It had been surgery after surgery over the previous two weeks, each good sign counterbalanced by a setback. His leg wounds kept bleeding, his fever required a cooling blanket, his blood pressure kept spiking, he had acute kidney failure, he was jaundiced, his blood wasn't clotting well. Rob was in such pain, and his body had suffered such severe trauma, that the doctors often kept him sedated. Dena took pleasure in any indication that he was there with her. She hooked up a radio and turned on conservative talk-radio giant Rush Limbaugh's show, Rob's favorite, and he squeezed her hand tightly as they listened-she hoped he was listening, at any rate. "You'll be fine," she would tell him. "You have to keep working on responding to commands. You're a fighter; you're a Ranger. You finished Ranger school when you didn't think you could go on anymore, and you can use that fight in you to get through this." He had two little girls who were waiting to welcome their daddy back, she said. They could still go ahead with all their plans, including the one to buy an RV and follow Eva and Julia to college so their daughters would never be out of their sight....

Dena, her mother, and her mother-in-law did a lot of praying. At one point, the doctor told them that for some "unknown reason," Rob's bilirubin count had come down, which meant that his jaundice was improving-the doctor wasn't sure why. All three women said at the same time, "We know why!" It was the power of prayer, they knew-indeed, they'd been praying specifically for his liver to start working properly. know why!" It was the power of prayer, they knew-indeed, they'd been praying specifically for his liver to start working properly.

Yllescas was supposed to receive skin grafts on his leg wounds on November 24, but the plastic surgeon was concerned that given the condition he was in, the grafts wouldn't take-so instead the doctors did a "purse cinch" on his wounds, threading the tissue and cinching it up to make the wound smaller. The next day, Julia and Eva came to visit. Eva, still a baby, was too physically vulnerable to risk exposure to her dad-who was now suffering from a fungal infection, among other things-but Julia, after hesitating for a second in the hallway, put on her gown and bravely went into his room. She seemed scared of him at first but then gradually warmed to him. It was Daddy, she could see that now. And Rob could see Julia, of this Dena was sure.

After Julia's visit, Rob Yllescas started going downhill fast, as if he'd been waiting to see her before saying good-bye. A CAT scan showed fluid in his left lung and his right leg. His breathing became labored. His temperature rose, and his respiration and heart rate increased.

"Last year, Thanksgiving wasn't good for me because I couldn't eat anything," Dena reminded her husband, referring to the gestational diabetes she'd been diagnosed with in 2007, while carrying Eva. "And this year you you can't eat anything, but next year we will have the best Thanksgiving together with our girls, pigging out!" can't eat anything, but next year we will have the best Thanksgiving together with our girls, pigging out!"

On Friday, November 28, Yllescas's pulse was low, and his blood pressure high. Another CAT scan revealed the presence of a large blood clot in the main part of his brain. His doctors gave Dena a choice: either she could let her husband die a peaceful death, or they could attempt an emergency craniotomy. The odds of his dying on the operating table were high, they said. And even if he did survive, he wasn't likely to have much quality of life.

It was the toughest decision of her life. Rob had told her that he didn't want to be a vegetable. But she couldn't believe that a loving G.o.d would get him this far and then allow him to die or, worse, live out the rest of his life oblivious to the world around him. Dena talked it over with her mother and her in-laws and decided to ask the doctors to perform the craniotomy. She figured the odds had been against Rob's surviving the IED blast, and yet he'd done that, so he would survive this, too, and somehow emerge cognitively sound. G.o.d was working through the doctors, she thought. G.o.d knew that Rob had two little daughters who needed him very much.

In a craniotomy, a neurosurgeon removes a section of the patient's skull in order to access his or her brain. The patient's head is locked into position with a three-pin Mayfield skull clamp that will keep it completely immobile while the delicate procedure is performed. First the surgeon cuts into the patient's head, folds back the skin and muscles, and removes a flap of bone to reveal the brain's protective covering. That covering, named the dura mater, is itself then folded back, exposing the brain. The surgeon can then get to work on trying to correct whatever the problem is-a blood clot, an aneurysm, a tumor, a bullet, or whatever. When that's done, the bone flap is usually put back in place with small t.i.tanium plates and screws, though if the brain swells, that step may be omitted.

During Yllescas's surgery, his wife prayed with a fierce intensity. If he's not going to have any quality of life, G.o.d, please just take him home, she asked.

He survived. When the neurosurgeon cut out the bone flap on the right side of Yllescas's skull, however, his brain bulged out. It shrank somewhat after the blood clot was removed, but the trauma of the surgery caused it to start swelling again, and a small section of it had to be excised so that Yllescas could be closed back up. The surgeon didn't know what repercussions this might have. He wasn't able to restore the bone flap; he said that could be replaced down the line with a t.i.tanium plate.

Dena was informed that there was a 90 percent chance her husband wouldn't make it to the next morning. A crash cart sat in his room all night. But as the first rays of sun crept through the hospital window shades, Rob was still alive. His vital signs and brain-pressure measurements held steady. Dena saw his eyes moving underneath his eyelids. "I hope you understand why I made the decision I did," she told him.

