Two-Three continued on down the goat path.
“Where did you see the EKIA digging, Sierra?” Two-Three asked me.
“Three, Sierra, right here,” I replied as I lassoed the spot with my laser.
“Platoon sergeant, Two-Three, we got something here. Looks like Sierra was right, he dug something in.”
Our EOD man came across the net and started telling Two-Three the best way to get close enough and provide enough details to try to identify what the device at the bottom of the hole might be.
That conversation was stepped on by an urgent call from the platoon leader. “BREAK, BREAK, BREAK. The AC-130 just PIDed four enemy fighters moving to you, Two-Three. Get back to the compound. We have a fire mission inbound.”
Two-Three and his squad beat feet back the way they came. Moments later, we heard the thump of the 40-mm cannon on the AC-130 ring out, followed by four corresponding explosive cracks on the opposite side of the hill that Two-Three was just on. They fired twelve more rounds in three bursts and buried the four enemy fighters and their weapons not 75 meters from the ones they had killed earlier.
The man Two-Three and I killed was spotting for the team of fighters who were going to ambush us from the high ground. If he was any good, once he finished with his spotting mission he was probably going to run back along his goat path and lead anyone who pursued them into the small mine he buried in his tracks.
We finished destroying weapons and searching the few bodies we found. We had engaged dozens of fighters, but we only found a handful of bodies. This wasn’t a surprise. We knew they carried their dead and wounded away so they wouldn’t fall into our hands, a reminder of the IMU’s training and discipline.
That done, we formed into a loose skirmish line along the rock wall where we had all started the night before. The sun was rising, and ominous storm clouds rolled in and covered the sky.
Our AC-130 went off-station: the cloud ceiling was too low and thick for them to be effective. They were supposed to be replaced with Apache gunships, but they wouldn’t do us any good. The ceiling was down to 500 feet—too low for helo ops. The only fire support we had were our own 60-mm mortars. They were faster to respond but weren’t as terrorizing to the enemy as buzzing airplanes and helicopters. They always made the kind of statement that could prevent us from being attacked.
We had planned to get back to the ROD site before dawn, but we were going to have to walk down the MSR in broad daylight. The rain started to sprinkle, and I hoped this wasn’t going to be one of the annual torrents that dumped buckets and lasted for two or three days.
We moved out down the road, but because of the rolling terrain, we could only see straight down the MSR. Every hundred meters or so we encountered a hill that was about 100 feet high. That kind of terrain meant that there could be an army of IMU waiting over the next hill, ready to ambush us. Without aircraft spotting for us, we would never see them coming. Our mortar men needed a forward observer to spot for them so they could shoot anything they couldn’t see themselves.
“All right, Marc, this is gonna suck, we gotta run the flats and climb each hill before the platoon gets there,” I said.
Marc nodded gravely, his face a reflection of the exhaustion I felt.
I drank the last couple of sips of water from my Camelbak.
“Remember, all we have are mortars,” I told him. “If the shit hits the fan, you’ll direct them.”
“Roger that,” he replied. At this stage of the mission, just speaking was an effort.
“Seven, Sierra-One,” I called on the net.
“Go for, Seven,” Platoon Sergeant Pack called back.
“Seven, we’re going to run a relay to the hilltops and overwatch you as you move.”
“Good to go, Sierra,” Pack replied. “We’ll send up a gun if you get in a TIC.” (TIC means “troops in contact.”)
It was important for Marc and me to climb those hills. Our machine gunners were carrying a massive amount of weight with their guns and would only climb those steep, loose-packed hills if absolutely necessary. We were effectively their scouts.
I took off at a sprint, passing the rest of the trotting Rangers. Every part of me was cramping. I hit the bottom of the slope at a dead sprint and pumped my knees high and hard. I held my rifle balanced on my shoulder with my right hand and clawed at the hill with my left. I paused just below the crest, then blew out hard two or three times before creeping to the pinnacle just enough to level my rifle over the top.
