Outlaw Platoon

by Sean Parnell

  Lieutenant Colonel Toner selected Outlaw Platoon to spearhead the battalion’s main assault. Second Platoon would follow behind us. A company of Afghan troops would dismount and support us from the ridges on either side of Route Trans Am. Delta would function as our quick reaction force. Another company from the battalion would support our right flank with a secondary thrust along a track south of Route Trans Am in concert with our own.

  Forty-eight hours before we began our offensive, Lieutenant Colonel Toner notified the Pakistani military that we would be operating on the border. All of us assumed that information would be passed to the Haqqani Network. There would be no element of surprise for us to exploit.

  During our final briefings, Sergeant Burley made one of his characteristic bombastic comments. It rang of false bravado, and our battalion sergeant major would not let it pass. “Oh, come on, Burley,” he said derisively, “doesn’t everyone call your platoon the ‘Running Birds’?”

  Stung, Burley went silent. That didn’t bode well for us. If this operation was going to work, Second and Third Platoons would need to work closely together. I feared that the animosity between us could derail the mission.

  The next morning, we poured out of Bermel more than four hundred strong. Our part of the assault included fifteen Humvees among our two platoons, Dye’s company section, and Lieutenant Colonel Toner’s command element. We moved unopposed to the gaping maw of Route Trans Am. It would be our jump-off point.

  As we waited for the other units to get into position, I dismounted and checked on my men. I sensed an eagerness in their mood that had been dormant since early summer. We had the power, the men, and the support to deliver a knockout blow to an enemy that had tormented us for almost a year. This would be their reckoning. Get it over with, and we could go home on a high note.

  The Afghan troops filed by on both shoulders of the road, their marine embedded trainers walking alongside them. The ANA moved with a different vibe that day. Straight-backed, uniforms squared away, eyes brimming with self-assurance—these Afghans were ready to fight.

  One of the marines saw me watching his men and said, “This is gonna be a fun one, eh?”

  “We’ll see,” I offered.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll be good.”

  The ANA peeled off the road and scaled the ridges on either side of us. Route Trans Am lies in the middle of a valley that runs east–west to the Pakistani border. The ridgelines dominate the valley all the way to the frontier. With the ANA advancing along them, we’d keep the enemy from hammering us from the high ground, and our force of Humvees could serve as mobile support-by-fire positions for both companies.

  Lieutenant Colonel Toner walked up alongside me. “You ready to do this, Sean?”

  Through the deployment, he’d rarely talked to me. His tone conveyed confidence. Just seeing him with us inspired me. His command presence was amazing.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied, trying to mimic his calm.

  “Good.” He smiled and slapped my shoulder, then turned to go chat with Captain Dye. They talked in private farther down the column while I stared out at the forbidden landscape ahead.

  You have to be perfect on this one, Sean. No mistakes.

  A few hundred meters up Route Trans Am, a dirt track ran off to the north through some low ground that bisected the ridgeline. Three figures emerged from that little side trail, all toting AK-47s.

  Chris Brown spotted them right away. So did Rowley, who was my driver that day. Nobody could handle a Humvee like Rowley, so I usually made sure he rolled with me.

  “Hey, are those ANA?” Chris asked.

  As if in answer, one of the figures exposed himself fully. For twenty seconds or more, we stared at each other, neither side making a move. Then, in sight of hundreds of coalition troops, the man raised his AK-47, grasping it one-handed by its pistol grip, as he defiantly shook it over his head.

  “What the fuck is he doing?” Rowley asked, half in awe.

  His two buddies moved to join him. They wore black headdresses, black man jams, and the typical green chest rigs full of AK mags.

  Behind me, I heard Lieutenant Colonel Toner say, “Those are not ANA.”

  He and Captain Dye started walking forward.

  The enemy taunted us. An RPG exploded among the Afghan troops on the north-side ridge. The three enemy fighters uttered a war cry, then dashed up the trail and disappeared. The ANA went berserk. The entire company spontaneously charged after the insurgents, shooting wildly as they sprinted along the ridge.

  Lieutenant Colonel Toner saw this and intuited the situation at once. He grabbed his radio. “Cat three, this is Cat six, stop the ANA. Repeat, stop the ANA.”

  But it was too late. Their bloodlust stoked, the Afghan troops veered north and disappeared over the ridge, their marines chasing after them. A sudden eruption of gunfire broke out on the far side of the ridge. Rocket-propelled grenades exploded. AKs barked. Machine guns chattered and boomed.

  Disorganized and strung out from the pursuit, the Afghan company ran headlong into a cunningly placed ambush. Those three men had been bait to lure our men over the ridge after them. Hit from three sides, the ANA started taking casualties. With our Afghans pinned down in the kill zone, the enemy counterattacked and cut them off from us.

  The marine radio operator came over our frequency, his voice panicky. “Lieutenant Burthonette is down! Bleeding bad . . . ANA is going down too.”

  “Sean?” Lieutenant Colonel Toner asked.

  He didn’t need to say a thing. “I’m on it, sir.”

