Victory Point

by Ed Darack

  “Wow, look at all these extremist fighters here at this big-ass training facility,” Kinser began as he searched for a cigarette, examining the eight-foot-by-eight-foot-by-five-foot-high rock hut. “Think there’s fifty midget Taliban in there, Bradley?”

  “Let’s find out.” Bradley lifted a latch and swung open a rickety wood door, exposing piles of harvested corn kernels.

  “Oh . . . shit. Somebody gimme a cigarette,” Kinser ordered, shaking his head. “Great intel.” For the next four hours, the twenty Marines fanned out over the entire mountain above them, finding nothing—no weapons caches, no signs any bad guys had ever even been in the area. Then an old shepherd rounded a corner, the owner of the small storage shack. As the Marines greeted the Afghan, Kinser’s company commander radioed the lieutenant. “Nope, no monkey bars, no guys with black masks running through an obstacle course, no Osama bin Laden, just a nice old man and some corn.” Kinser gave a quick brief over a secure net.

  “Okay. Then get back to Blessing, and take all that chow and water with you. Get back immediately, I mean now.” Kinser tried to explain the situation on the ground—the very, very steep ground below his feet—and that portaging the hundreds of pounds of chow and water would be virtually impossible without making a number of trips up and down the slope. After more back-and-forth, Kinser’s commander finally acquiesced, and the lieutenant gave all the supplies to the shepherd, which the Marines stacked inside and around his storage shack. Then, communicating more with hand gestures and facial expressions than in Pashto, Kinser apologized for “dropping in” on him and invading his space. The Marines followed their new friend down the mountain, on their way stopping by his small house, from which the shepherd brought out a large jug.

  “I think he wants to give us something,” Kinser said with mock trepidation, still reeling from the undercooked goat at Haji Arref’s compound. As the shepherd poured cups of the creamy liquid, Burgos and Bradley looked at each other with fear for their commander.

  “Sir, you aren’t gonna—”

  Kinser gulped it down. “This shit is damn good. Goat’s milk! First time I’ve ever had milk from a goat. Well, from a goat rope mission, we get goat’s milk! Mmm.” He finished off the cup, remarking how cool the drink felt in his throat.

  “Sir, I think it isn’t that cool; it’s just that it’s so freakin’ hot out that even something that’s a hundred degrees tastes cool,” Fisher added, then drank some himself.

  With the sun closing on the jagged western horizon, Kinser and his Marines fanned out and started down the mountain. “Keep thirty feet of dispersion, Girl Scouts!” Bradley shouted repeatedly as the Marines clumped up on their passage down the peak. “Remember, it’s a lot easier for them to hit us if we’re all fuckin’ clumped together. Keep dispersed!” Many of the grunts had never faced such a grueling physical challenge before; each carried from eighty to one hundred pounds of gear and Kinser’s thermometer showed the temperature to be 105 degrees just as the sun kissed the horizon. Their body armor wasn’t just heavy, it compressed their chests, bound into their shoulders, and their Kevlar helmets acted as convection ovens, literally cooking their heads in the intense heat. “This isn’t fuckin’ boot camp! And this ain’t training! This is for fuckin’ real,” Bradley roared. “Stay damned dispersed and look alive. We can get shot at at any moment!”

  Kinser, who bounded down the mountain at the head of the patrol, got tired of Bradley and Fisher constantly reminding their Marines how to be Marines.

  “Listen, motherfuckers,” he finally said. “I love you all. But if you didn’t want to worry about twisting your ankles or getting fucked-up knees and backs by the time you’re twenty-five, then you shouldn’t have joined the fucking Marine Corps. Understand? I’m tired of hearing Bradley and Fisher have to tell you how to act like Marines. Let’s rest for five, then when we step off again, stay fucking dispersed and keep up with me!”

  Burgos, who’d kept up with Kinser for the entire movement, proclaimed during the break, “Sir, I think we’re gonna have to start calling you the centaur.”

  “The centaur, huh?” Kinser responded. “Fisher, gimme another cigarette.”

  “What the fuck is a centaur?” “Red” Davidson asked.

  “It’s one of those white horses with a horn sticking out of its head, runs out of crashing waves with twinkly stars and a rainbow in the background. My ex-girlfriend’s little sister used to have posters of them all over her room,” Fisher stated with a wry grin as he handed the lieutenant a cigarette.

