The Only Thing Worth Dying For

by Eric Blehm

  After twenty minutes, the trucks rose out of the valley and turned off the road onto hard-packed red clay dotted with angular rocks. Reaching a saddle between two peaks, the men parked and got out. To the south, the mountains obstructed their view; to the east, they could make out the main road as it left the desert and threaded south through the mountains.

  Amerine, Mike, and Alex stood around a map spread out on the hood of their truck and estimated this range to be about fifteen miles across from north to south. Beyond, the terrain sloped down gentle foothills that fanned out onto a vast high-desert plain on which sat Damana, their next destination. The farming community was still under the control of the Taliban owing to its proximity to Kandahar, fifteen miles farther south.

  “These mountains are where Hamid expects to encounter Taliban patrols,” said Amerine. “But the larger forces are right on the outskirts of the city.”

  “Do we have any idea how many?” asked Mike.

  “Tens of thousands, down from the hundreds of thousands thought to be in Afghanistan when we started.”

  “Which means we don’t have a clue,” said Alex. “I’ll get more recon up tonight. Really have them work these mountains, so we don’t get surprised by anything.”

  “Shit,” said Mike, looking at a puddle forming on the ground. “Radiator’s leaking.”

  “Call Triple A,” Amerine said with a grin.

  Bari Gul walked over, crouched down, and peered under their vehicle. He beckoned over one of his men, who raised the hood, uncapped the radiator, and poured in a pouch of chewing tobacco.

  “He says this will close the leak,” said Seylaab. “It should get you back to town, but then you will need a better repair, or a new truck.”

  “Tashakor,” said Amerine, thanking the man in Pashto.

  Mike was scanning the desert to the east, between them and the road back to Petawek. “Is that what I think it is?” he said, lowering his binoculars and pointing to two parallel indentations traversing below a ridgeline.

  Amerine could see the marks without binoculars. “Tank tracks,” he said.

  “The ground is rock hard,” Mike said. “No telling how old they are, but there certainly weren’t any tanks in Petawek.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Amerine. “Alex—we got air?”

  “Yes, we do. I’ll bring one this way for another look.”

  To Seylaab, Amerine said, “Ask Bari Gul if he knows anything about tanks.”

  Seylaab translated, then said, “He doesn’t. Should we go?”

  “Yes. Tell him to be careful,” said Amerine, glancing at the radiator fluid still dripping from their truck before he climbed into the passenger seat.

  “Imagine being chased by a tank, then our truck breaks down,” said Mike as he got behind the wheel.

  “That is not a story I want to tell my grandkids,” said Amerine.

  As the convoy descended the hill in the direction from which they’d come, the men heard the sound of an engine through their open windows. They halted. A large cloud of sand was being kicked up on the main road a couple hundred yards away—whatever created it was hidden from view by a small rise, but it was big.

  “Oh fuck,” said Amerine. “Get me some elevation.”

  They backed up, parking behind a dune to wait. Finally, a giant yellow bulldozer came into view, clearing sand the way a plow clears snow.

  “Well, that was fun,” said Mike.

  “Let’s go back and get a new truck,” said Amerine. “We can tell JD we fled in terror from an Afghan in a bulldozer.”

  Even before he entered Karzai’s headquarters to request a new truck, Amerine knew something was up when he heard the tribal leaders inside talking excitedly. The small receiving room was packed with Afghans sitting shoulder to shoulder and knees to backs, filling every inch of the floor like a human carpet. Karzai was against the far wall, facing men who looked serious, even angry, waving their hands and fists in the air and speaking all at once. When he noticed Amerine, Karzai lifted his hand and the crowd parted slightly, providing a five-inch-wide pathway that Amerine pushed through.

  “What’s all the excitement about?” Amerine asked.

  “Word arrived from Germany,” said Karzai. “I’m being considered for interim leader.”

  Uncertain what this meant, Amerine said, “Interim leader of…”

  “Afghanistan,” said Karzai, who chuckled when Amerine’s eyes widened in surprise. “That was my reaction as well. In Bonn, they have identified a list, and my brother tells me I’m favored to lead the interim government—a whole new administration. The process will lead to a Loya Jirga, then the writing of a new constitution and, in a couple of years, elections for president.”

