No Way Out

by Mitch Weiss

  The wounds were horrific. Morales’s thigh and ankle were ripped open. Behr’s uniform was bathed in blood. Carter had been administering first aid to the two wounded soldiers. It was a less than ideal scenario. Although Carter had some first-aid training, he was rusty, and this wasn’t the time or place for on-the-job training. Plus, he had never administered first aid to a seriously wounded soldier. And it was important for a medic to treat a wounded soldier right away and get him to a hospital as quickly as possible. Studies showed that the quicker a medic can treat and stabilize a seriously wounded soldier on the battlefield—and get him to the hospital—the more likely the soldier was to survive.

  In this case, the clock had been ticking.

  Carter had no idea how long they had been trapped. The fire was continuous. Under these conditions, you lost all concept of time. How long had they been under attack? One hour? Maybe. Carter wasn’t sure and he was worried. They had to get help for the wounded soldiers. And the only way to do that was to find a way off the mountain before everyone was killed.

  He knew Walton was trying to find a solution. He’d overheard him on the radio with Bagram. From what he could tell, they were trying to set up more air strikes. Bombs kept falling, but they hadn’t stopped the insurgents. From the helicopter traffic, he heard that almost every building had fifteen to twenty HIG fighters on rooftops with guns bristling out of windows. The buildings were built with flat roofs and made of rocks and mud. Many of the buildings in the compound sat on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the valley. The enemy had the vantage points. We’re fucked, he thought.

  Carter knew they were in a precarious situation. They were cut off from the other ODAs and most of the commandos. They were alone, and the insurgents probably sensed that they were close to inflicting major damage on an elite Army unit. If that happened, HIG commanders could use it as a recruiting tool.

  The pilots needed to be precise. One wrong coordinate and a bomb could explode on their position. They had to be careful.

  But without air support, they were doomed.

  30

  Shurer

  Shurer had to reach Walton’s team. He knew his teammates had life-threatening wounds. But he was pinned down by fire. To get up there, he had to run at least seventy meters and then climb the mountain to their position.

  Since the first bursts of gunfire, the medic had been tied up treating wounded soldiers at the bottom of the trail leading up the mountain. His first call for help came a few minutes into the battle when a commando told him someone in his squad had been hit. So Shurer bolted about thirty meters in front of him and spotted a commando frantically trying to take off his pants.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked.

  The soldier was muttering and Shurer couldn’t understand a word he was saying. He turned his head from side to side, looking for an interpreter, and couldn’t find one. By the time he looked back, the commando had pulled his pants down to his ankles and Shurer discovered the problem. The bullet had grazed the commando’s skin just inside his left thigh and burned his testicle. He was incredibly lucky. While the round didn’t penetrate the commando’s body, it was close enough that it burned. Shurer examined the commando closely and determined there was no serious damage or bleeding.

  He stared into the commando’s face: “You’re okay,” he shouted over the noise. “Pull your pants up and get back in the fight.”

  The soldier just nodded his head yes. But Shurer could see the sheer terror in his eyes. It almost looked like the commando was going to cry.

  With the soldier back in action, AJ, an interpreter, reached Shurer and they quickly turned their attention back to the commandos. They began resetting the squad, making sure the commandos acted as a cohesive fighting unit. At that point, they weren’t doing this. Some were trying to hide behind big rocks and not firing their weapons at all. Then, through all the clutter, Shurer heard the high-pitched whistling of an incoming RPG. When he looked up, he saw it explode about seventy-five meters in front of him.

  The next thing he heard was a chorus of “Ron, Ron, Ron, Ron, Ron” echoing down the valley. At that moment Shurer knew that Staff Sergeant Ryan Wallen had been injured. When they were training the Afghans, Wallen would bring each commando on his team to Shurer and would jokingly instruct them that if he was hurt in combat, they were to “find Ron. This is what he looks like.” Wallen said it was a joke, but Shurer knew there was a method to his madness. No soldier wants to be wounded in the field without a medic. Timely care could mean the difference between life and death.

