically, shakes hands as if Mahmuti, his son, has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. "Now let’s get the other shitheads!" And with rifles, machine guns, mortars, and, to gild this lily, a couple of B-52’s, the soldiers do what yesterday’s soldiers, however willing, didn’t: They kill the Qaedas.

A few days later, Mahmuti sees another Qaeda and, far from dispatching him, has a conciliatory conversation with him. The man, who Mahmuti meets in the valley in an adobe building full of Americans, is an American prisoner. He’s shoeless. His hands wear plastic cuffs, and, in lieu of a proper blindfold, his head wears an empty sandbag like an empty grocery bag. By accident, Mahmuti in his combat boots steps on the Qaeda’s bare foot and tells him, "My bad."

"Water."

"You’re sayin’ water?"

"Yes yes."

"You’re speakin’ English?"

"Yes yes." Mahmuti takes off the outlandish sandbag, and the Qaeda starts crying. Man, thinks Mahmuti, I’m not gonna kill you. But, thinks Mahmuti, what if you weren’t the prisoner and I was? My shirt says Mahmuti, my dogtags say Islam, my pocket carries the Koran. You’d call me a Muslim traitor. You’d say, "So you’re against the jihad!" You wouldn’t just kill me. You’d torture me. Not reciprocating at all, Mahmuti gives the man water, socks, blankets, and asks him, "What’s your name?"

"Mehmed Tadik."

At home, thinks Mahmuti, I’ve got a Muslim friend named Tadik. "You’re a Muslim?"

"Yes yes."

"I am a Muslim, too.’

He’s mocking me, the Qaeda quite clearly thinks. His teeth start to grind as if they’re chewing betel nuts. "You Shiite or Sunni?"

"Sunni. How about you?"

"I Sunni." But still the Qaeda looks skeptical, looks to Mahmuti as though, if he weren’t handcuffed, he’d kill him.

Mahmuti assures him he’s Muslim. He says the Arabic prayer "Bismillah e Errahman e Erraheem"—"In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful." Again the Qaeda starts crying and, in English this time, Mahmuti asks him, "Are you Al Qaeda?"

"No no! I student Kabul University!"

"You’re lying."

"No no! I no Al Qaeda! I peace!"

"Are you haram?"

"No no!" The word means sinful.

"You are haram. You aren’t Muslim. We’re pure, we Muslims. We don’t go killing innocent people like in New York. That shit, we Muslims don’t do."

"No no! I no kill! I student!"

Mahmuti walks away. He has little love for the Qaeda. But having met him, met Tadik, could Mahmuti do what five sunny days ago he did to another human being, another believer in Allah—could Mahmuti shoot him and say, "That’s good fuckin’ shootin'"? No way.

Regrets? That isn’t what soldiers feel or Mahmuti feels. He thinks about the Qaeda he killed sometimes. He tells himself, it either was him or me. I won't let Mom sit and cry because some fuckin’terrorist took me out. Just as Dad said: Who cares that he’s Muslim? He’s wrong. At night Mahmuti prays to Allah, "Thank you for keeping shaytan, the devil, away from me. Thank you." But maybe Mahmuti has, well, not regrets, not remorse, but can I say qualms? Or why did Mahmuti protest to his sergeant one day, "We did the right thing."

"Damn right. We did the right thing."

"It wasn’t for pleasure, God knows."

The seventh day out, Mahmuti and his platoon return to their camp, and Mahmuti calls up his father in Paterson. "Unë mora nje," Mahmuti says in Albanian. "I took one."

"Shit!" says Mahmuti’s father in English. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah. No one got hurt. None of us."

"Good good." His father pauses. "Good job."

Mahmuti’s sergeant calls up his wife in Texas. He doesn’t tell her "I took one," but tells her, "A few things happened but I’m okay."

"In my heart," his wife says, crying, "you’re a great warrior now. You’ve earned your feathers." His wife isn’t being figurative. Despite his Hispanic name—Fuentes—the sharpsighted sergeant is an American Indian, an Aztec, much as I thought that Cortés had exterminated them all. The sergeant grew up by an Aztec reservation in Texas, where, on his return, there’ll be an immemorial ceremony for him, the great warrior getting a fifty-four-feathered bonnet, the feathers dyed red, white, blue, and (for the days gone by in Tenochtitlan) environment-emulating green. "You’ve earned your feathers," his wife says. "You know?"

"I know," the eagle-eyed sergeant says.

