The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor

by Jake Tapper

  The surgeon opened up his patient’s abdomen. The bowel looked dead. There were holes through the left side of the colon and most of the small bowel. Mace was bleeding near his left kidney. Zagol inserted cotton packs to stem the blood flow. As he did so, roughly thirty minutes into the operation, Mace’s heart stopped.

  Zagol began performing CPR. Mace’s heart started beating again. But the beat wasn’t sustained; it would come back for fifteen or thirty seconds at a time and then vanish. The surgeon inserted a tube into each side of Mace’s chest to release any air or blood that had gathered in the chest cavity and might be interfering with his heart. Air began to flow out of the tubes.

  An hour had passed. Mace’s heartbeat had not returned in any real way. Zagol opened the left side of Mace’s chest and cut open his ribs to make sure he hadn’t missed a wound to the heart. Reaching inside Mace’s body, he massaged his heart, clapping his hands together. He had used this technique once before, during his residency. Such massaging was a last-ditch measure, one that rarely worked. But Zagol would not give up on this soldier. He had told him he would get him home.

  Ninety minutes into the operation, Zagol knew that Stephan Lee Mace, twenty-one years old, wasn’t going to make it. He had been without a steadily beating heart for almost an hour. Zagol stepped away from the table and pronounced him dead. A second group of wounded soldiers had now come in from Keating, and twenty to thirty more would soon be on their way with various wounds.

  Zagol walked outside. For three minutes, he threw trash and cursed. It was the first time he’d ever been responsible for losing a patient. Several years later, he would still be questioning himself, wondering whether, if he had been a better doctor, he might have been able to save that young patient who had clung to life for so long and against such great odds, only to slip away once he’d finally been delivered to a safe place.

  Mace had ended up entrusting his Saint Christopher’s medal to Robert Hull, who had been promoted to captain and was presently stationed at Forward Operating Base Bostick. The medal now needed to be returned to Mace.

  When the announcement came over the FOB Bostick loudspeaker summoning Hull to the operating room, he was tending to some of the other wounded Black Knight troops who had been medevacked in. Hull was crushed to hear that Mace hadn’t survived the operation. The captain took a step toward the O.R., intending to put the chain around Mace’s neck, but Wilson stopped him. He wanted to protect Hull from the tragic scene.

  “Sir,” Wilson said, “I’ll give it back to him. He tried to give it to me—it’d be better if I did it.”

  Hull handed Wilson the medal, and the command sergeant major walked through the swinging doors of the operating room to return the medallion honoring Christopher the martyr to its place around the neck of Stephan Mace.

  Cordova wanted to find out about Mace, so he tracked down First Sergeant Burton at the Red Platoon barracks. He knew Mace had gotten to Forward Operating Base Bostick alive. Had he made it through surgery?

  Burton didn’t say a word, nor did he need to. He looked at Cordova with pain in his eyes.

  Cordova walked away, shattered. He couldn’t bring himself to tell Courville, Floyd, and Hobbs—maybe later, but not now, not now. He went into a small side room to be by himself.

  Miraldi’s platoon was assigned the eastern half of the outpost, and the troops took up residence in the one ANA barracks that was still standing. Afghan soldiers began trickling in after Lakis and Dabolins found them in their hiding places; they had not fought, not defended the outpost. The 1-32 Infantry troops had them stay in a separate room. Not only had the Americans seen Afghan security forces run away from battle before, but for all they knew, these particular guys could all be Taliban in stolen ANA uniforms. Eventually, Sax’s men forcibly took the weapons from the Afghans and posted a guard outside their room.

  Having heard about the ANA troops’ weak, cowardly, and in some cases treasonous performance the day before, as well as the rising tensions that had followed, Brown decided that they would be first to be shipped out the next day. Before their flight left, Lakis informed the assembled Afghans that due to weight constraints on the helicopter, they could bring along only one bag each. He looked at the congregated ANA troops and noticed one with an especially large satchel. He tried to grab it to see how much it weighed, but the ANA soldier pulled it away from him, and his fellow troops responded in a hostile manner. Lakis talked outside with the ANA commander about the incident. The ANA commander walked up to the soldier with the large bag, snatched it away from him, and dumped out its contents. Out spilled all sorts of objects pillaged from the U.S. troops, from digital cameras to protein-drink mixes.

