Lions of Kandahar (27 page)

“GO! GO! GO!” Bill yelled before the dust settled. Now we had the initiative, at least mentally. If the Taliban wanted to fight it out today, by God, they’d get all they wanted.

We shot through the dozen or so shallow irrigation ditches crisscrossing the open field and drove quickly toward the berm at the
base of the hill. The fire was sporadic and we managed to make it past the point where we had been stopped two days earlier. Had we really just caught the Taliban off guard? Maybe they thought we weren’t coming back. Sometimes lightning does strike twice in the same spot. Either way, it was a good sign.

We stayed off the main road leading over the berm to the hill. If there were any mines or IEDs, they would probably be on the road. When we came to the base of the berm I jumped out and took cover behind a twenty-foot-tall earthen mound. I motioned for my Afghan machine-gun teams and shouted commands in Pashto. This was one of those times my seven months in language school came in handy. An Afghan soldier carrying a Russian PKM machine gun cursed as enemy fire kicked up dirt all around us. The rate of fire increased steadily. The Taliban were awake now.

We had to clear a new berm, not visible on the two-year-old imagery on my computer, before we could get a clear field of fire. I crawled to the top and saw a set of compounds and a building to my right. Towering over us was Sperwan Ghar.

The ashy gray hill stood nearly sixty feet tall, looming over the small U-shaped building we’d seen on the map. There were six smaller structures at the base of the hill, all collapsed, as well as several old rusted Soviet trucks and a water tank. I caught a glimpse of movement in the windows of the main building.

I crawled back about a yard from the crest and gave the final assault call. Nearly two dozen Special Forces soldiers and ANA soldiers sprinted off their vehicles toward the safety of the berm. An ANA soldier plopped down beside me, set up his machine gun, and started firing while Bill collected the remainder of the ANA machine gunners and moved them into a line with my position on the berm.

“You—fire north to first building! You—take ammunition to machine gunner. You—protect right side machine gunner from Taliban,” I screamed in Pashto. No doubt the grammar and pronunciation weren’t perfect, but no one gave a shit at that point.

The return fire picked up and soon a maelstrom of fire rained down on us. Tracer fire zipped so close I could reach up and touch it. Rounds exploded in the dirt near my head. I rolled on my back to try to see where it was coming from. Rounds hit from the right, front, and rear of the berm. I raced back to my truck and grabbed my M240. Leaning over in the seat, I shouted at Brian to move up. “Drive up the side of the berm and just crest the top so Dave can fire! No matter what, stay off the road.”

Brian ground the gears into place and crept up the berm until Dave opened up with his .50 cal, swinging the massive machine gun from side to side to keep the fighters’ heads down. The rounds punched through the walls of the buildings. There would be no back room for the enemy to hide in. Jumping out of my truck, I dashed along the base of the berm toward some Afghan soldiers huddled behind it. Grabbing a PKM machine gun from an ANA soldier, I crawled with it up the hill and stopped exactly where I wanted it, fixing the bipod legs in position. I fired a ten-round burst, showing the Afghan gunner behind me where to shoot, motioning for him to fire in an arc. He flashed a quick smile, nodded, and went to work.

I wanted to get back to my truck and my gun. I ran along the backside of the berm, dirty, salty sweat pouring down my face. There was no covert way to get there. Rounds kicked up the dirt around me. Bullets cracked, passing way too close to me, to everyone. I needed to get down soon, before one of these assholes got lucky.

As I dove into my truck, Hodge staged the assault force behind the line of machine guns.

“Hodge, it’s Rusty. There’s a slight depression on the far side of the berm that you can use for cover,” I radioed. Procedural call signs and normal radio procedures take too long in the midst of a firefight. You say what needs to be said.

The assault force could set up in the defilade while we fired into the enemy positions, but they would still have to charge straight over the berm, into the teeth of the fire, and then clear a school built on a
little plateau partway to the summit of the hill, which we couldn’t leave occupied by the enemy. “This school was donated to the people of Afghanistan by UNICEF” was clearly painted over the doorway.

“Now, go! Go! Go!” Hodge screamed.

His commands were quickly lost in the roar of machine-gun fire coming from both sides. It looked like a microcosm of the storming of Omaha Beach. The twenty Special Forces and ANA soldiers bolted over the hill at a full sprint, enveloped in the cloud of dust they threw up. From where I was poised behind my gun, the assault seemed to unfold in slow motion. I could see the rounds cut through the dust cloud, impacting in wisps nearby.

Two ANA soldiers tripped and fell in a dusty tumble. One managed to get to his feet and keep running. The second did not. Another ANA soldier hopped the last few feet to the depression on one leg, his screams barely audible as blood spouted liberally. It was a femoral wound. An ANA medic crawled to his aid as a small group of soldiers sprinted for the side of the white schoolhouse.

They threw themselves against the wall, weapons targeted on the open doors and windows. We continued to fill the rooms with fire. Before they could seize the hill, they had to push the Taliban fighters out of the school, one room at a time. We had no idea how many rooms or fighters they faced.

“Rusty, stop firing or shift your guns left toward the hill,” Hodge called over the radio.

“Shifting left!” Dave and Brian adjusted immediately. Bill, who was now positioned with the ANA machine gunners to my right, began turning their fire to the enemy fighting positions on the hill itself.

No fighters remained in the school—any that had been there must have taken off after seeing the assault force, choosing to flee and fight another day.

On his signal, Hodge’s team burst out of a side exit and began their scratching, sliding assault up Sperwan Ghar. I could not help
but be impressed as I watched Hodge, at forty-one, ascending the hill with his NCOs and ANA soldiers.

“Talon 30. Talon 31. Where is our air support?” I radioed Jared.

