and began speaking. “My team was on a night mission in a village outside Kabul, to grab a local Taliban commander, and it all went to shit. The locals had supposedly fingered this guy and wanted to get rid of him, but it was actually a trap, and I lost two KIA and five WIA. We got out with our dead and wounded, and I wanted payback for those fucking so-called ICs who set us up.” He looked at Brodie. “That ever happen to you?”
“This is your story, Kyle, not mine.”
He nodded. “Okay, so we don’t do payback. We’re not Nazis. Right? We do surgical removal of those responsible, except we never know who that is. So I’m back at the FOB to regroup, and my squadron commander, Major Powell, asks me to speak to a Colonel Worley, and to listen to what he has to say. So, okay, I meet this guy alone in a bunker and he’s wearing civilian clothes, so he doesn’t have to show his rank, his branch insignia, or his nametag. He seems like an arrogant prick, but he’s cool as a cadaver on dry ice. And he says he’s sorry for what happened, and he says we’re not going to put up with this shit anymore. He says we are going to—get this—alter our posture, like instead of slouching, we’re gonna stand up straight. We’re gonna engage in a pacification program. He says Major Powell has agreed to this, whatever the hell this was, and that he’d like my team to lead off the program.”
Mercer seemed to be trying to collect his thoughts, or maybe erase some of them. He went on, “So I say, okay, what’s it about? But Worley doesn’t say right off. He tells me that my team and some other teams from other squadrons are going to return to this village… can’t even remember the name of it… and we’re going to pacify the village so that no other American soldiers are killed there ever again…” Mercer nodded to himself. “So, I get what he’s saying, and I get that he’s picked other teams from other squadrons that had the same shit happen to them.” He glanced at Brodie and Taylor. “He handpicked men who were pissed, and sick and tired of the fucking locals shoving it up our asses and getting away with it.”
Brodie nodded. He’d heard similar stories from old Vietnam vets about the treacherous villagers, who were probably just terrified peasants trying to survive between two armies. In ’Nam, the troops usually just satisfied themselves with burning the village, killing the livestock, and sending the population to a government-controlled area. In Afghanistan—and Iraq—there was no formal program to deal with the problem. But apparently Colonel Worley—and probably the CIA—knew how to deal with it. They were going to pacify the hell out of those villages. All they needed to go that route were pissed-off warriors. Guys who’d lost friends. Officers who’d lost men. Like Captain Mercer.
“Pacification”—one of those creepy clinical words that the military brass loves to use to make bad things sound okay. And it did sound okay, unless you were on the receiving end of the pacification.
Mercer continued, “So I spoke to my team, we met up with three other teams on the helipad, and off we went. We never worked with these guys before, and we never saw them again, but when we got to the village, it was like we all knew what to do and how to do it. A lot of anger came out… understand? Maybe a lot of guys had thought about this—like, fuck the rules of engagement, fuck the Code of Conduct, fuck the Geneva Conventions, fuck the politicians, fuck everyone who’s fucked us, and fuck everyone who’s not us.” Mercer looked into the deep jungle across the riverbank. “That’s the way it’s always been done. Since the dawn of time.” He nodded to himself. “You don’t need special training. When you’re pissed, it comes easy.”
Brodie and Taylor looked at each other, and Taylor nodded to Brodie—like, Say something, soldier.
Brodie said, “It comes easy. But it doesn’t stay easy.”
Mercer looked at him. “No. It gets harder. First time is easy. You’re pissed. Second time, not so easy.”
Brodie said, “Worley didn’t do you any favors.”
“We thought he did. Then… when I said something to him… like, we’ve had enough of this… he said something like, you went over the line, Captain, and there’s no turning back. I understood that we