TODAY IS NOT YOUR DAY

No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is as formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.

—RONALD REAGAN

The first F-18s checked on station and dropped down into view. The roar of their engines was a welcome sign that help was arriving. I could hear Mike on the radio starting to identify targets and buildings that needed to be leveled.

Standing on top of Sperwan Ghar, I could see hundreds of compounds in the sea of green that offered the Taliban fighters good cover. We needed to build “white space,” or security, to patrol in around the hill because the Taliban had started to maneuver in smaller groups, making it harder to see them before they opened fire. They were learning very hard lessons and adapting quickly. This is what all insurgents do in guerrilla warfare. It reminded me of a snake slithering from dark spot to dark spot before it strikes. So we set about making fewer dark spots. The aircraft could destroy the structures. We’d focus on the thick, head-high marijuana fields, appropriately named the “fields of wrath.”

Grabbing my binoculars, I zeroed in on a small clearing, where I could see Brian and Dave pouring diesel fuel on the thick green stalks. The plants were like rubber and wouldn’t catch fire. When the fuel didn’t work, they tried flares, illumination mortar rounds, and incendiary grenades to little or no effect. The patrol had lit more than a dozen fires, but none did any real damage.

I started to get nervous and called them back. I knew that sooner rather than later the Taliban would see them in the field and attack. Just before they got back on their trucks, a few fighters started shooting. A small attack compared to the previous ones, it lasted less than a minute when we opened fire with the machine guns on Sperwan Ghar. Afterward, Victor grabbed me. “Turan, the Taliban commander wanted more troops but another commander to our south said no.” I smiled and thanked him. The short message told me a lot. After less than a week of fighting, the enemy was now fragmenting, and we knew that more fighters were staging south of us. Hodge and Jared heard the same thing. Jared started to plan an operation for the following day. He wanted a team to go recon Zangabar Ghar, a small set of hills to our south. He was sure the enemy was using it as a landmark when they came across the river, and we had taken intense fire from there.

After Brian and Dave got back from the patrol, Bill insisted that we get the guns clean, redistribute ammunition, reinforce positions, eat some chow, and then try to rest.

We all went to work on our guns. Dave cleaned his big Browning .50 cal first. Then I stripped the machine gun next to my door. I brushed out the dust and oiled every part. When I had finished, it sparkled and the action worked smoothly. I finished about the same time as Brian. Sitting around the truck we got a treat: silence. We’d not enjoyed silence for more than a week and none of us dared interrupt it.

The Taliban had spotters constantly watching us, but in the thick fields and deep irrigation ditches it was impossible to see them. Occasionally a Taliban spotter peered over the thick stone walls. An attentive ANA soldier noticed movement in a small courtyard not far from the hill. Calling Taz over, he pointed the spotter out and Taz alerted me. I figured that if we killed the spotters, we’d be able to blind them one by one and instill enough fear that they would decide it wasn’t worth attempting.

I sent Dave and Riley to take up a sniper position on the hill with sight lines to the operative compound and wait. Brian took over duties on the Ma Duce. Dave set up the sniper rifle and peered through the Leupold scope. Scanning the courtyard, he could see several pomegranate trees and a gray T-shaped hand pump for a well. He settled in to wait. After a short time, his patience was rewarded when the spotter’s head popped over the wall. Riley called in and said they had him; Dave confirmed the range.

“Wait one,” I radioed back. “Watch him closely and tell me what he does.”

Grabbing my machine gun, I fired a short burst into a nearby field.

“He just popped up and then hunkered down,” Riley said.

A few seconds later Riley came back with what I needed to hear.

“Captain, he has a radio.”

“Drop him,” I said.

He had no more than crawled into the turret when the whoosh of an RPG cut it short. I glimpsed two Taliban fighters carrying a launcher seconds before the rocket flew over Dave’s head and exploded just behind my vehicle, right outside the window where the command post was located. The dirt-filled ammunition cans we had propped inside the empty window frames gave rudimentary protection at best, but they prevented small shrapnel from hitting anyone in the post.

Dave dropped into the turret. “Move, move, move!” he yelled as he thrust a round into the chamber of the .50-caliber machine gun.

