The Only Thing Worth Dying For (43 page)

Reed opened his eyes and saw Fox. “Thanks, sir,” he said before closing them again.

Stepping away, Amerine paused to take in the scene at the CCP. The chaos and confusion had settled into a surreally stoic rhythm. All the Special Forces soldiers, from both the ODA and headquarters, were trained in combat lifesaving skills and casualty evacuation. Those who were able had gotten to work saving lives, stopping the bleeding of both Americans and Afghans as quickly as they could. Every wounded American had been moved into the CCP, where Jackson, the physician’s assistant for Casper’s men as well as a former Special Forces medic, took charge. He calmly oversaw Pickett, Nate (another of Casper’s medically trained spooks), and the Delta medics, while triaging and treating the Americans and most critically wounded Afghans—whose CCP was simply an extension of the American triage area. Ken, the only other trained medic on scene, was sitting with his back against the wall of the clinic and his arm in a thin makeshift sling, staring off into space. The rest of the walking wounded, including Brent and Victor, were still bleeding as they limped from patient to patient, checking bandages and helping administer IV bags, offering words of encouragement to those who were coherent.

A burst of heavy machine-gun fire rang out from a Pinzgauer somewhere to the west. When no more followed, Amerine decided
that it had been a warning to dissuade any enemy that might be in the area from mounting an attack.

With the CCP up and running and the survivors of ODA 574 accounted for, it was time for Amerine to retrieve Dan’s body and to try to locate something of JD, who he presumed had been killed with the Afghans at the point of impact.

Between Smith, Delta, and the CIA handling communications, Amerine was certain that at least two calls for medevac had gone up, but he felt duty-bound to call in a last SITREP for ODA 574—even with the entire team down. If nothing else, he wanted to be absolutely sure that Task Force Dagger was aware how bad things were.

Shattered glass crunched under his boots as Amerine walked around the medical clinic and came upon Seylaab holding his AK-47 as though he was standing guard over the rows of wounded Afghans—around fifty, nearly triple the number of injured Americans. He had replaced his aqua robe with a Russian ammo vest, and when he recognized Amerine, he instinctively grinned, then seemed to catch himself and gave a solemn nod.

Amerine returned the nod and stepped inside the clinic, where some papers and MRE boxes were scattered on the floor around an empty table smeared with blood along one edge. Beneath it was a glassy pool of blood. Against the opposite wall sat a desk with a radio, pen, and paper neatly arranged, and an empty chair in front of it, as if waiting for him.

Seating himself, Amerine checked to see that the radio was on the right frequency, then began his transmission:

“Task Force Dagger, this is Texas One Two. SITREP to follow. Over.”

Major Miller entered the command tent of Task Force Dagger at the moment Colonel Mulholland began to speak into a microphone: “Texas One Two…SITREP?”

Normally, satellite communications were broken or fuzzy, but the voice on the other end was clear, as if Amerine were there in the room. “We are not under enemy attack,” he said. “We have estab
lished security. I have one confirmed KIA; one missing, presumed KIA.” Amerine went down the list, “two expectant,
*
four seriously wounded…” He concluded with “Rambo Eight Five will send additional SITREPs on all casualties once they are tallied.”

Miller was stunned by Amerine’s composure; he might as well have been in a training exercise back at Fort Campbell. It reminded him of a legendary combat commander in the Korean War, “Iron” Mike McKallis, whose higher command learned that the calmer Iron Mike sounded on the radio, the worse the situation was on the ground.

There was a pause after Amerine finished his report, then Mulholland said, “What do you need from us, Texas One Two?”

“I am combat ineffective. We need to be relieved in place by follow-on units.”

Turning around, Mulholland spoke to the only person in the command tent wearing a helmet and holding a gun. “Chris, you look like you’re ready to go,” he said.

“Yes sir,” said Miller, “we’re good to go.”

“Take two A-teams down there with your team and figure it out.”

“Roger, sir, we are on our way.”

