by Eric Blehm
“Counterattack is in progress. I’m seeing dozens of enemy dismounts [foot soldiers] pouring across the bridge, around fifty so far and more coming. They’re firing something big at what must be another group of our guerrillas retreating from the bridge toward Damana.”
“We have guerrillas by the bridge?” JD said.
“I don’t know which other trucks would be getting fired at.” To Dan, Amerine said, “Try to get commo with Hamid.”
“Who am I supposed to call?” asked Dan with a glance at Fox and Bolduc.
“Try the CIA,” said Amerine.
“This is fucked up, sir.”
“Do your best,” said Amerine. “We need to let them know what’s coming their way.”
The guerrillas’ trucks being chased from the bridge by long green streaks of tracer fire turned and came ripping around the backside of Shawali Kowt well beyond the berm. Their headlights and the Taliban tracer fire were suddenly on a crash course with all the trucks that had just retreated from the Alamo. It was a cluster of auto lights and tracer streaks, zigzagging out in the desert.
“What a goat fuck,” said Mag.
“Fucked up as an Afghan convoy,” said Mike.
“The Taliban might be trying to circle around our rear, sir,” said JD.
“I’d rather them surround us here at the Alamo than head north after Hamid,” said Amerine. “Damn, who started calling this the Alamo anyway?”
JD laughed.
“Still can’t reach the CIA,” Dan told Amerine.
He had been trying the CIA’s radio for over two minutes, and Karzai’s satellite phone was emitting a busy signal. With Fox, Bolduc, and Smith—who was also trying to reach the CIA—on the hill with ODA 574, Amerine had no idea how the 150 guerrillas had been set up to protect Karzai, who he assumed was still in Damana. And since the Taliban were attacking on foot, there were no vehicles for the American jets to bomb. Furthermore, it sounded as if the enemy was firing both light and heavy machine guns, suggesting that this was not just a mob but likely an organized unit.
“See the range of those tracers?” Amerine said to Mike. “Doesn’t that sound like a Dishka?”*
“Sure does. Good thing they don’t have night vision, because if they wheel that thing down the road a ways, we are in easy range.”
“Make sure Bari Gul stays with us,” Amerine told JD. “Integrate his men into our perimeter at this end of the hill. Tighten up the lines. We have no idea what we’re up against.”
JD jogged east toward the other end of the Alamo.
“We’ve got Spectre inbound,” said Alex, referring to a heavily armed AC-130 gunship.*
“I think we’re going to need it,” said Amerine. Due to its low, slow flight path, the AC-130 would have to return home at dawn when it would become an easy target, but it would probably keep the men alive until then.
Having pantomimed the instructions to Bari Gul—Seylaab was missing again—JD returned to the team while Bari Gul spread his guerrillas out among the American lines of defense, using a flashlight pointed at the ground for guidance. He then approached Amerine, holding his AK-47 at the ready position. Unlike his countrymen, he and his men weren’t going anywhere.
With the rest of the guerrillas having fled north, the enemy guns fell silent. This disconcerted the Americans, who had been using the gunfire to estimate the size and location of the Taliban force. None of the attackers had returned to the bridge, which meant there were at least a hundred Taliban on the near side of the river, most of whom had last been seen in the desert beyond the berm, firing toward Damana. But they had also seen some small-arms tracers coming from closer in, on the other side of the berm, suggesting that the Taliban had possibly come back toward Shawali Kowt and surrounded the team’s position. It was deadly guesswork; the enemy could be anywhere.
At 100 percent security, ODA 574 covered all avenues of approach with their carbines aimed into the night and a supply of RPGs near each man. “Can we set up the mortar tube?” Ronnie asked JD.
“Go ahead.”
Ronnie, Mike, and Brent ran to the trucks at the northern base of the hill and grabbed a huge 82 mm Russian mortar, behaving like kids who had just been given permission to launch their new model rocket. They lugged the tube back to the hilltop and began to set it up while Wes, Smith, and some of the guerrillas brought cases of mortar rounds.
