by Ed Darack
“He’s gonna go into hypovolemic shock!” Beeman exclaimed, worried that the blood loss would lead to multiple organ failure.
“Can’t stop the damn bleeding!” Figueroa responded. “The wraps aren’t stopping the bleeding!” Beeman grabbed a flat rock.
“Plug it with this rock!” Beeman ordered.
“Huh?”
“Plug it with the fuckin’ rock! Put the rock under the tourniquet, and that’ll slow the bleeding!”Figueroa followed Beeman’s instructions—and amazingly, Wilson’s blood loss slowed, and eventually would stop.
Meanwhile Konnie, emptying Epperly’s magazines, wondered when the big guns would start unleashing their destructive furor on Shah’s positions. He knew that Fox-3 was out of range of Doghouse’s 105 mm howitzers back at Asadabad, and figured that Middendorf’s 81s would open up in just seconds.
“Sir! Sir! I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot. Oh God! I’ve been shot! I think I’m gonna die!” Konnie looked down to see Corporal Tyler Einarson, clutching his bleeding right wrist. Einarson crawled up to Konnie and leaned on the lieutenant’s right shoulder.
“You’re gonna be okay, Einarson. You’ll be just fine.” Crack! Crack! Crack! Konnie continued to send rounds downrange.
“Sir, do you think I can get the Silver Star for this?” Put-sheeew . . . boom! Another RPG launched; another impact far too close. Put-sheeew . . . boom! Then another.
“You’ll get the Purple Heart, for sure. Not too certain about the Silver Star, though.” Crack! Crack! Konnie killed one more mag, then quickly slammed in another.
“Okay. Sounds good . . .” Einarson responded. Thud! “Ugh!” Einarson gasped as one of Shah’s rounds slammed into his right rib cage, exiting his chest—narrowly missing his heart—but shredding a good chunk of his lung. As Einarson reached up to Konnie, he fell to the ground.
“Einarson! Crawl back behind cover! Get COVER! NOW!” Konnie boomed. Crack! Crack! Crack! The situation became dire within the first salvos of the attack. RPGs and mortars exploded throughout their position, a roar of machine-gun fire deluged them, and now a Marine lay dying. Crack! Crack! Crack! More rounds downrange. “Vargas! Greenfield!” Konnie bellowed. The two Marines had been firing shredding volleys of 7.62 onto Shah’s positions, but the lieutenant needed them to get Einarson into a covered position. “Get your asses over here and take care of Einarson!”
“Roger that, sir!” Sergeant Carlos Vargas responded. Put-sheeew . . . boom! Yet another in an endless shower of RPGs rocketed toward them.
From a large rock about fifteen meters behind Konnie, Vargas and Greenfield emerged, grabbed Einarson, and dragged him to safety. Crack! Crack! Crack! “We need to get on that 240! It’s fuckin’ sittin’ there not doing anything but gettin’ shot at!” Konnie yelled. He had been so wrapped up in scanning the ridges, then making sure that Einarson got to a safe position—and then firing on those ridgelines—that he forgot that he was on the receiving end of machine-gun fire himself. Man . . . I don’t see any clouds, but it’s raining . . . raining all around. Big-ass raindrops, but where are the puddles of water? he wondered.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Oh . . . yeah, I’m getting shot at, not just shooting. Pretty intense now, too. Lots of rounds impacting all around me . . .
“Sir! Sir! SIR!” Vargas screamed at Konnie. “How the fuck you not gettin’ your ass shot off, sir?”
“I don’t know.” Konnie paused for a minute. “I have no idea. Thought for a minute it was raining!” He and Vargas started laughing hysterically.
“You’re fucking crazy, Lieutenant. I mean, damned motherfucking crazy!”
Crack! Crack! Crack!
“You CRAZY MOTHERFUCKER!” Crisp shouted at Konnie, amazed that the lieutenant was still alive, sitting within a hale of impacting rounds, wearing a flopping “boonie cover” in place of his Kevlar helmet. “Git ya ass back behind some cover, Lieutenant! Can’t be getting the commander shot the fuck up!” Crisp then saw Einarson lying in a growing pool of his own blood. Turning to aid the wounded grunt, the staff sergeant slipped and accidentally kneed Einarson in the head. “Damn! You dead? I think I killed you!”
“Am I gonna get the Silver Star?” the lance corporal asked Crisp, shaking off the jolt to his face.
