Crossing the River No Name

Khost, Afghanistan: One rainy night, in March, 2009, we crossed a muddy field to intercept a group of Taliban who’d come out of the mountains of Pakistan. They were walking west. We were patrolling north to arrive at a point ahead of them, where we’d set up an ambush. The field was actually many fields, inundated by snowmelt and rain. Piles of rocks, laid by farmers, demarcated the flooded borders. Every so often we’d come across evidence of what had once grown in those fields: an island of blighted corn stalks, a soybean shoot—as perfect as a laboratory specimen—floating in a shin-deep lake. Someday, I figured, the sun would come out, the land would dry, and the farmers would be back to re-stake their claims. That night, however, they’d taken shelter on higher ground, and that entire miserable stretch of Khost was ours.