“If you do not engage the targets we tell you, then we cannot use you,” Jared finally snapped, exasperated. “The enemy is within two hundred meters of our location and we need the fire now.”
The first two 2.75-inch rockets from the Apaches slammed high into the grape house in front of us, collapsing its entire front. The sharp cracks of the explosions marked a good hit. As the dust cleared from the rocket blasts, Afghan Army soldiers to my right cut down the four or five Taliban fighters who came stumbling out of the building dazed and confused.
As I reached down to grab another box of ammunition, a red glow flashed across the hood of my truck. The RPG exploded just outside Brian’s window, showering the truck with shrapnel. Stunned momentarily, we were snapped back into focus by Jared’s voice on the radio. He was still trying to muster fire superiority to push up toward the hill. Then the TOC in Kandahar came back: “Talon 30, this is Eagle 10. Here is your situation: the enemy count is not dozens, but hundreds, maybe even a thousand. Do you copy, over?”
I shot a glance at Brian. “You have got to be shitting me.”
The slapping sound of rounds hitting vehicles got my attention and I again focused on engaging targets with my machine gun. Nearby, the Apache gunships strafed Taliban fighters hiding around the hill. I could hear the giant zipper of the 30-mm cannons tearing up the compounds and irrigation ditches beyond us. Usually Taliban fighters hid when the Apaches showed up, but this time they held their ground and dug in. After a final pass, the Apaches banked, and the low thump of rotor blades faded in the distance as they headed back to Kandahar to refuel and rearm.
If these fighters weren’t afraid of the helicopters, then they’d only get bolder now that the birds were gone. I could hear Ron over the radio trying to get more helos. Ammunition in my truck was going fast, and based on the level of fire, I suspected the situation was the same in the other trucks.
As I turned back to my machine gun, Riley, my senior medic, arrived at my door. He had two AT4s, the light anti-tank rockets.
“Where do you want them?” he asked.
I directed him to one of the most active compounds. On his signal, Brian, Dave, and I fired every weapon we had to give him cover as he crept along the backside of my truck. Taliban machine gunners saw him, and their short bursts came within feet of him as he stepped out of cover to fire. He fired off the first rocket while trying to dodge the incoming fire marked by dusty flicks of dirt. It missed the doorway and exploded into the thick mud wall. Riley dove back to the truck for the second AT4. Racing back to the same spot, in the open, he shouldered the rocket and fired. Another cloud of dust flew in all directions around him. The 84-mm round impacted exactly where the Taliban machine gunners had been seconds before. Nearly a dozen more explosions followed, all around our trucks. I turned to ask Brian where we got all the AT4 rockets, thinking others were firing at the enemy too. Then I saw the fright in Brian’s eyes.
“That’s RPGs!” Brian screamed. Incoming enemy rockets.
It was like standing in a Fourth of July fireworks display complete with razor-sharp shrapnel. In the turret of his vehicle, Zack winced as an airburst RPG exploded beside him, sending shrapnel slicing into his arm. He ducked into the protection of the armored shield mounted around the MK19 grenade launcher and made a quick self-assessment. Seeing his arm still attached and being able to move his hand, he resumed firing at Taliban positions. The MK19 grenade launcher fires tennis-ball-sized grenades for hundreds of meters.
The call came over the radio. “Zack’s hit!” Riley darted to his own vehicle, grabbed his aid bag, and sprinted over to Zack, climbing up to the mount, completely exposed to the Taliban, to treat the gash in Zack’s arm while he continued firing. It wasn’t life-threatening. Riley bandaged the wound, calmly climbed down, and ran to the other three trucks in turn, checking everyone’s status.
Moments after Riley left, a grenade jammed in the smoking-hot barrel of Zack’s MK19. The grenades had kept the Taliban fighters at bay, but Zack could see them moving through an irrigation ditch and tree line on our flank. Not an ideal time to reduce firepower. Zack climbed out of the protective turret and around to its front, where he hunched over the gun, rear end to the enemy, jammed a steel clearing rod into its barrel, wrenched out the grenade, and repaired the damage. Miraculously intact, he was soon back to hammering the flanking fighters.
