Enthusiastic about Ryan’s scheme for supplying complex security systems for the military, Pedro had suggested that, to succeed, he would need one foot in Washington and the other in Silicon Valley, the only place such technology could be developed. Ryan rented an office a ten-minute drive from the Pentagon, which would serve as his head office, packed his scant belongings, and moved with Attila to California. The Uruguayan was waiting for them at the San Francisco airport, prepared to help Ryan—but from the shadows, as his political past was suspect.
Indiana knew some of Ryan’s story; he’d told her how he had been reconciled with his father before his death. But of the mission to Afghanistan, which haunted his nightmares, she knew nothing. There amid the redwood trees of the park, as he watched the chicken cook slowly in the sultry heat, Ryan told her the story of that night. In modern warfare, he explained, most killing is done from a distance; it’s an abstraction, a video game involving no risks, no feelings, in which the victims are faceless. But fighting on the ground is a test of every soldier’s courage and humanity. The all-too-real possibility of dying or sustaining horrific wounds has profound psychological and spiritual consequences—a unique experience, impossible to put into words, something understood only by those who have known that intoxicating combination of fear and elation. “Why do men fight? Because it’s a primal urge as powerful as the survival instinct,” said Ryan. There was nothing to compare to war: once he’d experienced it, everything in civilian life seemed bland. Violence affects not only its victims but those who inflict it. Ryan had been trained to face pain and death, and he had also been trained to kill: he had done it for years, never keeping count, feeling no remorse. He could torture a man, if it was necessary to obtain information—though it made him sick to his stomach, and he preferred to leave that job to others. To kill in the heat of battle or to avenge a friend was one thing: at such moments a soldier does not think, he acts blindly, spurred on by overpowering hatred; his enemy is no longer human. But to look civilians in the eye and kill them, to kill women, children . . . that was a different matter.
In early 2006 intelligence reports had Osama bin Laden hiding in a mountain range on the border with Pakistan, where some al-Qaeda units had regrouped after the American invasion. The region was too vast to search: it was an endless hive of caves, natural tunnels, and barren hills, its tribal peoples united by their faith and a common hatred of Americans. The Navy SEAL teams had already carried out missions in this harsh, dry landscape and suffered significant losses when the enemy combatants used their better knowledge of the terrain to lay ambushes.
How many of these humble goatherds, whose lives had scarcely changed since the time of their biblical ancestors, might in fact be enemy combatants? Which of the mud-colored huts were secret weapons caches? What might these women be hiding beneath their black robes? How much did the children know? Convinced that bin Laden was within reach, the Navy SEALs had been sent on a secret mission to kill him on sight and, if they couldn’t find him, to gather information and prevent the local population from helping him. As always in war, the end justified the means. Why this particular village? Ryan’s job was not to ask why but to follow orders; the legitimacy of the attack was not his concern.
He remembered every detail—he dreamed about it, relived it relentlessly. The SEALs and their dog were advancing stealthily, jaws clenched, each man carrying a hundred pounds of body armor and equipment, including ammunition, water, two days’ food, batteries, bandages, and morphine—to say nothing of his weapons, his helmet equipped with flashlight, camera, and headphones. They were wearing gloves and night-vision goggles. They were the chosen ones, those sent on the most delicate and dangerous missions. They parachuted from helicopters two miles outside the village. Though they could call on air support and troops, right now they were alone. Attila, muzzled and strapped into a harness, had also parachuted, rigid with fear. That jump into thin air was the only thing that terrified him, but the moment he landed he was ready for action.