She saw good signs. When the medical team cleaned out his mouth, he clenched his jaw. When his tracheostomy breathing tube was suctioned, he coughed and moved his shoulders. His brain stem is working, she thought. She held on to that. G.o.d got him through the surgery, she said to herself. Why would He do that if He didn't have a plan for Rob?

She heard Julia praying that night. "G.o.d, please heal my daddy so he can wrestle with me," said the little girl.

O Lord, please hear my daughter's prayers, Dena asked. They come from this most innocent of children, whose pa.s.sion and love for her father are unwavering. Lord, please heal my husband. Make him your miracle man. You are the Master Healer.

Two days after his craniectomy, on December 1, Rob Yllescas had a ma.s.sive stroke. Another clot had interrupted the blood flow to his brain. A CAT scan afforded no hope. There was nothing more for Dena Yllescas to hold on to. She decided to let him go. She promised him that she and the girls would be okay.

Captain Robert Yllescas, age thirty-one, was removed from life support and died quickly.

Mazzocchi sat at a picnic table in the dining hall with Chris Safulko, snacking on Pop-Tarts and talking for hours. He offered Safulko some water from the refrigerator that had been completely blown out by the RPG. (Tongue in cheek, they called it Freedom Water.) Meshkin was still on leave, and Pecha was about to take some R&R, which would leave Mazzocchi in charge of the outpost.

Winter was coming, likely meaning a respite from attacks. No longer did the U.S. forces think this was because the enemy was returning to Pakistan; no, they now realized that most of the insurgents were local, even if they did have Taliban leaders from outside of Kamdesh District. The reason for the seasonal break in hostilities, they suspected, was that excessive amounts of snow and ice made it dangerous for the enemy to traverse the mountains to stage serious a.s.saults. They hoped that would be the case this winter, at any rate.

In early November, snow fell on the highest peaks of the surrounding mountains, prompting sighs of relief. Finally, a break, the Americans thought.

A break from attacks, at least-there was still plenty of work to do. The construction quality of the buildings at the outpost was shoddy, and by now every structure leaked. Through the whole winter, soldiers had to set out buckets to catch the drips in nearly every room, then empty them once a day or more-yet another fight just to keep day-to-day operations going. Then, more seriously, the leaders of Blackfoot Troop had to fortify the outpost even further, taking advantage of the bad weather to strengthen fighting positions. This could be accomplished by a few different means, including chopping down surrounding trees and destroying rock outcroppings that the enemy used for cover. Along these same lines, Pecha and his lieutenants decided that they ought to send the insurgents some emphatic messages.

First, if the enemy wanted the outpost, he would have to suffer for it. American troops cleared the entire area around Combat Outpost Keating; if the insurgents tried to breach the wire again, they would have to cross the last fifty to one hundred yards in open terrain, under U.S. fire. Every yard the enemy fighters gained, they would have to bleed for. Second, the American officers would make it understood that the enemy could no longer move freely in the area. Resuming their aggressive patrols, they would show the insurgents that Blackfoot Troop was always watching.

There was also another, more perplexing challenge facing the Americans: they had to reengage with the locals and reunite with the shura. The IED had destroyed both the trust between the two sides and the troops' sense of security. The officers of Blackfoot Troop figured that the locals had decided the Americans weren't so strong after all: if they couldn't secure their own camp, couldn't protect their own commander, how could they make the valley safe for the Kamdeshis?

Although more skeptical about counterinsurgency than those before him, Pecha nevertheless realized that he had to do whatever he could to restore the trust between his men and the local elders. The insurgents had calculated that by killing Yllescas, they could put an end to the progress that 1-91 Cav, and then 6-4, had made in Kamdesh. One of Yllescas's early dreams had been to turn the shura tent at Keating into a heated building so that Blackfoot Troop could host gatherings there during the winter; by the time he was wounded, however, the building was only 80 percent completed. Now, as part of Pecha's version of a counterinsurgency program, Blackfoot Troop would finish it. The Americans bought the inn where Amin Shir had been found and tore it down; the materials were salvaged to finish the heated shura building. Doc Brewer opened the doors of the aid station, welcoming locals in need of medical care. Mazzocchi, as Pecha's XO, placed orders with headquarters for as many humanitarian-a.s.sistance supplies as could be spared. In some ways, the men could never match their earlier efforts, haunted as they were by what had happened to their former commander-yet they were determined to keep trying.

On the night of December 1, First Sergeant Johnson came into the plans room, where all of the officers were a.s.sembled.

"Captain Yllescas pa.s.sed," he said. Everyone fell silent. Within a few minutes, they all went their separate ways, to their bunks or out into the dark.

Kaine Meshkin was home on leave in Fort Hood, Texas, when he got the news.

Dena Yllescas requested that he escort her late husband's body from Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland to the funeral in Nebraska. Meshkin immediately agreed, and the Pentagon arranged for him to serve as an escort officer, which required official training in the position's duties and obligations.

