The First Stone Read online

  Those admitted to the field hospital in Camp Bastion receive no visitors. Once they’re healed—as healed as they can be with missing limbs, empty eye sockets, or half-burned-off faces—no one comes to get them. They are driven into the Green Zone and dropped off. Some of them receive a laminated card that states, in Pashto, that they have to come to rehab at the field hospital or that the possibility exists to procure them an artificial limb. They never show up.

  A week after the regrettable incident in front of the clinic, everyone is sure that the last Afghans are out of the camp. Any left must be dead by now.

  The soldiers discuss what happens to a body in the desert heat. It’s October and fortunately not as hot as it gets in the summer months—but still thirty-five degrees Celsius. Do they rot or just dry up?

  After another week, they find the bodies of a woman and two small children lying in the lee behind a stack of sandbags set up in front of the HESCO barriers. During the storm, the sand drifted over them like a dune, burying them without ceremony. Not even the slightest elevation in the terrain hints that they found their final resting place here. So many unpleasant rumors are already swirling among the locals about the events at camp that a few more bodies won’t make any difference. To deliver three corpses after the fact, when the rules for Muslim burials are long since violated, won’t help international relations.

  They decide instead to investigate whether more bodies are hiding around camp. A dog would be perfect for that job, but neither the Danes nor the Brits have any dogs right now; also, it’s inadvisable to request one from home, with the requisite dog trainer, as they don’t want to draw too much attention to the whole affair.

  The American Special Forces, who have a more open, anarchist company than the British and Danish soldiers, keep a dog in their area. They’ve adopted a golden-brown Afghan mutt of indeterminate breed. They feed him a diet of raw beef and cornflakes with milk, giving him a shiny coat—but he’s as undisciplined as the day he arrived at camp. Encouraging pats and cheers have replaced the kicks and stones the dog knew in his former life, and he no longer cowers. They’ve named him Sparky, and he’s transferred only after long negotiations.

  Sparky receives a collar and harness and, on a tight leash, is led around the camp’s outer edges to sniff out dead Afghans. Most of the time the dog struggles to break free of his harness. Eventually he buries his nose in the sand and lets out a howl, resulting in energetic but futile digging from the troops.

  Adam and Sylvester, along with Joakim and Jannick, accompany the dog. No one enjoys the task, and they start to direct their discomfort at Sparky, who, in their eyes, represents everything wrong with the situation, including the role played by the Americans.

  By late in the afternoon they’re so tired of the dog that they don’t even want to react when, howling, he starts digging in yet another pile of gravel. When Sparky finally lifts his sand-covered head with something hanging from his jaw, they wake up. Growling, the dog draws back with a half-decomposed child’s arm hanging from his teeth.

  As the excited dog pulls on his leash, Joakim—staring at the arm as if he simply can’t understand what he’s looking at—releases his grip. Sparky races off with his booty. A little ways off, he stops as if waiting for them. As they approach, he shakes his head and sets off again. A few minutes later they manage to corner the dog, who seems to think it’s all a game. With his face contorted in disgust, Joakim starts beating Sparky with his shovel. Whimpering, the dog yields to the blows, as if his previous cowed self has taken over again, knowing all along that being the object of endless beatings is his true destiny.

  “Joakim!” yells Jannick. “Stop!”

  But the dog’s defenselessness infuriates Joakim, who strikes harder and harder with the shovel until they hear a loud crack as he breaks the dog’s back. Releasing the child’s arm, Sparky lets out an extended howl. Adam, who has not participated in the hunt, runs over, grabs his pistol angrily, and shoots Sparky in the head. He stands for a moment staring at the dead animal.

  “It’s just a dog,” he says. “What the fuck have you done? That was completely unnecessary.”

  Grabbing the shovel out of Joakim’s hand, he carefully maneuvers the child’s arm onto it. Joakim clears his throat, as if he wants to say something. Adam stands with the shovel in his hand and stares at him.

  “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “Stupid animal!” screams Joakim.