The enemy could be anywhere: hidden in one of those mud huts, in the mountain caves, or sneaking up behind them. And death could come in many forms—a land mine, a sniper, a suicide bomber with an explosives belt. This was the irony of a war in which the most highly trained army in the world, the devastating might of the most powerful empire in history, was pitted against fundamentalist tribesmen prepared to defend their territory by any means necessary—with stones, if they ran out of bullets. It was David against Goliath. Goliath’s invincible weapons and technology weighed him down like a pack animal, while his enemy was nimble, cunning, and knew the terrain. This was a war of occupation, unsustainable in the long term—it is impossible to subjugate a rebellious population forever. The war on the ground might be won by gunfire, but on a human level it was bound to fail, and both sides knew it. It was just a matter of time. The Americans did their best to avoid collateral damage, because it came at a cost: every civilian death, every ruined house, simply increased the number of enemy combatants and fueled the anger of the local people. The enemy was elusive, invisible, melting into the villages, blending in with shepherds and farmers, driven by a maniacal courage—and Navy SEALs respect courage, even in the enemy.
Ryan moves in front, flanked by Attila. The dog is kitted out with a bulletproof jacket, goggles, headphones for receiving orders, and a camera mounted on his head, streaming images back to base. Attila is still a frisky pup—but when his service harness is strapped on, he becomes an armor-plated, almost mythical beast. He does not panic at gunfire or exploding grenades; he can distinguish between the sound of American weapons and those of the enemy, between the engine of a friendly truck and that of a rescue helicopter. He is trained to detect mines and traps. Attila never strays from Ryan’s side; when the dog senses danger, he presses against the man’s leg as a warning, and if Ryan should fall, Attila will protect him at the cost of his own life. He is one of twenty-eight hundred U.S. military service dogs in the Middle East. Ryan knows that he should not allow himself to be fond of the pup—Attila is a weapon, part of his equipment, but also, and above all, his companion. They can read each other’s minds; they eat together, sleep together. Ryan silently blesses the dog and pats him on the head.
All the muscles in Attila’s body tense—his hackles rise, his snout goes up, and he bares his jagged teeth. He is cannon fodder: he’ll be the first to cross the threshold. He advances cautiously but decisively; the only thing that will stop him now is Ryan’s voice in his headset. Crouching silent and invisible in the shadows, Ryan follows him, hugging his M4 assault rifle, the most versatile close-combat weapon there is. He stops thinking now—he’s poised, his attention focused on the target but still aware of his surroundings. His comrades, he knows, have fanned out around the village for a simultaneous assault. The enemy will hardly know what’s hit them. It must be a lightning raid.
The first house to the south is Ryan’s. He can just make it out in the pale glow of the waning moon: a squat, square hut, mud and stone that merges with the terrain as though it’s grown up out of the ground. A goat bleats somewhere, breaking the silence of the night a second time. Ryan twitches. He thinks he can hear a baby crying, stops ten yards from the door, but silence falls again. He wonders how many terrorists are hiding in this shepherd’s hut. He takes a deep breath, filling his lungs, then signals to the dog, who has been watching attentively, and the two race toward the hut. At exactly the same moment his comrades burst into the village—there are shouts, curses, explosions. Ryan fires a burst at the door and kicks it down. Attila goes in first and waits for instructions, ready to attack. Ryan follows behind, analyzes the situation through his night-vision goggles, gauging the space, the distance between the walls, the ceiling so low he has to crouch. He registers the dirt floor, the brazier, the cooking pots hanging above an unlit stove, three or four wooden stools. It is a one-room hut, and at first glance it seems empty. He shouts in English that nobody should move; at his side Attila growls. Then everythi
ng happens so fast that later he will not be able to piece together the events. At unexpected moments, disparate images will flash into his mind with the force of body blows; over and over he will relive this night in hideous dreams. He will never be able to master it, to come to terms with it.
He shouts again, hears something move behind him, turns, and fires—a burst of gunfire, and a body slumps with a strangled cry. A sudden silence follows the noise, an agonizing pause in which Ryan pulls his goggles onto his forehead and flicks on his flashlight, the beam sweeping the room and coming to rest on the figure on the floor. Attila leaps forward; his jaws snap shut. Ryan moves closer and has to repeat his command before the dog lets go of his prey. He kicks the body, turning it over to make sure it’s dead. A bundle of black rags; the weather-beaten face of an old woman. A grandmother.
