Lions of Kandahar (24 page)

Hodge’s second truck belonged to Jeff, the team sergeant; it was also armed with an automatic grenade launcher and quickly pulled up alongside Hodge’s truck. The gunner sank behind the boxy green launcher, flipped the safety off, and started pumping out dozens of grenades directly on top of the fighters in the irrigation ditch, strafing from left to right.

The rest of Hodge’s team pulled abreast and poured fire down the length of the trench, trapping the Taliban fighters. Bodies burst into pieces as the rounds tore into the group; an RPG shot straight up into the air.

Two fighters made a dash for it. Wearing baggy shirts and pants, AK-47 magazine pouches strapped across their chests, they darted into the open and were promptly cut down by two Afghan soldiers with a PKM machine gun.

The grenade launcher worked up and down the ditch repeatedly. No one was coming out of that trench ever again.

I called Jared and asked him to send Bruce’s team up to me. We literally needed to circle the wagons inside the bowl in order to maximize our firepower. Jared said they were dismounted from their trucks in the compound’s entrance, rooting out Taliban fighters, and couldn’t move. Some dire necessity had to have prompted that—you never send troops out on foot unless they can be covered by machine guns. I prayed that no one got isolated and pinned down.

I found out later what had happened: when the ambush was sprung on us, fighters in the compounds to the left and right side of Bruce’s team also opened up, smashing them in a hellish crossfire. The thick walls of the compound offered great protection—so good, in fact, that the team’s .50-caliber machine guns and 40-mm grenade launchers couldn’t penetrate them.

Bruce had decided to send in a small fire team to clear out the fighters. Ben, an engineer sergeant, and J.D., a medic, led a squad of
six Afghan soldiers from the cover of the trucks to the lead compound, where they pressed themselves against the compound’s thick tan walls and heaved grenades over to a spot near an entranceway. Their red and green tracers tumbled and spun, crisscrossing the interior as they flooded inside.

Ben and his men found four Taliban fighters in the back of the compound trying to flee through a small door. Three made it out. The fourth fighter broke for the door at a sprint, firing his AK from the hip. He hit the door and bounced back, surprised when it didn’t open, and collapsed in a heap when the Afghan soldiers with Ben fired.

The ANA squad leader shot Ben a toothy grin and a thumbs-up. Ben, known for his dry sense of humor, grinned back. The soldiers pushed on to other compounds and the scene repeated itself two more times. Each time, the bond between the Afghans and Americans solidified.

The third compound was really a large, three-story grape house running right beside a deep, dry irrigation ditch covered with vegetation. The Afghan soldiers threw another grenade into the ditch, then dashed across to secure the outside of the building. Peeking inside, they spotted several dozen large ammunition boxes and RPG rockets. Just as the combined team of soldiers was about to enter, an Afghan soldier outside started screaming. Hanging above the door was a Russian 107-mm rocket. A wire at head level would have set the booby trap off.

Between bursts, I listened to Ben’s radio report back to Bruce. I’d had enough of getting shot at while we waited on Bruce’s team to finish clearing the compounds. I sprinted across the open field to Jared’s truck. “Where the fuck is 36?” Our conversation and the explanation played out in shouts over the hammering of .50-cal machine guns and explosions all around us.

“The ambush cut off our element. Bruce’s team couldn’t get to our location—his guys went to push the enemy back so we can get
all the vehicles together,” Jared told me. “Predator says we have hundreds of fighters here.”

“Well, we need those guys back here now!” I shouted. “If they get stuck in there, we’ll have hell to pay getting them out. Can you get them back here so we can get out of this mess?”

The meeting was cut short when Casey, the gunner in Jared’s truck, shouted, “Ammo!” Jared and I scrambled over the back of the truck together to move ammunition boxes to him so he could keep the gun firing. The machine guns and grenade launchers were keeping us alive.