“We need to hang a round to get the plate set,” said Brent. Together, the three weapons sergeants aimed the mortar toward the bridge, and Brent dropped a round in the end of the super-elevated tube. There was a loud thump when the round launched. No one spoke for several seconds as they listened for the blast.
“Jesus,” said Mike.
“A dud?” said Brent.
“Either that or we left on way too big a charge,” said Ronnie.
Alex looked up from the digital map on his computer. “We’ll have an AC-130 on station in about thirty minutes.”
Boom! The mortar exploded in the distance.
“Not a dud,” said Brent.
“We have a problem,” said Amerine, who was standing next to Alex scanning the berm that wrapped around the northern side of Shawali Kowt. “The guerrillas left some of their own behind, and now they’re up on the berm and who knows where else.”
“That’s gonna make it tough for the gunship to know where to shoot,” said Alex. “Especially if we get attacked from the north.”
Amerine nodded. “Sir,” he said to Fox, who was still trying to get through to Karzai on the radio. “I’m sending out a recon element to bring back some of our guerrillas. I don’t know how many are out there, but they’re going to get cut to shit.”
“How many are going?” asked Fox.
“A split team. We won’t be gone long—we only have a half hour before Spectre gets on station. Just wanted to keep you in the loop.”
It had been five minutes since the Taliban had attacked, and Amerine was expecting them to open fire on the Alamo at any moment.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” Amerine told JD. “Two jobs. The first is for a split team to go get the guerrillas before the gunship arrives in roughly twenty minutes and mistakes them for Taliban. After the first team returns, a second split team will set up on the berm over there.” He pointed north to his original assault position, where Seylaab had led the charge earlier that day. “They’re going to keep watch so the bad guys don’t sneak up on us.”
Perhaps a half mile beyond the berm, a heavy exchange of automatic weapons fire erupted, but the men couldn’t see who was shooting or what they were shooting at.
JD checked his watch and said to Amerine, “You take your split team out to get those lost guerrillas. That way you can run the defense when the gunship is on station.”
“All right. You reestablish the perimeter. I’ll issue a contingency plan before we head out.”
Amerine walked over to Mag, who had taken up a position facing north. “Get Mike, Brent, Wes, and Dan,” he said. “We’re going on a rescue mission.”
“Yes, sir!” said Mag.
ODA 574 assembled in the center of the Alamo and conducted a precombat inspection of their NODs, the lasers mounted on their carbines, and their radios.
“Good to go,” said Mag.
“Okay, five-point contingency plan,” Amerine said to the team. “I’m heading out with Mag, Mike, Brent, Dan, and Wes. We’ll be gone twenty minutes. If we make contact with the enemy, we’ll attempt to defeat him and Charlie Mike [continue the mission]. If we meet a superior force, we’ll pop smoke and get back here right away. If you make contact, stay put in this position and we’ll return to you. You have nowhere to retreat from the Alamo, so stay here unless you’re overrun, then initiate the evasion plan. If you come under attack, keep an eye out for a way for my split team to get back inside the perimeter. If that’s impossible, we’ll form a second perimeter on the berm and link up when the situation permits. If we’re not back in twenty-five minutes and have not made contact, prohib
it all AC-130 fires along the corridor from this hill west to the bridge and south of the berm, unless you’re engaged with an enemy attack from that direction. Engage everything else freely north of the berm and in every other direction. Time is 2300.”
The split team moved north in a wedge, with Brent walking point; Mike, Mag, Dan, and Wes on staggered flanks; and Amerine trailing. “Not so fun being the point man on this little walk,” Mike whispered to Dan. They made their way past the medical clinic, then turned west to follow the southern side of the berm. From here they walked toward the bridge with the berm on their right and Shawali Kowt on their left. Sporadic gunfire from the west and northwest led the men to believe that the enemy was staying north of this corridor alongside the berm.
The night was chilly, but Amerine felt beads of sweat forming behind his goggles. He radioed the split team’s location to JD, who watched from the Alamo until he lost sight of them behind the buildings in town. With every burst of gunfire in the distance, JD winced, concerned that his boys might have walked into a fight. They had no firm idea how many enemy fighters had attacked or where they currently were.
