The Only Thing Worth Dying For (33 page)

Anticipating a counterattack, Amerine set security at 50 percent, and JD and half of the team headed down to the medical clinic to get some sleep. Amerine watched them cross the hundred yards of open ground, smiling when he saw that the pole from which the white Taliban flag had been hung was now flying the flag of Afghanistan. At 6:30
P.M.
it was dark enough for the rest of ODA 574 on the hill to don their NODs and hunker down into the fighting positions they’d chosen to cover their assigned zones. Mag put his go-to-hell pack in
a shallow trench facing the river, checked his weapon, and, before sitting down, trotted a few yards away to investigate a shadow he’d noticed two-thirds of the way down the slope.

“We’ve got a bunker over here!” he called out to Amerine.

“How the hell did we miss this?” Amerine said, joining Mag. He stared at the opening of what looked like a cave just below the trench line marking their security perimeter.

“It doesn’t look like it can go very deep,” said Mag.

“You want to lead or cover?”

“I’ll cover you, sir,” Mag said with a smile.

They walked down to the large opening and, without making a sound, turned on the lasers mounted on their carbines. Mag knelt on the slope above, while Amerine crouched on one side of the entrance, which was a couple of feet wide and high enough to allow him to walk upright, his beam lighting the interior earthen walls in an infrared glow.

Cautiously, Amerine peeked around the corner and scanned the recess fully, his laser tracking quickly from one side of the bunker to the other. The small space was empty, except for a beat-up carpet on the dirt floor. Calling out “All clear,” he entered the bunker. Mag followed.

On cue, three of Bari Gul’s men came in behind them, carrying blankets and flashlights that blinded Amerine and Mag, who quickly pulled off their NODs. The Afghans smiled at the Americans.

“Guess they found a home for the night,” said Mag.

With half of ODA 574 asleep in the next room, Smith worked by the glow of his open laptop to orient the satellite antenna out the open window of the clinic and into the night sky. When the computer was dialed in, he sat back in a folding chair and surveyed his work space. His M4 carbine was propped up against the wall, his rucksack was on the floor beside him, and six inches to the right of the keyboard was his “spitter,” an empty water bottle for the big dip of Skoal packed behind his lower lip.

As he began to type out a message to Task Force Dagger, the still
ness was shattered by machine-gun fire. Out the window he could see tracers lighting up the sky—originating from the bridge and heading in his direction.

Fumbling in the dark, Smith stuffed his equipment back into his rucksack, ran outside, heaved the pack into his truck’s bed, and slammed the tailgate shut. He heard something to his right and smelled hashish. Pulling on his NODs, he peered around the side of the medical clinic and saw three guerrillas on their haunches, the embers of their hash pipe glowing through his night vision.

Over the machine-gun fire somebody yelled out from the hill, “All right, everybody get up here. This is it. This is the Alamo!”

Come on, everybody, let’s get high
. Smith sang his own impromptu version of the Vietnam War–era hit by Country Joe & the Fish, steadying his nerves as he got in the truck and drove the short distance to the hill.
Whoopee, we’re all gonna die.

JD and the rest of the sleeping members of ODA 574 were awake, armed, and up the hill—spontaneously dubbed the Alamo—three minutes after the first gunfire shattered the silence.

Alex was on the radio calling out “troops in contact” Dan was sending word to Task Force Dagger. The guerrillas parked near the Alamo were running for their trucks in a frenzy, tossing supplies in the backs, leaping in, and spinning their wheels as they tore out through the berm and north into the desert toward Damana.

“What do we have?” JD asked Amerine, who was watching tracer fire from enemy guns streaking across the bridge a little over a mile to their west.

“Counterattack is in progress. I’m seeing dozens of enemy dismounts [foot soldiers] pouring across the bridge, around fifty so far and more coming. They’re firing something big at what must be another group of our guerrillas retreating from the bridge toward Damana.”

“We have guerrillas by the bridge?” JD said.

“I don’t know which other trucks would be getting fired at.” To Dan, Amerine said, “Try to get commo with Hamid.”

“Who am I supposed to call?” asked Dan with a glance at Fox and Bolduc.

“Try the CIA,” said Amerine.

“This is fucked up, sir.”

“Do your best,” said Amerine. “We need to let them know what’s coming their way.”