“I don’t know,” Jared responded, a beat before we both heard the TOC come over the radio with the word that we’d have fighters and Apaches to us soon. Fanning out, Hodge’s team worked their way up the side of the hill, hunched over with their weapons at the ready, clearing small caves and avoiding the spiraling road, wary of mines. Sure enough, halfway up the hill, there was a muffled explosion and an ANA soldier crumpled, shrieking in pain, his ankle a mass of bloody flesh. A medic on Hodge’s team made a beeline for him, despite the threat of more mines. Steve, my team’s medic, hopped into an ANA truck and took off toward their position.

“Mines!” Hodge screamed over the radio. The assault stalled. Mines tended to have that effect. The assault team wedged themselves into small washouts in the side of the incline and tried to fire back at the Taliban positions above. Others probed for mines. I called Bill on the radio.

“Link up with 26 and push over the hill now!”

Bill motioned to Taz and his squad to follow and took off at a sprint. I knew if anyone could pry the enemy off the hill it was Bill and Taz. Bill led Taz and his squad up the hill as Hodge’s men covered them. Soon, everyone was out of the washouts. Hodge’s team literally dragged the Afghans toward the top, firing at defenders above. As they neared the crest of the hill, I saw several hurl hand grenades over the lip. Crashing explosions were followed by automatic rifle fire, then more crashing explosions. I felt absolutely helpless.

One small ANA soldier scurried up the hill like a mountain goat. It was Taz. He crested the hill and fired his AK from the shoulder like a lifetime professional. He knelt at the top, near a Special Forces soldier who was struggling to find a footing under the immense weight of
his equipment. Taz fired intermittently, controlling his expenditure of ammunition, until the Special Forces soldier steadied himself. Side by side they walked forward toward the bunkers, covering each other.

A few minutes later, the call came over the radio. It was Hodge.

“We own the hill, but I don’t know for how long. There is a hell of a lot of movement down there. Do you copy?”

We had Sperwan Ghar. Now we just had to hold it.

FRIENDS FOR LIFE

T
he steady crack of bullets overhead, followed by the constant drumming of machine guns returning fire, made thinking impossible. Occasionally, the uniform tapestry of noise was torn by the whoosh of an RPG or the blast of a recoilless rifle punching a hole in a grape hut.

Between bursts, I tried to assess our situation. We had assaulted the defended enemy position twice and held. We now controlled some significant tactical real estate that the Taliban wanted back.

Hodge’s team occupied the Taliban’s previous fighting positions on top of the hill, but the enemy was hammering us from the nearly fifty compounds at its base and from the irrigation ditches, walls, fields, and grape huts that surrounded them.

Bill and Steve stabilized the wounded Afghan soldier with a tourniquet and pressure dressing. They put his detached foot into a black plastic bag, hoping surgeons in Kandahar could reattach it if we
could get a medevac helicopter in time. They moved him to the casualty collection point (CCP) near the berm.

I was watching the small Afghan truck pull away with the wounded when Brian noticed movement in the schoolhouse. We needed to know how many Afghans Hodge had left in the school for security, but my call to him was interrupted.

“Captain, Captain, Taliban moving back of school,” Ali called over in Pashto, as I glimpsed a few figures in dark shirts and scarves dart around the back of the school.

“I left six Afghans,” Hodge radioed back, but he reversed himself half a minute later: “Rusty, the six Afghans are up here with me. No one is in the school.”

Shit. Taliban fighters were back in the school. We could see them darting between the windows and climbing up the hill near a graveyard at the back of the building, probing to see if we were still there. If the Taliban held there, they would split our small force.

Hodge, Bill, and the rest were on top of Sperwan Ghar fighting for their lives. Jared, Casey, and Jude were at the casualty collection point defending the growing number of wounded and the medics trying to treat them. The job of clearing the school again fell to us. The Predator that had arrived on station was calling to alert us to the threat moving behind the assault force as I ordered my machine-gun teams to pick up their guns and ammunition and prepare to move.

“All Talon 30 elements: Talon 31 Alpha [commander] is moving to clear the school,” Brian said.

Since we were the support fire team, we had only machine guns—not the best room-clearing weapon, but we’d have to make do. Same plan as before—no sense in getting cute. Plus, the hasty plan would be second nature to everyone. Muscle memory over thinking.

“Dave, Brian,” I barked before I left, “mow those motherfuckers down when they come out the side of the school. I don’t want to deal with these assholes again! Hodge, you have enemy in the school. We are gonna clear it. DO NOT shoot down there!”

Turning to my squad of six Afghans, I put in a fresh magazine and checked the chamber. “You all come with me. Are you ready?” I said in Pashto. They greeted me with a chorus of
“Wa sahib”
—Yes, sir. Taking a deep breath, I screamed
“Hamla!”
—Attack!—and we headed over the berm at a full sprint.

Bright red tracers poured from the guns on my truck into the school while multicolored Taliban tracers streaked in front of us. Taliban in a group of compounds only one hundred meters away spotted us and let loose with their machine guns, frantically trying to zero in on us.

“ZA! ZA!
ZA!”—GO! GO! GO!—was all I could muster as we cleared the last twenty yards. We made it to the entrance on the far right of the schoolhouse as bullets chipped away the concrete walls around us. I quickly had two Afghan machine gunners set up their weapons. One hammered the compounds that had just fired at us. The other protected our rear in case any Taliban were feeling unusually brave.

I grabbed a grenade, showed it to the four Afghans behind me, flicked off the thumb safety, and pulled the pin. The Afghan soldier next to me turned and fired into the doorway, clearing my path. I stepped out, peered down a long hallway flanked by about four rooms on each side, and threw the grenade as hard and as far down the passage as I could. Rolling back behind the wall, I pulled the Afghan out of the doorway as the building vibrated, dust and razor-sharp shrapnel flying in all directions.