The night after he attended the training, Meshkin was sitting at his kitchen table with his wife, Ali, as they went over the details of how each of them would get to Nebraska. He was aware that he had become emotionally numb in Afghanistan. Over there, there wasn't any point in giving in to sorrow or depression, or at least it had seemed that way at the time. Those emotions-as opposed to, say, anger-just weren't practical in an environment in which you had to worry constantly about your own and your comrades' survival. Self-pity could get you killed.

But being back in Texas with Ali and their friends had brought all those pent-up emotions to the fore. Right there at the kitchen table, looking at the handbook detailing his duties as an escort officer for Yllescas's corpse, Meshkin broke down sobbing. He wept uncontrollably, in a way he hadn't done since college, when his mother died of cancer. That had been different, though: that time, he'd felt not only grief but also relief that his mother would no longer be in pain. This was something else. In this moment, all of his pain, frustration, sorrow, anger, and desire for vengeance had finally boiled to the surface.

"I don't know what's wrong with me," he told Ali as his body heaved.

The next day, he flew to Washington, D.C., and was taken to the funeral home where Yllescas's corpse lay. Meshkin was supposed to verify that his former commander's uniform had been put on properly and that he was wearing the right medals and ribbons. He wasn't prepared for what he saw. The morticians were doing everything they could to make Yllescas presentable, but there were clear limits to what they could accomplish. It was the darkest and most solemn moment of the war for Kaine Meshkin. It didn't make any sense, but, enraged and heartbroken, he was seized by a sudden desire to hurt the morticians who were messing with Yllescas's body. I want to beat the s.h.i.t out of these guys, he thought-though again, he didn't understand why.

Meshkin made sure the captain's uniform, ribbons, and awards were correct. Afterward, he was driven to a hotel and instructed not to drink any alcohol. He'd be picked up in the morning.

Stay cooped up by myself in a hotel, after seeing Rob that way? Meshkin thought. Are you f.u.c.king kidding kidding me? me?

He went to an Irish pub and drank-a lot-then stumbled back to his hotel and pa.s.sed out. He woke up the next morning and went to the funeral home to stay with Yllescas until they boarded the small plane designed especially for escort flights. Meshkin sat up near the c.o.c.kpit, right next to his friend's casket. Upon landing in Nebraska, he tried to prepare Dena Yllescas for what she was about to see at the funeral home. Her husband's body had deteriorated badly, he told her. Dena insisted on seeing Rob anyway. Afterward, she agreed with Meshkin that an open casket wouldn't be a good idea.

Rob Yllescas was laid to rest at the back end of the Osceola Cemetery, in a peaceful spot near a cornfield. He'd come home.

The view of Upper Kamdesh from Observation Post Fritsche. (Photo courtesy of Rick Victorino) (Photo courtesy of Rick Victorino)

Soon after Yllescas's funeral, Meshkin returned to the Kamdesh Valley, where it turned out that this winter, in contrast to the previous two, the enemy had decided not not to take a vacation. The insurgents didn't stage any major attacks on Camp Keating but instead mainly lobbed hara.s.sment rounds from a distance: small-arms fire, RPGs, an occasional blast from an ant.i.tank PTRD (most likely the same one from October 25). Still, this was a change for the worse. to take a vacation. The insurgents didn't stage any major attacks on Camp Keating but instead mainly lobbed hara.s.sment rounds from a distance: small-arms fire, RPGs, an occasional blast from an ant.i.tank PTRD (most likely the same one from October 25). Still, this was a change for the worse.

In accordance with a not-unusual custom whereby officers rotate their responsibilities, Lieutenants Meshkin and Mazzocchi switched jobs, Meshkin becoming the XO while Mazzocchi took control of Red Platoon.

In his new role, Mazzocchi led a patrol to the Northface to try to locate and kill the enemy RPG team that had been firing on the camp from the north. No dice-they didn't find it. Meshkin greeted the platoon upon its return, wanting to talk to his colleague about where the enemy team might be shooting from. As the two lieutenants were speaking, Meshkin saw a puff of smoke from the mountain and heard the launch of an RPG. He cringed. The rocket flew about a foot over their heads and detonated on a HEs...o...b..rrier right behind them. The blast was deafening. Mazzocchi was knocked unconscious. Meshkin had taken cover-instinctively, he supposed-and now began firing toward the area where he'd seen the smoke. His head felt as if it'd been walloped by a baseball bat; all he could hear was a high-pitched ringing in his right ear. In a state of mental disarray, he emptied a magazine to the north, but the enemy had already escaped behind a ridge. He would have headaches and a ringing in his ear for more than a year afterward.

In December 2008, at Fort Carson, Colorado, Colonel Randy George and Lieutenant Colonel Brad Brown were preparing for the following summer, when they were scheduled to a.s.sume control of an area of operations in eastern Afghanistan that included Combat Outpost Keating. More precisely, they were planning to close the outpost.

In six months, George would replace Spiszer, and Brown would take over for Markert. George commanded the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division; Brown was in charge of the 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment-or "3-61 Cav"-which was part of George's brigade.