“AC-130 will be on station in fifteen minutes,” said Alex.
Creeping below the base of the embankment, Amerine’s split team heard the gunfire getting louder. Suddenly, an Afghan holding an AK-47 at his side came into view on the berm above them. Everyone stopped. The man’s body was instantly speckled with the five green dots from their lasers.
“Americans, Americans,” Brent called out. Not seeing them, the man half-waved in their direction, keeping his AK-47 pointed down, and the Americans climbed the incline to find four guerrillas sitting in the dirt.
“Come,” said Amerine, waving. The guerrillas shook their heads. “They aren’t coming,” Brent said. “I’m going to crack an IR [infrared] chemlite and leave it here to mark the hill.”
As Brent bent the plastic chemlite, the crunching sound of the glass ampoules breaking inside seemed greatly amplified. He shook the tube, the chemicals creating a reaction that caused the stick to emit infrared light through its dark plastic coating.
Brent dropped it next to the Afghans and did his best to explain to them what it was for, hoping they would leave it alone.
“Okay,” said Amerine. “Let’s keep moving.”
JD checked his watch. The split team had been gone almost fifteen minutes, and the gunfire to the west was getting louder. Then, down by the bridge, they heard the deep rumble of the DShK as it began to belt tracer rounds north and northeast into the desert. If these were local Taliban, JD realized, their families might still be in Shawali Kowt, which stood dangerously close to the Alamo. In that case, they would most likely attack with small arms and RPGs, not the DShK. On the other hand, they might move the heavy Soviet machine gun closer to the Americans.
Finally, Amerine’s voice crackled over the radio. “We’re on our way back. What’s the status of Spectre?”
“It will be on station in five minutes,” JD said.
The six men came into view, alone.
“Did you find any of our guys out there?” JD asked when they reached his position on the Alamo.
“Two groups on the berm,” said Amerine. “Wouldn’t budge, so we marked them with IR chemlites.”
“IR chem?” said Alex, putting down his microphone to listen.
“Yeah. Fifteen hundred meters out, the other about seven hundred,” said Amerine. “Okay, your turn, JD. Get out to the berm, spot for the enemy, and get your asses back directly if things get hot.”
Infrared lights blinking on their shoulders, JD, Ronnie, Victor, Dan, and Brent moved out.
“AC-130 is coming on station now,” said Alex.
The roar of the AC-130’s four turboprop engines, familiar to the men after years of airborne missions, filled the air as JD’s split team quickly covered the 150 yards to the berm and formed a line across the top.
“We are in position,” he radioed back.
“What do you see?” Amerine asked.
“The enemy is to the west of us and advancing west-northwest about a klick away. They are well north of the berm.”
Alex relayed the four friendly positions—the Alamo, JD’s men, and the two groups of guerrillas—to the gunship. Large groups of enemy dismounts beyond the berm were pushing north, he told the pilot, while their own guerrillas were in vehicles. There could be Taliban vehicles in the mix, however, since nobody could be sure that none had crossed the river.
“It’s a mess out there; the pilots aren’t sure who is who,” Alex said to Amerine. “JD spotted a group coming around over there. Watch this.”
An infrared spotlight—which the men could see through their NODs—poured down from the Spectre north of JD’s position.
JD came on the radio and said, “The enemy is east of that spot about five hundred meters.”
“Is Spectre cleared hot?” Alex asked Amerine.
“Yup. Put them to work.”
The gunship banked into an orbit over the target, and long streaks of flame, each composed of hundreds of bullets, began pounding a group of twenty to thirty Taliban who had been following a road that ran to Damana.
“They’re dead,” said Alex.
Behind them, Fox was on the radio finally talking to Casper. “Most of our guerrillas retreated back to you in Damana,” Fox said. “We need you to get them to come back down.”
And that’s why we needed you there, and not here, thought Amerine.
“The enemy is so scattered I have no idea how we’re doing,” said Alex. “But this is definitely gonna scare the shit out of them.”