A path cleared in the crowded tent, and Miller ran down it and straight to ODB 570’s tent. He burst in, out of breath, and yelled, “Hey, get your shit on—we’re going!”

Heads swiveled from
The Sopranos
. A few men started laughing.

“No!” Miller boomed. “I’m serious, get your shit on. We’re going
now
!”

Somebody switched off the television. “You’re not kidding, sir?”

“Goddamnit, I’m not fucking around! We’re going into Afghanistan. Five Seven Four has taken casualties.”

On the northern outskirts of Shawali Kowt, Hamid Karzai sat on a knoll, his cheek bleeding from a small cut.

Five minutes before the bomb hit, he had been making his way to the top of the Alamo when Casper caught up and said that some tribal leaders had just arrived to speak with him. Karzai walked back down the hill and entered his command post. A couple of minutes later, the windows exploded inward and a thunderous blast knocked everyone inside to the ground. Reacting to what they thought was an RPG targeting Karzai, first Casper and then Karzai’s Afghan bodyguards immediately piled on top of him, shielding him with their bodies. When no further attacks came, they whisked Karzai to the knoll, where the rocks provided some shelter.

As Karzai had been pulled away from his command post, he’d glimpsed the horrendous scene and knew that many were dead.

While an Afghan bandaged Karzai’s cheek, which had been cut by flying glass, a Delta operator joined the CIA-Delta contingent now assigned to him. “What happened?” Karzai asked him.

“Not sure,” said the operator, “but it appears they were calling in bombs across the river and one fell short. That’s all I know. They’re too focused on saving lives right now to give the full rundown.”

Karzai was confused. What had Captain Amerine’s team been bombing? Were they under attack? Whatever it was had to have been urgent; otherwise Jason would have consulted with him. He had done so on every other occasion since Tarin Kowt.

“I need to see what I can do,” Karzai said in Pashto to his personal guard. To the Americans he said in English, “I need to check on my friends.”

Heads shook: His protectors would continue to dissuade Karzai from returning to the Alamo until they were certain about what had occurred and that the perimeter was secure.

Fifteen minutes after the bomb hit, Karzai’s satellite phone rang. A reporter from the BBC was calling from Bonn, Germany, to inform him that the tribal factions at the conference had come to an agreement.

“Congratulations, sir,” she said cheerfully. “You have just been named the chairman of the interim government.”

When he was finished sending the SITREP, Amerine stepped back outside the clinic to see Fox and Smith—the highest-and lowest-ranked soldiers on the scene—working side by side, pulling IV kits from the rucksacks of the headquarters personnel, all of whom had been instructed to store at least one behind his backpack’s kidney belt. They were making a pile of all available medical supplies outside the CCP, while Bolduc was calling out orders to the headquarters staff.

Casper, who was hurrying toward the CCP, spoke to Amerine as he passed: “The Marines are on the way. We’re getting the word out. Shouldn’t be long. They’re coming from Rhino. Hour flight or less.”

Townspeople from Shawali Kowt had emerged to help the surviving guerrillas with the wounded; others were out by the Alamo, stooped over like farmers in a field, picking up body parts. The hill was littered with weapons, clothing, and equipment. A laced boot stood upright. Papers swirled around as the breeze picked up. Amerine knew he should collect the sensitive items—fragments of pages from cipher books, maps, anything having to do with their mission—but that would have to wait until after he had tended to Dan.

The five trucks parked side by side along the northern slope of the Alamo had been perfectly spaced, like a row of dominoes. Now they were askew, lifted up and repositioned by the blast. With a slight limp, Amerine worked his way to the truck farthest right and got down on his knees, which made the shrapnel wound in his thigh burn.
Shit, that hurts!
he thought, then felt guilty for even acknowledging the pain.

Dan was heavy, cumbersome to move, and as Amerine pulled on him, getting most of his upper torso out from under the truck, he imagined Dan opening his eyes and doing one of his favorite impersonations, Bill Murray in the movie
Stripes
: “Chicks dig me because I rarely wear underwear, and when I do, it’s usually something unusual.”

