The sun was up. Euphoria had passed. Soto’s mind was still working, trying to decide where the ambush fit. His feeling had changed. Now he doubted the killing would change the company’s circumstances. The valley did not work that way. A thought arrived unsolicited, and stuck.
They’re going to get us back.
* * *
Soto woke to spectacle. Residents of the villages were ascending the footpaths to the ridge where Second Platoon had left the bodies. Some carried makeshift litters, including one that looked like a bed. The Korengalis were retrieving their dead. The Americans watched with spotting scopes and binoculars. As hours passed, the Afghans descended in groups, walking slowly, carrying bodies wrapped in sheets.
Elders from the villages appeared at the outpost gate and asked to speak with Captain Howell. They were subdued. In ordinary circumstances, such long faces might command people to hush. But the outpost was ebullient. Viper’s morale had been buoyed by the settling of a score. Soldiers strutted and grinned.
An awkward meeting followed. Howell greeted the elders politely and took a seat among them. The old men said the Americans had made a terrible mistake. A young girl had gone missing while gathering food on the mountain, they said, and villagers organized a search party to find her. The Americans had ambushed the search party, confusing local men for the Taliban.
Howell was expressionless as the account took shape. He waited until the last of the elders had spoken, and the group was satisfied it had made its point. Then he spoke. The elders’ tale, he said, was one of the most ridiculous lies he had ever heard.
* * *
After the ambush, Soto took over duties as Smith’s radio operator. Halase had been training him for about two weeks, teaching him the particulars of the eight-pound Harris VHF radio, known as an ASIP, and the various reports and procedures Soto would be expected to follow.
He was part of the platoon’s command group now, the human connection between the platoon and the company. He would be expected to know the platoon’s exact location at all times, and its orientation relative to each of the Taliban’s firing positions and the target reference points. He also had to consider the balance between being the communications link and working the odds to stay alive. The ASIP had an extendable antenna. For short distances and when the platoon was in line of sight of another radio, a minimal amount of antenna was fine. The antenna would not be flopping overhead, signaling to the Taliban that he was a conduit to fire support. But as the kilometers stretched out, or when the platoon ventured into the hollows upstream, Soto would have to extend the antenna farther and farther. He would be advertising his role.
On his first patrol, to Babeyal, an old woman complained that the Americans had killed her son in the ambush. The platoon faced no attack. His next patrol, to Donga, was also quiet. A wizened man stepped outside and spoke with Smith and Sergeant Wright. He claimed to know nothing of the ambush or of the men killed in it.
The next patrol was to be more serious: a walk to Laneyal, across the river from Aliabad. The company planned this mission carefully. When Second Platoon descended to the rushing water beneath Aliabad, it would be vulnerable to gunfire from multiple directions, including from many of the Taliban’s usual firing positions. Captain Howell ordered soldiers at Dallas and Restrepo, and the Marines and Afghan National Army soldiers at Vimoto, to be ready to help Second Platoon. He also sent along Lieutenant Rodriguez, the company’s executive officer, to walk with Smith, who was still learning the turf.
Soto readied the radio. Getting to Laneyal, he knew, involved just about all of the valley’s risks. They would have to walk along the road or trails on the western side of the river, which the Taliban often raked with gunfire. Then they would have to pick their way down the slope to a fork in the Korengal River, where two branches met. The path was narrow and known, a predictable route on which to lay traps. The river was brown and swollen with snowmelt and spring rains. The soldiers would have no choice but to cross both branches via small wooden footbridges. The first bridge was perhaps two feet wide. The second was nothing more than a plank. In the low ground, as they crossed it, the soldiers would be exposed from almost all sides.
On the day of the patrol, when the soldiers assembled at midday outside their wooden shacks, Sergeant Wright issued a warning. They needed to move fast, he said, and stay alert. The Taliban would be seeking revenge.
Second Platoon departed the outpost in a chilly drizzle. Sheets of mist drifted across the valley. Small clouds clung low to the slopes.
