After a quick debrief with Worthan, I walked by the base-within-a-base compound housing the resident “spooks”—what we termed the special operators in fatigue bottoms and North Face fleeces sporting REI glacial sunglasses and enviable tans. Outside, under an awning, were their souped-up Toyota Hi-Lux pickup trucks, complete with state-of-the-art communications gear and jury-rigged armored protection. Who they worked for, no one knew. If asked, they would respond “OGA”—Other Governmental Agency.
After showering, I found Story and the squad leaders and stood in a line snaking out from our chow hall, another windowless stone structure inside our compound. Dinner was nothing to write home about. There was a stew of mystery meat in the American food containers and a basket of naan bread and a tub of rice on the Afghan menu. Flashing back to Rob’s comedy routine at Oxford, I wondered what he would make of this material. I mixed and matched, and joined my men in the dining room which doubled as the TV room. Old School was on again. I had seen it twenty times already. With fraternity antics as background noise, we rehashed the day’s patrol, and I filled the squad leaders in on the base defense plan and the orientation patrol that Worthan wanted us to go on the next day.
Exhausted by a long day, I wrote a letter to Meena, spent an hour reviewing the latest intelligence reports, and asked the other platoon leaders about their experiences in Shkin to date. As they rattled off terrain features, I struggled to follow along on the small-scale Soviet-era map we were issued. The 1:100,000 scale squeezed a square mile of complicated terrain into a fingernail-sized map square. As I had found out on the first patrol, many ravines weren’t even marked on the map.
WE SPENT THE NEXT morning running laps around the perimeter (in body armor, with weapons), inspecting and preparing the vehicles, and rehearsing imagined ambush scenarios. This was the meat-and-potatoes work of a platoon leader in combat: training, planning, and rehearsing—all so that we would be ready when the shit hit the fan. After devouring a big lunch, we were about to depart the firebase with another platoon for an orientation patrol when plans screeched to a halt.
A five-minute barrage of rockets impacted around the firebase. I scrambled to the operations center to see if anyone had picked up where they had come from. Reports from the towers zeroed in on Losano Ridge, barely a half mile into Afghanistan and right under the nose of Pakistani observation posts that dotted every mile along the rugged border. Our big guns, the 105-millimeter howitzer artillery pieces, fired back. As usual, the enemy was two steps ahead of us. By the time our fire missions had been calculated by the fire direction center and transmitted to the cannons, the rocketeers were long gone.
I breathed a sigh of relief when reports from around the firebase confirmed that no one had been hurt in the attack. During our analysis, we determined that the rockets had been progressively more accurate. In contrast, at Gardez the rocket attacks had been very erratic, and the launchers’ sophistication involved little more than propping rockets up on stones. This attack was more like a fire mission that an American platoon leader might call, bracketing a target in successively smaller increments, zeroing in the artillery by indicating from a forward position whether rounds were short, long, wide right, or wide left. We concluded that there was probably an enemy forward observer directing the rocketeers from somewhere in the hills west of the firebase.
We scrapped the reconnaissance patrol, and Captain Worthan and I sketched a plan to ambush the enemy forward observer as he approached his observation post, probably in the early morning hours. That afternoon I sat with Story, Adams, and McGurk for three hours planning the ambush. Back and forth we debated each point of the plan, improving it with each iteration. Afterward, we rehearsed with the whole platoon and then got two precious hours of sleep.
THERE WERE MORE SHADOWS than soldiers as my men gathered for the mission. It was after midnight and shards of light from a sickle moon broke across their sharply angled noses and clamped lips. My mind flashed to the frigid mountains of northern Georgia, where as a Ranger student Gunny Oakes had taught me how to ambush Cortinians. Back then, before 9/11, I had never expected to apply those lessons. Now, patrolling new ridges in the night, I was glad I had recycled the Mountain phase. I had gotten twice the practice. One by one I inspected the patrol, following the checklist scorched in my memory by Ranger School.