For months, Brown had been reaching out via email to Markert and Kolenda, asking for guidance. Markert recommended that the 3-61 Cav troops practice shooting moving targets on a hill up to seven hundred yards above them; shooting uphill and downhill; and adjusting their aim points-all skills that were critical to surviving at Camp Keating. Make those targets move quickly, Markert wrote. You wouldn't believe how fast the enemy here is.

Kolenda offered similar advice. The mountains are brutal, he noted, and you're in Colorado, so take advantage. Everyone should be able to run twelve miles in full gear in less than four hours. And five miles without gear in forty minutes. That will give the men a foundation, at least, for what awaits them in Nuristan. And pick up a copy of Robertson's 1896 volume The Kafirs of the Hindu Kush, The Kafirs of the Hindu Kush, Kolenda added. Kolenda added.

But beyond the practical preparation, there were bigger issues that Brown just couldn't wrap his head around, the same ones that had flummoxed nearly everyone who'd had anything at all to do with Combat Outpost Keating. The outpost had been put near the road because the troops would need it for travel and resupply, but by 2007, road collapses and frequent ambushes had altered that plan, rendering Camp Keating completely dependent on helicopters for transportation and supply runs. Indeed, the outpost was named after an officer whose very death had highlighted just how unusable the roads were.

It was a familiar chorus, and for George, it was merely a different verse from the same dreadful songbook. The energy invested in counterinsurgency had been extensive, but George didn't think the results had been proportional. The United States had gotten itself in the middle of a variety of blood, land, and tribal feuds, Brown believed, and the government of Afghanistan itself had very little, if any, interest in making serious efforts in that region. The insurgency was actually gaining gaining strength, especially in the remote rural areas of eastern Afghanistan. According to one U.S. Army tabulation, the yearly number of attacks against the combat outposts in Kamdesh District had risen dramatically since their establishment, from a few dozen in 2006 (though the United States was there for only part of that year), to 109 in 2007, to 136 by the end of 2008. strength, especially in the remote rural areas of eastern Afghanistan. According to one U.S. Army tabulation, the yearly number of attacks against the combat outposts in Kamdesh District had risen dramatically since their establishment, from a few dozen in 2006 (though the United States was there for only part of that year), to 109 in 2007, to 136 by the end of 2008.

As George and Brown came to see it, the Army was committing an inordinate number of troops to try to secure a relatively small percentage of the Afghan population. Moreover, the particular ethos of Kamdesh District in Nuristan Province and the Korangal Valley in Kunar Province-with their geographical isolation, traditional local hostilities, and lack of any real Afghan government presence-meant that the Americans were more irritant than balm to the locals, and more incitement than deterrent to the enemy. Finally, providing air support and making resupply runs for those outposts and observation posts took up time that choppers and their pilots might otherwise be spending on missions in parts of the country more vital to the overall U.S. aims.

Colonel George sent a number of his noncommissioned officers to the outposts so they could see for themselves why they needed to push their soldiers to be fit and able to shoot, move, and communicate in difficult mountainous terrain. This fight would be quite different from what the brigade had gone through during its fifteen-month deployment to Baghdad during the surge. George and Brown, for their part, paid their first visit to Combat Outpost Keating on Sat.u.r.day, December 6, 2008-the same day the brigade held a memorial service for Yllescas. The leadership of Blackfoot Troop objected to the memorial's being held on the day of the week when the enemy was likeliest to attack, but headquarters insisted.

Once on the ground, George and Brown got out of the bird and looked up and around at the steep mountains-just as Kyle Marc.u.m and virtually everyone else who had been at the outpost over the past two and a half years had done on first arriving.

"What the h.e.l.l h.e.l.l are they doing here?" George asked. are they doing here?" George asked.

"I don't know," Brown replied.

CHAPTER 24

The Puppies

Pecha returned from leave in mid-January. He, Meshkin, and Mazzocchi were sitting on the small enclosed deck right off the aid station, smoking cigars, when a sniper's bullet pa.s.sed right between them and knocked out a light above Mazzocchi's head. That they had been targeted there suggested to them that locals were telling insurgents that the deck was a good place at which to randomly fire, that American soldiers often hung out there. Or maybe the enemy had just seen the cigar smoke.

Either way, for Pecha, the bullet was yet another reminder that he had to try to improve relations with the locals-a challenge, since the elders from the Kamdesh shura had begun offering excuse after excuse for not visiting Camp Keating: "So-and-so is too old to make the walk," they would say, or "That one doesn't have any shoes," or "The weather is bad." Meanwhile, the outpost continued to provide a significant amount of humanitarian a.s.sistance to local villages-blankets, jackets, shoes, and food-and the "Radio Kamdesh" idea was finally starting to come together. Taliban propagandists had been airing clandestine radio broadcasts warning locals that the Americans were planning to kill innocent people, steal their land, and kidnap their children. The enemy radio hosts would stay up all night singing the poetry of jihad; Safulko called these recitations Taliban death jams. Victorino suspected that the broadcasts originated in Kamdesh Village itself, from hand-held radios, the transmissions carrying throughout the area because the village was at such a high elevation. The Americans wanted to mount a counterinformation campaign in Kamdesh District, and to that end, Master Sergeant Ryan Bodmer, a U.S. Army Reserves civil-affairs NCO, was posted to Combat Outpost Keating from the PRT in Kala Gush to oversee the project.

