It was a dilemma: Radio Kamdesh’s transmission tower and broadcasting devices were expensive pieces of equipment, but shipping them out would require even more helicopter sorties, draining even more resources. Portis was in favor of either abandoning or destroying it all. Brown and George wanted to reuse the apparatus, concerned that if it was left behind, the Taliban would commandeer it and utilize it for their own propaganda.
On September 29, the argument was resolved by God: lightning struck the radio tower and blew it apart.
On October 1, Portis and the leaders of the Bastards—Lieutenant Salentine and Staff Sergeant Kirk Birchfield—hopped on a helicopter headed for Observation Post Fritsche. The men at Camp Keating called such quick journeys to the top of the southern mountain elevator rides. The attack that Afghan National Police chief Shamsullah had warned of had not happened, but Portis still wanted to find out whatever he could, and he thought some of the folks in Kamdesh Village might be able to help him. He was also hoping to meet with some Kamdesh elders so he could learn more about the HIG–Taliban agreement to cooperate. But his main reason for this elevator ride was inventory: he was looking for equipment, knowing what sticklers Army bureaucrats were.
The men had originally planned to walk up the mountain, but then Salentine noted that the chopper was going up to Fritsche anyway, so what the hell, why shouldn’t they just take an elevator ride? It was hard to argue with that logic. Portis walked into the operations center and told Bundermann and Shrode where he was going; while he was gone, Bundermann would be in charge of ground forces, and Shrode would supervise the implementation of close air support and mortars.
The trip from Keating to Fritsche normally took just a matter of seconds, but on this occasion, an insurgent fired on the bird. He scored a direct hit.
“The fuel line’s been shot out,” said the pilot, who immediately took evasive action and left the valley in the rearview mirror, taking with him Portis, Salentine, and Birchfield. They soon enough landed at Forward Operating Base Bostick, safe but disconcertingly far from their troops. Whether or not he meant to do so, the enemy had succeeded in once again depriving the men at Camp Keating of their commander.
“Bad” Abdul Rahman had wanted to attack Combat Outpost Keating on September 30, but he knew that spies had tipped off the Americans. So he waited.
Hundreds of Taliban warriors had been living in the mountains, watching and waiting to pounce. They saw that despite having been tipped off, the Americans did not bring in more troops or equipment to fortify the base.
Rahman noticed, too, and decided that no more patience was required. They would attack before dawn on Saturday, October 3.
On the night of October 2, Jonathan Hill and Eric Harder zoned out in the barracks, watching a Time-Life documentary about World War II. The Bastards complained a lot, but God, it would have been awful to be in World War II, they agreed. Down in the dirt, with no shoes, the Americans got shredded by German artillery as they stormed the beaches of Normandy. “Those guys basically walked into the valley of hell,” Hill said.
They made similar observations about Vietnam after they popped in a bootleg DVD of Apocalypse Now. It was a little trippier than the actual footage from World War II, of course, especially the part where the deranged Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore told his men it was safe to surf in the Nung River, even as they were taking artillery rounds from the Vietcong.
After watching both DVDs from start to finish, Hill and Harder called it a night.
Specialist Michael Scusa and Specialist Mark Dulaney were up until about 2:00 a.m., shooting the breeze and talking about their plans. Per usual, Scusa wouldn’t stop gabbing about his son, Connor, and how big he was getting. Sometimes the guys would tell Scusa to shut up about his wife and son already, but he wouldn’t.
Specialist Michael Scusa. (Photo courtesy of Jon Hill)
When Scusa entered the Army, he looked so young—with his glasses and boyish face—that the first thing his sergeant told him was that he seemed like he was wearing his big brother’s uniform. One of his fellow joes in the Bastards, Specialist Jonathan Adams, thought of Scusa as having walked right out of a remake of Revenge of the Nerds, he was so awkward and dorky. But they all came to respect his calm, measured approach to combat, his kindness, and his work ethic. And his devotion to his family: Scusa was going on leave in a few days and couldn’t wait to see his wife, Alyssa, his mother, and his little boy.
He and Dulaney were planning on applying for the Warrant Officer Flight Training program, and while on leave, Scusa intended to get some books that the two of them could use to study for the admissions test. They would be Army pilots together, remaining in a combat arms environment but no longer based in hellholes like Camp Keating.
Noor Din was a truck driver when the Taliban fell in 2001. After that, he signed up to become a police officer to help his country. Din saw Nuristanis rejoice at the arrival of the development dollars that the United States spread around for roads and schools. He also saw Nuristan and the local Kamdesh District become a battlefield as the American presence was challenged by insurgent groups. He saw the grief, the anger, when U.S. troops killed innocent Nuristanis. Their apologies—whether in the form of words or cash—were never enough.