Shiny metal. Cover it with black electrical tape.
Shake the canteens. Fill them to avoid sloshing water.
Ammunition magazines. Press the last bullets against the spring to see if they are full.
Batteries. Flick night vision devices on and off.
Weapons. Cleanliness. Laser-aiming devices. Safety switched on.
Radios. I can hear my squad leaders. They can hear me. Fresh batteries. Frequencies.
Body armor. Check for ceramic plates. Heavy but essential.
Medical. First aid pouches. Evacuation plan. Succession of command if I fall.
Extras. Smoke canisters. Flares, whistles. Infrared chemical light sticks. Grenades.
The Plan. Checkpoints. Passwords. Timeline.
Two hands slapped my calf as I passed through the wire and whispered through the handset. Story and the medic counted every soldier as they passed and fanned out into a rehearsed wedge formation.
“1-6, this is 1-7. All up.” Story confirmed that all were accounted for.
We skirted between and behind the small hills on the western flank of the firebase. The moon was still low on the horizon as we moved through the dark. The night vision device mounted on my helmet pressed against my face. I warmed up quickly, and sweat moistened my T-shirt under the body armor and small patrol pack. Apart from the periodic whispers of Howe calling in checkpoints, the only sound was boot soles rolling across gravel and sand.
We stopped short of our planned ambush location and formed a small cigar-shaped perimeter. McGurk and Chuck met Story and me in the center of the perimeter. Our position was far enough away from the ambush site to be out of earshot, but we still whispered to one another as we planned a small reconnaissance of the objective. A few minutes later I crept forward with McGurk, Chuck, Howe, and one of the snipers attached to our patrol. After pinpointing the wadi we wanted to overwatch, we identified a hill to our right where the snipers could gain a better vantage point with their powerful scopes. I pointed out a large outcropping of stone where I would position myself between my two squads. I determined the left and right boundaries of the ambush, and McGurk recommended a position for the machine-gun team.
Returning to the rest of the platoon, McGurk and Chuck quickly relayed the plan to their squads. They placed each man on the ambush line, carefully spaced apart and concealed in the tiny ground wrinkles that infantrymen know so well. My sniper team flashed an infrared signal to identify their position to the platoon. I placed my smoke grenades and flares next to me and called in to the operations center: “Gator 1-6 in position. Time 0340.” And then we waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
Warm sweat slowly cooled against my skin. By 5 a.m., I was shivering. Chuck, McGurk, and the snipers called in every thirty minutes to confirm that their men were still awake. The high desert air grew colder and colder as the night approached dawn. By 6 a.m. even New Hampshire native Howe remarked that it was “as cold as a witch’s tit in a brass bra.” As the sky slowly blossomed pink above the border mountains behind us, I lifted off my night vision goggles as the sun cast its first long shadows over our position.
I poised myself to initiate the ambush if necessary. Nerves steeled, I was ready for my first real ambush.
On a herd of goats.
Creeping across the wadi floor was a lone shepherd, at most seven years old, and thirty scraggly, mottled goats. I held my fire.
We waited another hour as the ground warmed, and then we patrolled the 150-foot-deep wadi adjacent to our base. The sun climbed higher, thawing us out as we walked. McGurk’s squad picked its way down into the wadi single file. Chuck l
ooked crestfallen as his squad passed my position. He was so eager to test his combat leadership that the familiar sequence of escalating anticipation and deflation was taking its toll.
“Chuck,” I whispered, “stay focused.”
We leapfrogged along the wadi, me on the high ground with Chuck’s squad and the snipers, Story in the low ground with McGurk’s squad and the machine-gun team. We would creep forward, establish an overwatch position, and then we’d cover McGurk as his squad cleared the low ground. After a quarter mile, steep terrain forced us into the wadi with McGurk. Fifteen-story walls on either side of the dry riverbed dwarfed us. Only an hour before, we had been in an ambush position above the wadi. Now, who was watching us?