With Markert's support, Bodmer had $130,000 worth of equipment, including a thirty-foot radio tower, shipped to Camp Keating. The goal was to broadcast news and miscellaneous music. Just as Dennis Sugrue of 3-71 Cav had done to promote Radio Naray, Bodmer made sure to distribute hundreds of small, Chinese-made hand-cranked transistor radios to the local populace. The locals, as they did with the humanitarian aid, bickered over the gifts.

At the White House, on January 23, a newly inaugurated President Barack Obama made his way to the Situation Room to talk about Afghanistan.

The commander of international forces in Afghanistan, General McKiernan, had an outstanding request for thirty thousand additional U.S. troops. While the new president had campaigned on the promise to withdraw American soldiers from Iraq, he had pledged to send more more men-at least ten thousand, or two brigades' worth-to Afghanistan. But Obama was reluctant to send more troops there without taking a harder look at the overall plan for that war, which he regarded as a mess lacking a clear strategy. During his presidential transition, one of President Bush's top advisers on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, had briefed the president-elect with a PowerPoint presentation that frankly spelled out for him that there was no strategy in Afghanistan that anyone could either articulate or achieve. men-at least ten thousand, or two brigades' worth-to Afghanistan. But Obama was reluctant to send more troops there without taking a harder look at the overall plan for that war, which he regarded as a mess lacking a clear strategy. During his presidential transition, one of President Bush's top advisers on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Army Lieutenant General Douglas Lute, had briefed the president-elect with a PowerPoint presentation that frankly spelled out for him that there was no strategy in Afghanistan that anyone could either articulate or achieve.61 There were some thirty-six thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan already, and the president wasn't about to grant McKiernan's request and nearly double that number without undertaking a more comprehensive review of what the United States was doing there-and why this war was in its eighth year, with no end in sight. There were some thirty-six thousand U.S. troops in Afghanistan already, and the president wasn't about to grant McKiernan's request and nearly double that number without undertaking a more comprehensive review of what the United States was doing there-and why this war was in its eighth year, with no end in sight.

Having impressively advanced through the ranks, General David Petraeus, leader of the group that had rewritten the Army's counterinsurgency manual, published in 2006, now headed U.S. Central Command, covering the twenty countries that comprised the European, Pacific, and African commands, including Afghanistan. Petraeus wanted the president to send in more troops and put even more emphasis on counterinsurgency in the Afghanistan war. He was backed in this call by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.62 Almost a month later, President Obama announced that he would commit an additional seventeen thousand U.S. troops to Afghanistan. "The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda supports the insurgency and threatens America from its safe haven along the Pakistani border," he explained. The president said he would be sending a brigade of Marines and a brigade of Army troops "to meet urgent security needs." He meanwhile asked a former CIA official and National Security Council staffer named Bruce Riedel to conduct a sixty-day review of the war and its strategy. The previous year, Riedel had published a book ent.i.tled The Search for Al Qaeda, The Search for Al Qaeda, in which he suggested that the real threat lay in Pakistan. in which he suggested that the real threat lay in Pakistan.

Another issue was percolating beyond McKiernan's troop request, and that was McKiernan himself. Mullen and Robert Gates, Obama's (and Bush's) secretary of defense, both had doubts about his leadership and wondered if he was really the right man for the job. To them he seemed too cautious and conventional.

Radio Kamdesh, once it was up and running, featured clerics who preached messages of peace and decried the other voices on the airwaves that were rallying locals to attack Americans. Similar monologues were delivered by the local Afghan National Police chief and ANA commander. After President Obama announced the surge of troops to Afghanistan, the Americans co-opted the information and began broadcasting the falsehood that all of the nearly twenty thousand new troops were headed straight for Kamdesh District. (The other broadcasts reaching the valley, from BBC and Voice of America, never specified where, precisely, the U.S. soldiers were to be posted.) The insurgents pulled back from the area around Combat Outpost Keating for a few weeks, until it became obvious that two new brigades weren't being squeezed in to the modest camp.

Forty-four elders came to Camp Keating on February 15 to learn more about Radio Kamdesh and to discuss other topics. They represented all four settlements in Kamdesh Village, plus Mirdesh, Urmul, and Agro. The elders from Paprok couldn't make it due to poor road conditions. The Mandigal elders weren't there, either; the consensus seemed to be that they were protesting the shura because Afghan security forces had killed two insurgents from their village, one of whom had been detained the previous summer for distributing pamphlets near Urmul on how to make bombs. (Yllescas had released him after the Mandigal elders promised to monitor him and keep him out of trouble. They hadn't done either of those things, apparently: according to several Nuristanis, the man had constantly peppered the main entrance to Combat Outpost Keating with small-arms fire.) During the shura itself, ANA Commander Jawed compared the elders from Mandigal to the thugs from Tora Bora. Anayatullah, the district administrator for Kamdesh, talked up the Americans' new radio station and its benefits for the area. Anyone who wanted to be a journalist, he said, would be welcome to travel around and collect information for broadcasts, with the shura a.s.suming responsibility for correspondents' safety. No matter what issue was brought up during this meeting, the discussion always got snagged in the thicket of security and its insufficiency-as, for example, when Gul Mohammed Khan asked why the Afghan government had promised to bring wheat to their district but then stopped in Barikot.

