The Summer House

Chapter 88 Afghanistan

I switch off my Iridium phone and put it back in my rucksack. Chief Warrant Officer Cellucci is standing to the right of the Little Bird helicopter and waves me forward. It’s windy out on the airstrip, hitting us with dust and gravel.

“No answer, Major?”

“None,” I say, walking to him as best as I can without my cane, rucksack in my right hand. I’m dressed in a dark-green flight suit, carrying an oversized crash helmet in my left hand.

He shrugs. “Happens sometimes, the signals don’t go through. Cosmic rays, sunspots — the atmospherics around here are pretty strange. Here, I’ll take your bag.”

Cellucci grabs it with little effort, tosses it into the rear, which is used for storage. I go to climb in and hesitate, my left leg screaming at me how stupid this is, and then Cellucci says, “Here you go.”

He grabs two fistfuls of my flight-suit fabric and pushes me in, the fabric from the one-piece suit jamming into a very sensitive area, and I sit down in the small, tight canvas seat. Cellucci helps strap me in and then walks around the bubble-glass front, eases himself into the pilot’s seat.

“Put your helmet on. Let’s get the comm set up so we can chat with each other.”

He helps me put the borrowed helmet on, adjusts the mic in front, hooks up the communications cable. I feel like I’m being put into a carnival ride by some smug traveling carnie who secretly hopes I piss myself when the ride ends.

After he buckles himself in, Cellucci starts working the switches, and I try to take it all in. There’s a control stick in front of me, with an identical one in front of Cellucci. Large pedals are on the floor, and I keep my feet away from them. Between us is a large console with a square screen and round dials, and I think I recognize a compass, and that’s about it.

Cellucci adjusts something, and his voice crackles through the helmet’s earphones. “Hear me, Major?”

I adjust the mic in front of my mouth and say, “Just fine, Chief.”

“Good,” he says. Overhead the engine starts to whine, and he says, “Okay, quick safety demo before we get airborne. If we’re up there and I get hit or disabled, so you’re the only one conscious, this is what you’re going to do. Okay? Pay attention.”

Earlier I was warm in my borrowed flight suit, but now I’m near shivering with apprehension. “Paying attention, Chief.”

“Good,” he says. “If I’m slumped over and you can’t revive me, and we’re heading to the ground, you unsnap your harness, here, here, and here” — he slaps at my torso — “and slip off your helmet quick as you can, and do your best to kiss your ass good-bye before we hit.”

He laughs and maneuvers the control stick in front of him, the collective control by his seat, and working the pedals, he lifts us off from FOB Chadwick.

I’ve flown other times in helicopters — military and NYPD — and they are Cadillacs compared to the Little Bird, which feels like a Volkswagen Beetle with helicopter blades overhead. Cellucci turns another dial, and I can hear him broadcast. “Tower, this is November Sierra Four,” he says. “Clear for departure to the south?”

“Roger that, November Sierra Four,” comes the female voice of the airstrip’s flight controller. “You are clear.”

He takes us up, and my stomach does a few loop-de-loops, for in front of us is a huge Plexiglas bubble, which gives me the feeling that at any moment I could slide out of my seat and break through the window. The fading afternoon sunlight flickers overhead, from the spinning blades casting shadows over the curved bubble. The control stick in front of me moves whenever Cellucci moves his stick.

I swallow twice and look at Cellucci, who smiles at my discomfort and gives me a thumbs-up.

“Doing all right, Major?” he asks, voice strong and confident through the earphones.

I swallow again. “Chief, I know you’re an elite flier. The Army knows you’re an elite flier, and so does everyone else in the Night Stalkers. Just a favor, all right?”

“What’s that, Major?”

I say, “Please don’t feel like you have to prove anything to me. Let’s just skip that step.”

A laugh comes through. “Roger that, Major.”

It doesn’t take long for us to leave the flat plain that holds the city of Khost and FOB Chadwick. The southern part of the Hindu Kush range, separating Afghanistan from Pakistan, rises straight up before us, left to right, huge stony peaks riven with valleys and ravines containing trees and small forests. Twice I spot a small village, stone and brick homes built on the steep slopes of the lower range.

“Pretty remote down there, ain’t it?” Cellucci says.

