American Spartan

by Tyson, Ann Scott

  The next morning, Jim pulled his usual guard duty, from four to six in the morning, after a late night with Abe, Ish, and Jan Shah, Jan Dahd’s son. If his father was the most influential tribal leader in central Konar, the son was the deadliest. Jan Shah’s knowledge of the insurgents and their activities was second to none. At around nine-thirty later that morning, Jim woke from a short nap to the sound of gunfire. Incoming rounds were hitting the qalat from a Taliban PKC machine gun. Next he heard the return fire from an American-made M240 machine gun he’d given the Afghan Local Police.

  Fuck, here we go, he thought.

  Everyone knew what to do. He’d detailed the qalat defense plan, and there had been several talk-throughs and walk-throughs.

  Jim glanced at me for an instant, saying nothing. He swung out of bed, pulled on his ammunition harness, and threw back the door. He wore a tattered gray sweatshirt over traditional Afghan pants.

  I grabbed my camera and flicked on the switch to start filming from the doorway.

  Fully in control, but quick and instinctive, Jim had already begun to tick off his internal combat to-do list. He moved across the courtyard, pointing at the qalat’s blue metal door, ignoring the incoming fire.

  “Secure the gate!” he yelled.

  The rounds kicked up dust and worked their way toward the operations center and checkpoint just outside the gate. The gate and the walls had to be protected at all costs from possible suicide bombers.

  Afghan tribal police, Jan Dahd’s men, moved to reinforce the entrance to the gate and the road leading to the qalat. Just outside at a guard station, the commander Abdul Wali unloaded two hundred rounds at the mountainside with Tribe 34’s U.S. military M240 machine gun. He’d only learned how to fire it the day before. Abdul Wali then handed off the gun to his fellow commander, Sadiq, and rushed into the qalat to support our counterattack. Standing exposed in the middle of the courtyard, he fired off more volleys with his AK-47. Outside the qalat, several other of Jim’s newly minted arbakai took positions and fired into the hillside.

  Jim listened to the volume and intensity of fire. He heard the Afghans shooting back—but not his heavy guns, which were supposed to be manned by the Americans.

  Where are my guys?

  Jim’s U.S. soldiers—many of them facing their first gun battle—deliberately moved into position according to Jim’s qalat defense plan. Their mantra, repeated over and over by Jim during training, was to give the enemy a “momentary impression of superior firepower.” Or, in his words: “Let loose on his ass with everything you have.” He needed those few seconds—not more—to assess the landscape of the battle and how to counterattack.

  Sgt. 1st Class Tony Carter, a weapons sergeant from the National Guard’s 19th Special Forces Group, scrambled up a wooden ladder and moved along the wall on the qalat roof toward his .50-caliber machine gun. Rounds zinged past him—close.

  I’m going to get shot in the head, he thought.

  But Tony kept moving. With minimal cover, he returned fire toward the muzzle flashes he saw coming from Martyr Mountain. Dan, who had been directing the arbakai barrage, rushed up the ladder behind Tony, covering for him in his last stretch to his .50-caliber station.

  Pfc. Jonathan Bartlett, a brawny high school football player from Springfield, Massachusetts, jumped on another .50-caliber machine gun in one of the Humvees parked in the courtyard. Bartlett opened up on the ridgeline, his gun smoking.

  Jim had made it past the incoming fire to the crude operations center, a tiny, mud-walled room with a couple of tables mounted with computers. Spec. Fernando Ruiz, a twenty-two-year-old from Los Angeles, was yelling into the radio in what sounded like Spanish—whatever it was, it was incomprehensible. Jim grabbed the radio and calmly told his commanders what he wanted them to know. In his experience, staff officers got in the way of the fighting more than they helped.

  “Iron 34, this is Tribe 34,” Jim said. “We are under enemy fire. I request no CAS, no QRF, no medevac. Break. I will update you as necessary. Tribe 34 out.”

  But as he kept listening to the outgoing fire, he knew something was still wrong. He could only hear three machine guns—they had six.

  Where the fuck are my goddamned guns?

  Jim ran back out and across the courtyard.

  Both M240s on his Humvee were idle. So was the .50-caliber machine gun on the RG-31, a mine-resistant armored vehicle.

  Jim’s gunner at the time, a young soldier on his first deployment, had not even climbed into the turret.

