The Fort Bragg Cartel is a work of investigative journalism uncovering institutional failures in the American military and the corrosive cultural influence of the Delta Force. Though the book focuses on these broader, social issues, Harp chooses to open the narrative with a tragic story at a more personal scale. The bleak, ominous depiction of the final hours of Mark Leshikar’s life ground the story in lived experience. Whereas the rest of the book will detail the history of the operator units and the traumatic consequences of the Global War on Terror, the opening chapters portray the human toll of such institutional failures. Harp centers this story to show the dehumanizing effect of Fort Bragg’s “operator culture”—Harp’s term for the culture of pervasive violence, secrecy, and impunity that pervades the military base. 

The nonchronological nature of the narrative emphasizes Harp’s intent, as these opening chapters portray a time long after the training, the fighting, and the return home have taken their toll on Lavigne and Leshikar. These chapters show them gripped by paranoia, self-medicating via illegal narcotics, and unaware of the traumatizing effects of their behavior on their children. In this way, the two men embody one of the book’s core themes: Cycles of Trauma and Addiction in the Military. Even a family trip to Disney World is not complete without “uppers, downers, ketamine, and bath salts” (156), nor is their family life enough to soothe their pain and paranoia. The death of Mark Leshikar is a tragic consequence of the events described in the rest of the book, but placed at the beginning of the narrative to ground such discussions in a human, sympathetic foundation.

The presence of Lavigne and Leshikar’s young daughters helps to show the corrosive nature of the Fort Bragg mentality. Throughout the book, Harp is clear that the consequences of the corruption, addiction, and violence as practiced by the men of Fort Bragg are not limited to the men themselves. The violence is directed outward, toward others. This violence is weaponized by the state and the military toward tactical aims, but it cannot be completely controlled. The violence spills over, affecting civilians everywhere from Afghanistan to North Carolina. Though the men of Fort Bragg may have been trained to see the people of countries like Afghanistan as faceless entities, the same cannot be said about the two men’s young daughters. These young civilian girls are forced to watch as Leshikar descends into a paranoid delusion. When Lavigne is tried for killing Leshikar, the girls are called as witnesses. The trauma that has so deeply affected the operators is thus passed on to the young girls, an example of Blowback as a Consequence of Military Interventionism as the violence of America’s decades-long covert wars returns home. The narrative’s inclusion of the children shows the full scope of the tragedy, as Lavigne and Leshikar’s trauma and substance addiction produces new traumas in the lives of their children.

The story of Mark Leshikar’s death also illustrates the sheer prevalence of drugs and weapons in public spaces in the US. At Disney World, a family theme park fenced off from the rest of society, the two men have no problem finding drugs. They repeatedly sneak away to “rendezvous with sketchy military dudes” (19) so that they can obtain cocaine, even though they are meant to be spending time with their families. Through a network of military contacts and known drug dealers, they are never far from getting their hands on illegal substances. Likewise, Lavigne has “a Colt 1911 that he carried concealed on his person at all times” (24). Even when he is with his family, he feels the need to have his weapon present. Even while consuming vast quantities of drugs and alcohol, he has a firearm with him. Drugs and weapons are simply ever-present in the lives of these men, showing the extent to which they have fully internalized the “operator culture” of Fort Bragg. Hidden networks of supply and demand exist to maintain this presence, meaning that men like Leshikar and Lavigne always have access to illegal drugs and weapons.