“It looks like the ends of the earth.”

He says, “Maybe so, but there are eyes on us down there, tracking us. Right now cell phones and handheld radios are ringing in every direction for about fifteen or twenty klicks, saying the Americans are coming.”

“You ever get shot at?”

“All the time, Major, all the time,” he says. “But usually we’re moving too fast. The T-men love to track the Chinooks and hit them when they’re landing or taking off. That’s one of the good things about the Little Birds.”

Higher and higher we go, my ears popping, and Cellucci says, “This is the God’s honest truth, Major, but last year I inserted a team into a real remote and deep valley, the kind of place where it looks like you have to pipe in the sunshine, and the villagers there, they thought we were the Russians. Can you believe that?”

I say, “Must be true if you say it. Could have been worse, though.”

“How?”

“They could have thought you were British.”

That earns me a laugh from my pilot as we continue to climb into the ragged mountains.

In less than fifteen minutes Cellucci tilts us as he turns to the left, and he says, “Okay, Major, there it is. OP Conrad, straight ahead.”

I look and see just a flat peak with tumbled rocks, stunted trees, and brush.

“Where?”

“You’ll see, soon enough,” he says, and then he starts transmitting, and I hear his voice. “Oscar Papa Charlie, this is November Sierra Four, November Sierra Four. Do you copy?”

The helicopter starts to descend.

“Oscar Papa Charlie, this is November Sierra Four, inbound. Do you copy?”

I think I see shapes appear.

Then a satellite dish. Another one. A set of antennas.

A cleared, rocky space, about half the size of a basketball court.

“Oscar Papa Charlie, November Sierra Four calling. We are inbound. Do you copy?”

I say, “Doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”

“Oh, they’re home all right,” Cellucci says. “But maybe they’re too busy to chat. Okay, Major, unsnap your straps, drop your crash helmet, get ready to hop out. I’ll be back in twenty.”

It feels like a cold fist has just punched my gut. “You’re not staying with me?”

He curses. “Are you nuts? How long do you think me and my Little Bird will last if I stay up there, like a goddamn fly on a tabletop? The muj will start dropping in mortar rounds in about ninety seconds.”

The rocky surface rushes up.

“Nope,” he goes on. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes to pick you up, head back to the FOB. Hope you can get your business done in that amount of time. You got a gold pass for one round trip, and that’s it.”

I tense up because at our rate of descent, my mind is screaming at me that we’re going to crash, but being the expert he is, Chief Cellucci works the controls and flares us up, the twin landing skids barely touching the ground.

He slaps me on the shoulder. “Go! Get the hell moving before I get a mortar round in my lap!”

I get the straps and buckles undone, reach behind me, get my rucksack, open the side door, and toss the rucksack out. I take off the borrowed crash helmet and shift and drop to the ground — making sure I land on my good leg — and I close my eyes and hold my breath as I’m engulfed in a whirling cloud of dust and kicked-up small rocks.

With a humming roar, the Little Bird lifts off and then dips into a ravine, until all I hear is the dimming noise of the engine. Then it pops back into view, and I spot Cellucci as he hugs the contours of the nearest ridge, waggling back and forth, like he finally wants to show off.

Fair enough.

I grab my rucksack and start toward the hidden bunkers of OP Conrad. I notice faded white PVC tubes stuck in the dirt — homemade urinals — and there is netting hanging up, and dirt berms, and HESCO barriers, made of metal webbing and about the size of large freezers, filled with rocks and dirt. There are antennas and satellite dishes, and one, then two, then four men emerge from a dirt entrance, like spelunkers coming up after being lost for a month.

“Hey,” I say.

The four men come closer, and now I understand why Cellucci couldn’t raise the outpost’s radio.

The four men are wiry, tall, bearded, and wearing the traditional sandals, cotton pants, sheepskin vests, and flat wool hats of Afghan villagers.

And fighters. All are carrying AK-47s, with belts and pouches around their skinny waists.

With horror, I realize that at some recent point the Taliban must have overrun this place. I drop my rucksack on the ground, hold out my hands — I have my service weapon holstered at my side, but going for it would be an instant death sentence — and I say, “Hey, does anyone—”

The closest one yells something I don’t understand and then hits me in the stomach with the butt of his AK-47.