4 March
APPROX. 0515 HOURS
John Chapman must have become aware of himself, gradually…and painfully. He was lying in the snow, crumpled on top of his own legs. He wasn’t sure what had happened, not exactly. It was dark but his NVGs were still on. The night sky was clear and the air bitterly cold. Above him was a lone tree with a thick trunk extending perhaps ten feet toward the heavens before spreading out into a thick crown, like a supersize Japanese bonsai tree, though arboreal aesthetics were immaterial. He needed to figure out what had happened. And he couldn’t ignore the pain. A cursory check would reveal two gunshot wounds in his torso. He ached, not only from the impact of the AK-47 bullets to his body, which had shocked the tissue around their points of entry, leaving already-dying flesh surrounding the holes, but also from the ungodly pain in his abdomen. One hole was just above his navel on the right side. The other bullet had entered just below the ribs on the same side. There was blood on his uniform, sticky and dark in the night, where the bullets had penetrated. The pain was intense. Was he bleeding internally? It would be difficult to say what damage lay beneath his uniform. Since none of the team had worn body armor, the rounds tore through his tissue like a hot knife stabbed into a pat of butter.
His cursory self-inspection complete, John needed to focus on his situation. A quick scan revealed his surroundings. Next to him was the trench from which the Al Qaeda fighters had attacked him as he’d charged uphill. Two bodies lay dark and lifeless in its recesses. Nearby was the body of another fighter, the man who’d shot him. At least he was dead. To his left was the large rock outcropping where he’d last seen Slab. Where the hell were Slab and the others? Were they dead? Or had they left him for dead? Fuck.
Gunfire from Bunker 2 above brought the situation into instant focus. The PKM was firing, but not at him. Answering fire from far behind and below, easily identifiable, answered his SEAL question. They were down there somewhere—not far, but a lifetime away for a wounded man. He couldn’t see them, but maybe he could reach them on his MBITR.
He fought through the pain as his frozen fingers fumbled with the radio on his chest. He was no longer sweating; shock and the cold were attacking his capabilities, and the pain was intense. His watch read a bit past 0520; still dark, though morning twilight would illuminate the mountain to the unaided eye in another thirty minutes. He needed help immediately, or the Chechens and Uzbeks would surely overrun him in the daylight…if he lived that long.
Switching from the fire control frequency he’d preset for airstrikes before they left Gardez, he dialed it to a LOS UHF battlefield common frequency. Airstrikes were not what he needed at this moment. He didn’t know where Slab and his team were or how many might still be alive, although clearly they weren’t on the summit any longer. But there were other Combat Controllers in the vicinity, Jay and Andy in particular, and all CCT viewed battlefield common as their private comms freq, even if that wasn’t expressly what the frequency was for.
“Any station, any station, this is Mako Three Zero Charlie.” And he waited alone in the dark.
It’s nearly impossible for the average human to understand the implications of true abandonment. The worst thing for a soldier is to be left on the battlefield, and that is exactly what happened to John. At this point, John Chapman was essentially a grunt, the basic individual battlefield element in combat. The distilled essence is kill or be killed, and his extensive specialized training, while not negated, was much marginalized. All the men on the mountain—Al Qaeda, SEALs, himself—were simply soldiers in the classical sense, fighting as soldiers have always done, in sweat, in cold, in fear, and in determination. The overriding imperative was their commitment to their comrades they lived and fought alongside.
And the one absolute of combat among soldiers is: Never leave a comrade behind or to the enemy. Heroics, courage, cowardice…These things can vary, even within an individual, depending on the circumstances and the day. It’s a concept difficult for civilians to understand. To them, a soldier soldiers on, rising to an occasion to perform some act of heroism when called for. But the truth for men in combat is the opposite. Courage is nothing but the necessity of action when a comrade is in trouble. To not act is cowardice, the opposite of the requirement to save one’s brothers. Invariably, those awarded medals for courageous acts on the battlefield view their actions as “Just doing my duty. They would have done the same for me.” This is most acute in the face of a friend under fire and threat of capture by the enemy.