As a police officer, Din tried to help the Americans. For years, he told the U.S. soldiers every time he heard about an imminent attack. The information would come to him from locals, and sometimes he would pick it up while listening to walkie-talkie chatter. Whatever intelligence he could muster, he would share: which village the insurgents were coming from, which spot on which mountain they were planning to fire from.
This attack had been coming for days, he knew—ever since word spread that Camp Keating would soon be closing. At that moment, the clock had started ticking down.
And now here it was, zero hour.
The Taliban fighters came to Urmul in the dead of night. The women and children of Urmul fled, as did many of the men, after being cautioned not to alert the American soldiers in the camp just a few hundred yards away. “We don’t have any problems with you,” the insurgents told the villagers. “We have a problem with the Americans.”
At 4:00 a.m. on October 3, 2009, close to three hundred mujahideen—led by their leader, Abdul Rahman, and scattered over the three mountains and throughout the village of Urmul—turned to Mecca and conducted morning prayers. Then they grabbed their guns and got into position.
Faruq and some others went to the Afghan National Police station about a hundred yards to the northwest, outside Combat Outpost Keating. The insurgents shot and killed two policemen; the third policeman on duty fled. The enemy fighters set up a base there. Other mujahideen went to the Urmul mosque. Many more were still in the mountains, where pine, cedar, fir, and oak trees stood like sentries, providing the Taliban plenty of cover. Fifty-three Americans were in the camp. Most would be sleeping. Maybe ten or fifteen would be on guard.
Ishranullah lurked in the hills, excited. On a number of occasions in the past, he’d been disappointed when the Taliban ran out of ammunition and couldn’t do anything for weeks. This was not one of those times. The Taliban had truckloads of ammunition. This attack had been planned and coordinated for weeks.
“There were a lot of foot soldiers from all the surrounding villages,” a man from Nuristan would later remember. “Each village volunteered a bunch of soldiers. They thought they were doing jihad, that COP Keating was occupying their land, occupying their area. They thought they were doing a service to their area. They were very, very proud.
“They thought, Let’s send a message. The message was: Tell the United States you don’t mess with us. It was a suicide mission; a lot of the fighters knew they weren’t coming back.”
Those who weren’t involved knew they’d better make themselves scarce if they wanted to live to see another day. As the sun started to rise on the valley and the mujahideen prepared to attack, Noor Din, the police officer, left Urmul and fled north to Mandigal. He did not warn the Americans.
Din’s boss did. Afghan National Police chief Shamsullah approached the camp and spoke with an interpreter whom the U.S. troops referred to as “Ron Jeremy” because of his resemblance to that mustachioed adult-film star.
Red Platoon was responsible for guard duty that night. Shortly before 6:00 a.m., the new shift relieved the guys who had been on watch since midnight. Private First Class Nicholas Davidson came a few minutes early to replace Corporal Justin Gregory near the camp’s entry control point, in the gun turret of the tower of the shura building. Gregory was giving Davidson the lowdown—“There are fresh batteries in the radios, the ammunition is over here”—when Ron Jeremy ran over to them.
“The Taliban are here!” he said, urgency in his voice. “They’re coming!”
Gregory grabbed the radio and called the tactical operations center. “Hey, TOC, this is ECP,” he said—short for “entry control point.”
“Yeah?” responded Private First Class Jordan Wong, the radio operator for the camp’s headquarters.
“Ron Jeremy just ran in and said Taliban are here,” Gregory announced. “You got anything on cameras?” There were PTZ (“pan, tilt, and zoom”) security cameras all around the borders of the camp, sending feeds to the operations center.
“I’ll check it out,” said Wong.
Ron Jeremy then ran to the operations center, where he approached Sergeant Jayson Souter, the Headquarters Platoon NCO in charge of fire support.
“The police chief just came to the gate and told me there are four hundred Taliban hiding around the camp, and they’re getting ready to attack!” the interpreter exclaimed.
Souter passed the word to Staff Sergeant James Stanley, who was relieving Sergeant Gallegos as sergeant of the guard. Stanley then radioed the news to everyone on guard.
Ron Jeremy next ran over to Staff Sergeant Kevin Daise, who was sitting by the burning barrels near the latrines. “Hey, Sergeant Daise,” he said. “The locals said the Taliban kicked them out of town.”
“Okay,” Daise replied. But how seriously was he supposed to take this warning? There had been so many false alarms over the past few months.
After telling Daise that the enemy was in Urmul, Ron Jeremy proceeded into the latrines to hide.
“Allahu Akbar,” the holy warriors said as they prepared their mortars, their B-10 recoilless rifles, their RPGs, their Dushkas.
God is great.
Declared one insurgent in the hills, in his own tongue, “The prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, says if you throw an arrow toward the enemy, it is as good as freeing a slave for the sake of Allah.”
They recorded these and other exclamations on video, for later posting on YouTube, as part of their propaganda campaign.
“We are ready with the help of Allah,” said another. “Bring me the ammunition.”
Five fifty-eight a.m.
It began.