The Renegades

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Even from a thousand feet in the air, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Parson could see the earthquake had shaken Afghanistan to a new level of misery. The slums of Mazar-i-Sharif stretched below the Mi-17 helicopter like a vast, disturbed hive. People milled in the streets. Black columns of smoke seethed into the sky above a city of collapsed ceilings and crumpled walls. An untold number lay dead or dying beneath the rubble.

The quake had happened only about an hour ago, and the U.S. Geological Survey rated it a preliminary 7.2. A smaller magnitude than the quake that had devastated northern Japan in 2011, but worse in its own way. Afghanistan’s construction standards were prehistoric.

Parson stood in the back of an Afghan chopper with an Afghan interpreter and an Afghan army colonel. Up front, Captain Rashid commanded the aircraft, accompanied by his copilot and a flight engineer. Wind from the helicopter’s open door rippled the sleeves of Parson’s tan desert flight suit. Reeking whiffs stung his nostrils. Not aircraft exhaust, but something closer to the smell of coal and charred wood. Black flecks whipped through the air: soot from the fires on the ground.

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