I unrolled the drab green sleeping pad and removed my shirt and boots. I always slept in Teva sandals because I could fight in them and my boots and feet could dry. Ranger school preaches taking care of your feet, so I poured a bottle of water over mine to clean them. I took another bottle of water and tried to clean the grime, salt, and sweat out of my shirt, finally hanging it on my truck, where in this heat it would dry in just a few minutes. I finally laid my head down on my inflatable pillow. My wife had bought it for me, and I thanked God for the day she married me. I said my prayers and drifted off to sleep.
In what seemed like seconds, I felt a tug on my foot. Time to move. I packed up my mat, threw on my now dry shirt, and was almost ready to go when Bill and Smitty cornered me, looking grave.
“We have plenty of food but water is going quickly,” Bill said, looking at a list of supplies in his log book. “We’re going through a gallon or more of water a day per man.”
“Captain, we need to get resupply in forty-eight hours. If not, we’ll be in the hurt locker,” Smitty said.
We marched over to Jared and filled him in on the problem. Studying the map and tracing our route into Panjwayi, we finally agreed to head for a bit of flat desert where a cargo plane could drop us pallets of water. Jude rigged up the satellite antenna so Jared could send up the supply request.
Hodge’s team took the lead, and my team fell back to the end of the convoy. By the time the morning sun broke the horizon, we had hit a relatively flat plain and I estimated that by the end of the day we would cover more than fifty miles. Then I saw the hulking sand dunes in the distance. The highest dune looked like a man hunched over with his arms stretched over the horizon.
“You get a feeling the dunes are trying to keep us out?” Brian asked me.
“Seems like it,” I said as Hodge came over the radio.
“Talon 30, this is Talon 26. We have to find a way around these dunes. Some of them are six stories high.”
Jared ordered us to stop and do some navigation.
Throwing my kit in the front seat, I jumped out of the truck and stretched my legs. Suddenly, I heard the crack from an AK-47, which sent me diving into the scalding-hot sand.
“Get back in the truck, Captain,” Dave yelled, as he sank immediately into the turret, grabbing his .50-cal machine gun and spinning quickly toward the direction the sound came from.
I did my best football scramble, pumping my legs as fast as they would go. Seconds later, the call came over the radio. We had a wounded Afghan soldier. I grabbed the first aid bag from behind the driver’s seat and dashed to the ANA trucks behind us, where an Afghan soldier stoically cradled his hand. I saw pencil-thin streaks of blood splattered on the truck and all over the soldier’s uniform and face, and I knew immediately what had happened. We had warned the ANA time and time again about putting their hands over the end of their AK-47 rifles. The weapon has a uniquely unsafe safety catch, and if left on fire, the rifle will discharge with very little pressure on the trigger.
I grabbed the Afghan’s wrist as crimson blood ran down his arm and covered my hand. Despite having just turned his right hand into hamburger, he didn’t yell or flail around. The bullet had splayed his hand open between the index and third fingers, with the wound stretching from his wrist to the top of his palm and the two fingers hanging loosely on silky white threads of tendon. I gripped his wrist tightly and placed my thumb and fingers against the radial and ulnar arteries to reduce the blood flow.
Steve arrived and dove into his kit bag for a compression bandage. Trying to salvage something positive out of the ugly accident, I had the Afghans gather around as Steve, with Victor’s help, gave an impromptu class on how to dress and treat a wound. Steve pushed the open wound together and applied an entire roll of Kerlix and a pressure dressing to the impact site, Victor translating every step. The administration of intravenous fluids followed. When the class was finished, I chastised the ANA openly for being so undisciplined and causing us to lose a valuable soldier with such a stupid mistake.
I walked to the truck, washed my hands, and called Jared. The Afghan had to be evacuated. Jared called it in while my team set up the landing zone. Already short soldiers, losing one to something this unnecessary aggravated me. If the operation was going to work, we needed everyone.
Steve and Riley had the patient ready to move when the call came in over the FM radio.