Yet now, the unbreakable rule had been broken. For men who are willing to fight and contend with the fear of capture by an enemy whose objective is to torture and then kill their captives, abandonment by their brothers is tantamount to a mother who abandons her child. It strains credulity. To the individual—child or soldier—this new reality comes crashing through the mind’s barriers. “This can’t be happening.” One can only imagine the impact on Chapman when the realization of abandonment hit home.
* * *
Three kilometers away, Jay Hill also sat freezing on a 10,000-foot peak, with his friend and Delta team leader, Kris. Despite the cold, Jay was busy. Extremely busy. On his mountaintop OP, his radios were arrayed around him, each within grasp. Now entering their fourth nonstop day observing Al Qaeda positions, he’d been up for the last seventy-two hours straight. No sleep and the constant cold were a fierce combination in an endless struggle deep inside enemy territory.
Earlier in the night, they were shocked to watch as Mako-30 made its undeclared insertion attempt directly onto Takur Ghar. “From my position I had good vis [visibility] on their summit. We were surprised they went in there, we didn’t know beforehand.
“It was busy at our location too. We were getting mortared, but I’d just laid down from being up for three days straight. When the mortars came in, the [Delta] guys picked up my radio and were talking to a flight of B-52s who were checking in. I woke up and heard them and told them, ‘Hey guys, you gotta get off the radio. Let me do that, that’s my job. You guys keep eyes on and provide security.’ They were using the laser rangefinder to coordinate, but had the wrong coordinates for strikes, so I got up and worked it. But I don’t want to give the wrong impression. It was a team effort. I needed to double-check coordinates for the calculus, then plot it on the map. We were using FalconView on a Toughbook at the time and a 1:24 map to cross-reference. It was all pretty dicey compared to how we do it now.”
Two hours later, Juliet Team had been stunned to watch a second MH-47 fly onto Takur Ghar, a location Juliet had passed during their infil, choosing instead their current peak, nearly as high but unoccupied. “We’d pulled up to that spot and realized it was a great location to observe the valley. We were gonna use it, but it’s got bad dudes all over it.” That night on Takur Ghar, “you could see the helos going in and see flashes of gunfire. RPGs. I could see the bonsai tree, but not the base of it.”
Jay was working on the net, talking to Andy and Hotaling, sharing information and air assets, when he heard Chapman call the first time. He didn’t know where Chapman was calling from, but knew it was his fellow 24 STS teammate; he recognized Chappy’s voice. And no one else used the Charlie suffix, so it wasn’t the SEALs of Mako-30.
“Mako Three Zero Charlie, this is Yankee Uniform Three, go ahead.” YU3 was Jay’s call sign on J Team, one of the few CCT call signs not to use a C suffix. He was rewarded only with static. With no response from Chapman, Jay returned his attention to his own tasks.
Over the air a few minutes later, it came again: “Any station, Mako Three Zero Charlie.”
“Go ahead Three Zero Charlie.” Nothing but static. Jay checked his radio in the dark, something he could do by feel. It was configured correctly. Chapman was calling on a battlefield common UHF frequency, one used for non–fire control or emergencies to communicate among friendly US SOF.
Of the transmissions, Jay said, “His voice was…He was struggling to get words out. He was stressed, you could hear it in his voice. You knew it was him. Besides just his voice, only Controllers used the ‘Charlie’ suffix.”
* * *
It’s impossible to say what John felt on Takur Ghar in the moment of realization that he was completely alone. Fear surely, and pain and shock were already gripping his body. But determination must have compelled him. When he got no reply to his transmissions, he likely worked through the mechanics of his radio equipment one component at a time—the radio first, then his comm cord, connecting it to his headset, and finally the earpiece and mike. He tried calling multiple times but must never have heard Jay’s responses, for reasons unknown. He gave up on his radio for the moment. He was getting colder from blood loss. All he had worn for warmth was a thin layer of black Capilene liners for his legs, a lightweight green fleece top, and his desert camo pants and blouse. His feet were warm in wool socks and leather heavy-duty Asolo hiking boots, and he had gray, loosely-weaved fingerless gloves on his hands, but without body armor or a helmet, his torso and head were suffering from exposure. His PVS-15 NVGs were mounted on a padded bracket, universally referred to by the guys as the “fucked-up head harness,” which allowed the goggles to be worn without a helmet but was uncomfortable and awkward with its pads and straps.