  The Bastards’ barracks at Combat Outpost Keating during the October 3, 2009 attack. (Taken from U.S. Army investigations)

  One of the Humvees at Combat Outpost Keating after the October 3, 2009, attack. (Taken from U.S. Army investigations)

  On Sunday, October 4, Brown and Portis walked the grounds of the outpost with Romesha, Hill, and Larson to get a grasp on what had happened. They assessed the damage, trying to figure out which entrances the insurgents had used to enter the camp, which buildings and trucks had been damaged and how. Dead Taliban remained inside the wire, gruesome and gray. The Americans were also trying to figure out what could be salvaged and what they would need to destroy before the camp was abandoned.

  Salentine led a team into Urmul to make sure all the enemy fighters had cleared out. When he came back, he told Portis, “If you think Keating looks bad, go check out Urmul. It’s Armageddon.”

  Enemy radio traffic indicated that the insurgents would try again to overrun the outpost, so Miraldi’s platoon was on full guard duty late into the night. Luckily, there was no new attack, just small firefights as Black Knight Troop shipped out men and equipment over the next two days. Harder was assigned the task of securing the video camera that had been placed atop the maintenance shack for surveillance; an insurgent in the mountains fired at him, and he slid down the roof, nearly breaking his leg. But compared to what had transpired but a few days ago, this was almost the stuff of comedy.

  The day after the battle brought ten local leaders from Kamdesh, Mandigal, and Urmul to the gates of Combat Outpost Keating. They asked for Portis, who came out to meet them. Were they there to apologize? To offer their condolences? To offer to help? No, they wanted to know if they could collect the bodies of the insurgents in and around the camp.

  Portis seethed. He told them they could send elders and women to collect the dead, but the appearance of any fighting-age males would be considered a threat.

  The elders from Urmul said they had been hiding in Agro since the Taliban told them to flee. Could they return to their homes now?

  No, Portis said. The outpost was still being fired upon, and the United States Army would continue to bomb the Switchbacks and Urmul in response. Those spots and the surrounding mountains would not be safe for the next forty-eight hours. Portis wrote in his journal that night: “They walked away upset. I walked away pissed off.”

  Portis wasn’t the only one seething. The night before, he’d sent troops into the original, burning operations center to retrieve classified equipment and documents. Cady was tasked with securing any Afghan currency that was still intact from the two safes—Portis wanted him to finish his task of paying the contractors. Cady could barely contain his contempt as he handed over a small fortune to the head Afghan Security Guard, just a day after he and his men had proved worse than useless.

  George and Brown had long discussed the best way to close Combat Outpost Keating. They had debated whether it was better to leave it intact or destroy it. This had been an ongoing discussion, and they again went over the options. Leaving it standing for Afghan forces or local authorities to use could be problematic; they recalled how 6-4 Cav left Combat Outpost Lybert, only to have insurgents falsely claim to have taken it by force.

  George and Brown decided that they would remove everything
they could and then they would bomb the hell out of the outpost, leaving nothing behind. Even if they had wanted to undertake a major salvage job, there wouldn’t be weren’t going to be enough helicopters to haul all of the equipment, and they weren’t going to spend the money and effort to remove the Humvees that had been shot up or the tons of stockpiled ammunition. The brigade flew in a team of engineers. Crater charges were placed in each of the Humvees, and detonation cord wrapped around all the damaged ammunition. Explosives were attached to anything that an enemy fighter could possibly use for either fighting or shelter. U.S. Air Force observers were given just under a dozen grid points on which to drop their bombs.

  Night fell, bringing to a close October 6, 2009. Members of the QRF left first, followed by the Bastards. The last to fly out were the members of Red Platoon. Burton pushed every group to conduct head counts, over and over. He was terrified that they were going to inadvertently leave someone behind at the camp, in the dark of night, as the United States abandoned the outpost forever.

