Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War (8 page)

Jeffords nodded vigorously in agreement, smiling. Lt. Johnson gave me a skeptical look.

“All right, Meyer, do your grunt thing.”

I grabbed six or seven Askars and started climbing. Halfway up, a grenade burst next to me, but the rocky ground deflected its shrapnel. I didn’t think the dushmen were that close. We hit the deck, not able to see them. Over the radio, Lt. Johnson informed me that it wasn’t a dushmen grenade; it was friendly fire. A soldier had fired a 40-millimeter shell, not able to tell us from the dushmen. So this was my chance. I pulled a high-visibility orange air panel from my pack, draped it over my shoulders, and continued climbing.

By the time we reached the top, the dushmen had pulled back to our left. We dared not run single file along the ridge trail, so we stayed where we were. Jeffords’ platoon continued plastering the hillside to our front. The dushmen replied with plunging fire, scattering rock chips in all directions and nicking several soldiers. Fortunately, no one needed a medevac. Within an hour, the dushmen had evaporated, per usual.

My little flanking party, thoroughly exhausted, walked back downhill. Jeffords was pleased with his caper, and his soldiers were all grins. They had fired a few thousand rounds, aired out their cabin fever, and nobody was hit too badly. Lt. Johnson was less than pleased. The whole thing went against standard procedures. And he knew I had been a party to it.

“Meyer,” he said, “I told you this was bullshit. I don’t know how you finagled me into this again.”

Just before the Afghan presidential election in late August of 2009, Lt. Johnson sent Staff Sgt. Kenefick and me, along with some Askars, to
guard the polling station at Dangam, a district center on the Pakistan border. President Karzai’s cronies had already rigged the election. Dangam was one of many remote districts guaranteed to deliver more votes than there were voters. What a country!

Staff Sgt. Kenefick and I were still a little standoffish with each other about his by-the-book ways. Maybe the lieutenant was forcing us to work together, or he was exiling me so he could relax for a few days. Dangam had been the patrol area for Lt. Jake Kerr’s platoon. Kerr was the wild-bunch officer at Monti, a loaded pistol who did what he wanted. I heard that at West Point he had played rugby, which is football without a helmet. He had sometimes come to our hooch to borrow, like a cup of sugar, a powerful weapon for one operation or another. Jacked from too many years in the weight room, Kerr tromped around the hills like an angry bear, and his platoon adopted his edgy style.

Early on, his platoon was sent to Dangam to stop the infiltration from Pakistan. Kerr’s soldiers had hiked up to every
khol
, or small knot of houses, along the road from Monti out to Dangam, to offer jobs to pave the road and build schools. Kerr spread the pay equally among small competing tribes. In turn, the work crews, not wanting to be blown up, pointed out where the IEDs were hidden. In short, Kerr knew how to play the tribal game.

In retaliation, the Taliban sent a raiding party to attack the Dangam district office. Tipped off, Kerr had a machine-gun crew waiting on a nearby hill. Three attackers were killed, and the others retreated back into Pakistan. In appreciation, the local Mushani tribe invited the Americans to a feast, where they welcomed Kerr as a tribal member and gave him the name Zelaware Zelmae, or Brave Son.

Kerr persuaded the local Askars and police to help his platoon build a fort. Once that was hardened, he planned to set up ambushes
along the trails leading to Pakistan, a mile farther east. But when a nearby outpost was overrun in May, Army headquarters pulled Kerr’s platoon out of Dangam because it was “too exposed.” The platoon thought headquarters had overreacted.

Staff Sgt. Kenefick and I took fifteen Askars and drove out to Dangam. We settled into Kerr’s old fort on top of a small hill with sheer sides protected by triple rows of barbed wire. The fort was a small patch of flat ground surrounded by a deep trench line, with bunkers at each corner—impossible to assault on foot.

But several hundred meters away on all sides were towering mountains. The dushmen could climb higher than the fort and fire down RPGs. It’s hard to find the highest peak in a country jammed full of mountains. You’d have to go all the way east to Everest if you didn’t want any higher ground around you.

Kerr had compensated by pre-plotting every visible slope, so he could call in artillery fire like calling for a takeout pizza. So I did the same. Before leaving Monti, I plotted a half dozen Kilo Echoes. KEs are pre-calibrated impact points for artillery fire. If we came under attack, I could radio a command like, “Left one hundred meters from KE 3366, fire for effect.” The artillery rounds zoomed the five miles over the mountain to that exact spot. Targeting in mountainous elevations is tricky, but I had sufficient practice during sniper training to feel comfortable.

