The War I Always Wanted (6 page)

“Fuckin' c'mere, goddammit!”

So again, everybody in front had to offload.

Captain K., Sam Edwards, and 3rd Platoon's acting platoon leader, were already gathered around a John Deere Gator. On the Gator was the air liaison. With him, he brought the new mission. Now we were to land at Objective Amy. Then we were to “attack” south to some random grid coordinate he gave us. If we weren't involved in heavy fighting, we were to establish an LZ for the last Chinook. It would be arriving around 4 a.m. the next morning, in about twelve hours. I was placing my notes back in my cargo pocket when, over the roar of the engines, Sam tapped me on the shoulder and yelled, “Hey man . . . the fun meter . . . It's pegged!” He smiled sarcastically, shaking his head and then turning away.

I got back on the bird. All of 1st Platoon's eyes were on me.
How the fuck do you give an operations order on a moving Chinook?
A formal operations order is usually several pages worth of detailed instructions, but that wasn't happening. I took out my notebook and tore off four little strips of paper. I scribbled some words on them, and then, since I was toward the middle, passed them in the direction of each corner of the aircraft. It only vaguely resembled a plan, but it was
something
. It looked like this:

It wasn't quite the way I'd learned to compose written orders in Army schools, but this was all the guys were gonna get. I figured if we got lit up as soon as we touched down, it wouldn't matter anyhow.

Suddenly the intensity of the bird's vibrations picked up. It lurched forward and I could feel the ground leave us. The bird began to pick up speed and we headed south, toward the Shah-e-Kot Valley and Objective Amy.

The two Chinooks flew in attack formation, one behind the other, not more than fifty or sixty feet off the ground. As I looked out the rear door, beyond the tail gunner, I could see the second bird fifty or sixty yards behind us. Skimming above the ground, I could see a trail of swirling dust it was leaving in its wake. I looked through the porthole windows and stared across the fast-moving Shomali Plain. On both sides, mountains stood ominously. I felt like they were waiting for us.

We had been in the air for about twenty minutes when out of the blue the door gunners on either side of the aircraft cut loose with long bursts from their machine guns. My head jerked up, my senses sharpened, and my stomach did a somersault. I looked at one of my grenadiers, a private from Nicaragua named Roger Paguaga. His dark eyes looked like a pair of eight balls.

I swiveled in the direction of the cockpit and the door gunners as best I could, buried under people and equipment. I started yelling frantically at the guys closest to me to get the door gunner. My arm pumped repeatedly as I signaled what I wanted, my finger aimed at the shooter. My face must have been strained. I wanted to know how close I was to actual failure. The guy closest to the right-side door gunner tapped him and pointed at me. I mouthed at him, “What the fuck was that?”

He put both hands up to his mouth and called back to me over the roar of the engines, “Test fire . . . that was a test fire!”

I rolled my eyes. Then I checked to see if I'd pissed myself.

At over one hundred miles an hour we flew past craggy rocks and snow-filled canyons. As the pilots hugged the terrain, I pondered how much someone would pay to take this trip as a tourist. In places like this, places free of industrialization, the sky is such a deep blue that it almost blackens. At lower elevations I could see green trees. There were browns and whites and blues and blacks and greens. I got tapped on the shoulder. One of my soldiers held up five fingers and mouthed, “Five minutes!” I took a breath and then made the signal for those around me to lock and load. Then I pulled the charging handle back on my own M4 before allowing it to slam forward, chambering a round.

I stopped thinking about everything. There was nothing else in existence but the roar of the helicopter around me. Nikki no longer existed. My family no longer existed. I had no memories. I had no dreams, no plans for the future. It was all gone—as if the helicopter's vibrations had liquefied my soul, allowing it to evaporate in the rushing wind that brought combat closer with each passing second. My mind became a pure, blank slate, capable of only repeating a single mantra:
Go left, keep Taylor by your side, keep moving—no matter what. Go left, keep Taylor by your side, keep moving . . .
.

I felt the helicopter slowing, beginning its hover. It lurched and bucked before coming to rest on the side of a mountain. I still couldn't hear anything but the whine of the engines and the
whompwhomp
of the rotor blades. Then the tail gunner moved out of the way and I instinctively held my breath. The ramp began to lower, and light flooded the interior of the aircraft.

5
 
Shah-e-Kot Valley,
Afghanistan

March 2002

I strained to see over the soldiers in front of me. They were struggling to shuffle off the bird as quickly as they could. I dragged my ruck across the floor of the aircraft in my right hand. In my left was my M4. I stepped off the ramp and started moving, completely disoriented.

Unexpectedly, all the air was sucked from my lungs. When we allowed for alpine elevations in the plan—about 9,500 feet—we tailored the helicopter load to the thin air and planned for freezing temperatures at the high altitude, but we hadn't planned for hauling such cumbersome gear on our backs. The first two steps off the bird were regular speed, the third was slower, and by the fourth step I was about to collapse. My head was spinning from trying to move too quickly with such a heavy pack. There wasn't enough oxygen in the air for me to do what I wanted to do.
Keep moving
. I couldn't get a satisfactory gulp of air. Suddenly my legs gave way and I dropped to a knee.
Keep moving
.

The first thought of which I became conscious was that I would live for at least a while longer. No one was shooting at me; nothing was exploding in my face. I looked around and saw that everyone else's movements had been grounded as well.

