The Only Thing Worth Dying For (30 page)

“We need to control that bridge,” said Amerine.

Fox nodded in agreement.

“How big is Damana versus Shawali Kowt?” Amerine asked Karzai.

“Shawali Kowt is almost a town, stretched along the northern bank of the river. Damana is barely a village. Very few people. Hundreds, versus one or two thousand in Shawali Kowt.”

“We will move as before, with your forward element seizing Damana in advance of the main body of the convoy,” Fox said to Amerine. “From there, I want you to move out to this hill southwest of the town.” A tightly wound circle of lines on the topographical map indicated a small but steep hillock, perhaps two hundred feet high and a quarter mile beyond Damana in the direction of Shawali Kowt and the bridge.

“We need to seize Shawali Kowt and take the bridge,” said Amerine, voicing his reservations. “That’s the only way to secure and hold Damana. A major road from Kandahar leads straight to the bridge, so we have to consider it the main avenue of approach for any Taliban coming north to attack.”

Though Fox understood the bridge’s strategic importance, he felt that pushing so far in one day was overly ambitious, and he was more comfortable with the closer goal of the hillock.

“For now, plan to look at the hill beyond Damana,” Fox said. “If you can see the whole area from there, it can serve the same purpose.”

Amerine nodded. “Will do—I’ll go brief the men.”

Around midnight, more weapons and supplies drifted down from the sky beneath big, billowing parachutes, except for one that “burned in” like a missile and smashed into the ground after its chute failed. ODA 574 prepared for the free-for-all that had occurred at the team’s first airdrop, but the guerrillas hefted the crates into the beds of a few trucks and drove them back to town without incident. Within a half hour, the crates had disappeared into Karzai’s compound.

At 5
A.M.
, Mike, Ronnie, and Brent crawled from their sleeping bags and walked over to Karzai’s compound to check the damage to the weapons that had been in the crate with the failed parachute. Soon their hands were coated with Cosmoline—the sticky, oily-smelling rust preventive used to protect guns in long-term storage. The weapons sergeants spread a jumble of broken AK-47s and PKM machine guns on blankets and began to salvage parts. As the sun rose higher, the three men had a growing number of assault rifles and machine guns assembled from what was still usable, and the sharp crack of AK-47 fire echoed off the mountains as they test-fired the weapons before distributing them to the locals along with food, clothing, and blankets.

Out at the hilltop observation post, the rest of the team was taking turns on watch. Amerine was writing notes in his journal when Alex said, “We’ve got company.”

Standing up quickly, Amerine looked to the south.

“No,” said Alex. “Over there.”

Charlie the spook was approaching from the village, and Amerine walked down off the hill to greet him.

“Hamid wants to see you,” Charlie said.

“On my way,” replied Amerine, who grabbed his M4, pulled on his load-bearing vest, and went over to Fox, who was sitting on the
tailgate of JD’s truck. “Hamid called for me,” Amerine said, “so I’m heading over to see him.”

“Let me know if anything is going on,” said Fox.

“Will do.”

Amerine and Charlie entered Karzai’s headquarters just as four Afghans were leaving, each of them staring solemnly forward, walking in a line like condemned men. Had it not been for their grave expressions, Amerine would have thought they were his own guerrillas.

“Jason, I have information about a Taliban headquarters and weapons depot,” said Karzai. “The men you just passed are Taliban deserters. They say there are hundreds of fighters gathered in a walled compound near a madrassa on the edge of a town south of the Arghandab River.”

On his map, Karzai pointed out the location roughly a mile beyond the bridge at Shawali Kowt. According to the deserters, the town remained staunchly Taliban.

Dan had been giving Amerine hourly intelligence reports. The Marines were still at Camp Rhino, with a few manning checkpoints on the roads heading into Kandahar from the south. The ODA with Sherzai had begun to disrupt enemy traffic on the roads well outside the city. These American emplacements had a common goal of bottling up the Taliban inside Kandahar, the initial stages of an expected siege. Both the Marines and Sherzai were following Task Force Dagger’s adamant directive to stay out of the city.

“So this information from these men is a peace offering?” asked Amerine. “Now they are on our side?”

“Yes.”

“Do you trust them?”