  Chris Cowen was on point that day, the very tip of the battalion’s spear. I ran to him and said, “Chris, take us in.”

  “Roger that.”

  A moment later, Outlaw Platoon rolled into the fight.

  On the far side of the ridge, the ANA had six men seriously wounded. The marine radioman called back to us and tried to describe his position. The company was trapped in a depression and being raked from elevated positions. “Lieutenant B’s hurt bad. Shot in pelvis. Arterial bleeding.”

  “Give us your GPS coordinates,” I ordered him. The radioman couldn’t give me clear directions.

  “Don’t have a GPS, sir.”

  Fuck. I keyed the mike and said, “Okay, give me your grid.”

  “Don’t have a map,” the radioman’s voice cracked.

  “We’ll find you, hang in there.” Switching radios, I told Cowan, “Take us onto that trail running north.”

  We made the left turn. The trail ran between two sets of cliffs that towered more than a thousand feet above our heads. As soon as our last truck got on line, the enemy struck from concealed positions along the cliffs. Machine guns lashed our trucks, and I watched Cowan’s take an unrivaled beating. We pushed through, our gunners unable to raise their weapons high enough to shoot back.

  “Keep going, we’ll get through the kill zone and find the marines,” I told the platoon.

  We came out from between the cliffs into more open country. Somewhere to our left, a marine lay bleeding out, but we could not see him or the men with him. On the slope to our right, muzzle flashes winked and glowed. My gunners could bring their weapons to bear now, and they went to work suppressing and killing the enemy.

  John Saint Jean, our Haitian national, manned the fifty mounted on Hall’s truck. As he traversed, looking for targets, he spotted an enemy fighter in a tree partway up the eastern slope. The ins
urgent saw Saint Jean’s barrel swing toward him and brought his own rifle to bear. They opened fire simultaneously.

  Saint Jean’s burst knocked the enemy fighter out of the tree. He tumbled down the slope and flopped onto his back beside the road next to my truck’s right-front fender. His AK came to rest between his legs. His arms lay limp at his side. At first I thought he was dead, but then his head slowly fell to his left shoulder and his flat-brimmed Afghan hat fell to the ground, revealing long, well-groomed black hair. He was not dark-skinned, so he could not be an Afghan. Dimly, I wondered if he could be Chechen.

  His reedy mustache twitched as he grimaced in pain, revealing pearl white teeth. Then his face went slack. His chin moved upward, and he speared me with dark, hate-filled eyes.

  His chest moved up and down as he took ragged gasps. His clothes were soaked in blood, some of which was spilling into the dirt by his side. I noticed he wore Merrell combat boots, which were better footwear than what we had been issued. His AK appeared brand new.

  Saint Jean had hit him in the stomach. How the fifty hadn’t torn him in half is anyone’s guess. Now, in his final earthly moments, his eyes betrayed nothing but loathing. No fear, no love; whatever indoctrination he’d experienced had burned away the compassion in his soul. As he died, all he had to hang on to was hate.

  “Let me finish him, sir!” Chris Brown shouted from the turret. He was too close to kill with the 240, so my gunner had shouldered a Mossberg 500 shotgun, which he had trained on the dying man.

  To hell with this guy. Look at him. He’s filth. Some men just need killing.

  The enemy fighter awaited his fate, no prayer moving on his lips, his eyes his only weapon now. They bored into me. I felt poisoned by his gaze.

  “Come on, sir. Let me kill him!”

  How I wanted to give that order, to see him die.

  “No.”

  “What? Whaddya mean, no?”

  His eyes never moved from mine. I’ve never felt a more malign and sinister presence. This dying man was corrupted by his hate. As he lay helpless, that was all he had left.

  “Sir! Let me fucking kill him!”

  “Don’t do it, Brown.”

  “Why not?” His voice sounded almost anguished. Chris Brown wanted vengeance. I didn’t blame him. Nor did I blame him for arguing with me, which under normal circumstances he never would have done.

  Blood began pooling between the man’s legs. His hands twitched. His eyes never broke contact with mine.

  “Please!”

  “No, Brown. You will not shoot this man.”

  “Why the FUCK not, sir?”

  Why not? It had nothing to do with the rules of land warfare or compassion or mercy or my Christian faith.

  In college, I had written a paper on the My Lai massacre. In the course of the research, I had met and interviewed some of the soldiers who had taken part in the killing. At the moment, they’d been swollen with rage and had slaughtered old men, women, and children. Though they had survived their time in Vietnam, they had come home lost souls, destroyed by the realization of what they had done. The guilt they’d felt ever since had ruined their lives.

  I loved Chris Brown too much to let him burden his conscience with this man’s foul soul. Twenty-five years from now, I needed Chris to be living a happy, fulfilled life. Cole would never have that chance. But Chris could. And I would not let him squander it with a trigger pull I know he’d never forget.

  “No. Rowley, drive.”

  Rowley edged us past the dying man. His eyes tracked mine until we left him in our dust.

  Three-six, this is three-three,” said Jeff Hall.

  “Go ahead,”

  “We have a casualty.”