III. COMPANY A, March 18 to March 29

Why the fierce resistance to Company C? Why the continued resistance to CompanyB? It might be Osama bin Laden is hiding there, an American commander tells an Afghan official in The New York Times. To catch Osama, his subordinates,or anyof his foot soldiers becomes the mission of Company A of the 4th Battalion of the 31st Regiment of thc 10th Mountain Division. In one platoon, known as the Misfits, are two boys who, when the towers fell, still were in Georgia learning their Right face, Left face, were in the same exact barracks and, by extraordinary chance, in the same exact double bunk. Their names, ranks, to hell with their serial numbers, are Private Andrew Simmons of Newark, New York, near Rochester, and Private Andrew Starlin of Buda, Texas, near Austin. Two Private Andrew S.’s.

A baby-faced boy, Simmons has oval glasses, scholarly looking black rims. In high school he sang in the concert choir. The other boy, Starlin, is pink-nosed, pink-cheeked, round-faced. His innocent eyes say, Me? I know nothing about it. In junior high school he played in the band. Simmons and Starlin played football,too, Simmons guard and Starlin center. Last year Simmons graduated, Starlin got his GED, and, for money for college, the two joined the Army doing their basic training together in Georgia.

The two didn’t know it, but precious little of basic training would stand them in stead in Afghanistan. Saluting? Marching? Using their hands reciprocally, all in the service of Right shoulder arms? More folderol for Port arms and Port arms salute? What they would do in Afghanistan Simmons and Starlin didn’t learn in Georgia: running into icicle-sided caves where maybe, maybe, would be Osama, firing their rifles automatically, firing their machine guns, and throwing their hand grenades like Bata pitching machines. From Georgia they went to Kuwait, another training place for the 10th Mountain Division. There they learned to eschew all Kuwaiti women. They learned to stand aside of Kuwaiti prayer rugs. Their shoe soles they learned to expose to no Kuwaiti.

To run into caves behaving deranged—no, Simmons and Starlin didn’t learn that in Kuwait.

They flew by cargo plane to Afghanistan, then by Chinook to Anaconda’s sometimes disastrous, sometimes felicitous locale. The sergeants yelling, "Get out," the two soldiers did—the two soldiers do, and their first thought is Oh my God! Their shock isn't due to bullets, grenades, mortar rounds, or any other man-made devices but to God's mountains around them. Mountains like this, the Andrews (who scarcely have seen the Adirondacks, much less the Rockies) haven’t known except in National Geographic. Steep, snow-sided, cragged, the mountains tower above them like heaven’s immaculate parapets. A soldier with them from Alaska thinks of Louis Armstrong’s "What a Wonderful World," and one from Michigan thinks of Dire Straits’s "These mist-covered mountains/Are a home now for me" and the song’s planetary conclusion, "We’re fools to make war." A soldier from Arkansas thinks of the Bible, of God cutting stone on Mount Sinai, of how some stone-blind people look at creation and don’t perceive there’s a God. Or how some people, like Osama, their quarry today, Osama who pleads belief in God, look at these sacred mountains and say, "A good defensive position."

The soldiers are in the Qaedas’ often-visited valley. To the east is the Qaedas’ notorious mountain, and to the west is a humpbacked one the Americans call the Whale. It’s there that Simmons and Starlin (and all the Misfits) deploy. Their helmets, Interceptors, rucksacks on, their rifles carried like quarterstaffs, the two tenderfoots (in army argot, crispy critters) start up the Whale’s precipitous side. Like marbles, the pebbles skid downward and the two critters skid with them like Jack and Jill, first on their boots, then on their seats, then stoutly stand up and retrace their route, the top of the Whale two miles away whatever they do.

On top of the Whale with guns, grenade launchers, mortars are, in all likelihood, the Qaedas. To keep them down, Starlin’s squad halts, and Starlin fires an antitank missile. His squad fires rifles, rifle grenades, machine guns as Simmons’ squad approaches where the Qaedas should be. A white flare (a star cluster) signals cease fire, and Simmons’s squad assaults the top of the Whale. Simmons’s sergeant passes a cave that a Qaeda could at any moment storm out of, his Russian rifle smoking. "A cave! Get back!" cries Simmons’s sergeant. "Frag out!" the sergeant continues, tossing a hand grenade—boom!--and the cave anorexically collapses. "It just caved in! Oh, fuck!" cries Simmons’s sergeant, seeing, on a boulder above him, a Qaeda, a man in green camouflage, and on his shoulders, a yellow blanket—bang, and the sergeant shoots him. "I got one!" He sees another blanketed being—bang! "I got another!" He sees still another—bang! "I got three!"

