well as from the drone and the satellite uplinks. The tar-
geting computer could identify friend or foe on the bat-
tlefield, and at that moment, red outlines were appearing
all over the grid like taillights in a traffic jam.
Prior to our operation, General Keating, commander
of United States Special Operations Command (USSO-
COM) in Tampa, Florida—the big kahuna for grunts like
me—had been talking a lot about COIN, or counterin-
surgency operations. Keating had expressed his concern
that Special Forces in the area might’ve already
exhausted their usefulness because the Army’s new phi-
losophy was to protect the people and provide them
with security and government services rather than ven-
turing out to hunt down and eradicate the enemy. We
were to win over the hearts and minds of the locals by
CO MB AT O P S
9
improving their living conditions. Once we made them
our allies, we could enlist their help in gathering human
intelligence on our targets. In many cases, intel from
those locals made all the difference.
Nevertheless, I remember Lieutenant Colonel Gor-
don, our Ghost Commander, having several four-letter
words to describe how effective that campaign would
be. As a Special Forces combatant, he believed, like I
once did, that you needed to spend most of your time
teaching the people how to fight so that after we left
they could defend themselves. However, if their enemies
were too great or too overwhelming, then we should go
in there like surgeons and cut out the cancer.
Zahed, our commanders believed, was the cancer.
What they hadn’t realized was how far the disease had
spread.
“Ghost Lead, this is Treehorn. In position, over.”
Doug Treehorn was the sniper I’d brought along,
much to the chagrin of Alicia Diaz, my regular operator.
Alicia had done tours in Afghanistan before, and I’d
had no qualms about taking her along, despite the chal-
lenges of being female in a nation where women were
treated . . . let’s just say differently. That she had taken a
fall and broken her ankle two weeks before being
shipped out ruined my initial game plan.
Treehorn was good, but he was no Diaz.
The others reported in. We had the complex cordoned
off, and with Less Than Lethal (LTL) rubber rounds to
stun guards before we gassed them into unconscious-
ness, the plan was to neutralize Zahed’s force, then slip
10
GH OS T RE C O N
soundlessly inside the compound and capture the man
himself. No blood spilled. Special Forces surgery. I mean,
could we make it any more politically correct? We were
going in there to take out a man whose soldiers routinely
blew themselves up at the local bazaars, but we were try-
ing our best not to hurt anyone.
Well, I’d told my guys that if push came to shove, we’d
go live. I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to that, if only to
meet the challenge. As I’d told the others before ascend-
ing the mountains, “This is not rocket science. And it
ain’t over till the fat man sings.” Zahed was pushing three
hundred pounds, according to intelligence photos and
video, and we planned to make him sing all about Taliban
operations in the region, including the smuggling of
IEDs manufactured in Iraq and rumors about Chinese
and North Korean electronic shipments into the country.
I know I’m making Zahed sound like a real scumbag,
but at that time, things seemed pretty clear. But I hadn’t
been there long enough, and I never thought for one
second that we Ghosts and the rest of our military might
be causing more damage than anyone else. We were
there to help.
“All right, Ghosts, let’s move out.”
I issued a voice command so that my computer would
patch me into the Cross-Com cameras of the others, and
I watched as the guards fell like puppets. Thump. Down.
And then my men, who wore masks themselves, hit the
bad guys with quick shots from a new CS gas gun we
were fielding. The gun issued a silent burst into an ene-
my’s face.
CO MB AT O P S
11
Ramirez crouched before the lock on the front gate
while I rushed down from my position and joined him.
It was a cool desert night. A couple of dogs barked in
the distance. Laundry flapped like sails on long lines
that spanned several nearby buildings. The faint scent of
lamb that had been roasted on open fires was getting
swallowed in the stench of the CS gas. I checked my
heads-up display: two twenty A.M. local time. You always
hit them in the middle of the night while they’re sleep-
ing. Again, not rocket science.
Ramirez, our expert cat burglar, picked the lock with
his tool kit and lifted his thumb in victory. I shifted into
a courtyard as Treehorn whispered in my earpiece: “Two
tangos. One to your right, up near that far building, the
other to your left.”
“See them,” I said, the Cross-Com flashing with more
signature red outlines that zoomed in on each guard.
Like most Taliban, they wore long cotton shirts draped
over their trousers and held to their waists with wide
sashes. The requisite beards and turbans made it harder
to distinguish among them, but they all had one thing in
common: They wanted to kill you.
I lifted my rifle, about to stun the guy on the right,
who stood near a doorway, his head hanging as though
he were drifting off.
Ramirez had the guy on the left, the taller one.
Static filled my earpiece and the images being sent via
laser from the monocle into my eye vanished.
Just like that.
The lack of data felt like a heart attack. I’d grown so
12
GH OS T RE C O N
used to the Cross-Com that it had become another
appendage, one abruptly hacked off.
My first thought: EMP? Pulse wave? We’d lost com-
munications, targeting, everything. And I never for one
second thought the Taliban could be responsible for
that.
Ramirez shifted over to me as he kept tight to a side
wall beside the courtyard. “What the hell?” he asked,
voice muffled by his mask.
Without warning, two shots boomed from the dis-
tance: Treehorn. He’d taken out both guards with live
fire. I wanted to scream at him, but it was too late.
“We’re clear!” I shouted to Ramirez. “Let’s go.”
I’d barely gotten the words out of my mouth when
salvos of gunfire resounded all over the compound. I
listened for the telltale booming of my team’s rifles
echoed by the popcorn crackle of the Taliban’s AK-47s.
Everyone had gone weapons free, live fire.
At the same time, the whir of the Cypher drone’s
engines resounded behind me, but then the drone banked
drunkenly and dove toward the courtyard, crashing into
the dirt with a heavy thud followed by the buzz of short-
circuiting instruments.
The enemy was using electronic countermeasures?
Theyhad taken out our Cross-Coms and drone?
Impossible.
We were in rural Afghanistan, where electricity and