  Abe rushed up, wearing his helmet and carrying his AK-47. “Do you want me on the M240?”

  “Fuck yeah!” Jim replied.

  Within seconds, Abe was laying down heavy fire on the enemy positions. Next, Sgt. 1st Class Fernando Gonzales, the team’s skilled intelligence expert, started shooting another machine gun mounted on the RG-31. The escalation of fire was enough to suppress the Taliban shooters and end the gun battle—for now. But what about tomorrow?

  At the after-action meeting that night, Jim and the team reviewed what had gone right and what had gone wrong. The Afghan police and their commanders had fought back without hesitation. Sadiq had quickly reinforced the qalat gate and road with ALP in case of a complex attack, such as a suicide bomber. But some of the inexperienced U.S. soldiers had reacted too slowly and cautiously. Ruiz worked incredibly hard and was unusually competent, but the first incoming rounds of his life had temporarily rattled him. Jim’s Humvee gunner had seemed confused about what he was supposed to do and didn’t fire his weapon. Shaky their first time under fire, they had hesitated. It took far too long for the soldiers to get the RG-31’s machine gun up and running. It was all Jim could do not to start ripping into his guys. But they were all he had. There was one solution to that problem: more combat.

  Jim explained that the delayed response was not the right message to send the Taliban. He then laid out an aggressive two-vehicle patrol the next day into the Dewagal valley, the nearby territory of the Taliban commander who ordered the attack. To leave the Taliban attack unanswered would have been dangerous, dishonorable, at odds with Pashtunwali. Jim handpicked the men to accompany him.

  Sadiq, wearing a dark green U.S. uniform and a black balaclava in order to hide his identity from the Taliban—he knew some of them—rode in the back of Jim’s Humvee. Jim’s vehicle was by then composed of almost all Afghans—Abe, Shafiq as the driver, Sadiq, and one of the mercenaries.

  The only other American was Jim’s gunner. The patrol passed an ambush zone nicknamed “Shark’s Tooth” and continued another mile up the valley. When the insurgents opened fire, Sadiq unleashed a two-hundred-round burst from the machine gun, leaving the barrel smoking. The rest of the team laid down consistent and heavy fire. But again, Jim’s American gunner hesitated.

  Back in our room Jim told me about the incident. He had so few men that his options were limited; what did I think?

  I was normally one to give people a chance to improve. But this time I said, “Take him off the gun. He’s going to get someone killed.”

  Dan agreed.

  While the rest of the U.S. military made it their priority to prevent killings of U.S. soldiers by Afghan forces, known as “green-on-blue attacks,” our lives were now completely in the hands of Afghans.

  Jim had earned their trust, and now—forged in battle—they owned ours.

  CHAPTER 29

  AT A TEAM MEETING that night, Jim told us the three main insurgent groups in the area, including Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, were said to be collaborating to attack the qalat. The word was that they sought to destroy the alliance between Jan Dahd and Jim’s team. Maulawi Basir, the insurgent commander from the Dewagal valley who had kidnapped Linda Norgrove in 2010, was reported to have two suicide bombers with motorcycles targeting Jim.

  “Any one of them would be a problem for us, but now they are all coming after us,” he said. “It is only a matter of time before we start taking casualties.

  “If they want to
fight, we will fight,” he went on. “I think they will attack tomorrow. It is Friday, so no ALP will be here training. The Badel valley elders will be at a meeting at Haji Jan Dahd’s, so they can say they are not responsible.”

  One of the most critical and fascinating pieces of this puzzle was Sadiq. Much of Sadiq’s family was Taliban from the Badel valley. He had sources within the Taliban who began to report planned attacks on the qalat.

  Early the next morning, Jim was up talking for two hours over the radio with the U.S. Air Force operator of a Predator drone that was monitoring the area surrounding the qalat. Jim knew from Sadiq that the fighters had left the Badel valley and moved in their direction, but he didn’t know exactly where they were. The Predator scanned the possible insurgents’ hideouts and infiltration routes from the Badel valley, but the camera spotted no insurgents on the move.

  At around 10:00 a.m., Jim and Ish walked to Jan Dahd’s qalat for the meeting with the Safi tribal elders from the Badel valley. Before he left, Jim turned to Sadiq.

