Outlaw Platoon

HarperCollins Publishers

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

GAME FACES

Speedometer needles touching fifty, Outlaw Platoon'ssix armored Humvees blasted down the Afghan road,trailing plumes of dust that could be seen for miles. In an area thatlacked even a single asphalt highway, this was the best dirt roadwe'd yet encountered. Smoothed and tempered by generations ofpassing travelers, it had no cart tracks to give our shock absorbersa workout, no drifts of desert dust to bog us down. After weeksof cross-country patrols so jarring they knocked fillings loose, ourrun south through the district of Gamal seemed as effortless as takinga lap at Daytona Speedway.

In Afghanistan, we Americans have to adjust our transportationexpectations. We are used to traveling fast. The men of my platoonfavored muscle cars such as GTOs and Mustangs, or suspension liftedpickup trucks. Out here, the terrain rarely allowed us to gomore than fifteen or twenty miles per hour. It was like being stuckin a perpetual school crossing zone.

Today, when we turned onto this unusual stretch of road, ourdrivers capitalized on the opportunity. They grew lead feet andpoured on the coals. The speed felt glorious.

The road bisected a broad valley six hours' drive south of our base atBermel. In this flat, treeless area, the only sign of life we'dseen for miles was patches of rugged plants that had somehowthrived in an environment of extremes: heat and cold, drought andfloods. To our left, a wadi veined through the ancient landscape.Earlier, we had tried to use it to traverse the valley in the hope ofavoiding roadside bombs. As our rigs splashed through the trickleof water at the bottom, Staff Sergeant Phil Baldwin's Humvee sankto its doors in quicksand. So much for that idea.

Steep ridges defined the valley's boundaries. Even without a treeor a bush to give color to their slopes, these spines of the Hindu Kushstill gave refuge to our enemy. They ceded us the low groundwhile they hid out in well-stocked caves that had been in use sincethe Soviet war of the 1980s.

The signs of that war lingered. During this drive south, we'dseen the skeletal remains of villages cratered by Russian bombs. Inthe surviving towns, the locals told us horror stories of the Sovietoccupation. One farmer spoke of watching his son be thrown tothe ground and stomped to death by laughing Red Army troops.After that, his entire village had braved the harsh mountains toescape on foot to a refugee camp in Pakistan.

This was our area of operations, a harsh and barren land whosepeople had known nothing but violence for decades.

I glanced over at my driver and radioman, Specialist Robert Pinholt.We'd been on the road since dawn, and his face was stripedwith dirt and sweat. His helmet rode low over his brow, his uniformand body armor powdered with Afghan dust. The only timewe were ever truly clean was in the shower. When he sensed mygaze, he tore his eyes from the road to steal a quick look at me.

"What, sir?" he asked. His piercing blue eyes stood in contrastto the dull grime on his face. He was a broad-chested twenty-year-oldwith earnest good looks and an engaging smile. If he'd been inoveralls instead of ACUs, he'd have looked like an extra on the setof Green Acres.

He'd been railing about the U.S. Postal Service again, and Icouldn't help but laugh at his passionate hatred for this smallsection of our federal government.

"Pinholt," I said, "I don't understand where all this hostility comes from.""What do you mean, sir? Isn't it obvious? The government'sviolating the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. It has a captive monopolyand can cross subsidize to expand into other business areas,undercutting the private corporations that compete in those areas."Government waste was one of Pinholt's biggest pet peeves. Sofar, he'd managed almost an hour's rant on the post office. I wasimpressed.

"Sir, look: not privatizing the post office is just bad fiscal policy.They've got seventy billion in unfunded liabilities, they're runningbillions in the red every year in a business where everyone else isin the black, and they compete unfairly against UPS and FedEx.""They deliver the fucking mail, Pinholt. My shit gets from pointA to point B quickly, and that's all I care about. What more do youwant?"

