Immediately, we see the source of the burning smell. On the far side of the base, a tall column of smoke is rising in a great billowing cloud up toward the sky. The base’s fire trucks are already positioned by the high chain link fence that borders the encampment, and their hoses are jetting arcs of water over the fence onto the small tents and shanti buildings on the other side.
Normally we would have been told to move along the Afghan locals who chose to set up camp right next to the base. Too dangerous to have potential insurgents sleeping on our doorstep, maybe building bombs in their shelters, strapping themselves up with C4, ready to make martyrs of themselves, but these people were all old women and children. Put out of their homes by bombings, they had no one to protect them and nowhere else to go. The Colonel decided it was permissible for them to stay alongside the base for a week until troops could be spared to relocate them somewhere safer, away from the open gunfire and the burning cars in the streets. Right now, it doesn’t look like anyone is going to require relocating, though.
“Holy shit,” Cade says under his breath. “What the fuck?”
What the fuck is right. There were maybe two hundred people here when we went to sleep, at least seventy tents and make shift shelters pitched up twenty feet away from the fence. Now every single one of those tents and shelters are on fire, and there are women dashing around, jaws hanging open, low wailing coming from their mouths as they try to find their friends and loved ones.
“Fuck. You think those assholes came down here and set fire to their own people’s tents? Why the fuck would they do that?” Cade covers his mouth with his hand, frowning at the scene unfolding before his eyes.
A woman stumbles out from a tent close by, howling in pain. She’s on fire, the long material of her clothing engulfed in flames that lick at her body, rising upward as she runs in the direction of the fire trucks. The guys douse her with water, putting the flames out, but she doesn’t stop howling. It’s the most ungodly, terrible thing I’ve ever heard. I won’t be able to free myself of the sights, sounds, and smells of this night for a very, very long time.
The radio I carry on my hip emits a burst of static, which I barely notice. Cade has to take it off my belt and place it in my hand before I realize that Richter, our platoon leader, is barking out orders to me and I haven’t answered him yet.
“—can see your ass from where I’m standing, Squad Leader. Answer your damn radio!”
I hold the radio up to my mouth, still blinking at the fire. At the tents that are on fire. At the people that are on fire. “Yes, sir. Sorry, I hear you. Just a little shocked that the base isn’t in full meltdown right now.”
“That’s what they want. They’re up on the hillside. Patrol saw three or four men up on the ridgeline watching through sniper scopes. They want chaos, and we don’t aim on giving it to them. Go wake up your men.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want those fuckers’ heads on sticks, Duke. Go get ‘em for me.”
“Sir, yes, sir. They’ll never see us coming.”
“That’s what I like to hear.”
The radio falls silent, and Cade and I run back to our tent, less dazed now that we have a purpose. I’m whooping and hollering by the time I tug the flap back and duck inside our billet. “All right, assholes, on your feet! On your feet! On your feet! We got work to do.” Ten bleary-eyed men are suddenly sitting upright in their bunks, moving automatically as they reach for their boots and their gear. They don’t gripe or complain. They’re all so used to this that their bodies function instantaneously, performing rote mechanical movements that were drilled into them back in basic training.
By the time everyone has their kit on and the straps of their M4s slung over their necks, my men are wide away and ready to fuck shit up. They live for this stuff. More often than not, they’re sitting around, trying not to cook in the Afghan heat. Being called out on a mission is the most exciting thing that can happen any day of the week. Being called out on a mission in the middle of the night is even better.