The Kid

Helmand Provines, Afghanistan, late 2006 with the Marines. My job was to go on mounted patrols with them, riding in MRAPs—big armored trucks meant to withstand blasts.

For a while, they worked. Then, the Taliban figured it out. They made bigger bombs.

IEDs were their weapon of choice, the cornerstone of their arsenal. They had only so many explosives, so they had to choose: one big bomb or many small ones.

If the Marines found the big one, it meant a few days of peace before the Taliban built another.

It was a war of patience, of deception. They studied us.

They knew what we were looking for. They knew how to hide things where we wouldn’t think to look.

But the Marines had the Kid.

The man wasn’t a kid. He was older than most Lance Corporals but younger than most Sergeants.

He was small, and at a distance, you’d think he was a teenager. Up close, you saw the lines on his face, the patchy beard.

He could have been 30. He could have been 50.

He didn’t know. He only knew he was born during Ramadan, sometime after the Soviets left, but he couldn’t say for sure.

We met him in the fields by his family’s compound. He walked up when he heard our convoy. He did his best to stare down the convoy.

The Skipper got out, uneasy about stopping but wanting to make an introduction. Hearts and minds.

He gave him a “salaam alaikum.” He didn’t smile, didn’t speak.

The Skipper put out his right hand, and he offered his left. That was an insult.

Left hand. Wiping hand.

The Skipper didn’t take it personally. Just laughed.

He looked at the Lieutenant, measuring. Maybe impressed or worried.

The Skipper gave him a pack of powdered Gatorade. He took it.

A week later, he came to the outpost with a sick toddler. The Corpsman mixed Gatorade with crushed Motrin.

The youngster got better. The Kid took note.

After that–he waited as we rumbled by. He heard the engines.

He ran out to meet us and said something simple, “Wazir Kalei busy today.”

It was understood–busy meant Taliban, meant bombs, meant death. The Marines listened.

For thirty-six days, there were no IEDs. Thirty-six days of the Taliban going mad, trying to figure out how they knew.

Command listened to their radio chatter. They thought the Americans had drones watching them.

They got desperate. Switched to ambushes.

The Marines were ready for those. They hit the Taliban hard.

They lost men. The Marines didn’t.

Then, one day, the convoy turned onto the familiar road and saw something small. Dark and out of place.

The point vehicle called it in. The Lieutenant asked for a better look.

The Lance Corporal in the lead gave the reply. “It’s the Kid.”

“Clarify,” directed the Skipper.

“It’s a kid,” he said again. “His head.”

The Taliban had figured it out. I don’t know how–none of us knew.

It could have been anyone giving them that intel. The villagers talked to the Marines.

The elders. The farmers.

But somehow, they knew. They knew it was the Kid.

Sometimes, I think about it, and I feel guilty, but not over the Kid’s death because I know that without him, we would be dead. And in some twisted, ugly way, that makes the Kid’s death acceptable collateral damage.

Now, if only what’s left of my humanity could believe that.