The soldiers moved briskly south. The mud was slick like grease. They passed Firebase Vimoto, where the Afghans and Marines were covering their movement, and came to the edge of Aliabad, a village of buildings built into the slope and made of meticulously stacked stone. The soldiers filed through muddy paths between them. Dogs barked. One, tied to the front of a home with a closed door, snarled at each man moving by.
At the top of the stone staircase, Second Platoon stopped. The valley dropped before them like a gorge. The soldier stood among twisted, leafless trees. Down in the lower ground, in terraced wheat fields and the almond grove, other trees were in bloom. People were hiding inside. The landscape seemed deserted, left for the dogs.
The fire teams arranged themselves behind cover and aimed their weapons across. They were in position so the lead squad could start crossing.
It led the descent, with the lieutenants and Soto following behind, along with Private First Class Roger Webb, the artillery forward observer. The radio signal was starting to fail. Soto extended the antenna. It rose about three feet above his head.
On the way down the stairs, the soldiers met one of the elders of Aliabad, Zarin, coming up. Zarin was a lithe man, more agile than his years would seem to allow. His beard was stained red with henna.
Lieutenant Rodriguez knew him. The two men chatted in the light rain. Zarin said he had just come from Laneyal, and the path was safe. He adjusted his cloak against the chill and bounded up the steps.
The platoon continued down.
The first bridge, at the bottom of the stairs, spanned the western fork of the river upstream from the junction. After scooting across it, about eight feet above the flow, the soldiers turned left, moving in a single file until they came to the eastern fork. There they turned right and walked to the second footbridge, the plank.
Second Platoon slowed, briefly bunching up to allow the soldiers to cross, one by one, balancing on the slick board above noisy, cascading water.
Smith and Rodriguez stopped at the junction, in the center of the platoon. They would let one squad cross, then direct the rest of the platoon to the other side.
The first soldiers reached the opposite bank. It was a short uphill walk to the first terrace. Laneyal loomed overhead.
Soto crossed with the radio. They needed to leave this low ground fast; it was no place to loiter.
An IED exploded on the trail, blowing soldiers over and heaving a cone of smoky dirt into the air.
In the moment after, all was still. Soto had been stung with dirt and small stones. His ears rang. He realized he was alive.
The soldiers waiting to cross the bridge, exposed in the rocky riverbed, knew what to expect: the rest of the ambush. They bolted, sprinting for cover.
Bullets snapped down toward the trapped men. The din rose, building to a crescendo of fire. The radio antenna rising above Soto marked him as a target.
Soto pushed himself to his feet and ran, downstream, leaping over boulders as he gained speed. There was a pile of logs ahead. He headed there. Bullets smacked dirt and stone. Soto’s antenna swung.
He reached the logs, finding cover among the wood. He took a knee and aimed his M4 up, looking for targets, and fired.
Beside the river junction, Rodriguez leaned into a dirt slope and radioed to the company.
“IED on the west side”—he corrected himself—“east side of the river, over.”
The platoon was taking fire from every directio
n except within Aliabad. From his position in the center of it all, Rodriguez could see this fight was unusual. Ordinarily the Taliban did not shoot from houses; doing so invited mortars and air strikes on people’s homes. Today they were shooting from homes in Donga, Darbart, and Laneyal, as well as the usual positions on the hills.
Viper Company reacted. Its machine guns and grenade launchers on the high ground answered back. Marines and Afghan soldiers from Vimoto were doing the same. Down in the riverbed, Specialist Oxman crouched behind a boulder and fired bursts from his machine gun, trying to give the soldiers across the river the opportunity to escape.
Smith called to the squad that had crossed the river. “Lead element, I need you to bound back,” he said.
Rodriguez stopped him. He knew the patterns. He figured this would not last long. Once the Americans attained a superiority of fire, and aircraft showed up, the Taliban would vanish. It was too dangerous for the platoon to maneuver out of the riverbed before then. Its soldiers would have to expose themselves by wading the river or crossing the plank. He suggested to Smith that he wait.