  “No, dumb-ass, that’s a fuckin’ unicorn,” Bradley interjected. “A centaur’s a—”

  “Half man, Half stallion,” Kinser roared as he exhaled a long plume of smoke from atop a boulder, then broke a huge grin—causing everyone else to fall down in laughter. “Now let’s get movin’ ” But while Kinser time and again showed his bravado in a joking, almost self-effacing way, he knew from Officer Candidate School and now in the field that great leadership stemmed in large part from physical ability. The dysentery had thrashed the young lieutenant from the inside out. He’d lost nearly twenty pounds, and could easily have just lain in bed for much of his days. But as an infantry officer, he didn’t just have to keep up, he had to set the pace—a strong pace, no matter how difficult the terrain or weakened his condition. He had to charge ahead not fearlessly, but with honest confidence and deliberateness, never revealing even the slightest hint of discomfort, pain, or trepidation. Marines watch their commanders, they pick them apart, notice their weaknesses, and Kinser valued stalwart leadership of grunts in the field above all else.

  “Oo-rah.” All nineteen Marines sounded off in consonance.

  “Hey, Bradley. Just to let you know, I know what a unicorn is. I was just jokin’ around.” Fisher enlightened his close friend.

  “Sure you do, Fish. I’m sure you’re a real expert on unicorns.”

  “Hey, sir, how do you know that the shepherd back up there wasn’t a Taliban or al-Qaeda supporter?” Burgos asked as the group neared the floor of the Pech Valley, now cloaked in the shadow of dusk.

  “Well . . .” Kinser thought as he bounded onto easier terrain, sighting the Pech Valley Road a few hundred meters ahead of him, “I suppose since we can’t read minds, we don’t really know. But we didn’t find any weapons caches in the little storage house, and there was no dunnage [leftover material from rocket or mortar attacks] anywhere on the mountain, and the guy’s little one-room house had nothing in it any of us could see, so then he’s just a regular Afghan, living his life.” The lieutenant, who, like many of his peers, possessed wisdom years beyond his age, continued: “I mean, look, we got bum intel, and you have to remember that the only real intelligence is gathered once boots hit the deck, and we get eyes on. Our boots hit the deck, we got eyes on, and the guy was clean—even gave us some kick-ass goat milk. We’re deep in the counterinsurgency part of this war. We can’t treat every Afghan like a bad guy. Far from it; it’s all about restraint. We can’t be pissing off the locals who the bad guys are tellin’ that they’ll be around long after we leave, and to trust them and not us. Read your ROE [rules of engagement] card. Read it, memorize it, and read it again.” Kinser was referring the “CJTF-76 Operation Enduring Freedom-VI Rules of Engagement Card,” a three-by-five-inch document published on 15 March 2005 detailing how all forces under CJTF-76 (both conventional as well as SOF) could and couldn’t engage known or potential enemy combatants. “I got that shit memorized, Burgos, and you should to. Points seven and eight are two of the most important: ‘Civilians Are Not Targets,’ and ‘Respect Private Property.’ ” The lieutenant continued to explain the ROEs, which Burgos knew, but didn’t understand to the depth Kinser wanted. “You’ve only been here a short while; you’ll pick up the subtleties pretty quick.”

  Rule number one on the ROE list—“You have the right to use force, including deadly force, to defend yourself”—obviously ranked as the most critical, and the one onto which battalion leadership f
ocused the attention of the grunts during their predeployment training more than any other. In the COIN fight, however, only in-the-field knowledge, of the kind Kinser had gained through trial by fire during his first month in-country, could provide a basis for distinguishing an elusive enemy hiding in the hills and among villagers from a civilian. And that enemy was as much a mind-set as a group, cell, or even individual, for example a villager who supported a terrorist, but who would then help Marines locate that terrorist (possibly because he’d mistreated others in the village). “Those SOF dudes beat the Taliban’s asses in a matter of weeks in 2001. They crushed their fuckin’ nuts, slaughtered them like pigs. The enemy we have now hides among the people, and looks for support from them. So we gotta ensure that those villagers know that we’re on the side of their security—that they can trust us and the new government completely—and at the same time kill the motherfuckers who are trying to use those villagers for their own purposes,” the thoughtful lieutenant, who graduated at the top of his class from Michigan State University with a degree in physical chemistry, added. “Marines have to be the pros, the real fuckin’ pros, Burgos. Can’t act like cowboys; that time’s come and gone—a long time ago in this war.”

