The First Stone Page 3

“Be careful what you wish for. It might come true,” says Viktor, who has worked with antisocial children and teens in institutional homes. It’s something he never hesitates to let the others know when he thinks someone needs to be put in his place. He calls them maladjusted. This is his third tour in Afghanistan. “I come out here when I want to relax. The last thing I need is the same problems that I deal with back home at work.

  “I know your type,” he says to Dennis. “All gung ho at the start. Out for blood. But sooner or later you all fall apart. Yeah, your father is a real piece of shit—I don’t doubt it. But it doesn’t give you license to be one, too. You’re not in the military to play hero. And you’re not here to win all the wars your great-grandfather and all his descendants never fought in. You’re in the military to learn how to be normal. Take care of your duties, take orders seriously, and use your head as something other than a loudspeaker for your private bullshit.”

  “Drop it!”

  Dennis grins and winks at Lasse, Nikolaj, and Daniel, who smile and wink back at him. “Fucking social worker,” he says, once Viktor has gone.

  Dennis is what they call an equipment whore. While the others are on the net writing to their parents or girlfriends, he’s on GrejFreak.dk and ShopUSA.com searching for more equipment. He has Trijicon binoculars for his automatic rifle, Oakley safety glasses, a Magpul padded rifle sling, and Blackhawk gloves with sewn-in Kevlar plates. Once a week he opens a package to show the others some new trophy he found on the internet. Viktor calls him the queen of equipment whores.

  Dennis is the trendsetter. Lasse, Nikolaj, and Daniel borrow his latest finds and then surf the net. They don’t have the funds to keep up with Dennis, their undisputed leader when it comes to parading around in fashionable equipment. Tobias, Jonas, Sebastian, Mathias, and Gustav train CrossFit with Viktor and share their sergeant’s view of Dennis and his crew, whom they’ve christened the Gucci Boys. Dennis responds by calling them chickens.

  While many in Third Platoon plan to wait and see how it goes before deciding if they’ll stay in the military and go to Helmand again, the five soldiers who follow Viktor are sure this career will last their whole lives. In omnia paratus. They view their job as soldiers not as an adventure but as work that has to be done. They plan to rise up slowly through the military hierarchy, on their way to promotions and ultimately retirement.

  Neither Dennis nor anyone from the trigger-happy trio nabs the first confirmed kill, however. Instead, it’s Adam—calm, reserved Adam, the Terror of Northeast Greenland, or the Dog Whisperer, as Dennis calls him when he’s out of earshot.

  During their first month, they go on routine foot patrols along the Helmand River. If they head east, in the direction of the nearby town of Girishk, the area is somewhat safe. The locals are inclined to be friendly or at least neutral. The river flows along slowly, its calm, unbroken surface faded blue like the sky above them. The clay-colored riverbanks are bare and cracked in the summer drought.

  If they head west, they run—like clockwork—right into an ambush. It’s like a ritual. They know the ambush is coming, just not exactly from where. They call it keeping the Tali-bob busy. They shoot at qalats and into bushes and dusty windbreaks, banking on killing someone; still, they never find any evidence of their efficacy. They have no idea whether their bullets end up in a wall, a poplar trunk, or a human body. Tali-bob always remove their dead.

  Only once do they come under fire when going east. It isn’t some well-organized ambush—just scattered gunfire—making it difficult to localize the shooters. The whole platoon dives into a nearby ditch and lies there for a bit while nothing happens. A few more shots are fired—and Simon swears he sees gunfire coming from a nearby qalat. There’s good cover all along the road, so they decide to take the qalat. Racing bent over, they reach cover at the foot of the mud wall surrounding the courtyard and plant an explosive.

  “Tactical breathing,” commands Schrøder. Their eyes focus while they breathe in deeply and count to four. Then they hold their breath and repeat the exercise. It can be scary jumping through a hole in a wall when you don’t know if concentrated fire is waiting on the other side. They’re in the Yellow Zone. Now they’re ready.

  Several of the men drop to their knees and stick fingers in their ears. They hear the explosion as clumps of clay and pebbles fly around them. They’re in. No resistance.