Bill came running to the truck. “Captain, I have bad news,” he shouted. “We have two boxes per gun and four rockets left. We are about to go black on ammo.”

Black on ammunition meant we were about to run out. I reached down and hit the talk button on my radio.

“Bruce, have your guys break contact and get your men out of there NOW! We are about out of ammunition. If they stay in there any longer, we cannot support you.”

Bruce called Ben and told him to get back to the vehicles. The teams were short on ammo, but Ben had to get out, and he couldn’t leave the enemy a cache as lethal as the one they had found. Taking a knee, he fished out a green bag with two blocks of C-4 explosives from his assault pack. The tiny packages were primed and ready to go.

Ben called Bruce on the radio. “Sir, we have cleared to the third compound due west of your location. We have a large booby-trapped cache at this grid. Cache includes a large amount of ammunition and RPGs. Demo countdown begins in two minutes on my mark. MARK.”

Ben ordered the Afghan squad leader to start moving his men back to the first compound. As each one passed, Ben tapped him on the shoulder to ensure everyone was accounted for. Two minutes was not a lot of time. Ben and the Afghans had to move fast.

Ben set his stopwatch and the timer. He glanced at the detonation cord, time fuse, and blasting caps to ensure they were properly set, then he carefully slid his fingers into the green blasting caps and gave a jerk. The small plastic containers popped and spewed streams of thick gray smoke. Ben calmly slid the C-4 into an opening next to a large stack of rockets and backed away.

The calm part was over. “Burning, burning, burning!” Ben said through the radio static as he sprinted from the grape hut. The demo was armed.

“Talon 36, this is 36 Bravo, thirty seconds to detonation.”

As soon as Bill and I heard Ben on the radio, we sprinted back to our trucks. Bill warned the last two trucks and I warned the first two.

“Button up, demo in thirty seconds!”

Brian slammed his door shut. Dave quickly dropped down into the turret. Ron crawled under Dave’s feet. I got in the passenger’s side and hunkered down as far as I could. We were only about a football field away. Two blocks of explosives setting off a cache would be … 
Whoom!
The flash hit first, then the sound, and a heat wave swept over us, rocking the trucks. Everything not tied down went airborne. Huge chunks of mud wall, clay bricks, rockets, and mortars rained down from the sky.

“All trucks give me a status,” I barked into the radio.

“Truck two up.” “Truck three up.” “Truck four up.”

The blast covered everything in a thin layer of dust. I looked up at Dave squatting in the turret. He burst out laughing. Soon, Brian and Ron joined in.

“What the hell are you laughing at?” I demanded.

“You look like a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound sugar cookie, Captain,” Dave got out between laughs.

It wasn’t a leap to realize that I looked ridiculous, half stuffed into the space between the floorboards and my seat, covered in dust, and barking into a radio. I had to laugh. “What else can happen today?” I said sarcastically.

“The day ain’t over yet,” Ron said.

“Coming out,” Ben said into the radio. He had no more than spoken when the first of the Afghans appeared, exiting the hole in the outer compound’s wall. Our rear gunners covered them as they and Ben sprinted toward the trucks.

Hodge’s team still couldn’t see us. J.D., the medic on Bruce’s team, knew we were stuck in the kill zone and took off with an Afghan soldier to flag them down. Running back along the road and skirting a marijuana field, he finally found Hodge’s group.

They were under fire too. The safety glass on two of Hodge’s trucks had been popped from bullet impacts and was laced with a webbing of cracks. There was no cover other than the trucks, and Hodge knew his team couldn’t stay in that position for long. But they were stuck. If they abandoned their rear covering position, the rest of the teams might never make it back out. Our entire situation was deteriorating rapidly.

It was time to make a no-bullshit assessment. We were receiving accurate fire from all directions. We were also low on ammunition. We couldn’t push forward to seize the hill. If we stayed, we’d eventually be outnumbered, facing hundreds of Taliban fighters—with no machine guns. I got on the radio and called Jared.

