The Only Thing Worth Dying For

by Eric Blehm

  “I need to see what I can do,” Karzai said in Pashto to his personal guard. To the Americans he said in English, “I need to check on my friends.”

  Heads shook: His protectors would continue to dissuade Karzai from returning to the Alamo until they were certain about what had occurred and that the perimeter was secure.

  Fifteen minutes after the bomb hit, Karzai’s satellite phone rang. A reporter from the BBC was calling from Bonn, Germany, to inform him that the tribal factions at the conference had come to an agreement.

  “Congratulations, sir,” she said cheerfully. “You have just been named the chairman of the interim government.”

  When he was finished sending the SITREP, Amerine stepped back outside the clinic to see Fox and Smith—the highest-and lowest-ranked soldiers on the scene—working side by side, pulling IV kits from the rucksacks of the headquarters personnel, all of whom had been instructed to store at least one behind his backpack’s kidney belt. They were making a pile of all available medical supplies outside the CCP, while Bolduc was calling out orders to the headquarters staff.

  Casper, who was hurrying toward the CCP, spoke to Amerine as he passed: “The Marines are on the way. We’re getting the word out. Shouldn’t be long. They’re coming from Rhino. Hour flight or less.”

  Townspeople from Shawali Kowt had emerged to help the surviving guerrillas with the wounded; others were out by the Alamo, stooped over like farmers in a field, picking up body parts. The hill was littered with weapons, clothing, and equipment. A laced boot stood upright. Papers swirled around as the breeze picked up. Amerine knew he should collect the sensitive items—fragments of pages from cipher books, maps, anything having to do with their mission—but that would have to wait until after he had tended to Dan.

  The five trucks parked side by side along the northern slope of the Alamo had been perfectly spaced, like a row of dominoes. Now they were askew, lifted up and repositioned by the blast. With a slight limp, Amerine worked his way to the truck farthest right and got down on his knees, which made the shrapnel wound in his thigh burn. Shit, that hurts! he thought, then felt guilty for even acknowledging the pain.

  Dan was heavy, cumbersome to move, and as Amerine pulled on him, getting most of his upper torso out from under the truck, he imagined Dan opening his eyes and doing one of his favorite impersonations, Bill Murray in the movie Stripes: “Chicks dig me because I rarely wear underwear, and when I do, it’s usually something unusual.”

  Tending to his dead friend was the worst moment in the most hellish day in Amerine’s life—yet this memory of Dan made him stifle a laugh.

  Casper and two Delta operators walked over and silently helped Amerine move Dan onto a poncho, then they carried him over to a small stone hut, away from the wounded, setting him down carefully. One of the Delta operators asked if anyone had a body bag.

  “No, I’ll use my bivy sack,” said Amerine, thinking it seemed less impersonal as they lowered Dan inside the weatherproof covering for the sleeping bag Amerine had slept in throughout the mission, almost as though they were putting him to bed.

  Once Amerine had zipped the bag closed over Dan’s ashen face, Casper and the two Delta operators left the captain alone.

  Kneeling beside Dan, Amerine wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find words of his own. He stared up at the sky, a deep blue now that the smoke had cleared, and began to recite “Futility” by Wilfred Owen—about the death of a soldier witnessed by Owen during World War I. Amerine had committed the poem to memory after he’d first read it as a student at West Point.

  Move him into the sun—

  Gently its touch awoke him once,

  At home, whispering of fields unsown.

  Always it awoke him, even in France,

  Until this morning and this snow.

  If anything might rouse him now

  The kind old sun will know.

  Think how it wakes the seeds—

  Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

  Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides

  Full-nerved—still warm—too hard to stir?

  Was it for this the clay grew tall?

  —O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

  To break earth’s sleep at all?

  Reaching the end, Amerine looked away from Dan and began to cry.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rescue at Shawali Kowt

  * * *

  Anytime. Anyplace.