Ron hollered to me from the bed of my truck. More bad news: we had lost the A-10 aircraft, which had to go refuel. “Shit, we can’t get a break,” I answered, then gave the heads-up over my handset: “As soon as we lose the aircraft, the savages are going to hit us hard. We need to be ready.”
Hodge and his team were spread out in a broad line, watching our rear in the narrow opening leading to the hill. When the ambush was sprung, my team had moved forward, and now the thick smoke from explosions and fires masked us from Hodge.
“Pop a smoke grenade to mark your position,” Hodge said over the radio.
“Negative,” I responded. The smoke would also give the RPG gunners a target to shoot at.
Hodge figured he could at least try to neutralize the enemy moving to reinforce their positions and increase the pressure on us. As he maneuvered, trying to glimpse us, an RPG barely missed his truck. The back blast caught the team’s attention. About twenty Taliban fighters were hiding in a deep irrigation ditch. They’d pop up, shoot, and then crawl back down and reload. Hodge’s truck jerked to a halt and opened fire.
Hodge’s second truck belonged to Jeff, the team sergeant; it was also armed with an automatic grenade launcher and quickly pulled up alongside Hodge’s truck. The gunner sank behind the boxy green launcher, flipped the safety off, and started pumping out dozens of grenades directly on top of the fighters in the irrigation ditch, strafing from left to right.
The rest of Hodge’s team pulled abreast and poured fire down the length of the trench, trapping the Taliban fighters. Bodies burst into pieces as the rounds tore into the group; an RPG shot straight up into the air.
Two fighters made a dash for it. Wearing baggy shirts and pants, AK-47 magazine pouches strapped across their chests, they darted into the open and were promptly cut down by two Afghan soldiers with a PKM machine gun.
The grenade launcher worked up and down the ditch repeatedly. No one was coming out of that trench ever again.
I called Jared and asked him to send Bruce’s team up to me. We literally needed to circle the wagons inside the bowl in order to maximize our firepower. Jared said they were dismounted from their trucks in the compound’s entrance, rooting out Taliban fighters, and couldn’t move. Some dire necessity had to have prompted that—you never send troops out on foot unless they can be covered by machine guns. I prayed that no one got isolated and pinned down.
I found out later what had happened: when the ambush was sprung on us, fighters in the compounds to the left and right side of Bruce’s team also opened up, smashing them in a hellish crossfire. The thick walls of the compound offered great protection—so good, in fact, that the team’s .50-caliber machine guns and 40-mm grenade launchers couldn’t penetrate them.
Bruce had decided to send in a small fire team to clear out the fighters. Ben, an engineer sergeant, and J.D., a medic, led a squad of six Afghan soldiers from the cover of the trucks to the lead compound, where they pressed themselves against the compound’s thick tan walls and heaved grenades over to a spot near an entranceway. Their red and green tracers tumbled and spun, crisscrossing the interior as they flooded inside.
Ben and his men found four Taliban fighters in the back of the compound trying to flee through a small door. Three made it out. The fourth fighter broke for the door at a sprint, firing his AK from the hip. He hit the door and bounced back, surprised when it didn’t open, and collapsed in a heap when the Afghan soldiers with Ben fired.
The ANA squad leader shot Ben a toothy grin and a thumbs-up. Ben, known for his dry sense of humor, grinned back. The soldiers pushed on to other compounds and the s
cene repeated itself two more times. Each time, the bond between the Afghans and Americans solidified.
The third compound was really a large, three-story grape house running right beside a deep, dry irrigation ditch covered with vegetation. The Afghan soldiers threw another grenade into the ditch, then dashed across to secure the outside of the building. Peeking inside, they spotted several dozen large ammunition boxes and RPG rockets. Just as the combined team of soldiers was about to enter, an Afghan soldier outside started screaming. Hanging above the door was a Russian 107-mm rocket. A wire at head level would have set the booby trap off.