I scanned my surroundings on my knee, elbow resting on my ruck. We were in a bowl, surrounded by high ground on three sides. I then realized that other Rakkasans had us encircled—that they were our cover. Their uniforms were soiled and crinkled; their faces dirty and unshaven. They were part of the original group that been out there for seventy-two hours, but they looked as though they'd been out there a month. They were the most beautiful people I'd ever seen.

Still trying to catch my breath, I took my ruck and began to haul it across the open area. By the time I got to Captain K. I was trying not to hyperventilate. When I plopped down, I looked out at the opening of the bowl. I could see a valley, and mountains on the horizon. My watch said 5:35 p.m. I gazed up at the craggy ledges looming over me, and then to the cobalt blue sky above them. I paused, struck for a moment by the sheer rugged beauty of the place. Then I turned away. On the other side of the high ground, in the distance, I could hear sounds that seemed surreal.
Whoomp. Whoomp. Whoomp
. Bombs, detonating to the south, sounded like the footfalls of some mythic giant striding through the mountains. I could hear the faint crackle of gunfire. This was the real deal.

Captain K. was saying something. I wasn't listening. I was catching my breath and still marveling at the fact the LZ had been secure. I only turned to look at him when I heard my name. He wanted my platoon to lead the company south. I nodded and stood up.

We had no need to look at the grid coordinate for our destination. As long as we kept the thuds and pops to our front, and as long as they were getting louder, we would be headed in the right direction.

I told Sergeant David Reid to put Pascoe up front. Sergeant Joe Pascoe was the platoon “survivalist.” A stocky ex-Marine, Pascoe was the guy who could make fire. He could capture, kill, and cook his own food and he could make his way through the woods effortlessly. Later, in Kandahar, he would design and build a trebuchet out of spare parts capable of launching six-packs of milk fifty yards. On the other hand, Pascoe could probably not help you match your drapes.

We had been in the bowl for ten minutes. The sky was still a deep blue, almost indigo, but the sun was starting to set and shadows were getting long. I looked up into the blue. Thousands of feet above me I saw the gray outline of an American B-52 headed south. Its four distinctive contrails stretched back as far as I could see. At that altitude, it was silent. I held my gaze on the plane as it traced a path toward the distant sounds of thunder. I had spent hours as a kid watching the B-52s based near my hometown in Louisiana. They had always been there in the sky for me, as a backdrop to my youth—at baseball games, down by the riverfront, stopped at a red light. You could rarely look to the sky in Shreveport and not see one. They were huge, powerful, and could carry nuclear weapons in their bomb bays. But they had always landed in a place I wasn't allowed to go. Perhaps that's why they hypnotized me.

In middle school, my classmates and I had watched them return from the first Gulf War. On that day, they had done a fly-by of Shreveport, flying low and slow over the city to the
cheers of thousands. In a strange coincidence, I was now watching one of the same planes that I had seen as a kid. Only now it was on an actual attack run.

As I stared at it flying over the nearest ridge, I knew that it was seeing them, hearing their roar as an impressionable kid, that made me reply to the recruiter. Back then I hadn't really known the difference between the Army and the Air Force, but I knew I wanted to be a part of it. Now I could feel them leading me again, this time into a battle. Still spellbound by their power, I followed willingly.

As the plane flew out of sight, I dropped my gaze back to the jagged surroundings. Then I heard Captain K.: “Friedman, get us out of here.”

Weighted down to a point that nearly buckled the knees, Sergeant Pascoe picked up his heading and we started south. We crested the bowl and began walking down a slight slope. As we walked down the hill, the sun dropped behind the high ground, leaving us in shadows.

We trudged on in the twilight, listening to the constant thud of impacting bombs. Not ten minutes later I saw all the right arms in front of me lift in the L-shaped signal for a halt.

“1-6, this is 1-2, over.” It was Sergeant Reid. “You need to come up here and check this out.”

I motioned to Taylor and we waddled to the front. Sergeant Pascoe stood facing south, overlooking a ravine two hundred feet across and probably fifty feet deep. Reid and Pascoe both looked at me. “Whaddya think, sir?” asked Sergeant Pascoe.

My response was the response of any true leader in time of trouble: “Ahhh, fuck.”

“We could go through it, but I think we can skirt it to the left on that high ground,” he said pointing. “It'd take longer, but I think it'd be easier on everybody than the going up and down would be.”

I looked at Sergeant Reid. “What do you think?” I asked.

“I think Sergeant Pascoe's right, sir. I think it's a better idea to go around. I think that walking into that hole with all this weight would be a stupid idea.”

“Okay,” I said. “I think you're right. Keep moving around it. Let's go.”

As I knew it would, the company net came to life. “Sir, they wanna know what the holdup is,” Taylor informed me. I knew that was coming—it was what I'd wanted to avoid by making a quick decision.

“Tell 'em ‘no holdup.' Tell 'em ‘we're moving.'”

“Roger, sir.”

Sergeant Pascoe led the company in a slow, winding curve toward the edge of the ravine. Within minutes Captain K., known simply as “Six” on the radio, was calling on the company net. He was in the middle of the company formation, probably a hundred yards back.

“1-6, this is Six, you're going the wrong way. Stop moving,” came the Voice over the net.

“This is 1-6, roger, we're going around a large ravine. 1-2 and his team leader have a route picked out that we think'll be quicker than going down into the low ground, over,” I explained.