"The driver would not drive all the way into Kamdesh District due to the security issues," Anayatullah replied.

"There were supposed to be forty-five hundred blankets for Kamdesh District," another elder noted. "Where have they gone?"

"You have to trust us," Anayatullah said. "There were three hundred and thirty blankets, but they were unable to bring them because there were illegal checkpoints past Barikot. The shura needs to do more to provide security."

"Security is the government's responsibility," Abdul Rahman protested. "Providing it is the job of the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Army."

Anayatullah insisted that he had brought up the matter of security within Kamdesh District several times with the new governor of Nuristan,63 Jamaluddin Badr, and promised that he would send Governor Badr yet another letter requesting a.s.sistance. Jamaluddin Badr, and promised that he would send Governor Badr yet another letter requesting a.s.sistance.

"All the other districts have electricity, hospitals, and roads," noted Afghan National Police commander Jalil. "We need to come together for construction in Kamdesh District."

The next day, at a meeting that Camp Keating hosted for all the contractors, Anayatullah spoke bluntly. "Security has been bad in Kamdesh for many years now," he said. "As contractors, you were aware of that when you took on these projects, so you need to stop using it as an excuse for why the projects are not getting done. From now on, you should factor in the cost of hiring security guards before you submit bids. And stop lying about how close the projects are to completion." Kyle Tucker, in charge of development funds for Combat Outpost Keating, informed the seventeen contractors present that they would need to finish the projects they were currently working on before they could be awarded any new contracts.

"You are the most important part of the development of Afghanistan," Pecha told them. "You need to take pride in what you're doing. Even the smallest projects are very important."

Important, maybe, but also endangered. Tucker had looked into the nearly three million dollars that had been committed to projects in Kamdesh District, and the report that he and Pecha wrote up worked its way up the chain of command. Spiszer and Markert decided the money had to stop flying out the door. As Spiszer saw it, 1-91 Cav had initiated these projects without having any means of performing proper oversight or inspections-or any power at all, really, to hold a contractor accountable after the first payment was made. (Then, too, the undermanned 6-4 Cav was at a disadvantage in having less combat strength than 1-91 Cav, hence less ability to get out to the villages to check up on projects.) In any case, the new civilian-affairs team at Forward Operating Base Bostick believed that Tucker should cancel every project outright until the violence stopped.

Tucker pushed back against that notion; he remained convinced that the projects could be used as important bargaining chips. He and Pecha did, however, cancel some projects, and for good reason. The contractors on the Bar Mandigal secondary-road project, for example, were reportedly working for the Taliban; they also rubbed Tucker the wrong way, and besides that, they hadn't done any work. Their total fee would have been $407,197, of which $50,000 had already been paid out. Project canceled. Another contractor had been hired to build a pipe system in Chapo-north of Urmul and up the road toward Barg-e-Matal-to help irrigate the fields there. He had collected $17,000 out of $27,552, but Tucker never saw or heard from him. Canceled. Same problem with the contractor in charge of the pipe project in Sudgul: $11,000 already paid out of $27,552, but no contact with Tucker. Canceled. A micro-hydroelectric plant in Sudgul: $35,000 paid out on a $67,560 contract. Canceled.

Many projects were far enough away, and in areas where security was sufficiently sketchy, that Tucker simply had no direct knowledge of whether or not they were real. He hired a local man with a video camera to drive out to the Marwai secondary road-$118,692.24 paid, in full, for its construction-and doc.u.ment its existence. The man did that and was paid for his time, though Tucker never felt 100 percent sure that the video wasn't of some other, already existing road.

The Americans had spent $19,000 on refurbishing the Kamdesh boys' school, that money having been used to build chairs and desks for the students and to repair the building itself. But then one day Tucker heard that the Taliban had taken over the school and raised their signature white flag over it. So he canceled payment on the remaining $6,000 owed to Mohammed, the contractor.

"We're paying for this school, and you're letting the bad guys live there," he scolded Mohammed.

"We can't control them," the contractor protested. "They have guns! What can we do?"

"Okay," Tucker said. "We'll come in with our our guns." guns."

"Oh, no," a shocked Mohammed replied, "we don't want you coming into our village with all your guns."

The next time Tucker checked, the flag had been removed. The shura tried to make a big deal out of this, but Tucker wasn't buying it; it wasn't as if the Taliban had abandoned Kamdesh, after all. He imagined the head of the shura telling the Taliban, "The Americans are mad that your flag is up, and they want to cancel the project. Take it down so we can continue to get paid, and we'll give you a slice of the pie."

