The Fifth Act, page 7
All pretense of eavesdropping vanished. Everyone was now actively listening to our conversation. The radio hissed as the major’s last transmission seemed to hang in the air. Those congregated around the Humvee were all staring at me. Much depended on my response. People have, at times, asked me whether I regret having fought in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan given their outcomes. When trying to answer that, I’ve often come back to this moment and perhaps a dozen others like it; that’s only a dozen such moments over the eight years I spent at war. But they were moments when I knew the decision I had to make was of real consequence—life-and-death consequence. I don’t presume to know if in every instance I made the exact right decision, but I know it was worth it to me to be there to make that decision. There are many things in war that I’ve since regretted or felt unclear about. Having been present at these moments is not one of them.
However, what followed is something that I’ve always felt unclear about.
I answered the major by reiterating our tenuous situation in terms of equipment and personnel. But before I could finish, he interrupted, “Your situation is understood. I say again: begin recovery efforts immediately.”
The special operations task force in Bagram wasn’t primarily made up of Marines but of special forces soldiers, like Super Dave, who himself had a close relationship with the special forces colonel our major worked for. Super Dave stepped around the back of my truck and called the colonel on an Iridium satellite phone while I monitored the radio. When Dave returned a moment later, he said, “We need to remain ready to go, but they’re going to look into contingency plans.”
The words had no sooner left Super Dave’s mouth than the major came back up on the radio. He parroted the same message.
It was late afternoon. The light coming out of the west and sweeping the town was golden. The sun, at this angle, was now in our eyes. It refracted through the smoke of the fires that still burned in Shewan, to include the one that had consumed Momez’s Humvee, and the light at this angle cast the day’s destruction in harsher relief. Every plume of smoke became visible. The shadows of newly broken buildings cast their jagged patterns through the town. The sporadic gunfire from the outskirts ebbed. We waited like this, in the near silence, for another twenty minutes or so.
The major came back up on the radio. Our sister team—the one we’d reinforced—had made it back to their base. They could refuel, rearm, and be back in Shewan at full strength tonight to recover Momez’s body. Our special operations task force had not only prioritized aircraft to support their recovery effort but had also arranged for aircraft to remain continuously overhead lest the Taliban try to snatch Momez’s body. Tubes would stay with us and coordinate the aircraft from the ground, while our entire force would remain in the area in case our sister team needed reinforcement. Our convoy would hold up in a nearby outpost, one manned by a few dozen army infantrymen where the Ring Road branched into the access road that had taken us to Shewan.
Willy had been listening as I coordinated the last of these details with the major. When I set the radio handset aside, whatever expression I was wearing caused Willy to put his hand on my shoulder and say, “This was the right call, skipper. You should feel good about that.” What Willy could see was that I didn’t feel “right” or “good” about any of it. Tonight, our sister team would go into Shewan to get Momez. One of two things would happen. They would either (a) recover Momez without incident, finishing a job we should’ve finished ourselves, or (b) meet significant resistance in Shewan, taking casualties of their own to finish the job that we couldn’t. Either way, as our convoy limped toward the Ring Road and the outpost where we’d pause for the night, a measure of guilt settled its weight on me. The only way I could have avoided that weight would have been to successfully return to Shewan—understrength and underequipped—and get Momez’s body out.
Maybe that’s what I should’ve done.
I’ll never know.
We pulled into the outpost after dark. The Taliban had shot up Tubes’s vehicle so badly that the auxiliary power running its radios no longer worked, and so he drove with me instead, coordinating aircraft from the back seat. The soldiers at the outpost lived hard, sleeping on foam mats in either sandbagged fighting positions or the slit trenches they’d cut into the rocky desert. When our convoy arrived, they emerged from their positions, curiously welcoming us. They gawked like stargazers as they pointed out the constellations of bullet holes and fragmentation gouges that pocked our vehicles. Their leader, a long-limbed lieutenant with a coating of stubble across his cheeks, gave a low whistle. “Lookee here,” he said with a singsong southern drawl as he shook his head in wonder. “Your fight up the road sounded bad. Not this bad, though. You’re welcome to stay long as you like. We can’t offer you much. Resupply hasn’t been through in a week.” He gestured to a pallet of bottled water and a few leftover cases of MREs.
Willy, who was always good at making friends, scrounged up some Gatorade powder from our trucks. He helped the thirsty grunts mix up a five-gallon jug’s worth. I was sitting up on the roof of my Humvee with Tubes when he came by, offering us each a canteen-cupful, which we took. It reddened our mouths as we waited for our sister team to begin their sprint into the center of Shewan. Tubes and I weren’t alone. Every truck with a radio had a small cluster of us listening and drinking red Gatorade.
Then, when Willy left, Tubes apologized to me.
I was surprised. “What are you sorry for?”
We were facing toward the west. The sun had long since set, and there was nothing but darkness in that direction. It took Tubes a minute to choose his words, but when he did, he explained, “I thought I could get him out, but I couldn’t. The fire was too intense. But if I had gotten him out, then we wouldn’t be in this mess. If the guys doing the recovery get hurt tonight, that’ll be on me.”