  “No matter what happens, if the qalat is attacked, protect Ann. She is my namoos,” Jim said.

  Sadiq’s face turned serious.

  “No, she is my namoos,” Sadiq said, patting his chest with his hand.

  Jim nodded, speechless. He could ask nothing more of Sadiq. He and Ish left on foot.

  Half an hour later, I was sitting outside in the corner of the qalat writing when machine gun rounds started flying in again, coming this time from both Martyr and Dishka mountains behind the qalat.

  Bartlett and Pfc. Richard Lerma were the first to jump up in their truck and start hammering the ridgeline with machine guns—faster, more confident, and more deadly than ever. With so few of us, each member of the team knew his job was critical.

  Abdul Wali stood beside them firing well-aimed rounds with his AK-47, then rushed out the gate to supervise the ALP.

  Shafiq ran across the courtyard and grabbed an automatic weapon, while Abe got on the rear gun of Jim’s Humvee. A mercenary named Sahib Zada rushed to help Abe reload.

  Dan took charge overall. “Stay in position!” he yelled, and ran to the operations center, where Ruiz was effectively manning the radios. The team’s air controller, Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Wesley Brooks, had his headset on and was trying to contact any aircraft in the vicinity.

  Insurgent fire tore through the dirt barriers the team had just built in front of the operations center, and shot through the hood of Dan’s Humvee. An RPG landed in the qalat next door.

  Outside by the ALP guard shack near the gate, rounds were coming in thick. Sgt. Danny Bird, a twenty-one-year-old from Albuquerque, New Mexico, ran to the shack and made sure the ALP were in position. Then Bird sprinted to the Mk-19 grenade launcher placed between the qalat gate and the main road and fired off several rounds.

  Dan rushed out the qalat gate and backed up the ALP by firing his favorite old M14 rifle. Then Dan ran to Danny and helped him reload the grenade launcher—but it jammed. Dan tossed Danny an Mk-48 machine gun.

  Suddenly, an enemy bullet hit Abdul Wali in the lower right leg.

  “I’m shot!” he yelled to one of the mercenaries, thirty-four-year-old Basir. Then he kept firing, blood running down his leg, until he ran out of ammunition.

  One of his men, Mahmud Dwaher, wrapped his commander’s leg in a tourniquet made of cloth. Then he picked him up and carried him piggyback under fire. Dwaher rushed into the qalat, up the stairs, and into one of the rooms, where he laid Abdul Wali on a cot. I ran in behind them. Dwaher rolled up his pant legs and showed me the wound.

  I ran out the door. “Abdul Wali’s been shot!” I yelled.

  “Doctor!” Dwaher cried, coming out behind me.

  Staff Sgt. Ed Martin, a medic from the National Guard’s 19th Special Forces Group, rushed in and began treatment. I got Abdul Wali some water and went back out.

  Dan came back into the qalat. As he passed through the gate he suddenly felt his leg burning.

  What the fuck? he thought. He had been shot in the leg, but he could still move, so he decided to ignore it. As a medic, he wanted to make sure Abdul Wali was all right.

  Across the way at Jan Dahd’s compound, Jim had been meeting with the Badel elders.

  “I’d like to provide development projects and help you, but if you want to fight, we’ll fight,” he told them. Just then, gunfire rang out in the direction of the qalat.

  The Special Forces team from FOB Fortress was also at the meeting with Badel elders. However, they did not fire back when the shooting started. So Ish, annoyed at the passive response, climbed up to the M240 machine gun on the back of one of their parked vehicles and started returning fire—ignoring the rule that Afghan interpreters for the U.S. military were not allowed to carry weapons. Jim considered that rule immoral and always made sure his interpreters were well armed.

  Jim and Ish ran back to the qalat and arrived after the firefight had died down. A short while later, Dan and Ish left for FOB Fortress to transfer Abdul Wali, who was on a stretcher in the back of a pickup truck, to a U.S. military field hospital in Asadabad. Once Dan arrived at the U.S. base wearing an ALP jacket, however, the U.S. medic mistook him for an Afghan and started speaking with Ish instead.

  “He’s the interpreter,” Dan interjected brusquely. “I’m the U.S. soldier.”