“You ignored my ass this mornin’ when I was tryin’ to keep y’all at least in covered positions without your gear on. You be lucky you don’t get a silver bullet!” Crisp yelled, and Einarson laughed. “Quit ya laughing—and here . . .” Crisp grabbed the lance corporal’s hand and pulled on his index finger. “Shut ya mouth and plug your suckin’ chest wound with ya finger!” Einarson nodded, and did just that. Crisp then saw the Rock, the interpreter, who’d been shot twice in the chest, still standing—open to more of Shah’s rounds. “Get down!” he yelled, then grabbed the ’terp and slammed him to the dirt. “What the fuck? Two holes in your chest not enough?” With the Rock safely on the ground, Crisp turned his attention back to Konnie. “Crazy-ass lieutenant! Get the fuck behind some cover.” Crisp raised his M16 and loosed rounds into Cheshane Tupay’s bulk, which cloaked Shah’s fighters—but not their muzzle flashes. Crack! Crack! “Whachoo doin’, PFC?” Crisp looked down to see one of the platoon’s privates first class crawling under his legs. Crack! Crack! Crack! The staff sergeant continued to put rounds downrange.
“AAHHH! I’m hit! I’m hit!” the PFC shrieked.
Crisp knelt down next to the teenage Marine. “What the fuck!” he boomed. “You little ass ain’t hit!” The staff sergeant started laughing when he saw some of the hot brass casings ejected from his M16 roll out from under the PFC’s sleeve—having fallen into his collar, they burned the private from his neck to his armpit. “Get you skinny little ass the fuck up and put some rounds downrange!”
“Oorah, Staff Sergeant,” the vastly relieved PFC responded.
“Hey, Vargas!” Konnie thought for a second. “We need to get on that 240. It’s quiet. I don’t like that. Get on the 240 and shoot the fuck out of that ridge!” Put-sheeew . . . boom! . . . How many RPGs were going to rain down? the lieutenant wondered.
“Okay. But, sir,” Vargas began, “I think you’d better get over here with us.”
Konnie turned to dash behind the rock where Vargas and the others were positioned—with the 240. He put his hand down to brace himself . . . and slipped on hundreds of spent brass casings. Boy, I guess I put a lot of rounds downrange, he thought.
“Hey, Vargas!” Konnie boomed as he began sprinting to the rock. “Make sure that when you start shooting that 240, you don’t shoot me!”
“No problem . . . no problem at all, crazy ass lieutenant!” Vargas yelled, part laughing, part gasping from his sprint with Einarson. Then he let the 240 rip. Konnie dove behind the rock just as the machine gun started belching fire. Streaks of red marked the rounds’ trajectories, gouging into Shah’s men’s hides on Cheshane Tupay’s shoulders.
“You guys good?” Konnie asked once he got to Vargas and Greenfield. “I wanna make sure you know where you need to shoot.” The lieutenant double-checked that they had Shah’s positions locked on. They did. And with that, he took off to Crisp, who was with Einarson and Wilson at the casualty collection point. “What’s the status, Staff Sergeant?” Konnie asked Crisp.
“Yo’ crazy ass is fucking crazy as ever, dat’s the status!” Crisp replied.
“Don’t make me laugh. I’m afraid I might hurt myself. Now really, what’s the status?” Konnie asked.
“Einarson’s got it pretty good. But the corpsman says he’ll make it. Wilson got shot twice in the leg, once in the ass. He’ll make it, too. Stuffed rocks in his arteries to keep him alive—I don’t know, some crazy corpsman trick. Three others got shot, but not bad enough that they can’t keep fighting.”
“Good. I’m off to Grissom and Pigeon.”
“Keep yo’ crazy ass head down, Lieutenant!” Crisp barked.
Konnie nodded, then bolted to Grissom’s position. Put-sheeew . . . boom! Halfway
there, though, one of Shah’s RPGs impacted just a little too close to the lieutenant. Konnie sailed through the air, landing on his side in a wave of smoke, dirt, rocks, and splintered wood. He rolled over and checked to see if he still had his M16. He did. Then he checked to see if he was bleeding. He wasn’t (not too badly, at least). No shrapnel that I can feel. Keep going, he thought.
