THE ROVER HAD AN ALTERNATIVE NAME, because everything in the Army needed an alternative name.
Kill TV. As in:
Whatcha doing?
Just watching a bit of Kill TV.
The name was meant to be ironic, I figured. Or else it was just blatantly fake advertising. Because the only thing getting killed was time.
You watched an abandoned compound thought to have been used by the Taliban.
Nothing happened.
You watched a tunnel system suspected to have been used by the Taliban. Nothing happened.
You watched a sand dune. And another sand dune.
If there’s anything duller than watching paint dry, it’s watching desert…
desert. I wondered how Baxter hadn’t gone mad.
So I asked him.
He said that after hours of nothing, there’d be something. The trick was staying alert for that.
If Kill TV was dull, Kill Radio was mad. All the handsets along the desk gave off a constant babble, in a dozen accents, British, American, Dutch, French, to say nothing of the various personalities.
I began trying to match the accents with the call signs. American pilots were Dude. Dutch pilots were Rammit. French were Mirage, or Rage. Brits were Vapor.
Apache helicopters were called Ugly.
My personal call sign was Widow Six Seven.
Baxter told me to grab a handset, say hello. Introduce yourself. When I did, the voices all perked up, turned their attention to me. They were like baby birds demanding to be fed. Their food was information.
Who are you? What’s happening down there? Where am I going?
Besides information, the thing they wanted most often was permission. To enter my air space or to leave it. Rules forbade pilots to pass overhead without assurance that it was safe, that a battle wasn’t raging, that Dwyer wasn’t blasting away its heavy guns. In other words, was it a hot ROZ
(restricted operating zone)? Or cold? Everything about the war revolved around this binary question. Hostilities, weather, water, food—hot or cold?
I liked this role, keeper of the ROZ. I liked the idea of working closely with top guns, being the eyes and ears for such highly skilled men and women, their last link to terra firma, their alpha and omega. I was…Earth.
Their need for me, their dependency, created instant bonds. Strange emotions flowed, weird intimacies took shape.
Hey there, Widow Six Seven. Hey, Dude.
How’s your day?
Quiet so far, Dude.
We were mates instantly. Comrades. You could feel it.
After they checked in with me, I’d hand them over to the FAC in Garmsir, a little river town nearby.
Thanks, Widow Six Seven. Goodnight. Roger, Dude. Stay safe.