“Talon 31, this is Mustang 11. Confirm grid and status of LZ,” the pilot said.
“Mustang 11, this is Talon 31. No change to grid. Status is cold. Beware of blackout sand,” I responded.
“Talon 31, roger. Inbound,” the pilot said.
I could see the drab green Black Hawk helicopter on the horizon. It was just a speck, but it was growing bigger by the minute. Someone popped purple smoke. On descent, the helicopter’s blades kicked up a massive cloud of sand and grit. I ducked my head and covered my eyes. I had no idea how they could see in that mess.
The medevac helicopter stayed just long enough for Dave and Riley to load the Afghan soldier, and then it shot from the desert floor into the sky again, leaving another huge dust cloud. Shinsha walked over and slapped me on the shoulder. He had such a broad smile it made his eyes squint. He didn’t speak, but I got the message. We took care of his soldier. He expected this of me, and I would do nothing to lower his expectation.
Before he left, I told him about the emergency air drop. “We’re low on food and water, so we have to make it last,” I said. “No wasting water. No throwing away food. When it’s gone, we’ll have to go without.”
Shinsha understood and promised to speak to his men.
On my way back to Ole Girl, I ran into Chris, the stocky mechanic from the support company that flew in with the replacement ANA truck. For the last several days, he’d kept our trucks running on duct tape and sheer grit. He repaired leaking hydraulic lines by cutting off the secondary lines and overlaying them on the broken ones. The radiators on a pair of ANA Hilux trucks ran out of water, so he filled them with water, urine, and whatever other liquid was available. To fix one of the trucks with a broken leaf spring and another with a broken steering stabilizer, he used five-thousand-pound nylon ratchet straps, intended for securing cargo, and cinched the parts together tight so that the trucks could keep moving. Whether we could fight with them was another issue.
“Captain, when these trucks get hot again, those straps will melt,” he said. “Then it’s back to the motor pool.”
Jared decided to wait until morning to resume moving. I thought it was a good decision because we were tired and everybody was frustrated with the vehicles and the Afghans. The break allowed tempers to cool.
* * *
At first light, we took advantage of the cooler temperatures to make our final push through the desert. The pain from my heat rash was excruciating, and I began to seriously debate riding this last leg with my kit off. My rash was turning into sores. If the sores got infected, I’d need antibiotics and be forced to raid our meager supply, medicine that I knew we might need for more serious injuries. I packed a fresh dip of snuff, closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and swung my body armor on. Pain shot like an electric current down my back and across my shoulders. I tried to control my heart rate and blinked away the tears in my eyes. As soon as the pain passed, I swallowed a half-dozen Tylenol, got on the radio, and called for the convoy to move.
For days, I’d suffered through Dave’s ear-splitting techno music. He’d hooked his iPod up to two Sony speakers on the turret. The enemy threat was low, and the music was great for breaking the monotony. Since he was in the baking sun all day, I’d allowed him to play DJ. But I couldn’t stand his high-octane techno anymore.
“For fuck sake, Dave, do you not have anything else on your iPod?”
“I’ve already been through all five thousand songs. What do you want to listen to?”
I reached back and fished a small Pelican case out of my assault pack. I passed up my old first-generatio
n twenty-gig white iPod, which I’d taken on three rotations and which had survived a roadside bomb blast and several firefights. It was a gift from a family friend. On the back, he’d inscribed, “One does not make friends. One recognizes them.” The iPod had become a sort of good luck charm.
Dave plugged it into the speakers.
“What do you want to listen to?”
I told him to pull down the country road music playlist. The first song couldn’t have been more perfect: the first few bars of “East Bound and Down” by Jerry Reed blared out of the speakers.
Chapter 10
THE NOTEBOOK
Do not touch anything unnecessarily. Beware of pretty girls in dance halls and parks who may be spies, as well as bicycles, revolvers, uniforms, arms, dead horses, and men lying on roads—there is nothing there accidentally.