The guerrillas’ trucks being chased from the bridge by long green streaks of tracer fire turned and came ripping around the backside of Shawali Kowt well beyond the berm. Their headlights and the Taliban tracer fire were suddenly on a crash course with all the trucks that had just retreated from the Alamo. It was a cluster of auto lights and tracer streaks, zigzagging out in the desert.

“What a goat fuck,” said Mag.

“Fucked up as an Afghan convoy,” said Mike.

“The Taliban might be trying to circle around our rear, sir,” said JD.

“I’d rather them surround us here at the Alamo than head north after Hamid,” said Amerine. “Damn, who started calling this the Alamo anyway?”

JD laughed.

“Still can’t reach the CIA,” Dan told Amerine.

He had been trying the CIA’s radio for over two minutes, and Karzai’s satellite phone was emitting a busy signal. With Fox, Bolduc, and Smith—who was also trying to reach the CIA—on the hill with ODA 574, Amerine had no idea how the 150 guerrillas had been set up to protect Karzai, who he assumed was still in Damana. And since the Taliban were attacking on foot, there were no vehicles for the American jets to bomb. Furthermore, it sounded as if the enemy was firing both light
and
heavy machine guns, suggesting that this was not just a mob but likely an organized unit.

“See the range of those tracers?” Amerine said to Mike. “Doesn’t that sound like a Dishka?”
*

“Sure does. Good thing they don’t have night vision, because if they wheel that thing down the road a ways, we are in easy range.”

“Make sure Bari Gul stays with us,” Amerine told JD. “Integrate his men into our perimeter at this end of the hill. Tighten up the lines. We have no idea what we’re up against.”

JD jogged east toward the other end of the Alamo.

“We’ve got Spectre inbound,” said Alex, referring to a heavily armed AC-130 gunship.
*

“I think we’re going to need it,” said Amerine. Due to its low, slow flight path, the AC-130 would have to return home at dawn when it would become an easy target, but it would probably keep the men alive until then.

Having pantomimed the instructions to Bari Gul—Seylaab was missing again—JD returned to the team while Bari Gul spread his guerrillas out among the American lines of defense, using a flashlight pointed at the ground for guidance. He then approached Amerine, holding his AK-47 at the ready position. Unlike his countrymen, he and his men weren’t going anywhere.

With the rest of the guerrillas having fled north, the enemy guns fell silent. This disconcerted the Americans, who had been using the gunfire to estimate the size and location of the Taliban force. None of the attackers had returned to the bridge, which meant there were at least a hundred Taliban on the near side of the river, most of whom had last been seen in the desert beyond the berm, firing toward Damana. But they had also seen some small-arms tracers coming from closer in, on the other side of the berm, suggesting that the Taliban had possibly come back toward Shawali Kowt and surrounded the team’s position. It was deadly guesswork; the enemy could be anywhere.

At 100 percent security, ODA 574 covered all avenues of approach
with their carbines aimed into the night and a supply of RPGs near each man. “Can we set up the mortar tube?” Ronnie asked JD.

“Go ahead.”

Ronnie, Mike, and Brent ran to the trucks at the northern base of the hill and grabbed a huge 82 mm Russian mortar, behaving like kids who had just been given permission to launch their new model rocket. They lugged the tube back to the hilltop and began to set it up while Wes, Smith, and some of the guerrillas brought cases of mortar rounds.

“We need to hang a round to get the plate set,” said Brent. Together, the three weapons sergeants aimed the mortar toward the bridge, and Brent dropped a round in the end of the super-elevated tube. There was a loud thump when the round launched. No one spoke for several seconds as they listened for the blast.

“Jesus,” said Mike.

“A dud?” said Brent.

“Either that or we left on way too big a charge,” said Ronnie.

Alex looked up from the digital map on his computer. “We’ll have an AC-130 on station in about thirty minutes.”

Boom! The mortar exploded in the distance.

“Not a dud,” said Brent.

“We have a problem,” said Amerine, who was standing next to Alex scanning the berm that wrapped around the northern side of Shawali Kowt. “The guerrillas left some of their own behind, and now they’re up on the berm and who knows where else.”

“That’s gonna make it tough for the gunship to know where to shoot,” said Alex. “Especially if we get attacked from the north.”