  “Who?”

  “Saint Jean, three-six. Shot in the head.”

  The man we’d just abandoned to fate had hit our Haitian national at the same time he’d been shot in the stomach.

  “What’s his status, three-three?”

  “He’ll make it. I’ll take care of him.”

  I called the marine radioman and told him to pop smoke so we could get a fix on his position.

  “Have no smoke,” he said.

  “Can you see us?” I asked.

  “Negative, can’t see you. So much blood. Hurry!”

  “We’ll pop smoke. Once you fix our position, talk us onto yours. Got it?”

  “Roger.”

  Colt Wallace opened his armored door in the middle of the firestorm striking our rigs and tossed a purple smoke canister into the road. Greeson did the same.

  “I can see yellow smoke! I can see yellow smoke!” the marine shouted.

  Shit. We don’t have yellow smoke. This guy’s losing it.

  “Tell us how to get to you!” My patience wore thin. We had not escaped the enemy kill zone. In fact, the volume of fire had increased. My trucks were getting shellacked, and every second wasted was one more my gunners had to endure.

  “You’ve gone too far! Turn around and come back!”

  Oh, fuck. Are you kidding?

  The trail was so narrow, we’d have to change direction with individual three-point turns.

  In the middle of a firefight, this would be no easy task. We’d be virtually stationary for several seconds, making us prime targets for RPG teams. I gave the order. The drivers nosed to the edge of the road, then backed up with the gunners guiding from the turrets.

  Back and forth, back and forth, we eased around even as the enemy hammered away at us.

  Cowan reported in, “We’re taking a shitload of machine-gun fire.” As he spoke, I heard three thunks in quick succession. “They’ve just about shot my window out. We can’t sit here any longer.”

  We completed the turn, then slowly started back down the trail. Greeson’s rig now led the way, while Cowan’s held the rear. In violation of our own established tactics, we had doubled back in the middle of a kill zone.

  Swept with fire, windows spiderwebbed with cracks, tires shredded by repeated hits, we searched for the wounded marine officer. The marine was getting hysterical and becoming incoherent. We stopped on the trail as I asked him to give cardinal directions. I did not want to overshoot and have to double back again.

  Greeson came over the radio and said, “We’re up front. We’ll handle it.” His rig inched forward through the sea of tracers and lead sparking like fireflies off his Humvee.

  No luck. We couldn’t find the marine.

  An RPG hammered Hall’s rig. Gardea had climbed into the turret after Saint Jean had gone down. Shrapnel from the rocket had sprayed across his turret. One splinter had flown up under his helmet and ricocheted into his forehead directly between his eyes.

  Enough of this. We needed to get Saint Jean and Gardea out. I made the decision to fall back. We would evacuate our two wounded men, reorganize, and figure out another way to get to the wounded marine. Clearly, sitting here or wandering around in the kill zone was only going to get more of my men wounded.

  We pushed between the cliffs, raked by gunfire the entire way. A pair of Apache gunships swung over the ridgeline, cannons blazing. Their strafing run caused the enemy fire to slacken long enough for us to finally escape.

  Back at Trans Am, we turned right and rolled back to Second Platoon, our Humvees riddled with bullet marks. Greeson dismounted and went to work evacuating our casualties. Captain Dye and I huddled up to discuss our next play. He ordered us to counterattack
on foot over the ridge and down into the ANA’s position, link up with the marines, and call in a medevac chopper.

  Second Platoon would form the main part of the assault; Third Platoon would support with another thrust through the kill zone until we could link up on the north slope of the ridge.

  Jeff Hall came up to us and said, “There’s no way you’re leaving me out of this. I’m going up there like it or not.” On top of being a Ranger, he was Pathfinder- and Jumpmaster-qualified. There’d be nobody better to work with the chopper crew to get the marine out of the fight and to a surgical unit.

  “Okay, do what you need.”

  Second Platoon had recently received a replacement officer, Lieutenant Carnegie, who had taken over command after Lieutenant Taylor had gone home to deal with a family emergency. Burley had finally returned to being the platoon sergeant, not its leader. Carnegie had endured a tough learning curve that fall, but he was coming into his own. He took fifteen men from his platoon, plus Jeff Hall and part of his squad, and led the way up the ridge.

  The joint platoon attack slammed into the enemy and broke through the growing cordon around the trapped Afghan troops. As Carnegie and Hall fought their way forward, we took our Humvees back down the narrow trail. As we battled our way through the enemy kill zone, Hall found Lieutenant Burthonette and treated his wounds as best he could. He called in the medevac helicopter, but since there was no flat ground, the bird was unable to land. The only way to get Burthonette out would be with a jungle penetrator lowered from the Black Hawk. This would require the bird to hover over the fight as the crew unwound the device. Then the wounded marine would be placed inside and reeled up to the aircraft.

  Earlier in the deployment, such an evacuation had been tried, only to have the penetrator’s cable snap. The mishap had killed four men. Knowing this, Hall had to talk the Black Hawk crew into giving it a chance. That they’d be hovering over a raging firefight made it doubly dangerous.