  Adam shakes his head. He turns his back on them and walks away, the arm sitting in the shovel’s blade.

  They find the bodies of three children in the pile of sand. One is a taller boy with his arms wrapped around a little girl. The third is a smaller boy missing the arm the dog ran off with. It couldn’t have taken much effort to wrench it from the disintegrating body. The faces are already almost unrecognizable.

  The children have also found their grave within the camp’s walls.

  Although Sparky was not an official member of the American army, an official complaint about the dog’s death is nevertheless lodged with the Danish camp authorities. With bureaucratic exactitude, the complaint refers to the Special Forces’ pet as the property of the American government. Though they refrain from asking for compensation, they demand an official apology.

  Two days later, Joakim is attacked. There are no witnesses. It happens around midnight; he is sitting alone in the mess tent for about two hours, staring into his cup of coffee with powdered milk. Afterward, he leaves to take an evening walk, unusual behavior for him. While walking along the HESCO barriers on the camp’s periphery, he is suddenly grabbed from behind and a hood is pulled over his head. For the next few minutes, he’s treated to a professional, systematic beating. He has no broken bones, but bruises cover his upper body and he has two black eyes. Both eyebrows are split open, and his balls also took a beating. He spends three days in the field hospital at Camp Bastion, where doctors say he can still have children—but right now the nurses don’t have to worry about being sexually harassed.

  Steffensen summons Schrøder to a meeting. “What got into you?” he asks. “The Americans are nice enough to loan you their dog and you murder it?”

  “We lost control,” says Schrøder, who wasn’t present but must take responsibility as platoon leader. “The circumstances were stressful. Also, the dog was completely undisciplined. It wasn’t a trained animal—just some mutt the Americans picked up somewhere. It ran off with a child’s arm in its mouth.”

  “I know the circumstances. That’s no excuse. An agreement is an agreement. You receive a piece of American property and you return it in the same condition. Understood?”

  “What about Joakim? He’s the one who broke the stinking animal’s back. And he just took a beating—who do you think did that? Will there be any consequences? What about Adam? He shot it. Is he the next to get it?”

  “There’s no proof of any connection between the attack on Joakim Bregnehøj and the dog’s death, so that’s irrelevant.”

  “I think otherwise. There’s an obvious connection.”

  “That’s for the MPs to decide—and after investigating, they’ve dropped the case. All that’s missing now is an official apology from our side. Are you ready to apologize sincerely on behalf of your people?”

  Schrøder doesn’t look particularly excited about the prospect. “Whatever . . .”

  “Excuse me. What did you say?” Steffensen’s tone is sharp.

  “I said that I’m ready on behalf of me and my people to apologize sincerely that we shot that stinking, totally useless mutt who should never have been allowed into a military camp in the first place.”

  Steffensen stares at him; his expression is impatient and his lowered voice threatening. “And can I get that apology once more, this time in a proper tone, so I can actually quote it in an official document?”

  16

  Michael and Jakob are shipped home for burial, and the platoon holds a ceremony on a cement platform painted wh
ite. Three flags are flown at half-mast. Another ceremony will be held at Camp Bastion, out on the runway, where soldiers will stand at attention as the coffins are carried onto the plane.

  Although the sun is strong, Lukas Møller isn’t wearing any sunglasses. As far as they know, the chaplain never spoke to either Michael or Jakob, but he understood their brotherly bond. “Michael was the protector,” he says, “but who was he protecting Jakob from? The rest of you. You consider yourselves so damn strong and important, but is that enough? You talk about fellowship, but does that fellowship extend only to your equals? If you’re so strong, don’t you have an obligation to those who might not live up to your demands and expectations?”

  He pauses for a moment, and they feel as if he’s looking each and every one of them in the eyes.

  “When someone dies, we get to see the big picture. Death provides a clarity of vision we otherwise lack. And maybe that’s the gift it has to give us. All of us must be each other’s big brother or big sister. Within any strong circle, there must be room for the weak, or else the solidarity isn’t worth anything. Attention. We must pay attention to each other.”

