The War I Always Wanted by Brandon Friedman Read Free Book Online

middle, passed them in the direction of each corner of the aircraft. It only vaguely resembled a plan, but it was
something
. It looked like this:

    It wasn’t quite the way I’d learned to compose written orders in Army schools, but this was all the guys were gonna get. I figured if we got lit up as soon as we touched down, it wouldn’t matter anyhow.
    Suddenly the intensity of the bird’s vibrations picked up. It lurched forward and I could feel the ground leave us. The bird began to pick up speed and we headed south, toward the Shah-e-Kot Valley and Objective Amy.
    The two Chinooks flew in attack formation, one behind the other, not more than fifty or sixty feet off the ground. As I looked out the rear door, beyond the tail gunner, I could see the second bird fifty or sixty yards behind us. Skimming above the ground, I could see a trail of swirling dust it was leaving in its wake. I looked through the porthole windows and stared across the fast-moving Shomali Plain. On both sides, mountains stood ominously. I felt like they were waiting for us.
    We had been in the air for about twenty minutes when out of the blue the door gunners on either side of the aircraft cut loose with long bursts from their machine guns. My head jerked up, my senses sharpened, and my stomach did a somersault. I looked at one of my grenadiers, a private from Nicaragua named Roger Paguaga. His dark eyes looked like a pair of eight balls.
    I swiveled in the direction of the cockpit and the door gunners as best I could, buried under people and equipment. I started yelling frantically at the guys closest to me to get the door gunner. My arm pumped repeatedly as I signaled what I wanted, my finger aimed at the shooter. My face must have been strained. I wanted to know how close I was to actual failure. The guy closest to the right-side door gunner tapped him and pointed at me. I mouthed at him, “What the fuck was that?”
    He put both hands up to his mouth and called back to me over the roar of the engines, “Test fire . . . that was a test fire!”
    I rolled my eyes. Then I checked to see if I’d pissed myself.
    At over one hundred miles an hour we flew past craggy rocks and snow-filled canyons. As the pilots hugged the terrain, I pondered how much someone would pay to take this trip as a tourist. In places like this, places free of industrialization, the sky is such a deep blue that it almost blackens. At lower elevations I could see green trees. There were browns and whites and blues and blacks and greens. I got tapped on the shoulder. One of my soldiers held up five fingers and mouthed, “Five minutes!” I took a breath and then made the signal for those around me to lock and load. Then I pulled the charging handle back on my own M4 before allowing it to slam forward, chambering a round.
    I stopped thinking about everything. There was nothing else in existence but the roar of the helicopter around me. Nikki no longer existed. My family no longer existed. I had no memories. I had no dreams, no plans for the future. It was all gone—as if the helicopter’s vibrations had liquefied my soul, allowing it to evaporate in the rushing wind that brought combat closer with each passing second. My mind became a pure, blank slate, capable of only repeating a single mantra:
Go left, keep Taylor by your side, keep moving—no matter what. Go left, keep Taylor by your side, keep moving . . .
.
    I felt the helicopter slowing, beginning its hover. It lurched and bucked before coming to rest on the side of a mountain. I still couldn’t hear anything but the whine of the engines and the
whompwhomp
of the rotor blades. Then the tail gunner moved out of the way and I instinctively held my breath. The ramp began to lower, and light flooded the interior of the aircraft.

5
 
Shah-e-Kot Valley,
Afghanistan
    March 2002
    I strained to see over the soldiers in front of me. They were struggling to shuffle off the bird