News From the Red Desert (35 page)

Back at the compound, Gul Haqtar and his wife and daughters were washing the bodies of their cousins. He felt remorse like a giant clamp on his chest, for having acceded to the Taliban's request to sleep in his compound, but he told his wife and anyone who would listen that he had no choice. He knew that disaster had come to them. His cousins
had brought the Taliban tea and rice and had asked them many questions. Some of his cousins were contemplating a path that could only have ended with an American bullet in their head. As it did, but so fast, so soon. Little Aqbal was just fifteen years old.

He had sent messages to all of their fathers. When the parents arrived it would be grief like an oil burn.

The next day, General Jackson walked into the SF compound for the first time. The specialist at the gate put his heels together and looked back at his sergeant, who just nodded. They didn't know what to do. For years, the compound had been sovereign SF territory. No one came in here except by invitation. But those were four stars on his hat. Jackson walked up to the duty officer and told him to take him to where Sergeant Foscart was being held. The duty officer, an uneasy captain who had only arrived in theatre that month, tried to phone his battalion commander, but General Jackson interjected, “Now, please, captain.”

Foscart was in one of the shipping containers that were used as temporary holding cells for all but the very hottest part of the year. He sat in a corner. When General Jackson approached his barred window and addressed him, he did not answer at first. The smell of urine and shit was ferocious. An American soldier had never before been held in one of these cells.

“Sergeant Foscart,” the general said again.

The duty officer took out a pad and began recording the conversation.

“I'm not talking to anyone without a lawyer,” Foscart said.

“Sergeant, I'm not going to ask you anything about the incident.”

No response.

“Sergeant, apart from Colonel Matheson, were there any other Americans hurt in this operation?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“Sergeant, is the embed you took with you still out on patrol with your team?”

“Yes.”

“Was she there during the incident?”

“You said you weren't going to ask me about that, sir. I want a lawyer.”

“I don't need to know anything else except whether she was there.”

“She was right there, sir. Right beside me.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.”

It was only now, on the following day, that Lattice spoke to her again.

“You have to cut these guys some slack. They have been here for six years now. They sleep in the field 250 days a year and they are by formal policy denied almost any public recognition at all. You have to understand what they endure.”

She nodded.

“I'm not saying this for my sake.”

“I know, General.”

“Want some more coffee?”

“Sure.”

“We're heading in tomorrow.”

“I thought we were going to be out for another three days.”

“We've fulfilled our mission objectives.”

“Or given it up as impossible, now?”

“Well, there were several applicable mission objectives.”

“Are the men shaken?”

“The men are fine. They would do anything asked of them.”

“Are you?”

“You can write that I am deeply concerned about the mishap of the other day.”

“Mishap?”

“That's what you can write.”

“That ‘Chaos is the core of Mars' talk you gave me is looking pretty prescient to me. Did you have my piece scripted out before we even left KAF?”

“A man's life has been destroyed. I'm not going to joke about it.”

“Twelve men's lives have been ended, actually.”

“I grieve for them all, collectively and individually.”

“Relax, my recorder isn't on.”

“I'll confirm anything I say.”

“I'm just going to call it like I see it, General.”

“I would expect nothing else from you. Write whichever truth you need to.”

He stood up and walked toward his men.

W
hen the helicopter landed at KAF early the next morning, Deirdre walked off onto the tarmac with her bag. She did not speak to anyone. The shit was about to come down and everyone knew it. Lattice disappeared with the soldiers and she was left alone. She headed to her room.

She lay face down on her cot for an hour and then she sat up, went to her little desk and opened her laptop. She began writing. A sadness filled her that she could not contain and she stopped writing for a while. She stood up and picked up a towel and some shampoo. She needed a shower more than she had ever needed anything.

In the steaming fibreglass box, she ruminated, her forehead against the wall of the stall: this was the biggest story she would ever break. It would define the rest of her career. And every word she would write would wound her. Like she was betraying her school, family and country all at once. This was not her. It felt wrong on every level. But it would be written about. There was no changing that. And if she didn't do it, everyone would want to know why. She had to write about it. It wasn't her who decided to shoot those boys. The things that ensued—for Lattice, for ISAF—would not be her doing. The depiction is not the act, the act is the act.

Back in her room, she sat on her chair in her towel looking at the few sentences she had managed. “Not in front of the fucking embed.” Clearly that would be a call-out at the very least. She lifted her hands to the keyboard. She set them back in her lap. Again.

In the café, Mohammed sat at the counter, blinking away sleepiness as Fazil baked cakes. He'd heard the helicopters coming in, but this was not unusual at that time of the day. The night raids sometimes lasted until the following mid-morning, depending on how eventful they had proven to be. There would likely be soldiers in soon, looking for coffee. In the meantime, stillness. He stared out the window and watched as the lady reporter emerged from the airfield fencing and walked up Screaming Eagle Way. She looked tired. Perhaps she had been up all night. She walked more slowly than he had ever seen her walk. Maybe her pack was quite heavy. The things she would see, doing that work, would be difficult, he imagined. YouTube had opened his eyes about those night raids. He would not watch any more of those videos. He would not go to any more of the movies, either.