“Thirty this is 31. Recommend we break contact so we can consolidate, reorganize, and call in an emergency resupply.”

Jared called 36, Bruce’s team, to make sure they were ready. Their fight had turned when the Taliban started firing armor-piercing rounds, which easily cut through our thinly armored trucks.

“Do it,” Jared shot back.

“All 31 elements BREAK CONTACT, I SAY AGAIN, BREAK CONTACT! Peel out in movement order. Provide covering fire,” I ordered.

Brian called, “Set,” and everyone held on. Our truck jolted backward, accompanied by an avalanche of brass shell casings cascading from the roof and hood. The other trucks on my team followed suit, and we stayed in one another’s tire tracks to avoid land mines
and IEDs. As we blew back out through the entranceway, the suffocating sensation of being in the kill zone evaporated. I watched the collage of colors on the digital map fade flat as we moved several kilometers into the desert.

Round one went to the Taliban.

SEVEN TWO-THOUSAND-
POUNDERS

J
ared’s truck skidded to a halt near mine, enveloped in a thick, choking dust cloud. I grabbed my map and headed straight for him. He was out of his truck, a radio handset in his fist, and motioning for me to hurry by the time I got there.

“Rusty, we finally have a Predator and a B-1 bomber overhead. Listen to this,” he said.

The comfort of having a B-1, its contrails weaving high above us, cannot be overstated. Pressing Jared’s mike to my ear, I could hear the Predator operator clearly from thousands of miles away. He was probably sitting in an air-conditioned control room outside Las Vegas as he zeroed his camera in on several trucks armed with machine guns and swarming with Taliban fighters. They were moving in and out of an L-shaped series of compounds near the hill. Other fighters were unloading boxes of ammunition nearby, the operator said.

“Talon 30. This is just in one compound. Do you copy?” the Predator
operator said. “There are seven total compounds with this type of enemy activity directly ahead of you.”

We could clearly see Sperwan Ghar in the distance. We were only about a mile away from the hill. The enemy hornets’ nest was another half mile from there.

Wow
, I thought as I looked down at my vest. Three magazines left. Not enough to last much longer. I called Ron to make sure he was setting up a link to the video feed. Mike, standing alongside Jared, was talking to the B-1, Jared to the Predator. “This is Talon 30. We need to know the number of personnel and type of vehicles.”

His response was sobering. “We stopped counting at one hundred enemy personnel with weapons. There are at least eight Hilux vehicles at the first compound,” the Predator controller reported.

Just then, Ron got the video feed. We watched dozens of dark figures as they scurried back and forth on the small screen. Jared leaned in, focusing intently. We all knew what he was looking for—civilians. After several seconds, he hit the talk button on his vest.

“Mike, do you have control with the bomber? If so, level that target. I mean level it.”

I marked the enemy position on my map. No matter how many bombs we dropped, I knew someone always survived. This had to be a devastating blow or they’d be on us in no more than a few hours. I grabbed Jared. “Sir, we need this strike to be crippling for the enemy. Let’s enhance this by hitting them with a mortar barrage right after the bombs impact.”

Hodge nodded in agreement. “Yep, that’ll do ’er!”

“We can fire from top to bottom on the target for about two minutes after the bombs impact. That will take care of the enemy who survive the strike and come out of the remaining buildings.”

Jared approved it without hesitation. We scrambled to set up the tubes and ammunition. Hodge’s team planted the first tube, and the Afghans and other teams followed suit. Before long, we had a half dozen tubes aligned between the trucks. While the weapons sergeants
plotted firing resolutions, the rest of us continued to rush boxes of ammunition up to the mortars.

Jared yelled for a status. We responded that we were set. He turned to Mike, who had spent the last few minutes planning the strike and talking the bomber onto the targets.

“The pilot is confirming the grids and inputting his data. He needs another minute to ensure everything is correct. This is a big drop. Ordnance will be one bomb for each building,” Mike said.