The Kamdesh girls' school was a whole other box of frustrations. Out of a $25,200 commitment by the United States, $9,200 had already been paid, but Tucker wasn't sure that any girls in the region even went went to school, given how dedicated the entire female population of Nuristan was to manual labor. The lieutenant sent his quality-control engineer, a local Afghan, to visit the project after receiving reports that the Taliban had blown up the building. The Afghan confirmed that there was a large hole in the roof. "Why are we repairing this if they're never going to use it?" Tucker asked. Project canceled. to school, given how dedicated the entire female population of Nuristan was to manual labor. The lieutenant sent his quality-control engineer, a local Afghan, to visit the project after receiving reports that the Taliban had blown up the building. The Afghan confirmed that there was a large hole in the roof. "Why are we repairing this if they're never going to use it?" Tucker asked. Project canceled.

Besides canceling nine projects, Tucker also saw five completed while he was in charge. Thirteen others could charitably be considered, well, continual works-in-progress. A total of $1,233,159.66 had been paid out to contractors by end of Tucker's tour, but there was also a big sum-$1,093,835.40-left unpaid, cash allocated but not disbursed for terminated projects. This annoyed a lot of contractors and villagers. Tucker knew that with American money no longer coming in, some of them would have little incentive to care whether or not the American soldiers were safe. Even worse, some would find work with the insurgency. Tucker tried to leave on good terms with everyone, but he walked away from some of these Nuristanis thinking that things in the valley would almost surely get worse before they got better.

The litter of puppies Cali had birthed in the summer of 2008 had matured into a pack of aggressive beasts, and the antipathy between them and the Nuristanis had grown apace. The dogs provided the U.S. troops with companionship and boosted their morale, as well as offering an added measure of security, but they regularly terrified the locals, barked at Nuristani contractors and security guards, and clamped their jaws around the necks of goats and sheep. Blackfoot Troop's "pets" also attracted other feral curs from the area.

Gulzaman, the head Afghan Security Guard at Observation Post Fritsche, had a house in Kamdesh, but he would often bring his oldest son, Hasanyullah, with him to stay at the observation post. Sometimes he would even entrust Hasanyullah, who was around eight, to the care of Lieutenant Chris Safulko and his troops while he went off on some errand or other. The kid would come to Safulko's hooch, sit on his cot, and browse through American magazines. His presence in itself showed that Gulzaman had a level of trust in the Americans that was not insignificant at this precarious time in the valley.

And then, for some reason, Cali started snarling at the boy.

It started off modestly: a growl here and there, a baring of teeth. But then it quickly devolved into outright hostility toward the boy, who began cowering in Cali's presence. Sergeant First Cla.s.s Dominic Curry talked it over with Staff Sergeant Ian Boone, and the two of them shared their conclusions with Safulko: they couldn't have this anymore. Cali was causing a huge disruption in an important relationship. And the problem wasn't only with Hasanyullah; every day required the Americans to do some sort of damage control after Cali and another snarling pooch named Willie Pete growled and barked at one or another of the day laborers on the observation post. Sure, the Nuristanis gave as good as they got, throwing rocks at and even kicking the dogs, but the dynamic was becoming increasingly tense.

Safulko agreed that they couldn't allow Cali to attack and bite Hasanyullah before they acted. So soon after their discussion, one of the sergeants approached Willie Pete, who was gnawing on a goat bone he had found in the trash, and shot him in the head. Then he walked over to Cali, who was at the landing zone. Boom, Boom, he killed her, too. he killed her, too.

Many of the troops were upset, but as far as Safulko was concerned, he hadn't had any choice in the matter. It would be great if we could all spend our days hanging out, cooking steaks, and playing with dogs, he thought, but we're soldiers in Afghanistan, we're not on a f.u.c.king camping trip.

In March, the enemy mortars returned. Tucker, working out the math based on time of flight and a.n.a.lyses of craters freshly formed at Combat Outpost Keating, developed a general idea of where the enemy was likely firing from: Lower Kamdesh. Several days were spent hunting for the tube, with troops sitting on the Northface and waiting for the mortars to fly so they could try to pinpoint the exact location for counterfire. But the mortars never came.

After Mazzocchi returned from leave in March, he and Red Platoon moved up to Observation Post Fritsche, where he sent word to the Kamdesh elders: Talk to us. But they wouldn't accept the invitation, so Mazzocchi asked Pecha if he could threaten the shura with a warning along the lines of, If you don't come here and talk to us, we're eventually going to find the enemy mortar tube and blast it away, and if anyone from Kamdesh gets hurt, the blood will be on your hands. Do it, Pecha said. So Mazzocchi conveyed that message to a Kamdeshi whom the troops referred to as "Skinny" Gul Mohammed, one of whose sons was suspected of being an insurgent. The Kamdesh elders never turned over the mortar tube, but neither did Blackfoot Troop ever receive fire from it again.

Mazzocchi deemed this a great victory-and one accomplished, moreover, by means of words, not weapons. Then, a week later, enemy mortars started hitting Camp Lowell. The insurgents had just moved the tube down the road.