A moment later, the gunship took out another target farther north.
“Sucks to be the Taliban tonight,” said Mag.
About an hour and a half after the initial attack began, the Taliban stopped firing and vanished into the night.
“Gunship isn’t seeing anything between Damana and Shawali Kowt,” said Alex.
“Start working targets south of the river,” said Amerine. “Usual rules of engagement: Look for any convoys coming this way.”
It appeared that the AC-130 had forced the Taliban to retreat, but ODA 574 couldn’t chance it. They had to assume the enemy was still out there. For hours the men had missed a bunker they were standing on top of. What tunnel systems and camouflaged trenches did the surrounding desert, orchards, and structures conceal? Amerine decided that he’d better keep the team close in case there were any more surprises.
“Wes,” he said, “call JD and have him come back.”
While the gunship continued to orbit the immediate vicinity, the team stayed at 100 percent security, positioned close to one another along the Alamo’s upper slopes, with Bari Gul’s men covering the eastern end. IR chemlites scattered down the slopes marked their location for the AC-130.
Around midnight, Smith, who had reassembled his commo equipment near the Alamo’s highest point and had spent the last hour sending SITREPs to Task Force Dagger, realized that he’d missed the escape-and-recovery plan. If the Alamo were overrun, he had no idea what to do.
“Sir,” he asked Bolduc, “what’s the evac plan?”
“Nobody’s coming to get us,” Bolduc said. “We’re staying here.”
By four in the morning, the AC-130 had run out of targets after engaging two small convoys on the Kandahar Road, and JD downgraded security to 50 percent. Dan, who had joined Smith at his position, had taken second shift and was rolled up in a ball on the ground, shivering in his sleep. Pulling the poncho liner from his go-to-hell pack, Smith laid it over Dan, tucking the edges between his shoulders and the dirt.
Lying prone at the top of the Alamo, Smith fought to stay awake as he looked down the barrel of his rifle toward the river. Aside from his own chattering teeth, it was mostly quiet, and the monotonous “mrrrr” of the big propeller plane circling overhead began to lull him to sleep. He bit his lip, which silenced his teeth but did little for his eyes, which struggled to stay open. Then th
e AC-130’s guns erupted again, firing at a target to the west and giving Smith one more surge of adrenaline to get him through the shift.
At dawn on December 4, the smoke from cooking fires in Shawali Kowt began to drift across the Alamo, where the sun warmed the men covered in the slime of day-old sweat and dirt. Bari Gul’s men were shuffling around the eastern end of the hill, some of them arranging prayer rugs, when Mag opened his eyes.
“Can’t believe it’s morning already,” he said.
“Are you kidding me?” Mike said. “That was one of the longest nights of my life.”
In the morning light, the ridgeline across the river was more jagged than Amerine remembered; the contrast between its rusty color and the clear blue sky sharpened its features.
“I see four dudes with RPGs,” said Mike, looking toward the bridge with binoculars.
“I’ve got air,” said Alex.
With his binoculars, Amerine saw the four Taliban walking west, toward the bridge, along the road on the other side of the river. There was no need to consult with Karzai; these were enemy combatants nowhere near civilian buildings. But looking over at Fox and Bolduc, Amerine wondered if they had any idea what Karzai was up to in Damana, and if they intended to join him.
“Let’s kill those guys,” said Amerine, his voice flat. “What do we have, Alex?”
“Clear line of sight. Let’s lase them.”
Mike was already on it, having set up the SOFLAM—which estimates the distance to a target and marks it for laser-guided munitions—on a tripod. All of the previous bombs had been guided by the aircrafts’ own laser marker targeting systems; this was the team’s first use of a SOFLAM on this mission.
Within three minutes, Alex had talked an F-18 pilot onto the target’s position, confirmed that it was cleared hot by the captain, and chosen a 500-pound laser-guided bomb from the jet’s weapons menu. Turning to Mike he said, “Laser on.”
“Lasing,” said Mike as he pointed the beam at the center of the four-man group.