Soto crouched with an American news photographer accompanying the patrol. The two men could hear the shooting but could not see who was firing. Their ears were buzzing from the blast. The river and gunfire drowned out other sound.
Smith shouted from the river junction.
“Stay there!” he screamed. “Stay! There!”
Soto could not hear him. He thought they were too vulnerable where they were. He needed to bring the radio to the platoon.
“We gotta move!” he shouted.
The two men stood and ran away from the woodpile, a few paces down the bank. They jumped into the river. The photographer hit the water first. It was chest-deep. The current was violent. It pushed him downstream and pulled him under until he found footing.
Soto followed him in.
Cold water wrapped around him like a blast. He felt the weight of his pack and radio working against him, and tried to stand. His feet found bottom. Soto kicked against the flow. A stone building stood across the river, less than one hundred feet away. Soldiers were huddled behind it. The photographer was headed there. Gunfire chattered. Soto pushed himself across the stream, struggling to stay upright, and not have the radio and plate carrier pull him down. The photographer cleared the water on the other side on all fours, scrambled upright, and ran to the waiting soldiers.
Soto reached the shore a few seconds behind, and dashed into place.
They were safe.
From Dallas, soldiers fired two Javelin missiles, one into a house in Darbart and another into a house in Laneyal. An Air Force sergeant notified Rodriguez by radio that a plane was about to release a 500-pound bomb.
“They’re going to do the drop in, like, thirty seconds!” Rodriguez shouted to Smith. “Let your boys know!”
The bomb whooshed in and exploded, reverberating like thunder over the riverbed. A mushroom cloud rose where a building had been.
The company told Rodriguez over his radio that the plane had more ordnance. It would strike again.
Viper’s firepower advantage was now established. The scattered pieces had come together.
After the second strike, the Taliban fire subsided. The platoon’s enemies pulled back. Two rocket-propelled grenades flew down from the hill and zipped by the lieutenants. They struck the river-bank and exploded, far enough away from the soldiers that no one was hurt.
Smith told the soldiers pinned under Laneyal in the wheat field to be ready to withdraw. Rodriguez had made a good call. They had found a stone wall that offered protection and remained safe while the Americans massed their fires.
Now was their chance. They threw smoke grenades. As the plumes rose, obscuring them from sight, they retraced their steps along the trail. Rodriguez and Smith jogged forward from the slope they had been crouched against, and heaved a pair of smoke grenades near the plank bridge. More smoke billowed on the almost motionless air.
The soldiers reached the river’s first fork, and crossed. Viper Two was contracting. Smith ordered the soldiers up into Aliabad. Winded and angry, covered in mud and drenched in rain and sweat, they climbed the steps and clustered in alleys on the slope. They slapped one another’s backs and swore.
Roger Webb approached Soto. He had seen Soto in the kill zone, running for his life, then pinned behind the woodpile.
“Man, I thought—” Webb said.
Soto finished his sentence. “You thought I was gone?”
He flashed his big smile.
The mood lightened.
Corporal Sean Conroy, a Marine advising the Afghan soldiers at Vimoto, wandered through the platoon, followed by several Afghans in mismatched uniforms carrying warm machine guns and rifles. Conroy emanated the attitude of someone who enjoyed gunfights. He was often unshaven and out of uniform; sometimes he was shirtless and showed his tattoos. He and the Afghans had been firing into the villages to help the trapped platoon escape. Its soldiers were here around him, looking good. Conroy grinned and walked among them in a casual strut.
The platoon went through the ritual of a head count before returning to the outpost.
Squad and team leaders checked each man and tallied ammunition. Many had fired much of their load. Oxman had left the outpost with about eight hundred rounds for his machine gun. He was down to his last hundred, and in conservation mode. Another soldier had twisted his knee. He could barely walk.
A voice called out.
