hit!”
Garza ran over to Westbrook, who, with blood oozing from his neck, was struggling to get to his feet. Rounds were zipping past as the dushmen aimed in to finish him.
“Stay down!” Garza said, looking at the wound. “Stop trying to get up. You’ll get shot.”
The three wounded Askars crawled to the stone wall holding up the edge of the terrace and dropped down to the next terrace, leaving Fabayo alone. Swenson looked back to see one Askar stand up and take a bullet in the neck.
Garza, out in the wash thirty meters away, yelled for help moving Westbrook out of the line of fire. The reporter rushed out and together they pulled Westbrook back. Fabayo dropped his first-aid bag and sprinted across to Garza, who was holding Westbrook’s hand and reassuring him. Westbrook was heavy, and it took the reporter, Garza, and Fabayo pulling together to carry him behind a terrace wall.
A bullet had entered Westbrook’s neck near the shoulder blade and ricocheted downward, a dangerous but not fatal wound. Swenson applied Quick Clot powder and a bandage to seal off the bleeding.
The fight had been raging for over ninety minutes and the chain of command throughout Kunar Province was on alert. Procedures for releasing helicopters had been unsnarled, and two OH-58 Kiowas were en route to the valley. At 0715, they contacted Swenson.
“Highlander, this is Pale Horse,” the PC (pilot in command) radioed. “What do you need?”
“Pale Horse,” Swenson replied, “am under heavy fire from the village and the hills to the east and on both sides. Request immediate suppression while we pull back.”
The Kiowa squadron had been in Kunar for ten months. The pilots knew the terrain and enemy habits. They intended to swoop in low in crisscrossing strafing runs, deliberately swerving and cutting back at odd angles. They didn’t care whether they hit the dushmen; they wanted to force them to crouch down and cease firing. The aerial tactics would allow the Command Group to pull back westward down the draw under reduced enemy pressure. The reporter and Garza propped up and carried Westbrook and some of his gear.
As Swenson moved, he called for a medevac. Shadow radioed back that the TOC wanted questions answered before calling for one.
“Is he Army or Marine?” Shadow said.
Swenson cursed; Maj. Williams was more diplomatic.
“This is Fox 6,” Williams radioed. “It doesn’t matter his service. He’s U.S.”
There was a pause, then Shadow reluctantly radioed, “Repeat, TOC needs to know if he’s Army or Marine. It’s in the regulations.”
Swenson ignored the request. Fabayo and Swenson unfolded their orange air panels in preparation for a medevac by helicopter. When that drew the attention of the enemy machine-gunners, Swenson ordered everyone to pull back west another two hundred meters. As they were falling back, Williams and Garza were carrying the gear of the wounded and returning fire, while Westbrook, barely conscious, was helped by Fabayo and the reporter. At least twice they had to duck for cover as machine-gun bullets and rocket-propelled grenades impacted behind them and to their right side.
Standing up in the turret, I saw the group of Americans staggering down the wash to our left. Our Humvee was almost clear of the terraces and about to enter the wash when Rod came to a sudden halt. There were big bags of a white powder in the path just ahead. It was the stuff the dushmen use to make roadside bombs. There was no way to go around the bags. We had a cliff wall on our left and a sharp drop-off on the right.
Rod shouted up the turret.
“Looks bad, Homey!”
Chapter 11
INTO THE FIRE
It was standard procedure for the dushmen to place sacks of ammonium nitrate in shallow holes, insert a blasting cap, and run a wire to a flashlight battery. They’d cut the wire and glue each strand to a piece of wood, with the ends almost touching. When a foot or a tire wheel applied pressure,
“I don’t think they had time to wire them up,” I said. I had no way of knowing that for sure, but I wanted to believe it. They might have seen us coming and rigged it in a hurry to cut us off.
“You ready?” Rod said.
He dropped the truck into gear. I hung on to the turret, eyes squeezed shut. I waited to be flung into the sky and wondered if I could do a backflip in the air and land on my feet—not that it would make any difference. I’d be dead, but you have a few funny thoughts in the infinite split seconds of a battle.
We rolled over the bags. There was a slight bump, and we continued driving.
“All right!” Rod yelled.
Ahead of us the trail cut sharply to the left and led down into a gully. Rod hit the accelerator, and we gained speed downhill. I lost sight of Valadez’s orange air panel up on the ridge. Then we popped out on the far side of the gully.
I saw Hafez. He was staggering past us, holding up another Askar.
“Stop!” I yelled to Rod.
I climbed down and grabbed Hafez. He had been nicked in the right arm and another bullet had lodged in the armor plate on his back. He was dirty and tired. He drank some water while I bandaged his arm.
“Very bad in there,” he said. “All confused.”
“Where’s Lieutenant Johnson?”
Hafez shook his head.
“We were in a house, heavy shooting,” he said. “The lieutenant told me to go first. I knew the way. He’d follow.”
He described what happened next: They ran out of the house and across a terrace. They leapt into a trench to catch their breaths before making the next bound. The trench, visible on our photomaps, slashed diagonally, leading uphill toward the schoolhouse occupied by the enemy.
Lt. Johnson said he’d cover Hafez, who helped two wounded Askars hobble downhill. With bullets zinging about him, Hafez ran at a fast clip. He didn’t see or hear Lt. Johnson after that.
Hafez and the two wounded Askars joined the Command Group scattered in the terraces beside the wash. He had heard an insurgent leader, whose voice he did not recognize, tell his men to stay off their radios and use their cell phones.
Dushmen were pressing in on the Command Group from both sides, yelling in Pashto to the Askars to surrender. A wounded Askar next to Hafez threw down his M16.
“If you give up,” Hafez said, “I’ll shoot you. No one surrenders.”
At one point, Hafez said Maj. Williams was lying next to him, returning fire. Two dushmen in dirty man- dresses peeked over a terrace wall about thirty feet away and gestured to them to surrender. Hafez clawed at his gear and threw a smoke grenade. They ducked away and didn’t reappear.
Hafez left the Command Group to sort itself out and, helping a wounded Askar, was heading west back to the operational release point when I had stopped him.
“I need you to come back in with me. I can’t find them without you,” I said.
Hafez had recently married. He was wounded and exhausted. He could now go home and have a life.
“If today is my time to die, then I die.”
He climbed into the truck next to Rod. After placing my bulging medical bag and ten boxes of ammo on the rear seats, I strapped a handheld radio to the gun turret so I could listen for Lt. Johnson and we moved out again.
“Can you show us a way in?” I said.
Hafez shook his head.
Wounded Askars were straggling by us. One was holding a bloody cloth to his face, another was hobbling on a shredded leg. The exhausted Askars had stopped where the shallow gully and steep terraces gave them
