The field lay to the east of town, surrounded by a dusty brown expanse highlighted with a meandering strip of green-the weeds and trees that grew along a river. The chopper began to descend for a flyover of the Mazar Airport. To build an air force from scratch was another. To fly his own plane, manage his own crew-that was one thing. For that matter, he didn’t think he was, either. However, Parson doubted they were ready for anything like the job ahead of them now.
The Afghans were making progress toward a professional air force. He’d never piloted helicopters, but as a rated officer he could help teach the Afghans the basics of running a squadron: maintain currency records, give regular testing, retrain the guys who bust their check rides, and always, always, always treat maintenance with respect. In his other tours, he’d flown as a C-130 Hercules navigator and then as a pilot on the C-5 Galaxy. His third tour, but his first in a nonflying position. Parson had been back in-country only a month, in a new role as an adviser to the Afghan Air Force. And as a paratrooper, she’d been around aircraft enough to speak a little of that language, too. There was no better translator/interpreter in the business. Parson had requested that she come work with him as an individual augmentee, and she’d agreed immediately she just had to finish up some training back in the States. She spoke Pashto so well, she seemed to read minds. Parson wished his old Army friend Sergeant Major Sophia Gold had already arrived. How will we ever airlift enough to make a difference? Oh yeah, and still fight the war. And Parson imagined the colonel was taking the thought a few steps further: These people will need everything-food, shelter, medicine. Parson didn’t understand a word, but he could guess what they were saying: What a fucking mess. Subdued tones on the interphone like whispers at a funeral. Rashid, the colonel, and the interpreter conversed in Pashto. Black flecks whipped through the air: soot from the fires on the ground. Not aircraft exhaust, but something closer to the smell of coal and charred wood. Wind from the helicopter’s open door rippled the sleeves of Parson’s tan desert flight suit. Up front, Captain Rashid commanded the aircraft, accompanied by his copilot and a flight engineer. Parson stood in the back of an Afghan chopper with an Afghan interpreter and an Afghan army colonel. Afghanistan’s construction standards were prehistoric. A smaller magnitude than the quake that had devastated northern Japan in 2011, but worse in its own way. Geological Survey rated it a preliminary 7.2. The quake had happened only about an hour ago, and the U.S. An untold number lay dead or dying beneath the rubble. Black columns of smoke seethed into the sky above a city of collapsed ceilings and crumpled walls.
The slums of Mazar-i-Sharif stretched below the Mi-17 helicopter like a vast, disturbed hive. NavyĮven from a thousand feet in the air, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Parson could see the earthquake had shaken Afghanistan to a new level of misery. A great teacher and friend, and veteran of the U.S.