Ryan swears under his breath. Collateral damage, he thinks, but he’s not sure: something went wrong. He is about to leave when, out the corner of his eye, he sees something at the other end of the room, hidden in the shadows. He whips round, and in the torchlight sees somebody cowering against the wall. They face each other, just a few feet apart. Ryan barks an order not to move, but the figure jumps up, making a sound a little like a sob, and Ryan catches a glimpse of something, a weapon. He doesn’t stop to think, he pulls the trigger, and his face is spattered with blood as the spray of bullets lifts the enemy off the ground. Ryan stands, waiting, feeling as though he is watching the whole scene in a movie somewhere far away, detached. Then suddenly he is overcome with exhaustion and feels the sweat and the tingling in his skin that comes after an adrenaline rush.
At last, deciding the danger has passed, the Navy SEAL walks over. It is a woman. The bullets missed her face, and he can see she is a young, very beautiful girl, with a mane of dark, undulating hair. Her huge, pale eyes are wide, emphasized by thick black brows and lashes. She is barefoot, wearing a light robe like a nightshirt; next to her hand lies an ordinary kitchen knife. Beneath the bloody robe he sees that her belly is swollen; she is pregnant. The woman looks Ryan in the eye; he can tell she has just moments to live, that there is nothing he can do for her. Her bright eyes mist over. He feels his throat heave, and doubles over, trying not to retch.
It’s barely three minutes since Ryan kicked down the door. He needs to keep moving, to search the rest of the village—but first he has to make sure there’s nobody else in the hut. He hears Attila growl, searches for him with the flashlight, and sees the dog behind the stove, where a little opening leads into a windowless alcove with straw on the ground, a pantry of some kind. There are sides of smoked meat hanging from hooks, a sack of grain—rice or wheat—and a couple of jugs of oil, and some jars of preserved peaches—contraband, probably, as they look like the ones from the mess hall at the American base.
Attila looks ready to pounce, and Ryan orders him to keep back while he scans the rough dirt walls with his flashlight, then scuffs some of the straw away with his foot, realizing that, unlike the rest of the hut, the floor here is not dirt but wooden planks. There could be anything underneath them, he knows, from a weapons cache to a terrorist hideout; he knows he should call for backup before investigating further. But Ryan is nervous, and without quite knowing what he is doing, he gets down on one knee and pries the boards loose with his hand. He doesn’t need to force it, as three planks come away together: a trapdoor.
He jumps to his feet and points his gun down into the hole, convinced there is someone hiding in there, shouts in English for them to get out—there is no response. He moves the beam of light around, finger still on the trigger. And then he sees them. First the girl, with a scarf tied round her head, squeezed tightly into a trench, gazing at him with her mother’s eyes; then the baby she’s holding, maybe one or two years old, sucking on a pacifier. Fuck, fuck, fuck, the soldier murmurs as though praying, and kneels down next to the hole, his chest so tight he can hardly breathe. He can guess that the mother hid her children, telling them to stay still, to keep quiet, while she prepared to defend them all with a blunt kitchen knife.
The Navy SEAL stays on his knees, unable to turn away from the hypnotic gaze of the solemn girl, cradling her brother to her body, protecting him. Ryan has heard all kinds of stories: the enemy is callous; they turn women into suicide bombers; they use children as human shields. By rights he should check to see whether the girl and her brother are blocking the entrance to a tunnel or a weapons store. He should make them climb out of their hideout, but he cannot. Finally he stands up, brings a gloved finger to his lips to tell the girl to keep quiet, closes the trapdoor, covers it with straw again, and, trembling, walks out.