His MBITR was connected to a single-ear headset with a boom-type mike for speaking. To transmit, he merely needed to push a button with his index finger and the programmed frequency would send the signal. Only now, he was receiving no response.
At least his M4 was working. That was critical. It had a reflex-style sight as well as an AN/PEQ-2 laser—the same pointer Slab had seen moving just before the SEALs retreated—and a suppressor, not that suppression mattered. It would provide no masking of his location at this range, which raised a question: Did the Chechens and Uzbeks know he was here?
As Chapman took stock of his situation, two Al Qaeda fighters were moving upslope in his direction along the ridge below, but their sights were set on the SEALs sliding down the cliff face. They slowly encroached, attempting to gain a view of the Americans. If they could get over the top, they’d be able to strike at them.
Slab and the other SEALs were still only fifty meters from Chapman, but he had been cast from their thoughts. Their focus was survival. Without the Combat Controller, Slab was forced to break out his MBITR and work through the presets to find the fire direction net frequency.
Turner, overhead in his gunship, had been watching the calamity unfold, powerless to help and not able to reach Chapman or the team as the “firefight in a phone booth” unfolded five thousand feet below. In the back of the AC-130, Staff Sergeant Chris Walker sat in the “sensor booth”—essentially a room built into the right side of the fuselage opposite the 25mm GAU-12 Gatling cannon, 40mm Bofors, and M102 105mm howitzer. As the low-light-level TV operator (LLLTV), he was responsible for illuminating targets covertly in the dark. The images could be amplified to produce a clear battlefield picture even without moonlight. He was joined by three others, the infrared (IR) system operator, an electronic warfare officer, and an observer. They sat in a claustrophobic row. Together, with both pilots and a fire control officer on the flight deck, they saw everything that happened on the ground below.
When Slab raised Grim-32 on the radio, the aircrew was relieved to find someone, anyone, to talk to. Now they could get down to business, doing what no other fire support platform in the world could—orbit a friendly force surrounded by hostiles and turn back the tide.
The first thing Slab called for was the Quick Reaction Force. With his request relayed, Slab turned his attention to the gunship’s weapons, telling Turner, “We’re kind of hiding on the edge of a little precipice. I know how to call for fire and I know I’m danger close, but I’m telling you I need the fire now.” He went on to describe the peak.
“There’s no friendlies up top?” asked the leery pilot. Only two days earlier, Turner’s gunship had been involved in the friendly-fire incident with Blaber and Haas’s convoy. He was not about to repeat history. The SEALs had by now turned on an IR strobe, which Walker clearly identified on his screen. Walker could also see the SEALs.
“No,” replied Slab. Neither he nor the gunship had any idea Chapman was now moving under the tree just below the summit. And Chapman, no longer on the fire direction frequency, had no idea he was now in greater peril from his compatriots than from Al Qaeda.
“I want guns on two big clusters of trees up there. Only two are up there near a big rock. You got the strobe?” Meaning his own location.
“Yeah, I got the strobe.” Thirty seconds later, the gunship put several rounds down on the summit and asked the SEAL for corrections, but Slab had no means of observing where the rounds were impacting. With the SEALs unable to adjust their fire, the gunship was shooting blindly. Chapman, sheltering below the bonsai tree, remained crouched in the bunker as the mountain exploded around him.
On the ridge above and just south of the SEALs, the two Al Qaeda fighters continued stalking the Americans. Another fighter remained on the point of the rock fin, watching the two “brothers.” He was safer in his rock position, observing the events unfold.