  The medic initially resisted evacuating Abdul Wali by helicopter for Asadabad, arguing that ALP were not allowed such treatment. Incensed, Dan wouldn’t take no for an answer. He finally prevailed and Abdul Wali was flown out on a helicopter. Later back at the qalat, Dan, with Ed’s help, treated his own leg, which had been grazed by a bullet.

  THE RAPID PROGRESS JIM was making with the Safi tribe was the result of many months of invested effort. But the cost to the U.S. military of the Chowkay operation—in terms of manpower, weapons and other equipment, and money—could hardly have been lower. The qalat was austere. We were living largely off the local economy. Jim’s command did not advance him any additional funds for the mission to Chowkay. The upshot was that Jim had to borrow heavily from local Afghans while at times he and Dan spent their own money. We were not paying large sums for security forces, as many other Special Forces teams did.

  Indeed, Jim was already concerned about making the handoff in April to the incoming Special Forces team. The team leader, Capt. Randy Fleming, had emailed him asking questions about the gym and chow hall. Clearly Fleming had no concept of living in an Afghan qalat, let alone the overall mission. We’d been in Chowkay just three weeks, and Jim was trying to gain more time.

  Meanwhile, our requests for the most basic needs to keep us alive and the mission moving forward were routinely denied. For example, Jim asked for some resources to build observation posts on high ground: money to hire donkeys to help ferry supplies, tents and blankets for the ALP who would man the posts, ammunition, and, most important, heavy weapons. But still no funds arrived—so he had to pay out of the limited existing budget, or again borrow from Ish or other Afghans. The team also had to scrounge at the nearby U.S. military base, FOB Fortress, for packaged military meals, fuel, and water. Even then, the command complained that the team was consuming too much water. All we had was bottled drinking water and a small water tank built in an open-air wooden stall. We washed ourselves in buckets. Given the threat to the qalat, Jim asked his command for ten thousand rounds of additional AK-47 ammunition for training the ALP who guarded the qalat. That request was denied also.

  On March 9, Jim, Dan, Fernando, Abe, a few other team members, and I made a trip back to COP Penich to gather critical supplies such as water, ammunition, and two M240 machine guns. We drove in pickup trucks down a dusty dirt road on the opposite side of the river from Chowkay. Lt. Roberts had been asked to make sure that the supplies were ready to pick up. Jim decided to have me stay at Penich for a few days, for my safety.

  But when Jim arrived at Penich, he received some disturbing news. Abe and Ish’s brother Imran, who had stayed at Penich wo
rking for Roberts, told him that Roberts had been openly hostile to requests from Tribe 34. One day Imran had approached Roberts to pass on a simple message.

  “Sir, Capt. McKone needs you to call him,” Imran had told Roberts.

  “Fuck them,” had been Roberts’s response.

  A few other soldiers at Penich were griping about the requests from Tribe 34. “They think they are the only guys at war,” another soldier said, according to Imran.

  In a way, the simmering resentment was understandable because the splitting of Jim’s team between Chowkay and Penich divided the men who were eager to fight and those who were not. “The rules Jim puts out may not be actual Army doctrine, but they are actual warrior doctrine. If you are a natural soldier, it’s an easy transition to make,” said Bartlett, who had been itching to go to Chowkay and had already proven his skill as a gunner on Dan’s truck. “But if you joined the Army because there were no jobs in Michigan, or because you wanted to impress a chick, it would be a harder transition.” Several of Jim’s men were under consideration for awards for valor, unlike the less aggressive soldiers who had stayed behind with Roberts.

  Before Jim left, he pulled Roberts aside and asked him to respond to what Imran had said. It was Roberts’s chance to broach his concerns directly with Jim, man-to-man. But Roberts shied away from the opportunity.

  “Is there anything you need to say to me or anything I need to know?” Jim asked him.

  “No, sir,” Roberts replied.

  Then Jim called Roberts and the rest of the Penich team together outside on the muddy ground where the vehicles were parked, and dressed them down.

  “Listen here, motherfuckers,” Jim told them. “You have leadership issues, loyalty issues, and teamwork issues. Three things are wrong, and it starts with you, Lieutenant,” he said, looking at Roberts, who stared back blankly. “You had better get your shit together. When we call and ask for something, you better have it ready,” he said. “If you can’t do the job, let me know and I will get you out of here. Your buddies over there are fighting; we are fighting for our lives. We need you to work as a team. Does anyone have any questions?”