by Sean Parnell
Normally, the platoon sergeant would lead the men in that sort of situation, but with R. Kelly flying around theater “squaring away our mail,” the de facto leadership of Delta had long since passed to Big Red. After June 10, Greeson and I had had a closed-door meeting with him to discuss the realities outside the wire. We promised that no matter what happened, we’d always come to each other’s aid should one of our platoons end up in trouble again. That moment sealed a bond of trust between us that helped mitigate Second Platoon’s behavior and set our minds at ease. Neither platoon would ever have to rely on Sergeant Burley again. In a scrap, I knew we could count on Big Red.
“Where’s Captain Dye?” I asked, surprised not to see him.
“Operations center,” Newton replied.
I took it as a sign of trust that he’d given me a company minus to maneuver with today.
I sketched the plan for Newton: “We’ll drop artillery to soften them up. As soon as the last shell lands, we hit the objective area. They’ll have no time to react before we arrive. Got it?”
“Roger, sir.”
“We’ll advance to contact. If we get ambushed, get to your nearest rally point, establish a perimeter, and counterattack if you can.”
Newton grinned. “I like that.”
Our new Prophet spook, Sergeant K, reported, “Lieutenant, the enemy just reported Delta’s arrival. Said, ‘Four more camels just showed up. They’ll be coming for us soon.’ ”
“Okay. Reuter, let’s pound ’em with artillery.”
In seconds, the first 105 shells left the guns back at Bermel some fifteen kilometers away. They whistled overhead to impact on the far side of Rakhah Ridge.
“Mount up,” I ordered. Thoughts of home vanished. I existed in the moment, without a past, with no confidence that there’d be a future beyond this next fight. It was a cold and rootless place, but it was where I needed to be. Only the men and my bond with them anchored me to the here and now.
The Prophet spooks reported, “Okay, we’re on target. One just said, ‘They’re hitting us with artillery.’ ”
I smiled at that.
A moment later, we got another update: “One of them just reported that the shells are impacting close.’ ”
The smile widened. We’d picked the right area to hammer.
I radioed the platoon: “Okay, guys, be ready. They’re waiting for us.”
Bermel called in: “Their commander just told them, ‘Stay in your positions, and the artillery won’t hurt you.’ ”
“Did any of his subordinates reply?” I asked.
“Yeah. They said, ‘Allahu akbar.’ ”
Fuck. Doesn’t sound like they’re going to break and run.
“Let’s go,” I ordered. Outlaws leading the way, Campbell on point, our nine Humvees churned through the dust toward the back side of Rakhah Ridge.
“Okay, three-six, they see you. ‘Here they come. Be ready.’ ”
Time to see how Special Forces guys fight.
We hadn’t gone far when the Prophet spooks called in one final enemy message: “Remember, aim for their gunner’s heads.”
Eighteen
Arrival Moment
The 105s went silent. We rolled around Gangikheyl Hill, passed the May 7 ambush site, and reached an intersection behind Rakhah Ridge. Delta Platoon swung right. We swung left. We’d hunt the enemy down and reinforce whichever element made contact.
Campbell’s rig reached a large, sweeping turn in the road, forcing us to slow down. Ridges and hills dotted the landscape around us. The enemy could be hiding on any one of a number of pieces of high ground. The hackles on the back of my neck stood at attention.
We’re about to be hit.
I reached for my handset to warn the platoon.
The enemy volley fired almost a dozen RPGs at us simultaneously. Campbell’s rig took a direct hit. The explosion slammed McLeod against the side of his turret, breaking his forearm. He slipped and nearly fell into the turret. But through the swirl of smoke and flame, I saw him hanging on with his one good hand. He wasn’t going down.
Another rocket slammed into our truck right between the doors. Shrapnel and sheets of flame jetted upward, burning Chris Brown in a dozen places.
“What the fuck?” he screamed. “How many goddamned RPGs do they have?”
