This wasn’t a training situation, however, so when Shrode pulled up the information, he and Bundermann determined that they were comfortable with calling in an air strike within two hundred yards of the outpost—which they immediately passed along to the air force controllers at Bostick. Then Shrode and Bundermann performed a quick huddle to figure out exactly how far they wanted to push inside the zone of what is called “danger close,” the unspoken question between the two of them being: What’s the closest strike we can call in while lowering the odds that any of us will survive by an additional ten percent?
One minute later, they sent word to Bostick that anything to within one hundred yards of Keating was fair game.
What Bundermann intended to submit was a request that a cluster of smart bombs be dropped between the Putting Green and Urmul. This, he envisioned, would serve as a kind of two-for-one special. In a single stroke, he’d terminate a swath of enemy gunners and RPG teams all along the spur that connected those two hot spots. And if he got extra lucky, those bombs might also take out one or two dishkas that the Taliban had placed along those ridgelines overlooking the village. (Although these dishkas were in a different location from the heavy machine gun that had just succeeded in damaging Lewallen’s and Huff’s Apaches, the pilots were also concerned about these weapons systems. Eliminating them before the helicopters returned to the battle space was a priority for Bundermann.)
This entire plan was already in place when the first sergeant handed over the EFJohnson radio and Bundermann learned that Larson, Carter, and Mace were alive. From Bundermann’s perspective, the next step—using the Bone’s bomb drop as the trigger for a massive barrage of cover fire from Red and Blue Platoons, plus Fritsche’s mortars, so that Larson and Carter could make their run with Mace to the aid station—seemed like a no-brainer.
By 10:56 a.m. the air force controllers at Bostick had radioed Kulish and his crew—who by now had topped off their fuel tanks and were ready to drop—to prepare to engage.
One minute later, Kulish announced, “Weapons away,” and let loose six of the Bone’s smart bombs, all of them targeted at the Putting Green and the spur leading down to Urmul.
As the bombs fell, Bundermann sent out a final warning to anyone who was listening on the combat net:
“Everybody get low,” he ordered. “This one’s gonna be close.”
• • •
WHEN YOU’RE LESS than two hundred yards away from a massive bomb drop, the impact is unspeakably violent.
The initial explosion registers as a deafening bolt of sound, but the auditory assault doesn’t really matter, because the concussion that follows is so much more powerful. What’s more, these two forces—sound plus shock wave—are stacked so closely together that you’re barely aware of the distinction. What you feel, mostly, is a kind of vast pushing sensation, almost as if an ocean wave has struck you in the solar plexus and, through some strange trick of physics, is now passing through your tissue, your bones, your entire body.
If you haven’t experienced it directly, the effect is hard to imagine unless you try to conceive what it might be like to be an especially tiny insect—a type of mite, say—huddled inside the bass drum of a heavy-metal rock band.
Wow, that was close, you say to yourself as first shock registers and passes.
But damn—it was kinda cool too, you think as the last shock recedes.
And then you’re struck by a disturbing idea:
Oh my God . . . did I just die and I haven’t yet realized it?
As impressive and fearsome as all of this was, however, the thing that truly blew our minds was the visual impact of the Bone’s air strike.
When the bombs started falling, Raz and I were crouching on the floor in the middle of the Shura Building, having already moved away from the walls on the theory that if the building collapsed around us we’d have a better change of surviving a hit from the plywood roof than if we were buried beneath the wreckage of the stone walls. This meant that we were staring straight through the west doorway, which neatly framed the Putting Green.
The first bomb sledgehammered the top of the ridge directly above Urmul, blowing chunks of dirt, clouds of pulverized rock, and shredded bits of trees high into the air. The impact created an unearthly sound that was louder and darker and more menacing, by far, than any thunderclap that either of us had ever heard, and as the explosion unfurled like a crimson flower, we realized that we could actually see the concussion coming at us in an undulating pulse that was causing the air itself to vibrate.
When the concussion struck the Shura Building, it picked up the entire roof and slammed it back down while seizing all four walls and shaking them as if they were a cluster of dead leaves on a tree branch. The air inside filled with a cloud of deeply agitated dust particles. And as all of this was unfolding, the second and third bombs were now striking the Putting Green, to be followed in turn by the fourth and the fifth and the last.
Krak—BOOM
Krak—BOOM
Krak—BOOM
Krak—BOOM
Krak—BOOM
Krak—BOOM
It was, quite simply, the most awesome thing that Raz and me had ever witnessed in our entire lives—and under any other circumstances, we would both have felt compelled to pause for a moment to breathe in and acknowledge the blunt and feral majesty of that awesomeness. But at that moment, I could also hear Bundermann on my radio giving the countdown to open up:
Anyone who can hear this, give fire on three!
—One . . .
—Two . . .
“Grab your 203 now!” I yelled to Raz. “Get out the back door and unload everything you’ve got!”
