On the flight deck, the pilot edged the throttles forward and we began to move. A few twists and turns later and we were screaming down the runway on the takeoff roll. The aircraft rotated and climbed away at a steep angle. My stomach reacted: I vomited into the O2 mask.
The Hercules continued to climb, leveling off at 10,000 feet. Ten minutes later, the red light began to flash as the ramp came down and the aircraft filled with the roar of its own jet blast and slipstream. I felt a slap on my helmet. From the corner of my right eye, I saw Fester's boots. The sergeant was standing beside me. I didn't think I could move.
I heard Fester scream in my ear, “Get up, mister!” I felt a hand under my armpit, lifting. I stood and swayed while he checked my gear again. “You can do this, sir,” he yelled. “You've trained for it. You've done it.”
I thought for sure my legs were going to crumple beneath me. I took a step and then another, walking backward toward the edge of the ramp, knowing nothing but air lay behind if not this step, then the next.
“You're not fit for this,” said Sergeant Fester over a Heineken in the club.
I didn't reply.
“You might get to where you have to go but then you're going to freeze up.” He looked me straight in the eye, searching for clues. “What do you want me to do about it?”
“Whatever you think you have to do about it.”
Fester didn't answer right away. He thought about it, drank his beer, and thought about it some more. Waiting for enlightenment, I guessed.
“What if I do nothing?” he asked.
“That's an approach.”
“You need to see someone.”
“When the job's done.”
“That's the point, ain't it? What if you can't get the job done?”
Fester had seen the yellow bile bubble out from under my oxy mask and streak my webbing and BDU. He'd seen my hands shake. For a moment up there, my knees had almost caved. I thanked the God of Clean Underwear that He had at least heard my prayer.
Fester said, “Jumping when every part of you says don't takes a lot of guts.” He had another long conversation with his beer before getting back to me. “I'm going to pass you,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “even though you've got a mountain of fear to climb every time you get in a plane.” He ordered another round by pointing his chin at the enlisted man behind the bar. “I'd still get help if I was you.”
“I'll buy a book,” I said.
FORTY
Pakistan was closed to U.S. aircraft. Therefore, the C-17 ferrying me and five U.S. Army engineers into Kandahar, Afghanistan, had to take the long way round. Refueled in flight, we flew nonstop via Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan. I spent most of the flight time grinding my teeth or filling a paper bag on my knees with yellow slime from my stomach. I finally got some fitful sleep but then the plane began its descent, a wild descending corkscrew. I braced myself against the fuselage and waited for the crash. There was a rumor circulating that the local Taliban operating around Kandahar had somehow managed to get their hands on a bunch of late-model Stingers. The C-17 twisted and writhed, either to avoid being shot down by the aforementioned rumor, or because the pilots were a couple of sadists.
A series of rapid explosions erupted, the vibration from them pulsing up through the floor and the fuselage. Keeping time with this, a strobing staccato of white light flickered through the sky outside, close to the aircraft. The pilots had banged off flares and chaff to confuse and divert inbound infrared and radar-guided missiles. Maybe the missile threat was genuine. Whatever, we were thrown around like kids on a fairground ride designed to make people sick. It succeeded. I threw up as usual, along with two of the engineers. With all this puking, I was starting to feel like a bulimic. I glanced at the loadmaster strapped in opposite to get some clues about the wild approach. He was yawning.
The aircraft felt like it was slipping sideways out of the sky as the flaps deployed and a rumble below my feet told me the landing gear was now hanging in the breeze. And then suddenly the aircraft pulled up and the turbines screamed and my earlobes almost kissed my shoulders under the weight of the G-forces driving me down into the seat. There was a massive thump as the tires smacked onto the runway. Thank Christ. Touchdown, Afghanistan.
It was sleeting out on the runway. The icy water stung my face, but I needed the wake-up. I turned my head into the wind and took the punishment for a full minute. Veils of rain and sleet hung below licorice-colored clouds lumbering in from the south. The familiar mass of Zaker Ghar Shomali, a hill away to the northwest, looked like a white roll of sugar. I'd only seen it once before when it was a drab gray-green, the color meat turns when left to the bluebottle flies too long. My hand ached. More snow was on the way. That wasn't so bad. Snow would bury the powdered rock that settled on everything here and blew into ferocious dust storms capable of stripping paint from steel.
I was processed through the APOD, the aerial port of debarkation — the military's version of immigration and arrivals. This was housed within the structure of Kandahar Airport, a series of high, sixties-style egg-shaped arches butted up against each other. The place reminded me of a Wild West wagon train set in a defensive circle, waiting for the Indians to attack, which, given what was going on in Afghanistan, was not an inappropriate metaphor. Neighboring Pakistan had turned its sociological clock back to around the time the Magna Carta was signed, and the Taliban and al Qaeda units were rubbing their hands together with glee because of it. According to various Web sites known to host prime-time decapitations, the coup in Islamabad was an omen from God that the struggle to make everyone's life small, mean, and miserable was destined to succeed.
The APOD was packed, the buildup anounced three months previously still going on. I hoisted my gear over my shoulder and walked over to a big-framed USAF sergeant who was seated behind a desk playing a computer keyboard like it was a baby grand. The group Nickelback was on the comeback trail and their latest track blared through the airport's speaker system. I came up beside the sergeant and saw that he was in the middle of some kind of shoot-'em-up game. “Oh, damn it!” he said when the leg of the character on screen got blown off. He glared up at me, annoyed, like it was my fault. “Sir…?”
I said, “Can you tell me where th—”
“Special Agent Cooper. You're in serious danger of looking like a soldier.”
It was a familiar voice behind me, though not one I'd have considered friendly.
“Hey,” I said, with not a hell of a lot of warmth.
It was Sergeant Butler and Corporal Dortmund. “If you're looking for the welcoming committee, boss, we're it. Good flight?” asked Butler.
“Nope.”
“We're out the front,” he said as he led the way through a swirling sea of brown, desert-patterned DDUs.
I followed.
“Nice to see you again, Mister Cooper,” he said over his shoulder.
“Really,” I said. The conversation had the easy flow of a glacier.
“You seen the dailies, by any chance?” Butler asked.
I wasn't sure what he was talking about. He straightened this out by handing me a folded copy of the Trib. One of the headlines sharing the front page said, Pakistan Announces Bomb Tests. Closes Borders.