Rami Issay stirred himself enough to rise in the back and make it heavily to a table. He waved to Mohammed, indicating that he would like a chai. Mohammed paused for a millisecond and then rose to make it. His boss had barely slept. He had been so excited it had been all he could do even to remain in the bed. Eventually, in the swirl of imaginings about moving to California and owning his own bungalow, about the reassessment his wife would make of him, he drifted away briefly. And then he was awake again, to the sound of Fazil sifting flour. If the possibilities in front of him were half as great as he was told they were, then anything could happen. But he had never known insomnia such as this before. Were good things worth worrying about so much? Surely he would not have preferred just mindlessly running the coffee shop, would he?

Sara Miller and Chayse Simpson came through the doors just then, waving at Rami Issay, and then waving harder to indicate he should stay where he was.

“Jack Benson only gets involved in projects that will be big,” Miller said. “I heard he was following our work before I came out here, but something must have caught his attention—probably that footage you sent in of the chess tournament.”

“So what do we have to do before he gets here?”

“Well we should have a modified treatment of ‘Stolen Information' ready to show him, one that emphasizes Issay's appeal. And we should have notes on our show, too.”

“I'd like to talk about that more. I don't know how that non-realistic dramedy/reality idea works.” Simpson winced, internally. That was snider than she'd meant it to be.

“Non-realistic dramedy/reality show? That's perfect. Take it from there. Maybe we cast only soldiers and people who have worked at the café. Maybe we make a complete replica of the café. And then write scripts around that recreated reality. With the carrying device of a pop-culture-worshipping Pakistani Muslim exhorting everyone around him to be more civilized, to understand the momentousness of Lady Gaga and
Glee.
All around him, carnage.”

“He has no idea who Gaga is. He watches a lot of movies he doesn't always understand that well. To the extent that he knows anything, that's what he knows.”

“He can read a script.”

“Grow a beard, whittle up a mallard call.”

“Exactly.”

“That's a lot of work to do in what, two days?”

“That's how it works in the big leagues, my dear. We might not be sleeping very much. Got any cocaine?”

“What?”

“Joking. Anyway, it's ecstasy you kids use these days, isn't it?”

“If we were at an EMF concert in 1996, maybe.”
Shit. That was sharp.

“You're going to go far, Chayse.”

Oh. She likes it.

He met Deirdre at the café, without Fred, at her request.

“Look, I know you have had your problems with him, but I need your advice,” she said. “This piece could mean the end of his career. It could torpedo a possible path to success in this theatre. It could affect thousands of lives.”

“What did he tell you to do?”

“To write whichever truth I needed to.”

“So he was telling you to do your job, basically.”

“I guess.”

“I've known Tom a long time. It's all he wants, for everyone to just do their jobs. As he defines it, admittedly, but that's all he wants.”

“Even if doing my job means wrecking the mission here?”

“He really did sell you on his whole thing, didn't he?”

“No, he didn't.”

“He is a meticulous man. Everything he does is something he has considered and decided to do.”

“You think he arranged the massacre?”

“Don't be an idiot, Deirdre, of course not. But what he said to you, before and after, was thought out. You can count on it.”

“You want him taken down, don't you?”

“No. I think the cult of Special Forces is bad for the army and that assassins, generally, don't pacify countries very well, but I don't want him destroyed. It's okay with me if his wings get clipped, but it doesn't really matter what's okay with me and what isn't. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm sure he didn't know the shooting would occur. But Tom would certainly have known that it could have occurred and he opted to allow you to see that.”

“You think this sort of thing happens often?”

“Who knows? I'm not SF. But I'd say it happens way more for the SF
than for the regular army. Which is another reason to be careful about an expanded role for SF.”

“You really are trying to sink him, aren't you?”

“Deirdre.”

“Fuck you, Jeremy.”

And she stood and left. Everyone in the café had stared at their table-tops and pretended not to listen as they'd craned for every word. Why would a journalist speak with such familiarity to a general?

Just Amachai walked in as General Jackson walked out. She had spent the last half-hour on the telephone telling her parents and her son that she was coming home. She was so happy she had to restrain herself from giggling. Her son had not believed her. Then, when he realized she was serious, he had shrieked, he was so happy. Her parents had been more lukewarm, but she was their favourite daughter, ultimately, and they missed her no matter the money she sent them. Anyway, it was time. They all knew it. She had been abroad for years. Dubai, before here. And before that, Kazakstan. That had been dreadful. She almost came home then.

After she got off the phone she had packed her things. It took about fifteen minutes to fill three duffle bags. She left enough clothes out to wear the next few days. She was going home. It had been as simple as deciding to. She should have done this months ago. Years ago.