The Only Thing Worth Dying For (39 page)

When Mag opened his eyes the next morning, the first thing he saw in the predawn darkness was a man standing over him, laughing.

“What?” Mag said gruffly.

“Get up,” said JD, nudging him with the toe of his boot. He looked around at the Afghans huddled closely around Mag. “You got something you want to tell me about last night, soldier?”

“Yeah,” said Mag. “That was a damn cold night.”

“Sure was,” said JD, holding out a box. “Have one. They’re from my wife.”

“Well, thank you, Santa, and Mrs. Claus too,” Mag said, taking the Rice Krispies Treat.

“This too.” JD tossed over a box, and Mag read the return address. “From the love of my life,” he said with a grin.

“Battalion showed up in the night and brought the mail,” JD said, “and those.” He lifted his chin toward the two trucks parked alongside the team’s trucks at the base of the Alamo.

Mag held the bar between his teeth while he stuffed his sleeping bag and the shoe box–size package from his girlfriend, Sherry, into his rucksack, hoisted it over his shoulder, and walked away from the sleeping guerrillas to his truck. Mike was there sorting through some gear.

“Hell,” Mag said to him, pointing at the white king cabs. “I thought it was all a bad dream, but it’s worse. We really did get pulled off the hill—
and
battalion’s here.”

At a quarter to seven, Amerine and JD stood atop the Alamo watching the headquarters personnel mill about near the medical clinic. The sun glowed on the eastern horizon like a narrow band of orange fog.

“All right,” Amerine told JD. “Get Ken. Let’s get this over with.”

A few minutes later, JD returned with their medic, and the three headed off the Alamo together, away from the rest of the men. JD stood to one side, his arms crossed, while Amerine stared Ken in the eye and said, “I’m relieving you of duty and sending you to the battalion headquarters.”

Though Ken’s mouth opened in surprise, he said nothing. Without a pause, Amerine read aloud the counseling statement detailing the reasons for his relief, which included his panic in Tarin Kowt and Shawali Kowt and his failure to bring the mortar up to the ruins as ordered.
*

Taking the document when Amerine handed it to him, Ken looked it over, angrily shaking his head. At last he signed the paper to confirm he had read it, but he circled the option stating that he did not agree with what the captain had written. Shoving it back in Amerine’s hand, he addressed JD. “You’re going to let him do this?”

“Grab your gear and move it into the medical clinic,” JD said. “Major Bolduc will meet with you and get you settled into Battalion.”

With a glare at Amerine, Ken walked away, still shaking his head.

Amerine shifted his attention to the headquarters staff now gathering along the low wall that encircled the command post. He recognized many of them from 5th Group. “A lot of good men here,” he said.

“When I got the mail, Chief Reed told me that Bolduc is going to brief the headquarters up there on the Alamo,” said JD. “What’s our next move, sir?”

“Let the men enjoy their mail, but tell them to be ready to pack up and go as soon as I give the word.”

Back on top of the Alamo, Amerine saw Alex lying in his sleeping bag near the command post, talking to two of his fellow Air Force TACPs, including Tech Sergeant Price. They turned their attention to Bolduc when he began to address the headquarters staff, and Amerine grabbed his rucksack and carried it down to his truck. Mag was busy with his own truck—“getting the battle chariot ready,” he said—as he performed the daily ritual of cleaning out the air filter, topping off the fuel, and checking the tire pressure. “It will be good to get on down the road,” Mag said, motioning toward the Alamo, where a group of curious Afghans had gathered to listen to Bolduc speak.

“What’s with the dog and pony show?” asked Mike, walking up.

With a shrug, Amerine leaned back against the truck to watch Bolduc’s energetic briefing. JD came over and stood beside him.

“I think we’re out of a job,” said Amerine.

“Yeah, Bolduc’s got troops to lead again,” JD said. “Sort of like his own A-team.”

“Regardless, the Taliban surrender should come sometime today.”

“Don’t fool yourself, sir,” said JD. “They aren’t going to surrender. We’re about to go from being insurgents to counterinsurgents.”

Bolduc’s briefing lasted fifteen minutes. By 7:30 he was ordering some of his men to set up communications in the medical clinic while he directed others to mingle with members of ODA 574 in order to learn more about the area and recent events. Amerine was standing off to the side of the Alamo’s command post, waiting for a chance to talk to the major, when Fox walked over after greeting his staff. Just as he arrived, a Pinzgauer crested the berm north of Shawali Kowt and parked on the top. Another one appeared farther west.