“I don’t think they are lying.”

“Then we should direct our bombers there and destroy it?” Amerine asked.

By now Amerine felt he could read Karzai for signs of doubt—a slightly raised eyebrow or change in posture. He had noticed this when he told him about the encampment that proved to be refugees. This time there was no hesitation. If they didn’t strike the enemy now, they would likely meet them, along with all those weapons, on the road to Kandahar.

“Then I believe we should move tomorrow,” said Amerine. “After this strike, there’s no reason to wait here another day.”

Satisfied with the airdrops, Karzai concurred. “Tomorrow morning we depart for Damana.”

Returning to the observation post, Amerine headed straight to Dan and Wes, who sent SITREPs to Task Force Dagger and brought up satellite imagery of the intended target on their laptops; Alex directed aerial reconnaissance aircraft to the area. Amerine then informed Fox and Bolduc of the new developments, and the three of them were looking at the maps on Alex’s computer when recon pilots radioed that they had “eyes on” the enemy compound. Their report fit the description the deserters had provided, including the two adjacent outbuildings purportedly being used as large weapons caches. A great many vehicles were scattered in the area, a pilot said, “like grazing sheep.”

Since the target was located near the edge of a populated area, this strike held the greatest risk for collateral damage that Amerine had authorized, and he sought Fox’s opinion. Fox, with a nod from Bolduc, agreed: It was risky but necessary.

ODA 574 monitored the situation for the rest of the day, learning from the pilots that a steady stream of people was coming and going from these small buildings; it appeared that Taliban fighters were stocking up.

After sunset, most of the guerrillas and many of the locals from Petawek gathered between Karzai’s compound and ODA 574’s observation post, sitting on blankets or on the tailgates of trucks, their gazes fixed south as if waiting for a drive-in movie to begin. Word had spread that the Americans were attacking a Taliban position, and they were here for the show.

Finally, Alex said, “The bomber is vectored in—the pilot’s at the right place.”

Amerine cleared the target hot.

Within ten minutes, the horizon glowed from the explosions thirty miles away. Some cheers rang out among the Afghans, but at this distance, the ensuing fire was only an orange glow. Apparently unimpressed, many of the guerrillas retired to their encampments.

The Americans remained fixated. Another explosion blipped on the horizon. Then another. These secondary blasts were from the cached weapons: stores of grenades, RPGs, perhaps even surface-to-air missiles. They continued sporadically, alleviating Amerine’s concerns that the deserters might have fed them bogus intelligence.

He marked the location on his map with an X, then pulled out his black journal, describing the explosions and distant glow as “death on the horizon.”

Dawn broke clear and cold on the third of December. The guerrillas were scattered among their vehicles, carpets rolled out on the hardened soil where they had been praying toward Mecca moments before. An hour later, carpets rolled up, MREs eaten, third cups of tea or coffee drunk, most of the bipeds in the vicinity were still sitting on their asses—another late start. “It’s Afghan Standard Time,” Mike said to Wes. “It’s a disease.”

Amerine was going over the day’s route with Alex when he saw Dan trotting down off the hill toward Petawek, alone. He watched Dan walk straight to Karzai’s compound and talk to the guerrillas guarding the door, who stepped inside and conversed with one of the CIA spooks before allowing Dan inside.

How things had changed: Now the team was going through Afghan bodyguards or the CIA to speak with Karzai. Amerine looked over at Fox and Bolduc, who had been spending nearly all their time out at ODA 574’s post, ignoring the golden rule of guerrilla warfare: Always stay with the G-chief.

Half an hour later—or three cups of tea, Amerine guessed—Dan and Karzai emerged from the compound and strolled up to the observation post, Dan looking like a woolly mountain man and wearing his Red Sox cap, and Karzai, beard neatly trimmed, wrapped in a tan blanket. The two men approached Amerine, who noticed that although Karzai’s eyes were as clear and alert as ever, they were rimmed with dark circles from lack of sleep.

“I asked Hamid to come out for a team photo before we push out,” Dan said with a grin. “Thought this was a good time for it.”

“Good idea,” said Amerine with a nod to Karzai. “Get everybody together.”

