Green on Blue (9 page)

Just as we have you, he answered, and offered you melmastia under the laws of Pashtunwali. You ask too much, Sabir. You and Gazan have your war for your own reasons. Our village respects the privacy of that feud. We ask you to respect the privacy of our homes.

Low grumbles of approval met these words. The shura fell to silence. Mumtaz faced Commander Sabir. The heft of his paunch pushed against his billowy shalwar kameez. His beard ran down his face as immovable as the pines.

The outpost will provide great wealth for those who help, said Commander Sabir. A few spingaris, including Haji Jan and Mumtaz, found the talk of money to be too much. They walked out of the shura shaking their heads. Commander Sabir called after them: War is coming here. My friendship should not be taken lightly. I am not one you want as an enemy.

Those who remained in the circle tugged their beards, grumbled their consideration, and left, disappearing into their mud-walled homes.

The shura was over.

Issaq trooped through the village and waved his arm in a circle above his head, giving the signal for us to load our vehicles and begin the half-day journey back to Shkin. Mortaza and I jogged to our HiLux, where Tawas waited for us. I wedged myself into the bed. From my perch behind the machine gun, I saw the spingaris gather in their courtyards to discuss the proposal. Far off, I saw the satellite dish on Atal’s compound and a thin ribbon of smoke still rising from behind.

You ready! Yar shouted at me from the driver’s seat.

I banged on the roof of the cab twice. We lurched into gear. Driving
out of Gomal, children stepped from their homes forming into packs. They ran after our convoy. Whether they chased us from the village or wanted to come with us, I couldn’t say. Our trucks kicked up a white cloud of dust and their voices rose and then choked to silence in the cloud, but still they came. In front of me, I saw an arm reach from our cab. It was Tawas. He threw handfuls of bubblegum into the air. The foil wrappers glinted in the sun, bright against the dust. The children stopped, fell to their knees, and fought each other over too few pieces.

We returned to the mountains.

–

Commander Sabir never drove the same route twice. He was determined, to the point of obsession, not to be ambushed like his brother had been. And staying alive was a good if inconvenient obsession for a commander to have.

Our convoy had left Gomal just before lunch. The sun hung directly overhead, but the pleasure of its warmth was offset by my nagging hunger. We followed a ravine toward the north road. The pebbles and boulders of its bed were washed and gray in the sun. Our HiLux pitched me backward and forward. I held the stock of my machine gun to stay upright. We splashed through a flooded bank and a jet of cold water smacked my face. It trickled under my collar and down my back. The wind set into me. That, plus my hunger and the long drive ahead, chiseled away my courage.

Suddenly our convoy stopped. From my pocket, I pulled a piece of naan. The vibrations of our HiLux still rang in my body but slowly seeped out of me toward stillness. I enjoyed the stillness. With it, warmth replaced the wind and I ate. The cold and hunger that gnawed at me eased. Soon I realized how dangerous our situation had become. We sat in the ravine and the mountain rose up straight, so close that I
could reach out and touch its granite walls from either side of the bed. I tossed my last mouthful of naan onto the ravine floor. I grabbed the buttstock of my machine gun. I opened its feed tray. Inside the mechanics were clean and oiled. The belt of ammunition sat linked and heavy against the worn metal firing mechanism. Lead into brass, lead into brass. The predictable pattern comforted me. I slammed the feed tray shut. The metal-on-metal snap echoed.

Suddenly we lurched backward and reversed to a slightly wider part of the ravine. From the front of the convoy, Commander Sabir’s HiLux drove around us. The flags on its hood snapped in the wind. Yar leaned his head out the driver’s window. He wore a green bandana over his curls. Aziz! he shouted back to me. Keep your eyes open. The Comanches got a truck stuck behind us.

On the side of the machine gun was a small metal charging handle. I pulled it back and then slid it forward, chambering a round. The machine gun was ready to fire, and I felt ready to fire it. Now only Issaq’s HiLux was ahead of us. I couldn’t see behind us. I didn’t know how much of the convoy was stuck. I shouldered my gun. It felt like a man I didn’t know was holding a knife against my bare chest. The stranded vehicle blocked the ravine and left us completely vulnerable. My stomach drew tight as a fist. I scanned the tops of the granite walls. Nothing.

Four explosions rolled in the distance. If there’d been clouds in the sky, the noise would’ve been mistaken for thunder.