Behind us, the opening volley hit two more Humvees. Shrapnel wounded four of our five gunners. Dugin took a nasty face wound that sent blood pouring over his IBA and splattered his turret. Howie, his hands still recovering from the burns he had received on June 10, was studded with RPG shrapnel across his arms.
Miraculously, none of the rigs went down. As accurate as their volley had been, the enemy had failed to score a catastrophic kill.
The radio squawked, “We’re getting hit! We’re getting hit!” It was Captain Herrera. Several kilometers away, Delta Platoon had been ambushed simultaneously. Both elements had their hands full. We would not be coming to each other’s rescue. The enemy had changed tactics on us again.
Machine-gun fire whipsawed across our column. A second volley of RPGs followed the first. The turret blast shields sparked and clanged as bullets and whirring steel splinters ricocheted off them.
All five of my gunners clicked their safeties off and went cyclic. The Mark 19 boomed. Brown’s 240 spewed fire. The fifty-cals chugged. In seconds, we created a halo of lead and explosives around us that sent at least some of the enemy diving for cover.
I keyed my radio. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Chris Brown get thrashed around in the turret from another RPG. “We’re in their kill zone, keep moving. Don’t stop. Rally at checkpoint Bandar Two. We’ll circle the wagons and counterattack.” Over the company net, I heard Delta Platoon doing the same thing, using a building we called Hotel California as its rally point. It was three kilometers south from us.
Campbell’s rig sped up. I saw McCleod handling his hundred-pound Ma Deuce virtually one-handed. He hammered the enemy fighting positions, some of which were less than a hundred and fifty meters away.
More RPGs lanced across the road, exploding on either side of our rigs. The gunners poured it on.
“Doin’ great, guys, keep it up.”
We rounded the corner, and the road opened up into a narrow valley. I expected we’d be out of the kill zone at that point, but even as we hit a straight stretch and picked up more speed, the enemy continued to deliver withering volleys on us.
Their kill zone on May 7 was only a couple hundred meters wide.
The ridges on either side of us looked alive with fireflies. Muzzle flashes, and lots of them.
The road rose out of the valley and passed an abandoned village perched atop a plateau. That was our rally point. It was almost two kilometers away.
“Reuter?”
“Yeah, LT?”
“Start calling fire on our target reference points along these ridges.”
“Roger that.”
He went to work. As we sped through the valley, towering mushroom clouds formed and billowed on either side of us as the 105s barraged the enemy. Our column split the space between barrages, dealing out death as we rolled for the rally point. Not an unnecessary word was shared. Nobody screamed. There were no obscenities hurled at the enemy, just lead and explosives.
We’d become cold professionals.
We hit the high ground, still taking fire. A tire shredded. Rockets sizzled past. We had ammo to burn this time around, and nobody held back. If our machine-gun barrels warped, so be it. We’d replace them during a lull.
We reached our rally point, guns still blazing. The edge of the enemy’s ambush line was now about 600 meters away, primarily across the road on the east side of the valley. Their muzzle flashes winked on even as our drivers formed a perimeter.
The rally point would be a perfect defensive position. Years
ago, a village had thrived there. It was a ghost town now, the compounds long abandoned and gone to ruin. The outer walls of nearly every qalat had partially collapsed, which actually served us well. We used the breaks like giant firing slits for our Humvees. The rigs nosed up to them, and our dismounts bailed out and formed up into fire teams. With a few quick orders, they swarmed into the nearby buildings to ensure that no enemies lurked within.
Our temporary medic, Doc Pham, ran up to me and asked, “Lieutenant, where should I set up the casualty collection point?”
Pantoja would never have asked me that. He’d have had it handled.
“Work that out with Sergeant Sabatke,” I replied.
“Sir, we have more indirect coming. No air available due to the weather,” Reuter reported. Gray clouds overhead darkened the landscape, and dust in the air mingled with the clouds to constrict visibility for our aviators.
I called Bermel and gave Captain Dye an update.
“We’re sending help to you,” he told me.
I didn’t think we needed it, but better always to error on the side of caution.