“Sierra, clear,” I huffed into my radio.
“Sierra, moving,” Marc said. He had to pull rear security, and I watched him sprint past the trotting Rangers at full tilt. Marc had always had some serious wheels, fast even by Ranger Standards. He looked like a maniac, but he hit the next rolling hill ahead of the rest of the platoon and churned up it. I watched him pause below the crest and blow out a few breaths before peeking over the hill as I had.
“Sierra, clear!” He forced the air out of his heaving chest and managed to pound out the words.
“Sierra, moving,” I called back. The rest of the platoon never broke stride.
I let gravity take me down the hill, my legs barely touching the ground. I was winded, and my legs and back were screaming with lactic acid and cramps before I hit the low ground. Spittle and snot came from my nose and mouth, and my breaths were guttural sounds. The Rangers I passed were like metronomes, trotting as fast as most people run. They could keep up that pace for days. I hit the next slope and used my left arm like a gorilla, clawing my way to the top of the hill again.
We did this three more times, but we got through those hills without being ambushed by the IMU, and I think Marc and I built a lot of street cred with the rest of the platoon. I was maxed out, and I wondered if I had enough gas in the tank to fight my way out of this the following night.
As we continued north toward the ROD site, we came upon another village, divided by a small creek. Back at MES, some Army SOF PSYOPS (psychological operations) guys had given us leaflets to distribute when we went through the villages.
The leaflets were pretty artfully done, with dramatic pictures and texts that said, in several Afghan languages, things like “Drones are watching you” and “Coalition forces are coming to kill the IMU who are oppressing you.” It seemed surreal, walking through this village on a beautiful spring day just as people are waking up and handing out colorful leaflets talking about death and destruction.
We got through the village without incident. By now, the sun had burned off the clouds that had dumped rain on us just a little while ago, and we could see well ahead of us. There was our ROD compound on the top of a hill.
We’d stayed in some pretty nondescript ROD sites before, but this wasn’t one of them. This was a massive compound shaped like a castle. Our two-story home was in the center, with the second story winding around like a parapet.
We were exhausted from our night mission, and once inside the ROD site we dumped our gear, set up watch rotations, and got some badly needed rack.
I pulled watch for the first part of the day, then swapped with Marc in the early afternoon and caught some rack myself. I slept on the second floor of our “castle.” Remarkably for Afghanistan, it had bay windows on all four sides. As much as I reminded myself that the reason we were in Afghanistan was to kill the enemy, I thought it would be a shame if we made contact here, because the first thing those of us in the parapet would have to do would be to smash those bay windows out so we could return fire.
By the time I woke up, it was nearing dusk.
I staggered downstairs and saw that one of the guys had killed a turkey, and a group of them were roasting it on a spit.
We ate a turkey dinner—a rare treat—while we went over our plans for that night. We used stones and sticks to make a “sand table”—basically a scale model of the next village we were going to. Once we had our plan set, we spent the last of the twilight making our final preparations.
When it
was completely dark we heard the unmistakable, and welcome, sound of Kiowas. That was our cue, and we moved out.
We had been ambushed and surrounded the previous night, and we barely escaped. Most of the Taliban and IMU knew not to fight Americans at night, but these guys weren’t playing by that rule. Something else was at work.
We already had our intelligence group collecting information on the enemy, using the many mysterious ways they plied their craft. They told us that we had killed over forty IMU fighters the previous night and wounded many more. That was the good news. The bad news was that there were still thousands of IMU in the province. Apparently, the previous night hadn’t been a knockout punch; all we had done was stir up a hornet’s nest.
I didn’t usually carry more than one grenade, if I carried any at all. Tonight I made sure I had four of them, and I added a couple extra magazines from our Speedball. The additional mags only gave me forty extra rounds, but I’m a sniper, so I figured, “one shot, one kill.”