“No, it won’t,” I said, cutting him off. But of course, the logic of Tubes’s guilt mirrored the logic of my own. He wasn’t thinking about what, in fact, could’ve happened—because he couldn’t have done more; rather, he was thinking of what should’ve happened—Momez shouldn’t have died. But that was outside his control.
I said this to him.
He looked back as though he wasn’t quite convinced. He simply said, “I don’t know,” and I wondered then—and have wondered since—who absolves us of such regrets. If Tubes’s burns weren’t enough to convince him that he’d done everything in his power to save Momez, then what would convince him? Or was it even possible to convince him? To have lived when others have died means to question why. That question has few satisfying answers. Better not to ask it; that is, if you can resist its allure, which I also said to Tubes as we sat there. What I said specifically was, “It is what it is.” Which was a caution, a way of saying that the question he was asking turns survival itself into a dilemma, one that traps you between guilt and death.
Our sister team came up on the radio. They had begun their movement into Shewan. Disciplined and professional, their curt radio transmissions marked their progress as they passed into town, calling out checkpoints. When they arrived at Momez’s charred vehicle they remained equally cool, offering up a sharp “At the objective.” Tubes and I watched the drone’s live feed on his tablet as their grainy silhouettes fanned out around the vehicle. What quickly followed was “Objective secure.” Then another few minutes passed. Once they recovered Momez, they would need to call in his kill number. Each of us had one. It was the first two letters of your last name and then the last four of your social security number. When calling in medevacs we used kill numbers instead of names so that everyone on the net wouldn’t immediately be able to identify the casualty. Medevacs are called in with three priority levels. The highest is urgent, which is for “loss of life or limb.” The next is priority, “patient’s condition is stable but requires care.” The last is routine, “personnel’s condition is not expected to worsen significantly.”
The dead are classified routine.
Our sister team calls out Momez’s kill number—“November, Uniform . . .”—as they formally request one routine medevac. With that done, they announce that they’re returning to base, as well as their status: “Mission complete.”
SCENE VI
A hotel room, Venice, at night
The Unnamed Gate will remain closed. Ian’s contact in Senator Cotton’s office can’t convince the CIA to open it. In the chat, Nick wonders whether the convoy should simply return to the Serena Hotel and try again tomorrow night. Matt puts this question to the 145 Afghans riding the buses. He relays their response to us over the chat: That’s a hard no.
If the perimeter of HKIA were a clockface, the Unnamed Gate would be located at the twelve o’clock position. Our convoy remains pulled off on the shoulder of the road here. Rumors are that the traffic around the North Gate, which is at the two o’clock position, is relatively light.
Earlier that day, I’d swapped emails with the lieutenant colonel in command of the Marines at the North Gate. His name is Chris Richardella. His battalion—the 1st Battalion of the 8th Marine Regiment, said “one-eight” in Marine speak—is my old infantry battalion, the one I fought in as a twenty-four-year-old platoon commander in Fallujah. They’re known as the “Beirut Battalion” because nearly forty years before, on October 23, 1983, Marines from 1/8 were guarding the airport in Beirut when Hezbollah detonated a pair of truck bombs, killing 241 Americans. Given 1/8’s legacy, its deployment to HKIA only adds to the myriad minor subplots in the drama unfolding at the airport.
One of those minor subplots is that Chris Richardella, or “Rich” as he’s called, is an old friend. We attended our Marine Corps officer training together in Quantico nearly two decades ago. That the end of a war would serve as an overdue reunion for those who participated in that war is an irony of this evacuation. Sitting up in my hotel room bed, with my cell phone plugged into the wall, I’m cursing myself for not having kept in better touch with Rich over the years. The cell phone number I have for him is old, and he’s not picking up as our buses head toward the North Gate.
As I’m scrambling through my contacts, Nick, Ian, and everyone else on the chat is doing the same. We’re all searching for someone—anyone, really—who might be able to help us open one of these gates. The team aboard the convoy is getting impatient, posting Find us an open gate on the chat.
It is getting close to morning. I can’t get through to Rich. Our convoy is now stalled outside the North Gate. Nick calls me directly. The Rockefeller Foundation, which has partially funded one of our charter flights, has connections to the Brookings Institution, whose president, John Allen, is the former commanding general of US Central Command. “We’re trying to reach him,” Nick explains.
Whatever frustration or despair I’d felt a moment before vanishes. I know General Allen . . . sort of. More than a year ago, we’d sat at the same table at a dinner in Washington, D.C. He’d graciously invited me to visit him at his office. A month later, we’d spent a pleasant afternoon sipping coffee and reminiscing about our wars. I put Nick on speaker while I scroll through my contacts. And there it is: General Allen’s cell phone number.
I call.
“Elliot, good to hear from you,” he says, and then, without missing a beat, adds, “So, it sounds like we’ve got ourselves a bit of a situation.” A representative from the Rockefeller Foundation has already contacted him, so he’s somewhat read into our problem at the airport. He offers to call his former colleagues at Central Command and, hopefully, get them to open a gate for our convoy. We agree that I’ll text him the name and phone number for the convoy point of contact (which is Matt) and that he’ll then pass that along to the Centcom J-3, the officer in charge of operations. I also put him directly in touch with Nick.