—SOVIET INFANTRY MANUAL ISSUED IN THE 1930S
The Kuchi tribesman, with about twenty camels in tow, came over the horizon. As he got close, I could see his weathered face and long black beard. His thin frame was covered in layers of robes, and he had a sizable knife, curled at the end, wedged into his belt.
“This guy looks like an extra from Raiders of the Lost Ark,” I cracked.
Smitty called over the radio that through his binoculars he could see several large packs on one of the camels that appeared to be ammunition or mortar rounds. I didn’t see a weapon in the tribesman’s hands, but I knew the desert can play tricks on you. Hell, I had just seen a herd of camels that I took for enemy soldiers.
When the Kuchi saw the long line of trucks, he stopped, dropped his pack, and threw his hands in the air.
“I like this guy already,” Bill said over the radio.
Steve, Smitty, and their terp, Jerry, went to talk with the man. He told them that his herd was part of a dowry from his bride. Steve and Smitty searched him and then asked to see his cargo. Without hesitation, he pulled out his knife and cut the heavy packs off the camel. The woven cloth bags tumbled to the sand.
Smitty rifled through the packs while Steve watched with his rifle at the ready. The bags were full of scrap metal, mortar fins and munitions casings, which the tribesman said he had collected at the training camp we had found near the mountain about a week’s walk south. His story made sense. There was plenty at that camp to pick up. He smiled when Smitty offered him three bottles of water, glad to drink from our supply rather than his own. While he drank, Smitty took out a notebook and started asking questions. I stood off to the side by my truck.
“Seen anyone around here?” he asked, as Jerry translated.
“Several Hilux trucks.”
“In which direction?”
“From the south, toward Panjwayi,” the Kuchi responded, polishing off the last bottle.
No one innocent would cross this desert on a joy ride. I checked our position on my computer and GPS. We were almost out of the desert. I watched the Kuchi repack his load as we started again toward Panjwayi. Ahead of us, the contour lines on the GPS display converged, indicating more high ground to surmount.
After a few hours, we crested a hill and spotted a small cluster of multicolored tents pitched on a plateau. The Kuchi’s future father-in-law. As we passed, the man greeted us and asked if we had seen his camels. He didn’t seem too interested in the welfare of his future son-in-law.
“Typical father-in-law,” I told Brian.
The plateau fell off into another series of rolling hills. When we at last surmounted the final one, stretching out before us was the lush green Panjwayi Valley. I called Jared to let him know we’d made it out of the desert and were near the drop site. Jared radioed back that another truck was stuck, so Brian, Dave, and I shut off Ole Girl, shed our gear, and handed out bottles of water like celebratory champagne.
Beyond us flowed a vast ocean of green vegetation. I could see the Dori and Arghandab rivers framing the valley on either side, an intricate network of hundreds of villages crammed with mud huts, grape fields, pathways, trails, and irrigation ditches. For a moment, I imagined how ancient travelers must have felt when they saw the valley after weeks of walking across the desert, but the feeling didn’t last. The battlefield calculus was all too obvious. The Canadians were going to need more troops—a hell of a lot more. This wasn’t a few remote villages. This was an undeveloped city.
“Good thing we don’t have to clear it,” Brian said, reading my mind.
Jared’s truck pulled up next to mine, its radiator hissing, the cooling fan churning at full blast.
“Man, that sure is a sight for sore eyes,” he said.
“Let’s just hope we don’t have to fight in it,” I responded.
Victor hopped off my truck and pulled out several bottles of water and his prayer rug.
“What’s the water for, Victor?” I asked.
“It is time for me to pray,” he said.
We were close to the drop zone, but still short on supplies, which we’d been rationing for a day. I wasn’t taking any chances until the pallets of food and water arrived.
“You can either drink that water or wash your feet with it,” I said. “I don’t care, but that’s all the water we have left to share with you. Your choice.”
He thought for a second and put two of the bottles back in the truck. Dave looked down from the turret and smiled. “Maybe he’s a fast learner, Captain.”
“We’ll see.”
