KAY SAW THE blast before he heard it: The earth vomited up a massive volcano of dirt and asphalt, and all of the colors of the world disappeared in a veil of dust.
From the gun, Doyle screamed: “IED! IED!”
The explosion sucked the air from around the patrol then slammed it back down in a blast wave of sound that crashed in at the same instant Westerhaus slammed on the brakes. Kay watched in sick disbelief as Specialist Paul Conlon rocketed like a human missile from 3-2’s turret, reached an apex three stories high, and plummeted back to the pavement.
Westerhaus skidded the Humvee to a halt a hundred meters from the edge of the blast crater. The smells of burning rubber and asphalt choked the air. A thousand thoughts ticker-taped through Kay’s mind: Conlon is dead. What about Donnie and the others? How many? How many KIAs?1
Small arms fire peppered in from both sides of Highway 1. Doyle and SPC Joel Ochoa answered in a series of staccato bursts. Shon Haskins jumped from the lead truck and ran back toward 3-2. Weapon in hand, Kay started to join him, but the cord to his radio headset yanked him back, reminding him it was first his job to report the contact to higher.
Fingers flying, he dialed up Airborne on the TacSat, a satellite communications link.
“Wardak TOC, Dog 5! Wardak TOC, Dog 5!” As Kay yelled into his mic, he caught a glimpse of Haskins leaping into the blast crater. It was an image he would remember forever: Haskins’s huge form midair, body armor flying up around his ears, exposing his belly as he jumped into the pit to aid his brothers.
The choir of American guns blasted away at ambushers on both sides of the road. Kay transmitted: “This is Dog 5! We hit an IED at Highway 1 and Durani Village! Request immediate air MedEvac, QRF,2 and air support!”
Kay yelled the message over and over, but he was broadcasting in the blind and couldn’t tell if other equipment was jamming his transmissions. His heart tried to pull his feet toward the bomb crater, but he willed himself to stand fast as his mind clicked over options for calling in essential support. He had no way of knowing whether or not his satellite comms had been received, and the convoy was currently out of range for line-of-sight transmission—
Cell phone.
Kay yanked his cell from his vest pocket. Just then, Wardak TOC came back over the net: “Dog 5, this is Dog 6. Dog 5, Dog 6, over.”
In the Airborne TOC, CPT Roger Hill’s heart dropped into his belly. He heard an urgency in Kay’s voice that he hadn’t heard since they landed in Afghanistan. He knew the worst had happened, just not who or how many.
Hill keyed his mic and kept his voice calm. “Dog 5, tell me what you got.”
Kay’s transmission scratched across the frequency in tight bursts: “Sir, we’ve got one KIA. We might have more. At least three to four wounded. Still working on that.”
“Got it,” Hill transmitted. “The TOC’s going to work on getting the MedEvac, and I’m on my way with the QRF.”
“Roger, sir.”
“Dog 6 out.”
As if Kay’s grim report were somehow telepathic, the TOC had already drawn a crowd. The artillery platoon commander and his men rushed to draw up target reference points for enemy exfiltration routes near the patrol’s location. Already kitted up, Hill grabbed fresh batteries for his field radio. Kay’s words squirmed in his mind like worms: At least one KIA…
He snapped his chinstrap and chambered a round in his M4. “Dog 6 is moving!” he yelled over his shoulder and headed toward the TOC door.
“Sir, you’re still within 105 range down there,” the artillery officer, Charlie Weaver, called to Hill. Weaver pronounced it “one-oh-five,” as in “105 mm artillery.” Hill acknowledged with a nod then turned to see his first sergeant, Tommy Scott, filling the TOC door with his defensive-back frame. The two men locked eyes.
Usually controlled, Scott could not hide his anguished rage. “Sir, I just need to grab a radio and I’ll be ready to go with you.”
Hill knew Scott wanted to go after the bastards that had blown up his boys, and it killed Hill to say what he had to say next. “Tommy, you’ve got to stay here.” He emphasized his next words gently: “The most important thing now is the MedEvac. Right now, the MedEvac is more important than getting the guys who did this.”
Scott was silent. His jaw muscles clenched. Then he nodded, a quick, shallow movement. Professional. By this point in the deployment, Scott had handled MedEvacs for more than forty wounded, but no KIAs. They both knew this one had to be right.
“Dog 6 out.”
As Kay registered Hill’s last transmission, a fresh storm of bullets kicked up dirt around his feet. He let go the radio mic and dialed Sergeant Lopez at Sayed Abad on his cell.
