HUMVEES BARRELED PAST AT forty miles an hour, jostling the turret gunners like rag dolls. I jabbed Chuck’s shoulder and squeezed the top of Markam’s boot as I yelled up the turret: “Hang on up there!” Through the haze of dust behind us I counted four more Humvees. I recalled the motivational videos that West Point screened before lectures. To the thunder of AC/DC’s “Big Guns,” a host of Abrams tanks had crested sand dunes and fired salvo after salvo from their turrets. A thousand cadets cheered. A column of Humvees had just a fraction of a tank’s firepower, but I felt as if I were living inside a video reel.
As we drove toward Losano Ridge, Thompson called in a mortar mission over the company radio frequency, requesting a smoke round where he had seen movement to the east. The smoke would help the Apache attack helicopters circling above us identify the suspected area before flying in to check things out. A plume of gray smoke preceded the sound of impact by a fraction of a second.
As often happens with artillery and mortar fire, the round landed far from where Thompson had intended. When Captain Worthan learned that the round had wounded three enemy fighters he ordered the mortars to repeat the mission and to “fire for effect.” The technical command understated what was about to happen. Every mortar tube fired several bass drum volleys of high-explosive ammunition on identical trajectories. Whooomp. Whooomp. Whooomp. The concussions reverberated in my chest. An indeterminate hill between Losano Ridge and Pakistan erupted as nearly a dozen mortar rounds fell in a tight cluster over the next couple of minutes. Whereas the first mortar round had been luck, these rounds were dead-on, literally.
While the concussive explosions reverberated across the hills, the Apache helicopters approached in tandem for a closer view, drawing fire from below. Buzzing above me like a giant dragonfly, the lead helicopter rolled off to the south with amazing dexterity. The trail helicopter, sharing the call sign “Widow-Maker,” opened fire with its chain gun and splintering 2.75-inch rockets.
“Fuuuuccccckkkk yeaaaaaahhhh!” Markam shared his delight at the rippling explosions, no doubt shaking his fist in the rattling turret above me.
The helicopters circled in again for the kill, but their prey was already dead. Our mortars had killed a half-dozen enemy fighters and destroyed their own 82-millimeter mortar system. It looked as though we had just destroyed the enemy that my platoon was looking for along Losano Ridge and in the wadi. I smiled from ear to ear. Mission accomplished.
Nevertheless, over the radio Captain Worthan ordered us to complete the sweep as planned. McGurk’s squad, augmented with a three-man machine-gun team and Story, tumbled out of the flatbed Humvee, brushed off a quarter inch of dust, and moved down into the wadi on the far side of Losano Ridge. I tapped knuckled fists with Story and wished him luck.
By the time my Humvees reached the northern limit of Losano Ridge and parked in a semicircle facing Pakistan, it was already dusk. Captain Worthan’s party was making its way back up the slope to our position. All eyes were focused on McGurk’s squad as they finished their wadi sweep. Once they covered another football field of terrain, they would hike up the steep flank, join us on top, and pile into the Humvees. We would all then return to the base for a shower and hot chow. They began clearing the last set of ruins below, looking like ants eating a graham cracker. Markam handed me the binoculars and I took a closer look. McGurk knelt in the center of the compound. I grabbed my radio handset.
“What you got?”
McGurk was always precise. “Fresh footprints, probably Converse. Some candy wrappers, looks like Snickers. And what looks like recently burned wood.”
“Where do the footprints lead?”
“Toward the right, away from this hill to my front and toward the Pak observation post. The footprint trail might be a trap. I’m going to send Grenz’s fire team up the hill in front of us instead.”
Grenz’s fire team of four advanced in a wedge up the small hill. There were three distinct rises, each with a short drop-off before rising to the next, slightly higher rise. As Grenz crested the last rise, a burst of gunfire snapped the silence.
Grenz surprised three Taliban who were crouched underneath a scrub pine fifteen feet in front of him. One gripped a double-handled detonator. Grenz leveled his rifle and shot all three—killing one and seriously wounding the others. From where I stood I couldn’t tell any of that, of course. All I observed were the consequences: We had hit a wasp’s nest with a baseball bat.