As ODA 574 gathered around Karzai for the picture, Fox and Bolduc came over and stood directly in the middle of the group; appearing apologetic, Nelson Smith shuffled to the back.

Mag set up his camera on the tailgate of a truck, set the timer, then ran back to a space between Mike and Dan, kneeling in the front row.

“Let’s take one more,” said Ken said after the camera clicked. “This time with just the guys who were here from the beginning.”

There wasn’t a man on ODA 574 who didn’t smile at Ken’s suggestion.

It was almost twelve, and the team’s three vehicles—including a new truck, purchased from a local to replace Amerine’s—were loaded and ready to join the guerrilla convoy already assembling. They would continue in the same formation used since leaving Tarin Kowt.

ODA 574 gathered for a final huddle, and Amerine recapped the plan they’d been preparing for the day’s movement to Damana, twenty-five miles away.

“I don’t expect the hill west of Damana to yield anything,” Amerine said, “so get your heads focused on Shawali Kowt. We’ll make contact with the enemy today. If we have to take Shawali Kowt, it isn’t going to be easy. But that town and that bridge are the key to defending the entire area.”

“Enough fun and games,” said JD after a long pause. “Let’s saddle up.”

While the rest of the men moved out to their vehicles, Amerine took JD aside and said, “We’re going to run into something out there today. If things go to shit and I give you the word, get Hamid’s ass out of there. Get him airlifted to Pakistan or back to Tarin Kowt, whatever it takes. We’ll find our way back to you; don’t try to come for us. Your job is to keep Hamid alive.”

“I hear you, but we’re not going to leave you behind,” JD said, tugging the bill of his Harley-Davidson cap downward.

“You’re going to have to trust that I will call for you to come help if there is anything you can do. Remember, Hamid Karzai is about to become the leader of this country’s government. You are protecting the future of Afghanistan.”

CHAPTER NINE

Death on the Horizon

Unlike the northern capital, Kandahar does not lie in the shadow of lofty hills; but about three miles off, from the north, westward, to the south, there runs a bare serrated range, with many a fantastic peak and clearly-cut block showing against the sky-line. To force a passage in this direction, through thickly sown villages and gardens and vineyards, was no child’s play. Without masses of well-trained infantry the attempt could not have been made at all.

—Lieutenant Charles Gray Robertson, 1881
¹

The convoy pushed out from Petawek at the crack of noon, the men waving good-bye to the children for whom, over the last few days, they had provided a distraction from the tedium of village life. Nelson Smith, a new father, had been particularly taken with these beautiful children and was astounded at how weathered they were by the desert wind and sun, even at just two or three years of age. In some cases they already had wrinkled hands and crow’s-feet forming at the corners of their eyes.

“I wish I could put one of these kids in my rucksack and take him home,” Smith told Mag. “Could probably give him a cracker every once in a while and he’d be happy as a clam.”

Before they departed, Fox had emphasized to Karzai the importance of an orderly convoy; they couldn’t afford another off-road rally this close to Kandahar. Karzai’s followers were to stay behind the shuttle bus. If they wanted to swarm around the desert in the rear,
that was fine. Showing great restraint, the guerrillas maintained order as the line of vehicles crossed over into Kandahar Province without so much as a speed bump marking the sandy border and climbed into the mountains where Amerine and his split team had mistaken the bulldozer tracks for a tank’s.

Caves, overlooks, and fighting positions—foxholes and trench lines—abounded on both sides while the convoy moved cautiously down the rough road, but the positions were unoccupied. Word of Karzai’s victory had reached the province, where local tribal leaders had opened channels through which they were now traveling unopposed. They were less than twenty-five miles from Kandahar with no sign of the enemy, only an occasional farmer walking along the road, carrying firewood or a sack of dried goat dung. Every so often, the outline of a camel in the distance alerted them to a Bedouin camp.

Around 3
P.M.
, the lead element crested the far side of the range, and the terrain smoothed out before them: an arid landscape striped by belts of vegetation—some green, but mostly the burnt hues of autumn; the few villages in the valley below looked like handfuls of pebbles strewn among the brown and tan fields. There was nothing to suggest that a thriving metropolis lay only fifteen miles beyond the sharp peaks jutting like the serrations of a saw blade on the far side of the valley.