Serial S02 - Ep. 1: DUSTWUN
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This forecast is supported by U. S. bank. At U. S. Bank, when they say they're in IT with you, they mean IT.

Not just for the good stuff, that gray and openings and celebrations, although those are pretty great, but for all the hard work that took to get there, because together they're proving day in and day out that there is nothing as powerful as the power of us. Visit U. S.

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These first two episodes of serial season too are free, but to hear the whole series, you'll need to subscribe to the new york times, where you'll get access to all the serial productions and new york times shows. And it's super easy. You can sign up through apple podcast or spotify. And if you're already a time subscriber, just link your account and you're done. About a year and a half ago, clipsed from this video appeared on every .

major news broadcast.

IT showed the rescue of a guy named boo burdock. He was the U. S. Soldier who was captured by the taliban and held captive for just shy five years.

The taliban, in the video, the first thing you see is a couple of guys in traditional afghan clothes. You've got scarves on their heads or covering their faces, and they are holding machine guns. They're standing next to a silver pickup truck.

The front hood is up in the back side of the truck. The door is open. A bareheaded figure is sitting with his knees up against the seat in front of them.

The camera clothes in. And you see this pale Young man, and that's bergdoll. His head is shaved.

He looks sort of like a cult leader from a seventy's movie. He can keep his eyes open properly. They're bothering him. He keeps blinking and rubbing them. A wider shot shows that the scrubby, rocky hills all around the truck are dotted with other guys, taliban holding rifles .

or rocket propelled.

Your needs one or two of the guys lean in to our bird or is sitting and they're talking to him. He's looking at their faces. One guy says something in patio, which is translated on screen as don't come back to afghanistan.

I've heard since is that the guy said, do not come back to afghanistan. You will not get out alive. Black spots appear in the cloudy sky, and you see that their planes are helicopters.

One gets closer and closer is a black cock. Then you see bird down again. He's out of the truck now, looking up at the sky.

His clothes are too big. Billie, then, at about six minutes in, right after some cows wander onto the scene. The helicopter lands, dust flies, bird walks forward, Franked by two men, while three men from the helicopter U.

S. Special Operations team jog toward him. The two sides meet in middle of the clearing, shake hands like team captains.

Right before the starting whistle burgle steps forward, the americans put their hands on him, pull eem towards the black cock while they're walking backwards. They don't want to turn their backs on the taliban just yet. Bergdoll is walking stiff ly lumbering almost at the helicopter.

They pat him down one more time and then he's on board. They're up and away, takes listen two minutes. And it's done. The video cuts off.

From this american life and W, B, Z, chicago is cereal, one story told week by week. I'm Sarah. ic.

Could you even everyone? Ordinarily, the released of an american service men after five years and wartime captivity would be caused for universal celebration and joy, plane and simple.

Pentagon sources tell nbc that berg goal vanished under mysterious circumstances. There have been rumors he left his base unarmed after turning the war and bow hero or deserted, that these soldiers .

are engaging in a political smear campaign by, in the old days, deserters were not.

The very last thing is just. I'm a prisoner. I want to go home. Bring me home, please. 你好。

b. Bergdoll was rescued on may thirty first twenty fourteen. If you follow the story in the news, maybe expected the usual things would follow, a big welcome home, and then the story would come out. We learn what happened to him, how he ended up with the taliban, and IT did start out that way. President obama announced bird's return in the rose garden of the White house with bertolt parents, bob and Jenny, by his side.

This morning, I called bob and Jenny bergdoll and told them that after nearly five years in captivity, their sun bow is coming .

home birdlings home town of hail, idaho, which for five years had bring bow home posters and yellow ribs all over the place. They plan this big celebration for him. But then so suddenly the whole story flipped within days, within hours of his rescue, in fact, people began saying that we shouldn't be celebrating him because bober dt.

Deliberately walked off his post into hostile territory. That's how we got captured. Some of his former paton mates called him a deserter. Others were saying he was a trade, or even who might have collaborated with the taliban.

Some people took a fence that in the rose garden event, bob burg doll, who had grown a long beard in his son's absence, had spoken some phrases in arabic, c and pashto. The celebration in hailey was cancelled. Congressional leaders condemned the trade the president made to get bird down back the release of five taliban detainees from guantanamo o bay, saying the trade was not only ill conceived but illegal.