We streamed out of the ROD site and headed down the road toward our target village. We could hear two Kiowas approaching from the southeast, and if we could hear them, so could the enemy. We knew we wouldn’t have the element of surprise tonight.
We made our way into the village. It was only about 800 meters from the ROD site. I was walking near the front with the lead squad, while Marc, as usual, was pulling rear. He was watching our trail, as well as the back half of our formation, and was moving to wherever he was needed.
We got to our first blocking position at an intersection. I took a knee along with the machine-gun team. I wanted Marc to stay with them and help discourage enemy reinforcements from the surrounding villages. I used our wait time to confirm ranges with the gun team leader. It was a well-practiced exchange by now. We sized up the terrain, and the corporal leading the gun team was getting pretty good at ranging things by eye.
Marc showed up with the trail elements of 2nd Platoon and took a knee next to me. We noticed three men walking toward a structure about 400 meters from us. Each man was carrying a wrapped bundle, and one of them had what was either a shovel or an RPG over his shoulder.
We’d been in-country long enough to know that the only thing an Afghan man would be carrying in a long wrapped bundle like that was several rifles. Worse, at that range a shovel over the shoulder looked identical to an RPG. Mac and I had learned that lesson the hard way the last time we were deployed together.
I got Marc on them with his scope and we looked at them together, manipulating our scopes, zooming in and out, fiddling with our focus rings. But before we could make out for certain what they were carrying, they were inside the building. It did look like an outbuilding of some kind, and it was the end of a workday. They could just be putting their tools away for the night. In that case they would come out empty-handed and head to their homes. But if they weren’t farmers, then they’d hole up in that outbuilding if a firefight started. I was certain the latter was the case, but the ROE made the call for me.
“No PID, Marc?” I asked once they were inside. I was still scrutinizing the door they had entered.
“No, just bundles and a shovel,” he replied. He was keyed up for the mission, but his relaxed tone told me he wasn’t as convinced these guys were bad actors as I was.
“If they come out again and they’re carrying those bundles, that means it isn’t a shovel,” I explained. “Just keep eyes on it. If they come out empty-handed, call it up.” (That meant he should report it over the radio.) “If they come out with something over their shoulder, it’s an RPG. Nobody digs holes all day and then digs holes all night.”
Marc nodded without taking his eye out of his scope.
“Do a countdown with the gun and start firing at the same time, but make sure you shoot the guy with RPG first,” I said, wanting us to count down from “three” and then fire at the enemy simultaneously.
“Roger, Balls,” Marc replied.
“I mean it, man. Those guys come back out, you light them up,” I commanded. I was so sure these guys were bad actors that I could taste it.
I got up and trotted after the rest of the platoon. I wanted to stay at the blocking position. I knew these guys were bad, and I wanted to be the one to kill them.
But Marc could handle it, and we might end up clearing through the whole village. I couldn’t sit on my ass waiting to cherry-pick a confirmed kill or two while Marc, my subordinate, did the bulk of the work on the mission. I trusted him and needed to let him do what he did so well.
The platoon was working fast, and by the time I caught up to them and made my two-story climb of the compound they were almost ready to move. The residents of the compound confirmed our second stop for the night, a compound on the northern edge of the village. They told us some IMU guys would bunk out there. It corresponded with what our intel told us, and that was good enough. Platoon Sergeant Pack sent Two-Four’s squad, a machine-gun team, to check it out.
Despite my elevated position I couldn’t see much. I called up Two-Four to let him know I was coming with, knowing the platoon sergeant and platoon leader would hear me. The hardest part of being a Ranger leader, hands down, is keeping track of where all your men are, while the worst thing that can happen is friendly fire. I think we would all rather be overrun and killed together than have to live with the mistake of killing one of our own. I didn’t envy the colossal mental effort our leaders had to employ in order to keep track of everyone.
