by Eric Blehm
“Damn,” said JD. “Pretty lonely down here.”
By sunset, a ten-vehicle convoy of 1970s-style station wagons, 1980s minivans, and modern Toyota trucks, plus one small shuttle bus, lined up on the main street of Haji Badhur’s Cove. Two pickup trucks that had arrived from Tarin Kowt and were full of guerrillas armed with RPGs and assault rifles would lead the convoy back to the capital of Uruzgan.
Amerine, Mike, and Alex piled into a Toyota king cab pickup behind the guide trucks; behind them, Karzai and the CIA team—including Miles, who was kitted out for combat while hooked to an IV—boarded the bus, and Ronnie climbed on top of it. Behind them, the rest of ODA 574 crammed into another king cab.
Karzai told Amerine that the Afghans talking in a group nearby owned the vehicles and intended to drive them, a detail that didn’t bode well with the Americans: Nobody trusted the drivers to react calmly if they drove into an ambush or were stopped at a Taliban checkpoint. Amerine balked, but Karzai explained that there was no other option—in Uruzgan, vehicles are hard to come by and the Afghans would not relinquish theirs. The team could have bought its own trucks in Pakistan and had them airlifted with the weapons the night before, but Karzai had wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible and promised to acquire trucks for ODA 574 in-country.
Now, with no choice but to take what were essentially taxis—and without time to recon the route—the team drew up a plan. In the event of an attack, the Green Berets would commandeer these vehicles, fight off the enemy, then retreat with Karzai back to the last rally point. After regrouping, they would retreat to the relative sanctuary of Haji Badhur’s Cove, which they suspected would eventually be overrun by a large enemy force. They would call in airpower to defend the village while preparing to be extracted from the country.
While going over this plan, the men reminded each other of the agreement they’d made back in Uzbekistan regarding the “never leave a fallen comrade” creed. In JD’s words: “If I’m killed and we’re going to be overrun, don’t die trying to bring back my body. Save yourselves and tell the story.”
To avoid that outcome, ODA 574 had enlisted the help of a pair of F-18s to fly the road ahead of the convoy. At 30,000 feet the planes were invisible from the ground, but their advanced optics could identify approaching vehicles and roadblocks.
The route followed the Helmand River fifteen miles north to Mullah Omar’s hometown of Deh Rawood. There the convoy would turn east and drive for another thirty miles across a small mountain range to Tarin Kowt. Karzai estimated that it would take them four or five hours to travel this distance, an indication that the roads in Uruzgan would live up to their reputation as the worst in Afghanistan.
Once under way, Amerine began to identify rally points—a hill, a wadi,*a stone hut—every mile or so, relaying the information to the other team members via radio and entering their coordinates into his GPS. For the first hour, just as Karzai had told them, there were no checkpoints or traffic. The recon jets spotted nothing up ahead, and the convoy advanced unimpeded over the narrow, spine-jarring roads. Soon after dark, they followed the river past the rusted-out remains of a Soviet tank that had been pushed onto its side and was now part of the earthen wall flanking the dirt road. “Mines,” muttered the driver of Amerine’s truck in a rare use of English as they pulled off and drove next to the road for a quarter of a mile. They passed other remnants from the Soviet army, detoured around landslides, and dodged loitering goats that didn’t flinch at car horns or the sound of bullets fired into the air.
After two hours, the road took them into Deh Rawood, past neighborhoods, shops, and restaurants with small wooden tables and chairs stacked in front. It was early in the night, yet the town was almost completely dark, as though windows had been covered to black them out. Scanning the road ahead with their NODs, the men saw no one—not even a dog or a goat.
Amerine read the town’s name on his GPS, savoring for a moment the depth of their infiltration and feeling the hair on the back of his neck tingle. Just cruisin’ through Mullah Omar’s hood, he thought. Ain’t no thang.