  The rooms surrounding the first courtyard are full of women and children hiding their faces and pressed up against the walls. With rifles aimed and ready to fire, Lasse and Nikolaj order them to get down on their knees. Mathias and Dennis rummage through the hay inside the stalls. No weapons. The area reeks of cows and TNT after the explosion—but mostly TNT. The air is thick with dust, but the soldiers are wearing safety goggles.

  Jihadists can easily hide under burkas. That’s the way it usually goes. A farmer who storms off in a kirtle can be hiding a whole store of weapons. They have instructions to be aware of his gait: if he takes long, measured steps, he’s probably a jihadist. But you can’t shoot a man because of his gait. These devils are clever.

  “We can’t just gather the whole herd together and body-search them, one by one,” says Schrøder. “If they aren’t Taliban now, they’ll join if we start staring at their women.” No, it won’t work, and they all know it.

  “We missed a courtyard,” says Michael. Sørensen, the sweeper, walks ahead with his mine-detecting dog. There are two doors painted green and facing each other. The courtyard is about six meters each way. They kick the first door in—it flies off the top hinge, swinging back and forth. They go in. Nothing. They kick in the next door. Adam and Aske enter with their rifles raised. They hear a shot from inside, and Aske suddenly tumbles backward through the doorway. He has dropped his rifle and is holding his right upper arm, his face contorted with pain. He’s pale under the blond hair sticking out from under his Kevlar helmet. His mouth is open, as if he needs extra air. For a moment he stands there, swaying, and then he leans against the whitewashed wall and slowly slides down.

  “Oops,” he says, as if the reason for the pain is his ass’s sudden encounter with the ground. His gaze is distant.

  Simon races over with the medic pack. Schrøder yells wildly that Adam has to get out of the building so they can toss a pair of hand grenades before entering and cleaning up. Staring at the doorway, they hear a round of fire, the sound muffled by the thick mud walls.

  “Adam, Adam—for Christ’s sake!”

  They’re frozen in place. There’s a comrade inside. If they’re smart, the towelheads will take him hostage—if he isn’t already dead. They can’t just open fire the moment they see someone at the door. It could be Adam with a knife at his throat.

  They hear a voice from within. “I got him . . . I fucking got him.” It’s not a cry of victory; there’s no triumph in Adam’s voice. Instead, he sounds exhausted. But also amazed. They hear an intense cough and then a moan. They look at each other. Is he wounded?

  “Get out of there—now!” yells Schrøder.

  Adam appears in the doorway, supporting himself with one arm against the wall. A faint shiver goes through his upper body beneath his flak jacket. The hand holding his rifle shakes uncontrollably. His knees begin to knock. There’s a dark stain between his legs. Was he hit? He takes a few steps forward and is about to fall over Aske’s outstretched legs, but then he also suddenly sits down.

  “I fucking got him,” he repeats with the same amazement as before. He sets aside his rifle. Simon shoots him a worried look. Adam waves his hand dismissively. It’s still shaking. “I’m not wounded. I just pissed my pants.” He smiles wryly. He has also thrown up on his flak jacket, though he isn’t aware of it yet.

  “Breathing,” commands Schrøder.

  Adam obeys. Closing his eyes, he exhales completely before filling up his lungs again. A change comes over him, his agitation dissipating. Even his hands stop shaking.

  Aske needs to be evacuated, so Viktor radios for a helicopte
r. Sørensen and Sylvester step through the hole they’ve blown into the wall; they need to take the mine dogs out and set up a landing spot in the fields. Viktor orders Mathias and Dennis to prepare an emergency stretcher. He looks at trigger-happy Dennis, who’s finally experienced his first engagement. “Well,” he says, “are you having fun yet?”

  With difficulty, Aske stands up slowly. “I’m not lying on that thing,” he says. “I can manage.” Simon lends him an arm for support.

  “I need two more to go in.” Schrøder looks at Adam, as if he doesn’t completely trust his assessment of the situation. “You’re sure there was only one of them?” He points at Hannah and Sidekick. “Finish the job. And be careful. Better to shoot one time too many than not enough.”

  Sidekick is holding up a videocam. He films Adam, then the doorway. “Can’t you see I’m busy?” he says to Schrøder.