  The soldiers from Third Platoon bow their heads. The chaplain knows them even better than they do. He knows their weaknesses. He knows those rarely visited places deep inside them known as their better selves. He’s sure they’re capable of much more than they realize. He can say things about their comrades that they’ve never heard—or if they have, they’ve never thought about it.

  As they listen to the chaplain, they understand that they’re living their lives inattentively. The chaplain doesn’t. He has ears like a military listening post. He can hear the grass grow in their hearts and a leaf fall to the ground in the distant corners of their souls.

  “Learn from the chaplain,” says Schrøder during their debriefing the next day. “Listen to what he hears. See what he sees. You’re already trained observers. You notice everything about the road before you, the shoulders, the number of cell phones that appear in the hands of passersby, children playing in a street or suddenly gone when they’re usually there. A withered bush in the middle of some lush growth can mean the difference between life and death. A roadside bomb might be buried beneath it. You know that messages are hidden everywhere. You know the dangers in the landscape. And you must also know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. You must be spies—not to betray each other but to support each other. Bombs can be hiding inside you, and you won’t know they’re there until it is too late. But your friends might notice that little twitch in the corner of your mouth, the fake laughter, a hand that shakes just slightly. You have to read each other the way you read the landscape. That way you’ll live longer—and avoid the eulogies.”

  17

  “Did you also film their deaths?” asks the chaplain.

  Sidekick and Schrøder sit holding their tea mugs in the church tent.

  Sidekick has just told Møller about the helmet cams and his own video camera. He explains that they’re using the recordings to create a tribute for Michael’s and Jakob’s families. There may be some combat engagements, but they’ve chosen everything carefully. Nothing dangerous or humiliating. Nothing that might cause any unnecessary sorrow.

  Sidekick admits that they filmed their comrades’ deaths. It’s unavoidable when the medic’s helmet cam is on, which it always is in combat. But they won’t show those parts to anyone.

  Bare torsos in the sunshine, happy times in the mess tent, ball games in front of the tents, hands making the V sign, big grins across the board. And then a clip of the chaplain’s speech. That’s what their relatives will see. They’ve also conducted short interviews with each other saying nice things about the dead or recounting funny everyday details that will help their families keep their memory alive.

  “We recorded so much,” says Sidekick, “that we could’ve made a three-hour film about both Michael and Jakob. Actually, about every one of us.” He sits up in the folding chair. “We’re the most well-documented soldiers in the history of the world. Every single one of us will have a gravestone made of millions of pixels.”

  “In a way,” says Schrøder, “it’s easier to think about the dead than the wounded who have to stay home because they’re invalids now. The quarter dead, half dead, or three-quarters dead, as we call them. Sorry, Chaplain, I don’t mean to be disrespectful. Just being realistic. We could also call them quarter living, half living, or three-quarters living—but for some reason it doesn’t sound much better.”

  “Many do recover.”

  “Fortunately. Still, I feel responsible. It’s happening on my watch. And then they’re lying in a hospital bed or at a rehabilitation center fighting a new enemy. They only have a stump of an arm, or they’re missing both legs. Or what if it’s their balls they’ve lost? What do you say, Chaplain? What part of a man are you without your dick—half living, three-quarters living, or totally dead?”

  Viktor, Nikolaj, Lasse, and Daniel fly home to attend Michael and Jakob’s funeral and to serve as pallbearers. When they return, Lasse and Daniel discover that, unbeknownst to each other, they’ve both gotten tattoos of Michael’s leopard. Not as large as his—as if they both decided that there should be room for more, that they’re preparing to transform their bodies into memorials for dead comrades. Lasse’s tattoo is on the right side of his chest, while Daniel’s is on the left, but the inscription is the same: “Michael Lorentzen, 1987–2011. RIP.”

  Viktor suggests that they create a CrossFit routine in honor of the dead. American soldiers do it, so why shouldn’t they? He calls it a “hero workout.” Jakob wasn’t really into CrossFit, so they name it after Michael, who often worked out with Viktor. Most of them do. Viktor does for their bodies what the chaplain does for their souls.