The army launched a big investigation into what exactly happened. Why did berga leave is post. Even now, other soldiers are so enraged by what burger did that for his own protection.

He's got to a security detail with him when he leaves his base in san antonia. Finally, the army charged bergdoll with two crimes, one of which Carries the possibility of a life sentence. And through all of this bow, berg on himself was like a ghost, a blank we never heard from him.

He wasn't talking on T. V. He wasn't, couldn't the newspaper.

So IT seems like that was that history was only gona live in that kind of antiseptic upstairs realm of pissed off politicians and military experts and T. V. commentators. But last spring I found out the bober doll had been talking to someone almost a year. He'd been talking to a filmmaker.

the mark ball natura, very large things.

That's this .

good time place, right? You're pretty careful with IT exactly like i've noticed with me. Like you don't you don't crack many jokes? No, but you can you know, I mean, I might not laugh, but you could try.

Opportunity might. Yeah, I give that a try. If you see an opening, let's see what you've got.

Mark bowl is a screenwriter and producer. You've probably heard of his movies the hurt locker, zero dark thirty. Mark wanted to make a movie about bow story, so a couple of months after both came back to the U. S, mark managed to contact him, and they started talking about everything about the taliban and motorcycles and the existence of god, and how good spicy salsa is, and how memory works and what a soldier should and shouldn't be. Marker recorded the calls, not for broadcast anything, which is why you sometimes hear mark making himself a snack.

Yes, there.

Or the sushi of mark sending email or his dog .

stuff in around how long I was. It's roughly twenty .

five hours of recorded conversations, a lot of IT ranging and raw. The report is sort of unexpected. Mark swears a lot. He can be blunt, although the soldier comes off as the softer one, his go to exploit is good grief.

These types are not like regular interviews, because mark isn't so much after the fact of what happened, though he wants those two, but more reis after the why of what happened, trying to get inside bose head to understand how both sees the world and bow is never monotheistic or reaction in these conversations, he's trying hard to explain himself. You can hear the boat is thinking through something has so far extraordinary life, basically, and what's become of that, which is understandable, considering that any one piece of this story could keep a person's mind sharing. Right now, bow is waiting to see if the army is going to a drop the charges against him, or take them all the way to court martial to a trial or something in between.

And then there's the stunning fact the boat was held by the taliban for almost five years. I just want to pause on that for a second. Five years alone, that's longer than any american has ever been held by the taliban.

Longer than any american has survived being held by the taliban. He can't speak pashto. The people handling him for the most part didn't speak english. So for five years, you can really talk to anyone. And then here is in these calls with mark, and he's describing things vividly that seem describable.

well. At one point, they told me that they can have you in a really dark group, almost sounds like a basement, like where there is no light, there is a few rooms like that. So like, how do I explain to a person that just standing in empty, dark room hurts?

Just like, well, you know, someone asked you, well, why does he hurt that your body hurt? Yes, your body hurts, but it's more than that. It's like this mental, like everyone was confused.

There's time that I wake up and it's just so dark like I would wake up not even ring like what I was. You know, I get that feeling when that word is on the tip here. Phones, yeah, that happened to me on me.

I would like, what is my like I couldn't I couldn't see my hands. I couldn't do only thing I could do is like, touch my face and even that wasn't like you registering, right? Yeah, you know to the point where you just want to scream and camps like cream, so it's and they are screaming in your mind in this room is then like in this black in the room that's tiny.

And just on the other side of that, firstly, little door, wooden door that you could probably easily rip off the inches is the entire world out there. IT is everything that you're using. This is everybody.

Everyone is out there. You know, that breath that you're trying to breathe, that that that release, that you're trying to get. Everything is beyond that door. I ate doors.

Now on the other side of the door was relief, of course, but also all the various people and systems that had kicked into action after both went missing, both parents and his friends back in idaho, the military intelligence analysts, diplomats and secret meetings with the taliban, debriefs at guantanamo bay, the state department, the White house.

At some point after i've been reporting out all these various threads of both story, interviewing lots of people at length about bow and about what he did and the consequences of what he did, this children's book I used to read to my kids popped into my head. It's called zoom. There are no words, it's just pictures.