In the gunship, the copilot asked Slab, “Do you have anybody to your south?”
“No. I have all my guys.”
“I have two or three guys moving to the south.”
“They are not mine.”
“Roger.”
A 105mm howitzer round exploded on the rocky fin’s farthermost point, destroying the rock outcropping and vaporizing the observer.
“They aren’t moving anymore,” came the gunship’s simple assessment.
The two stalkers, a mere 150 feet from the detonation, changed their minds, withdrew from the ridgeline, and moved into a small collection of rocks just below Razor-04’s landing site. One of them, an Uzbek, had on Roberts’s desert camo Gore-Tex pants, which he’d rifled out of the dead SEAL’s rucksack. The two were soon joined by another, who came up the draw by himself. There they discussed what should be done. The Americans may have retreated but they still possessed immense firepower in the form of the AC-130 that could be heard droning relentlessly overhead. The summit was taking a pounding beyond Bunkers 1 and 2, and the jihadists could do little during the onslaught but wait and pray to Allah.
A few kilometers in the opposite direction, Combat Controller Ben Miller and Mako-21 were observing the chaos. With the obvious fight unfolding a scant distance away, they were anxious to get into it. Ben made repeated requests on their behalf, stating Mako-21 “is about seven klicks west of current situation” and able to assist if only headquarters “can send a helo their way.” Pete Blaber, now mobile in the valley below, monitoring a number of troops in contact, and with a clear view of the mountain, listened patiently. Eventually he told the team, “Hold what you got.” Al, the team leader, had to quell a near mutiny by the other SEALs, who felt their place was in the battle. “Blaber wouldn’t let us leave our mountain.” But Blaber knew the CSAR helicopter would be on its way, and it was impossible to generate another to move the men, who weren’t equipped for a sustained gunfight the way Gabe, Keary, Jason, and the Rangers were, with multiple heavy machine guns, ammunition, and grenades. Mako-21 was also not even close to its own objective and was struggling in the frozen terrain. They’d already passed J Team’s resupply to the 101st for delivery instead of taking it themselves. With their own mission a long way off, they needed to focus.24
* * *
A distressed Chapman repeatedly called out on his radio, each time heard four klicks away by Jay, who responded immediately every time. Chapman either never received the replies or couldn’t hear them under the fire of the gunship. However, John must not have been monitoring the AC-130’s fires net or he would have made himself known to the aircraft. Jay was increasingly concerned for his friend; the gunship was churning up the mountain. “On our OP we were talking [about what was happening on Takur Ghar]. Everyone agreed there were two elements on the mountain. You could hear Slab on the FDO [fire direction frequency] talking to Grim. And Chapman was on either LOS or another freq.”
In his bunker, John continued to bleed. The pounding by the AC-130 was terrifying, and he knew, better than others, that if a 105 round hit his position, he’d be obliterated. Intermittently, he reached out to raise someone, anyone, on UHF without success. His attention was diverted by the enemy, who now knew he was there. Their intentions were announced by an RPG exploding against Bunker 1’s upper berm a few feet above his head, showering him with dirt. With a blast kill radius of several meters, he survived only because most of the detonation was deflected over his head, yet it still damaged his ears and left them ringing. Okay. They knew he was here. Ironically, it was likely the unwitting gunship and its rounds ravaging the summit that had prevented a rush by the Chechens and Uzbeks. To allay any doubt about their understanding of the situation, a grenade tossed from Bunker 2 exploded between the combatants. Using his PEQ-2, John fired his weapon over the top of the berm and hunkered down lower, while the Al Qaeda in Bunker 2 continued to pound his position repeatedly with AK-47 and PKM fire.
Despite the gunship, the mountain was now populated across its upper slopes by additional fighters converging on the Americans. Here and there, pairs and singles of Al Qaeda searched for targets. One of the fighters, the Uzbek who’d taken Roberts’s Gore-Tex pants, made a decision. It was obvious an American was in Bunker 1, a fortified position he himself had helped to build and occupy in preparation for the glorious battle he hoped to wage against the Americans. And now, one of the infidels had the audacity to occupy “his” mountain. He began to snake his way upslope at an oblique angle to Chapman’s position, using the fire from Bunker 2 as a mask.
