Lions of Kandahar (30 page)

It was then that the small, clear voice of a child reminded me to “shoot into the bushes, Daddy, shoot into the bushes.” The moment gave me goose bumps.

“Earlier we couldn’t convince the other birds to fire that close,” Dave added.

Behind us, the Chinook’s rotors whined as it prepared to take off. As they gained power, a huge dust cloud mushroomed out in all directions, cutting visibility. A blessing for the helicopter.

“Everyone on the perimeter, find a target and open fire,” Jared radioed to the teams.

I heard Dustoff 03 call Viper 08: “I’m coming out.”

The helicopter leapt into the air. “Now! Now! EVERYONE open fire!” I barked into the radio.

We flicked the kill switch on. My three remaining trucks, Bruce and Hodge’s team, ETTs, interpreters, and the ANA soldiers opened fire on the compounds and grape huts. Everyone who could fire a weapon started shooting.

As the helicopter rose through the dust cloud and banked hard toward the open desert, I said a silent prayer for those inside we probably would never see again. With the Chinook out of harm’s way, I called for another pass from the Apache.

“Viper 08, this time I need for you to come in and make a run on the three buildings only. Do you copy?” I said.

I was not happy with his reply.

“Talon 31, sorry, got to go. Escort for Dustoff 03. You guys be safe. Viper 08 out.”

Just then, a round shot straight between Ron and me. I winced visibly and scooted to the back of my truck. My nerves were shot. I
ducked down under the rear tire as a volley of RPG and recoilless-rifle fire crashed into the schoolhouse. Someone screamed “Incoming!” as explosions from mortars shook the ground and enemy machine-gun fire peppered the vehicles. I was rattled. Collecting myself, I shouldered my rifle and fired. Brian and Dave were, as always, cool as cucumbers.

The windows in the three compounds directly across from my support vehicle flickered wildly. An ANA platoon leader screamed,
“Der dushman!”
Many enemies!

Flashes from bullet impacts wreathed our positions. The truck engine whined, almost as if in agony, as Brian roared back about ten meters toward a concrete latrine, desperately seeking some cover. I expected any minute to see Ole Girl burst into flames around us.

We faced well over two hundred enemy, and their numbers were growing. We’d already fired rockets into the compound, but hadn’t slowed them down. More Taliban simply occupied the building.

Bill moved the Carl Gustav recoilless rifle from his truck and fired a half dozen rockets at the large compound. The 84-mm high-explosive rounds blew large chunks from the thick walls but didn’t penetrate. “Captain, I just can’t punch that thing!” he yelled.

All three compounds kept up a steady stream of machine-gun fire. Brian called out that fighters were moving to the left. I crawled up the side of the truck and into my seat.

“Show me,” I said.

Dave let out a long burst from the .50 cal. The rounds riddled a three-sided wall and irrigation ditch a football field away. It was a counterattack. I called Jared immediately.

“Sir, we have a no-shit counterattack of sixty to eighty enemy coming from the northeast, maybe more. Distance is about one hundred to two hundred meters.”

Jared came back moments later with a shocking order: “Pack up and be prepared to move.”

“Move where?” I asked.

“Fall back to the desert.”

I refused to accept it. I knew that if we gave up the high ground, the enemy would be on top of us in no time, intermingled with our forces, causing unspeakable carnage. We would be mauled. All of my experience as a soldier screamed that we had to make a stand.

“Move? Where the fuck are we gonna go? Back to the fucking desert? I will not fall back off this hill. We have paid for it in blood. This fucking hill is ours and I refuse to give it back to those fucking savages. They can have it if they can take it! Let them get a mouthful of attacking OUR defenses.”

Hodge and Bruce agreed. We stay.

Up to this point, I had tried to be controlled and methodical, but a primal rage consumed me. The feeling is indescribable. There are very few in our society, other than soldiers, who understand it. It is the physical combination of adrenaline, testosterone, exhaustion, and emotion. My rage surfaced, and it unleashed a previously harnessed power. Whatever it is that the brain produces during those moments, I liked it—no, I loved it. I knew we could hold. Instantly, I felt all my exhaustion leave me and my nerve restored. I paused to look around, ignoring the radio.