  —Air Force, 16th Special Operations Wing motto

  * * *

  At Camp Rhino, less than one hundred miles south of Shawali Kowt, Master Sergeant David Lee, third in command of ODB 540, was in his team’s tent when the request for emergency medical evacuation came over the radio shortly before 9 A.M. The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, under the command of Brigadier General James Mattis, had occupied the airstrip since November 25. Two days later, Lee and his B-team had arrived; their primary role was as a liaison, coordinating the Special Forces’ actions in the area with those of the Marines.

  Looking out the door at the parked helicopters—including four Cobra gunships, four transport CH-53s, and six dual-rotor heavy-lift CH-46s—Lee picked up the radio and informed Task Force Dagger that the Marines at Camp Rhino were the closest Americans in a position to respond, a forty-minute helicopter flight away. Meanwhile, Lee’s boss—Major Rob Cairnes, the commander of ODB 540—was running across the flat, barren landscape to General Mattis’s command post, located in one of the few hard structures on the base, a single-story concrete building. He informed the Marine general, face-to-face, that a presumed mortar or artillery attack on a Green Beret position had occurred and that the wounded needed immediate evacuation from Shawali Kowt. Mattis asked if they were still in contact and wanted more specifics, which Cairnes did not have.

  “Well, if they’ve taken fire,” said the general, “and you can’t tell me definitively how they got all scuffed up, I’m not going to send anything until you can assure me that the situation on the ground is secure.” Mattis went on to explain that there were a thousand Marines at Camp Rhino for him to worry about, and he was not willing to dilute base security and risk sending his air squadron on a dangerous daylight mission just to assist an unknown number of casualties.

  Cairnes raced back to consult with Lee and his second-in-command, Chief Warrant Officer Tom Leithead, all of whom were infuriated. They could understand why Mattis wouldn’t send all of his helicopters, but no one could fathom why he wouldn’t do something to help their guys. “Where’s the love from the Marines?” said another member of the team. “They’re supposed to be frothing at the mouth for this kind of shit.”

  The Green Berets continued to monitor the radio and berate the Marines: “These helicopters outside would be airborne already if it were Marines that were bleeding,” said the B-team’s communications sergeant.

  “You know what,” said Lee, who had watched the Marines endure abysmal conditions at the base since they’d arrived. “It’s not the Marines. It’s Mattis.”

  “Just heard,” said the commo sergeant. “One American KIA, three critically wounded.” Still, nobody at Camp Rhino knew the two most critical facts: that this had been a friendly-fire incident, and that the position at Shawali Kowt had not been and was not currently engaged with the enemy.

  For the past week, Lee and Leithead had been briefing Mattis and found him a fairly personable guy. He probably just needs a little prodding in the right direction, thought Lee. Turning to Leithead, he said, “Let’s go have a little talk with the general.”

  “I’m all for that,” said Leithead, and the two hurried to the Marine command post some twenty minutes after Mattis had declined Cairnes’s request. Inside, the expressions on the faces of Mattis’s staff showed their frustration and embarrassment. One Marine glanced away as they walked past, unable to meet their eyes.

  Mattis greeted the two Green Berets at the heavy wood door that led into his spartan concrete-floored office. He held a military-
issue canteen cup filled with coffee in his left hand and gestured them inside with the other. After closing the door to a crack, he sat down at a small writing desk where a map was laid out.

  “Let’s hear it,” said Mattis.

  “Sir,” said Lee, “we’ve got reports of mass casualties, and word is they expect the numbers to continue to rise. You are the closest American with the ability to respond.”

  “Do you have an update on how they got all scuffed up? Are they still in contact?”

  “With all due respect,” said Leithead, “we think that’s irrelevant.”

  “I hear you, but no, I’m not sending a rescue mission,” Mattis said. “We. Don’t. Know. The situation.”

  “The situation, sir,” said Lee, “is that Americans are dying. And they need your help.”

  “Look, when I have fighters over the scene so that I’ve got air superiority, then I’ll send choppers. That, or we wait till nightfall.”

  Exchanging a look with Leithead, Lee said, “That’s not good enough, sir.”

  Standing up, the general cleared his throat. “Sergeant,” Mattis called to his sergeant at arms, positioned outside the office. “We’re done. Escort these men out of here.”

