KYIV, Ukraine—My brother Drew, a former Air Force captain, told me one of the worst stories I’ve yet to hear from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He was riding in a convoy from Bagram Air Base to Kabul during a deployment to Afghanistan in August 2010.
This particularly dangerous stretch of road was known as “suicide alley” due to the frequency of Taliban improvised explosive device attacks. Most of the IEDs the Taliban used in this area were physically connected to detonators by a thin copper “piano wire,” which made them immune to jamming.
These hard-wired IEDs required precision from the attacker to time the explosion with passing vehicles. So the best defense was to drive fast and not stop—no matter what.
“The Taliban would do anything to get us to stop,” Drew later told me. “But as soon as you stop or open your door, you’re dead.”