Tending to his dead friend was the worst moment in the most hellish day in Amerine’s life—yet this memory of Dan made him stifle a laugh.

Casper and two Delta operators walked over and silently helped Amerine move Dan onto a poncho, then they carried him over to a small stone hut, away from the wounded, setting him down carefully. One of the Delta operators asked if anyone had a body bag.

“No, I’ll use my bivy sack,” said Amerine, thinking it seemed less impersonal as they lowered Dan inside the weatherproof covering for the sleeping bag Amerine had slept in throughout the mission, almost as though they were putting him to bed.

Once Amerine had zipped the bag closed over Dan’s ashen face, Casper and the two Delta operators left the captain alone.

Kneeling beside Dan, Amerine wanted to say something, but he couldn’t find words of his own. He stared up at the sky, a deep blue now that the smoke had cleared, and began to recite “Futility” by Wilfred Owen—about the death of a soldier witnessed by Owen during World War I. Amerine had committed the poem to memory after he’d first read it as a student at West Point.

Move him into the sun—

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it awoke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—

Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides

Full-nerved—still warm—too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth’s sleep at all?

Reaching the end, Amerine looked away from Dan and began to cry.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Rescue at Shawali Kowt

Anytime. Anyplace.

—Air Force, 16th Special Operations Wing motto

At Camp Rhino, less than one hundred miles south of Shawali Kowt, Master Sergeant David Lee, third in command of ODB 540, was in his team’s tent when the request for emergency medical evacuation came over the radio shortly before 9
A.M
. The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, under the command of Brigadier General James Mattis, had occupied the airstrip since November 25. Two days later, Lee and his B-team had arrived; their primary role was as a liaison, coordinating the Special Forces’ actions in the area with those of the Marines.

Looking out the door at the parked helicopters—including four Cobra gunships, four transport CH-53s, and six dual-rotor heavy-lift CH-46s—Lee picked up the radio and informed Task Force Dagger that the Marines at Camp Rhino were the closest Americans in a position to respond, a forty-minute helicopter flight away. Meanwhile, Lee’s boss—Major Rob Cairnes, the commander of ODB 540—was running across the flat, barren landscape to General Mattis’s command post, located in one of the few hard structures on the base, a single-story concrete building. He informed the Marine general, face-to-face, that a presumed mortar or artillery attack on a Green Beret position had occurred and that the wounded needed immediate evacuation from Shawali Kowt. Mattis asked if they were still in contact and wanted more specifics, which Cairnes did not have.

“Well, if they’ve taken fire,” said the general, “and you can’t tell me definitively how they got all scuffed up, I’m not going to send anything until you can assure me that the situation on the ground is secure.” Mattis went on to explain that there were a thousand Marines at Camp Rhino for him to worry about, and he was not willing to dilute base security and risk sending his air squadron on a dangerous daylight mission just to assist an unknown number of casualties.

Cairnes raced back to consult with Lee and his second-in-command, Chief Warrant Officer Tom Leithead, all of whom were infuriated. They could understand why Mattis wouldn’t send all of his helicopters, but no one could fathom why he wouldn’t do
something
to help their guys. “Where’s the
love
from the Marines?” said another member of the team. “They’re supposed to be frothing at the mouth for this kind of shit.”

The Green Berets continued to monitor the radio and berate the Marines: “These helicopters outside would be airborne already if it were Marines that were bleeding,” said the B-team’s communications sergeant.

“You know what,” said Lee, who had watched the Marines endure abysmal conditions at the base since they’d arrived. “It’s not the Marines. It’s Mattis.”

“Just heard,” said the commo sergeant. “One American KIA, three critically wounded.” Still, nobody at Camp Rhino knew the two most critical facts: that this had been a friendly-fire incident, and that the position at Shawali Kowt had not been and was not currently engaged with the enemy.

For the past week, Lee and Leithead had been briefing Mattis and found him a fairly personable guy.
He probably just needs a little prodding in the right direction
, thought Lee. Turning to Leithead, he said, “Let’s go have a little talk with the general.”