  Without another word, Lee and Leithead walked out of the office toward the door to the command post, again passing Marines who wouldn’t make eye contact. Behind them, they heard Mattis say, “Nobody gets into my office.”

  Back outside, Lee said, “Who’s going to get our guys out of there?”

  “Besides here, the only helicopters are at K2 and J-Bad. Uzbekistan and Pakistan. They’re at least three hours away, and that’s if they’re ready to launch.”

  They looked to their left, at the rows of Marine helicopters parked along the desert airstrip.

  “What a joke,” said Lee.

  Meanwhile, the Air Force at J-Bad was scrambling to launch a rescue mission. All of AFSOC’s 16th Special Operations Wing pilots and some of their flight engineers, aerial gunners, para-rescue jumpers (PJs),* and combat controllers convened at the operations center, where Commander Kingsley and Lieutenant Colonel Hadley were frantically putting together the flight plan for a rescue, even though every one of their helicopter crews had just returned from the mission to Shawali Kowt the night before. According to Air Force safety regulations, none of these pilots could legally fly until they’d had twelve hours of “crew rest,” including eight hours of sleep.

  Hadley broke away from the planning to check on the gathering crew members. They looked like men who had been awake for twenty-four hours straight, which they had. “Mike,” he whispered to Kingsley, “they’re all fucking exhausted. We have an MC-130** crew that hasn’t flown, but we don’t have a single helicopter crew that is rested.”

  Both men considered their options in silence, concluding separately that the only solution was to ignore regulations—which could endanger the rescuers and end their own careers in the Air Force.

  “We’re fucked,” said Kingsley.

  “I know,” said Hadley. “But we have to figure out a way to make this happen.”

  “Sirs!” Major Shawn Silverman, the acting commander of the 20th Special Operations Squadron, burst into the command center. “I heard what’s going on. There are two MH-53 crews that just got in for the first rotation of flight crews out of the combat theater.”

  “They’re here already?” said Hadley, who knew that crews would be rotating out over the coming week, but wasn’t aware that their replacements had arrived. “What’s their story?”

  “One arrived day before yesterday. The other got in last night and hasn’t gotten an intel brief or an area brief. Neither knows the routes, procedures, nothing for flying combat missions across the border. They aren’t clear to fly into Afghanistan, but I’m certain they are up for anything. Just say the word.”

  “Where are they now?” asked Kingsley.

  “Asleep.”

  “Wake them up.”

  Silverman went out the door.

  “The PJs’ squadron commander is chomping at the bit,” Hadley said to the on-call operations officer, Major Reynolds. “Tell him to put together two CSAR [combat search-and-rescue] teams and get them out to the 53s. The aircrews will meet them there.”

  Reynolds went out the door.

  “Steve, we don’t know what the situation is,” Kingsley told Hadley, “but we’ll figure it out on the way. You’ve been in intel briefs for the past seventy days. You know the routes. You know the missions. You’ve flown them all. I need you as a doctor and air mission commander.”

  Though Hadley would have helped any American who needed it, his familiarity with ODA 574 gave him an emotional stake in this mission. Hadley and a few other AFSOC personnel at J-Bad had been involved in every step of the planning for Karzai’s insurgency: He’d been Karzai’s personal physician at J-Bad; he had treated Karzai’s tribal leaders for everything from acid reflux to high blood pressure. And he had shared meals with every member of ODA 574, spending the most time with Amerine, a fellow graduate of West Point. Three weeks earlier, as Amerine left on his mission, Hadley had said, “We’ve got your back.”

  “Yes sir,” Hadley said to Kingsley. “I’m in. Let’s get them out of there.”

  Air Force Captain Steve Gregg had been in Pakistan only twelve hours when he felt someone kicking his cot. “Sir, wake up!” said First Lieutenant Paul Alexander. “There are wounded Americans who need our help. We’ve got a mission right now!”