What do you see? shouted Yar from the cab.

An arm of smoke reached upward from the direction of Gomal. Before I could reply, the air cut in half and shook. The rocket. A thunderclap so loud it seemed sound and time tried to divorce one another. Just in front of us, its explosion fountained pebbles from the ravine floor. They sprayed wetly across the hood of our HiLux. Fear’s knife slid
into my chest. The unknown promise of violence had become known. It was painless.

I pushed my machine gun’s buttstock down to strafe the high ridges above. It wouldn’t depress far enough. From the back of the bed, it could go no higher than the canyon walls. Ahead of us another tuft of smoke uncoiled in the air. It slammed to the ground—a miss. And a remarkably wide one, nearly fifty yards off target. Yar jumped out of our truck. He threw himself against the wall’s face. He started to climb. Confused, Tawas and Mortaza froze and watched. With two of his soldiers behind him, Issaq ran toward us along the ravine. Follow Yar! he screamed, hugging the sheer face, and climbing with his Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. To the summit! To the summit! he grunted.

Up the canyon wall, Mortaza followed Issaq, and I followed Mortaza, pulling my machine gun off its mount and slinging its dead weight across my back. Tawas trailed behind me. His eyes were wide and white, his mouth open. His fear of being left in the ravine gripped him more than his fear of the summit. We pressed against the mountain, clawing and pulling at its sides. The rock became a greater enemy than our ambushers who now shot over us, unable to see down the sheer face of the wall. We tugged at tree roots and perched one-legged on toeholds.

Just beneath the summit, Yar, Issaq, and Mortaza gathered along a small ledge. Issaq shouted down to me: The machine gun! I scrambled up to their perch. Tawas and a few others still climbed beneath us. My panicked heart drilled a hole into my chest. I arrived exhausted. Weakly, I unslung the gun’s heavy weight from my back. My arms drooped as I cradled it. Crammed body to body on the small ledge, Issaq thumbed toward the summit above our heads.

I nodded.

Issaq and Yar bent down. They held Yar’s green bandana and made a stirrup for my feet. I stepped onto it, feeling my knees shake. The
stirrup gave a little under my weight. Yar looked past me to Mortaza, who stood, rifle in hand, ready to summit and charge the guns that fired steady overhead. Mortaza looked back. His eyes were large and white. His mouth was open, just as Tawas’s had been moments before. Yar nodded to Mortaza. He swallowed and nodded back.

Yar and Issaq exploded with their legs, lifting the ends of the bandana I stood on. I reached above my head with the machine gun and, arms extended, barely cleared the top of the ridge. I sprayed wildly, the recoil of the heavy gun knocking me back until I thought I might topple into the ravine.

Under the cover of my shots, Mortaza charged up the cliff. His legs kicked against the steep loose dirt. Just as he summited, Yar and Issaq dropped the ends of the bandana. I slid back down the face of the wall and toppled onto the ledge. The machine gun knocked me on the helmet. It landed, hot at my feet. I looked up and saw Issaq and Yar following after Mortaza. Overhead was the
pop, pop, pop
of rifles and then the hollow
buzz, buzz
of rounds coming back.

I heaved the machine gun across my back and followed Yar and Issaq. The heavy
crump
of a grenade exploded ahead. Dust flew into my face. I scrambled my last few steps and stood on the summit. Quickly it dropped toward the back slope of the ridge. Just where that slope began, a cloud of deep gray smoke rose from the earth.

Once again I pulled the heavy machine gun off my back. I crouched behind a small boulder that, even in a crouch, covered only my chest. I unfolded the machine gun’s bipod and fired into the cloud of smoke,
dunk, dunk, dunk, pause, dunk, dunk, dunk, pause.
I couldn’t see anyone.

A c
rack, hiss
over my head was the only response, but it seemed to come from a distance.

Hold fire! A shout from somewhere in front of me. Issaq? With shaking hands I canted the machine gun toward the sky. The back of
my knuckles grazed its smoking barrel. I smelled the faint odor of my burned skin. One side of my father’s ring had melted nearly flat against my finger. Awash with nerves, I’d felt almost nothing. Farther up the summit, Mortaza sprinted from behind a large boulder. He ran toward the grenade’s gray smoke. It had thinned in the high mountain breeze. He jumped and disappeared into what looked like a hole. From across the summit Yar, Issaq, and Tawas ran toward Mortaza—
pop, pop,
came from where Mortaza disappeared. I ran toward him, too.

