Lions of Kandahar (33 page)

A few seconds later Riley came back with what I needed to hear.

“Captain, he has a radio.”

“Drop him,” I said.

When Dave was ready, I fired another burst. The spotter popped up again and Dave fired. The round hit high. Chambering another, he fired again. This time it hit the spotter. The 7.62 match-grade ammunition entered through the neck and traveled in an arc, exiting his back. The body dropped in a heap behind the wall. He’d never report our movements again. Dave returned to the truck, smiling like a Cheshire cat, and we again relished the quiet.

He had no more than crawled into the turret when the whoosh of an RPG cut it short. I glimpsed two Taliban fighters carrying a launcher seconds before the rocket flew over Dave’s head and exploded just behind my vehicle, right outside the window where the command post was located. The dirt-filled ammunition cans we had propped inside the empty window frames gave rudimentary protection at best, but they prevented small shrapnel from hitting anyone in the post.

Dave dropped into the turret. “Move, move, move!” he yelled as he thrust a round into the chamber of the .50-caliber machine gun.

Brian started the truck and threw it in reverse just as another rocket exploded in front of the berm where the truck had just been parked. Contact reports of attacks on the vehicles flooded the radio. The Taliban were trying to destroy our gun trucks. They knew that the trucks had the most firepower and were essential to our defense of the hill. The fire grew more intense.

I took a bead on where I had seen the movement—a small three-windowed mud building quaintly tucked in between two larger compounds. I took a breath, exhaled slowly, and kept my eye on the building. One of the windows had a small red curtain, and I had seen two men carrying either a mortar or a recoilless rifle past it. I knew the ammunition bearers would be next, carrying sacks of mortar or recoilless-rifle rounds.

The first figure ran past and I squeezed the trigger, sending up a spray of sticky oil; I’d forgotten to wipe off the excess after I’d finished cleaning the gun. Wiping my face, I pulled the machine gun
into my shoulder. It rocked rhythmically as I made adjustments to the sights. Brian fired repeatedly at the same point. I aimed just past the opening where I knew they would either run into the bullets or try to hide once they knew there was fire coming at them.

Three hundred meters, three hundred fifty, three hundred seventy-five, there!

I fired a six- to nine-round burst each time, and it finally put me on my mark. The rounds penetrated the wall, and there was a commotion behind it. I must have caught them resting on that side. A figure came into view on his knees and fell forward, clutching his chest, then slung violently backward. I depressed the trigger fully and counted to ten. Nearly an entire can of ammunition went streaking through the gun. I was running low, maybe twenty rounds left. Finding a target wasn’t easy, and now that I knew where they’d hidden, I wasn’t going to let them escape. I fired another whole can into the wall. Soon, Dave started to pound the hut with the Ma Duce.

Out of ammunition, I yelled to Brian to cover me while I ran for more.

“Grab me some too,” Dave shouted.

Letting the machine gun hang in the gun mount, I sprinted for the cache in a nearby ditch. An ANA machine-gun position to my right rattled as I ran. Sliding into the four-foot-deep channel, my knees rebelled. Pain shot through my joints, and I felt old.

The machine guns brought me out of my funk. I snatched four boxes of ammunition, climbed out of the ditch, and took a step when I was overwhelmed by intense heat and pressure. I lost all sense of control and balance.

An RPG or recoilless rifle had exploded somewhere near my left front, hurling me violently back into the ditch. I landed on my left shoulder, followed by the rest of my 230-pound frame and another 50 pounds of equipment. I couldn’t feel my shoulder anymore. I clutched it with my right hand just to make sure it was still there.

My helmet, sunglasses, and headset were gone. The strap on my
left shoulder holding my body armor was shredded and the plates hung cockeyed across my chest and back. I couldn’t focus—everywhere I looked I saw stars. I gagged and coughed out the dust and smoke, struggling to get enough oxygen into my lungs. Dave’s .50 caliber sounded muffled even though I was only a few feet away.

I commanded my left knee to bend so I could roll over, stealing a quick glance at it. I expected to see it shredded. I winced as it bent but knew that meant it was still connected. I tried to spit some of the grime out of my mouth but couldn’t muster enough saliva to do it.

I struggled to focus. Then panic set in. I didn’t want to die. “NO!” I said repeatedly to myself as I clawed at the wall of the ditch, trying to see over it.

Every movement felt like slow motion. I expected to see Ole Girl in flames just like Greg’s truck. Peering over the edge, I saw Dave banging away in the turret. My eyes filled with tears, half from the pain and half with relief. I even chuckled as I laid my head in the powdery dust and again thanked my creator. Crawling back down into the ditch, I found my helmet. I couldn’t hear a damn thing.

Seeing my team still fighting gave me strength. They now stood in the face of fierce fire with only rifles; the ammunition for their machine guns was long gone. I needed to get to my truck. Rolling over the lip of the ditch, I crawled out and started back toward my truck when a round from an enemy machine gunner hit me just above my kidney. Pain shot through my body. It felt like a ball-peen hammer on the end of a semi-truck traveling at one hundred miles an hour slamming into me. I was too deaf to hear my own screams.

I fell flat on my face, helpless.

“This is it,” I thought. “Today, I die.”

I realized that everything I loved was going to be taken away. I could see Brian, hand extended. He had crawled through the cab to my side of the truck. Still deaf, it took me a second to read his lips.

“Come on, you can make it. Come on!” he said, motioning for me
to come with his gloved hand. What I could not see or hear were the wisps of dust kicked up by rounds hitting the earth around me.

I didn’t want to die.

I wanted to go to him. I drew my knees to my waist and crawled as low as I could, focusing on his reddish freckles. I watched as Dave kept firing and prayed I could make it to the safety of my vehicle.

