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328 GH OS T RE CON
“No, you’re history. Count on it!”
I shoved Brown aside and hustled out of the room. I
stormed back to the billet, wrenched up my duffel, and
lifted my voice to the men. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
But we didn’t leave right away. The guys wanted to
pay their last respects to Ramirez, and they all went over
to the hospital and did that. I waited by the Hummer
and found myself in an awkward conversation with
Dr. Anderson.
“So now you go home, and the next Zahed takes
over? We have to start from scratch.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Don’t you even care?”
“I care too much. That’s what’s killing me. That’s
what’s killing us all.”
EPILOGUE
We weren’t ghosts who returned home. We were zombies.
War-torn. Down three men. Feeling little joy in our “mis-
sion completed.” I spoke briefly with each of the men, and
they shared my sentiments.
Colonel Gordon told me that Warris had friends and
relatives in high places, which was why his loyalties
tended to lean toward regular Army operations, even
though he’d chosen a career in Special Forces. In fact,
Gordon said that Warris had even written an article pub-
lished in Soldiers magazine detailing his thoughts about
a dramatic shift in Special Forces operations and mental-
ity, an argument against elitism and what he deemed as
special privileges granted to our operators.
330 GH OS T RE CON
Well, the punk really got a taste of our “special privi-
leges” by spending some time in a hole full of crap.
That’s how we prima do
During one layover, I got a call from Harruck, who
told me Anderson had placed the girls in a good orphan-
age, but then the facility had been raided by Taliban
who said the girls had been raped and that they were all
going to face charges. Hila was, of course, among that
group. Would she spend twenty or more years in jail? I
didn’t know, but Harruck said he had a few ideas. He
then surprised me: “You were wrong about me, Scott.
I’m not a politician. And I’ll prove it to you.”
And then, as we were boarding our final flight back
to Fort Bragg, Gordon called again to tell me the spooks
were going for a charge of murder.
Apparently, Mullah Mohammed Zahed wasn’t just
the Taliban commander in the Zhari district. He was
the warlord leader of a network of men—warlords, Tal-
iban leaders, and corrupt public officials—who were part
of a massive protection racket in the country. It seemed
the United States was paying tens of millions of dollars
to these men to ensure safe passage of supply convoys
throughout the country.
We imported virtually everything we needed: food,
water, fuel, and ammo, and we did most of it by road
through Pakistan or Central Asia to hubs at Bagram air
base north of Kabul and the air base at Kandahar. From
there, local Afghan contractors took over, and the pow-
ers that be thought hiring local security was a brilliant
idea so we could promote entrepreneurship. Indeed, it
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331
had struck me as curious when local Afghan trucks
showed up at the FOB loaded with our military supplies.
I’d assumed the Chinooks had brought in everything,
but I was wrong.
So . . . Zahed was indirectly being paid by the United
States to provide protection to the trucks delivering sup-
plies to our base, even though we were his mortal enemies.
What an opportunist. He had to profit in every way imag-
inable: from our supply lines to each and every improve-
ment we’d made in the village. If he could, he would’ve
been the one to sell us the guns we’d use to kill him!
Gordon said the network was making more than a
million a week by supplying protection. There was a sym-
biotic relationship between the network and the Taliban,
who were being paid not to cause trouble and were also
being employed as guards. Many of the firefights, Gor-
don said, were the result of protection fees being docked
or paid late. The gunfire had nothing to do with purging
the “foreign invaders” from their country. Hell, the
invaders were paying their salaries.
So this was the lovely oasis that Zahed had nurtured.
And there wasn’t a single piece of high-tech weaponry—
no laser-guided bullet, radar, super bomb, nothing—
that would change that. One Ghost unit had taken out a
man. We couldn’t reinvent an entire country.
And then, the final kicker: Gordon had learned that
the CIA was already negotiating with Zahed’s number
two man, Sayid Ulla, who had taken up residence in that
opium palace in Kabul. Pretty much everything Bronco
had told me about the agency’s intentions and desires
332 GH OS T RE CON
had been a lie. And I felt certain that they had supplied
the HER F guns to Zahed’s men and attempted to use
the Chinese as fall guys.
So nothing would change. I’d taken out a thug, but in
a country with very little, thugs were not in short supply.
As I wrote a letter to Joey’s parents, I once again tried
to convince myself that my life, my job, everything . . .
was still worth it, even as murder charges loomed.
I’m sorry to inform you that your son died for nothing
and that this war messed him up so much that he killed
an i
unit.
I typed that twice before I got so mad I slammed shut
the laptop.
If the plane seat could have swallowed me, I would’ve
allowed it. All I could do was throw my head back and
think about how badly they were going to burn me. And
when my mind wasn’t fixated on that, I’d see Shilmani
crying . . . and think about Hila being thrown in a rank
cell . . . and see some yellow-toothed scumbag count
cash handed to him by Bronco.
I reached down under my seat, dug into my carry-on
bag, and produced a letter that had been part of a care
package sent to me by the volunteers of Operation Shoe-
box, a remarkable organization that sent personal care
items, snacks, books, and dozens of other items we all
needed so desperately. The folks even included toys we
could hand out to children during our missions. I’d
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333
never met a soldier who wasn’t smiling as he opened up
one of those packages.
The handwritten letter I’d received was from a
thirteen-year-old boy from Huntsville, Alabama.
Dear Soldier:
My name is James McNurty, Jr., and I want to thank
you very much for serving our country. I know it must be
hard out there for you, but if you take good care of your-