It wasn’t the smell, I mean, I get what months in the suck is gonna do to your hygiene, but the look on his face was a lot like he was about to hurl like he was sick or there was something dead nearby. Squirters knew something about the night in Kandahar, but I wasn’t gonna let this crow cost me a hot shower and a hot meal. ….I wish I listened to the ganner, I don’t think I’ve slept since.
Some context… anything to keep me awake at this point…
I dropped in shit lake, 2006 just fore’ the surge. The name came from the literal pit of human waste left open to the air, they don’t tell you about it before you get on the 17, and they laugh their ass off when the doors first open. Made your eyes water, and the smell stayed with you for weeks.
Once we got used to it we followed suit, fuckin’ wit everyone else who hadn’t had the pleasure.
Came te’ be a rite of passage, whether ye’ came on a bird or a moose.
I’d been there a month and it was getting stale, I couldn’t taste anything at chow most days anyway and I spent so much time on circuit in the gun that I don’t member much about the pond anymore, these days, fuck… Brass suited me with a terp, they thought I knew the lay, no one fuckin did, always gonna be another flash on the road no matter how many times you been down it. Tried to tell em’ but butters ain’t got the sense te light a cig, much less listen to a grunt. Anyway, I get this guy named Ali, never membered his last name, didn’t care, so many angels dropped cause terps were workin both sides the rifle, ain’t gonna put my trust’n one if I get my say, but I still get orders and the brig ain’t away from th’ smell, I hear it’s gone now, but my boots still have the memory in the summer.
Ali spoke English, er’ his version of it, I could understand em if he talked slow, and didn’t keep is’ mouth open too long, muj’s ain’t heard a mouthwash neither. He was ‘posed to introduce us te’ people that we could link up, ain’t got nothing te’ do with me, and the serpentine’ stopped every jingle not up te play nice so far, so I let em’ do’is job.
Met up with Hekmat, Ali said he was an uncle, but all these ganners got some kind of cousin thing going on so it didn’t mean nothin’. E’said that we was in the birthplace of the Taliban made me kinda warm’n that I was being as much a thorn in their ass as they were in ours, but Hekmat said ‘Argandab’ was gonna be quiet the next few nights, but he wouldn’t say why, just said the word “dehqan” tween the two of them, a word Ali didn’t translate for us. I had been picking up a little Pashto while I was there, it meant landowner, or ‘farm crew boss’. I could tell however, by the way he said it; it didn’t mean ‘farmer.’ I could smell a setup a mile away so I thought Ali was gonna rabbit and leave me and my guys into an ambush, but intel was intel, maybe I could get bagram for the weekend if I found a nest a’ muqs I wasn’t gonna be picky getting off the lake as we was calling it.
On the gun back to base, Ali said we had to wait until morning, that were we was going wasn’t gonna be safe til’ then. I looked back at my TL Scott and he just shook his head, ain’t no way we was waitin til morning.
Scott, called back te’ base saying we was checking something out, it was gonna go it with the NOD and we was gonna make sure nothing was coming in from the north, we find something, the drone could paint it and put some heat on our mujs’ for they was ready.
We got off the horn and Ali looked nervous, I asked em’ what he was afraid of, we was in the safest way to travel in the area, and we was just lookin’ but Ali was insistent that we not go north, not tonight, I was determined more than ever, and I ain’t been wrong yet. He said that there were things about his country we just didn’t understand, that it would be best to wait til’ mornin’.
I asked him if it was because of the Dehqan? His face went pale as I mentioned it, he swallowed deep.
“We ain’t afraid of no farmers, Aladdin.” The six of us in the gun laughed, but Ali said nothing.
He just sat there, the fear of the situation beginning to sink in.
As the sun sank back below the horizon, night came quickly to the valley, making the caves look longer and deeper until they swallowed the sand and moondust that covered everything in the region.
…
The night wore on, our convoy slicing through the Afghan darkness like a knife through black velvet. The moon, half-hidden behind the rugged mountain peaks, cast a dim, eerie light over the landscape. As we ventured deeper into the north, the air grew colder, and the atmosphere among the men tensed with a palpable unease.
Ali’s nerves had frayed to the point of breaking. His eyes darted to the shadows that clung to the rocks and gullies beside the road. Every noise seemed to make him jump, a reaction that rippled through the convoy. My own attempts to stay collected were becoming increasingly strained as Ali’s fear infected us all.
The mood was so thick you could cut it with a bayonet. Trying to lighten the mood, I called out, “What’s got you so spooked, Ali? You’d think you saw a ghost.”
He shook his head, mumbling something about bad omens and cursed lands. It was then that a peculiar smell wafted through the air, a mix of decay and something wild, a scent that didn’t belong.
“Damn, Ali, if you’re that scared, you could’ve just said so instead of lettin’ one rip,” I joked, forcing a laugh that sounded more hollow than I intended.
The men chuckled weakly, but the laughter died quickly, smothered by the heavy air and the unspoken acknowledgment that the smell was something else—something none of us could place. My heart skipped a beat. The scent was not human or animal; it was something ancient, something that spoke of the earth and rot.
Ali’s eyes widened, and he whispered fiercely, “It is not me, sir. It is them. The Dehqan.”
The smell grew stronger, a sign that we were not alone. The joking ceased completely, replaced by the sounds of safety catches clicking off and shallow, tense breathing. The soldiers scanned the dark, fingers tight on triggers, every sense strained to its limit.
The convoy slowed, the drivers instinctively cautious as the scent enveloped us, thick and suffocating. We were far from any village, far from anything that should be living, yet the smell suggested a presence, a life form that was undeniably other.
I glanced at Ali, his face pale in the dim light of the vehicle’s dashboard. “Talk to me, Ali. What are we dealing with?”
He swallowed hard, his voice a whisper torn straight from nightmare. “The Dehqan… they guard the night. They are the night. We should not have come!” he shrieked, pulling at his ears and trying to hide from the deep darkness in the cabin.
Before I could press him further, the radio crackled to life, breaking the tension for a moment. “Sir, movement up ahead—large, unidentifiable!” The NOD tracked heat and low-light features and at the moment it was the only things that illuminated the road, the readout was clear, something, was there.
My eyes shot to Ali as he nodded and covered his head as though that would do anything.
(End of Part One)