Brian started the truck and threw it in reverse just as another rocket exploded in front of the berm where the truck had just been parked. Contact reports of attacks on the vehicles flooded the radio. The Taliban were trying to destroy our gun trucks. They knew that the trucks had the most firepower and were essential to our defense of the hill. The fire grew more intense.

I took a bead on where I had seen the movement—a small three-windowed mud building quaintly tucked in between two larger compounds. I took a breath, exhaled slowly, and kept my eye on the building. One of the windows had a small red curtain, and I had seen two men carrying either a mortar or a recoilless rifle past it. I knew the ammunition bearers would be next, carrying sacks of mortar or recoilless-rifle rounds.

Three hundred meters, three hundred fifty, three hundred seventy-five, there!

I fired a six- to nine-round burst each time, and it finally put me on my mark. The rounds penetrated the wall, and there was a commotion behind it. I must have caught them resting on that side. A figure came into view on his knees and fell forward, clutching his chest, then slung violently backward. I depressed the trigger fully and counted to ten. Nearly an entire can of ammunition went streaking through the gun. I was running low, maybe twenty rounds left. Finding a target wasn’t easy, and now that I knew where they’d hidden, I wasn’t going to let them escape. I fired another whole can into the wall. Soon, Dave started to pound the hut with the Ma Duce.

Out of ammunition, I yelled to Brian to cover me while I ran for more.

“Grab me some too,” Dave shouted.

Letting the machine gun hang in the gun mount, I sprinted for the cache in a nearby ditch. An ANA machine-gun position to my right rattled as I ran. Sliding into the four-foot-deep channel, my knees rebelled. Pain shot through my joints, and I felt old.

The machine guns brought me out of my funk. I snatched four boxes of ammunition, climbed out of the ditch, and took a step when I was overwhelmed by intense heat and pressure. I lost all sense of control and balance.

An RPG or recoilless rifle had exploded somewhere near my left front, hurling me violently back into the ditch. I landed on my left shoulder, followed by the rest of my 230-pound frame and another 50 pounds of equipment. I couldn’t feel my shoulder anymore. I clutched it with my right hand just to make sure it was still there.

I commanded my left knee to bend so I could roll over, stealing a quick glance at it. I expected to see it shredded. I winced as it bent but knew that meant it was still connected. I tried to spit some of the grime out of my mouth but couldn’t muster enough saliva to do it.

I struggled to focus. Then panic set in. I didn’t want to die. “NO!” I said repeatedly to myself as I clawed at the wall of the ditch, trying to see over it.

Every movement felt like slow motion. I expected to see Ole Girl in flames just like Greg’s truck. Peering over the edge, I saw Dave banging away in the turret. My eyes filled with tears, half from the pain and half with relief. I even chuckled as I laid my head in the powdery dust and again thanked my creator. Crawling back down into the ditch, I found my helmet. I couldn’t hear a damn thing.

Seeing my team still fighting gave me strength. They now stood in the face of fierce fire with only rifles; the ammunition for their machine guns was long gone. I needed to get to my truck. Rolling over the lip of the ditch, I crawled out and started back toward my truck when a round from an enemy machine gunner hit me just above my kidney. Pain shot through my body. It felt like a ball-peen hammer on the end of a semi-truck traveling at one hundred miles an hour slamming into me. I was too deaf to hear my own screams.

I fell flat on my face, helpless.

“This is it,” I thought. “Today, I die.”

I realized that everything I loved was going to be taken away. I could see Brian, hand extended. He had crawled through the cab to my side of the truck. Still deaf, it took me a second to read his lips.

I didn’t want to die.

I wanted to go to him. I drew my knees to my waist and crawled as low as I could, focusing on his reddish freckles. I watched as Dave kept firing and prayed I could make it to the safety of my vehicle.

When I got to the side of the truck, I stuck out my sweat-soaked hand. Brian grabbed it and pulled me into the truck with what seemed like superhuman strength and turned me onto my back. I squirmed around, trying to stop the piercing pain and find some comfort. This truck was home, and for a split second, I felt safe.