  But the training paid off because Shurer knew who the injured soldier was in advance. So he packed up his kit and ran until he reached Wallen, who was clearly pissed off that he was hit and couldn’t return fire.

  “Fuck, look at this,” Wallen said, pointing to his neck.

  Shurer analyzed the wound: Wallen was bleeding from his neck. So he pulled out gauze and started examining the wound to assess the damage. Wallen’s airways looked fine. There was no vascular damage. The medic could tell that the wound wasn’t life threatening, but the blood was still flowing.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he said, wrapping gauze on the wound. He began exerting pressure to stop the bleeding.

  “Are you sure?” Wallen asked.

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  The fire was nonstop. Shurer didn’t think it could get much worse. Until he heard a frantic call from Walton on the radio: Behr, Morales, and CK had been hit and they needed Shurer up there fast.

  “Did you hear that?” Wallen asked.

  “Yeah. I heard it.”

  Shurer glanced at Wallen. His bleeding was minimal.

  “I’m good,” Wallen said. “Go get them.”

  Getting to Walton’s team, though, posed a great risk. A medic is taught not to put himself in any unnecessary danger. He has to stay alive so other soldiers can live. But it had reached a point in the battle where he had to go. So Shurer grabbed his bag and headed into the fire.

  31

  Walton

  Walton recognized the sound: a sharp scream. Another soldier had been shot.

  When he turned his head, he saw Rhyner clutching his leg and blood on his pants. There was no one else to take care of him, so Walton tore open the airman’s pants to expose the wound. He feared the round hit an artery. But luckily, he had only been grazed.

  “You’re okay. You’re okay, man. Just keep going.”

  Rhyner was shaken. But Walton needed him to be alert. His job was too critical. He was the pilot’s eyes on the ground. He was responsible for coordinating air strikes. Find a target and lead the pilots to the right positions. But Rhymer seemed a little shaky. He was young and this was his first major battle. So Walton had to keep tabs on him. In fact, Walton was bogged down. As the commander, he had to coordinate the mission. But having to help with the air strikes was an added responsibility.

  After treating Rhyner’s wound, the medic in Walton urged him to check on CK.

  He had been putting it off as he frantically radioed commanders about the battle, trying to get reinforcements. In this mind, he knew CK was dead. His body was pinned up against the mountain in an open area near the crevice. But what if he was really alive and just wounded? Walton had to find out.

  Firing some rounds hoping to suppress the enemy fighters, he raced from the ledge to CK’s body. Rounds skipped off the rocks as he weaved his way to the Afghan. One bullet struck his rifle, smashing the flash suppressor, a cigar-size tube on the end of his barrel.

  Grabbing CK’s body armor, he turned him over. Walton could see that the terp’s eyes had rolled back in his head. Blood was coming out of his mouth, ears, and nose. There was no pulse. CK was dead. Rolling the Afghan’s body for cover, Walton started barking at the commandos nearby. Only a few were firing. The rest were pressed against the rock face. “Just don’t stand there. Fire,” he screamed.

  Walton knew they were in trouble. Accurate fire was hitting all around them
. There was little cover. He knew Behr was bleeding out. Morales was seriously wounded, too. But scanning the ledge, he knew there was a bigger problem. Behr and Morales were still too much in the open. While the overturned tree had provided some protection, it wasn’t enough—and with the enemy snipers, it was just a matter of time before they picked them off. One wrong move and they would be dead.

  Walton bolted back to his original position and grabbed Carter.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” he told Carter. “I am going to go right and you’re going to go left. We’re going to get up and grab these guys and drag them back.”

  “Okay,” Carter said.

  “ONE. TWO. THREE.”

  Both men bolted to the wounded soldiers and dragged them to the position underneath the sloping rock. The spot wasn’t that much better than the tree, but it offered some cover. Huddled near the rock wall, Walton grabbed Carter’s hand.

