Project Valhalla

By Brett Allen

The village square is caged by qalats─clay homes, rising from dry earth like tombstones. The air is choked with dust kicked by truck tires and the soles of two hundred feet. The feet are filthy. They shuffle anxiously, hesitantly, atop leather straps or buried in ragged sneakers, already on their second life. The dust leaves a film in my mouth, but the taste is trumped by the stink of festering human waste wafting off the drainage ditch outside of town.
It’s hard to tell if this was the plan for Afghanistan all along. Not the sewage, but the strategy. After the first decade, the Generals and the finks in Washington had to have seen the writing on the bullet-riddled walls. The second decade amounted to nothing more than a military performance piece. A song and dance, just violent enough to matter and just tame enough to not. “Combat jazz-hands” to fool the Taliban and local militias—hell, even the American people—into thinking we meant to win, all while the Military Industrial Complex churned out war machines making the rich bastards richer and scarring the psyche of another generation. Now, two years after “the fall”, the dramatic swansong-exit, I’m back here, in the back of a sweaty mob, trying not to look too American.
“Too American.”
I’d better not look American at all. Six hours in “hair and make-up” and an hour in “wardrobe”. I’d better look like Osama Bin-Fricken-Laden. Time will tell.
I look over my shoulder, but my handler is gone. I don’t blame him for bolting. In the village square, at the center of the crowd, is a beat-up humvee. A souvenir left by the old occupiers as they sprinted for the exit. Some guy in a pakul and bad eyeliner is standing in the turret, exposed from the chest up, an AK cradled in one arm. He’s shouting something from a bullhorn. Hell if I know what. Beneath him, the humvee doors are spread like the wings of a great scarab and scowling men lean out brandishing rifles of every origin. They look mean and intimidating, but I know they’re just glad to have a break from the baking heat of the truck. I remember what it was like.

Twenty-two a day. That’s how many veterans they said committed suicide every day. Wasted lives they said. Brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, cousins, grandparents, grandkids, friends, coworkers, and on and on. All veterans of the great Global War On Terror─dying in droves by their own hands.
“Don’t be part of the statistics,” they told me. They told me this when I called the hotline. I called the hotline when things got dark and things got dark when I failed to assimilate; when the camaraderie was gone and the bills stacked up and it became apparent nobody valued the transferable skills of a combat infantryman. Nothing felt genuine. I was drowning and everyone thanked me for my service with quick smiles while they quietly worked an angle or receded into the residual ecstasy of rendered praise.
The operator was nice enough, but once she found out about my service, she transferred my call. I’d never called a suicide hotline before, but transferring the call seemed like poor protocol.
“Project Valhalla Hotline, Major Charon speaking,” said a flat female voice. “This call may be recorded for training purposes. Would you like to stay on the line after the call for a short survey?”
“What? No. I’m sorry, who is this?”
“Project Valhalla Hotline,” repeated the voice. “Are you thinking about killing yourself?”
“I was,” I said.
“‘Was’ or ‘are’?” She asked, suddenly stern.
“‘Are’,” I said. “I mean, I am.”
“You haven’t done anything already have you?” She asked. “Like, you haven’t taken a handful of pills or cut your wrist or rigged a guillotine on an egg-timer or anything, right?”
“Do people actually do that?”
“I’ve got stories,” she said. “Have you done anything?”
“No.”
“Perfect.”
Major Charon explained that ten months prior, two Army veterans, who’d met in the waiting room of a VA psychologist’s office, used their combined connections in southeast Asia to smuggle themselves into Afghanistan via the Pakistani border. Chaperoned by a small band of resistance fighters, the two Americans traversed a distance of 300 miles in-country, returning to the abandoned Forward Operating Base from which they’d both once served. The FOB, as they learned, was being utilized as a training facility for extremists and foreign fighters. Their eager allies had been more than happy to outfit the two Americans with as much and as many varieties of ordinance as they could scrounge and rig together. The resulting assault was a one-way ticket for both men—as they had intended—and was the cause of such death and destruction that it was heralded as a monumental success by the U.S. Counter-Terrorism community, who quickly took credit for the assault in an effort to save face. From the rubble, Project Valhalla was born. A Department of Defense program, Project Valhalla was billed as a mutually beneficial response to both the high veteran suicide rates and multiple decades of failed counter-insurgency strategy. The DoD was offering veterans one last opportunity to give their lives for a higher purpose─and a modest life insurance payout.
“Think of it as a counterinsurgency insurgency,” Major Charon said, “or repurposing old equipment.”
“Don’t you feel bad, encouraging people to commit suicide?”
“We’re not encouraging. We, of course, don’t want anyone to commit suicide,” she said. Her tone was a well-rehearsed script. “We’re simply utilizing individuals who’ve already chosen this specific path to gain a strategic advantage.”
“Shouldn’t you be trying to stop folks from killing themselves?”
“We tried that,” Charon said. “Too many lawsuits.”
The line was silent for a full five seconds.
“Can we count on you?” She asked.