And IT starts with these pointy red shapes. Then next page you realize those shapes are rooters calm. Next page you zoom out, you see the rooster is standing on a fence with two little kids watching him.

Next page zome again, they're in a farmhouse. And then zoom further, you realized that all of IT, the rooster, the kids, the farmhouse or toys, being clayed with by another child. And that that whole scene is actually add in a magazine, and the magazine is in the lap of someone napping on a deckchair.

So on, out and out resumes the appetite of the thing, getting wider and wider until the original image is so far away. It's unseeable. That's what the story of bob g dollars, like this one idiosyncratic c guy makes a radical decision at the age of twenty three to walk away into afghanistan.

And the consequences of that decision, they spend out wider and wider. And at every turn you're surprised the picture changes. To get the full picture, you need to go very, very small into one person's life, and also very, very big into the war in afghanistan that .

we even really knows who is, and nobody knows why he did that.

He was film make remarkable in his tape that got me interested in all this. We were talking the other day on the phone about what got him interested in both he.

like he is a misty about. He was the serious ma, something that from a military perspective, for a lot of people's perspective, is is unforgivable. He he commits a cardinal thing in working, walking off and reading his post right.

And yet it's not that simple because he says that he did IT for the that's just really good reasons, like the most important, profound reasons you could possible think of. So how do you just something? How do you just to.

For this story, we've teamed ed up with mark and his production company page one. They'd come to us saying, hey, we've been doing all this reporting on the story and we ve also got this tape. Do you think you might, anna, listen.

And yes, we did, and we were kind blown away. And so we began working with them. They share their research with us and also put us in touch with many of their sources, especially soldiers.

We don't have anything to do with their movie, but mark, in page one, are our partners for season too. You might have marking me talking from time to time during the course this season so we can compare notes. Bob doll is currently an active duty soldier.

He's got a clerical job at his base and said antony, texas, where he's waiting out his legal situation again, boat isn't talking to the press, but he did give us permission to use the tape phone calls with mark. So let's start at the beginning. Why do you do IT? Why boil? Leave his cartoon. That's remark started too.

like I can tell you the story. Well, give me, give me the, give me the thirty second version first.

This is for mark's first type phone call with bow.

The second. Version, you know what that one is, right? But what is that one? The radio signal dust one stands .

for duty status whereabout. The unknown is the army's version of man overboard.

This one is the radio signal let's put out over the radio win. Age goes missing in a combat view, okay? Or our soldiers taken captive, right? Both says what .

he was trying to do was to cause a dust one which already sets him apart because IT means boat doesn't fit into any of the a wall or desertion scenario were used to. He wasn't cove warding. He wasn't drunk or goofing off.

He didn't drop his weapon and flea in the middle of firefight. He didn't decide in a burst of panic or confusion to go walk about. Instead, slow, simmering and methodical, both formulated a plan. He would create a crisis, a dust one, in order to call attention to another crisis. Both says he had serious concerns, concerns that began back in basic training in which persisted throughout his deployment in in afghanistan regarding bad leadership .

within his unit and what I was seen from my first unit all the way out into afghanistan, all I was sitting was basically leadership failure, to the point that the lives of the guys standing next to me were literally from what I could see in danger of something seriously going wrong and somebody being killed.

This is a big point of conflict. Maybe be big point of conflict in both story. The question, generally, of those true motives for leaving his post, and specifically, whether his description of what was happening around him is accurate or believable.

Because, of course, this explanation could be a story he invented. You could argue that he did have five years to come up with IT or he could be expressing the genuine beliefs of a whistleblower or the truth could be something else entirely. And i'm definitely going to a get into that precisely what bow says he was seeing during his deployment and how he reacted to IT.

But all that will make more sense once you know more about both himself. So for now, i'm onna jump over that and just give you the bare bones of what both says happen and that is he was so alarmed by what he considered crappy and potentially dangerous leadership that he needed to act. He needed to let his command know at the highest levels .

now as as a private first clash, not what he is going to listen to me course. So nobody is going to take me serious if I said, and investigation needs to be put underway, that this person needs .

to be psychology. Both solution is the dust one. At the time, bow was at a tiny outpost known as O P.

mst. Masters in him in the town, right across the road from the O P. Few thousand people lived there, masters in paci ka province in eastern afghanistan, right? The pakistan border.

