The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor (77 page)

Specialist Michael Scusa.
(Photo courtesy of Jon Hill)

When Scusa entered the Army, he looked so young—with his thick glasses and boyish face—that the first thing his sergeant told him was that he seemed like he was wearing his big brother’s uniform. One of his fellow joes in the Bastards, Specialist Jonathan Adams, thought of Scusa as having walked right out of a remake of
Revenge of the Nerds,
he was so awkward and dorky. But they all came to respect his calm, measured approach to combat, his kindness, and his work ethic. And his devotion to his family: Scusa was going on leave in a few days and couldn’t wait to see his wife, Alyssa, his mother, and his little boy.

He and Dulaney were planning on applying for the Warrant Officer Flight Training program, and while on leave, Scusa intended to get some books that the two of them could use to study for the admissions test. They would be Army pilots together, remaining in a combat arms environment but no longer based in hellholes like Camp Keating.

Noor Din was a truck driver when the Taliban fell in 2001. After that, he signed up to become a police officer to help his country. Din saw Nuristanis rejoice at the arrival of the development dollars that the United States spread around for roads and schools. He also saw Nuristan and the local Kamdesh District become a battlefield as the American presence was challenged by insurgent groups. He saw the grief, the anger, when U.S. troops killed innocent Nuristanis. Their apologies—whether in the form of words or cash—were never enough.

As a police officer, Din tried to help the Americans. For years, he told the U.S. soldiers every time he heard about an imminent attack. The information would come to him from locals, and sometimes he would pick it up while listening to walkie-talkie chatter. Whatever intelligence he could muster, he would share: which village the insurgents were coming from, which spot on which mountain they were plan to fire from.

This attack had been coming for days, he knew—ever since word spread that Camp Keating would soon be closing. At that moment, the clock had started ticking down.

And now here it was, zero hour.

The Taliban fighters came to Urmul in the dead of night. The women and children of Urmul fled, as did many of the men, after being cautioned not to alert the American soldiers in the camp just a few hundred yards away. “We don’t have any problems with you,” the insurgents told the villagers. “We have a problem with the Americans.”

At 4:00 a.m. on October 3, 2009, close to three hundred mujahideen—led by “Bad” Abdul Rahman and scattered over the three mountains and throughout the village of Urmul—turned to Mecca and conducted morning prayers. Then they grabbed their guns and got into position.

Faruq and some others went to the Afghan National Police station about a hundred yards to the northwest, outside Combat Outpost Keating. The insurgents shot and killed two policemen; the third policeman on duty fled. The enemy fighters set up a base there. Other mujahideen went to the Urmul mosque. Many more were still in the mountains, where pine, cedar, fir, and oak trees stood like sentries, providing the Taliban plenty of cover. Fifty-three Americans were in the camp. Most would be sleeping. Maybe ten or fifteen would be on guard.

Ishranullah lurked in the hills, excited. On a number of occasions in the past, he’d been disappointed when the Taliban ran out of ammunition and couldn’t do anything for weeks. This was not one of those times. The Taliban had truckloads of ammunition. This attack had been planned and coordinated for weeks.

“There were a lot of foot soldiers from all the surrounding villages,” a man from Nuristan would later remember. “Each village volunteered a bunch of soldiers. They thought they were doing jihad, that COP Keating was occupying their land, occupying their area. They thought they were doing a service to their area. They were very, very proud.

“They thought, Let’s send a message. The message was: Tell the United States you don’t mess with us. It was a suicide mission; a lot of the fighters knew they weren’t coming back.”

Those who weren’t involved knew they’d better make themselves scarce if they wanted to live to see another day. As the sun started to rise on the valley and the mujahideen prepared to attack, Noor Din, the police officer, left Urmul and fled north to Mandigal. He did not warn the Americans.

Din’s boss did. Afghan National Police chief Shamsullah approached the camp and spoke with an interpreter whom the U.S. troops referred to as “Ron Jeremy” because of his resemblance to that mustachioed adult-film star.