The convoy continued east out of Deh Rawood, through villages where the vehicles’ headlights shone on rectangular metal signs bearing the stenciled names of past humanitarian projects—a well dug by UNICEF, the ruins of an abandoned Red Crescent clinic. Finally they crossed the mountains that formed a giant ring around Tarin Kowt Valley. Even though it was 11 P.M. as they rolled into the capital of Uruzgan Province, Tarin Kowt seemed almost too quiet, appearing to be as deserted as Deh Rawood.
Everything was desert-colored, brick and adobe. From one block to the next, it all looked the same. The string of vehicles zigzagged over narrow dirt roads through a honeycomb of mud-walled compounds, deep into the town where they finally saw life: a young man holding a kerosene lantern. He pushed open the metal gate of a compound and ushered in the two trucks carrying the Americans and the shuttle bus, while the two escort vehicles remained idling on the road outside.
Ronnie slid off the top of the bus and, with the rest of ODA 574, formed a perimeter around it, weapons at the ready. JD had Mike and Mag check the place out, as they’d done their first night in Haji Badhur’s Cove, but in this case they were near the center of a much more populated area, with blocks and blocks of neighborhoods linked by a maze of roads. They couldn’t just toss a grenade over a wall and run into the mountains.
Karzai said a few words to one of the four armed men in the compound, then led Casper and Amerine into the dwelling. He quickly showed them the two rooms their teams would stay in, then the three men returned to the driveway, where the Americans were unloading their gear from the trucks.
“Now I must leave you to go to the former Taliban governor’s palace to meet with the local resistance,” Karzai told Amerine.
“When can I meet them?”
“I must go to this meeting alone, Jason. I will send for you.”
Not at all comfortable in their new surroundings, Amerine said, “Please keep me informed immediately of any developments.”
“Of course,” said Karzai as he got into a truck and was driven away.
By the light of kerosene lamps, ODA 574 and the spooks lugged the gear into their rooms, the mood remaining tense as the Green Berets settled into the claustrophobic space. Rolling a wire out the window, Dan and Wes set up the antenna for their radio. “I’m going to send up a SITREP,” said Dan to Amerine. “Anything special you want me to say other than ‘A massive Taliban force is on its way to try to kill us; be ready to help’?”
“You might want to tone it down a bit,” said Amerine. “But I think that sums it up quite well.”
Forty-five minutes after Karzai left, two guerrillas arrived at the compound with instructions to bring Amerine and Casper to Karzai.
“We’ll be back in an hour,” Amerine told JD, holding up his radio. “I’ll update you once I know what’s going on.”
“You should bring somebody with you,” said JD.
“No need,” said Amerine. “If it’s a trap, we’re dead. You get the men out of here.”
The guerrillas drove Amerine and Casper up a residential street, turned right at an open-air market shut down for the night, and entered a small business district where shop windows were full of medical supplies and automotive goods. Amerine noted every detail, down to the height of the compound walls, and replayed the route in his head so that he could make it back to the team’s new safe house on foot if he needed to. A pair of rusted-out Soviet BMP armored infantry carriers, flanked by rows of sad, leafless shrubs, stood before an iron gate guarded by four Afghans with machine guns that was barely wide enough to admit their truck. Dozens of trucks were parked along the wide dirt driveway leading to a modest concrete building: the governor’s palace.
As Casper hurried ahead, Amerine hung back and followed their guerrilla driver past smiling guards and into a large room dully lit by gas lamps in its corners. The Afghans seated along the walls also regarded them with friendly smiles,
but Amerine remained vigilant even when Karzai emerged from the darkness to welcome him. “These are the tribal and religious leaders who took part in the uprising,” Karzai explained. “And I have news from them.”
These men looked more like well-manicured diplomats than revolutionaries, more polished than the tribal leaders Karzai had brought with him to Pakistan.
“A large convoy of Pakistani Taliban is on its way from Kandahar to retake Tarin Kowt,” Karzai continued. “There are reports of one hundred trucks carrying one thousand men.”
“When will they arrive?” asked Amerine.
“They left this morning,” said Karzai. “The roads are difficult, like what you saw today. So they could arrive anytime tomorrow.”