Jared knew I would not change my mind, and his orders confirmed it. “All right, everyone, dig your heels in. If you think we can hold it, we will make the school our Alamo. I am going to pull the lanyard. All 30 elements, move to the school and hill. Hold your positions and stay low. The sky is about to fall.”

There was no choice but to keep the enemy at bay and try to grind them to a pulp.

We owned the high ground this time, and the RPGs and recoilless rifles simply could not shoot uphill without hitting the berm or shooting over our heads. Ali’s men spotted a group of fighters trying to set up on a nearby roof—an RPG is most effective on a flat trajectory—but Ali’s machine gunners caught them in the open and left them up there.

On the top of the hill, Hodge’s team didn’t have enough firepower. Jared sent Bruce’s team to reinforce them. Engineers had come in with the resupply aircraft and they, along with our team engineers, began the dangerous and painstaking work of probing for mines under fire. They uncovered another IED in the road and several anti-personnel mines on the top of the hill.

We were holding on, but just barely, when the Taliban hit the school with a recoilless rifle and set one room ablaze. Taliban radio intercepts flooded the airwaves with requests for reinforcements at the “commander’s palace.” The Taliban communicated predominantly in code. Fresh fighters had come from across the river and had no idea where to go. Typically, they would wander around, calling the commander every few minutes until they found their linkup. The advantage to us of this type of bumbling was that they had no real sense of tactical movement and could be outmaneuvered and killed. The disadvantage was that they could show up anywhere, anytime, and surprise you. They did both.

At first the radio call made no sense, until I started to scan the compounds.

“Brian, Dave,” I asked, “do any of those compounds look like a palace or a place that belongs to a senior Taliban commander to you? Anything especially ornate or out of place?”

Ron quickly pointed out the cluster of compounds we had been ambushed from on the first day. They had high walls, large grape houses, and ample, once-manicured fields now decimated by gun runs from the Apaches. It had to be the place.

Suddenly, the whine of jet engines filled the air. “Here they come,” Jared said excitedly. Mike, standing on Jared’s truck, now orchestrated nearly a dozen inbound aircraft. We’d finally gotten the air support we needed, and the fighters and bombers swarmed around us like hornets waiting for their chance to strike. A refueling tanker had also been brought in to keep the fighters on station. The modern angels of the battlefield would finally level the playing field.

Ron, sitting in the back of my truck, turned on his computer to get a video downlink so we could confirm the target and description. Otherwise, the ordnance could end up on top of us. The snowy gray-and-white screen flickered, but no picture resolved. Ron called the aircraft to confirm the code again, but it was no use. There would be no video feed today.

“I got it under control, Captain. I’ll do this talk on and we’ll start putting this stuff right up their ass,” Ron said, throwing the computer back into the truck.

Mike started passing aircraft over to Ron, and I ran over to him with my map and GPS to confirm the targets. Ron held up four fingers, indicating that four aircraft were available.

“Level that one damn building if you do nothing else!” I said.

“Captain, the pilot says we are two hundred meters away. It is officially ‘danger close’ for a bomb that big,” Ron told me between radio calls. “The pilot wants your initials.”

I knew exactly what that meant. If the bomb blast killed any friendly forces, the pilot did not want to be held responsible. I understood but didn’t have much choice.

“Romeo Bravo,” I said.

Moments later, I heard the shrieking sound of jets dropping altitude and looked up to see two A-10 Warthogs swoop in, wings loaded with missiles, bombs, and rockets.

“Okay, I have a solution and verbal target confirmation,” Ron said. “That building will be the first to go. One thousand-pound bomb in thirty seconds.”

Wasting no time, I put out a net call over the radio to notify everyone and closed the door on my truck, as if that would do any good if the bomb was off target. But a sense of security is all. I noticed an Afghan soldier looking over the edge of his foxhole, ignorant of the danger, and yelled at the top of my lungs for him to get down.
WHOOM!
The entire building vanished in an upward cloud of smoke and dust. The rolling energy from the blast streaked across the short
field, roiling the tall marijuana plants, racing up the hill like an invisible tidal wave.

“Two more coming, stay down!” Ron yelled.