  “Congratulations,” Amerine said. “Sounds like democracy. But your men don’t appear to be celebrating.”

  “They are angry because there is a rumor that the supporters of King Zahir Shah are lobbying for him to add his name to the list of candidates to be considered. They fear that with his popularity, it would block my chances.” The phone Karzai was holding in his hand rang and he took the call, talking loudly over the din in the room.

  Amerine had known that Karzai would play an important role in bringing the tribes together in support of a post-Taliban government, but his tireless lobbying for the Loya Jirga had seemed to overshadow even himself as a consideration for the top slot in any future government. Now Karzai was the front-runner. Do I call for a helicopter and evac him out of here? Amerine wondered. No, we need Hamid to press the Taliban to surrender. Is there anybody else? No, this army will disintegrate without Hamid. I can’t even get a truck without him.

  When Karzai got off the phone, Amerine said, “Sorry to jump right into business, but I need a new truck.”

  “You will have one before nightfall,” said Karzai.

  Amerine left a few minutes later with a smile on his face, but it faded as he continued to dwell on the dangers ahead. If the Taliban were to focus on killing one person to thwart the campaign, Karzai would be their prime target.

  Approaching Fox at ODA 574’s observation post, Amerine told him the news. “You might want to get down there and talk to him,” he said.

  Fox and Bolduc went straight to Karzai’s headquarters, and JD called the team together.

  “All right,” Amerine said. “This mission just got a whole lot bigger.” He gave a rundown of what was happening in Bonn, then continued: “Our job is to get Hamid to Kandahar and force the Taliban to surrender. Even though he is being considered for interim leader, we are not his bodyguards. We still need to take him to the fight.”

  That evening, Amerine, Fox, Bolduc, and Karzai gathered around a map in the lantern-lit receiving room, now nearly empty except for Karzai’s standard entourage.

  They’d been in Petawek for less than twenty-four hours and already Karzai was receiving updated intelligence from Afghans fleeing Kandahar Province in expectation of a battle. Some of the Taliban defectors who had abandoned their posts were holed up with friends or relatives in nearby villages, Karzai told the Americans; the air strikes over the past two weeks had definitely dissuaded Taliban movements north into Uruzgan Province, and only small patrols limited to one to three vehicles were pushing north of the Arghandab River, the main waterway that wraps around the northern and western outskirts of the city of Kandahar.

  Supporters of Karzai had come to Petawek from Damana, Pashtun farmers who informed Karzai that the Taliban troops stationed in their village were gone. Damana was now being “watched” by smaller Taliban patrols that came from the direction of Kandahar, crossing the Arghandab on a bridge at the town of Shawali Kowt,5 which was three miles south of Damana and ten miles from the city center of Kandahar. According to these reports, it seemed logical to assume that the Taliban would defend Kandahar along the river and specifically at this bridge, the only one for miles.

  “We need to control that bridge,” said Amerine.

  Fox nodded in agreement.
>
  “How big is Damana versus Shawali Kowt?” Amerine asked Karzai.

  “Shawali Kowt is almost a town, stretched along the northern bank of the river. Damana is barely a village. Very few people. Hundreds, versus one or two thousand in Shawali Kowt.”

  “We will move as before, with your forward element seizing Damana in advance of the main body of the convoy,” Fox said to Amerine. “From there, I want you to move out to this hill southwest of the town.” A tightly wound circle of lines on the topographical map indicated a small but steep hillock, perhaps two hundred feet high and a quarter mile beyond Damana in the direction of Shawali Kowt and the bridge.

  “We need to seize Shawali Kowt and take the bridge,” said Amerine, voicing his reservations. “That’s the only way to secure and hold Damana. A major road from Kandahar leads straight to the bridge, so we have to consider it the main avenue of approach for any Taliban coming north to attack.”