Without missing a beat, Raz dashed through the door, crouched down in the trench with his back to the east side of the Shura Building, and began launching grenades backward over his shoulder in the direction of the North Face. He pumped them out as fast as Miller—who had revived enough to serve as his assistant—handed them to him, not even bothering to look where he was shooting.
Meanwhile, me and Dulaney had sprinted through the west door and set up just outside. While Dulaney let loose with his SAW, vomiting out an entire drum of rounds into the Putting Green with a prolonged, vicious-sounding braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack, I was burning through a belt of ammo on the PKM machine gun that had been abandoned by the Taliban, concentrating on the Switchbacks and Urmul.
All across Keating, every man who could stand and shoot was springing from his position and doing exactly the same thing. Koppes was pumping grenades into the Diving Board with the Mark 19 on our last remaining gun truck. Hill and the men of Blue Platoon were riddling the sides of the North Face and the Switchbacks with every heavy machine gun and personal weapon they could lay their hands on. Even Big John Breeding and the two surviving members of his gun crew up at the mortar pit, who by some miracle had managed to reestablish radio contact just as Bundermann was ordering every weapons system on post to open up, were putting out fire. (Only much later would we learn that Breeding and Daniel Rodriguez had managed to retrieve the 60-mm mortar tube from the pit and were now firing it, by hand, into the North Face from inside their hooch.) And while all of this was taking place, the gun crew up at Fritsche was hurling mortars into the center of Urmul—accurately this time—as fast as they could load and shoot.
The combined effect of all that outgoing firepower was something to behold. Bullets, grenades, and mortars were flying in all directions. None of us had the faintest idea how accurate we were or what sort of damage we might be inflicting on the enemy. But one thing that I can say for sure is that when Larson and Carter heard the barrage go off, they knew exactly what to do.
Carter had been hoping for a brief lull so that he could prep the stretcher that we kept on the back hatch of the gun truck and clear a path for the first part of their run. But as soon as the last of the smart bombs from t
he Bone struck above Urmul, Larson was yelling, “Go! Go! Go!”
Jumping out of the truck, Carter kicked a few loose ammo cans out of the way, seized the stretcher, and raced over to the rear door on the passenger side, where Larson had the door open for Mace.
“Mace, you need to shift your legs,” Larson ordered. “We’re gonna throw you on this litter, and then we’re gonna run.”
As Mace tried to move, they pulled him from the truck and placed him on the stretcher. Larson tucked their weapons next to Mace, then grabbed the handles on the back end while Carter took the front.
They had more than a hundred yards of open ground to cover. The terrain was uneven and would be swept by sniper and machine-gun fire the entire way.
“Mace, this is gonna hurt like a motherfucker,” Larson announced. “Hang on, boy!”
With that, they started running.
Charging as hard as they possibly could, they tried to keep to a straight line without any weaving or dodging except for when they had to skirt around bomb craters or pieces of wreckage. It was pretty much exactly the same way that the other guys had carried Kirk on his litter three and a half hours earlier, except that there were only two runners instead of four and now they had to cover more than twice the distance.
Neither Larson nor Carter would remember much about that run, except that it was one of the hardest physical things that either of them had ever done—and that they hauled ass the entire way. They jumped straight over at least two dead Taliban soldiers, and somewhere between the piss tubes and the Shura Building, they also encountered the body of an American soldier. It was Chris Griffin, who had given up his life while trying to rescue them. This was as far as he’d gotten when he was gunned down.
They ran straight past him and kept going.
As they peeled by us on the south side of the Shura Building, I caught them out of the corner of my eye. From there, they traced a reverse version of the same route that we had taken when we’d fought our way to the ammo supply point: past Jonesie and his machine gun; past the demolished door to John Deere’s room; around the end of the Hesco wall, along the side of Red barracks, and straight through the white plywood door with the red cross painted on it, where Larson and Carter delivered up Mace to the medics by dropping to their knees on the blood-smeared blue linoleum floor of the aid station.
• • •
THE MOMENT we got word that the litter team was safe, everybody ceased fire and ducked back inside for cover. As our shooting subsided, a stunned silence descended over Keating and the surrounding ridges.
The fighting would quickly resume. But in the lull, as I crouched inside the Shura Building and surveyed the mud-and-stone walls around me, I keyed my radio and spoke to Bundermann.
“I’m no structural engineer,” I said, “but I don’t know how much more this building can take.”
“Well, do you want me to stop it?” he asked. The Bone had plenty more smart bombs and Bundermann had every intention of using them.
“Nope, keep giving it,” I replied. “Let the building collapse around us and we’ll figure it out from there.”
A minute or two later, I got another call from the command post.
It was my best friend.
“Hey, brother, I just got patched up by the medics and I’m good to go,” said Larson. “Where’re you at?”
“We’re out by the front gate,” I told him. “If you can make it here, we’ve got some more work to do, and we could sure use a hand.”
We still had to take back the helicopter landing zone so that we could evacuate our wounded. We also had to find a way to venture out and collect our fallen brothers before the Taliban made off with their bodies. And while we did those things, our medics had to find a way of somehow keeping Mace alive.
