Part 24 (1/2)

s.h.i.+r also added that he actually did know someone in the area by the name of Hamid,58 a laborer who worked at Camp Keating. Walker asked Sergeant First Cla.s.s Shawn Worrell, who was in charge of the day laborers, if he knew a Hamid. Worrell said yes, and he went off to find him. Walker then had s.h.i.+r blindfolded and brought Hamid in to see him. ”Do you know this man?” he asked him. a laborer who worked at Camp Keating. Walker asked Sergeant First Cla.s.s Shawn Worrell, who was in charge of the day laborers, if he knew a Hamid. Worrell said yes, and he went off to find him. Walker then had s.h.i.+r blindfolded and brought Hamid in to see him. ”Do you know this man?” he asked him.

”I've never seen him before in my life,” Hamid said.

Walker handed Amin s.h.i.+r over to the ANA soldiers, who put him in a cell while the intel specialist contacted his chain of command to commence the process of taking an Afghan detainee into an American holding facility. Then he went back to ask Worrell if he could talk to Hamid again. ”Of course,” Worrell said. But it turned out that Hamid was no longer at the outpost: he had vanished and was gone forever.

Walker eventually theorized that s.h.i.+r had come to Urmul and linked up with Hamid three days before he set the explosive. At some point, Hamid described Yllescas to him. The day before the attack, s.h.i.+r was seen loitering on the concrete bridge near the entrance to Camp Keating (not an uncommon practice for locals), where he confirmed Yllescas's ident.i.ty by his headscarf, body size, stature, and gait. That night, with the moon at low illumination, s.h.i.+r crouched by the northern side of the landing zone and then walked around to the wooden bridge.

Based on the size of the area destroyed, and judging from the firsthand accounts of the soldiers who had witnessed the blast, the IED might have contained ten pounds of explosive material. Walker speculated that s.h.i.+r might have been able to store an IED that small in his pocket, and that when he took it out by the northern side of the landing zone, his voter ID also fell out. It was dark enough that he didn't notice it.

This was all theory, circ.u.mstantially b.u.t.tressed by some eyewitness accounts, but Walker became entirely convinced that Amin s.h.i.+r had targeted for a.s.sa.s.sination the man who'd become the greatest threat to the insurgents' influence in Kamdesh.

It was noon in Killeen, Texas, when Dena Yllescas's cell phone rang. She had just finished nursing their baby girl, Eva.

It was the rear detachment notification captain calling. ”Your husband has been injured,” he said.

For some reason, Dena didn't believe him. She thought he was joking. ”Are you serious?” she asked.

”Yes, I'm serious.”

He began giving Dena some phone numbers. She was numb, and her hand was shaking. ”Rob was. .h.i.t by an IED,” he told her. He was in critical condition at Bagram Air Force Base. She was stunned. She hadn't even known there were were IEDs in that part of Afghanistan. The captain began listing her husband's injuries, a litany that seemed never-ending and that caused Dena to deeply desire that he shut up: she didn't want to know. IEDs in that part of Afghanistan. The captain began listing her husband's injuries, a litany that seemed never-ending and that caused Dena to deeply desire that he shut up: she didn't want to know.

Within hours, Dena's home was overflowing with friends who had heard the news. Another friend had picked up Rob and Dena's daughter Julia from school and taken her to play with her own kids. Dena's sister-in-law Angie had meanwhile volunteered to fly to Texas from Nebraska to get Julia and Eva and bring them back to her home, where she would take care of them while Dena went to be with Rob, wherever that ended up being.

When Julia finally got home, Dena pulled her into her bedroom. ”Daddy's been hurt,” she told her. ”But doctors are taking very good care of him. We need to say lots of prayers for him.”

Lieutenant Colonel Markert called Dena a couple of times that day to give her updates and answer any questions she might have. At about 11:30 p.m. in Texas, he called again, and she asked him if she could speak with the doctor who was caring for her husband. ”I'll have him call you as soon as he can,” Markert said.

On the first night that Amin s.h.i.+r was being held at Camp Keating, Mazzocchi went to talk to an angry Commander Jawed, who felt responsible for what had happened.

”I'm going to avenge Yllescas,” Jawed bitterly declared, ”by drowning s.h.i.+r in the river.”

Mazzocchi told him to calm down. ”Shedding more blood won't accomplish anything,” he said. ”We should honor Yllescas by trying to pursue our goals in the valley just as he did.”

Jawed remained upset, however, and he insisted on talking to s.h.i.+r. Mazzocchi accompanied him to make sure he didn't do anything stupid. He was also curious to see what Jawed might get out of the man. Most U.S. Army soldiers-Mazzocchi included-were prohibited from directly questioning enemy prisoners of war.

After Jawed had finished yelling at the prisoner, Mazzocchi fed him questions to ask s.h.i.+r: ”Why did you do it? Was it because you wanted to defend the valley? Was it because you wanted to defend your family? Why?”

”I don't have any money,” Amin s.h.i.+r said. ”They paid me a lot of money for one day's work. I just wanted to make some money.”

”Who paid you?” Jawed asked him.

s.h.i.+r paused.