  Bundermann stood on the landing zone waiting. He couldn’t leave Combat Outpost Keating soon enough. Hurry up, let’s get out of here, let’s get out of here, he said to himself.

  Brown waited until the last helicopter was on the ground before he pulled the trigger and ignited the thermite grenades per the engineers’ instructions. They would have fifteen minutes before the explosion destroyed the outpost—more than enough time to clear the area. The men linked up by the shura building, then exited out the gate of Combat Outpost Keating for the last time. Everyone boarded the helicopter. Burton and Brown paused at the back deck of the bird. Each wanted to be the last soldier to leave the camp. Portis watched them, shaking his head.

  “Get on the damn bird,” Burton told Brown. Brown stepped into the helicopter, and the first sergeant followed, convinced he was the last man out of Combat Outpost Keating.

  But Romesha and Larson had rear security for the helicopter and had been standing next to the edge of the ramp. They waited and watched Burton enter the helicopter, then they looked at each other and stepped up on the bird at the same time—the very last to leave, just as they had wanted.

  The helicopter rose and made its way down the valley. Bundermann looked out the back hatch of the bird and took in the tranquility of the mountains, and beyond them the stars. The men waited for the explosion. And waited.

  It never came. Something was wrong with the timer or with the explosives.

  After Brown got back to the operations center at Forward Operating Base Bostick, a B-1 bomber flew over Camp Keating and dropped several tons’ worth of bombs on it. The next day, another B-1 dropped even more. Surveillance from a Predator drone on October 8, however, indicated that structures at the outpost were still standing. Worse, the Predator captured images of fourteen insurgents trolling around the camp and removing ammunition from the ammo supply point. Another B-1 bomber was cleared to target the insurgents, but its equipment malfunctioned. Instead, the two Predator drones over the site each fired two Hellfire missiles at the fleeing Taliban. “Bad” Abdul Rahman Mustaghni and the thirteen other insurgents were obliterated, and at long last, Combat Outpost Keating was gone forever.

  CHAPTER 39

  Two Purple Hearts and Just One Scar

  Combat Outpost Keating, after the United States bombed the camp. (Taken from U.S. Army investigations)

  As was standard procedure, on October 10, General McChrystal ordered an official “15-6” investigation into what had gone wrong at Camp Keating. Major General Guy Swan III was appointed as investigating officer. He gave a progress report to McChrystal on November 3 in Kabul and handed in his full findings on November 9. Swan noted that Camp Keating had had a number of serious vulnerabilities, including “insufficient overhead cover for battle positions,” an “oversized compound relative to troop strength,” and a mortar position that should have been more defensible. He faulted four officers—Brown, George, Porter, and Portis—for their “failure to improve COP Keating’s base defense and AT/FP” (that is, “antiterrorism/force protection”) “plans at the troop and squadron level.”

  Porter, who had since been promoted to major, “bears the greatest responsibility,” Swan concluded. The captain had rejected recommendations for additional protection, including lumber and sandbags that were already available at the outpost. He hadn’t even let his lieutenants inspect the Claymore mines to make sure they were working, Swan noted.

  Lieutenant Colonel Brad Brown “also bears significant responsibility,” Swan’s report stated. Brown was criticized for having known that the outpost was in a “precarious” position, given that he had visited it several times, beginning with his attendance at the memorial service for Captain Yllescas. Moreover, Brown knew that Porter “was not a strong leader,” so he should have been more sensitive and paid more attention to security plans at Combat Outpost Keating.

  In addition, Swan faulted Captain Stoney Portis, who had assumed command of the outpost less than two weeks before the attack, for the fact that “he made no significant improvements in force protection.” Portis had increased the amount of time that troops were on “stand-to” guard duty, but he hadn’t added patrols, checked the Claymore mines, assigned extra personnel to “stand-to” battle positions, or switched up response patterns or battle drills.

  Finally, Swan faulted Colonel George, because as brigade commander, he bore overall responsibility, and having visited the outpost twice, he also knew firsthand of the outpost’s vulnerabilities.