Sergeant K, our new Prophet spook who had replaced Dixon after he’d gotten wounded, stacked up with one of our fire teams. They flowed past a crumbled wall and into a courtyard, ready to enter and clear a squat one-story dwelling. On the far side of the valley, a machine gun went cyclic. Bullets chewed the outer wall, blowing clouds of dust and bits of dried mud into the air. The gunner adjusted fire and raked the courtyard. Sergeant K was shot off his feet, a bullet in his ankle. Doc Pham rushed to his aid.
Sergeant “Bear” Ferguson appeared at my side. He and Tony Garrett had come out with us, and I was grateful to have their mortar available. I pointed at the nearest enemy muzzle flashes, and they went to work.
Dugin, his face a mask of blood, climbed out of his turret and dropped beside me. His helmet was askew, and his chin strap had been unclipped.
“Dugin, how you doing?” I asked.
Wild-eyed, he froze like a hunting dog and made a sweeping gesture with one arm. He looked as though he were moving in slow motion. “There’s the enemy! There’s the enemy!” he shouted melodramatically.
Chris Brown saw it and checked fire for a moment. “Dugin!” he screamed. “Shut up and shoot!”
Dugin wiped a fresh trail of blood off the side of his face and remained next to the vehicle, rifle in one hand. “Sir,” he called to the Special Forces colonel, “I’m sorry I’ve let you down. I’m sorry.”
The colonel looked confused, unsure why my gunner was talking to him.
“Dugin, either shoot back or get to the casualty collection point,” I ordered.
“I’m sorry. I’ve let you all down,” he blurted again. Mumbling, he went to go get treated by Doc Pham.
The other Special Forces guys dismounted with us. In the middle of the fight, they huddled up behind one of our trucks and popped their laptop open. One of them set up a miniature satellite array. Soon another was banging away on the keyboard. This particular team reported straight to Special Operations Command, and they were doing just that in real time with some form of secure instant messaging.
Technology. Gotta love it.
The men finished clearing the abandoned dwellings. Campbell, Wheat, and Sabo barked orders. The men fanned out to form a perimeter among the ruins. Soon the entire platoon, except for the gunners and drivers, lay prone, using the half-fallen walls as cover from the considerable incoming that raked across the village.
The Special Forces colonel dashed past me and dived onto his belly beside a chunk of fallen wall. Rifle to his shoulder, he triggered off a string of controlled shots. I swear I saw him grinning.
Howie, Brown, and McCleod stayed in the fight despite their wounds. McCleod’s forearm was already swelling, and he couldn’t use his hand at all now. I marveled at those young men.
The Mark 19 belched grenades. The fifties flayed and ripped. Brown’s 240 went cyclic again.
The ridge on the far side of the valley was soon blanketed in smoke.
The enemy fought on but did not maneuver on us. Perhaps with Galang down, they’d lost their taste for close-quarters combat. We were gaining fire superiority, and the time was growing ripe for a counterattack.
It would not be easy. We would have to cross a lot of ground to get to them. But no way were we going to just sit here. I wanted to punish them, deal them a decisive blow that would wipe this cell out once and for all.
I checked in with Big Red. Delta Platoon had its hands full. It had circled the wagons at Hotel California, but one of its Humvees had suffered a catastrophic RPG strike. The men were dishing it out, but since they rolled lean, they didn’t have the dismounts to kick out into the fight that we had. For now, though, they were holding their own.
The Special Forces team slapped their laptop closed and joined the fight, their silenced weapons making dull tunk-tunk-tunk sounds.
The quick reaction force arrived. Once again, the marines with their Afghan protégés had come out to reinforce us. As their pickups and Humvees bounced into our perimeter, I heard somebody say, “Why the fuck is Second Platoon always MIA?”
That’s on Burley, not the men.
With the reinforcements, I had well over a company of troops—120 men—that I could maneuver. I called back to Bermel to talk to Captain Dye and let him know I intended to counterattack.
