great soldier. I’d already seen what torn loyalties and jeal-
ousy could do to the warrior spirit, and I wanted to pro-
tect myself against that.
But for what? My life is now a blade caught in a heavy
knot, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared out of my
mind. I’m fourteen again, and Dad’s telling me that
Mom just died, and I’m worried about how we’ll get
along when she did so much—when she was the person
who held our family together. When I think about going
CO MB AT O P S
3
to prison, I lose my breath. It’s a panic attack, and all I
can do is hide behind sarcasm and belligerence.
Blaisdell, who’s shaking her head at me now, showed
up three hours late with some bullshit excuse about a
deposition running long, and I told her to have a seat at
my little kitchen table so we can talk about saving my
life. She gave me a look. She’s a major with the JAG
corps, probably about my age, thirty-six or so, with rect-
angular glasses that suggest bitch rather than scholar. I
hate her.
Now she lifts her chin and grimaces. “Is that you?”
“What do you mean?”
“That smell . . .”
I scratch at my beard, rake fingers through my crew
cut. All right, I hadn’t bathed in a couple of days, either,
and I’d been growing the beard for the past month.
“You want to wait while I take a shower?”
“Look, Captain, I’m doing this as a favor to Brown’s
sister, but you can hire your own attorney.”
I shake my head. “Before I shipped back home,
Brown told me about some of the other cases you did,
maybe a little similar to mine.”
She sighs deeply. “Not similar. Not as many witnesses.
Some reasonable doubt—the chance that maybe it was
just an accident. Everything I’ve read in your case says
this was hardly an accident.”
“No, it certainly wasn’t.”
“And you understand that you could lose everything
and spend the rest of your life in Leavenworth?”
4
GH OS T RE C O N
I stare back at her, unflinching. “You want a drink? I
mean as in alcohol . . .”
“No. And you shouldn’t have one, either. Because if
you want me to help you, I need to know everything.
The narrative they gave me is their point of view. I need
yours.”
“You don’t even know what unit I work for. They
won’t tell you. They just say D Company, First Battalion,
Fifth Special Forces Group. You ever hear of the Ghosts?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. They want plausible deniability.
Well, they got it, all right, and now I’m the fall guy.”
“You’re not the fall guy. From what I read, no one
forced you to do anything.”
I lower my voice. “I went to a briefing. They showed
me a PowerPoint slide of the situation over there. It was
supposed to illustrate the complexity of our mission.
Somebody said the graph looked like a bowl of spaghetti,
and guys were laughing. But you know what I was
thinking? Nothing. I didn’t care.”
“Why’s that?”
“They gave me a mission, and I tried to put on the
blinders. I went in, and I got the job done. Usually I
never give a crap about the politics. I don’t feed the
machine. I am the machine. But this . . . this wasn’t a
mission. This isn’t a war. It’s an illusion of understand-
ing and control. They think they can color-code it, but
they have no idea what’s going on out there. You need to
stand in the dirt, look around, and realize that it’s
just . . . I don’t even know what the hell it is . . .”
CO MB AT O P S
5
She purses her lips. And now she’s looking at me like
I’m a stereotypical burned-out warrior with a new drink-
ing problem and personal hygiene challenges. Screw her.
“You don’t care what I think, do you?” I ask.
“I’m here to defend you.”
I take a deep breath. “That sounds like an inconve-
nience.”
“Captain, I know where this is coming from, and I’ve
seen it before. You’re angry and upset, but you’d best
not forget that I’m all you’ve got right now.”
“I’ll ask you again, do you think I’m guilty?”
She dismisses my question with a wave. “Start at the
beginning, and I need to record you.” She reaches into
her fancy leather tote bag and produces a small tablet
computer with attached camera that she places on the
table. The camera automatically pivots toward me.
I make a face at the lens, then rise and head toward
the kitchen counter, where my bottle of cheap scotch
awaits. I pour myself a glass and return to the table.
She’s scowling at me and checks her smartphone.
“Oh, I’m sorry if you don’t have the time for this,” I
say, then sip my drink.
“Captain . . .”
“You got any kids?”
She rolls her eyes. “We’re not here to talk about me.”
“I’m just asking you a question.”
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
I grin slightly. “How many?”
“I have two daughters.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are.”
6
GH OS T RE C O N
“Can we get on with this now? I assume you know
about attorney-client privilege? Anything you share
about the mission will remain classified, compartmen-
talized, and confidential, of course.”
I finish my scotch, exhale through the burn, then
narrow my gaze. “Well, I’ll tell you one thing: I am not
a murderer.”
ONE
My target’s name was Mullah Mohammed Zahed, the
Taliban commander in the Zhari district just outside
the city of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. His home-
town, Sangsar, was located in a rural area along the
Arghandab River. The Russians call that place “the heart
of darkness.”
Zhari and its small towns were and still are a crucial
gateway region to Kandahar and also a staging area for
Taliban activity. Commanders often told us that if we
could take Zhari, we’d control Kandahar. I’ve been in
the military long enough to understand the disparity
between wishful thinking and the will of a dedicated
and ruthless insurgency.
But again, we didn’t care about the politics or the
8
GH OS T RE C O N
past or even superstitious Russians. I took my eight-man
team to “the ’Stan,” as we call it, and invested in two
days of recon using our airborne drones complemented
by a local guy feeding us intel from a handful of his
eight thousand neighbors. We picked up enough to jus-
tify a raid on a mud-brick compound we believed was
Zahed’s command post.
“Ghost Lead, this is Ramirez. Jenkins and I are in
position, over.”
“Roger that, buddy,” I responded. “Just hold till the
others check in.”
I had positioned myself in the foothills, shielded by an
outcropping so I could survey the maze of dust-caked
structures through my Cross-Com. The combination
monocle-earpiece fed me data from my teammates as