Brian unzipped my first aid kit and shoved a packet of pain pills in my mouth, stretching his drinking tube over to give me water. Even with the gritty dirt, sweat, blood, and pills, it was the sweetest water I ever drank. I struggled to draw my legs inside the open door. I could see Brian talking into the radio. I was on my back, facing up and looking at Dave’s waist and legs behind the turret opening in the roof. Several pieces of hot brass from Dave’s gun tumbled from the chamber and hit me in the face. I tried to shoo the brass away like flies. I knew I was messed up and needed help. Sunlight blinded me, and I tried to cover my face when a figure appeared in my truck door.

Bill.

He ran his hands down the top of my skull and neck, under my arms, over my waist and the small of my back, and down to the base of my feet. He only stopped at my lower back, which was soaked, to assess the small shrapnel wounds in my butt. Finished, he showed me his hands. Very little to no blood. I still couldn’t tell which hurt worse, my back, shoulder, butt, or left knee. Bill said my shoulder was dislocated and called Riley.

He then pulled me up, face to face, and looked me straight in the eye.

Riley showed up next. He did his own quick evaluation and told me my shoulder was dislocated and the ligaments in my knee were probably torn. Without warning, he grabbed my left arm and started to move it. I screamed. Riley had learned the trick during training at Fort Bragg, and after a few tugs and twists he popped it back into the joint. The sensation of numbness retreated from my wrist and fingers. He didn’t even flinch when several rounds pinged off the truck as he worked.

With my shoulder in place, he wrapped my knee to keep the swelling down and gave me a pain shot.

“You’ll feel better in a few seconds,” he said before running to another truck to tend to a wounded Afghan.

Wow, this does feel nice, I said to myself.

The bullet had hit the lower left corner of the ceramic plate on my body armor. But it shouldn’t have. Had my vest not been damaged from the blast and the plate knocked out of place, the 7.62 bullet would have passed through my kidney, liver, intestines, and possibly my lung.

I sucked hard on the tan tube of my CamelBak, but nothing came out. The shrapnel that struck my body armor had traveled across the plate and shredded the plastic bladder. The wetness that I feared was blood soaking my back and butt was water. Fumbling on the floorboards, I found a bottle of water and poured it onto my face. I had cheated death, but now I knew I wasn’t bulletproof—not a feeling you want to have in the middle of a firefight. I covered each nostril and shot snot and blood from my nose. My hearing gradually improved, and soon I could hear Dave and Brian yelling to each other for ammunition and calling out targets.

Brian now selflessly ferried ammunition from the ditch I had just been wounded in. He darted back and forth several times, tossing the ammunition into the back of the truck.

I crawled into the back of the truck and heaved two luggage-sized cans of ammo onto the turret for Dave. I could feel the breeze blow through my pants. My desert camouflage trousers had been torn from my rear at the waist all the way down to the inside of my thigh. There was no time to change. Dave’s gun soon went dry again, and I helped him change out ammunition cans. My M240 machine gun hung limp in the bracket near my door. I pulled a box of ammo, loaded the belt into the feed tray, and slammed it shut. Setting the buttstock into my shoulder, I went back to work.

That day I fired thousands of rounds at fighters in the buildings and ditches that surrounded Sperwan Ghar. It was my way of getting the fear out of my system. Whatever enemy was out there had tried to kill me and failed. Now I would eat, sleep, live, and breathe to make them regret it.

I planned to sleep behind my truck with my body armor propped up in front of me that night. My armor had saved me twice from certain death. We would all rest again to the sound of the Spectre engines above us.

I stopped to talk with Shinsha on the roof of the school before getting some rack time. That miserable bastard of a sun had set as I stepped onto the broad flat surface, but I instinctively bent forward at the waist, ducking to stay low, even though it was dark. I was taking no chances. I flopped down on the bright red-and-black-patterned pillow next to Shinsha. He swung his massive head toward me and squinted through the cigarette smoke.

The first truly inspiring piece of news from the battle had come from the Taliban themselves. There was no explaining away the enormous number of fighters arriving at the hospitals in Pakistan. There was no way they could hide their growing casualty numbers, something they’d been able to do in the past. We had them on their heels. Their commanders fought internally about how they would receive reinforcements. They knew their dreams of taking Kandahar by winter were slipping away. Now all we had to do was keep the pressure up, pursue them when they ran, and punish them.

Chapter 19

TODAY IS NOT YOUR DAY