Chaos is king. Dead, dead, dead at Simmons’s feet are one yellow-blanketed donkey and two Qaedas, none of whom is Osama. Farther away is a Qaeda who Simmons, bang bang bang! keeps firing at but who escapes behind a boulder, and in the ground is a quite provocative hole that Simmons drops a hand grenade into, a hand grenade that falls, falls, like Alice in Wonderland and, in time, emits a chthonian bing. Such is the Great Osama Hunt for Andrew number one.

Still downhill is Starlin’s squad. It sees another cave on the Whale’s side. The Misfits conclude it’s a man-made bunker: three walls of interlocked rocks, the fourth wall the Whale, the roof perhaps plywood and, on top of that, more rocks. The question is, Where’s the doorway that (at any moment) the Qaedas with Russian rifles might hurtle out of?

Starlin’s squad searches for it. In the interlocked rocks it sees some interstices for the Qaedas’ rifles, and Starlin tosses a hand grenade expectantly into one. He cries, "Frag out!" and runs up the Whale—bang!—and runs downhill to another interstice to toss another grenade in. Uphill, downhill, uphill, he’s on a crazy gymnastics machine at an altitude twice that of Denver. He’s winded. He breathes like a dog whose tongue’s hanging out, huh huh, huh huh. At last Starlin finds the Qaedas’ perilous doorway. Into it Starlin’s sergeant throws another grenade—bang!—and tells him, "Go in!"

"I’ll lead with lead!" The first lead rhymes with deed, the second rhymes with dead.

"Go for it!"

And through the doorway goes Starlin, shooting, apparently, at a Qaeda: a Qaeda's chest, a Qaeda’s shirt, well, that’s what the target appears to be. In comes Starlin’s sergeant, shooting (shooting a shotgun) at the same man, and another sergeant shoots, too. Oh, Lord have mercy! Not falling down, the man keeps moving as Starlin and the two sergeants shoot. The smoke from Starlin's gun, the other gun, the shotgun, the crumbled rock, and, who knows? from the Qaeda is so thick it might be an hour past midnight. No one sees anything, but on Starlin’s rifle, attached with duct tape, is a small flashlight, and Starlin cuts through the darkness with it. The little that’s left of the target, which, it develops, is hanging by rope from the ceiling, might have been a T-shirt, blanket, sandbag, or Pillsbury flour bag but by no flight of anyone’s fancy was ever a Qaeda. Damn, Starlin thinks.

"Holy shit! I can’t believe it!" says Starlin. It's some days later, and Starlin sees something amazing. A bunker, a Qaeda bunker, is a true treasure house that Starlin, merely an American, might even envy. The tents aren’t cheesecloth, the blankets aren’t cotton, the sleeping bags could emanate from the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps. In one corner is a propane stove—a cooking stove—and pots, pans, forks, spoons, teapots, teacups and saucers, and in another corner are scissors, needles, catheters, syringes, all the supplies that Rivera has plus Chap Stick and Vaseline. On the floor is no Persian carpet, but in some other bunkers (even on other bunkers’ walls) are many, and, so help me God, in these other bunkers are Korans, boom boxes, audio recorders, audio players, video cameras, night optical devices, gymnasium bags from Adidas, sneakers, boxing gloves, punching bags, fingernail clippers, toenail clippers for Goliath, sewing machines, money—both Afghan afghanis and Pakistani rupees—a Russian sword that Starlin’s sergeant appropriates, and a Casio watch with altimeter and compass that Starlin appropriates. "Holy shit!" says Starlin. "This mountain! I can't believe the Qaedas got everything up it!"

And more. In and around the bunkers are cartridges, mortar rounds, rockets, grenades that the Misfits detonate. But there’re thousands, and for hours they're exploding, hitting theWhale, nearly hitting the Misfits. One rocket hits a red cedar, the tree catches fire, and the smoke floats to a Navajo soldier. He experiences déjà vu. Before coming to Afghanistan, he sat in a hogan in Arizona with a Navajo medicine man. In headband, turquoise necklace, crimson shirt, the man opened a leather pouch and on the hogan’s earthen floor sprinkled red cedar shavings. He rattled a rattle, drummed a drumstick, sang a Navajo song the Navajo soldier understood, then set the shavings afire and, in Navajo, said, "Let mother nature help this boy. Let him come swiftly and safely home." In the smoke, the words rose into the soldier’s nostrils, consciousness, self. And today in Afghanistan, the red cedar smoke and the words again envelop him. It’s mother nature’s sign. I’ll come swiftly and safely home, the boy tells himself correctly.

