2200 hours rolled around and I had to go wake Chad, also known as specialist (spc.) Weaver, up from his quarters 2 down from mine. We were on a night mission tonight, us two and 2 other men from our battalion. Our mission was set to start at 2400; I had a feeling we were going to get a late start. I never felt right when we got a late start on anything. It just made me have butterflies in my stomach. That night we were set to walk patrol along a road that lead into a little town known as Kabul. Earlier in the day our higher ups were explaining to us there had been some suspicious activity going on during the night into the wee hours of the morning that had been happening for the past couple of days. We had no idea on what to except. But we are soldiers and we had to be prepared for anything that this job throws are way. I finally got Chad up, he was a very heavy sleeper sounded like a lumberjack at times but him and I had a close relationship. I met him back in my hometown of Brewer, Kentucky where there was either a church or a bar on every street corner. We went to Brewer high school an both decided to join the military at the same time. Him an I went to boot camp together, both got stationed at Cherry Point, NC an then we both got sent to Kabul military base in Afghanistan to serve our 18 months which was our first tour of duty. Chad, myself, Eric and Mike were all up and we were sitting around having a cup of coffee, talking about how we were going to handle the task at hand. There was a little table in the corner of the barracks so called “hang-out room”, you could only maybe three people around it, but that all four of us were crowded around that table because the task that was assigned to us was some very serious shit. Mike was in charge of setting up our spots where we would be stationed that night. That’s what he joined the military to do, Special Operations. He had a fancy name for his job, Intelligence Operator. Although he did get input from all of us as to what we thought would be good and not. He had some new-fangled technology on his laptop that set up what the sight look liked that we had to protect an it even put little people in to represent us an where we were to be set up that night.

“Does this look good fellows?” piped up Mike from the corner where he was doing last minute changes to the plan.

Mike turned the laptop around and we all took a look over the site and plan for the night.

“Looks good, as always” proclaimed Chad.

Chad was set to be on the opposite side of a set of three buildings where the local town people usually set up their local market or bazaar as they would refer to them as. Eric took a quick glance over the operation.

“If that’s what it’s supposed to look like then it looks fine, Hell I wouldn’t know, I’m only an infantry man” Eric said this trying to lighten the mood, everyone had that butterfly feeling in there stomach. He got a laugh out of all of us.

“You have any input on this Mark?” asked Mike in stern tone.

“Nope, it looks fine.” I had said

I had taken the plan and looked it over, but sat back and didn’t say anything except for those few words. I didn’t really have anything say, yes it looked good but that’s what Mike was there to do, plan and execute operations. It was time to head out of the barracks an into the darkness of the night. We walked out the door in complete silence, it was so quit you could hear the buzz of the street light from above. Everyone was so quite because they didn’t know what was next to come, would we come back to the barracks in the early morning successful on figuring out what’s going on in the streets of Kabul at night. Or would this operation be a total flop and would the suspicious activity go on for yet another night? Would we even come back at? So many questions ran through our minds. I was never this wondrous in my life before. It wasn’t a good wonder either; it’s one of those of a possible life or death situation. It felt like an eternity walking from the barracks to the “garage” where the humv’s were kept. We made that walk that normally took roughly 2 minutes in less than a minute. We weren’t going slowly by any means; it was just that everything was being thought about long and hard. We all piled into the humv in complete silence. Eric was to be the driver that night, but felt too wheezy to do so, so Chad took over the driving. The town of Kabul where the suspicious activity had been happening was three and a half miles down the dirt road. The sound of the engine on the humv pierced the silence of the night. There a was a small hill before the entrance of town we shut off the humv just at the top of the hill so we could coast down to the pull off that was at the bottom. The pull off had been made by us a while back when we first arrived to Kabul Base. There were some bushes on either side an in front of the space so anyone that may be trying to come in from the same way would only see bushes and not any of our vehicles. We didn’t want anyone to hear us coming that would have thrown off the whole mission. We made our way down the hill and pulled off there at the bottom. Before we got out of that humv I read part of the soldiers psalm to my fellow brothers. Psalms 91 is known as the soldiers palm because we are told that in World War I, the soldiers of the 91st Brigade recited the 91 Psalm daily.

“He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him. With long life will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

I ended reading the Psalm and said a little prayer to ask for our safety and to make sure we got back after we fulfilled our task. I finished the prayer for myself and my fellow brothers and we put on our gear and were ready to make our trek into town and set up our site for the night. Town was only probably one a half miles from the pull off where we parked. When we made our walk into town we spread out so the noise we were making would be more spread out and not altogether. We made our way into town in complete silence; the only sound was the tick of the street lights. Us men stayed out of the street lights as much as possible just in case there might have been anybody out an about at the time. We made it to town finally after what felt like hours of walking. In reality we only walked for maybe 20 minutes at maximum. When we got into downtown everyone went there separate ways. Everyone went to their spots that Mike had assigned less than an hour ago. Chad was on the far end of the town up on a fire escape landing in the prone position. I was in the first ally way closest to Chad standing up against the wall listening and looking for any suspicious activity. Eric was on the opposite side of the road in the next alley way up. Mike was at the far end of town walking the edge of the buildings. Everybody could see everybody just for more precaution, just in case something terrible wrong would happen. All of us men had our guns as if we were ready to fire at any threat that came. We were in our stands for about an hour when I see Chad get up from his stand outta the corner of my eye. He climbs down the fire escape an stands bellow it to take a stretch. Chad starts pacing up and back from one business door to another. I always remember Chad in our younger days, he could never sit or stand still, and he always had to be doing something. When we were younger we all thought he had ADD or ADHD or something like that, I don’t know, but the doctors said it was nothing to worry about. That whatever followed him all through life. He was never not doing something. Chad had his eyes peeled and ears open the whole time he was pacing. The dust would fly when he moved from his boots hitting and gliding across the ground. It was so dry in Kabul. The night was pitch-black. Only images of what the town looked like remain in our heads. Everything disappears when it becomes dark over here. Almost like a totally new world was born upon us. A sound radiated out of the darkness of the night. All of us stopped in a quick instance. It sounded like a car door. Who would be up at this time of the night, unless it was somebody up to no damn good? Nobody moved, the sound turned into what sounded like footsteps. Where were these footsteps headed? Straight for us it sounded like!

“Stay low, everyone” I whispered over the radio.

Just I said that there were two men the popped out from behind a shack with AKs about 150 yards down from Chad. Everyone was trying to stay as low as possible. Chad wanted to get back up onto the fire escape but didn’t want to take the risk of them seeing him. The men crept closer to where Chad was, they had no idea he was there. The two men stopped maybe 75 yard from where Chad was and the got down onto their hands and knees and got a shovel out to start digging a hole. This only meant one thing over here. These men weren’t doing this for the hell of it, they were sent on a mission to set up and kill people when morning rolls around. The men were about to plant an IED right in front of our faces. The one man took a bag off of his back and set it into the hole. These men were acting alone. At that time we had to take action and do it quickly at that. I radioed over to Chad and told him that if there was any way possible he needed to get into the prone position or a leanin g position, because we were taking this no good bastards. Chad was going to take the guy that was on the left hand side and I was going to take the one on the right. On the count of three we would shot but we had to make our shots perfect, if we didn’t we take the chance of hitting the IED and blowing up ourselves and everyone else that was in that section of Kabul at the time. We were taking the two men on a count of three. Eric counted us down and we listened over the radio. That three seconds was the longest thing I ever went through in my life. Chad and I saved thousands of lives that day without them even knowing. Us four men were only doing our job that day.