Lions of Kandahar (31 page)

Inside, we scoured the rooms for intelligence. I walked into one room near the foyer and was immediately uneasy. The walls were jet black; names were scrawled across them. Taliban voodoo. The Taliban often mark their presence by pouring diesel fuel into a bucket of sand and igniting it in a designated meeting or council room. The smoke turns everything in the room black, which provides them with an evil and almost invincible aura for the benefit of the local people, who believe the power of the Taliban alone is responsible for the transformation.

Sandal prints peppered the ceiling, symbolizing that whoever saw them was under the foot of the Taliban. The names on the black walls were those of the Taliban leaders. In theory, the locals, who
would eventually discover the scene, would also witness the Taliban’s power.

One of the names caught my eye. I called Jared and told him he needed to see this.

“What the fuck is this?” Jared said, stunned, as he joined me.

I pointed to one name that I recognized from the notebook we had recovered from the village on the outskirts of the Red Desert. Jared fished the book out of a pouch on his body armor and flipped through it. An interpreter ran down the list. All sixteen names in the notebook matched the names on the wall. We had the true names of the major Taliban leadership in Panjwayi and southern Afghanistan.

Jared flipped open his satellite phone and walked outside to get a clear signal. This needed to get to Bolduc and our intelligence people as soon as possible. The next time those assholes tried to communicate, we would be ready and on them.

By the time the sun set, we’d fought for thirteen straight hours. Two Chinooks arrived with our resupply of ammunition and weapons. During the battle we had broken or destroyed more than a dozen machine guns.

The helicopters barely landed. The crew chiefs knew the situation and quickly kicked the bundles out of the back. An additional explosive ordnance disposal team also arrived to clear the trails and footpaths of mines. We’d found nearly a dozen mines, planted all over the hill.

After the helicopters left, the two A-10s that earlier had dropped the life-saving bombs to halt the counterattack returned. They’d flown to Bagram Airfield north of Kabul, to rearm and refuel.

Swooping down, they quickly unloaded all of their bombs and rockets into Mike and Ron’s targets. Their final gun run with their 30-mm cannons crumbled the walls of a nearby compound.

“Talon 31, this is Tusk 16. It looks like you guys will be okay. From up here, the enemy seems to be moving back. We have numerous dust trails from vehicles moving away in all directions. Unfortunately we have to go off station. You guys keep your heads down and hold on tonight. We WILL be back tomorrow morning before sunup. I guarantee it.”

Pulling up, they started to climb into the darkening sky. The lead A-10 made a steep left turn and came straight toward Sperwan Ghar. He couldn’t have been more than a hundred feet off the deck. I could see him clearly inside the cockpit as he rolled the plane slightly onto its right side, looking down at us over his shoulder as he gave us a thumbs-up. As the plane cleared the hill, he leveled out, rocked his wings back and forth, and shot straight up into the sky doing a slow, steady barrel roll.

To this day, that scene is burned into my memory. I knew at that moment that I was truly part of the most magnificent fighting force on the face of the earth. I knew for certain that if I needed it, help would come. It was a sense of relief and confidence that words can’t convey.

I was sure we’d need such help. With the Canadians bogged down to the north, the Taliban would turn their ferocity on Sperwan Ghar.

I expected a very long night.

HOLDING ON AT ALL COSTS

T
he explosion jolted Brian and me from a deep sleep atop the hood of Ole Girl, throwing us to the dusty ground. Another explosion rocked the earth as soon as I hit the dirt. Brian and I scuttled quickly on hands and knees toward the rear of the truck, the thorns and prickly ground bushes digging deep.

“You hit?” I asked Brian.

“No, you?” he said.

“No, I’m good,” I said catching my breath. My hands and knees were on fire and I had nearly soiled a good pair of pants. Then I heard the snickering. Still half asleep, I crawled around to the far side of the truck, where I found Ron and Dave smiling, enjoying themselves, crouched against the wall of the schoolhouse.

The AC-130 gunship had arrived soon after I fell asleep. It announced its presence by slamming several 105-mm artillery rounds into a compound a hundred meters from the hill. Dave and Ron controlled the gunship and knew in advance the explosions were coming.

“You move pretty quickly for an old man,” Dave said.

“Up yours, Dave!”

The barrage sent a shower of yellow-orange sparks in all directions. Smoke from small fires drifted in and out of the moonlight, creating dark gray clouds that hung over the decimated buildings. The AC-130 crew had worked all night firing at the massing Taliban fighters, its cameras scanning the ground for enemy soldiers. Invisible to the naked eye, they circled overhead. We dubbed them our “night angels,” and in fact their guns sounded like trumpeting as they hammered the fighters trying to reorganize and attack.

“Target! Load! Gun is set! Ready! Fire!”
Boom!

From the top of Sperwan Ghar, we could see numerous fires. The Taliban were still bringing fresh troops across the river. Nearly two hundred enemy fighters walked or rode in trucks, lights off, across the dry riverbed toward Sperwan Ghar. The fires lit the way. Others probed, trying to assess our defenses. They absolutely had to attack at dawn. It was a fight for initiative.

Still exhausted, Brian and I simply crawled under the truck’s bumper and went back to sleep. We would get three hours before we took over guard duties for the night. The comforting echo of the gunship’s attacks let us rest easy. When I felt the familiar tug at my foot a few hours later, I sat up and hit my head on the bumper.

“Damn it,” I said, rubbing my now throbbing forehead. Ron stood there, absolutely exhausted from having stayed up all night calling in strikes.

“How did it go last night?” I asked.

“Busy, very busy,” he said. His hard work had killed at least 110 fighters.