After a nerve-racking hour snaking through the ravine, we finally stumbled through the gap in the concertina wire. Immediately, packs dropped, helmets clunked off the ground, and shorn scalps steamed as canteens emptied over my soldiers’ heads. No sooner had we reached the compound, ready to sleep, than a telltale screech advertised another rocket explosion. “Goddam,” I muttered under my breath as I donned my body armor and helmet and sprinted on weary legs to the operations center. Over the next couple of minutes, seven rockets burst harmlessly around the perimeter. We had been played.
In the last twenty-four hours we had survived two rocket attacks, conducted one Humvee patrol, and set an overnight ambush. Not a bad day’s work on two hours’ sleep. I urged my men to get some rest while they could before I collapsed fully clothed on top of my sleeping bag.
Five hours later I emerged to eat a hasty dinner and analyze the map with Story, McGurk, and Chuck. If we were going to fight, it would most likely take place on the jagged border to our east. The firebase had absorbed rocket attacks for six days straight, and each attack had originated from ridges on the Pakistani border. The next day Captain Worthan was sending another platoon to an over-watch position near the border to deter a rocket attack while our firebase was being resupplied by Chinook helicopters. Captain Worthan was giving our platoon a day to catch our breath. In the morning we would unload the helicopters. Other than that, our main responsibility was to keep our gear ready in case something happened to the other platoon. I looked forward to an easy day—reading mail, spending some down time with the guys, and developing a training agenda.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
29
The Unforgiving Minute
My limbs sink, my mouth is parched, my body trembles, the hair bristles on my flesh. The magic bow slips from my hand, my skin burns, I cannot stand still. My mind reels.
ARJUNA TO LORD KRISHNA,
The Bhagavad-Gita
PRIVATE HOWE RAN INTO THE GYM, PANTING BREATHLESSLY. His report came between gulps of oxygen. “Second Platoon.” Breath. “Under fire.” Breath. “Losano Ridge.” I sprinted to the operations center, ducked through a five-foot portal, and twisted past the lawn chairs in front of computer terminals. The room was abuzz with activity. Dry erase markers scribbled friendly and enemy positions in green and red. Large protractors plotted ranges for mortars and howitzers; target descriptions crackled over the radio. Hot coffee splattered my sleeve as I jostled for elbow room in the suddenly overcrowded cave.
Major Paul Wille, the battalion operations officer and the senior officer at Shkin, barked at specialists and privates who moved too slowly in response to his orders. A graduate of the Army’s elite School for Advanced Military Studies, his grasp of military operations was impressive. He had developed much of the large Anaconda operation in 2002 as a division planner. In his spare time he read military history. Unfortunately for us, he reserved patience only for books. Every forty-five seconds he would emit a much-caricatured “Goddaaaaammit.” His eyes glowered beneath the brow of his oversized head, crowned with a crewcut of red hair marred by gouges he had inflicted as his own barber. I always looked to Major Wille’s cheeks as an honest barometer of current conditions. At the moment their ruddy hue was a bad sign.
Captain Worthan grabbed my shoulder and updated me. “Second Platoon has been taking fire from Losano Ridge. They took a couple of casualties, but things are under control now. They’ve been hammering the ridge with artillery and mortars. You’re going to clear the area where they think the fire is coming from to see if anyone survived our artillery barrage.”
I tried in vain to follow my map as he spoke.
“Any questions?”
I didn’t even know where to start.
STORY, MCGURK, AND CHUCK hustled the platoon from their video games and headphones. The motor pool where the Humvees lined up resembled a NASCAR pit stop. MRE boxes were chucked from trunks and replaced with additional ammo. Sergeants harangued privates who had forgotten kneepads or had emptied their canteens since the morning inspection. Drivers scurried between tires and surfaced from hoods with grease and oil smearing their faces. Howe was busy confirming radio frequencies and checking batteries. The heavy machine gunners in the Humvee turrets tightened the lashes securing their ammunition boxes.