“I need you right now!” Kay yelled. “I got guys dead!”
Instantly, through the phone, Kay heard Lopez yelling orders, Humvee engines roaring to life. Kay snapped his cell shut and sprinted toward the blast crater. He’d only gone thirty meters when he saw Paul Conlon lying faceup, spread-eagled, body armor blown off. His camo pants hung around his legs in tatters like a castaway’s. The side of his head appeared road-rashed and dented in, but his expression was peaceful. Grief sucked the air from Kay’s lungs and for an instant the rattling guns, burning truck, and shouts from the crater faded into a surreal bubble of silence.
He was only twenty-one…
Kay tried to blink away the image of the young man’s broken body, but it would remain forever, burned into his retinas like a brand.
“Contact, left, three hundred meters!”
Doyle’s warning shout yanked Kay back into the moment. He heard a bubble-wrap snap as a round zinged past his head, then the smack-smack-smack of an M240B machine gun from the trail vehicle in the patrol. To his left, giant rings of dirt blossomed near the wadis as Doyle served up MK19 grenades.
Kay raced back to his vehicle for cover as two men on a single moped broke cover and raced west, away from the highway.
Taliban spotters, Kay thought. Fuckers probably detonated the IED with a cell-phone trigger.
As Kay took aim across the Humvee hood and snapped off shots with his M4, an incongruent thought shot through his mind: I’ve got to get home and see my wife.
He kept firing until a Dog Company gunner’s 40-millimeter grenade burst dead-on in front of the scooter, killing the spotters. Kay safed his weapon and turned his attention to the burning gun truck. He dispatched Westerhaus to aid CPT LeMaire, who was hanging out of the driver-side door murmuring incoherently like a heat stroke victim. Kay then sprinted to Carwile. Haskins had already dragged the lieutenant out of his seat onto the ground. Doc Scott, an enlisted medic, had cut away Carwile’s body armor and uniform. Blood streamed from the lieutenant’s right ear, and a mixture of blood and clear liquid streamed from his nose and mouth. Battery acid dripped down over his arms and torso, leaving a trail of chemical burns.
Specialists Daniel Siler and Andrew Huston knelt close as Ochoa, crying openly, cradled Carwile’s head in his lap.
Khan, the Afghan interpreter, was on his knees near Carwile, screaming, arms thrust at the sky.
Doc knelt in front of Carwile and got six inches from his face. “Lieutenant! Hey, Lieutenant Carwile! Look at me, Lieutenant… I need you to look at me!”
Carwile tried. His eyes were open, but they seemed to Kay to drift in their sockets like lost ships.
“Don’t close your eyes, sir!” Huston pleaded. “Just push through it… just stay with us!”
Carwile’s color drained fast as shock dropped over him like a lead curtain. He coughed—a gruesome, bubbling sound—and a gout of blood spilled down his chin.
“Collapsed lung,” Doc said crisply. He threaded out a spool of plastic tubing, preparing to intubate.
Carwile’s body began to jerk and twitch as if attached to electrodes. Kay forced himself to look into Carwile’s eyes, and was surprised when an image of Carwile’s wife, Jennifer, and the couple’s two little girls, flashed into his mind. He had seen them back in the States while on midtour leave. Jennifer wore a pink blouse. The girls wore matching pink dresses. Kay and his wife, Jill, visiting Jennifer in her kitchen. So normal.
Carwile’s body shivered and bucked. Ochoa laid him on the ground and began mouth-to-mouth. He blew in a breath, then spit out blood, blew in a breath, spit out blood.
“It’s not working, man!” Huston cried. “Let me try—”
They traded places for a few moments, then traded back again, Ochoa now bending to the task between sobs, tears streaming down over his blood-smeared chin.
Khan had collapsed on the dirt hardpack and was descending into shock. Haskins saw him, hoisted him back to his knees, and tried to soothe him. “It’s going to be okay, Khan. Conlon’s okay. Lieutenant Carwile’s going to be okay.”
Haskins then rose, grabbed Doc Scott, and whispered fiercely in his ear. “Khan’s going into shock. Go over there and tell him everything’s okay. I don’t care if you have to lie your ass off!”
CPT Hill and Dog Company’s QRF roared up in a swirl of sand and fine debris. Hill surveyed the scene and registered the damage: a massive blast crater. A knot of soldiers on the ground, working to save someone. Larry Kay walking toward him through gun smoke and the shimmer of burning fuel.