  In five minutes, Gregg, Captain Pat Fronk, and their copilots, Second Lieutenant Marty Schweim and Alexander, were dressed in their tan flight suits with aviator bulletproof vests and running to the command center inside the hangar. There, Kingsley quickly shook each of their hands and introduced them to Hadley, their mission commander, before moving to stand beside a map of Afghanistan tacked to the wall.

  “Welcome to the war, gentlemen—here’s the situation,” Kingsley said. “Americans are requesting emergency medevac north of Kandahar, at the same location our squadron flew into last night. We’ve got the routes, we know where they are, but that’s about it. I know you haven’t been briefed on intel, routes, or procedures, and I wouldn’t be asking you to fly if you weren’t our only option. Lieutenant Colonel Hadley has been in on every intel brief since we got here, and he has flown dozens of missions into Afghanistan. He will brief you en route. Flight time is just shy of three hours.

  “From the moment you cross the border, you’ll be flying through bad-guy country all the way. This was a mortar attack on an American position; we don’t know if our guys are still in contact, but we’re assuming it will be hot. As I learn more, I’ll relay it to Lieutenant Colonel Hadley. Ground crews are turning around two of the 53s that flew last night; they’re already refueled. CSAR teams are getting their gear and will meet you at your aircraft. Godspeed.”

  Following the briefing, Hadley went directly to the medical unit to request “the most qualified doctor on the base” to be the lead physician in an emergency medical evacuation behind enemy lines that was leaving immediately.

  Within moments, he was shaking hands with Doc Frank, a family practice physician. When they left the aid station, each man had with him a basic lifesaving bag that included airways, tourniquets, IVs, chest tubes, a laryngoscope, and various surgical instruments. In addition, they each carried two trauma bags and six units of O-negative blood.

  Pointing Frank in the direction of the helicopters, Hadley went in search of Charlie the spook, who had arrived at J-Bad early that morning from Shawali Kowt. He located him in the mess hall. “Got some bad news,” Hadley told Charlie. “Your team’s position north of Kandahar is requesting emergency medevac.”

  Charlie stood up, dropped his fork on the plate of a half-eaten meal, and hurried for the door with Hadley. “What the hell happened?” he asked.

  “We’re not sure, but initial reports say it was a mortar attack. We’re going in to pull them out. I know you need to get home, but you’re fa
miliar with the layout on the ground. I am asking you as a friend and a soldier to go back in there with me.”

  “Just let me grab some equipment,” said Charlie, leading the way to the spooks’ private armory behind the building that had acted as the safe house for ODA 574 and the CIA during the planning of Karzai’s insurgency. On a chain around his neck, Hadley kept a key to the cement-walled storage facility; he had standing orders to divvy up the weapons to his staff if the base was ever overrun. He unlocked the metal door.

  Loaded carbines and shotguns lined one wall. Crates of exotic weapons, including shoulder-fired anti-tank missiles, were stacked in a corner. In another corner were boxes of grenades and claymore mines, as well as body armor, load-bearing vests, and ammo pouches. Hadley was already carrying his Air Force–issued Beretta M9 sidearm and compact Colt Commando carbine with seven fully loaded thirty-round magazines for each. Charlie selected the same weapons for himself, then added six fragmentation grenades and an extra case of 1,000 rounds of ammo for both men. On the way out, Hadley grabbed three additional boxes of ten hand grenades each for the two helicopter crews.

  Jumping into a Humvee, they drove to the two Pave Low helicopters being towed onto the runway.

  Every other air mission into Afghanistan had taken several hours or even days to plan. Because helicopters are short-range aircraft, they would need to be refueled in flight at a prearranged location. Since the MC-130s carrying the extra fuel would make easy targets at the low altitude necessary to fill up the helicopters—usually around five hundred feet above ground level—the refueling locations were always far from population centers.

  The refueling crews at J-Bad, call sign Ditka 04, were given roughly ten seconds of guidance from Hadley. “We don’t know where, we don’t know when, and we don’t know how much, but we’re going to need gas,” he said. “Go anchor yourselves somewhere up near these coordinates, and we’ll call you when we need you.”