I was still down the next day as I tried to make sense of what had happened to my friend. Even running into Vicki didn’t cheer me much.

She said, “I heard about your friend. I’m really sorry.”

All I could do was nod.

She was very patient and gentle. “How would you feel about a tour of the whole base in a vehicle? Maybe it’ll give you some perspective. At least it might take your mind off your friend.”

I agreed, and after an hour or so, she turned out to be right. There was so much to see, it was overwhelming. I had to remind myself why I was here. I had to find Rick Jackson. I had to protect my family. I also realized that everyone here took the same risk as Jason Roche.

The vehicle hardly looked like standard military issue. It was a silver Toyota Hilux with a sunroof. The truck was only a couple of years old but it had seen some rough duty. Almost every section of the body had a dent, and duct tape held part of the rear window together.

Vicki handled the truck like a pro. Throughout the tour, she avoided all potholes and the occasional piece of road debris.

She said, “It’s fairly cool this time of year, but mainly because we’re up at about five thousand feet. Roughly the same elevation as Denver.”

“I bet most people prefer Denver.”

“There really is a TripAdvisor page for Bagram Air Base. It gets three and a half stars. My favorite review said, ‘avoid if possible.’ That one made me laugh out loud. But when you’ve got up to forty thousand people on a six-square-mile base, not everyone’s going to be happy. All of Afghanistan only has about thirty-five million people. The capital has about a tenth of the population right there. As far as Afghanistan goes, this is the place to be.”

I was curious about the population. “Anyone speak English?”

“Sure, some. Most everyone speaks Pashto. Farther south, they tend to speak more Dari. On the air base, it’s a little harder to figure out languages. You’ll meet up with soldiers from Estonia or Cyprus or half a dozen other countries you’ve barely heard of. It surprised me how many of them don’t speak much English. And the contractors come from every country imaginable.”

“How many contractors are on the base?”

“More than a quarter, probably between eight thousand and ten thousand. There’s something like thirty-five or forty countries participating in Operation Resolute Support. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s military and who works for one of the contractors.”

“Ever heard of Deep River?”

“Yeah, sure. They’re a pretty big outfit. They get some support from my office. They also run the detention facility out near the Russian ruins.”

“Who do they hold at the facility?”