Red Platoon was responsible for guard duty that night. Shortly before 6:00 a.m., the new shift relieved the guys who had been on watch since midnight. Private First Class Nicholas Davidson came a few minutes early to replace Corporal Justin Gregory near the camp’s entry control point, in the gun turret of the tower of the shura building. Gregory was giving Davidson the lowdown—“There are fresh batteries in the radios, the ammunition is over here”—when Ron Jeremy ran over to them.

“The Taliban are here!” he said, urgency in his voice. “They’re coming!”

Gregory grabbed the radio and called the tactical operations center. “Hey, TOC, this is ECP,” he said—short for “entry control point.”

“Yeah?” responded Private First Class Jordan Wong, the radio operator for the camp’s headquarters.

“Ron Jeremy just ran in and said Taliban are here,” Gregory announced. “You got anything on cameras?” There were PTZ (“pan, tilt, and zoom”) security cameras all around the borders of the camp, sending feeds to the operations center.

“I’ll check it out,” said Wong.

Ron Jeremy then ran to the operations center, where he approached Sergeant Jayson Souter, the Headquarters Platoon NCO in charge of fire support.

“The police chief just came to the gate and told me there are four hundred Taliban hiding around the camp, and they’re getting ready to attack!” the interpreter exclaimed.

Souter passed the word to Staff Sergeant James Stanley, who was relieving Sergeant Gallegos as sergeant of the guard. Stanley then radioed the news to everyone on guard.

Ron Jeremy next ran over to Staff Sergeant Kevin Daise, who was sitting by the burning barrels near the latrines. “Hey, Sergeant Daise,” he said. “The locals said the Taliban kicked them out of town.”

“Okay,” Daise replied. But how seriously was he supposed to take this warning? There had been so many false alarms over the past few months.

After telling him that the enemy was in Urmul, Ron Jeremy proceeded into the latrines to hide.

“Allahu Akbar,” the holy warriors said as they prepared their mortars, their B-10 recoilless rifles, their RPGs, their Dushkas.

God is great.

Declared one insurgent in the hills, in his own tongue, “The prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, says if you throw an arrow toward the enemy, it is as good as freeing a slave for the sake of Allah.”

They recorded these and other exclamations on video, for later posting on YouTube, as part of their propaganda campaign.

“We are ready with the help of Allah,” said another. “Bring me the ammunition.”

Five fifty-eight a.m.

It began.

CHAPTER 30

“Wish Me Luck”

T
he mortar pit didn’t have a computer, so in these early-morning hours Daniel Rodriguez had to go elsewhere to work on the online correspondence course he was taking to earn points for a promotion. Since he was friends with Docs Cordova and Courville, he headed for the computer at the aid station. Cordova was studying calculus and physics online through Pikes Peak Community College, but this morning, he was slacking: he was in his bunk, having dozed off while reading Malcolm Gladwell’s
Outliers
. Rodriguez spent a while on his correspondence course, then surfed the ’net looking for possible vacation options in Australia; he had some leave time coming.

The first RPG hit the aid station, and Rodriguez didn’t need any help identifying what the explosion was. He stopped what he was doing and put on his helmet and a non-Army-issued protective vest—one that actually didn’t contain any body armor but was much more comfortable than those that did—just in time for the next blast. Cordova and Courville were now awake; they came from the back of the aid station, where their bunks were.

Rodriguez usually carried an M4 carbine, but this morning he had opted instead for his lighter 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol. Now he cursed himself for that decision, which had been rooted entirely in sloth. Wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, he headed for the door, stopping on the way to look back at Courville and Cordova. “Wish me luck,” Rodriguez said. He then went to the door, prepared his 9-millimeter to fire, and sprinted out into the open.

The bullets were coming in sporadically, punctuated by occasional RPG bursts, and Rodriguez zigzagged across the grounds to the laundry, then to the showers and the piss-tubes. His first, human instinct had been, of course, to stay in the aid station, but his sense of duty propelled him to the southwestern corner of the camp, to Mortaritaville, to his team: Breeding, Kevin Thomson, and a new guy just a few days into his tour at Camp Keating, Sergeant Janpatrick Barroga.