Suddenly, the entire border flashed like camera bulbs at a concert. A cacophony of fire from heavy machine guns, rifles, antiaircraft guns, and rocket-propelled grenades signified a coordinated ambush. Behind me, Captain Worthan and the antenna farm bounded down the slope toward McGurk.
What do we do now, sir?
This was the minute all of my training had prepared me for. As rounds whipsawed past me and spit up gravel, I had to decide whether to follow Worthan down the hill into the ambush or to stand my ground and coordinate the Humvees’ heavy machine-gun fire. By doctrine I needed to be wherever I could best influence the fight. But where was that?
As I stood, a trio of bullets ricocheted off the adjacent Humvee. I pivoted back toward the Humvee. I would make my stand on Losano Ridge. That decision, made in seconds, would later replay in my head a thousand times.
“I can’t see anything!” I bellowed at Chuck. “Where’s McGurk’s squad?”
“Right between us and those muzzle flashes.” Buzzing small-arms fire interrupted Chuck’s reply.
“Get the Mark-19s on the flashes. Cease fire with the .50 cals. I don’t want any low rounds to hit our guys.” I had to shout just to be heard above the din.
Chuck coordinated his gunners’ fire over the vehicle radio, stepped out of the Humvee, and motioned with his hands where he wanted the two grenade launchers to split the target area. The reassuring thumpity-thump-thump of the Mark-19s was quickly followed by the detonation of their 40-millimeter grenades landing eight hundred yards away.
I hefted the Humvee door open and took three long strides to a small tree. I had to get in a better position to see down into the wadi and identify where the incoming fire was originating. Howe followed with the radio on his back. Kneeling down, I grabbed the handset. The first words I heard sent an icy chill down my spine.
“We’ve got a KIA. O’Neill’s KIA.”
No way. My knuckles turned white strangling the handset. No fucking way. McGurk repeated the status report. I stared at the radio in disbelief. This isn’t happening. Small-caliber rounds dented the Humvees around me, but it was strangely silent, as if someone had pressed the mute button.
O’Neill had been with the platoon only a few days. We’d shared only a handshake, and yet now I was responsible for his death. All I could remember were those eyes—glacial blue, like my brother’s. There’s no way O’Neill’s dead. This wasn’t a game or an exercise or a movie; these were real soldiers with real blood and real families waiting back home. What had I done wrong? Who’s next? McGurk? Story? Me?
Bullets snapped through the air, but the muzzle flashes were harder to isolate. I had my gunners lob dozens of grenades at the spark of every enemy muzzle they saw. Still, the distinct hammering of enemy machine guns and the cracks of sniper fire remained. My men in the wadi were firing everything they had. Although I had a rifle, I couldn’t pick out targets that wouldn’t risk hitting my own men below me. The only weapon of any use was the radio. It became my eyes and ears as well as my voice. I pieced together what had happened to O’Neill from the radio traffic among Grenz, McGurk, Story, and Worthan.
Grenz had moved under withering fire, recovered O’Neill’s exposed body, and moved him to a sheltered position down the slope. O’Neill had been shot three times below the body armor, shearing a main artery. A medic and McGurk dressed the wound in vain, but O’Neill had already hemorrhaged too much blood. That is when McGurk had reported him KIA.
“I need a litter team down here ASAP!” screamed Story over the radio. He wanted to move
O’Neill back up the hill for evacuation by medevac helicopter. If we got him to the doctors fast enough, maybe it wouldn’t be too late.
Behind me, the whine of worn-out brakes made me turn my head around quickly. Chuck maneuvered his Humvees to positions offering better fields of fire. His long experience with heavy weapons in the Marine Corps was proving valuable. Below, Grenz dodged RPGs to get hold of a radio and started marking enemy positions with smoke rounds from his grenade launcher. A shower of hot brass casings tumbled like quarters off the side of a nearby Humvee as Markam fired five-second bursts of the .50 cal at Grenz’s marks. Markam was a master—timing the length of his bursts to balance firepower and accuracy. The rounds ripped along the border, shattering trees into showers of thick splinters. Even at a range of a mile and a half, a .50-caliber bullet hit with the force of a .44 Magnum at point-blank range.