  “I did not just hear that! What the fuck do you think this is, Andreas? A high school field trip? Film school?”

  They’ve had long discussions about Sidekick’s obsession with documenting everything that happens on patrol. Although all of them already wear GoPro helmet cameras, Sidekick thinks they aren’t good enough. Schrøder has hesitantly given him permission to take along his own Sony Handycam, but now it looks as if the platoon leader regrets it. He points at the doorway where Hannah is waiting. “Get your ass over there! Now!”

  Sidekick shoves the camera down into his equipment bag and walks reluctantly over to Hannah.

  “Get in there!”

  They walk quickly through the door. Shots are fired. A moment later they walk out again. “There wasn’t anything for us to do. We just wanted to be totally sure. Nice job!” Hannah lifts her thumb appreciatively in Adam’s direction. Adam doesn’t react—he’s finally noticed the vomit on his flak jacket.

  “I stink,” he says.

  Lasse, Nikolaj, and Daniel, the three would-be warriors, stare at him with envy in their eyes, along with a bit of contempt. They glance at each other as if to say that any of them could have handled this much more elegantly. The Dog Whisperer, the Terror of Northeast Greenland, has thrown up!

  Daniel hands him a bottle of water. Accepting it gratefully, Adam rinses his mouth out, then pours the rest of it over the vomit and rubs it off.

  Troels and Clement drag the enemy corpse out, feetfirst, and place the body in the middle of the courtyard. They finally have a close-up view of the enemy, the first evidence that they’ve killed someone. A mini-drone pops up over the courtyard. Lasse and Mads make the V sign at the drone; they’re doing it for the men sitting at their screens, back at camp.

  “Look at what I found.” Schrøder steps out of the room, a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder. He’s holding out a dusty bag in one hand. “You think it’s a lie!” They stare at the bag, a small rectangular backpack with a handle on top. A leather emblem reveals a sitting fox with a bushy tail.

  “What about it?” asks Hannah.

  “Don’t you see it? It’s a Fjällräven—the most popular backpack in Denmark!”

  A Fjällräven? Tali-bobs have Fjällrävens? They’re shocked.

  Schrøder walks over to the body. “Look at this,” he says, taking the turban off the dead man. His hair is light brown, like the thin beard covering his sunken cheeks. His deep-set eyes are gray green. His lips are pulled back in a grimace, revealing his gums and distorting the dead man’s face. Yet there’s something undeniably European about his features.

  “Better get used to it.” Schrøder points at the corpse. “Some of them really look like us.”

  They’ll have to carry the dead man back to camp, where he’ll be handed over to the Afghan army.

  Adam is now standing over the corpse. “He could be a Dane,” he says, without knowing why he says it. He wants to grab the dead man by the shoulders and shake him back to life. “What are you doing here?”

  He just killed another human being. It was us or them—me or him—a classic situation in any training book. He did what he had to do. He defended himself and neutralized an enemy fighter. His first confirmed hit. It should be a great moment—but the asshole looks like a Dane!

  They hear the loud whir of double propellers slicing through the air. It’s a Chinook closing in to land on the field outside the qalat.

  “The towelhead had a fucking Fjällräven,” says Adam.

  3

  The dead Taliban soldier with the backpack keeps appearing in Adam’s thoughts. He never speaks about him, but he’s a relentless question. It’s that Adam doesn’t know the answer. It’s that fucking Fjällräven. And those gray-green eyes, the fair skin, the light hair. Why the hell didn’t he have the typical mane of shiny black hair and a forest of unruly beard? Why couldn’t the asshole just look like the enemy?

  Until the moment the rifle went off, as the towelhead was hurled against the wall and a large red blotch bloomed on his embroidered kirtle, they didn’t know each other. Now, they’re as connected as you can be with someone whose life you’ve ended and whose face you’ve seen. Why did he have to get up and look at him? There should be a rule for soldiers in war: never look at your enemy once you’ve killed him. He can’t have any name, any identity other than the one that can be summed up in that single word: “enemy.” Who are they shooting at? Same answer. The enemy. Always the same answer. It’s the only dictionary you need when you go to war. A one-word dictionary.