As Rodriguez ran to the right, he caught a glimpse of the incoming small-arms fire from the Switchbacks in front of him, sparks in the dawn’s dim gray. The bullets, shrapnel, and rocks on the ground sounded to him like popcorn kernels bursting. The gravel hit his legs as he ran at full speed; it felt like hail going in the wrong direction, from the ground toward the sky. He had once dreamed of being a college football player, Rodriguez, but this was an altogether different kind of running for the end zone.

Rodriguez was near the Humvee/guard post known as LRAS-1 when he started firing back toward the Switchbacks with his pistol. He had only fifteen rounds, but he used every last one of them as he sprinted breathlessly toward his team and up the stairs to the mortar pit.

The first blast woke them up, but they remained in bed.

“Was that incoming or outgoing?” asked Hill.

“Outgoing,” said Harder. Neither of them opened his eyes. They were both exhausted from staying up late watching those DVDs, and one big explosion wasn’t all that odd a sound to hear as dawn broke at Camp Keating. They figured Breeding was just firing a mortar.

Then the second explosion came in to the camp, and this one shook the Bastards’ barracks.

“Nope, that’s incoming,” said Harder as he got up and threw on his gear. He was wearing only underwear and shorts, but he was sure he’d be up and down in twenty minutes. His sneakers were outside the barracks—they smelled pretty ripe—and he couldn’t find a clean pair of socks.

From the mountains came the staccato of heavy machine-gun fire. Harder knew he had to get outside and take care of whoever this was—and then, he thought, he could go back to bed. He pulled on a tan T-shirt and laced up his hiking boots.

“Hurry up and get your shit on!” Harder yelled to his men—Michael Scusa, Christopher Griffin, Specialist Jeremy Frunk, Specialist Mark Dulaney, and Specialist Jonathan Adams. They grabbed their ammunition and weapons. Harder opened the door and saw what was going on outside. He turned to Hill.

“This is a big one,” he said, though he had yet to realize just how bad it was.

The first thing John Breeding heard from his position in the mortar pit was a cacophony of RPG explosions, one after another after another. Everyone promptly got suited up. Thomson, his gear already on, was standing by the door, near the radios, and he ran out to remove the tarp from the M240 machine gun so he could fire it into the hills.

Thomson was ripping the poncho liner off the gun, about to run around and fire it, when Rodriguez arrived on the scene.

“Switchbacks!” Rodriguez yelled. “Switchbacks! Target sixty! Hit the Switchbacks!”
⁸¹

But just as Thomson stepped in front of him, Rodriguez saw his face explode in a burst of red. A bullet fired from the high ground had found its mark in the private’s right cheek, going through his mouth and out his left upper back. He fell onto the ground.

Rodriguez went to him; Kevin Thomson was gurgling, but he couldn’t speak. His eyes were filigreed with burst vessels. A pool of blood and parts of his head were spilling into his helmet, into his body armor, onto the ground. The gore had the texture of soup. Rodriguez was at once horrified and nauseated by the sight. Thomson’s eyes glazed over and turned black and red.

“Thomson!” Rodriguez yelled. “THOMSON!”

The private was gone. That calm kid from Nevada didn’t make a sound; he didn’t move. Two minutes into their attack on Combat Outpost Keating, the Taliban had scored their first casualty.

The new guy, Barroga, poked his head out of the mortar pit to see what was going on.

“Get on the sixty!” Rodriguez told him, pointing him to the 60-millimeter mortar tube. But he saw Barroga hesitate. The kid was weighed down with fear, inexperience, and instant regret. There lay Thomson’s body.

Barroga thought he probably could have prevented Thomson’s death, could have said to him, “Hey, we’re getting shot at, wait two minutes before you run out to throw off the tarp,” but this was his first firefight, and he’d been at Camp Keating for only a few days, while Thomson had been there for months. And now…