  “Make a fist,” he ordered, putting Carter’s hand near the wound on Behr’s pelvis. “Press it here as hard as you can.”

  Walton then rushed back to CK’s body and dragged it to their position in order to shield Morales and Behr from some of the fire. Before leaving the Afghan, he checked for vital signs again.

  Nothing.

  Walton just didn’t want to believe that CK was dead. He took a deep breath and finally called over the radio that the Afghan had been killed. And for a moment the radio, which had been so busy with traffic, fell silent.

  32

  Ford

  Ford found Shurer and together they bounded up the hill.

  All of the team’s firepower was at the bottom of the hill. There was no point in going up the hill. He urged Walton to move the wounded down, but to no avail. The switchbacks leading to the ledge where the team was trapped were so narrow that the two were having difficulty navigating them quickly. They were weighed down by body armor and gear, but there was no time to waste. They had to get up there fast. It was almost like a game of leapfrog. They would run and climb, stopping only to help the other up the steep terraces. It was grueling and dangerous. Bullets were hitting the rocks.

  Meeting Williams on the way up, they spotted a group of insurgents moving to get in firing position. Shouldering their rifles, Williams and Ford opened fire, cutting down the fighters and buying a little more time or their teammates trapped above.

  Climbing over the last ridge, Ford finally reached the ledge where the team was trapped. Carter was trying to treat Morales and Behr. The rocks around them were soaked in blood. Behr was pale white. Carter was exerting pressure on Morales’s leg trying to keep it from bleeding. Morales appeared composed.

  Ford stared at CK, then turned to Walton, who was pressed against the rock wall talking on the radio. With no medics on the ledge, Ford figured Walton, a trained EMT, would be working on the wounded.

  CK’s body was set up front.

  But the captain, almost sensing Ford’s reaction, spoke first: “He is fucking dead, dude.”

  “Are you sure?” Ford snapped. He knew never to assume that someone is dead.

  “Yeah. I’m sure. I just checked.”

  Ford could tell Walton was pissed that he was questioning him, but CK was his friend, and he wanted visual confirmation that he was dead. CK’s body was still out in the open and nobody had even checked him. Ford just wanted to ensure that they didn’t need to treat him.

  Ford and Walton could be stubborn. They wanted things done their way. But to make Ford happy, Walton put a knee down on CK’s body and pulled off his glove to check him again; some blood in his mouth began bubbling.

  “Look, it’s bubbles,” Ford said.

  “It’s me,” Walton said. “It’s my knee on his chest. I’m pushing out the last bit of air in his chest.”

  He was dead.

  Fuck, Ford thought. It was true. He turned his head away from CK’s body and noticed that the terps were up against the wall doing nothing. There was almost no cover.

  Staying close to the wall, Ford started to think about how to improve their position. He noticed Rhyner sitting by a tree near the ledge facing away from the village. It was Rhyner’s job to get the Apaches and F-15s above to drop bombs and fire rockets at the bunkerlike buildings above them.

  But the young airman looked stunned. To Ford, who was unaware of Rhyner’s having been grazed by a bullet, he appeared to be in shock.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m doing all right,” Rhyner replied.

  Ford knew the other ODA was calling in air strikes, but Rhyner wasn’t. And the helicopters weren’t doing anything. Their ordnance just hit the side of the buildings and wasn’t leaving a dent.

  “You need to get CAS going. Get some fast movers in here. Get the helicopters out of here. They’re worthless.”

  Rhyner still seemed kind of dazed. He looked at Ford, then back to a map and then the radio, then looked back at Ford.

  It was the biggest firefight Ford had been in, and this was his eighth deployment. It was Rhyner’s first. He could only imagine what Rhyner was thinking or feeling.

  “Hey, if you’re calling for fire, you need to face the objective,” Ford said. “I need you to turn around.”

  Moving back toward Shurer, he wanted an assessment on Morales and Behr.