Between bursts, I listened to Ben’s radio report back to Bruce. I’d had enough of getting shot at while we waited on Bruce’s team to finish clearing the compounds. I sprinted across the open field to Jared’s truck. “Where the fuck is 36?” Our conversation and the explanation played out in shouts over the hammering of .50-cal machine guns and explosions all around us.
“The ambush cut off our element. Bruce’s team couldn’t get to our location—his guys went to push the enemy back so we can get all the vehicles together,” Jared told me. “Predator says we have hundreds of fighters here.”
“Well, we need those guys back here now!” I shouted. “If they get stuck in there, we’ll have hell to pay getting them out. Can you get them back here so we can get out of this mess?”
The meeting was cut short when Casey, the gunner in Jared’s truck, shouted, “Ammo!” Jared and I scrambled over the back of the truck together to move ammunition boxes to him so he could keep the gun firing. The machine guns and grenade launchers were keeping us alive.
Bill came running to the truck. “Captain, I have bad news,” he shouted. “We have two boxes per gun and four rockets left. We are about to go black on ammo.”
Black on ammunition meant we were about to run out. I reached down and hit the talk button on my radio.
“Bruce, have your guys break contact and get your men out of there NOW! We are about out of ammunition. If they stay in there any longer, we cannot support you.”
Bruce called Ben and told him to get back to the vehicles. The teams were short on ammo, but Ben had to get out, and he couldn’t leave the enemy a cache as lethal as the one they had found. Taking a knee, he fished out a green bag with two blocks of C-4 explosives from his assault pack. The tiny packages were primed and ready to go.
Ben called Bruce on the radio. “Sir, we have cleared to the third compound due west of your location. We have a large booby-trapped cache at this grid. Cache includes a large amount of ammunition and RPGs. Demo countdown begins in two minutes on my mark. MARK.”
Ben ordered the Afghan squad leader to start moving his men back to the first compound. As each one passed, Ben tapped him on the shoulder to ensure everyone was accounted for. Two minutes was not a lot of time. Ben and the Afghans had to move fast.
Ben set his stopwatch and the timer. He glanced at the detonation cord, time fuse, and blasting caps to ensure they were properly set, then he carefully slid his fingers into the green blasting caps and gave a jerk. The small plastic containers popped and spewed streams of thick gray smoke. Ben calmly slid the C-4 into an opening next to a large stack of rockets and backed away.
The calm part was over. “Burning, burning, burning!” Ben said through the radio static as he sprinted from the grape hut. The demo was armed.
“Talon 36, this is 36 Bravo, thirty seconds to detonation.”
As soon as Bill and I heard Ben on the radio, we sprinted back to our trucks. Bill warned the last two trucks and I warned the first two.
“Button up, demo in thirty seconds!”
Brian slammed his door shut. Dave quickly dropped down into the turret. Ron crawled under Dave’s feet. I got in the passenger’s side and hunkered down as far as I could. We were only about a football field away. Two blocks of explosives setting off a cache would be … Whoom! The flash hit first, then the sound, and a heat wave swept over us, rocking the trucks. Everything not tied down went airborne. Huge chunks of mud wall, clay bricks, rockets, and mortars rained down from the sky.
“All trucks give me a status,” I barked into the radio.
“Truck two up.” “Truck three up.” “Truck four up.”
The blast covered everything in a thin layer of dust. I looked up at Dave squatting in the turret. He burst out laughing. Soon, Brian and Ron joined in.
“What the hell are you laughing at?” I demanded.
“You look like a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound sugar cookie, Captain,” Dave got out between laughs.
It wasn’t a leap to realize that I looked ridiculous, half stuffed into the space between the floorboards and my seat, covered in dust, and barking into a radio. I had to laugh. “What else can happen today?” I said sarcastically.
“The day ain’t over yet,” Ron said.
“Coming out,” Ben said into the radio. He had no more than spoken when the first of the Afghans appeared, exiting the hole in the outer compound’s wall. Our rear gunners covered them as they and Ben sprinted toward the trucks.
Hodge’s team still couldn’t see us. J.D., the medic on Bruce’s team, knew we were stuck in the kill zone and took off with an Afghan soldier to flag them down. Running back along the road and skirting a marijuana field, he finally found Hodge’s group.