Moments later, Konnie lunged behind a rock to see Grissom and Pigeon, staring at their respective radio operators, who were furiously trying to coax uncooperative comm boxes into sending and receiving. “Sir.” Konnie snagged Grissom’s attention.
“What, Konnie?” the captain replied with an annoyed tone.
“Does battalion know what’s going on?”
“No,” Grissom shot back.
“We got mortars?” the lieutenant asked.
“No. Not yet,” Grissom responded.
“Pigeon?” Konnie turned to the forward air controller.
“What?”
“We got CAS yet?” Konnie was referencing close air support assets—A-10s and AH-64 Apache gunships
“No,” Pigeon responded.
“Well then, what do we have?” Konnie asked with a laugh.
“Radios that don’t fucking work because this fucking Afghan heat is making them melt down!” Grissom furiously barked. “Mountains are supposed to be damn cold. Not like a hundred and twenty degrees in the shade!”
“Well then, you know what they say? Never go anywhere without at least two captains,” the lieutenant retorted sarcastically.
“Not fucking now, Konnie,” Grissom roared. “This isn’t the time for your smart ass bullshit!” Konnie just laughed to himself.
“Got battalion!” one of the radio operators piped up.
“Get a request in for CAS. Immediately,” Pigeon ordered.
“Where’s Dorf’s 81s?” Konnie threw himself back into the dialogue.
“Almost there—almost got him . . .” the radio operator responded.
Along the eastern wall of the Chowkay, roughly one kilometer south of Fox-3’s position, the echoing booms and clatters of the massive ambush had instantly snagged the attention of Ben Middendorf and his Marines. The twenty-six-year-old lieutenant, who graduated from West Point, then “snuck” out of the Army to join the Marines—urged there by his father, who had served in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War in the venerated First Recon Battalion—instinctively built a plan within seconds as his grunts dove to the ground and stared at the lieutenant with “what now?” expressions. “Go firm! Get into defensive positions!” Dorf commanded. “Get those tubes fire-capped” (fire-capable, meaning that the mortars are ready to fire). The Marines jumped into their heat-of-combat roles, with Middendorf looking to get the vital mortars ready to crush Shah and his force. But the Marines stood on steep ground, and each burly 81 mm mortar tube needed a patch of flat ground roughly two feet by four feet, at the very bare minimum, to get positioned.
Seconds melted into minutes, then Corporal Joshua Plunk, whom Middendorf considered one of the best Marines he’d ever worked with, reported, “We got one up, sir! But just one!” With the tube mounted to the base plate, and standing firm against the bipod, Dorf just needed to get in comms with Fox-3. But Grissom’s weren’t the only radios with problems that morning. When Middendorf’s radio operator dove to the ground, a vital cable from the PSG-5 high-power satellite communication radio tore from the unit, rendering it useless.
“I just happened to bring a spare, sir,” the RO revealed.
“Eighty-ones good to go, sir, got Lieutenant Middendorf on the hook.” Grissom’s radio operator called out moments later.
“Excellent!” Grissom called back.
But just then, boom! The Marines looked at one another, then at a smoking crater forty-five meters distant. Boom! Again . . . but the next one landed just thirty meters away.
“Get down! They’re walking mortars onto our position!” bellowed Grissom.
Boom! Fifteen meters.
“The next one’s on top of us. RUN!” yelled Konnie.
Boom! Right on top of the group of them—literally on fucking top. The mortar round detonated about twenty-five feet above Pigeon’s head, the tail fin actually hitting him in the shoulder after smashing into the ground aside the FAC.
“Thought one of you guys was punching me . . . but it was the ass end of the mortar!” Pigeon nervously laughed. Unlike the Marines, extremists like Shah can’t always be sure of the quality or the supply consistency of their munitions; when a cell gets a crate of mortar rounds, only some may detonate as engineered, and often they don’t function at all—or some, like number four in the barrage that was launched on the command post that morning, might air-burst safely above the intended target.
“I guess that makes this our really lucky day,” Konnie again chimed in with his dry sarcasm. “Somebody get me a lottery ticket.”
“Okay, motherfuckers. Now let’s get some,” seared Grissom, wiping the sweat from his brow—brought on not just from the heat, but from fear of incineration by an exploding mortar round. He contacted Middendorf directly, and passed him a grid reference point for the attackers to their east. Seconds after the gun team received the coordinate, they had the deflection and elevation for the gun from their mortar ballistic computer—and a round downrange. Whump!