After I hang up, my wife rolls over. Sleepily, she asks, “Who was that?”
“General Allen.”
“Centcom General Allen?”
“Yeah,” I say, and begin texting the broader group with an update. “He’s going to call some of his old colleagues to get them to open the gate for us.”
“That’s so messed up,” she says.
“What’s messed up? He said he’ll help.”
“He shouldn’t have to help. It shouldn’t come down to General Allen, or to you, or Nick, or Ian. Can you not see that?” She’s exasperated. Her tone is such that it’s as though we’re in an intervention, one where she’s trying to make me see the nature of an abusive relationship I’ve been trapped inside. “It’s just poignant,” she says. “To see all of you trying to finish this, with so little help. It’s a total collapse.” She pushes her body close to mine.
Collapse is a good word. The past couple of weeks have been not only a collapse of our country’s competence as we’ve unconditionally lost a twenty-year war, but also a collapse of time, space, and hierarchy.
Time has collapsed, as those of us who fought in Afghanistan years ago have found ourselves thrown back into that conflict with an intensity as though we’d never left.
Space has collapsed, as those of us coordinating these evacuations are spread across the world in places as far-flung as France (Nick), Virginia (Ian), and Italy (me), to say nothing of those on the buses in Kabul, like Matt.
And hierarchy has collapsed, as from the president of the United States on down, we are all subject to the vicissitudes of this catastrophic withdrawal.
An hour passes. Then two. It is morning now.
The Centcom J-3 instructs our convoy to head to the South Gate, which is located at the six o’clock position along the airport’s perimeter. Crowds at the South Gate can be bad. Still, the J-3 insists this is the only way into the airport. Also, our entrance will have to be negotiated with the Taliban, which maintains its own checkpoint outside the gate. Matt drives ahead to scout out conditions. Thirty minutes later, he returns with this message: Traffic is bad but situation at roundabout and gate is OK, you gotta go through and loop into that lane that leads into the airport. Not sure if the Talibs will let you through though, got whacked upside the head for asking.
There’s chatter among the others in the buses: Shit you ok? . . . followed by, I think let’s just roll up. No other choice.
They go.
We monitor the convoy’s progress in the chat. The cadence of the updates is familiar. Bus 3: Lead vehicle needs to slow up. Bus 1: We’re waiting. Bus 3: Gotcha. Bus 1: Rolling. Each of these minor communications seems to build toward a climax; that climax is, of course, the success or failure of the mission, whether our convoy will make it through the South Gate.
Bus 2: How’s it look?
Bus 1: Stuck in traffic before airport roundabout now.
Nick is coordinating with Centcom. He posts, They will let you in. Asking for ETA?
Bus 1: 5 min
Nick: [From Centcom] “Keep pushing. Don’t divert.”
Bus 2: Pushing.
Bus 1: U-turn into airport lane now
Nick: Please advise when convoy is at gate. They will assist.
Bus 3: 2 min
Bus 2: We are spread out. Cars got between.
(Those two minutes pass.)
Bus 2: Gotta get through traffic and Taliban. They are spraying the crowd with fire hoses.
(Another two minutes pass.)
Bus 1: Convoy is at gate
Nick: Copy
Bus 1: Talibs saying they need green light from inside airport
Nick: Copy and passed on
Bus 2: Lead bus stuck at the gate. Crowds are trying to enter bus.
Nick: Copy
Bus 1: Has to happen now boys
Nick: passed on
Bus 1: K moving
Nick: all buses?
Bus 1: Only first for now. Who has the list?
(The manifest is reposted in the chat, 145 people in four buses.)
Bus 2: Second bus not moving.
Bus 1: They want the list coming from the inside. From the Americans, I guess.
Bus 2: Humvee blocking us. A Talib Humvee is blocking the way. Nick can you pass up the list?
Nick: More info from the ground please. Allen is asking.
Bus 1: They’re not letting us in for now
Bus 2: We are stuck. Crowds around trying to get in buses. We need to pass the Talib checkpoint.
Matt: On my way
Bus 1: Who has the printed list? Lots of shooting. They won’t let us in.
Nick: Copy
Bus 1: Quick please it’s chaos. Nick can the US pass word from inside?
Nick: Asking. Allen speaking to Centcom in real time, doing everything he can.
Matt: On foot in the roundabout, got eyes on the convoy
Bus 1: The talibs need the list and the license plates of the buses and it has to come from the americans
Matt: I’m beside first bus
Bus 1: They’re sending us back. It has to come from americans inside.
Nick: Allen is interceding. “Centcom acknowledged all info passed to coordination cell. They understand the urgency.”
Bus 1: Not gonna happen guys.
Bus 2: We’re blocked from behind.
Bus 1: Backing up
Bus 3: Are bus 1 and 2 out of line? Are we following?
Nick: Centcom does not promise immediate resolution. If you can leave, I would leave.