By this point, Pecha had become convinced that the Hundred-Man Shura was impotent and perhaps even a bit corrupt. Adding to the Americans' general unease was the fact that the new ANA troops who'd arrived in February were green and weak; indeed, the whole Afghan battalion, spread out across Nuristan and Kunar Provinces, seemed incompetent. Intensely frustrated by their limited manpower, Pecha and his lieutenants brainstormed ways to secure the area: Mazzocchi increased the number of joint patrols with the ANA from Observation Post Fritsche, while Pecha worked more closely with the Afghan National Police, in whom he had more faith than he did in the ANA. Neither effort sufficed, however, and attacks on the camp continued. Pecha had been hoping that there might be an influx of U.S. soldiers to Kamdesh as part of President Obama's new troop surge, but no additional forces were forthcoming.

Pecha then gathered his platoon leaders and sergeants and proposed that they set up a new, permanent observation post on the Northface, to be named after Captain Rob Yllescas. They would put eight to ten U.S. troops there, along with four or five ANA soldiers. It would make life safer for all of them, Pecha was convinced. His commanders were not so sure. Lieutenant Colonel Markert had concerns about, first, the addition of yet another target for the enemy, and second, the squadron's ability to haul up enough supplies to create a new OP Yllescas. The idea was officially shot down when Colonel Spiszer visited Camp Keating: Pecha just didn't have enough troop strength to man another observation post, he said. Spiszer had also heard that back in Colorado, their replacements were already making plans to close down the base in any event.

From the moment the officers of Blackfoot Troop first heard about the attack at Wanat, in which a huge group of insurgents had surprised and overwhelmed a much smaller American force, they'd sworn they would do everything they could to avoid suffering the same fate-a vow that was repeated at most of the more modest outposts scattered throughout the region. But then, on May 1, Markert called Pecha with some bad news: it had happened again.

Early that morning, a force of up to one hundred insurgents had surrounded, attacked, and overrun Combat Outpost Bari Alai,64 a recently established Afghan National Army camp in Kunar Province. Three American troops, two coalition troops, four ANA soldiers, and an Afghan interpreter had been killed. Markert, worried that the enemy might try to capitalize on this event by launching another overwhelming attack on a different remote outpost, recommended that Pecha limit not only the number of patrols outside the wire at both Keating and Fritsche but also the distance those patrols were allowed to range from their home base. In response, Pecha staggered his patrols so that there would never be one from Camp Keating out at the same time as one from Observation Post Fritsche. He immediately ordered more troops to stand guard, relying on a pattern-a.n.a.lysis wheel that Victorino had created to provide some predictive guidance about when attacks were most likely to occur.-(Thursday, it seemed, was the next-most-volatile day after Sat.u.r.day.) a recently established Afghan National Army camp in Kunar Province. Three American troops, two coalition troops, four ANA soldiers, and an Afghan interpreter had been killed. Markert, worried that the enemy might try to capitalize on this event by launching another overwhelming attack on a different remote outpost, recommended that Pecha limit not only the number of patrols outside the wire at both Keating and Fritsche but also the distance those patrols were allowed to range from their home base. In response, Pecha staggered his patrols so that there would never be one from Camp Keating out at the same time as one from Observation Post Fritsche. He immediately ordered more troops to stand guard, relying on a pattern-a.n.a.lysis wheel that Victorino had created to provide some predictive guidance about when attacks were most likely to occur.-(Thursday, it seemed, was the next-most-volatile day after Sat.u.r.day.) What happened at Bari Alai was alarming enough in and of itself, but soon the Americans also began to wonder if there might not be something more sinister to the story-specifically, complicity on the part of Afghan soldiers. The account of the actual attack was all too familiar, beginning with dozens of insurgents' staging a well-coordinated a.s.sault on the outpost. An RPG killed Staff Sergeant William Vile, an ANA trainer. (The ANA trainers at Bari Alai were members of the U.S. Army, the Michigan National Guard, and the Latvian Army.) The other two Americans killed at the camp65 were hit by another well-placed RPG that breached the wall and caused a secondary explosion, destroying a bunker; one of the two men was also shot at close range. Two soldiers from Latvia were killed as well, and a third Latvian was severely wounded, while a fourth experienced severe psychological trauma. were hit by another well-placed RPG that breached the wall and caused a secondary explosion, destroying a bunker; one of the two men was also shot at close range. Two soldiers from Latvia were killed as well, and a third Latvian was severely wounded, while a fourth experienced severe psychological trauma.

But what was different and confusing about this particular incident was that the Taliban, in an unusual move, took prisoner eleven ANA soldiers and a second interpreter. A dozen Afghans-that was a lot of POWs for this war. It seemed suspicious to the Americans. And there were other puzzling aspects, too, starting with the fact that Combat Outpost Bari Alai sat on the top of a mountain and therefore wasn't easy to overrun. Some U.S. officers speculated that there might have been some collusion-that perhaps the "captured" Afghan troops had aided the insurgents. This was a new ANA platoon, and one of the three U.S. soldiers killed that day, James Pirtle, had expressed concern about the Afghan soldiers to his parents. They were insubordinate, he said; they sneaked off the base at night and didn't stay at their guard posts. Other reports indicated that when their superior officers tried to push them to do their jobs, the ANA troops pushed back.