“You got an FO yet for the fire package?” Konnie asked the captain. Middendorf’s forward observer had remained with him; with Grissom, Konnie, and Pigeon able to pass back fire-adjustment instructions to the mortar team, Dorf felt confident.
“No. Wanna be a forward observer, Konnie?” Grissom asked.
“Rog. Let’s pass some adjustments to Dorf,” the lieutenant responded. Seconds later, more 81 mm mortar rounds detonated along the ridgeline—slamming directly on the points of origin of Shah’s attacks. “Fire for effect,” Konnie annunciated with a grin, and the ridgeline exploded in a series of deafening fireballs. “Dorf, your mission is dead on. The only adjustment I have will be to have you guys walk rounds along the ridge, just to make sure you get all of ’em, especially the fleeing ones.” By now, Shah’s attack had all but ceased, but Middendorf’s crew continued to pummel the ridgelines.
“They’re egressing,” Grissom called out after scanning the ridges with his binoculars. “Konnie, keep the mortars raining down.”
“A-10s rollin’ in,” Pigeon interjected.
“Good. We need Dustoffs for the wounded. Get ’em in here. But work those A-10s for everything you can. Gun run after gun run on those fuckers running into the mountains,” commanded Grissom.
After Dorf’s mortar barrage, the enemy quit firing on Fox-3’s position, but a small group of Shah’s men, positioned just to the west of the mortar team on a small peak known to the grunts as Hill 2510 (for its altitude—in meters—on their maps) took a couple potshots at them. Returning fire immediately, the Marines around the mortars silenced the minuscule ambush. But then, as the Air Force A-10s raced toward the Chowkay, Shah’s main effort once again sprang forth, and began firing on Fox-3; not with the furor of the first ambush, but well coordinated and deadly, nonetheless.
“Middendorf, I need a mark for the A-10s.” Pigeon radioed the lieutenant with grids of Shah’s men’s current positions, asking not for high-explosive rounds, but for white phosphorus illumination mortars—to mark the extremists’ positions for the high-explosive rounds plugged into the A-10s’ seven-barrel high-speed rotary guns, soon to be available for close air support. With two mortar tubes now up and running, Middendorf and his Marines had the targets marked for Pigeon, who then passed a series of preliminary attack instructions to Grip-21 and Grip-11, the call signs for the two A-10s. But Grip-21’s inertial navigation guidance system went faulty, preventing the pilot from undertaking attack runs as he’d been accustomed to doing. Pigeon, who graduated at the top of his flight school class at Meridian, Mississippi, had, like all Marine combat aviators, close air support indelibly stamped into the DNA of his very being. H
e’d chosen the job as FAC—forward air controller—one of the most respected tours a Marine aviator can undertake—in order to be on the ground with those he’d trained for so many years to support. And now he was experiencing the ground side of things at their most intense. Ever concerned about a possible friendly-fire event, particularly with Grip-21’s guidance system out of commission, Pigeon made a handshake deal with the Air Force pilots—he would give a detailed “talk-on” to the A-10s of Fox-3’s position, then the FAC, once oriented, would talk the attack aircraft onto the enemy’s positions based on Fox-3’s location. But it took over twenty minutes before the A-10s positively identified Fox-3’s location, during which time Pigeon’s radio started to lose power and malfunction. But the determined FAC was able to get Grip-21 to launch a five-inch-diameter white phosphorus rocket onto ground in an area where he suspected Shah’s men had taken up positions; using that brightly burning mark, Pigeon talked the A-10s onto specific locations where they unleashed bursts of 30 mm rounds at a rate of one hundred per second. As Pigeon worked to fix his radio, the two Grip A-10s climbed in altitude and took up a holding pattern far to the west of the activity. But the Chowkay’s summer heat once again proved its potency, overheating Pigeon’s radio anew after he got it working, keeping the Grips from unleashing their cocked might for another set of runs.
“Venom-11,” Grip-21 began, “we’re being replaced by Boar-11 and Boar-21. They’ll be checking in soon. Good luck.” With mortars continuing to rain down on Shah’s fleeing men, all of the terrorist’s attacks, save for the occasional sniper shot, had ceased. But some of the most difficult work still lay ahead: Pigeon needed to coordinate not only the A-10 attacks against the fleeing enemy, but also the Dustoff Air Ambulance extraction of the wounded.
