Walk in My Combat Boots by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: None
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2021-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Ranch House is a remote outpost located in the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan’s Nuristan Province. The building looks like something from a Western—small, the front half made of wood, its backside built into the mountain. The ground is rock and smaller rocks. No dirt. I have no idea how trees can grow out here, but they do.

A guy named Baldwin says, “Deloria, you and Dell are at Post Three. That’s up at the top, about three hundred meters away.” He points to a trail. “You can go straight up this way or you can do the switchbacks. I suggest you use the switchbacks.”

We head up the steep mountain, following the switchback trail as we lug our heavy bags and equipment. The higher altitude starts to get to us. Dell starts throwing up. This is going to be way different from what I had planned in my mind, I think.

Post Three faces the top of the mountain. It consists of a guard tower, and underneath it is our fifteen by fifteen sleeping quarters. The front half of the guard shack looks up the mountain and is level to the ground. The back half provides a small lookout to the north. Two other guys, Dogs and Tennon, who are new to the platoon, will also be sleeping here with us.

There are twenty-two of us here at Ranch House. One squad stays behind while the other goes out on patrol.

The nearby village has no electricity, just donkeys and women slaves. I don’t know what else to call them. Women do all the work while the men sit with each other and smoke what I’m pretty sure is opium.

Before our platoon arrived, some Army engineers built a hydroelectric dam, but it doesn’t power anything because there’s nothing here to power. Besides, these people don’t want or care about electricity or our money or equality. The men are in charge, and they don’t want equal rights because they don’t want to ruin the lives they already have.

It’s our job to persuade everyone we encounter, using our interpreters, to not support the Taliban and to help us. We promise to give them safety. Their question to us is always the same: Are you guys going to be here for the long haul? This is Afghanistan. War is constant, and people are constantly at war.

Over the next two months, I feel like we’re making strides. The village elders are starting to warm up to us. Still, there’s no way to know if they’re telling us the truth or feeding us bullshit.

Everything changes the following month, when propaganda leaflets produced by Hazrat Umar, the one-eyed head of the Taliban, the man who sheltered Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks, flood the village. Al-Qaeda promises to kill anyone in the village seen talking to us.

We go to the village and put on a show to convince everyone that we’ll protect them, keep everyone safe. Kids are walking around grabbing at our shit and asking for stuff. I’m trying to deal with them while paying attention to my sectors of fire when an explosion pops off.

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