Next to the town, the soldiers set up a sort of campsite, a scrubby, rocky clearing about the size of a football field. A couple of supply roads come together right there. One of the roads leads back to the battle ans big ford Operating base at chona fob, where there's relative comfort beds, internet, burger king, baseball courts.

The other road leads to the pakistan border, the earth. There is this fine, fine dirt. The soldiers I talk to call the moon dust.

The one time I saw me in this would have been a couple days before burdock disappeared. I looked at and I got chills that, wow, that that place socks. That's a guy named ben Evans.

He never even went to opp mst. But driving by IT was enough to taken the bleakness. There was four truck surrounded by sea wire, crammed up in a little run off ditch. So I gave me the William just see in the place.

op. Mst, probably the worst place humanly imaginable.

That's john thermal. John was in the same company as, though not as black food company, different. Platon, like other soldiers I talk to, john remembered most mostly for what I lacked, trees, plumbing, electricity, water, shade.

But O, P. Master was built on the side of a hill. And on topper of the hill there was a cemetery. And it's a grana. This places spooky from the gad go and the quality of life was extremely low. Um everybody pretty much got some sort of G I illness while we were out there just because we couldn't keep things clean enough. We didn't have the resources.

But but what was the dirty just just, just dusted.

like the flies, definitely. The open toilets, the burn pit, a burn pit, which we call the pit of hell.

This is a shame cross, who was a friend of both at the time, sample attune. The pit of hell was a large holiday dug, and they threw the trash there and burn.

T, I call the pit of hell, because we started IT and and never went out and just burn continuously all .

through the night and days. Different from did you have to shit .

for lack of a Better word? Yes.

that seems like that would .

be a bit of more than we. They took, they took an empty hasc w but tesco's is like a large basket. You filled dirt, you know, eight, three talk, anything took anti one of those.

And I made a little room, and you had the little bucket. Everyone should in then, but up, mix up fuel, and someone's jobs stand out with the stick and stir IT as they burned. As you're stir in IT. Sometimes if you have a rodia wood, large wooden stake, one by one, you know, IT would have to eventually burns down to and thirteen and closer and closer.

Just who is job we've been to do the steering like if you have to draw draws for the stirring to private.

the ncs that always pick one of us. And usually you could be lie and then pick to the private. They don't like both company.

Blackfoot company had set up the O. P. In the first place.

I was supposed to help the afghans keep the insurgents in check because the two roads there, the U. S. Called one of them root oui.

In the other root dodge. We're used as supply routes for taliban fighters and their weapons and ds, and provides explosive devices. They were a big threat in afghanistan, both bottle leader said. There was an I D hot spot about a thousand meters out along root ali. The afghan national police had their own outpost further up the hill there as well.

The american soldiers had strung all this concertinas wire on the place, and their job was religious to be there in the middle of nowhere, making their presence felt, keeping a look out for suspicious vehicles, watching the rooftops of mass for snipers. Some of the guys I talked to said that occasionally someone would shoot at them and they shoot back. But none of them said there was much action there.

They didn't discover anyone transporting weapons or bombs. Mostly IT was just fruit vendors or farmers or families passing through. Both platoon would go to the O P.

For three or four or five days at a stretch, sometimes doing patrols into mass or the other nearby town mulock, or pulling around the clock guard duty, either from the trucks or from the hill top up near the cemetery where they dug out a small foxhole bunker. There were long, long stretches of boring of wondering what the hell they were doing there. All the soldiers I talked to said they're just hated being at mast.

The O. P. Was about twenty miles southwest of farb, shona.

So both idea was that he sneak away from mast, which bow refers to as A T, C, P, for traffic control point, and run all the way back to the fob. He says he figured he could make you to shrug. And maybe twenty four hours or so, here's go again.

A man disappears from a TCP at a few days later, after this one is called up, p reappeared that a fob, suddenly, because of the the swan, everybody is alerted. Via is alerted, the navy is alerted, the marines are alerted, air forces alerted, not just army.

which means that when he reappears, it'll be such a big deal. They'll be such a commotion. Everyone will want to know why he left and why he's back. And so he'll be able to get an audience with whoever he wants a general ever, and they won't be able to ignore his complaints.