When I got to the side of the truck, I stuck out my sweat-soaked hand. Brian grabbed it and pulled me into the truck with what seemed like superhuman strength and turned me onto my back. I squirmed around, trying to stop the piercing pain and find some comfort. This truck was home, and for a split second, I felt safe.

Brian unzipped my first aid kit and shoved a packet of pain pills in my mouth, stretching his drinking tube over to give me water. Even with the gritty dirt, sweat, blood, and pills, it was the sweetest water I ever drank. I struggled to draw my legs inside the open door. I could see Brian talking into the radio. I was on my back, facing up and looking at Dave’s waist and legs behind the turret opening in the roof. Several pieces of hot brass from Dave’s gun tumbled from the chamber and hit me in the face. I tried to shoo the brass away like flies. I knew I was messed up and needed help. Sunlight blinded me, and I tried to cover my face when a figure appeared in my truck door.

Bill.

He ran his hands down the top of my skull and neck, under my arms, over my waist and the small of my back, and down to the base of my feet. He only stopped at my lower back, which was soaked, to assess the small shrapnel wounds in my butt. Finished, he showed me his hands. Very little to no blood. I still couldn’t tell which hurt worse, my back, shoulder, butt, or left knee. Bill said my shoulder was dislocated and called Riley.

He then pulled me up, face to face, and looked me straight in the eye.

“Today is not your day, Captain. Everything is still attached. You’re
okay.” And with that, he laid me down and returned to the fight. I knew right then and there that I really was okay.

Riley showed up next. He did his own quick evaluation and told me my shoulder was dislocated and the ligaments in my knee were probably torn. Without warning, he grabbed my left arm and started to move it. I screamed. Riley had learned the trick during training at Fort Bragg, and after a few tugs and twists he popped it back into the joint. The sensation of numbness retreated from my wrist and fingers. He didn’t even flinch when several rounds pinged off the truck as he worked.

With my shoulder in place, he wrapped my knee to keep the swelling down and gave me a pain shot.

“You’ll feel better in a few seconds,” he said before running to another truck to tend to a wounded Afghan.

Wow, this does feel nice
, I said to myself.

The bullet had hit the lower left corner of the ceramic plate on my body armor. But it shouldn’t have. Had my vest not been damaged from the blast and the plate knocked out of place, the 7.62 bullet would have passed through my kidney, liver, intestines, and possibly my lung.

I sucked hard on the tan tube of my CamelBak, but nothing came out. The shrapnel that struck my body armor had traveled across the plate and shredded the plastic bladder. The wetness that I feared was blood soaking my back and butt was water. Fumbling on the floorboards, I found a bottle of water and poured it onto my face. I had cheated death, but now I knew I wasn’t bulletproof—not a feeling you want to have in the middle of a firefight. I covered each nostril and shot snot and blood from my nose. My hearing gradually improved, and soon I could hear Dave and Brian yelling to each other for ammunition and calling out targets.

Brian now selflessly ferried ammunition from the ditch I had just been wounded in. He darted back and forth several times, tossing the ammunition into the back of the truck.

A volley of three RPG rounds came in and hit the northern school wall beside our truck, peppering the vehicle with razor-sharp metal and debris. Dave dipped down from the turret, shaking and squeezing his hand and cursing. A bit of shrapnel had gashed it open. More mad than hurt, he grabbed the butterfly-shaped wooden handles of the machine gun, cranked twice, and went back to work.

I crawled into the back of the truck and heaved two luggage-sized cans of ammo onto the turret for Dave. I could feel the breeze blow through my pants. My desert camouflage trousers had been torn from my rear at the waist all the way down to the inside of my thigh. There was no time to change. Dave’s gun soon went dry again, and I helped him change out ammunition cans. My M240 machine gun hung limp in the bracket near my door. I pulled a box of ammo, loaded the belt into the feed tray, and slammed it shut. Setting the buttstock into my shoulder, I went back to work.

That day I fired thousands of rounds at fighters in the buildings and ditches that surrounded Sperwan Ghar. It was my way of getting the fear out of my system. Whatever enemy was out there had tried to kill me and failed. Now I would eat, sleep, live, and breathe to make them regret it.

I planned to sleep behind my truck with my body armor propped up in front of me that night. My armor had saved me twice from certain death. We would all rest again to the sound of the Spectre engines above us.

I stopped to talk with Shinsha on the roof of the school before getting some rack time. That miserable bastard of a sun had set as I stepped onto the broad flat surface, but I instinctively bent forward at the waist, ducking to stay low, even though it was dark. I was taking no chances. I flopped down on the bright red-and-black-patterned pillow next to Shinsha. He swung his massive head toward me and squinted through the cigarette smoke.

“Roostie,” he said in his usual gruff tone, pointing toward a small Chinese-made hand-cranked radio by his feet, which was tuned to a Pakistani national radio station. Shinsha seemed unusually happy and laughed deeply several times during the broadcast. I sat and drank chai while listening, acting as if I understood every word. Finally, when it was over, Shinsha explained the broadcast to me in Farsi through an interpreter. “A Taliban spokesman in Quetta, Pakistan, admitted that more than three hundred fighters had been martyred in the past two days,” he said with a satisfied smile.

The first truly inspiring piece of news from the battle had come from the Taliban themselves. There was no explaining away the enormous number of fighters arriving at the hospitals in Pakistan. There was no way they could hide their growing casualty numbers, something they’d been able to do in the past. We had them on their heels. Their commanders fought internally about how they would receive reinforcements. They knew their dreams of taking Kandahar by winter were slipping away. Now all we had to do was keep the pressure up, pursue them when they ran, and punish them.

A WORLD OF HURT