  Adam is under siege by his own conscience, which wants to reduce everything to black and white. What does your conscience know about war? Nothing. It’s his first kill, but in some hidden corner of his mind, he also hopes it’s his last.

  He threw up when he shot the Afghan—he threw up because he was the one who ended him. Aske didn’t get to shoot before he was hit. It’s probably normal to throw up your first time, especially when it happens so close and in such a small space. In battle, you can expect just about any reaction, something they’ve all learned. A quarter of all soldiers shit their pants when their lives are in danger. Nobody shit his pants inside the qalat. Except the dead guy. He lost all inhibitions. You piss, you shit, everything leaves you when you die. The body is evacuated, the lease is up; your home’s true owners, the worms, get ready to move in.

  They have two stories to tell when they get back to camp. Their helmet cameras were on the whole time, and before turning in the recordings, they download them to their laptops. Afterward, they collect them all, and Andreas edits them on his Mac. In one story they blast their way into the qalat, cross the small courtyards, kick in the door, and then suddenly you hear shots. Aske comes out, wounded in the shoulder, followed by Adam. They drag the dead Taliban fighter across the courtyard. The V sign. They stand shoulder to shoulder, carrying their captured quarry on their shoulders—the rocket launcher, a Kalashnikov. The helicopter arrives. Another day at war.

  A different story emerges from Sidekick’s Handycam. They blast their way into the qalat, cross the courtyards, and kick in the door. The sound of gunfire, Aske comes out, his flak jacket open, a hand snips open the sleeve and the chest on his uniform, naked skin, blood oozes out of a black-rimmed hole, a piece of gauze covers it and turns red, a stiff face and a feeble attempt at a smile. Focus then shifts to a flak jacket covered in vomit that looks like another camouflage pattern on top of the original, a moist crotch, a limp body being dragged out of a doorway. The camera zooms in on the dead man’s face, his light skin, light-brown hair, gray-green eyes that no longer see anything, and thin beard. Then an orphaned Fjällräven, sitting in the middle of the courtyard, and the logo on the backpack, a bushy-tailed fox sitting. The face again, then the camera pans down along the body, the dead man lying there with his arms above his head, his dusty white kirtle stained with blood, the face again, and then the body once more, as if the camera has been seized by a sudden restlessness, or maybe it’s wonder.

  Lukas Møller, the platoon chaplain, says that bravery is the soul’s glorious triumph over the flesh. That’s the story the
first video tells. The other tells a different story: a bandage soaked in blood, vomit, pissed pants, a dead body. The flesh’s triumph over the soul. War is both stories.

  A day at war. Adam watches the first story only once, but he has seen the other often. And every time he watches it, he sits silently in front of his laptop. A day at war. Yes, but which war?

  And then he watches the film again.

  4

  The Danish platoon’s commanding officer, Ove Steffensen, does not look like a leader of men. The squad’s “boss man,” as they call him, pretty much reflects the camp’s ethnic makeup; he has zero charisma and doesn’t want any. A stocky man with brown horn-rimmed glasses, Steffensen has a wide forehead, partially covered by short bangs, and a trim mustache resting between a narrow nose and a small mouth with soft, fleshy, always somewhat moist lips—which the more witty privates refer to as a “baby mouth.” Unlike the American general Stanley McCrystal, he can’t survive on one meal a day or run ten kilometers every morning. Troops see him only on rare occasions. Sometimes he strolls out of headquarters, always surrounded by a small entourage, and crosses the pavers to the flagpole. He has often heard the warning, usually delivered in jest, to stay away from short officers: they’re erratic and abuse their power. But Steffensen doesn’t abuse his power. He just hides it.

  Steffensen, who never comes into the mess tent, has food brought to him. His second-in-command has to appear in his place and give the required speeches. Steffensen only shows up when there’s an official visit from some cabinet minister or delegation of politicians. Businesslike, he guides his guests around, pointing and commenting, before they scurry off to lunch at base headquarters. If they praise the food, they’re told that the soldiers eat the same thing. They’re also briefed on the current situation. Steffensen always says a few words, followed by his second-in-command, and then a small flock of Danish officers and police who function as advisers to the local authorities. The word “progress” is, of course, mandatory.