Only one unit used these customized fighting vehicles, which are high-speed, go-anywhere tanks on wheels, bristling with heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, and state-of-the-art armaments such as anti-tank rockets and mine-clearing weapons.

“When did Delta show up?” Fox said to Amerine. “Did you know they were here?”

“No idea,” said Amerine. “Must have come in during the night.”

“Why wasn’t I consulted?” Fox said, shaking his head. Amerine watched him trot down toward the medical clinic, then walked over to Bolduc and said, “It’s way too crowded up here, sir. If you want this position, I’ll move my men somewhere else.”

“No,” said Bolduc, “we want your team to stay and pull security. Later on we want you to retake the hill, so come up with a plan with Captain Bovee, write an order, and brief me on it before you move out.”

“Yes, sir,” said Amerine. Though the headquarters had no authority to order ODA 574 to pull security
or
take the hill with the ruins, they could keep the team in place based upon Fox’s TACON com
mand authority. Amerine was happy to retake the hill, and he was not about to argue over authority.
I want to get my men as far from here as I can
, he thought.

“We’re staying put for now,” Amerine told Mag back at the trucks. They were watching the guerrillas on the Alamo crowding around the headquarters weapons sergeant, Chris Fathi, who spoke Farsi, Urdu, Turkish, Kurdish, and some Arabic. Word had gotten around that an American spoke the local dialects, and more and more Afghans gathered until more than thirty were pushing in around Fathi, talking over one another and resting their hands on his shoulders. Amerine felt for him—it had taken days for the men of ODA 574 to relax when their backs weren’t covered. He also knew that the Afghans were giving him an earful about how the Taliban “are everywhere!”

During the mission, local Pashtun had encouraged ODA 574 to attack homes, buildings, caves, even schools—always stating with certainty that Taliban fighters were inside. As more clans joined Karzai’s movement, the false leads and dubious intelligence multiplied until Amerine found it nearly impossible to distinguish reliable tips from bogus information.

Amerine walked from the trucks to the southwestern end of the Alamo, past Fathi and the group of Afghans to where JD sat in the dirt near Dan, reading a letter. Next to him was a small cardboard box, on which lay a four-by-six-inch photo of JD and his family that his wife had sent.

“How’s the family?” asked Amerine.

“They’re great,” said JD, reaching for one of the remaining Rice Krispies Treats. “Here, sir, have one.”

“Thanks,” said Amerine, taking a bite.

Amerine hadn’t gotten a care package or letters. He hadn’t provided his family with a mailing address, telling them he would be in touch when he could. He didn’t know when he would be able to write and hated the thought of receiving a pile of letters with no way to respond. Even worse, he didn’t want that pile of letters going back to his family, unopened, if he was killed on the mission.

Washing down the last of the bar with a swig of JD’s lukewarm cocoa, Amerine told him that they’d been ordered to take the hill by the bridge.

“You mean
re
take the hill.”

“Exactly,” said Amerine, turning to leave. “I’m going to work the plan with Bovee. I don’t see us doing things much different from yesterday—we can consider that our live-fire rehearsal. We’ll talk later. Enjoy that letter.”

“Want another?” JD held up the box.

“You eat them. Then tell the guys what’s up.”

Amerine walked a few steps over to Dan, who was tinkering with a disassembled radio laid out on a poncho liner.

“Everything going to be working in a couple of hours?” Amerine asked.

“Should be. What’s up?”

“We’re taking that hill again, so make sure our internal comms are squared away. The radios aren’t faring too well, and I’m a little worried.”

“You gotta be gentle with them,” Dan said, cradling one of the radios in his open palm. “Treat it like a baby.” He looked up from behind his bushy beard, cocked his head sideways, and squinted at Amerine. “So, we’re going to take the hill again, eh?”

“Looking that way.”

“Groundhog Day,”
*
said Dan. “Any chance I could have Wes’s spot?”

“Certainly,” said Amerine. Dan was arguably the best marksman on the team. “But make sure JD doesn’t mind sending you out with me, and figure out who’s going to run commo on his split team.”

“Would be good to be up front on the assault.”