  The hero workout in Michael’s honor consists of four-hundred-meter runs, fifty push-ups, twenty-one swings of the kettlebells, and twenty-one thrusts with a fifty-kilo sandbag. After they finish the program in record time, they repeat it until, groaning, they collapse onto the gravel. Then they try to do it wearing their ten-kilo flak jackets. Troels and Clement are the first to give up; they’ve complained of stomach pains and headaches since the ambush. The next to quit is Årslev, spitting out his snuff. Viktor and Hannah are the final two—but even as they collapse, moaning, Schrøder is still standing, looking as if he’s ready for another round.

  “We’ve lost two men,” he shouts at the gasping, exhausted soldiers. “Michael and Jakob are irreplaceable. How do we go on? Let’s be honest with each other.” Schrøder looks around to make sure they’re all still listening. “Wasn’t there a moment during battle when you felt that rush—that wow when the rifle comes alive in your hands and it feels like the world’s biggest cannon, and your heart pounds faster than ever? And you know, as you’ve never known before, that you’re just so fucking alive? Aren’t there moments out here when you all feel it, down to your toes, out to your fingertips, up to the roots of your hair, deep in your ass, that this is just the fucking greatest?”

  He looks around again. Dennis stands up and starts to clap. One after another, they join in. Only Troels and Clement aren’t there. Iraq Robert looks as if he’s heard it all before. Maybe this is the kind of pep talk they give in DarkSky. Although Viktor joins in, there’s no excitement in his face. He claps only because he’s loyal to his platoon.

  “In your jobs at home, have any of you ever had the same feeling of fighting for something great? The war resisters are always whining about post-traumatic stress disorder when they want to feel sorry for us. But what if what we experience after battle is the opposite of trauma? Okay, you’ve gotten a little gunpowder on your balls—and at some point you’ll have trouble sleeping or concentrating. Mice have been chewing on the wires and now the lights are out. We’ve all experienced it. We know something’s wrong. Boom—here come the psychologists. Well, shit! You’ve just had the greatest experience of your life. What if your trauma is just the disappointment of knowi
ng you’ll never be back on the battlefield? You’ve peaked. From here on, it’s all just everyday nonsense. From now on, your lives are just a film in black and white, but you’ve already experienced 3-D. Still, they keep telling you something’s wrong with you, because it’s hard to get used to looking at the screen on an old console TV from the fifties. You know what I mean? I know I’m hitting on some sensitive subjects. We all have someone we miss. Maybe we tend to romanticize life back home, but was it really so great? If it was, would we all be here? We mourn for our fallen comrades, and we always will. But above all else, we are proud. Proud of the choice we made. Proud of who we are.”

  They clap again. “Michael!” they shout. “Jakob!”

  18

  “I liked what you said yesterday.”

  Hannah glances at Schrøder. They’re on their way back to camp after patrolling the outskirts of Girishk. Standing next to each other in the APC, they stare out over the last stretch of desert before they’re back at camp. The weather has changed. Though it still gets hot in the middle of the day, the sun isn’t as strong as before and the shadows are longer. The blue sky has taken on an unknown depth. The desert’s colors are heavy and gray. Sometimes it rains, but not like the tropical monsoons that wash everything away. It’s more like the autumn rain back home. The desert absorbs everything, and the gravel turns a shade darker. Before, everything turned white in the shimmering heat. Still, the flat landscape has preserved its unyielding emptiness. Once the enemy was only a mirage; now he has become concrete, although they still don’t know who he is. Images from skirmishes and other engagements are burned into their memories—with Jakob’s and Michael’s dead bodies filling each and every one of them.

  Hannah doesn’t say anything about the effect the sight of Schrøder’s sweaty body had on her when they finished their hero workout for Michael and Jakob, and he was the only one still standing. On top of that, he still had enough air in his lungs to give a speech that grabbed her; he was able to turn all the usual shit on its head and describe things as they really are.