To their sheltered camp come the Misfits.With time to reflect on it, Simmons is quite upset by his recollection of the two dead human beings but Starlin thinks, They screwed with us, so we screwed with them. At night the Misfits use MRE boxes, other boxes, MRE plastic bags, even cargo-plane pallets to build a crackling campfire—crack! an MRE creamer exploding in blue-green sparks. A sergeant strums on his ukulele, singing a gospel song: "The Lord may Light, /The Rock of my salvation/Of whom shall I be afraid?/Of whom shall I fear?" "Know what I’d do if I found Osama?" a Misfit asks. "I’d cut him into little pieces. I hear they have a reward for him. I’d ask them, ‘How much is each piece worth?’"

"No, you wouldn’t. You’d do what you’ve been told to. You’d shoot him."

But really, did Simmons and Starlin ever come close? Did ever Osama live in the Whale? No one knows, although the Qaedas' paperwork showed that he scarcely needed to to account for the Qaedas’ commitment. In the rubble the Misfits (and other boys in other ruins in Afghanistan) found these papers, dirty, dog-eared, charred papers in both of Afghanistan's languages and six other languages, too, and army intelligence translated them. They showed that the Qaedas came from Afghanistan and from Algeria, Arabia, Bangladesh. Bosnia, Canada, China, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Kyrgystan, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, the United Kingdom, the United States, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. At their camps in Afghanistan, at 6:00 every morning, the Qaedas did exercises, averaging thirty push-ups, thirty sit-ups. All morning the Qaedas studied weapons, using, in English and Arabic, Dari, Pashto, Tajik, Urdu, and Uzbek translations, manuals from the American Army, Marines, and Special Forces and even articles from American hunting magazines. In the afternoon the Qaedas studied the Koran. They weren’t taught Right shoulder arms, but to A, B, and C’s common question of "Why were they such fierce enemies?" the Misfits found a troublesome answer. It simply is this: "We were good soldiers. And they were good soldiers, too."

Epilogue

In April the division comes home to the Adirondacks. Three boys have died, none of them in Afghanistan, remarkably. Two were killed by errant artillery rounds as they breakfasted in the Adirondacks, and one committed suicide in Uzbekistan. Another division, the 101st, from Kentucky, also fought in Anaconda. So did the Special Forces, and eight of its soldiers died. One fell from a Chinook as Mahmuti and his platoon dug Ranger graves miles away, and six boys died while trying to rescue him. Another boy died in a Qaeda ambush.

Uninjured, undead, are all the Osama-stalking soldiers of Company A. They didn’t catch him, but they neutralized his caves, bunkers, camps in Afghanistan, Osama becoming an impotent individual alive (or, who could disprove it? dead) in God knows where and God doesn’t care. Of the Andrews, Simmons is single, but Starlin comes home to his second son, twenty ruddy inches long and one day old. His son says, "Wah," and Starlin says, "Wow," astonished at this little human being, a boy who thanks to Starlin’s army, surely won’t die in an unprovoked holocaust, as a two-year-old did last September in the Center’s south tower.

Also uninjured, undead, are the Qaeda killers of Company B. Mahmuti comes home to Paterson to a couple of younger cousins who ask him, "Did you kill anyone?" and he answers, "No." Fuentes, Mahmuti’s eagle-eyed sergeant, comes home to the Aztec reservation near San Antonio, the warriors all racing bare-backed horses and, in red-, white-, blue-, and green-beaded moccasins, dancing to the sun and the moon, the bells on their ankles tinkling.

Undead, thanks to Rivera, and still in Company C are Horn, Miranda, Abbott, McCleave, Almey, and Stanton, one hugging him and one patting him as Rivera receives the army commendation medal with a V for valor, but McGovern (two toes lost) and Wurtz still aren’t back. Rivera comes home to Krystal's new many-mirrored apartment close by in Liverpool, New York. He buys her a half-carat diamond ring. One night, lying together, his fingers exploring her eyelids, eyebrows, hair, as if he’s just discovered them on Jupiter, he tells her the ultimate truth of Operation Anaconda. "I love you, Krystal. But also," Rivera says, "I love those guys. So much that I might have died for 'em. Even those guys in cowboy hats and big-buckled belts, I love 'em. I don’ listen to country music with ‘em. I don’ do the two-step with ‘em. But when they cry ‘Doc!’ I run like they’re my own brothers. Because they are."

And crying, Krystal, a medic herself, says, "I understand."

[robowombat]

John Sack gives a worms eye view of combat in Afghanistan.

[Free the USA]

Index Bump