Other Al Qaeda knew the Americans were now split, with one group falling down the cliff face the jihadists had avoided, and at least one more in Bunker 1, where the only true firefight was raging on. It drew most of their attention to the beleaguered Combat Controller. As a consequence, it also drew most of the fire, alleviating the pressure on the wounded and retreating SEALs, who continued to slide down the mountain in order to gain distance from the enemy. On the Predator’s camera, the unfolding violence was captured silently by its unblinking eye.
John’s world became an interminable one-man stand as he fired sparingly, trying to pace his ammo depletion. He was either already too weak from blood loss or thought better of exposing himself to throw any hand grenades. Whatever his reasons, he used none of them. Mortars now rocked his position as well, as the jihadists on the lower slopes lobbed rounds onto the mountain, apparently unmoved by the potential fratricide this might produce. More alone than ever and shaking from the cold and shock, John fought on. He had no choice. Either the SEALs would come back, a rescue force would arrive, or they would not, and he would fire until he was out of ammunition or killed. The SEALs were no longer firing, so they were either dead or had left the summit. Either way, he was alone in this battle.
As he lay there in an enemy trench, the sun slowly crept toward the horizon, chasing the darkness from the mountain. Its deadly illumination was already snatching John’s few remaining advantages by laying the predawn twilight at Al Qaeda’s feet. He snapped his NVGs, now useless, up onto his “fucking head harness.” His watch read 0553, twenty minutes before true sunrise, but that hardly mattered. This high on the mountain it was already light enough to see, for everyone to see.
Overhead, Chris Walker continued to watch the events unfold. Next to him Gordon Bower, as the infrared sensor operator, was working Grim-32’s IR system to target the enemy for the pilots. The AC-130H IR system did not pick up infrared strobes like the one John had now activated. Rather, the plane’s IR system registered heat signatures only, so that anything warmer than the surrounding terrain appeared as a black outline. The two sensor operators frequently compared inputs to events on the ground, allowing them to form a comprehensive picture. As Walker recalled in his witness statement, “Indications of friendly engagement from within Bunker 1 against the enemy were frequent and consistent. I continued to observe glint tape, strobe lights, muzzle flashes, and IZLID laser movement after 0042Z [the GMT time at which the SEALs retreated from the summit] from Bunker 1.”
Those innocuous and sanitized observations failed to convey the carnage on the ground. John Chapman was fighting for his life and losing the battle. He was now marred by shrapnel in his arms and body, his misery compounded by growing weakness as the bleeding in his abdomen continued. “Any station, any station, this is Mako Three Zero Charlie,” he tried again in vain. Jay Hill heard the call and responded for the dozenth time, but his transmission never reached John’s ear.
A fusillade from Bunker 2, including yet another RPG, seized John’s attention. This was followed by an Al Qaeda flanker from his right, across the slope and from below Bunker 2. John quickly dispatched the threat with a few well-aimed shots.
There was no time to regroup in his isolated bunker. Without warning, the Uzbek in Roberts’s desert Gore-Tex pants, dyed henna beard, and green Russian camo charged him from the boulder above Bunker 1, firing as he rushed over Roberts’s dead body. Fortunately, Gore-Tex Pants was struggling to make ground on John as quickly as he hoped. He was wearing slip-on shoes with no tread, and his progress was slowed by the lack of traction. Still, he was only feet away and firing point-blank at the American. John swung his M4, and from a distance of a mere ten feet, felled the Uzbek with several precious rounds to the chest. The Uzbek dropped like a rock onto his back into a twisted final pose, never to rise again, his lifeless eyes staring skyward. The time was exactly 0600.