“It would be good to have you up front. See you in a bit.”

Though Amerine doubted the Taliban would attack with a delegation en route to discuss surrender, he would not allow himself to underestimate the enemy. Looking around at the flurry of activity on
the Alamo—the scene was almost festive, with the guerrillas chatting up Fathi and the headquarters personnel mingling with ODA 574—he thought,
I gotta find Bovee, hammer out this bullshit operations order, and get us moving
.

Pickett was making the rounds, introducing himself as the battalion medic and performing checkups on the members of ODA 574. He approached a man who was grabbing some gear from the back of a truck.

“What do you do?” he asked Ken.

“I’m the battalion medic.”

“Wait a minute,” said Pickett. “
I’m
the battalion medic.”

“Well, not anymore,” Ken said.

After confirming this swap of positions with Bolduc, whose idea it had been to give Ken a chance on the headquarters staff, Pickett headed over to his new team sergeant, JD, whom he knew from 5th Group. “Hey, Sergeant, looks like I’m your new medic,” he said.

“That’s what I got,” said JD. “Why don’t you put your kit down in that truck. We’re gearing up for a mission in a bit; come on back and I’ll fill you in.”

Feeling a surge of adrenaline, Pickett walked off the Alamo to transfer his gear to one of ODA 574’s vehicles.
Boy,
he thought,
is Denise gonna be pissed when she finds out about this!

Shortly after leaving Dan, Amerine found Captain Dennis Bovee, the headquarters’ assistant operations officer, in the command post.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” said Amerine with a grin.

Bovee had been with the 101st Airborne Division when it relieved Amerine’s battered battalion after the disastrous riots in Panama. Today was December 5, three days before the five-year anniversary of that fiasco.

“Yes we do,” Bovee said, smiling. “So, how do you want to work this plan?”

“Let’s take a walk. There’s a place just up the Alamo where we can see our objective, down by the bridge.”

The two captains strolled north along the edge of the Alamo, past the ashes of the guerrillas’ fire from the night before, to a section of crumbling wall where they sat facing the bridge and the hill with the ruins a mile to the west.

“Good view,” said Bovee.

“Makes a leader’s recon pretty easy,” said Amerine.

With a flash of fire, a 500-pound bomb exploded on the ridge across the river just south of the bridge, sending up a billow of brown dust and black smoke.

Both men stood up. “What the fuck?!” said Amerine. The Afghans on the other side of the Alamo started to cheer.

“Hold on a minute,” Amerine said to Bovee and walked quickly over to the command post. There he saw the headquarters TACP, Price, with his radio and map spread out on the ground before him, and Alex next to him, sitting with his legs in his sleeping bag and eating an MRE. Alex returned Amerine’s angry look with an apologetic shrug and glanced over at Fox and Bolduc, five yards away.

Amerine understood immediately what was happening: Bolduc’s brief had become the headquarters’ air strikes.
The fighting headquarters,
he thought.
Getting a piece of the action.

Only there was no action and, as far as Amerine could tell, nothing to strike. Combat had ceased the day before, soon after Wes was shot. There hadn’t been so much as a bullet fired in the past fifteen hours.

Noticing Amerine, Bolduc stepped over while Fox looked on.

“What’s going on, sir?” asked Amerine, choosing words that weren’t confrontational but using a tone that clearly was. “What are you doing?”

“I’m orienting my staff, Captain,” said Bolduc. “We’re engaging Taliban positions on the ridge. I’ll get one of the new TACPs linked up with your team sergeant later.”

“Well,” Amerine said through clenched teeth, “whenever you’re done doing whatever it is you’re doing, send the new TACP over to JD.”

Wes is the lucky one
, Amerine thought as he headed to JD’s position at the southwestern edge of the Alamo, where forty or more guerrillas had massed to watch the bombing.
He doesn’t have to witness this bullshit.

Reaching JD, Amerine asked if the team was ready to move.

“They’re all packed,” said JD. “Just holding in place, waiting for the word.”

Nelson Smith joined Fathi after the bomb hit. It had taken Fathi only a few short conversations with the Afghans—locals and guerrillas—to determine the locations of numerous enemy positions on the other side of the river. The bomb had been directed at some men the Afghans pointed out—and that the headquarters staff had confirmed with binoculars were armed—coming down the ridge on a trail. No other enemy were spotted.