Several large rockets slammed into Sperwan Ghar with the arrival of the sun, just after the first call to prayer from the local mosque. I thought it sickening that the mullahs who presided over prayers were the same Taliban who used the mosque speaker systems to broadcast messages to fighters. I estimated about one hundred fighters on my
side of the perimeter. We could see them moving through the orchards, across irrigation ditches, and between the thick mud walls of the compounds. The faint cry
“Allah akbar”
echoed around the hill.

Bill moved team members into position to cover the enemy advance. Gunfire raked the back side of the hill, where Hodge and his team were located. The familiar zing of passing bullets again became commonplace.

“Tango, Tango, Tangos from the north,” an SF soldier’s voice came over the radio, notifying us of targets and their location. The call was cut short by the deafening sound of machine-gun fire from the roof.

About a dozen fighters tried to advance, but Afghan soldiers moved to reinforce the machine-gun position and stopped them. I scanned the area through my binoculars and saw a group of fighters, including a teenage boy, huddled in the intersection, dead or dying. Birds and two large dogs descended on the bodies.

Better them than my men
, I said to myself.

It made me sick. The Taliban fighters were being led to slaughter by zealots who cared only for their cause. Those who preached Sharia law the loudest were unwilling to die for their distorted and perverse ideology. They forced many a young boy to ferry ammunition or fight. It was a matter of choosing between ignorance and understanding. My men would not die for an act of foolishness.

The attack quickly shifted to Hodge and the south side of the hill. Ali Hussein called over the radio in short excited bursts and reported more fighters headed for the narrow, shaded passageway.

“Okay, Ali,” I said, trying to sound reassuring, “when the enemy arrives, just shoot them.”

He got the joke and then ordered three Afghan soldiers, including Taz, over the embankment to counter. Pumping his arm ferociously, Taz led the soldiers into the enemy-infested grape fields.

They disappeared over the small embankment and reappeared along a compound wall leading to a small building deep in the fields.
I reported their movements over the radio, making sure our shooters knew that friendly forces were outside the wire.

Taz’s crew carefully climbed the mud stairway leading to the top of the compound wall. The wall ran directly along the irrigation ditch where we had gunned down the dozen fighters. Taz pointed toward the wall and I knew there were Taliban on the other side. He held up three fingers, a countdown, and then all three men rose and fired. Two just sprayed their AK-47s like garden hoses, but not Taz. He kept his rifle tight into his shoulder and fired methodical bursts into the fighters, then snatched a grenade from his pouch and tossed it into the ditch. The other soldiers followed his lead and all three jumped from the ten-foot wall and ran at a dead sprint back toward our perimeter. Three crashing explosions sent dirt and tree limbs flying behind them.

Taz came dashing with his team through the school hallway to my truck, knowing from long experience that I would want a situation report. They had found twenty fighters on the wall and wounded or killed half of them. I hugged my good friend. I was proud of them, and I remember wishing that others could see what I saw, Afghans fighting for their freedom. As they sprinted back to their positions, a friendly voice came over the team radio net. It caught me off guard, and I stopped to make sure I wasn’t hearing things.

It was another SF team, but not just any team. It was the boys from 333—Triple X. Joe, the team sergeant for Triple X, was on the net and his voice was music to my ears. This was another serious group of pipe hitters coming to the party.
Hot damn
.

Bolduc knew how high the stakes were for Sperwan Ghar and had moved 333 into the battle. We were finally getting more Special Forces soldiers on the ground. I pulled my microphone down from my face and told my team members, whose confidence visibly swelled. We were not alone.

Team 333 had arrived the night before and wedged itself between the jagged rocks on top of Masum Ghar, the ridgeline overlooking
the Canadian task force to the north. Virtually invisible up there, they watched the battlefield through powerful Steiner binoculars and Leupold spotting scopes. We now had friendly forces watching over the Canadian task force, cutting off the enemy to our north, fresh resupplies coming in regularly, and ownership of key terrain. Matt, the team leader, called me for an update.

For the last several hours his team had patiently waited, plotted, and observed Taliban forces moving up and down the valley. Joe (known as “Kramer”), their warrant officer, and Matt’s men marked targets in the valley below with what would turn out to be deadly accuracy. From their vantage point, they could see the entire Canadian side of the valley and the front half of ours.

Between us, we came up with a detailed sketch of defensive positions, destroyed vehicles, ditches, enemy fighters, and the locations they moved to. When Jared got on the radio, I gave him the overview. When the time was right and when the air power came, they would unleash hell.

The familiar high-pitched whistling of incoming rounds sliced through the air and I threw myself facedown on the concrete floor of the school. Several crashing
crumps
of explosions impacted behind the school near the latrine. RPGs and recoilless-rifle rounds exploded close to my trucks and the Afghan machine-gun positions. I hit my face on the rear sight of my rifle and busted my lip open.

The attack on Hodge’s position had been a feint. The main crux of the assault hit my positions within minutes. As the fire became more intense, I called Hodge for reinforcements.

Ron called for me or Jared on the radio. He had something for us. We radioed back that he would have to wait, but then I heard him checking Navy fighters on station above the valley.

“NAVY? Where the hell did they come from?” Jared asked.

“Apparently an aircraft carrier, sir,” Ron said.

Now everyone out here was a smart-ass. Ron had been hanging around Dave too long.

Mike called in that, based upon the number of call signs checking on station, we were no longer in short supply of aircraft. The fighters had to refuel after the long flight from the Indian Ocean and would be back in an hour. We had no idea where the other aircraft were coming from and truly didn’t care. All we knew was that they were finally here.

While we waited, I imagined what was taking place in the United States. I knew the process. I could see the phones lighting up at the Pentagon, spurring decision makers to act.