  Though Fox understood the bridge’s strategic importance, he felt that pushing so far in one day was overly ambitious, and he was more comfortable with the closer goal of the hillock.

  “For now, plan to look at the hill beyond Damana,” Fox said. “If you can see the whole area from there, it can serve the same purpose.”

  Amerine nodded. “Will do—I’ll go brief the men.”

  Around midnight, more weapons and supplies drifted down from the sky beneath big, billowing parachutes, except for one that “burned in” like a missile and smashed into the ground after its chute failed. ODA 574 prepared for the free-for-all that had occurred at the team’s first airdrop, but the guerrillas hefted the crates into the beds of a few trucks and drove them back to town without incident. Within a half hour, the crates had disappeared into Karzai’s compound.

  At 5 A.M., Mike, Ronnie, and Brent crawled from their sleeping bags and walked over to Karzai’s compound to check the damage to the weapons that had been in the crate with the failed parachute. Soon their hands were coated with Cosmoline—the sticky, oily-smelling rust preventive used to protect guns in long-term storage. The weapons sergeants spread a jumble of broken AK-47s and PKM machine guns on blankets and began to salvage parts. As the sun rose higher, the three men had a growing number of assault rifles and machine guns assembled from what was still usable, and the sharp crack of AK-47 fire echoed off the mountains as they test-fired the weapons before distributing them to the locals along with food, clothing, and blankets.

  Out at the hilltop observation post, the rest of the team was taking turns on watch. Amerine was writing notes in his journal when Alex said, “We’ve got company.”

  Standing up quickly, Amerine looked to the south.

  “No,” said Alex. “Over there.”

  Charlie the spook was approaching from the village, and Amerine walked down off the hill to greet him.

  “Hamid wants to see you,” Charlie said.

  “On my way,” replied Amerine, who grabbed his M4, pulled on his load-bearing vest, and went over to Fox, who was sitting on the tailgate of JD’s truck. “Hamid called for me,” Amerine said, “so I’m heading over to see him.”

  “Let me know if anything is going on,” said Fox.

  “Will do.”

  Amerine and Charlie entered Karzai’s headquarters just as four Afghans were leaving, each of them staring solemnly forward, walking in a line like condemned men. Had it not been for their grave expressions, Amerine would have thought they were his own guerrillas.

  “Jason, I have information about a Taliban headquarters and weapons depot,” said Karzai. “The men you just passed are Taliban deserters. They say there are hundreds of fighters gathered in a walled compound near a madrassa on the edge of a town south of the Arghandab River.”

  On his map, Karzai pointed out the location roughly a mile beyond the bridge at Shawali Kowt. According to the deserters, the town remained staunchly Taliban.

  Dan had been giving Amerine hourly intelligence reports. The Marines were still at Camp Rhino, with a few manning checkpoints on the roads heading into Kandahar from the south. The ODA with Sherzai had begun to disrupt enemy traffic on the roads well outside the city. These American emplacements had a common goal of bottling up the Taliban inside Kandahar, the initial stages of an expected siege. Both the Marines and Sherzai were following Task Force Dagger’s adamant directive to stay out of the city.

  “So this information from these men is a peace offering?” asked Amerine. “Now they are on our side?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you trust them?”

  “I don’t think they are lying.”

  “Then we should direct our bombers there and destroy it?” Amerine asked.

  By now Amerine felt he could read Karzai for signs of doubt—a slightly raised eyebrow or change in posture. He had noticed this when he told him about the encampment that proved to be refugees. This time there was no hesitation. If they didn’t strike the enemy now, they would likely meet them, along with all those weapons, on the road to Kandahar.

  “Then I believe we should move tomorrow,” said Amerine. “After this strike, there’s no reason to wait here another day.”

  Satisfied with the airdrops, Karzai concurred. “Tomorrow morning we depart for Damana.”