Amerine nodded. “Sir,” he said to Fox, who was still trying to get through to Karzai on the radio. “I’m sending out a recon element to bring back some of our guerrillas. I don’t know how many are out there, but they’re going to get cut to shit.”

“How many are going?” asked Fox.

“A split team. We won’t be gone long—we only have a half hour before Spectre gets on station. Just wanted to keep you in the loop.”

It had been five minutes since the Taliban had attacked, and Amerine was expecting them to open fire on the Alamo at any moment.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” Amerine told JD. “Two jobs. The first is for a split team to go get the guerrillas before the gunship arrives in roughly twenty minutes and mistakes them for Taliban. After the first team returns, a second split team will set up on the berm over there.” He pointed north to his original assault position, where Seylaab had led the charge earlier that day. “They’re going to keep watch so the bad guys don’t sneak up on us.”

Perhaps a half mile beyond the berm, a heavy exchange of automatic weapons fire erupted, but the men couldn’t see who was shooting or what they were shooting at.

JD checked his watch and said to Amerine, “You take your split team out to get those lost guerrillas. That way you can run the defense when the gunship is on station.”

“All right. You reestablish the perimeter. I’ll issue a contingency plan before we head out.”

Amerine walked over to Mag, who had taken up a position facing north. “Get Mike, Brent, Wes, and Dan,” he said. “We’re going on a rescue mission.”

“Yes, sir!” said Mag.

ODA 574 assembled in the center of the Alamo and conducted a precombat inspection of their NODs, the lasers mounted on their carbines, and their radios.

“Good to go,” said Mag.

“Okay, five-point contingency plan,” Amerine said to the team. “I’m heading out with Mag, Mike, Brent, Dan, and Wes. We’ll be gone twenty minutes. If we make contact with the enemy, we’ll attempt to defeat him and Charlie Mike [continue the mission]. If we meet a superior force, we’ll pop smoke and get back here right away. If you make contact, stay put in this position and we’ll return to you. You have nowhere to retreat from the Alamo, so stay here unless you’re overrun, then initiate the evasion plan. If you come under attack, keep an eye out for a way for my split team to get back inside the perimeter. If that’s impossible, we’ll form a second perimeter on
the berm and link up when the situation permits. If we’re not back in twenty-five minutes and have not made contact, prohibit all AC-130 fires along the corridor from this hill west to the bridge and south of the berm, unless you’re engaged with an enemy attack from that direction. Engage everything else freely north of the berm and in every other direction. Time is 2300.”

The split team moved north in a wedge, with Brent walking point; Mike, Mag, Dan, and Wes on staggered flanks; and Amerine trailing. “Not so fun being the point man on this little walk,” Mike whispered to Dan. They made their way past the medical clinic, then turned west to follow the southern side of the berm. From here they walked toward the bridge with the berm on their right and Shawali Kowt on their left. Sporadic gunfire from the west and northwest led the men to believe that the enemy was staying north of this corridor alongside the berm.

The night was chilly, but Amerine felt beads of sweat forming behind his goggles. He radioed the split team’s location to JD, who watched from the Alamo until he lost sight of them behind the buildings in town. With every burst of gunfire in the distance, JD winced, concerned that his boys might have walked into a fight. They had no firm idea how many enemy fighters had attacked or where they currently were.

“AC-130 will be on station in fifteen minutes,” said Alex.

Creeping below the base of the embankment, Amerine’s split team heard the gunfire getting louder. Suddenly, an Afghan holding an AK-47 at his side came into view on the berm above them. Everyone stopped. The man’s body was instantly speckled with the five green dots from their lasers.

“Americans, Americans,” Brent called out. Not seeing them, the man half-waved in their direction, keeping his AK-47 pointed down, and the Americans climbed the incline to find four guerrillas sitting in the dirt.

“Come,” said Amerine, waving. The guerrillas shook their heads. “They aren’t coming,” Brent said. “I’m going to crack an IR [infrared] chemlite and leave it here to mark the hill.”

As Brent bent the plastic chemlite, the crunching sound of the glass ampoules breaking inside seemed greatly amplified. He shook
the tube, the chemicals creating a reaction that caused the stick to emit infrared light through its dark plastic coating.