The enemy had already begun to exfil the ambush using the maze of deep wadis. Hill’s driver pulled his vehicle up to the blast site as 1st and 4th Platoons’ vehicle crews peeled off to form a perimeter. Sporadic small arms fire crackled in as Hill jumped down from his truck and went to meet Kay.
“Hey, sir,” Kay began, but his eyes welled up and he stopped. He stanched his tears by sheer force of will.
Hill kept his voice soft. “Hey, buddy, what’s going on? What do you need from me right now?” He labored to keep his eyes and attention fixed on Kay and not on the devastation all around.
Kay swallowed, steeled himself, and rattled off a complete sitrep (situation report): status on the enemy, number and type of casualties, how first aid was being rendered. A detailed triage on the injured had not yet been feasible, because the blast had thrown soldiers in so many different directions relative to the vehicle. Paul Conlon was dead, and Doc Scott was working furiously to save Donnie Carwile.
“Haskins is organizing a casualty collection point, and we need security,” Kay finished. “Most of the guys are helping with CPR.”
Behind Kay, Hill could see SPC Joseph Coe’s lanky form lying on the other side of the Humvee. Someone had already wrapped his head in a bandage, and his dark hair poked from underneath. Ochoa was hunched over Donnie Carwile administering CPR, with Khan in hysterics nearby. In his grief, Ochoa had begun to punctuate his CPR breaths by screaming at the sky.
Hill clenched his jaws as if he could cut off the horror with his teeth. He dragged his eyes from Ochoa. “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” he told Kay. “Mo and Hulburt are taking up positions on both sides of the road.” Sergeant First Class Grant Hulburt was platoon sergeant for 1st Platoon, and Sergeant First Class Tim “Mo” Moriarty was acting platoon sergeant for 4th.
“MedEvac birds and CAS3 should be here soon,” Hill continued. “Let’s start consolidating everybody on the LZ. Where do you want the birds to come in at?”
Kay pointed to a flat stretch of desert floor just east of the highway where Haskins was now setting up security. That would be the LZ, or landing zone.
“Got it,” Hill said. “Keep doing what you were doing. I’ll send this up to higher and check on our air and MedEvac.”
Kay nodded and started to turn back toward the blast crater when Hill grabbed his shoulder. “Larry, you did a good job. You did a good job today.”
Kay’s eyes welled again and he turned away.
Hill started toward his truck then caught sight of Paul Conlon lying faceup, as though gazing at the sky. Hill flashed to a snapshot of Conlon and Carwile mugging for someone’s iPhone camera: Carwile in a gray ARMY T-shirt, his arm draped around Conlon, flashing a peace sign; Conlon rocking a fake mustache, head thrown back, ripping his T-shirt apart at the neck to show off some fake chest hair he’d drawn on with a Sharpie.
Looking at Conlon now lying dead in the road was like looking at a bright light gone out forever. A phantom garrote closed Hill’s throat.
Hill ran back to his truck, called in the sitrep, then sprinted to the crater to lend a hand with the casualties. Haskins had moved to get Coe and others clear of unexploded ordnance surrounding the burning Humvee. SFC Tim Moriarty—“Mo”—a buzz-cut bear of a man, was on the ground, bending to breathe life into Carwile. Now an infantryman, Mo had been a medic in the ’80s and ’90s. He let another soldier take over compressions on Carwile, and moved to triage the wounded.
Conlon’s head wound declared he was beyond help. Mo directed some soldiers to pull Carwile near him, away from Coe, Parsons, and LeMaire. During Desert Storm, Mo had pulled dead American boys from under the tracks of Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and tended a young corporal killed by a mine blast to the head. He’d learned then that it was best to separate the living from the dying and the dead.
Mo knelt near Conlon and Carwile, and laid a hand on each man’s head. Other soldiers saw what he was doing, gathered in a hushed circle, knelt and bowed their heads. As the first MedEvac helo thumped over the horizon, Mo began to pray: “Dear Lord, please take these fallen warriors and keep them. Be with their families now as they are about to face the most difficult times of their lives…”
One night during the initial invasion of Iraq, Mo’s unit lost three men. The mother of one soldier later grieved in a blog post that her son had died alone. In a dark, lonely place with no one to pray for him. Since that day, Mo prayed for the fallen whenever he could. But he believed that mother’s boy had not been alone; that God was everywhere, even in the hell of a battlefield, and that He could be seen in the actions of men.