Kandahar was only seventy-five miles away across wide deserts and over mountains that would take some time to cross. Still, there was much to do in order to create the initiative Amerine’s small team would require to make a stand against such a large force, and Amerine had to assume the attack could occur before tomorrow. He glanced at the door; the infantryman in him had already begun to plan their defense.
“So we must eat,” said Karzai, smiling. “They waited for us to arrive before breaking their fast for Ramadan. Sit down and eat, then we can discuss this further.”
“Please thank them, but I have to return to my team and make preparations immediately,” Amerine said. “I need you to ask them to send us every man they can to defend the town.”
Karzai’s brow furrowed. “Are you certain there is not time to eat?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will have men with trucks at your compound in two hours.”
Amerine paused in the doorway of ODA 574’s makeshift command post, feeling safe in the presence of his team. It was almost 12:30 A.M., and in his absence the men had lined up their rucksacks along one wall of the ten-by-twelve-foot room. In one corner, Dan was using his go-to-hell pack as a low desk for his laptop, and Wes was running a second antenna wire outside through a small window. Standing just inside the door beside Ken, JD was testing the flame on one of the two hissing gas lamps hanging from metal hooks in the wall, while Mike, Mag, and Ronnie were taking inventory of the grenades, claymore mines, and ammo clips piled on the cement floor. JD glanced at Amerine, who gestured for him to step outside.
“We’ve reportedly got a thousand Taliban in a hundred trucks coming to retake Tarin Kowt,” Amerine told him. (See map on p. 352)
JD smiled. “Okay, so…what now?”
“Only thing I can think of is we find a good hill to climb and bomb ’em before they get here. Any better ideas?”
When JD shook his head, Amerine said, “It’s going to be a long night and a longer day.”
They went back into the room.
“Listen up!” JD shouted. “The captain has some info to put out.”
Every member of ODA 574 immediately stopped what he was doing; the ensuing silence unsettled Amerine, who would have preferred the usual banter to calm his nerves about the terrible odds they faced.
“Hamid’s people have reports that the Taliban launched a counterattack from Kandahar to retake this town, as many as a thousand men,” Amerine said. “After what these people did to their governor, we can count on them sacking the town if we can’t stop them. We have to be in position to defend Tarin Kowt before dawn. I need Mag, Mike, Ronnie, and Brent to do some quick terrain analysis and look for likely enemy avenues of approach, then find us some high ground with a good view to direct air strikes on the most likely route. Dan and Wes, get commo with Task Force Dagger and tell them that we’ll probably be in the shit tomorrow, if not sooner. Alex, get us some aircraft and let’s look for the bad guys. JD, figure out a timeline. Hamid is sending as many guerrillas as he can to help us, so we need to have a solid plan in about seventy-five minutes. We’ll have a status brief at 0130. We depart at 0300.”
Every inch of available floor space was soon covered with maps, with half of the men on their hands and knees studying them.
Alex got out his radio, laptop, and cipher book and within minutes announced that two F-18 fighter planes were inbound for reconnaissance. Amerine went next door to brief the CIA team on ODA 574’s plan, telling them to be prepared to evacuate Karzai if the Taliban couldn’t be stopped. If that happened, they would regroup at Haji Badhur’s Cove.
“Good luck, Jason,” Charlie said. “Make sure you take the car keys from those guerrillas so they don’t leave you behind.”
Amerine returned to his team’s room, laid out his map on a small wooden table, and attempted to visualize the coming battle. Even though he had no appetite, he forced down an MRE, not knowing when he would next be able to eat. His eyes were drawn to that small circle he’d drawn around Haji Badhur’s Cove. They’d driven through several villages on the way to Tarin Kowt, but they still didn’t know whether their inhabitants backed Karzai or had merely allowed them passage.
With his pencil, he circled Tarin Kowt Valley and put a question mark in its center. He glanced at his team: JD was listening in on Mike, Ronnie, Brent, and Mag, who were kneeling over their maps in the center of the room, bouncing back and forth opinions of the positions they might occupy. Dan, Wes, and Alex were seated on the ground along one wall, leaned over their radios and laptops, sending up spot reports to Task Force Dagger on their situation and talking to aircraft overhead. Ken sat against another wall, drinking coffee and observing the men, his aid bag packed beside him. After almost an hour, Amerine stepped out into the courtyard hoping to see a group of armed men awaiting instructions, but it was just the same smiling guards.