When we arrived about noon, after a long drive without saying much to each other, Staff Sgt. Kenefick and I assigned two Askars to each bunker. I then took out my binoculars, map, and compass to recheck the Kilo Echoes. I had been doing this for about half an hour when a sheep or goat herder in a bluish man-dress walked into plain sight, about four hundred meters away on a higher hillside. He was waving a walking stick at his invisible sheep, while looking right at
me. His cover was so pathetic that I almost waved back at him. Then he ducked behind an outcropping, stuck the barrel of an AK out of the rocks, and fired off four or five rounds.

Staff Sgt. Kenefick was standing outside a bunker about a hundred feet from me.

“Meyer, we’re under attack!” he yelled.

Technically, yes. But the shepherd was shooting without poking his head up to aim. He had one chance in a thousand of hitting us. A second harmless burst followed, the bullets cracking more than ten feet above our heads.

“Call for arty! NOW!” Staff Sgt. Kenefick yelled, holding the radio headset out toward me.

Oh, nice. Staff Sgt. soon-to-be Gunnery Sgt. Kenefick needed the lowly corporal’s help. I trotted toward him, stopped, assumed parade-rest posture, arms locked behind my back, chest pushed forward in the wide open, and pasted a respectful expression on my face.

“What does the staff sergeant wish the corporal to do?”

Another burst from the AK.

“This is no time to be a smart-ass, Meyer!”

A few more rounds, still way high. I’m locked in parade rest.

“Aye, Staff Sergeant.”

He balanced the handset, considering whether to throw it at me. “Meyer, hurry up!”

He had started calling in the artillery mission, and when I got to him he was asking me, “What do I say now?”

“Left one hundred, drop two hundred,” I said.

He repeated it on the radio.

“What now?” he asked.

“Fire for effect,” I said, “should be dead on.”

“Okay, fire for effect,” he repeated over the radio.

We settled behind some sandbags. Even before the shells landed, two of our Askars rushed up with their brand-new 203s, which are short, wide-barreled weapons that fire 40-millimeter grenades the size of a man’s fist. They plunked a few shells toward the shepherd and puffs of orange powder bloomed across the hillside. By mistake, the Askars were shooting training rounds, not explosive rounds.

The shepherd scampered away. If he is still alive, he probably enlivens campfires in the Hindu Kush with his account of gas warfare. In old age, he will blame his ailments on a chemical weapon that was a mixture of talcum powder and red dye.

The artillary rounds landed right on target. After the fire had ended, Staff Sgt. Kenefick looked at me and slapped me on the back.

“I’m pretty good at that, aren’t I!” he said.

We both burst out laughing. Somehow that stupid incident broke the tension between us. Over the next few days, we learned how to divide the tasks and work together.

Dangam, a dusty border hamlet, had changed allegiances several times in the long war.
The border meant nothing to the tribes. Smugglers, commuters, Taliban, local cops—everyone seemed to get along, like in the intergalactic bar in
Star Wars
. We couldn’t figure out much of what was going on. Dodd Ali, my closest Askar friend, said he and the other Askars were outsiders like us, so they had no idea who might be Taliban.

I watched the town’s daily routines. The sub-governor calmly went to work inside the district compound below our outpost. The police chief puttered around in his truck, as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Night after night we saw the bobbing flashlights
going over the pass into Pakistan. We didn’t have a clue who was coming or going, or why.

Our Askars insisted the Taliban were skirting around our outpost. They pointed at figures about seven hundred meters away, walking single-file, and shouted, “Dushmen! Dushmen!” Our rules of engagement required that any target display both hostile capability, like a rifle, and hostile intent, like aiming at us. I couldn’t plug someone for walking single-file. While we watched the district compound from one hilltop, insurgents were watching from other hilltops and chatting on their handheld radios. Our Askars said they used simple codes, like “the chickens [mortars] and horses [rockets] are in position.”

At Lt. Johnson’s insistence, Dog Company had sent out a squad from Monti to stand guard with us on election day. Jeffords’ squad brought a badminton set from a care package from the States. We decided to set it up on the helo landing zone, the most exposed place on base, and have a tournament. We called it the No Taliban Badminton Tournament 2009, and we swatted the shuttlecock back and forth, hoping to lure a dushmen into shooting.