John was breathing heavily now, the pain pushed back by true fight-or-flight adrenaline but by no means eliminated. Two rushers attacked in as many minutes. He was now going through ammunition at an alarming pace. Of the seven thirty-round magazines he started with, he was down to only a couple. And unlike the SEALs, he had no pistol secondary.
A lull arrived like a double-edged blessing. True, no one was shooting at him for the moment. But huddled in the bottom of the dirty narrow trench, surrounded by frozen bloody snow and dead bodies, John was now more alone than ever. Seconds felt like minutes. Time stretched, the pain dragging it out. An eternity. With no options, he waited.
Four minutes passed. He tried another unsuccessful radio call. How many did that make? He’d lost count.
The threats all seemed to come from above and his left and right, certainly the heavy machine-gun fire. What John didn’t realize was, while the first flanker charged from the right and Gore-Tex Pants had been approaching from the left in preparation for his own assault, another lone gunman was making his way upslope.
Silently the stalker advanced. Seeing his two “brothers” fall to the man in the bunker, he decided another rush assault was inadvisable. Clearly the American, armed with an M4 by the sound of its report, was deadly with his weapon. Stealth was called for. Sporadic fire from Bunker 2 directed at Bunker 1 assisted in masking his approach and keeping the American’s attention, and so the man pushed forward.
At 0606, the lone gunman arrived below Bunker 1, in precisely the location the SEALs had occupied just before leaving Chapman behind. Who struck first will remain forever unknown, but John engaged the gunman in fierce hand-to-hand combat, his already shrapnel-ridden and bleeding body drastically diminished. The gunman connected with the Controller at least a few times, leaving “blunt-force injuries of the head, neck and extremities,” “a contused forehead,” and “abrasions of the lips, nose, and cheeks,” as noted in the official forensic pathology report.
Somehow, the severely injured Chapman overwhelmed his attacker and killed him, leaving the body at the mouth of the bunker. Exhausted and hyped-up on another rush of adrenaline, he had no time to recover. Bunker 2 launched an even more ferocious attack, firing one more RPG into Chapman’s redoubt.25
Chapman heard the MH-47’s heavy rotors beating the cold clear air in the early morning twilight. He may have even seen the helicopter’s approach, though whether he did or not was immaterial. There was only one place the rotor sound of a laden MH-47 laboring up the mountain slopes would be headed: Takur Ghar. A wave of relief surely washed over him as he realized that either Slab, their insertion helo, or headquarters must have initiated the QRF. They were coming back for him. Another reality: With no one else to defend the HLZ, this MH-47 would meet the same fate as the previous two. Though he couldn’t have known, this helo was stuffed with Rangers, two Air Force PJs, and fellow Combat Controller Gabe Brown. All totaled, eighteen men. The loss of life, should it fall victim to a fully alerted and prepared enemy with multiple RPG firing positions and heavy weapons, would be catastrophic, the worst in the war to date.
Chapman knew what the enemy wanted. His fighting position, Bunker 1, had a clear view of the helicopter’s approach and a direct line of fire where it would set down. As things stood, from their positions higher on the mountain, the enemy couldn’t engage the rescue team; they needed his position to place their RPGs. If the Rangers made it to the hilltop intact, the roles would reverse, and Al Qaeda would be the ones in danger of being overrun, not Chapman.
His options were nil. To save the lives of the rescue force sent to save his own, he needed to negate the threat—just as he had done an hour before, saving the lives of his entire SEAL team. If he was to survive, he’d need to somehow climb out of the bunker, battered, bleeding, and severely wounded, and take the fight to the enemy, challenging the jaws of death once more. Remaining static would surely be his demise. He had one weapon and little ammo, but the course of action was clear.
John’s commitment to his comrades was clearly evident that morning, and it necessitated rising from the bunker to save the men he didn’t know on Razor-01. His actions can best be summed up in a word: brotherhood. And to men in combat, brotherhood is love. There’s no difference between the two words. While it’s impossible to say if the thought crossed his mind, or even if he recognized it at all in that short moment, his decision to act at this point was surely the embodiment of those two interchangeable words.