At the 0130 status update meeting, Mike indicated on the map the only major route into the valley, tracing it through a narrow mountain pass. The high ground beside this pass looked like the best place to establish an observation post from which to direct air strikes on the enemy.
Mike’s description was interrupted by Alex. “Sir, the F-18s spotted eight trucks heading north from Kandahar. Are they cleared to engage?” Immediately, Dan and Wes plotted the location of the convoy on the map while Amerine looked over their shoulders. The trucks were twenty miles away, and the team agreed that this must be the lead element of a larger force.
The room went quiet. Every man looked at Amerine. He visualized the valleys and roads, pictured the mountains and what the pilots were seeing. According to Karzai, a force like this coming north could only be Taliban. If a thousand men were closing in, they had to slow them down to gain time for Karzai to rally his men. These air strikes would also be crucial to defending Tarin Kowt. Without further consideration he gave the order: “Smoke ’em.”
Alex keyed his hand mic. “Cleared hot,” he told the pilots. The men resumed their conversations, easing the tension slightly, but they remained tuned in to Alex.
“I’m going up on the roof to watch for the explosions,” said Alex.
“I’ll come along,” said Amerine, feeling for an instant his remarkable detachment. He’d just ordered his first kill, probably dozens of deaths, and the words he had chosen were as casual as if he was telling his men to swat flies.
Outside, Amerine steadied a ladder for Alex as he climbed up on to the roof.
A thousand men are coming for this place, Amerine thought. Horrible odds, just as there had been during Operation Safe Haven2 when he was a second lieutenant fresh out of West Point, stationed in Panama on the first assignment of his career.
On December 8, 1994, Amerine’s superiors had sent five twenty-five-man infantry platoons plus fifty Air Force security police to quell a riot in a Cuban refugee camp in Panama. In spite of his and other platoon leaders’ objections, his commanders had denied their request to bring shotguns and teargas, and provided them instead with batons and face and body shields. Once the platoons were inside the fenced camp, approximately 1,000 refugees attacked the 175 soldiers with softball-size cobblestones that rained down on the Americans, breaking shields and bones with a never-ending supply of projectiles.
; Reinforcements were sent in, but by day’s end more than two hundred U.S. servicemen (including Amerine and his men) had been wounded, some critically. Though the incident would never be recognized by the Army as “combat,” the level of violence was far worse than anything most of the men had experienced. The United States closed the camps two months later.
Amerine vowed that never again would he let men under his command bleed for nothing, but here he was almost seven years later, putting his team in harm’s way despite major reservations by the CIA and his chain of command over the viability of the mission. He questioned his motives for pushing ahead. He’d had no doubts in Pakistan that his mission then was noble and righteous. Why the misgivings now? he asked himself. Was it his desire to set things straight, a belief that somehow succeeding here would reconcile the catastrophe in Panama that had haunted him all these years? He wondered if it was his ego that had brought him—and his men—into harm’s way.
After a couple of minutes on the roof, Alex called down, “They’re dropping bombs!” Amerine scrambled up the ladder and scanned the horizon, but could see no flashes nor hear the rumble from the explosions. Alex listened to the radio and reported: “Sir, they engaged the convoy. Five kills. Three got away when they ran out of bombs.”
Amerine looked at the night sky stretching before them. Here, far from city lights, the constellations and the Milky Way were exceptionally bright, reminding him of childhood walks at night with his father, who’d taught him the stories behind the constellations. Orion—the Hunter—had always been Amerine’s favorite, and tonight he could see it clearly, shining over the battlefield.
Karzai returned from the governor’s palace moments later. He was pleased when Amerine informed him of the F-18 attacks, and apologized that he had not been as successful: He had mustered only thirty men with four trucks, plus two trucks with drivers for ODA 574.
“When will they arrive?” asked Amerine, not at all surprised.