Dodd Ali asked if he could shoot the shuttlecock out of the air with his squad automatic weapon, which shoots ten rounds a second. I said no; if he missed with the SAW, I’d be splattered all over the sandbags. I was “Meyetta” to Dodd Ali. He couldn’t believe I had ridden on the back of my cow, Tinker Bell. He was fun to talk to, open, friendly, and fearless. We would sit around talking and asking questions of each other like kids in middle school, learning as much as we could about each other. He proudly cleaned his SAW five times a day and absorbed every tip I gave him about shooting. He was the most disciplined Askar on base. That’s why we gave him the SAW in the first place.

Staff Sgt. Kenefick and I figured the local officials were crazy to have announced the voting location in advance. The night before the elections, we therefore switched the voting station to a small store outside of town. We sent the Askars into town at morning prayer to redirect the voters.

The insurgents liked to shoot 107-millimeter rockets—light, three-foot-long projectiles fired from short tubes that were set up rapidly on temporary bipods. A man can carry a launcher on his back, and the rocket can be aimed directly at the target. The damn things can go five miles.

The voting started at 7
A
.
M
. I heard the first rocket
foomp
at 7:01. It ripped apart the front of the empty district compound where a hundred voters would have been lined up had we not moved them a kilometer away. The empty center took twenty-one rounds in the next two hours. The Taliban had their orders to hit that building, so they did, stupidly, again and again. But they hit it well.

I left Dangam with a healthy respect for the skill of the rocket gunners and their cold hearts, willing to kill their own relatives. They didn’t do so this day, but they’d tried.

Staff Sgt. Kenefick and I headed back to Monti, while the over-full ballot box headed for Kabul. Staff Sgt. Kenefick and I were okay with each other. Absolutely.

A few weeks later, it was Combat Outpost Monti’s turn to feel the full force of the rockets. In early September, just before dinner one evening I heard the
foomp, foomp
of two rockets launched from tubes somewhere up on the hill above us. We started taking concentrated rocket fire on the Afghan side of the base. We had taken RPG shots before, of course, but several rockets incoming barrage-style was a new experience. The dushmen were firing on a direct lay from a hilltop to the southeast, with the gunners looking straight down at Monti.

They were in the air, screeching our way with their very rocket-like sound. You don’t have time to react. The hair on the back of your neck tingles for a split second before the bang. I jumped on the .50-cal and pumped out rounds, while Lt. Johnson tried to lay an azimuth for our mortars. Then my gun jammed.

The lieutenant and I ran into the concrete watchtower at the main gate to get another gun. No sooner had I hopped on a 240 machine gun than a rocket shook the tower. An Askar picked up an RPG to
shoot out the other window. I grabbed it out of his hands and placed it under my feet. The back-blast in that enclosed space would have fried us. I shouted down at Doc Layton to start shooting back. You need to get your firepower going if you want to keep the enemy from popping up and firing. It’s all about volume, aggression, overpowering them with a flood of bullets and explosions.

“I’m a doc!” he yelled back. In our previous skirmishes, he had been there to patch us up, not to kill anybody.

“C’mon, Doc. Corpsmen can shoot back when they need to!” I yelled.

He started firing his peashooter M4 rifle toward the dushmen moving on the hill at least seven hundred meters away, probably setting up more rockets. A ridiculous range for the M4. We heard a sudden screech before another rocket slammed into the side of the tower. An Askar tapped me on the shoulder. He had a shocked look on his face and was pointing down. The bone was sticking out of his right shin where his foot had been, and blood was gushing out.

“Doc Layton, put a tourniquet on this!” I screamed. Doc had something better to do now, the thing he had come for.

I gestured at two Askars to carry the wounded man down the metal outside stairs. Twice they dropped him as more rockets slammed in. Lt. Johnson saw that they were just killing the guy and he jumped up to take care of the situation. Doc Layton grabbed the 240 and started ripping off bursts as I put the wounded man over my shoulder and headed down the stairs. Halfway down, a rocket hit a truck next to the tower. I leapt the last flight of stairs and landed hard on the ground. Lt. Johnson ran out and stopped a Ford Ranger that was headed out of the area.