  Swan volunteered a recommendation that the “obviously indefensible or high risk COPs and OPs” should be closed. Brown had briefed McChrystal on brigade plans to shut down Combat Outposts Keating and Lowell as well as Observation Post Fritsche, the report acknowledged, but a number of other pressing matters had interrupted those plans, including the Afghan elections, the siege at Barg-e-Matal, and the search for MIA soldier Bowe Bergdahl. Moreover, according to Swan, the plan to abandon Combat Outpost Keating had itself “inadvertently undermined the focus on current base defense and preparedness.” Troops “were unclear, even confused, about their mission for anything beyond ‘defending the COP.’ ” Furthermore, Swan declared, the base was undermanned.

  Brown was furious when he read the report. Every base in his area of operations was undermanned. Between them, Combat Outpost Keating and Observation Post Fritsche had had three out of the ten platoons total in the squadron—and those ten had been fashioned out of an original eight, so that their troops were already stretched thin. Combat Outpost Lowell had two platoons. Observation Post Mace and Observation Post Bari Alai had only one each. Swan had asked Brown why he hadn’t repositioned more forces to Combat Outpost Keating, and Brown had explained that as it was, the rest of the squadron had barely enough troops to defend itself and keep the road open. Swan told him he should have asked Colonel George for more men, but George knew how thin they were, he was aware that every unit had the same problem—that was precisely why they had worked so hard to close the small outposts. But Swan hadn’t been tasked with looking at the larger problems of Regional Command, or of Afghanistan as a whole. He was focused solely on Combat Outpost Keating. That had been his order.

  On December 27, 2009, McChrystal determined that there was a need for him to issue a “memorandum for the record” stating the obvious: many of the decisive factors identified in the investigation as having contributed to the attack on COP Keating were the fault of people far above the colonel, lieutenant colonel, and two captains—namely, himself and other generals. The Army assessed the value of the loss of Combat Outpost Keating at $6.2 million, including LRASs, radios, machine guns, Humvees, and night-vision goggles.

  In a letter acknowledging his formal reprimand, Brown, on January 2, 2010, wrote that while he felt “a sense of personal accountability for every soldier killed or wounded in this unit, and most acutely those who died on 3 October,” there were other factors that the Army needed to consider.

  He had long tried
to close Combat Outpost Keating, he noted, believing that it “and the other isolated outposts in Kamdesh District served little functional purpose in the counterinsurgency effort, exacerbated ethnic and tribal tensions to the advantage of the insurgency, and placed a majority of the squadron’s resources in tactically untenable positions.”

  As to Porter’s failures as commander, Brown admitted that he had been “aware of the leadership issues at COP Keating, and had asked and received approval” from Colonel George “to change command of that troop ninety days after their arrival in theater.” After October 3, Brown had learned that instead of complaining to him about problems at the outpost, including serious concerns about force protection, the troops had decided instead to wait for their new commander, Stoney Portis, to arrive and resolve the issues.

  “Leadership issues” notwithstanding, Brown didn’t think the heaps of criticism being flung at Porter were fair. Could Combat Outpost Keating have been better fortified? Sure, Brown concluded, but it wasn’t as if any of them could have done anything to change the fact that the outpost was located at the bottom of a valley surrounded by three steep mountains teeming with enemy fighters. Soldiers under Porter—and generals above him—were looking to blame someone, and while Porter might not have been a strong commander, at the end of the day, his failures paled in comparison with the challenges posed by the camp’s geography and the command’s decision to scatter small and remote bases throughout one of the most dangerous corners of the world. Brown called the October 3 battle “not only a tactical victory for the coalition, but a resounding operational defeat for the Taliban and the enemies of Afghanistan. The Taliban’s loss of key leaders and fighters severely weakened their sway with the population in both Nuristan and eastern Kunar.” Brown was talking about the overall picture in the region—“Bad” Abdul Rahman and hundreds of his fighters dead, the former HIG commander Mullah Sadiq in Afghanistan and beginning to play a positive role—but this remark later prompted a U.S. State Department official to ask, “If that’s a victory, what does defeat look like?”