We held fire superiority now. We kept up the volume of fire, mowing through our available rounds. Even though we’d brought twice the usual ammo load, Sabo was taking no chances. He worked furiously to transfer ammo from the Afghan trucks to ours until we had more than enough bullets to burn.
I called a leaders’ meeting in one of the ruined compounds. My squad leaders gathered quickly. The Special Forces colonel joined our circle. His face glistened with sweat. “This is like the Wild West!” he exclaimed. “I haven’t been in a fight like this since Colombia in the eighties!”
“Listen up,” I said. “We’re going to counterattack that ridge.”
The colonel lit up. “What?”
“We’ve got a good base of fire. Sabo, you stay with the gunners. Campbell, Wheat, get your men and come with me.”
“We’re counterattacking?” the colonel asked.
“Yes.”
“Right the fuck on. Let’s go get ’em!” he blurted out, a wicked grin on his face. My squad leaders burst out laughing. Coming from an old gray-haired warrior, the words seemed incongruous.
Right then, the bond between the colonel and the rest of us became complete. “We’ll move in five. Go get ready.” Everyone scrambled to assemble for the attack.
I returned to my truck one last time to check in with Delta before we moved. It had lost a second truck to an RPG, but another element of Afghan troops had arrived with their marine embeds, so they had the situation in hand. I told Big Red what we were about to do, then wished him luck.
Just before I gave the order to advance, the enemy struck.
Eight men wearing man jams, field jackets, and chest rigs full of AK mags boiled out of a wadi that ran along the flank and rear of our plateau. We’d just finished reposturing for our counterassault, and now we had to pivot in place to deal with this new threat.
A hundred meters away, they made a rush for my truck, screaming and firing from the hip as they ran. My gunners spun their turrets around and hammered at them, but we’d been caught by surprise and our accuracy suffered.
They went to ground and started sniping at us. Ferguson direct-fired his mortar at them. Our machine guns scythed back and forth. Our dismounts repositioned themselves to add their weapons to the fusillade.
An insurgent jumped to his feet and jackrabbited for the wadi. Our machine guns chased him all the way until he vanished behind the wadi’s lip. A second later, two more broke cover and fell back. The others stole away. Within minut
es, the enemy squad had vanished.
What the hell was that?
When I returned my attention to the ridge on the far side of the valley, I understood exactly what had just happened. We’d just been juked right out of our jocks. Silently, I cursed myself for not anticipating it.
That eight-man team had been a feint. They had hooked behind us, lain in wait for the perfect moment, then made a show of assaulting us right as we were about to jump off with our own attack. Their move had derailed ours and forced us to react. With our attention diverted, the main enemy force had broken contact. They had slipped over the ridge to the east and disappeared toward Pakistan.
The din of battle died away. On the north side of the valley, the enemy disengaged from Delta Platoon as well. Soon silence graced the late afternoon. We stood alert, fingers on our triggers, coldly awaiting their next move. But they had gone, and once again we held the battlefield.
The Special Forces colonel pulled me aside. “Lieutenant, you guys deal with this every day?”
“Just about every time we leave the wire, sir.”
“Nobody knows how intense things are out here. I want you to know I’m going to personally tell Major General Freakley about it.”
“Thank you, sir. We’re pretty shorthanded. Could use more troops.”
“I’ll pass that along.”
“Thanks.” I needed a cigarette. Then I remembered that I didn’t smoke.
“You ever think about going Special Forces?”
Not really. But I didn’t want to offend the colonel. “Sometimes, sir.”
“You get in touch with me if you ever decide that’s what you want.” He put a hand on my shoulder and smiled. Looking around at the men busy at their tasks, he lowered his voice and said, “You know, these soldiers respect your decisions.”
Without thinking, I said, “I love these men, sir.”
I’d never said that out loud before.
Perhaps there are no heroes, just men who are not afraid to love.
I thought of Brown, Howie, and McCleod. I thought of Dixon picking up Baldwin even after he’d been shot and was going into shock. I thought of Pantoja ignoring the ragged hole in his face as he treated everyone around him.