They were under fire too. The safety glass on two of Hodge’s trucks had been popped from bullet impacts and was laced with a webbing of cracks. There was no cover other than the trucks, and Hodge knew his team couldn’t stay in that position for long. But they were stuck. If they abandoned their rear covering position, the rest of the teams might never make it back out. Our entire situation was deteriorating rapidly.
It was time to make a no-bullshit assessment. We were receiving accurate fire from all directions. We were also low on ammunition. We couldn’t push forward to seize the hill. If we stayed, we’d eventually be outnumbered, facing hundreds of Taliban fighters—with no machine guns. I got on the radio and called Jared.
“Thirty this is 31. Recommend we break contact so we can consolidate, reorganize, and call in an emergency resupply.”
Jared called 36, Bruce’s team, to make sure they were ready. Their fight had turned when the Taliban started firing armor-piercing rounds, which easily cut through our thinly armored trucks.
“Do it,” Jared shot back.
“All 31 elements BREAK CONTACT, I SAY AGAIN, BREAK CONTACT! Peel out in movement order. Provide covering fire,” I ordered.
Brian called, “Set,” and everyone held on. Our truck jolted backward, accompanied by an avalanche of brass shell casings cascading from the roof and hood. The other trucks on my team followed suit, and we stayed in one another’s tire tracks to avoid land mines and IEDs. As we blew back out through the entranceway, the suffocating sensation of being in the kill zone evaporated. I watched the collage of colors on the digital map fade flat as we moved several kilometers into the desert.
Round one went to the Taliban.
Chapter 14
SEVEN TWO-THOUSAND-
POUNDERS
War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.
—GENERAL WILLIAM T. SHERMAN
Jared’s truck skidded to a halt near mine, enveloped in a thick, choking dust cloud. I grabbed my map and headed straight for him. He was out of his truck, a radio handset in his fist, and motioning for me to hurry by the time I got there.
“Rusty, we finally have a Predator and a B-1 bomber overhead. Listen to this,” he said.
The comfort of having a B-1, its contrails weaving high above us, cannot be overstated. Pressing Jared’s mike to my ear, I could hear the Predator operator clearly from thousands of miles away. He was probably sitting in an air-conditioned control room outside Las Vegas as he zeroed his camera in on several trucks armed with machine guns and swarming with Taliban fighters. They were moving in and out of an L-shaped series of compounds near the hill. Other fighters we
re unloading boxes of ammunition nearby, the operator said.
“Talon 30. This is just in one compound. Do you copy?” the Predator operator said. “There are seven total compounds with this type of enemy activity directly ahead of you.”
We could clearly see Sperwan Ghar in the distance. We were only about a mile away from the hill. The enemy hornets’ nest was another half mile from there.
Wow, I thought as I looked down at my vest. Three magazines left. Not enough to last much longer. I called Ron to make sure he was setting up a link to the video feed. Mike, standing alongside Jared, was talking to the B-1, Jared to the Predator. “This is Talon 30. We need to know the number of personnel and type of vehicles.”
His response was sobering. “We stopped counting at one hundred enemy personnel with weapons. There are at least eight Hilux vehicles at the first compound,” the Predator controller reported.
Just then, Ron got the video feed. We watched dozens of dark figures as they scurried back and forth on the small screen. Jared leaned in, focusing intently. We all knew what he was looking for—civilians. After several seconds, he hit the talk button on his vest.
“Mike, do you have control with the bomber? If so, level that target. I mean level it.”
I marked the enemy position on my map. No matter how many bombs we dropped, I knew someone always survived. This had to be a devastating blow or they’d be on us in no more than a few hours. I grabbed Jared. “Sir, we need this strike to be crippling for the enemy. Let’s enhance this by hitting them with a mortar barrage right after the bombs impact.”
Hodge nodded in agreement. “Yep, that’ll do ’er!”
“We can fire from top to bottom on the target for about two minutes after the bombs impact. That will take care of the enemy who survive the strike and come out of the remaining buildings.”
Jerry Bradley & Kevin Maurer Page 17