“Dewater?”
There was no answer.
“Hey, anyone seen Dewater?”
Soto looked around. Dewater.
Private First Class Richard Dewater was one of the platoon’s combat replacements. There was no sign of him.
Shouts grew sharper. Where was Dewater?
Nausea swept over Soto. He radioed to the outpost, in case Dewater had somehow walked back. Word came back. Dewater was not at the outpost. He was MIA.
* * *
Captain Howell ordered action. He sent the Afghans to comb along the river, working upstream toward Aliabad, to see if Dewater had been swept away. He readied his other platoons to search villages on the east side. If Dewater had been captured they would scour every home and recover him before the Taliban could move him out of the valley. He sent Second Platoon back into the kill zone. Maybe Dewater was still there.
It was evening. Darkness was near. Zarin, the man who had told them the path was safe, had returned, and Rodriguez had told him to wait for questioning. He stood among the soldiers who remained in Aliabad as the rest of the platoon moved down the staircase again.
They suspected him of having led them into the ambush. “Fucking worm,” one said. “I’d like to put a fucking bullet in that bastard.” Zarin did not speak English. The hostility was palpable, clear no matter the tongue. He remained in place, waiting patiently, secure in the rules. He had heard American anger before.
On the way down to the river, Sergeant Tanner heard a soldier call out. Someone had found the buffer spring from an American rifle on the stairs. It was a distinctive part, and freshly oiled and clean. It meant a rifle had been broken apart and the spring had flown free.
This is bad, Tanner thought.
Down below, in the riverbed, Soto took point as the soldiers moved across the bridges. The sun set. The ambush site turned black.
The platoon spread through wheat fields, looking for signs. They found the blast hole. Was this where Dewater had been standing? Soto stood beside it, trying to work out what might have happened.
Where the fuck could this guy be?
Where?
This is where the attack started.
They had not seen any Taliban fighters down low on the trail. How could anyone have been captured?
“I found him,” a voice said.
Soto spun around.
Sergeant Tanner was there. Dewater was not.
“Where?” Soto said. “Where is he?”
“Look up,” Tanner
said. He swung the beam of his flashlight overhead, into the branches of a tree.
Dewater’s body hung from a branch. Tanner figured it was about two stories up. In a dimly lit glimpse Soto saw Dewater had only one leg. His uniform had been stained. He still wore his helmet. Its strap had held.
Soto went down to one knee. He raised his radio handset to his mouth.
“Break, break, break, break,” he said, using the convention for interrupting all traffic with important information.
Dewater, he knew, had died instantly.
The frequency went silent, letting Second Platoon send its message. Smith was beside him. He took the radio.
“We found him,” he said. He told Captain Howell that Dewater was in a tree and that the platoon would retrieve his remains and carry him back.
“Understand all,” Howell replied.
Another sergeant, Matthew Kuhn, climbed up the trunk and worked Dewater free. The soldiers placed him in a litter and lifted him. Slowly, in a processional, they made their way across both forks of the river, up and over the muddy and slippery switchback trail, to the staircase. They stopped repeatedly, panting, struggling to keep their friend on the litter.
On the staircase, Afghan soldiers watched. One raised a camera. Something in Soto snapped. He stepped between the lens and Dewater’s body.
“What the fuck you doing, man?” he shouted. “What do you think you’re taking a picture of? We don’t take pictures of you. Put that camera down.”
There was a language barrier. Soto was not getting what he needed. The soldier stood there, seemingly unsure what Soto wanted. Soto shoved the man. “We’ll fuck you up!” he said.
The Afghan soldier lowered the camera.
Soto seethed. He figured the soldier would sell the photograph. What, motherfucker? You want to show that picture to your stupid-ass Taliban friends? And you think you’re going to show that like it’s a fucking victory? You killed one guy with an explosive. After we just killed like sixteen of your guys. You had a big, complicated ambush and after that explosion you couldn’t even hit any of us?
The Fighters Page 26