Weren't you're afraid they you like throw you in with a jail, whatever and that but actually what I know, that's what I figured they do then how long you figure you'd stay in there? I figured stay there until people got the situation cleared up. You know, I I was fully confident that when somebody actually took a look at the situation, and when people started investigating the situation, that people would understand that I was right. You know, what was going on was a danger to the lives of the men man company. The idea was, I rather be sitting in eleven words and standing over the body of, you know, not mental or go or somebody like that and understanding that if somebody had done something, they still be alive.

Now see a mental and co. We're guys in both .

potent so got moved. That's ever it's still stupid. Well, yeah, they're not that not mutually exclusive.

Boat makes preparations back at the farm for a spell. He goes to the toronto post office and send some of his things back to idle some books, his new laptop, his kindle, a journal. In the likely event that he gets in trouble, he doesn't want his personal stuff sees by the army.

There's a shop run by the locals at the farm. They called the huggy shop. They sell dvds and cloth. Boby is a local outfit, a sort of robe.

because I knew there is a possibility of me being out in the open in daytime. So obviously, big White guy in a uniform deifying self is going to attract the attention. However, a person with a traditional like of the local dress on and local headscarf that's not gonna draw much a pension.

He also took out three hundred dollars from his bank account in us and afghan I money, just in case you need to bribe someone. At the end of june two thousand nine, both bottle on was on its very last rotation at opp mast. The company was getting ready to hand the place over to the afghans, which really just means they were going to take their trucks and leave.

In any case, this would be his last chance to execute this plan. And this plan is risky. Obviously, it's difficult and is dangerous, but technically it's not impossible to do.

IT physically, but was capable. He was a good runner. He'd run similar distances before, plus he was used to running in high altitudes in the idaho. He did well in the heat when he talks about IT.

Now he'll sometimes acknowledge the wrong headiness of IT, that he over estimated his ability that he wasn't aware of the other ways he could have registered concerns about leadership. But there was this other idea, but was testing out. Yes, he says he wanted to bring attention to the plate of his platoon on. But he also admits that his plan was part crucible. I was trying .

to prove to myself, I was trying to group to anybody who used to know me that I was capable of your being that person like a super sold dreaming yeah, because of being what I hear to be. Like doing what I did was me saying I am right, like a quite just born right, a character in a Better, whatever, a character. yeah.

So I had this fantastic idea that I was going to prove to the world that I was the real thing. You know, I could be, yeah, know what I see, what IT is that every all those guys out there go to movies and watch those movies, they all wanted be that. But I wanted to prove that I was that.

Why not just way and see if you got the opportunity to prove that, like on a mission, you know, because you've even been that long, like when I waited, when I wait a couple months and two, if you get chance to prove yourself and you know some kind of text for engagement, that was the combination of situation, the situation that I was in, in that situation, I thought as right concerned. So IT wasn't that I would just decided him i'm going to do to prove that I could do IT. I I was trying to find a solution to the problem, my hands, and I just try into IT this idea, right? Like I was just going to say two words, one son.

On the morning of june third, two thousand and nine boat been scheduled to take over guard duty. The soldiers would keep watch from the turn of one of the emr PS, which is a big armored truck, but was supposed to take over from Austin langford. But lanford comes to the end of his shift, noble, so he gets down from the big truck, which she's not technically supposed to do until he is relieved. But whatever he steps down and shakes pose little tent, which is right near the embraer, to wake him up for duty. The lanford goes back up in the truck, still no bow.

So I went back down and then opened his tent and he wasn't in there. So I go, cable. He probably went to the bathroom or .

something lanford shout to a guy headed IT to the toilet, says, C. F. Burg dos. In there. Guy comes back. no. Then land further remembers the boo had a reputation for sometimes hanging out with the afghan national police guys who also had an outpost upon the hill.

That was my next thought, was he might be up there. So I radioed up to the ops that he is burned out there. They said, no bird does not appear.

Someone alerts shame cross since his bodies with bow. And now shame starts looking.

looked around and poked around from a little bit. And then I one over the air trucks, a few people were awake and tried ask them, hey, was where boo? So I don't, I don't know. And after I check in three works, I started a concern. And that's when I am back and I woke or pl and I told him, well, what what had happened that knew he was gone.