I jumped in behind Chuck in the lead vehicle. I leaned out the window and counted two more armored Humvees and the flatbed Humvee, crammed with nearly a dozen soldiers from McGurk’s squad. Captain Worthan’s Humvee with its “antenna farm” of radio operators raced through the big compound gates and joined the middle of the convoy as we bucked and braced down a switchback slope into the wadi leading toward Shkin Bazaar.
The four miles to Shkin Bazaar took us over an hour to cover in our rugged trucks. A brisk walk would have been faster. It took almost another hour to move the last three miles to Second Platoon’s position high on a plateau overlooking Losano Ridge and the Pakistani border. I fanned out my vehicles along the bluff and joined Captain Worthan looking for Thompson, Second Platoon’s lieutenant. We found him kneeling behind the armored door of his Humvee. While pointing out suspected enemy positions, he was as calm as if he were pointing out gopher holes in his backyard.
I faced east over the bluff toward the border with Pakistan. I scanned the vista with fresh eyes, looking for landmarks that matched my map. The two-dimensional representation disappointed yet again. Not five feet in front of our position was a ten-story drop-off and a wadi the width of three football fields rising on the other side to Losano Ridge. Another wadi lay behind Losano Ridge, and beyond it the hills climbed steeply another two thousand feet to a jagged mountain range inside Pakistan. The map represented all of that with a few squiggly contour lines, hardly the topographic information necessary to move vehicles and dismounted troops through unfamiliar hostile terrain. Gee-whiz technology allowed me to put a bomb through a chimney if I wanted, but did little to get me to the objective in the first place. The map did indicate our altitude, though. On the bluff we stood at 7,100 feet, a mile and a half above sea level. Walking hills with fifty pounds of gear at that altitude, in hot weather, would have been a challenge even under peaceful circumstances.
I asked Thompson where the border with Pakistan was.
“Your guess is as good as mine. We’re in Afghanistan now. Losano Ridge is in Afghanistan. Those observation posts up on the higher ridge behind Losano are in Pakistan. The border is somewhere in between.”
In front of me, a track barely wide enough for a Humvee tripped down the side of the escarpment and continued up the spine of Losano Ridge. Thompson pointed out the smoldering ruins atop Losano Ridge where the enemy had launched its mortars at his platoon earlier that day. Losano Ridge, named after an American airman who was killed in action there only five months earlier, looked like a Louisville Slugger. To the south was the handle, the only point where vehicles could start the ascent north toward the thicker, higher part of the bat. The ridge ended abruptly after a mile on a bald knob of gravel one hundred yards across. Along the ridge’s thick brow, a trail slalomed between boulders and four-foot scrub pines. I kicked a few loose pebbles across the withered grass and over the ledge.
Thompson, Worthan, and I hashed out a plan. My platoon would clear across the r
idge to be sure there were no more fighters remaining on Losano. To minimize the risk to the convoy from a roadside bomb blast, I would space my Humvees one hundred feet apart as we drove along Losano’s spine. To protect my flank I would send Story with McGurk and his squad through the wadi between Losano and the Pakistani border. I would move the Humvees along the ridge, set in position, and then cover the guys on foot as they moved parallel to us in the wadi. Six or eight leaps like that and we’d clear the ridge and the wadi. Captain Worthan’s antenna farm and another squad would follow behind. We identified the bald spot at the end of Losano in the north as our best available medevac landing zone. Gunny Oakes at Ranger School had at least taught me not to forget that.
We needed to move quickly. I doubted that any enemy would have remained after the repeated artillery barrages and helicopter gun runs earlier that afternoon. We had four hours of daylight left to find out. By nightfall we were certain our adversaries would be back across the border, where Pakistan appeared to grant tacit sanctuary.
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education Page 30