  But determining friend from foe would prove frustratingly difficult to do; Kinser taught himself to rely on a sixth sense he’d gained through experience and from members of 3/3. Having run patrols throughout the Korangal, Pech, and Shuryek, the lieutenant knew all too well about the “soft compromise,” where a local noncombatant—often a goat herder or a woodcutter—appears out of nowhere. “And then you never know what he’s gonna do once he rounds the bend in the trail—just keep tending his goats or pull out an ICOM and let his insurgent buddies know our pos [position], or maybe just start humming loudly, or tapping a stick to a certain beat—there are all sorts of ways they can alert the bad guys to our presence. The only way to really know is to make sure everybody in these hills knows that we’re here to help ’em, and simultaneously kill or capture the terrorists and insurgents. I prefer killing over capturing,” Kinser stated with a grin. “Don’t have to worry about prison breaks and all that.” But after decades of slaughter, the locals were wary of outside military forces, and Kinser knew that getting them to trust American intentions was a tough sell; only staying outside the wire, living with the villagers themselves, was the answer. “If it were up to me, Burgos, me and you and Bradley and Red, and everyone here would never see the inside of Camp Blessing for the rest of our deployment. We’d eat chicken and rice every night with the locals and run the hills for the next six months, drinkin’ goat milk, makin’ new friends like that old man up there. I fully expect one day to come back here with my wife and kids and go on vacation, maybe at the ‘Nangalam Mountain Resort.’ That’d be pretty fuckin’ cool.”

  “Yeah.” Burgos laughed. “That would be pretty cool, sir.”

  “Okay, Girl Scouts, keep sharp!” Bradley commanded as the group of twenty reached the Pech Road—Camp Blessing’s “MSR,” or main supply route, and Kinser got on the radio to call for a CAAT. “Three guys. That’s all it takes.” The burly corporal thrust his index finger at three positions on the mountains above them that he’d identified as ideal platforms from which to set an ambush. “Three of those motherfuckers, all in superior [higher] positions from us, two guys on PK machine guns, and one with an RPG.” Bradley was referring to a standard ambush technique frequently seen in the area: often beginning with an RPG hit, two machine gunners from different positions “open up” so that their respective lines of fire meet exactly on the target, “interlocking” those streams of rounds, forming a triangular “tip of death” as RPG rounds rain down. Such an ambush can make three bad guys seem like thirty—or even a hundred and thirty—and had been preferred by the mujahideen as a way to hold up massive columns of Soviet armor. Although in the event of an ambush, Kinser would immediately start a call for fire from Doghouse, potential ambushers need just five seconds to send enough rounds downrange to kill a small group of Marines standing close together. Dusk was a preferred time to strike, with enough light to see a target with the naked eye, but not dark enough for the grunts’ night-vision goggles to work.

  There would be no ambush that night, however. Kinser stared out at the Pech River, its thunderous roar fed by the massive snowmelt of one of the wettest winters on record. Like clockwork, CAAT-Alpha arrived, with an additional local Toyota truck to help carry the Marines and their gear. Having spent the past month up and down the Pech Road, Kinser had seen the water level slowly climb, nearing the road in some places. He also knew that the road itself was in bad shape, making night driving all the more dangerous with its washouts and deep ruts. He wanted the CAAT drivers to run with headlights, not have to operate blacked out on NVGs (night-vision goggles). But his commander had mandated running dark. So they loaded their gear into the Toyota and the highback Humvee (a troop transport Humvee fitted with benches, surrounded by light armor high enough to protect Marines while sitting), then jumped into the trucks.

