Like some great hunter on an African safari, Howard waited for his elephant gun.
He was going hunting with the only weapon the team had that could possibly penetrate the mud-walled compounds protecting the enemy fighters: the Carl G.
He didn’t know how long he and his commandos had been trapped at the base of the mountain, trying to make their way up to help their wounded comrades. They were held back by hellish fire, but that only made Howard more determined. Maybe it was his New England stubbornness, Yankee roots dating back to the American Revolution, but Howard was going to find a way to get the job done.
Before the first rounds were even fired, Howard and his commandos had moved to the far side of the wadi hoping to set up so that they could get a clear shot at the houses above. Peering up at the edge of the cliff, he could see men running along the ledge. But he couldn’t see any guns through the ten-power scope mounted on his SR-25 sniper rifle. People always move when you show up in helicopters at a village. People are going to walk around and tell the others something is going on. That is to be expected. As long as they don’t have a gun, you can’t shoot them.
But when one of his commandos started yelling and pointing, he knew something was wrong. Howard strained to see what the Afghan was pointing at, slowly scanning each man through the scope. Without an interpreter, though, he had no idea what the Afghan was saying.
Howard called into his radio: “Hey, I need a terp over here.”
His eyes continued to slowly scan the ridge for any men carrying guns. Frustrated, Howard turned to a commando. “I can’t see what you’re pointing to. I can’t see it.”
Without warning, he was caught in a maelstrom of fire. Pressing himself against the boulders in the wadi, Howard tried to find cover. Any cover. Jamming as much of himself as he could behind a basketball-size rock, he got behind his sniper rifle and searched for a target.
No one was visible.
The fighters who were up in the ridge moments before were now behind cover and concealed. He started to methodically scan the buildings, looking into windows and at holes and creases in the wall for muzzle flashes or smoke. Anything that would give away their position. All around him the others were shooting at the buildings and the windows, even bushes where they thought someone might hide. Anything to suppress the fighters.
A few minutes into the fight, Howard saw Ford start calling for a cease-fire by waving his hand up and down in front of his face. Sometimes you have to stop shooting to make sure you’re actually getting shot at and to figure out where the enemy fire is coming from.
During the previous rotation, Howard remembered how they had hit a target with the Afghan National Police. As the police got out of the vehicles, one of the Afghan officers accidently fired his gun into the dirt. No one shot at them, but everybody on the back side of the house started shooting. It took a few minutes to figure out that no one was under attack.
Soon all the commandos had stopped firing—except one. Howard stopped scanning and turned to him: “Cease fire. Cease fire.”
Howard knew the commando understood him. It was one of the first commands they taught their Afghan counterparts. But the man kept shooting.
“Cease fire. Cease fire,” Howard said again.
Finally, he grabbed the Afghan, punching him in the shoulder. The Afghan turned and looked at him in amazement.
“Cease fire!”
Howard had barely gotten the words out when two rounds hit a rock in front of them. Both men dove behind the rock.
“Never mind,” Howard said. “I don’t know where you are shooting at, but keep doing it.”
That’s when he called for the commando carrying the Carl Gustav.
“Bring me my rocket.”
He called the gun a rocket because the commandos knew that word. In seconds, the commando ran up to Howard and handed him the green tube. It was heavy and the Afghan was happy to get rid of it.
Fired from a pistol grip and trigger, it is aimed with a massive black optical sight. It can be fired standing, sitting, kneeling, or prone.
“Ammo. Ammo,” Howard called next.
Sanders and Walding had identified a two-story building that overlooked the whole wadi. Walton and Rhyner had called over and over again trying to get the pilots to drop bombs on it. The bombs would drop to the left or right of it, but never on it. From inside, the fighters could keep up a steady barrage.
Calling down to Howard, Ford wanted him to use the Carl G to mark the building. The Hellfire air-to-surface missiles from the attack helicopters were bringing buildings down, and Rhyner and Sergeant Robert Gutierrez of ODA 3312 were trying to talk the Apaches onto the other buildings where the fighters were hiding. But the Air Force JTACs had no way of identifying the target. The Carl G was big enough that the rounds could be seen from the air, making it perfect for marking targets.
“I’m going to shoot and try and mark this building that we’re trying to blow up,” Howard called up to Rhyner. “So tell me when they are looking.”
In the distance, he glimpsed two Afghan commandos with heavy rounds attached to their backs running toward him. When they reached him, he removed the rounds he had tied to their body armor with nylon webbing. He broke open the breech and slid the round into the tube. The gun can fire a number of different rounds from high explosive to antitank and even smoke. He was shooting high explosive. With his sights on the building, Howard checked to make sure no one was in the back-blast area and then fired.
The round slashed across the valley, smashing into the building.
Howard fired three rounds from the wadi, but the building was so solid it was like he had fired a pebble. But the pilots from the Apaches spotted the rounds and launched Hellfires that would soon level the building. Finished, he called the commandos back.
“Okay, take my gun,” Howard said, handing the tube to the Afghan and grabbing his sniper rifle again.
Taking up position behind the rocks again, he started to fire through the windows of the remaining houses. He had a feeling it was going to be a long day.