Who was the po ten .

of buildings?

John billings was the P. L, the pot on leader. He testified a military hearing that he thought shame. And Austin and the other guys were just messing with them, he said.

He thought, quote, they just want to see me get all spaced out, freak out, you know, call higher headquarters unquote. Instead, billions realizes with horror that is real freaks out and calls higher headquarters. He told an army prosecutor that he felt a quote, internal frantick ess unquote.

He can't find his guy. He typed out a message to his company commander back horn a to the effect of were not up, meaning not one hundred percent account for I have a missing soldier. At the other end of that message is kept in solving o as solving o, who tells them, look again, there's got to be a mistake.

Billings ride back, not a mistake. So fino sets the dust one in motion. Just as boit planned. The news start circulating at the O P, obviously. Then back at the fab of the chain of command, and then all over afghanistan, both fellow soldiers immediately tried to piece together what had happened. Here's Austin langford, the guy who bow is supposed to relieve from guard today.

I knew in my mind that he had nobody came in and took him, because they would have either been seen, they wouldn't been able to get through the constant ino wire. He would have fought back like I didn't imagine him being taken as an option. And he left behind all his sensitive .

items in a nice, neat little sit items, meaning mark merial number .

year would be a problem. His weapon, his, the laser for his weapon, the optic, his night optics, stuff like that. A big problem.

If I weren't messing, you left IT. And in a nice, neat little pile with a note, of course, stand with the fact there was just a ton of conjecture instance. There's actually no evidence. Bow after note and bow himself says he didn't leave. One does not clear to me where that detail came from.

Other people said both had been acting to coy with the afghan national police guys the way that he'd been talking to the locals in the way that he'd been you know he'd been throwing up plate to guard shifts um because he was busy talking to the locals. That's jh quarter. Here's dail hanson.

His guesses were expensive. We're like, man is like a what I mean, like this crazy. Like more what was the discussion?

Yeah like what were you guys thinking inking? I mean, those are the things I was either like guys to complete unit or is either like C I A, like we are trying to like .

we can figure that out. You know, some of these guys, they're seen so many strange and terrible things and deployments, but this was unheard of. I talked to josh and ben and another band and a game calling Scott not his real name, and can and john and Jason and mark and zack and Austin and chain and darrow.

They remember both differently. They remember what happened after he left differently. They have different feelings about IT. They do not speak with one voice, but to a man. They said they were gob marked when they heard someone was missing.

And now it's like, this is gotta a drill, a rap. Like this dream idea. Like, what? Like, you know what?

I just a crazy thing I could ever happen because I was so ludek ous at the time to think what?

Walk, nobody walks off of bob, or or a, you know, not even a bob, you know, a combat outpost.

Where are you? Onna go. I mean, it's not liking, go hide out, you know, the mall or something. I mean, there there is nowhere but taliban.

One of those friends told me that he was always a meticulous packer. This trip from meter Sharona was no exception. Both got his wallet and his camera.

He always had his camera on him, two small knives that clip onto his belt, plus utility knife. He's got a notebook insider, a few poems and journal entries, plus a newspaper clipping about a guy hood. Set a record for sAiling thousand days or something o love's boats for water.

He'd filled the blood from his camel back, about three leaders, headband, ed to pack, and nuts from his tramadol, some vacuum pack, chicken meat from an M R E, the stands for meal, ready to eat, the soldiers field ration. And he had his compass, his afghan clothing. He showed into his pocket.

He figured he wouldn't need IT until the sun rose sometime after midnight on june thirtieth, bow walks about half way up the hill toward that second lookout and climbs over the concertina wire in a spot where someone had thrown a plastic create down on top of that, he skirts passed the afghans and U. S. Posts on top of knowing it's a blind spot for them slate for one thing.

So people are probably tired. And if they're looking out at all, they're looking into the distance, not directly below them. Plus afghans don't have night vision gear anyway.

Once he clears that hill, he heads northwest toward the town of mulock, passes school there until finally he's out in open desert. And that's when IT hitt them. And he sudenly feels the magnitude of what he's done. So basically .

what I decided to do the first place, go from point a to point b. yeah. And that was IT.

