Ford found Shurer and together they bounded up the hill.
All of the team’s firepower was at the bottom of the hill. There was no point in going up the hill. He urged Walton to move the wounded down, but to no avail. The switchbacks leading to the ledge where the team was trapped were so narrow that the two were having difficulty navigating them quickly. They were weighed down by body armor and gear, but there was no time to waste. They had to get up there fast. It was almost like a game of leapfrog. They would run and climb, stopping only to help the other up the steep terraces. It was grueling and dangerous. Bullets were hitting the rocks.
Meeting Williams on the way up, they spotted a group of insurgents moving to get in firing position. Shouldering their rifles, Williams and Ford opened fire, cutting down the fighters and buying a little more time or their teammates trapped above.
Climbing over the last ridge, Ford finally reached the ledge where the team was trapped. Carter was trying to treat Morales and Behr. The rocks around them were soaked in blood. Behr was pale white. Carter was exerting pressure on Morales’s leg trying to keep it from bleeding. Morales appeared composed.
Ford stared at CK, then turned to Walton, who was pressed against the rock wall talking on the radio. With no medics on the ledge, Ford figured Walton, a trained EMT, would be working on the wounded.
CK’s body was set up front.
But the captain, almost sensing Ford’s reaction, spoke first: “He is fucking dead, dude.”
“Are you sure?” Ford snapped. He knew never to assume that someone is dead.
“Yeah. I’m sure. I just checked.”
Ford could tell Walton was pissed that he was questioning him, but CK was his friend, and he wanted visual confirmation that he was dead. CK’s body was still out in the open and nobody had even checked him. Ford just wanted to ensure that they didn’t need to treat him.
Ford and Walton could be stubborn. They wanted things done their way. But to make Ford happy, Walton put a knee down on CK’s body and pulled off his glove to check him again; some blood in his mouth began bubbling.
“Look, it’s bubbles,” Ford said.
“It’s me,” Walton said. “It’s my knee on his chest. I’m pushing out the last bit of air in his chest.”
He was dead.
Fuck, Ford thought. It was true. He turned his head away from CK’s body and noticed that the terps were up against the wall doing nothing. There was almost no cover.
Staying close to the wall, Ford started to think about how to improve their position. He noticed Rhyner sitting by a tree near the ledge facing away from the village. It was Rhyner’s job to get the Apaches and F-15s above to drop bombs and fire rockets at the bunkerlike buildings above them.
But the young airman looked stunned. To Ford, who was unaware of Rhyner’s having been grazed by a bullet, he appeared to be in shock.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I’m doing all right,” Rhyner replied.
Ford knew the other ODA was calling in air strikes, but Rhyner wasn’t. And the helicopters weren’t doing anything. Their ordnance just hit the side of the buildings and wasn’t leaving a dent.
“You need to get CAS going. Get some fast movers in here. Get the helicopters out of here. They’re worthless.”
Rhyner still seemed kind of dazed. He looked at Ford, then back to a map and then the radio, then looked back at Ford.
It was the biggest firefight Ford had been in, and this was his eighth deployment. It was Rhyner’s first. He could only imagine what Rhyner was thinking or feeling.
“Hey, if you’re calling for fire, you need to face the objective,” Ford said. “I need you to turn around.”
Moving back toward Shurer, he wanted an assessment on Morales and Behr.
“Urgent,” Shurer said, by now covered in blood as he tried to stop the flow from the massive wound in Behr’s pelvis.
That meant they had no more than thirty minutes before Behr was likely to die. He was as white as ghost and Ford didn’t think he was going to make it. He had to start getting these guys off the ledge. Looking around, he realized that he had lost all situational awareness. It was total chaos. He didn’t see Sanders or Walding on the ledge and had no idea where they were.
“Hey, where are they at? Sanders? Walding?”
“Up there,” said Walton, pointing higher up the mountain toward the village.
Ford immediately signaled them on the radio. He was afraid they would get cut off since they were right by the village. And if they were cut off or got pinned down, he knew there was no way they could get down.
“Come down to us,” he told Walding before turning his attention back to the ledge.
Walton looked at Ford. “Are we still going to continue the assault?”
Ford knew ODA 3312 was pinned down in the wadi and they still weren’t getting enough close air support. He had no idea what ODA 3325 was doing, but their objective was in another part of the valley.
“No. The assault is done. We need to get these guys packaged and headed toward an LZ. Until we get CAS rolling and get the casualties out of here the assault is done.”
“Okay, Scott,” Walton said. “Get these fucking casualties out of here.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Ford said.
Ford figured Ghafour was already gone. And if he wasn’t, they would get him with air strikes—as soon as the fighters got going. Heading back to Rhyner near the tree, Ford hadn’t gotten his point across to the man the first time. And getting air cover to relieve some of the pressure was quickly becoming the difference between surviving and dying on the cliff.
Ford was pissed off.
“I am going to throw you off the mountain,” he barked, getting in Rhyner’s face. “We need to get it rolling.”