We arrived at a small clearing before the reverse slope fell steeply into another ravine. Below us, Mortaza stood in a chest-high trench. It seeped melted mudwater as a gash seeps pus. Piles of rocks had been stacked on the edge to form a parapet. Flopped over the trench’s back lip was a dead man. His brown shalwar kameez was neatly tucked into a cartridge belt with double-wide magazine pouches on each side. He was soaked to his knees, but the rest of him was perfectly composed. The final decoration of his soldier’s costume was a tidy bullet hole lodged in his forehead. A red spot set cleanly between brown eyes of the usual sort, remarkable only in their projection of nothing. Issaq flipped the man over. As neat as the bullet hole was in front, the back of his head was a split mess.

We wandered about the littered ridgeline. Scattered around the trench were blankets, a small plastic jug of diesel, and a tin pot with warm uneaten rice stuck to its sides. A bag of uncooked rice, stamped
USAID,
leaned open against the wall of the trench. Mortaza heaved the bag over to Issaq and scratched at his chin, which bulged underneath his tight helmet strap.

These are our supplies, said Mortaza. How do you think Gazan’s men got them?

I don’t know, said Issaq. I’ll speak to Naseeb.

The dead man’s bolt-action rifle, a Mauser, lay half submerged in
the slit trench. It was beaten and weathered. I picked it up and sighted down its length. Its barrel canted noticeably to the right. Tawas took a piece of bubblegum from his pocket. He chewed it, calming himself. Still breathing hard, he spoke: These fools would have done better to throw rocks.

No wonder they couldn’t hit us, said Mortaza.

I felt a fool for being so afraid during the assault. Whoever ordered this ambush must have known it didn’t stand a chance. I said: These rifles are as bad as what we trained with as recruits.

Issaq grasped the stock of the Mauser and took it from me. There are no bad rifles, he replied, only bad marksmen. A good marksman makes compensations. For him even the bent rifle shoots straight. But these rifles are familiar.

A low rumble erupted behind us, ending our conversation. Tawas stood and pointed to several thick white columns of smoke. He spoke the obvious: Gazan’s mortars punishing Gomal for our shura.

We made our way to the ravine floor. Each of us was very quiet. We were in awe of how reckless it’d been to throw ourselves against the canyon wall. More mortars fell in the village. By the time we climbed down into the ravine, the thick white columns of smoke had become a black haze that drifted into the mountains around us. Gomal had caught fire.

We arrived back at our trucks. The rest of the convoy was lined up and waiting. Commander Sabir stood with his boot planted against our fender. He clapped each of us on the back as we loaded our HiLux. Good hunting! he said. Good hunting by all. And we smiled the way small men do when they satisfy a great one. Our convoy departed and pulled deeper into the mountains, closer to our firebase, to home. I thought perhaps we would go back to Gomal and help them. But we didn’t. I doubt Commander Sabir ever considered it. It was better to let the fires burn.

W
hen Mr. Jack came to our firebase, he came at night. He parked his black HiLux amid our gray ones in the motor pool. Our mechanic knew to wash the truck for him. In the morning, it sat glimmering on the wet gravel. All day we soldiers walked by, each of us finding our reflection in its black door and hood. Mr. Jack spent these days in a special building tucked in the perimeter’s far corner, just a shack really. We caught passing glimpses of those he met with. They looked unimportant, herders who wandered and saw much in their wanderings or elders from far-off border towns. Once or twice I caught sight of Mr. Jack in the day. Always he wore a pair of wraparound sunglasses, their lenses mirrored. Behind them, I imagined his eyes were very blue, the sort I’d seen from afar but never looked into. Once his business was done and before he left, he’d always visit Commander Sabir in his quarters. These visits lasted until late, and we could hear laughter through the walls, the type of late laughter that required a bottle. And this is the way Mr. Jack arrived at night and left at night.

A few days after we returned from our patrol, I spotted Mr. Jack’s HiLux in the motor pool as I walked to breakfast. There was nothing strange in this. What was strange was that Atal’s HiLux was parked next to it. I remembered the way Atal’s limp, oiled hand had felt in mine. The
idea of him meddling in our affairs unsettled me. My mind and stomach churned as I got in line for my meal.