I found some open ground between the compound and the village where I had good fields of view and started scanning. There was an irrigation trench near me I could use for cover, but I stayed on a knee, fairly visible in the moonlight.
“Seven, Sierra-Three,” Marc called for the platoon sergeant.
“Go for, Seven,” Platoon Sergeant Pack answered back.
“Seven, there’s a mass exodus happening. It looks like all the women and children are leaving. They’re all heading to the east. BREAK,” Marc said, then. “It looks like the whole village, maybe a hundred women and children. There are no MAMs that I can see.”
“All right, Sierra-Three, keep eyes on,” Platoon Sergeant Pack said. Then he said “BREAK” to keep the net clear. “All 2nd Platoon elements, we know this means an attack is imminent. Squad leaders adjust security. Make sure we don’t have any gaps.”
I watched the women and children streaming out of the village, maybe one or two hundred of them. I wondered where they’d go. I was thankful they wouldn’t be in the cross fire of the battle I knew was coming. This was much different from what I had experienced in the southeastern part of the country. Down south around Kandahar, the Taliban would use women and children as human shields or force their women to hide weapons when we were coming for them.
The courtesy of evacuating women and children is probably how the IMU managed to keep the locals from turning on them. I was thankful for this as well, because it meant that anyone left in the village had stayed to fight. That didn’t mean we could “free gun” and blast everyone, but we didn’t have to extend them the same benefit of the doubt.
I turned my attention to the northern border of the village. There was a breezeway between two adobe buildings. I could see three men standing in a row under the roof of the breezeway. They were probably in their forties, and they were watching the Rangers take down the isolated compound. In front of them was a low wall, just over waist high. The man on the far left kept turning away from us, checking the progress of the exodus of women and children.
I watched the Afghan men, as well as the exodus, while Two-Four and his Rangers quickly but cautiously processed the compound. They quietly scaled the walls, opened the gate to the exterior, and quickly moved through the living quarters. The building had been abandoned in the last 24 hours; it had perishable food and made-up beds, but no one was home. The squad did a cursory search but was careful to avoid booby traps, then determined it was a dry hole.
The squad picked up and moved back to the compound that Pl
atoon Sergeant Pack and the rest of the platoon were still processing. One of the three men I was watching darted into a doorway. I guessed at his path behind the adobe wall, and my guess was confirmed when I saw his silhouette flash past a small window. The two remaining men hadn’t spotted me, but they knew that Two-Four and his boys had their backs turned.
I switched my laser to red-visible and flashed it in the faces of the two remaining men to let them know they shouldn’t try anything. Most sane humans in Afghanistan shrink and run when you do this, but these men just snapped their attention to me. ROE didn’t say you could shoot someone for being defiant, but I wished at that moment that I could.
The man who returned stopped short of the doorway he had disappeared into, warned, it seemed, by a gesture from his compatriots who had remained outside. I watched his body language, and it looked a lot like mine when I was propping up a gun in a corner next to a doorway—something I had done a thousand times and had seen other Rangers do as well. It wasn’t enough to enable me to shoot, but it was getting us closer to making a determination.
“Seven, Sierra-Three.” It was Marc’s tense voice coming across the net in a scratchy whisper. “Can you send me some guys? I have several enemy personnel with small arms moving northwest toward 1st Platoon.”
At first I wondered why Marc hadn’t simply engaged with the machine-gun team backing him up.
“Sierra-Three, Seven, roger, where are they?” Platoon Sergeant Pack asked.
“Seven, they’re exiting Building One-Oh-One, four hundred fifty meters from me, heading toward building Four,” Marc called back. That made more sense to me now. If Marc pulled a shot or our machine gunner was a bit off, a single enemy RPG could turn them all into casualties. It wasn’t the choice I would have made, but Marc was doing the right thing. They were not decisively engaged, the enemy didn’t even know they were there, and he could afford a bit of tactical patience to turn the odds in our favor.
When the Killer Man Comes Page 16