Story was back on the radio, angry. “I need that litter team! Where are they?”
Running at a crouch between Humvees, I grabbed every soldier on the hill who wasn’t firing a heavy machine gun or driving. I sent three down the steep slope toward the sheltered position where O’Neill had been moved. They skidded down the slope like their boots were on fire. Rounds kicked up dirt around them as they slalomed to avoid enemy fire.
LaCamera used to say, “No one pays to watch a one-ball juggler.” Well, if combat was a circus, I was in the center ring juggling a dozen flaming torches, piecing together fragments from three radio frequencies, coordinating a half-dozen weapons systems, and dodging the rounds ricocheting off Humvee doors and furrowing the dirt near my position. It was loud and chaotic, and I wanted to piss in my boots, which was exactly how LoFaro had described combat to me in Normandy five years before. And just as he said it would, the sense of confusion dissipated as I gained my bearings. Confidence replaced dread. Eventually, incoming fire slowed. For the second time that afternoon the battle looked as if it was over. It seemed as though we had been fighting for hours, but when I glanced at my watch, I realized fewer than twenty minutes had elapsed since Grenz triggered the enemy ambush.
The familiar buzz of helicopter rotors grew louder as the silhouettes of two Apaches skimmed in our direction. They banked in tandem toward the suspected targets, and the border lit up in sparks of enemy muzzle fire. I crouched near a shrub on the edge of Losano Ridge with Chuck and Howe as the Apaches fired their chain guns. A host of smoke and sparks blasted toward our position from the east.
“RPG! Get down!” Chuck screamed while diving to the ground.
Howe and I dove in unison as a whistle introduced a loud thud in the gravel ten feet away from us. The explosion was muffled.
“You all right, Howe? Chuck?”
“I’m good. You, sir?” Howe responded with a startled look on his face as though he had seen his own ghost. Chuck was dirtier than normal but otherwise unscathed.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I ran my hand over my uniform to be sure.
I smiled at our luck. I thought Chuck had been mistaken in his identification. The whistle sounded a lot more like a mortar round than a rocket-propelled grenade. Whatever it was, it had exploded into the earth, showering us with harmless dirt instead of jagged hot shrapnel. Meanwhile, explosions continued to perforate the ground near my men below.
Chuck interjected, “Sir, those rounds are being fired from the Pak OP.”
“Are you positive?”
Damn. Plumes of smoke trailed from the Pakistani observation post as grenades screamed toward McGurk below. Action steadied my nerves. I raised the radio handset to my mouth and called the artillery battery. I read off the grid coordinates—two letters and eight numbers—enough to level our ally’s observation post. I understood now what it meant to kill or be killed.
Minutes later the first tree-shredding explosion missed the observation post by two hundred yards. I quickly called in a correction over the radio.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” Captain Worthan’s voice was distinct and loud over the radio.
My frustration was barely veiled as I explained what I had just seen with my own eyes.
“I know. You gotta trust me on this.”
“Roger,” I muttered indignantly.
I bit my lip to prevent my rage from finding insubordinate expression over the radio and began moving between Humvees, helping to identify targets with tracer fire from my rifle. One of the Apaches broke from the tandem back toward the north to find and escort the medevac helicopter to our position. As the Apache banked above us, I could see the holes where enemy fire had riddled its fuselage like a colander.
Meanwhile, Captain Worthan ordered the mortars to fire burning white phosphorous rounds on an area where Grenz had identified movement to the east. The initial round landed a hundred yards away from the intended target, but nevertheless wounded another three enemy fighters. For the second time in one day, errant mortars had been lucky. Chance, apparently, worked both ways. Three repeat missions silenced the enemy position, killing another seven, including a senior al-Qaeda commander in the Shkin area.