  “You know, Joyce, you never complain about anything,” Bradley said to the young lance corporal, who, at just 135 pounds, was one of the smallest in the platoon. “I love that about you.” A SAW gunner (squad automatic weapon, or M249, a fully automatic weapon much heavier than an M16), Joyce quickly developed a reputation in the platoon as one of the best Marines of the bunch, one who never once complained about any patrol, food, living quarters—anything—and who always volunteered first for any mission or project. He was tough, but with a magnetically kind demeanor; shy but absolutely reliable. He smiled at Bradley and jumped into the highback. “Okay, bitches, let’s get the fuck back to that wonderful wonderland of Camp Blessing!” Bradley slammed the heavy doors shut on the highback and jumped into the Hilux, then the convoy slipped into the pitch darkness of the June night.

  The condition of the road proved even worse than Kinser had remembered. The drivers, who sped the convoy along as fast as possible to minimize time windows for any IED triggermen to set off explosives, slammed the Humvees into ruts and potholes, sending the Marines in the highback flying off their benches. They hit one pothole so hard that the Marines thought they’d been struck by a small IED. Then a slam into a rut knocked the NVGs off the driver of the highback, blinding him as he veered into a deep rut on the edge of the road. The violent jolt flung three of the Marines out of the rear of the truck, over the steep riverbank, and into the icy, roiling waters of the Pech, ten feet below the road. The convoy screeched to a halt. Bradley, Fisher, and the other Marines jumped into action, scrambling down the embankment and wading into the numbing water as Marines who’d fallen into the river clung to rocks and boulders, fighting off the crushing cold and gasping for breath, the weight of their flak jackets with heavy ceramic plates and helmets filled with water adding to their struggle. “Gimme a fuckin’ HEAD COUNT!” Everybody was there, but one: Joyce.

  “Where the FUCK is he?” Fish yelled over the thunderous rush of the pitiless river. Kinser immediately got on the hook with Matt Bartels. “Start droppin’ illum rounds. Drop ’em NOW!” The lieutenant passed Matt their coordinates and within seconds the river lit up under the blinding-white light of parachute-suspended 120 mm phosphorus illumination mortar rounds.

  “We’re fuckin’ findin’ him!” Kinser roared.

  “JOYCE!” the Marines bellowed into the night as they locked arms and waded chest-deep into the water, their breathing crushed by the water’s iciness. “JOYCE!”

  “We got two Apaches and a Dustoff inbound to you guys,” Bartels passed to Kinser. The Dustoff, the call sign for the Army’s famed Air Ambulance units, was a UH-60 Blackhawk, and came equipped with a powerful spotlight. The mortarmen lobbed the illum rounds at perfect intervals; just as one died, another popped open hundreds of yards higher. Once the Dustoff roared in zone, the mortarmen ceased dropping, and under cover of the Apaches, the pilots of the UH-60 flew the craft just ten to fifteen feet above the river, beaming the penet
rating spotlight into the water. But the air crew could see nothing, not at the site of the accident, or downstream, during their hours-long search. Lance Corporal Kevin B. Joyce, so young, vital, capable, and recognized by his peers and his commanders as such a great Marine, yet so reserved, kind, and utterly selfless, was gone.

  “Sir, everyone’s gonna get hypothermia. We can’t keep goin’ into the water,” Doc Anaya told Kinser. Both soaked from head to toe, they struggled to keep from shivering. The lieutenant just stared at Anaya in the darkness, then nodded. Anaya—a member of one of the most important cadres of U.S. Marine Corps units (and most distinguished groups in the entire U.S. military)—attached Navy Corpsmen—who not only fight side by side with infantry, but stand ready to drop their weapons even in the thickest of battle to save Marines’ lives (as well as those of civilians, and even injured enemy combatants)—realized that each of the group had overtaxed himself, and might go missing in the torrent as well. Anaya’s struggles that night, shoulder to shoulder with the others, proved that although the letters on his camis spelled out U.S. Navy, he was a grunt through and through.

  “Call just came in that we need to mount up in the convoy and get back to Blessing,” Kinser stated firmly. Kinser’s company commander wanted CAAT to keep moving. The Marines solemnly loaded up and headed back home.

  But just a couple hours after arriving at Blessing, Bradley and Fish organized a foot patrol to continue searching for the missing Marine, keeping their hopes alive that he’d washed ashore and survived the ordeal. Under the steel-blue glow of an eastern Afghan dawn, the Marines passed once again outside the wire, and hiked down to the spot where they last saw their friend. Then again, with arms locked, they waded into the river, combing for the young Marine for hours. But no sign of Joyce.