Jared met with the commanders and we all agreed to wait until dark to approach the resupply site, so that we wouldn’t compromise it. I spent part of the afternoon going over my gear. I had two pairs of socks and two T-shirts. My skin was raw because of the heat rash. I soaked an expensive Under Armour T-shirt in water and washed my chest and feet. My civilian boots were holding up, and it helped that they were a size too big. In this heat, my feet swelled badly. Army desert boots have a piece of leather that cuts across the top of your feet—and, when they swell, digs into them and cuts off circulation to your toes. You can’t cram a soldier into boots and equipment made by the lowest bidder and mass produced for every soldier. It doesn’t work that way and never has. That’s why most special operations soldiers wear civilian hiking boots. It isn’t because they look cool. It’s because they work.
I grew up in the infantry and still remember the Ranger instructor’s words of wisdom: “Listen up, girls, there are two things you will take care of as a grunt or you will not last long on the battlefield: your rifle and your feet. In that order.” I put on fresh socks and slid my boots back on. They were tight, really tight.
Team 26 had volunteered to lead the way toward the valley and we got under way as the sun was setting. As Hodge turned the convoy off the ridgeline and into the riverbed, the temperature dropped at least twenty degrees, and we were soon soaked by the light spray thrown up by the tires and the water sloshing over the floorboards of the truck.
The convoy churned along in the shallow river for about a mile, until we converged on the drop point programmed into our computer maps. For once the map of the area basically reflected the actual ground. Our homework had paid off; the site was perfect. A large sandy drop zone was surrounded by a ridgeline that we could set up on, and that provided some concealment for the vehicles and a commanding view for miles. Bill set up sectors of fire that I plotted on a laminated tablet, later adding the Afghan positions that Shinsha showed me. The sector sketch was basically a diagram of the position and showed the machine guns’ interlocking sectors of fire in the event a fight broke out.
With the area secured, we set up signals for the pilots. A night air drop could be more dangerous than a firefight. Once those pallets slid out of the aircraft, the only thing controlling them was weight, wind, forward throw, and gravity. One mistake and thousands of pounds of water and ammunition might land on our heads.
With the sun now gone and still several hours until the aircraft arrived, we decided that the ANA could go down to the river in groups of ten men at a time. The first five would bathe while the others
secured the area. When the first group finished, they would switch. We needed to wash, too, and the medics—Steve, Riley, and Greg—talked about it, consulting cards they carried in their uniform pockets and checking the amount and types of medicines on hand. The river was full of microorganisms and bacteria.
Finally, Greg gave us the thumbs-up.
“Do it, but you have to dry your clothes in the sun to kill any remaining bacteria,” Greg said. Riley added that we could soak the clothing in alcohol to kill most of the creepy crawlies if we had to move before it was light. I agreed to their recommendation and Bill sent the guys down to the river a couple at a time.
Nearby, Jared had some good news and bad news. He told me everything was on time and the Air Force was dropping more than twenty thousand pounds of water, fuel, repair parts, ammunition, medical supplies, and rations. Riley and Steve had also ordered boxes of baby wipes, rubbing alcohol, and rags to scrub the heat rash and sores. I could see Jared smile against the glow of his computer screen. The bad news was ISAF might delay the start of the mission. He didn’t say why. It wasn’t confirmed, and until it was, he was going to stick to the schedule. We had to be in position before they could launch the attack.
With only thirty minutes before the bird arrived, Jared, Hodge, and I separately confirmed one another’s math and walked to check the drop markers and signals, a series of infrared strobe lights arrayed in a predetermined shape. Bill made sure the team was ready and everyone had their nods and “go” bags, small backpacks with food, ammo, and other essential equipment, just in case one of the pallets decided to fall on top of a truck.
The pilot’s voice came over the radio.
“Talon 30, Talon 30. This is Archangel 51.”
Jared reached for the handset. The MC-130 was inbound. The specially designed aircraft could fly in any weather and was made for low-visibility operations.
“Archangel 51, this is Talon 30. Go ahead.”
Jerry Bradley & Kevin Maurer Page 12