  “Urgent,” Shurer said, by now covered in blood as he tried to stop the flow from the massive wound in Behr’s pelvis.

  That meant they had no more than thirty minutes before Behr was likely to die. He was as white as ghost and Ford didn’t think he was going to make it. He had to start getting these guys off the ledge. Looking around, he realized that he had lost all situational awareness. It was total chaos. He didn’t see Sanders or Walding on the ledge and had no idea where they were.

  “Hey, where are they at? Sanders? Walding?”

  “Up there,” said Walton, pointing higher up the mountain toward the village.

  Ford immediately signaled them on the radio. He was afraid they would get cut off since they were right by the village. And if they were cut off or got pinned down, he knew there was no way they could get down.

  “Come down to us,” he told Walding before turning his attention back to the ledge.

  Walton looked at Ford. “Are we still going to continue the assault?”

  Ford knew ODA 3312 was pinned down in the wadi and they still weren’t getting enough close air support. He had no idea what ODA 3325 was doing, but their objective was in another part of the valley.

  “No. The assault is done. We need to get these guys packaged and headed toward an LZ. Until we get CAS rolling and get the casualties out of here the assault is done.”

  “Okay, Scott,” Walton said. “Get these fucking casualties out of here.”

  “I’ll take care of it,” Ford said.

  Ford figured Ghafour was already gone. And if he wasn’t, they would get him with air strikes—as soon as the fighters got going. Heading back to Rhyner near the tree, Ford hadn’t gotten his point across to the man the first time. And getting air cover to relieve some of the pressure was quickly becoming the difference between surviving and dying on the cliff.

  Ford was pissed off.

  “I am going to throw you off the mountain,” he barked, getting in Rhyner’s face. “We need to get it rolling.”

  The Ledge

  (April 6, 2008)

  After hours of fighting, the team eventually got trapped on a small ledge overlookingthe valley 60 feet below. Three of the Special Forces soldiers were gravely wounded.

  [Part 3]

  THE LEDGE

  33

  Behr

  Behr knew he was in deep shit. Shurer had finally arrived, but Behr was struggling to maintain consciousness. Helpless, he thought. I’m fucking helpless.

  And he was feeling guilty.

  Not only was he unable to contribute to the ongoing firefight, he was drawing somebody else to his aid. Fellow soldiers were trying to protect him at great risk to their own safety. H
e knew Morales had probably been shot because of him. He felt like a burden. You’re not supposed to get shot. You’re just dragging other people down.

  Now Behr’s memory was becoming cloudy. He couldn’t even recall the soldiers who’d moved him to the new spot on the ridge. He opened his eyes, but everything seemed blurry. He noticed his only protection was a nearby rock wall. That was it. But it didn’t seem to be providing much cover at all. Not with the bullets impacting near his body.

  Lying in the rock-hard dirt with half his uniform cut off, Behr was too weak to do anything. While his arm hurt, it was his pelvis that worried him. It was throbbing, and when the pain welled up, he would bite down hard on his lip. Someone on the team had removed his body armor to make it easier to exert pressure on his pelvis to stop the bleeding. The reality was that Behr was slipping into shock. If that happened, his body would start shutting down.

  In the minutes after Behr was shot, his adrenaline had kicked in, and this helped keep him alert. But now he was drowsy. He blamed this, in part, on the morphine. Each Special Forces soldier carried a morphine-filled needle he could inject if he was wounded in combat. Someone on the team had injected Behr. While the drug relieved some of his excruciating pain, it left him disoriented. He had lost all concept of time. He was unsure how long he had been in this spot, or how long the battle had been raging.

  He only knew that Shurer was there beside him. He noticed the serious look on the medic’s face. Not a good sign, Behr thought.

  Shurer was on top of Behr, pulling gauze and other material out of his kit, starting an IV, and then putting pressure on the wound. While he worked, Behr glimpsed a building on the other side of the valley. He spotted flashes of muzzle fire coming from it.