Two more thousand-pounders crashed into the buildings, sending more waves. Everything hit on target, and an eerie silence followed the blasts.

“Gun runs!”

The short steady burping of cannons from the A-10s shattered the silence. Trees snapped and burst in slow motion, rolling through the air as exploding shells ripped them to splinters. The irrigation ditches that once provided cover became death traps. Shells landed on the Taliban fighters huddled there, each round bursting a bucket full of hot steel in all directions.

“That should take some piss out of them,” Ron said, feeding adjustments to the pilots between runs to maximize the carnage.

Whoever was advising the Taliban understood the gravity of the situation. They made the only plausible decision and tried to close the gap between us, hoping to make it impossible to bomb their position without hitting us. Too bad for them, we had planned for that. We had discussed this type of situation in the team room prior to deployments. We had all decided we would rather die in a botched rescue attempt by another American than have our heads cut off on the Internet for our families to see. I had already made up my mind that if I was going to die today, I would rather do so fighting than retreating and getting shot in the back.

The airwaves flooded with wounded Taliban leaders and foot soldiers calling for help. A Taliban commander came on the radio screaming and wailing for his brethren.

“Send the tractors, we have many dead and injured. We cannot get closer!” another Taliban leader reported.

Ron continued to level the grape huts as I called Hodge and Bruce on the hill to let them know about the enemy calls for assistance.

“I know, I see them coming,” Hodge said, counting at least seven
dust trails from tractors moving along a series of roads and irrigation ditches northeast of Sperwan Ghar.

The A-10s made one more gun run on the grape huts and then climbed to the tanker for more fuel. Two Apaches arrived, and Hodge’s team sent them after the tractors. Flying fast, the Apaches gained altitude and doubled back for the kill. But by then, all of the tractors had disappeared into the high marijuana fields.

Like dragonflies, the Apaches hovered and circled the area, looking for the tractors. Finally, the lead gunship dipped down and fired a short burst into an irrigation ditch, then flared hard right and scooted away. The burst spooked more than thirty Taliban fighters, who started shooting into the air. The second Apache, closing in on the ditch, fired nearly a dozen rockets into the tangle of trees above it. The helicopters made three more runs before peeling off to look for more fighters. Jared gave them the green light to attack any Taliban fighters within four hundred meters of the hill.

For the next several minutes, the Apaches teased fighters into shooting at them to give away their positions. It would start with a burst of gunfire, the tracers climbing into the sky, followed by some deft flying and colorful language as the lead pilots moved to safety and the trail Apache followed up with a gun run, ending the threat.

We had so many aircraft in the area that anyone who had any experience controlling them was on the radio. Mike divided the hill down the center with an imaginary line. He worked the aircraft to the south of the line and Ron worked the aircraft to the north. For nearly two and a half hours more than twenty attack aircraft—fighters, helicopters, and Predator drones—chased the Taliban fighters through the irrigation ditches, leveled their compounds, and smashed the almost impenetrable grape huts.

I scribbled notes anywhere there was space. The entire inside of my truck was a notepad. The dashboard, hood, my sleeves, the window—all contained precious information as I tracked targets, aircraft, and Taliban movements.

Taz interrupted me with a hiss, the Afghan version of “Psst, dude, over here.” He pointed to his AK-47 magazine and held up two fingers. His men had two magazines, or sixty rounds left. I pulled out my knife.

“Taso chaku bulla kawalishi.”
Use your knife next.

Taz just smiled and bobbed his head enthusiastically. He disappeared behind the school. We were in it together, and I was confident the Taliban weren’t getting past Taz and his men. If they did, I would know Taz and his men were dead.

The air support afforded us a brief respite from the fire. Jared’s truck pulled to a dusty stop behind mine. Everyone grabbed bags and boxes from the trucks and set up a command post in a small corner room of the schoolhouse. Empty ammunition crates became chairs and tables. We packed empty ammo cans full of dirt into windows to guard against RPGs and shrapnel. Battlefield details in white chalk decorated the gray spackled walls.

The gun trucks cross-loaded all the remaining ammunition, replaced Taliban defensive positions on top of the hill with U.S. or ANA machine guns, and cleared the school of unexploded ordnance. The school was now our Alamo.