The operation in the Afghan village was a failure, though aside from the American soldiers and the Afghan survivors, nobody ever knew. If that dusty corner of the world had ever harbored a terrorist cell, somebody had warned them in time, and they had managed to dismantle their systems and disappear without a trace. No weapons or explosives were found—but the fact that only elderly people, women, and children were there was considered sufficient to justify the CIA’s suspicions. The attack left four Afghans injured, one seriously, and two dead women in the first hut. Officially, the operation never took place: there was no investigation, and if anybody had asked, the brotherhood of the SEALs would have given a consistent version of events. But nobody did ask. Ryan would have to shoulder the burden of his actions alone. His navy buddies did not need him to explain; they took it for granted he had done what was right in the circumstances, had fired only in self-defense or as a precaution.
“The other men in the unit managed to take the village with a minimum of collateral damage,” Ryan confessed to Indiana. “I was the only one who lost control.”
He knew that war was chaos, that the risks were enormous, that at any moment he could be left wounded, crippled, brain-damaged, that he could die in combat, or be captured, tortured, and executed. He had no illusions about war. He had not joined the navy for the uniform, the weapons, or the glory; it was a vocation. He was prepared to kill or be killed, was proud to serve the most glorious nation in history; his loyalty had never wavered, nor had he ever questioned the orders he’d received or the means employed to secure victory. There was always the risk he might kill civilians: that was inevitable. Half the collateral damage caused in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan came from terrorist attacks, the other half from American fire. Even so, until now the missions assigned to his team had never involved engaging with unarmed women and children.
Ryan had no time to brood about what had happened that night in the village, since his unit was immediately redeployed, this time in Iraq. He pushed the events into the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind and carried on with his life. The girl with the green eyes did not come back to haunt him until a year later, when he came around from the fog of anesthesia in a hospital in Germany and saw her sitting, solemn and silent, cradling her little brother, in a metal chair a few feet from his bed.
Indiana shivered under her poncho as she listened to Ryan in the chill damp of the woods that day. She did not need to ask any questions. As he told the story, she had slipped into the hut behind Ryan and Attila; after they’d left, she had crept into the hole beneath the wooden boards and stayed with the children, hugging them close until the attack was over and the women in the village came and took away the bodies of their mother and their grandmother, until they came and found them and took them from this hideout so they could begin the long process of mourning their dead. Everything happens simultaneously, she thought to herself; time does not exist, there are no limits in space, we are part of the spiritual whole that embraces all the souls of previous incarnations, the spirits of the past and of the future. We are tiny drops in one great ocean, she thought, as she often did during her meditations. She turned toward Ryan, who was sitting on a tree stump next to her and hanging his head, and saw that his cheeks were wet with the rain, or perhaps with tears. She reached out to dry them in a gesture so sad, so tender, that he heaved a
mournful sigh.
“I’m fucked up, Indi, my body and my mind. I don’t deserve anybody’s love, much less yours.”
“If that’s what you believe, then you’re more fucked up than you think, because the only thing that can heal you is love—but you have to let it in. You’re your own worst enemy, Ryan. You need to start by forgiving yourself. If you don’t do that, you’ll always be trapped in the past, hounded by your memories—which are subjective.”
“What I did wasn’t subjective—it was real.”
“You can’t change the things that happened, but you can change the way you see them,” Indiana said.
“I love you so much it hurts, Indi. Hurts me here, right in the center of my body, like I’ve got a gravestone crushing my chest.”
“Love doesn’t hurt, Ryan. What’s crushing you are war wounds, guilt, remorse—all those things you’ve seen and the things you’ve had to do. Nobody comes through something like that unscathed.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Well, first off, we’re going to leave the crows to eat this chicken—it’s as raw now as when we started—and then we’re going to go to bed, and we’re going to make love. That’s always a good idea. I’m freezing, and it’s starting to rain—I need to be in your arms. And then you’re going to stop running, Ryan, because there are some memories you can’t escape: they’ll always catch up with you. You need to make peace with yourself and with the girl with green eyes. Call to her so she can come and listen to your story, ask her to forgive you.”