  Returning to the observation post, Amerine headed straight to Dan and Wes, who sent SITREPs to Task Force Dagger and brought up satellite imagery of the intended target on their laptops; Alex directed aerial reconnaissance aircraft to the area. Amerine then informed Fox and Bolduc of the new developments, and the three of them were looking at the maps on Alex’s computer when recon pilots radioed that they had “eyes on” the enemy compound. Their report fit the description the deserters had provided, including the two adjacent outbuildings purportedly being used as large weapons caches. A great many vehicles were scattered in the area, a pilot said, “like grazing sheep.”

  Since the target was located near the edge of a populated area, this strike held the greatest risk for collateral damage that Amerine had authorized, and he sought Fox’s opinion. Fox, with a nod from Bolduc, agreed: It was risky but necessary.

  ODA 574 monitored the situation for the rest of the day, learning from the pilots that a steady stream of people was coming and going from these small buildings; it appeared that Taliban fighters were stocking up.

  After sunset, most of the guerrillas and many of the locals from Petawek gathered between Karzai’s compound and ODA 574’s observation post, sitting on blankets or on the tailgates of trucks, their gazes fixed south as if waiting for a drive-in movie to begin. Word had spread that the Americans were attacking a Taliban position, and they were here for the show.

  Finally, Alex said, “The bomber is vectored in—the pilot’s at the right place.”

  Amerine cleared the target hot.

  Within ten minutes, the horizon glowed from the explosions thirty miles away. Some cheers rang out among the Afghans, but at this distance, the ensuing fire was only an orange glow. Apparently unimpressed, many of the guerrillas retired to their encampments.

  The Americans remained fixated. Another explosion blipped on the horizon. Then another. These secondary blasts were from the cached weapons: stores of grenades, RPGs, perhaps even surface-to-air missiles. They continued sporadically, alleviating Amerine’s concerns that the deserters might have fed them bogus intelligence.

  He marked the location on his map with an X, then pulled out his black journal, describing the explosions and distant glow as “death on the horizon.”

  Dawn broke clear and cold on the third of December. The guerrillas were scattered among their vehicles, carpets rolled out on the hardened soil where they had been praying toward Mecca moments before. An hour later, carpets rolled up, MREs eaten, third cups of tea or coffee drunk, most of the bipeds in the vicinity were still sitting on their asses—another late start. “It’s Afghan Standard Time,” Mike said to Wes. “It’s a disease.”

  Amerine was going over the day’s route with Alex when he saw Dan tro
tting down off the hill toward Petawek, alone. He watched Dan walk straight to Karzai’s compound and talk to the guerrillas guarding the door, who stepped inside and conversed with one of the CIA spooks before allowing Dan inside.

  How things had changed: Now the team was going through Afghan bodyguards or the CIA to speak with Karzai. Amerine looked over at Fox and Bolduc, who had been spending nearly all their time out at ODA 574’s post, ignoring the golden rule of guerrilla warfare: Always stay with the G-chief.

  Half an hour later—or three cups of tea, Amerine guessed—Dan and Karzai emerged from the compound and strolled up to the observation post, Dan looking like a woolly mountain man and wearing his Red Sox cap, and Karzai, beard neatly trimmed, wrapped in a tan blanket. The two men approached Amerine, who noticed that although Karzai’s eyes were as clear and alert as ever, they were rimmed with dark circles from lack of sleep.

  “I asked Hamid to come out for a team photo before we push out,” Dan said with a grin. “Thought this was a good time for it.”

  “Good idea,” said Amerine with a nod to Karzai. “Get everybody together.”

  As ODA 574 gathered around Karzai for the picture, Fox and Bolduc came over and stood directly in the middle of the group; appearing apologetic, Nelson Smith shuffled to the back.

  Mag set up his camera on the tailgate of a truck, set the timer, then ran back to a space between Mike and Dan, kneeling in the front row.

  “Let’s take one more,” said Ken said after the camera clicked. “This time with just the guys who were here from the beginning.”

  There wasn’t a man on ODA 574 who didn’t smile at Ken’s suggestion.

  It was almost twelve, and the team’s three vehicles—including a new truck, purchased from a local to replace Amerine’s—were loaded and ready to join the guerrilla convoy already assembling. They would continue in the same formation used since leaving Tarin Kowt.