Interview with the Devil: Epoch by Harbron Michael

Author:Harbron, Michael
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

12

ENTER SANDMAN

In 2009, a squad of twelve soldiers was positioned north of Kandahar Airfield. It was a recon mission this squad was on, and unbeknownst to them, where they had camped out for the night was the patrol path of a Taliban platoon. If it hadn’t been for Billy Hawthorne, who was outside of Kandahar city, taking pictures in hopes that they’d go well with his latest piece on the war and would earn him a promotion that’d end his long and unlucky streak of wartime correspondence, perhaps that US Army squad would have met their demise. But Hawthorne scoped out the Taliban platoon as it had just left Kandahar, and with the satellite phone the army had issued him for such exact circumstances, he alerted the higher-ups at the Airfield about the oncoming platoon, therefore saving the lives of those twelve soldiers.

One of those soldiers, a private named Thomas ‘Hawk’ Westbrook, would go on to achieve meteoric heights in the US Army over the next decade. Throughout both their careers, Billy and Hawk crossed paths time and again. Never did Hawk forget that if it wasn’t for Billy that night, he’d have been a dead private, and it was because of this eidetic remembrance that he granted him one final favor, the keyword not being favor but final.

After fourteen hours of traveling, switching one C-130 for another, and making his way past the rather rigorous airport security at Baghdad International Airport, Billy had followed the fire some six thousand miles away.

With his luggage (missing his Glock, which he had to give to the pilot of the C-130 for safekeeping) by his feet, he stood at the airport’s entrance, Arabic ringing in his ears in the form of the people arguing with each other and the call to Zuhur prayer resounding from the top of the mosque’s minaret, feeling the familiarity of Middle-Eastern cacophony washing over him, comforting him.

The pilot—who had been made privy to intel by Brigadier Westbrook—had told Billy that a local contact would take him where he needed to go. His name was Abdul-Basit, and he’d be holding up a placard with the name “Mr. Pasha Khan.”

“Why Pasha Khan?”

“Because your Farsi’s not half bad, from what the brigadier tells me,” the pilot said. “Also, you’re going there guised as a Pathan, and they’re the only Indigenous group with skin as white as, you know, Caucasians.”

“I only know a handful of Pashto.”

“That’s more than what most Iraqis know, as you know,” the pilot told him. “You’ll be fine. Just say your salams to anyone who looks your way and wear this.”

The pilot gave him a Peshawari hat with a peacock feather at the front. Putting it on, Billy felt awkward as hell, but given his sunburnt, tired, and grimy face, he felt like he could pull off a passable Pathan impression.

Now, wearing the Peshawari hat, Billy stood remembering the phrases of Arabic that he did know. One such phrase was “La tutlek, ana sahafi,” which translated to, “Don’t shoot, I’m a reporter.

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