On a number of levels, this battle wasn’t over yet.
PART V
Saving Stephan Mace
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Go Get It Done”
DESPITE THE TWIN HAMMER blows of the B-1 air strike and the barrage of outgoing fire, the Taliban didn’t take long to return to the business of trying to wipe Keating off the map. Within a few minutes of Mace’s arrival in the aid station, the buildings in the center of camp were once again targeted by enemy gunners. Anyone trying to move outside those structures instantly drew fire from snipers, rocket crews, and machine-gun teams.
From inside the Shura Building, however, it seemed to us that this onslaught was blunted by the increasingly aggressive air support that we were now getting. No sooner did the Bone check off station than the sky above camp was playing host to a gaggle of Warthogs. The snub-nosed A-10 attack jets would appear from out of nowhere, usually in pairs, and hit the ridgelines and mountain sides with long, metallic-sounding bursts from their 30-mm cannon, which fired four or five times faster than even the chain guns on the Apaches. They seemed to concentrate mainly on the Switchbacks and the North Face, homing in on targets that had been relayed from Armando Avalos, who continued to call in coordinates and strike requests.
The helicopters were back too, sweeping through the narrow valley with a vengeance and directing their fire into any cracks and crevices where they thought the enemy might be hiding. And before long—just as soon as Justin Kulish, the commander of the Bone, was able to refuel his aircraft—Bundermann would be requesting another massive strike, this time using a suite of even larger and more destructive two-thousand-pound smart bombs along the Switchbacks. This furious renewal of the engagement by both sides gave rise to the unstated feeling, which we all shared, that the final outcome of this battle still hung in the balance and had yet to fully swing to one side or the other.
It was amid this atmosphere of uncertainty that Larson showed up at the east door of the Shura Building lugging an M4 that he’d snatched from God only knew where and as much ammunition as he could possibly carry.
When he arrived, I tamped down the elation that arose inside my chest and kept things cool by giving him a quick man-hug (shoulders only). Even so, it was obvious that I was thrilled to have him back.
Then we got down to it.
The most important piece of information Larson had to share was that he’d spotted Griffin’s body near the piss tubes as he and Carter had chugged past with Mace. That was less than thirty yards from where we were standing. If we acted fast, we could reclaim the first of our dead.
Larson and Raz immediately volunteered to got get him. They got ready by dropping their ammo, weapons, and anything else that might slow them down. After they’d stripped off everything but their Kevlar body armor, they darted out the west door and sprinted toward Griffin while Dulaney and I stepped outside and opened up on the Putting Green and the Switchbacks with our machine guns.
When they reached Griffin’s body, they discovered that rigor already set in and he was as stiff as a board. While Larson picked up his legs—one of which had been badly broken and was now bent at an impossible angle—Raz seized his head and neck. As Raz started to lift, something shifted inside Griffin and a gob of blackish-looking goo, as thick as molasses, erupted from Griffin’s mouth and sprayed over Raz’s face and arms.
This was the first of several encounters over the next hour in which the members of my team would find themselves literally and figuratively touched by death and its aftermath in a way that was visceral, direct, and ugly enough to stay with us for the rest of our lives. In that moment, however, neither Raz nor Larson could afford to think about what was happening: they were too busy stumbling back to the Shura Building while half carrying, half dragging Griffin’s body between them.
When they arrived, we all retreated inside and laid Griffin out on the floor. The damage that the bullets had done to him—the wounds in his cheek, the side of his skull, and his neck; the large-caliber holes in his thigh—was horrific and hard to take in. A few minutes later, Sergeant Jim Stanley and Damien Grissette, a spe
cialist from HQ Platoon who was in charge of Keating’s water supply, showed up with a stretcher to take him back to the aid station.
Before leaving, Stanley and Grissette delivered some news: the fire that had started on the Afghan National Army side of camp had now spread to the point where Blue Platoon’s barracks was about to go up in flames. Only the command post separated Blue’s barracks from Red Platoon’s barracks, which meant that there was a good chance that everything we’d brought from the States to sustain us during our year in Afghanistan might be on the verge of turning to ashes.
“Hey, Ro,” Larson said softly, “mind if I run back and get my chew before it all burns up?”
Given that we were in the midst of battle, it’s hard to imagine a more inappropriate request. But it’s a testament to the peculiar chemistry of combat—the surreal and irrational way that it can blend high seriousness with the irredeemably banal—that I didn’t blink an eye when he popped the question.
“All right, see you back here in a bit,” I replied. “And while you’re there, see if you can grab me a can of Dr Pepper, okay?”
• • •
LESS THAN FIVE minutes later, Larson was back, with a can of Copenhagen and a six-pack of Dr Pepper. He’d also been thoughtful enough to snag my carton of Camels, which meant that every man in the Shura Building could now take a tactical pause to crack open a soft drink and grab a smoke. We all agreed that it was an excellent resupply mission, and fully worth the risk of Larson maybe getting shot.
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