The Tender Soldier: A True Story of War and Sacrifice Read Online Free Page B

watching him. But Ayala was the biggest man on hand, and the platoon leader knew he wouldn’t let the Afghan escape.
    Just then, an Afghan in a military uniform ran up. It was JackBauer.‘You motherfucker!’ Jack was yelling at the man on the ground in sharply accented English. ‘Motherfucker!’
    He started kicking the handcuffed Afghan in the face. Before Ayala could react, Jack had kicked the man into the stream, jumped into the water, and begun pounding him with his fists.
    ‘What are you doing?’ Ayala yelled at Jack. ‘What’s going on?’ Later, Jack would remember Ayala scolding him, saying something like: ‘Hey, Jack! You don’t know about our culture.You can’t just kick people in the face—it’s not allowed.’ But at this moment,Jack Bauer was out of breath, shaken, and terrified. He tried to speak, but his tongue refused to take the shapes required by the English language.
    ‘Slow down,’ Ayala told him. ‘What’s up?’
    ‘He burned Paula!’ Jack yelled, grabbing her name from the air.
    Ayala hauled the cuffed Afghan out of the stream and threw him hard against the wall. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he told Jack. He turned to some soldiers standing nearby: ‘What’s going on over there?’
    ‘Paula’s burned,’ Specialist Skotnicki told him. ‘They’ll be evacuating her soon. It looks like she’s going to be okay. You can go see her if you want.’
    Ayala didn’t say anything, but Skotnicki saw his face twist. Ayala was thinking about the conversation he’d overheard between the lieutenant and the sergeant about turning the man over to the local police.The police out here were compromised, he knew. A few days earlier, they had told Cooper they were scared to patrol without American escorts. They didn’t even get paid most of the time, which meant they were for sale. If they gave the captive to the police, Ayala thought, he would be free in matter of days, weeks at most.
    The handcuffed Afghan lay panting in the dirt and now Jack Bauer was speaking to him, softly and angrily, in his own language: ‘What’s going on?Why did you burn that girl?’
    ‘I’m crazy,’ the man on the ground muttered. ‘I’m crazy. Don’t speak to me. I’m crazy.’
    Shaken, Ayala moved to stand over the Afghan captive. He turned to another interpreter, the one the Americans called Tom Cruise, who was standing nearby. ‘Ask him why he did this,’ Ayala said.
    Tom Cruise asked, but the man just lay there. The interpreter asked again. Silence. And a third time. ‘Why don’t you answer the question?’ Tom Cruise yelled.
    Finally, the Afghan spoke.‘I’m crazy,’ he said. ‘I cannot control myself. Sometimes I’m walking naked in the night.’
    Ayala’s mind was working. He looked at the man on the ground. The Afghan lay in the fetal position, his head facing east toward the wall, his feet toward the water. His clothes were wet and dirty from the stream and the struggle.His hands were still cuffed behind his back.
    Ayala turned to Jack Bauer. He had something to say to the man on the ground.‘Tell this guy he’s the fucking devil,’ Ayala said.
    He pulled out his pistol and pressed the muzzle against the handcuffed man’s temple. He pushed the man’s head toward the ground. He squeezed the trigger.

2. W HAT Y OU D ON’T K NOW W ILL K ILL Y OU
    T he path that brought Loyd, Ayala, and Cooper to Maiwand wound through decades of lost knowledge. In the thirty-three years since the last Americans had been airlifted out of Saigon, most of the Army had turned its back on the failures of Vietnam and vowed never to fight another war like it. The United States had broken the Soviet Union and chased Iraq out of Kuwait without major ground combat.Technology increasingly allowed the Army to fight from a distance, and the Pentagon poured money into computerized battlefield sensors, satellite systems, and unmanned drones. The United States had become the world’s foremost military