The vest beneath my tunic is strapped tight and impossibly hot. Heavy too. I don’t dare adjust it though. If I tear a wire connection, I’ll blow the whole deal. Literally. Or worse yet, I won’t blow at all and then I’m stuck wearing this thunder-vest-of-death until I can reconnect with my handler, wherever he is.
I take a breath.
I take a step. And then another. No one in the crowd notices me. They’re all too focused on the trucks and the bad mamajama with the bullhorn.
I step further into the crowd, trying as always to avoid human contact. Halfway to the truck, I stop, not wanting to advance too quickly. An old man looks my way. He gives me a weak smile and his leather hand trembles at the end of a gnarled oak cane. There’s no sign of detection in his eyes, only tired desperation. He’s been through all this before.
Through it all, I feel a creeping sense of purpose. It visits like an old friend and seems to lighten the hidden burden sitting heavy on my chest. I’m surprised at how comfortable I am in these surroundings. A stark contrast to the fraudulent feelings of home, receiving handshakes and back slaps at Fourth of July picnics and Veterans Day parades. People telling me I’m a hero and in the same breath lamenting at what a travesty my war was. At least here I don’t have to make small talk or bite my tongue while “coulda-been-soldiers” tell me how things should’ve gone.
I think about the friends I’ve lost here and in other dusty places. I wonder if they’d think it all worthwhile. I wonder how the dead will welcome me.
The man on the truck is shouting again. Two of his goons circle to the back of the truck where they pull a teenage boy from the cargo hold. Sixteen years old, maybe. The boy seems dazed, his long shirt drenched in sweat. His eyes flash jolts of cognition, wild and terrified. They drag him to the front of the truck and throw him against the hood. The man in the turret is angrier now and I can see specks of spit flying from his mouth. He points at the kid and then at the crowd. Everyone lowers their eyes in shame. I do too. One of the men yanks the boy’s arm out across the hood, locking it straight, pinned at the wrist. The other man pulls a kukri blade from a sheath. The boy's eyes are wide, but the terror is to complete and his lips only tremble as he searches the crowd for any hero. For a split second, he stares at me. I softly thumb the detonator hidden in my right hand. The blade is up. It gleams brilliant in the sun and then the blade is down. The boy is allowed to slump to the ground and his lifeless hand is left to sit like a great spider upon the hood. The crowd’s cheer is weak and insincere. Noise of obligation. No one wants to be next. I wonder if, under all the blood, the blade even scratched the humvee’s hood. The butchered limb seems to point at me.

Suddenly, I’m eleven years old in my parents’ garage. The cars have been backed out into the driveway and two naked, yellow bulbs buzz, illuminating the empty space. The yawning door invites a cool, Fall breeze that smells of decaying leaves. From a rafter, a rope suspends the carcass of a whitetail deer above the cement floor. Field dressing has left the deer's torso hollow, crimson, and gaping. The blood drains and drips into a bucket below. My dad looks proud. I still feel nauseous, but I’d never admit it.
“You killed it,” he says. “So you’re going to help butcher it.”
He sees the discomfort in my eyes.
“Don’t make the mess, if you’re not willing to clean it up,” he says.
He takes a hacksaw to the animal’s forelegs, right at the knee. He works the higher legs because he knows I can’t reach them.
“Cut right below the knee,” he instructs. “This will keep you away from the good meat.”
He hands me the saw and pulls out his knife, which he uses to slice the hide along what remained of the front legs. I kneel down and go to work. In my head, I’m reliving the hunt─the waiting, the excitement of the deer’s arrival, the release of the arrow, the tracking, and the jarring reality of field dressing. But mostly, I grapple with the act of taking a life. Before I realize it, one leg is off. I throw it to the side and move for the other.
“You’re cutting too high,” my dad says. He bends down and inspects the leg, then turns it so I can see the wide cross-cut, bright with red tissue. He tosses the leg back and the disembodied hoof lands at my knees. The hoof seems to point at me.
Dad hands me his knife and I look at him with confusion. He’s wearing the serious face of a teachable moment.
“No wasted meat.”

Unnatural silence brings me back to the crowd. The boy on the ground is gripping the stub of his wrist and moaning between choked sobs, but all eyes are on me. The man in the turret is looking at me expectantly.
Did he ask me something? Did I not cheer when the crowd cheered?
The man in the turret yells to his men, who push through the crowd. I desperately want to run. Survival instinct. But I remember my mission and if I play my cards right, this could work in my favor. Still, I wish I’d learned Pashto or Dari or Arabic or whatever-the-hell language the man in the turret was shouting. I know it's trivial, but I’d like to know what I’m being accused of.
The two men that cleaved the boy are grabbing my arms. I resist, but just enough to play the part. I don’t want to jostle the vest or piss them off enough to shoot me dead on the spot. They kick the boy like a dog until he drags himself away with his remaining hand and they throw me against the hood of the truck. My face is mashed down into the boy’s blood and I can see where the kukri came down. Not a scratch. I can hear my heart in my ear. Thumping. Thumping against the truck’s metal skin. Thumping in the wet blood.
The impact has loosened the prosthetic nose and I can see it with crossed eyes. I curse the DoD and its “lowest bidder” policy. The turret man is still yelling. He’s going to make an example of me. For what, I do not know.
The man holding me down is young, maybe my own age. Maybe younger. People here age faster. He looks down at me and grins. His teeth are an abstract painting, but his smile fades when he spots the curling skin of my fake nose. He yanks it off and holds it high in the air, prompting gasps from the crowd. People shriek and back away, no doubt assuming I’m diseased or cursed or both.
I try to keep my hands low, but the cleaver-man pulls up my right arm. He slams my hand onto the hood, but not hard enough to loosen my grip on the detonator. The man in the turret is analyzing the prosthetic nose, tossed to him by his underling. The cleaver-man raises his blade high and when he looks down he sees the red wire running from fist to sleeve. There’s a moment of dull curiosity, followed by searing, white-eyed terror.
I take a breath. The button makes only the gentlest click under my thumb. The sun flashes off the blade and I wonder again how the dead will welcome me.

****

Brett Allen is a humor writer and former U.S. Army Cavalry Officer who served from 2006 to 2010, largely with 3-71 CAV, 10th Mountain Division. He’s the author of the novel Kilroy Was Here, a dark comedy highlighting the absurdities of war and loosely based on his 2009 deployment to the Logar Province of Afghanistan. Brett currently resides in Ada, Michigan with his wife and kids and is working on his next novel.