”Bad people from the Mandigal shura,” he said.

So s.h.i.+r wasn't an insurgent mastermind-he was just a dumb kid trying to make a little cash in a land of scant opportunity. Hobbes had been proven right yet again.

Shortly after midnight, the surgeon called Dena Yllescas. ”How much detail do you want?” he asked.

Everything, she told him. Her imagination had been getting the best of her.

Rob Yllescas had arrived at Bagram approximately four hours after the explosion, he said. He had already had his third surgery. His right leg had been amputated just below the knee, and his left leg had been taken off at the knee. He also had a fracture in his left femur, at the hip. More information came in the next day: Rob was in stable condition and would be flown that day to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, and from there to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Markert called and told Dena that some of his colleagues had seen him and said he looked 100 percent better. When Dena explained to Julia that they'd be staying at Walter Reed for a while, the seven-year-old said, ”That means daddy has an injury.” Julia seemed to connect Walter Reed with Yllescas's friend Ryan, who had been injured in Iraq, spent time at Walter Reed, and had an arm and a leg amputated.

”Yes, Daddy has had an injury,” Dena said.

”Did Daddy's legs get chopped off?” Julia asked.

”Yes, baby,” Dena told her. ”Daddy lost his legs, but he is still Daddy, and he loves you very, very much.”

Tears welled up in Julia's eyes. ”Is Daddy still going to be able to wrestle with me?” she asked.

”Yes, baby,” Dena said, ”he will be able to do all of the things he used to do with you. But it will take a while before he can do them again.”

Julia thought for a second.

”But Mommy, Eva won't know Daddy,” she said.

”You mean, she won't know him without his legs?” Dena asked.

”Yes, Mommy.”

”Baby, Eva won't know any different, and Daddy will love you both just like he did before,” Dena said. ”You know how Ryan has a metal leg? Well, Daddy will have two metal legs.”

Julia scrunched up her face. ”Well, I'll be painting those legs peach,” she declared.

The mood at the outpost was bleak. Feelings of rage, sorrow, loathing, xenophobia, inadequacy, depression-every possible emotion came over the men of Blackfoot Troop. Everyone knew that the best-case scenario was that Yllescas would lose both legs, and that the worst-case scenario was far more probable. Members of Task Force Paladin, formed to combat the growing threat of IEDs, flew in from Bagram. The newcomers transferred Amin s.h.i.+r to Forward Operating Base Bostick and then to the detainee holding center at Bagram.59 The day after the attack on Yllescas, Mazzocchi and Meshkin demanded to meet with the Kamdesh shura; there were a lot of questions that the elders needed to answer, they thought. The elders said they were too scared to come to Camp Keating, but eventually a large group of locals met with the Americans at the Afghan National Police station in Urmul.

Meshkin and Mazzocchi took the lead: What was going on in Kamdesh? Who had organized the attack? Why hadn't the Americans been warned?

The elders said they were sorry the attack had occurred, but they insisted they had no information to share, and the more they were pressed, the quieter they got. To Mazzocchi, their response was telling-an admission of guilt. They clearly had had known that something was going to happen and hadn't done anything to stop it, but they also wanted to make sure they would keep receiving development funds. known that something was going to happen and hadn't done anything to stop it, but they also wanted to make sure they would keep receiving development funds.

”Captain Yllescas had been calling for you to meet with us for weeks,” Tucker said. ”It's comical to me that you have agreed to come down here only now that something bad has happened. As of now, all projects are on hold. We give you all this money and get nothing in return. We know you have the ability to stop the violence, the madness, the chaos. But you don't care! And if you you don't care, it makes it hard for don't care, it makes it hard for us us to care.” to care.”

One of the elders from the Mandigal shura, an ancient man with a thick white beard, had been staring right into Tucker's eyes as he spoke. Tucker could feel his piercing glare; the old man was looking at him with an expression that seemed to him to be saying, Look at this stupid f.u.c.king kid yelling at us. The twenty-four-year-old lieutenant could only imagine the war and poverty that had marked this man's life, only guess how little he must care about being barked at by some young pup in yet another occupier's foreign tongue.

”We're here for only a short time,” Tucker said. ”Then we're going to return to America, where we have happy lives-where our roads are paved, our children go to school, and our police protect us. You, however, will continue to struggle with violence, as will your children and their children. If you want to make a difference, let us know. We're here to help.”

The Americans left Urmul and returned to the outpost.

At 7:30 in the morning at Camp Blessing, in Kunar Province, Captain Dan Pecha was summoned to the operations center to answer a call from Major Keith Rautter, the brigade chief of operations back in Jalalabad.

”You've got two hours to pack up all your gear,” Rautter told him. ”The chopper's on the way.”

The thirty-three-year-old Pecha, an a.s.sistant operations officer with the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry, had been waiting for his opportunity to command a company, likely somewhere in Kunar Province. His wait was over, but he wouldn't be in Kunar. Before lunchtime, Pecha was at Forward Operating Base Bostick, meeting with Markert to talk about his new job: he was moving to 6-4 Cav to command Blackfoot Troop at Combat Outpost Keating.