The subsequent lull in enemy fire allowed the casualty evacuation team to make faster progress up the steep slope. Four men moved O’Neill the length of five football fields in order to reach the top of Losano. One of the privates who had carried O’Neill up the hill approached me. His uniform was stained with blood. A grimace accented by the pallor of his cheeks had replaced his grin. He looked as if he had aged twenty years when he looked down at me.
“I am leaving after my contract is up.”
He delivered his verdict straight-faced, without a trace of cynicism. His resignation struck me between the shoulder blades. My men were no longer bulletproof. Neither was I.
I marked the landing zone for the helicopter with smoke grenades and talked the pilot toward our position. As the helicopter flared to land, the rotors pulsed hot air over the entire ridge, enveloping us in a storm of dust. Just as it set its skids on the ground, a half-dozen rocket-propelled grenades whined through the air. The medevac pulled off hastily as the third firefight of the day erupted from a two-mile arc along the border. Could this get any worse?
There was so much lead coming our way that it was hard to tell where the fire wasn’t coming from. Five Humvees churned in unison, unloading a small arsenal of munitions at what we believed were at least thirty enemy positions. Every round fired from the border had our address. The temptation of knocking an American helicopter out of the sky must have been irresistible. Fortunately, the helicopter was able to pull off without suffering severe damage from the surface-to-air attack, although it hadn’t been on the ground long enough to get O’Neill.
The combined fire of my Humvees allowed the medevac to remain in a holding pattern to the west. The Apaches began lighting up the area, strafing the border with rockets, Hellfire missiles, and machine-gun fire. Dozens of enemy fighters fled toward Pakistan, only to be mowed down like stalks of grass by the Apaches.
“I’ve got two A-10s inbound in thirty seconds!” Worthan was practically cheering over the radio as the Air Force jets approached.
The A-10 is the infantryman’s best friend in the Air Force. Designed specifically to support ground troops under fire, the twin-engine jet can carry an assortment of five-hundred-pound and two-thousand-pound bombs. Its seven-barrel Gatling gun fires nearly four thousand rounds per minute of powerful 30-millimeter ammunition large enough to slice tree trunks in half.
There was so much dust and smoke to the east that no one on the ground could properly identify targets for the jets. This was Clausewitz’s “fog of war,” all right. In a stroke of brilliance, Worthan improvised, turning over control of the A-10s to the Apache pilots, who presumably had a better view of the target area. The coordinated dance of the helicopters and jets was beautiful to watch. The Apaches dodged heavy ground fire, marked their targets, and exited stage right so that the A-10s had a clear line of fire. The ground shuddered as smoke puffs lined the entire ridge. The sound of the Gatling guns reached
our ears a half second later. Unlike our machine guns, the seven-barrel Gatling guns spun so fast that you couldn’t make out the sound of individual rounds. It sounded like a wood chipper grinding thick logs. In an eight-second burst of fire, the pair of A-10s unloaded one thousand rounds on the ridge. The earth boiled with explosions. Two passes silenced every gun aimed at us.
Dusk had fallen before the attack on the medevac helicopter had taken place, and it was rapidly growing dark. We still needed to get O’Neill to the field hospital fifty miles away, although, by now it was far too late. The helicopter returned without resistance this time. Less than a minute after touching down, the medevac lifted off with O’Neill and sped to the north, escorted by the two Apaches. As the helicopters disappeared in the distance, I regretted that I hadn’t seen O’Neill’s face before he left. He was gone, and I would never be able to apologize.
We wanted to get off the ridge before dark and had half an hour to consolidate all the troops on Losano Ridge before driving back to the firebase. As McGurk’s squad moved back up the ridge, Grenz found his way to the dead fighter who had held the detonation device in his hand. He looked to see what it was connected to. He led his team, now one man down, toward the Humvees, following a wire only superficially buried. Upon reaching the top of Losano Ridge, he traced the wire to an antitank mine buried five feet away from my Humvee.
The Unforgiving Minute: A Soldier's Education Page 31