However, twenty minutes out, I said, you know, twenty minutes out i'm going good, greece and in over my had this is going and when I get back to the they can, I knew that was going to happen what certainly you know is really starts the same again that yeah, I really did something bad. That was not bad, but I did. I really did something .

serious also. He's profoundness scared. He's a world away from anything he knows in a country whose culture is alien to him, or people want to kill him. And he's outside the wire in the dark when I picked him standing there. I imagine a free floating astronaut, no comforting tethers attaching him to the mothership.

The thought crosses bose mind should just go back to the O, P, but he's not at all sure he could sneak back in after all the guys there are watching for people coming toward them and they're manning big machine guns, he might get shot. Instead, both figures. He just got a clenched jaw and go for IT.

And here again, he makes a decision that is not the one you expect, at least not the one I would expect, because Normally does he keep going? But he alters his plan, complicate IT, makes IT a little grander and more ambitious in hopes mitigating the momentous trouble he now realizes he's in. Both figures will try to arrive back at the fob with some extra thing, a gift in the form of valuable intel.

He knew that on the road from fox rona to op mst, there were sometimes ideas board hurts some place that the guys who are planting the ideas were doing IT at night. So he decides he'll make like a special forces guy and try to catch someone planting an ID or about to planting ID. IT looked for flashlights, Bobby, up and down. Listen for the crack of dios.

The idea would have been, if I had seen somebody in the darkness who look like they are doing something suspicious out, then slowly, quietly follow them in the name, and then in the morning pick up their trail and track them to wear everyday that they're going. Then I get that information. And so that when I got back to the fob, say, you know what, you left your position.

But I can say, well, I also got this information, so you know what you're you going to do? I have this information of this person who was doing this on this name, and they look here. And so that would be like, just viable. Like he left his photo of know, he left the TCP, but he collected into that helped us stop somebody who was putting an ID in the road. You that would have been the bonus point that would have helped me deal with the whole basically Carrying e of court, learned that her rune, or of a hickey of rat that was going to hit me once I got back to the fob.

Up until this point, both has he had been walking in open terrain between the road and a swell of hills. His idea was to make a slight detour, to shift a bit more, tour the hills where some houses were thinking he'd have a Better chance there of catching someone moving around in the dark unawares.

But before he knows that he's in the hills, he says he got completely tangled in there, forgot to check his compass for two hours, which is a rookie move. And so what was meant to be a slight deal turned into a major detour. By the time he straighten himself out and gotten out of the hills.

he'd lost valuable time. Just the next morning was, 你好， where got got myself through by the .

time the sun was up, but was an open desert with .

no cover you. That's what put me into line of side of the element. And what happens some dudes drove up and just snag you? Or what?

Maybe in a light of mooring ycl value about by motorcycles that might have been a couple guys on the back of a couple of the moorcroft les is by at last six years, seven guys with the A K forty seven. One guy had a IT was a bigger one that was, they had IT then shoot the seven point six two thirty and shot seven point to forty one, one of those, and they were driving on the road. And I I can tell you what set him off.

I can tell you how they spotted me. I I don't know. They just deviated. They turned off the road, came towards me. And maybe they're just, maybe they just stop somebody walking to the desert and they wanted to see he was that they had seen need to help.

I don't know what I was but there was in the open open desert and i'm not about that run bunching of motorcycles yeah so that I can do anything against, you know, six or seven guys the day k forty seven and they just, they pulled up and was, but they said, you felt like crazy. Now I did. I'm i'm much student enough to try and fight off all the head with a knife and much student up on to try night. Yes, they forty seven. So did they basically just tie your hands and tell you on the back of one of the bikes or something or what tty much?

Hello.

hello, this is Sarah. That's me calling the taliban. Hello, is .

that your? 我我我， yes, yes. Thank you very much. Are you doing the .

taliban version of post capture next time on cereal?

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episode of real. They have no hesitation, have no problem killing you. And what are we going to do with him or be going to and they kill him to be heard him. I mean, like literally like we were charging in these towns just running out of time OK. Now we're going to .

fly you into this bEdwin village and you're going to check all the women's faces to make sure that they're not hiding him and women's clothing. The team went in and looked up and saw the ceiling lined with see four.

He is asking about couple or asking about police, and we told him that we are please. What you mean? My name is go very go. Holy and twenty three years old.