He ignored me. "The post office is tax exempt. That's oneadvantage. It is free of SEC reporting requirements. Its accountingprocedures would trigger an IRS investigation in any other Americancorporation. The postmaster can go to the U.S. Treasury andborrow money whenever he wants, at rates no private companycould ever get."

"So?" I asked, goading him. Pinholt had the heart of a warrior,but the mind of an economist. I loved to provoke him, as he usuallyhad very well thought out opinions. Plus, the more I got to knowhim, the more I realized he was a case study in contrasts, and thatintrigued me. He was a Texas native who spoke without an accent.Dallas born and raised, he hated the Cowboys and loved the DonShula–era Dolphins. He was a buttoned-down conservative whodidn't touch liquor, didn't smoke or even drink caffeine, but in hisspare time I'd catch him listening to hippie rock like Phish. He hada thing for opera, too.

"So?" he said in surprise. "Even with all those advantages thepost office is a huge drain on the taxpayers! Even the EuropeanUnion's privatizing their mail delivery. Think about that. All thosesocialist countries are going that route, while we let the federalgovernment mismanage a business that would otherwise makebillions. And those billions would be taxable. Instead of a drain onthe budget, mail delivery could be a revenue enhancer."

With nothing else to do but talk or debate, those long vehicularpatrols were like college road trips with heavy weapons.

We came to a slight bend in the road. "Hey, watch out, Pinholt."I warned. He was drifting a bit again, distracted by our conversation.This happened a lot. "Don't try to kill us twice in one day."That annoyed him, "Come on, sir. That's getting old already.""Hey, you almost drove us off a cliff. You're never going to livethat down."

Earlier that day, we'd had to negotiate a treacherous mountaintrail to get into this valley. It wound down a cliff in a series ofswitchbacks so sharp that our Humvees couldn't take them withoutour drivers executing three-point turns. On one, Pinholt had edgedthe nose of our rig over the cliff, shifted into reverse, and gunnedthe gas. Unfortunately, our rigs had been beaten up by months ofhard use. The transmissions, which had not been designed for allthe weight our armored Humvees now carried, sometimes stuck orjammed. In this case, ours didn't move out of drive. We lurchedforward and almost went over the edge. The rig teetered on thebrink as we all started to scream at Pinholt. I grabbed my gunner,Chris Brown, and yanked him inside the rig out of fear he'd bethrown clear if we did go over. Not that it would have mattered.The valley floor was at least five hundred feet below us.

Truth was, I was impressed by how Pinholt came through in theclutch. He stayed calm, shifted gears again, and waited to hit thegas until he was absolutely certain the transmission was functioningproperly. When he heard a soft thunk as it finally shifted intoreverse, he eased off the brake and backed us away from the brink.We'd been harassing him unmercifully ever since.

"Gettin' old, sir," he said again.

"Tell you what, I'll lay off when you give me my MREs back."Pinholt knew I was a picky eater. Before leaving on patrols, hemade a point to purloin my favorite MREs - meals ready to eat - andhide them, just to get a rise out of me. We'd had a runningbattle for weeks over this.

"I'll think about it, sir."

"You're a hell of a radioman, Pinholt. But I swear to God, youdrive like a blind old lady."

"Awww, sir, cheap!"