At 0611, with a glorious sunrise striking his east-facing bunker, John Chapman, face battered and bloodied, his body wracked with pain, made the bravest decision of his life. He mounted the shrapnel-spattered berm onto the dirty and bloodstained snow, blinking against the blinding rays of the morning sun. If the Chechens and Uzbeks had any questions as to whether the lone American was still alive, he answered them with his first volley, a multi-round burst aimed directly at their PKM, his ejected casings glinting in the morning sunlight as they launched skyward. He emptied the magazine in his M4, then switched mags before dropping prone in the snow in the face of the PKM’s response.
A barrage was unleashed on Bunker 1 as Al Qaeda fighters saw the loaded MH-47 making its final approach, seconds from landing. On the far side of the summit, a lone RPG gunner moved into position, while a second RPG warhead was mounted on a launcher inside Bunker 2. Elsewhere across the slopes, fighters continued to converge. Another flank attempt was made from the east.
John slid down the slope on his side with his legs in front of him, stopping just below his bunker and the bonsai tree. With a fresh magazine, he engaged and killed the eastern flanker. But there was absolutely no time to stay in the relative safety of defilade below the tree. Struggling up the rocky snow-covered bank, he turned his adrenaline on the PKM again, firing as he moved, until more AK-47 rounds assaulted him from the east. Staring into the blazing sunlight, he searched for targets, firing rounds in desperation to protect the helicopter now throwing snow from its rotor wash and drowning out the noise of enemy gunfire with the thumping of its mighty turbine engines. John leaned his haggard body against the giant bonsai, using it for protection, methodically engaging any movement on the mountain. There were just too many targets for one man.
More fighters appeared to the south along the ridge like ants from an anthill. The unmistakable sound of an exploding RPG warhead stopped time. Behind John, the giant MH-47 reeled under the impact of a direct hit as the grenade exploded against its right engine, destroying it instantly. The left engine immediately compensated for the loss of power by revving. It was no use. Overloaded and at high altitude, its fate was sealed. The copilot had already been shot in the leg and helmet. Calvert, the pilot, considered making a single-engine descent from the summit but realized he’d never clear the ridge in front of him. He immediately dropped the helo down expertly with a thump.
As the Chinook settled onto the slope, John resumed engaging the Al Qaeda fighters. Dropping prone again, he fired at the most immediate threat to the devastated helicopter, which had yet to disgorge any soldiers or airmen. The fighters along the ridge enjoyed a broadside view of the bird and immediately set about raking it with heavy fire, including more RPGs, killing several Rangers and a crewman instantly. As John fired along the ridgeline, his back was exposed to the concentration of fighters from Bunker 2 and the DShK position.
As the Rangers, PJs, and Gabe Brown began to pour out onto the snow from the helo’s ramp, John was raked with fire from behind, several rounds connecting with his legs. Two entered his lower left leg, lacerating his left calf, and another embedded in his heel. His right leg was devastated. One round entered above the kneecap, exiting out the other side a few inches away. Two rounds slammed into his thigh, the first shattering his femur. His body jerked involuntarily with the impact.
Though his body was mangled by small-arms fire and shrapnel, John Chapman battled on, changing out to his last good magazine. The only other he had on him had been shot through on his Rhodesian vest, rendering it useless. He fired at any target he could see along the ridge, unaware of the many enemies converging behind him, focused intently on his back.
One of them, Chechen or Uzbek, took aim at the prone American now in the open and on the ground, an easy target at a handful of steps, and fired two rounds from his AK-47.
John, quite literally firing the last of his ammunition at the enemy immediately in front of him, would have felt the bullets strike home. The tight two-round shot group entered his upper torso close together on their trajectory until connecting with his aorta, exploding the organ and dropping his blood pressure to zero. His ammunition and life expended, John Chapman died. The last images before his eyes closed forever were of blood-spattered rock and snow on a desolate mountain peak, while other men raged around him, fighting for their own lives.