Things weren’t going well in the wadi either.
Since the insurgents held the high ground all around them, it was hard for Lodyga’s team to move without drawing fire from the houses in the village. Now the team would again have to cross the river, but this time under fire, and move up the valley to rescue ODA 3336.
Every step was met by the crack of a bullet or the explosion of an RPG.
Since ODA 3312 had left Patriot 2, it had taken them a long time to get close to Walton’s team. That’s because as soon as Lodyga’s team returned to the river that bisected the valley and headed toward ODA 3336, they started taking accurate fire. And it was coming from both sides of the valley.
Pressed up against the western wall, Lodyga scanned the cliffs above. Bullets snapped around him, striking the rocks. The fire was coming from both sides and bullets plunged down on them from above.
He and McGarry paused to get their bearings. They knew that in order to make it to ODA 3336, they would have to fight through this kill zone. Their only chance was to start dropping bombs on the houses around them. Gutierrez was already in contact with the jet fighters and Apaches overhead and soon had them vectored in on the buildings covering their approach.
He and Lodyga decided to focus on the east side of the wadi. That way they would be covered by an overhang as they moved forward into the valley. Plus they had seen HIG fighters moving around on trails between fighting positions. Soon Apaches were raking the trails with gunfire and slamming Hellfire missiles into the houses that dotted the ridge of the wadi.
Martin received a call from Walton on the satellite radio saying that a suspected sniper was hiding in a cistern in the village. Peeking out from his perch near the cliff wall, Lodyga unslung an AT4, an antitank rocket, and started to aim at the cistern. It was one of the few weapons, like the Carl G, that had enough firepower to at least rattle the fighters in the buildings above.
Clearing his back-blast area, he prepared to step out and fire. His interpreter, standing nearby, waited for the signal to cover him. Shoulder-ing the rocket, Lodyga stepped out and immediately bullets started to crash around him. Nearby, McGarry watched as Lodyga flinched when he tried to fire. Nothing happened.
“Hey, take the safety pin out, asshole,” McGarry called to him.
“Fuck you. I did take it out,” Lodyga said as he checked the rocket, shouldered it, and blasted the cistern.
While the Apaches hammered the east side of the wadi, Lodyga got his guys ready to move forward. The only way through the kill zone was to send one team forward while the other covered. McGarry’s team would cover while Martin pushed forward. Martinez and his machine-gun team had already pushed forward and set up farther up the valley.
The team could feel the bullets whipping past their faces.
On their first push, Martin and his team were caught in the open. Lodyga watched as Martin emptied a magazine right along the ridge on the east side and then scanned the west side as he reloaded. All of the windows were open and looking down on the team’s position.
Lodyga started to yell at Martin to get back, but no one could hear over the roar of the fire. A bullet struck a commando near Lodyga. The Afghan was trying to climb up over a rock. Almost in slow motion, Lodyga watched as the little dust clouds sprang up as the rounds impacted around him. One round struck the side of the commando’s body armor and Lodyga watched the Afghan crumble.
Racing back to cover, Martin and the commandos waited for a lull in the fire so that they could make another push. Martin looked down at his leg and saw a growing bloodstain. His lower pant leg was soaked.
“Hey, man, you’re bleeding,” McGarry said.
“I think I got shot,” Martin said.
“Yup, looks like it.”
McGarry cut open Martin’s pants to see the wound. It was probably some shrapnel from an RPG or bullet fragments. There was a chunk of skin gouged out of his thigh, but it wasn’t serious.
“You’re going to be okay,” McGarry said.
“I ain’t got time to bleed,” Martin joked, stealing a line from the movie Predator.
Despite the heavy fire, Lodyga and his men were calm. They had been in much worse shape when their teammate Staff Sergeant Miller was killed. They knew the importance of keeping their heads. It meant life or death during that ambush and it meant the same thing in the Shok Valley. But they also knew the pain of losing a teammate, and despite the stiff resistance, they kept fighting to get to their brothers trapped on the ledge.
By this time, the air reaction team, a small team of reinforcements, had landed and took up position with ODA 3312. They waited in the wadi while Lodyga led his team forward.
It took three tries, but ODA 3312 finally pushed deep enough into the valley to see where ODA 3336 was trapped. Setting up their machine guns in the wadi, they started to rake the village with fire, hoping to give Walton’s team some relief.