The late afternoon sun perched atop the ridge lines, spilling red-goldlight across the valley. We sped along, each Humvee toppedby an armored turret with a heavy weapon mounted inside. Ourfive machine guns and one automatic grenade launcher gave ourgunners ready access to more firepower than any other platoonfrom any other war. Our dads in Vietnam could have used thismuch heat. When combined with the thirty men and six vehicleswe had, Outlaw Platoon possessed muscle, mobility, and numbersto handle almost any challenge. Even if we got in over our heads,we had my radios. With them, I could call in artillery, unleashhelicopter gunships, or target satellite guided bombs on our enemy.In the month since we'd arrived in country, the enemy hadremained elusive and we had yet to encounter them in a stand-upfight. Yet the hills had eyes. I had a nagging sense that we werealways being watched. Studied, really. We were the new kids intown, and they knew enough about the U.S. Army to know thatunits, like people, have their own quirks. Some are disciplined;some are lax. Some are aggressive; some are timid. Until theyfigured us out, they were content to observe. But sooner or later, Iknew they would pick a time and place to give us our first test.The road curved slightly as it followed the lip of the wadi. Aswe came around the bend, I could see our destination rising out ofthe valley floor along the horizon. A hundred and fifty years ago,the British had constructed a redoubt atop a sheer walled mesa thatdominated the entire southern half of the valley. From the base of the mesa,the slate colored cliffs rose almost straight up for a full kilometer beforeflattening to a narrow plateau. The mud walls of the old British fort ranalong the edge of the plateau. Medieval style towers abutted the walls atregular intervals.

This was Bandar, the most important coalition base in the area.It towered over the valley road, affording the soldiers atop it a clearview of the traffic moving below. Because of that, it was a naturalchoke point, one that was virtually impregnable to attack thanksto its thousand meter cliffs. No insurgent force could ever scalethem- hell, not even the Rangers who'd taken Pointe du Hoc onD-Day could have climbed them under fire.

We drew close, and our drivers eased off the gas. We reachedan intersection and turned toward the mesa. The road narrowedand entered the northern cliff face. We could see how long deadBritish engineers had blasted through the sheer rock to build thetrack up to the fort. It would be an impressive feat today, let alonein the 1850s.

"Pinholt," I said as we stared at the steep road ahead.

Before I could continue he interrupted me. "Sir, I know. I know."We stopped, and one of my men jumped out to guide us forward.As we inched along, the clearance between the cliff on oneside and the sheer drop on the other diminished until we barelyhad a meter on either side of us. I would not have even been ableto open my door if I had wanted to. Pinholt stayed on the ball anddid a good job.

The track snaked up the mesa, making regular forty-five degree turns,until we reached the fort's front gate. The original entrancehad been destroyed long before and had been replaced by strandsof concertina wire stretched across a metal framed gate.

A rusted conex box had been placed nearby to give the guards cover fromthe elements. I saw no fighting positions nearby, but in the distancea Soviet-era ZU-23 double-barreled antiaircraft cannon stoodsilhouetted against the twilight sky.

A teenage Afghan Border Policeman (ABP) wearing a green camouflagejacket, khaki pants, and a Chicago Bulls 1990 National Championship capstepped out of the conex to greet us. His AK-47 dangled carelessly at his side.Flecks of rust marred its receiver; the magazine was dinged and scuffed.

Ancient gear, poorly kept. I made a note of that.

Our 'terp, Abdul, spoke a few words to the guard, and he waved usthrough the entrance, pulling the gate open as he eyed us with interest.We rolled into the fort. As we passed the ZU-23, I could see itwas but a rusted hulk. There was no way it could be returned tofiring condition. Hell, it had probably been there since the Reaganera.

Here and there, Afghan Border Policemen stood with theirweapons slung haphazardly. Some smoked home-rolled cigarettes.All of them looked stupefied with boredom. They stared at us aswe passed as if we'd come from a different planet.

Neglect and age had combined to leave the fort in a state ofnear ruin, something we could not detect as we made our approachalong the valley's floor. Now we slid by crumbled guard towers,their wooden frames jutting out of the hardened mud like ancientbones. A few old buildings still had enough walls and roof left tobe used to store equipment and supplies in. The rest of them wereof little use to anyone except, perhaps, military archaeologists. Theouter wall had many gaps, which had been haphazardly screenedwith strands of concertina wire. If it hadn't been for the thousandmeter cliffs, the place would have been a catastrophe waiting tohappen.
(Continues...)Excerpted from Outlaw Platoon by Sean Parnell. Copyright © 2013 by Sean Parnell. Excerpted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
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