back.
“Keep one of your guys on the road to watch them. Advise when they try to move out.”
“Standing by,” he e-mailed back.
Dave and I were out back talking to each other, plotting things out on a map. Torres let us know that the 10th Mountain guys were expected to be set up before dawn. They were coming in from the northwest so they could move in quietly.
I got back on the phone with Ray. “My guys tell me the ACM are starting to advance toward the village. They’re coming from the east and the southeast.”
This is what we had been waiting for. The Taliban were on the attack.
7
FORCE ON FORCE
IN the past five days, the small force of two reinforced companies of 10th Mountain soldiers and a handful of Special Forces soldiers, along with Afghan National Army help, had been humping up and down the freakin’ mountains in continuous engagement with the ACM farther north of Deh Chopan. (ACMs were Anti-Coalition Militia … the Taliban to you or me.) This was officially a brigade combat team that, in reality, could not measure up to battalion strength. The fact that these kids could hang with this level of stress was a testament to their training and leadership.
At the SCIF, Torres had Colonel Ault issue the full range of orders to set into motion a movement of men, helicopters, and material to try to protect Deh Chopan. On Rob’s satellite images, I inspected the thick-walled mud huts in the small village. They reminded me of Bedrock, the cartoon town that the Flintstones lived in. For a moment, it was interesting to contemplate the Taliban as a bunch of Fred Flintstones. Nah. I couldn’t recall ever seeing a fat Taliban.
Dozens of DCU-clad officers sitting in the basketball court–sized operations tent, buffeted by periodic hurricanelike wind surges that rattled the tent down to the frame, began sending out information and orders to the commanders of the soldiers and aviators to choreograph the complex ballet of destruction.
With the detailed intelligence we had received from Ray’s assets, and continuous confirmation from JSTARS orbiting just over the Indian Ocean, a major engagement was about to occur. We believed we had the upper hand. Then again, this was Afghanistan. We were up against a hardened force of suicidal fighters who knew the terrain better than we did.
Within minutes, electronic messages were sent to the aviation units from the desk officers in the Operations Center directing a flight of three CH-47s and two AH-64 Apaches to be prepared to securely pick up the two reinforced companies of infantry that would, hopefully, move approximately 60 miles in less than eight hours to catch the Taliban by surprise before they could infect another village. They would be picked up close to dawn, in rugged mountain terrain. The CH-47 pilots had learned, adapted, and become skilled at swinging the massive twin-rotor medium-lift helicopters around in that environment. In many ways, the CH-47 was proving to be a better combat helicopter in the mountains than the single-rotor UH-60 Black Hawk because of the inherently superior lift of two rotors.
At midnight, the company commanders and platoon leaders of the 10th Mountain Strike Brigade would be huddling in the frigid mountain air, receiving and discussing their new instructions. In small, temporary command posts, they would sit under a bluff, or in a small mud hut that they had found and occupied, using red lights and detailed maps to conduct hasty planning, and assessing the best approaches into Deh Chopan. The weather, the known and expected Taliban strength, the timeline, the number of MREs each man had to sustain himself during the assault, and, most important, which squads would conduct the assault/occupation and which would be designated to perform the “shaping attack” to cut off and block the Taliban from retreating back to Pakistan—all these were factors. They had to prevent reinforcement or resupply by the hundreds of motorcycle
“Keep one of your guys on the road to watch them. Advise when they try to move out.”
“Standing by,” he e-mailed back.
Dave and I were out back talking to each other, plotting things out on a map. Torres let us know that the 10th Mountain guys were expected to be set up before dawn. They were coming in from the northwest so they could move in quietly.
I got back on the phone with Ray. “My guys tell me the ACM are starting to advance toward the village. They’re coming from the east and the southeast.”
This is what we had been waiting for. The Taliban were on the attack.
7
FORCE ON FORCE
IN the past five days, the small force of two reinforced companies of 10th Mountain soldiers and a handful of Special Forces soldiers, along with Afghan National Army help, had been humping up and down the freakin’ mountains in continuous engagement with the ACM farther north of Deh Chopan. (ACMs were Anti-Coalition Militia … the Taliban to you or me.) This was officially a brigade combat team that, in reality, could not measure up to battalion strength. The fact that these kids could hang with this level of stress was a testament to their training and leadership.
At the SCIF, Torres had Colonel Ault issue the full range of orders to set into motion a movement of men, helicopters, and material to try to protect Deh Chopan. On Rob’s satellite images, I inspected the thick-walled mud huts in the small village. They reminded me of Bedrock, the cartoon town that the Flintstones lived in. For a moment, it was interesting to contemplate the Taliban as a bunch of Fred Flintstones. Nah. I couldn’t recall ever seeing a fat Taliban.
Dozens of DCU-clad officers sitting in the basketball court–sized operations tent, buffeted by periodic hurricanelike wind surges that rattled the tent down to the frame, began sending out information and orders to the commanders of the soldiers and aviators to choreograph the complex ballet of destruction.
With the detailed intelligence we had received from Ray’s assets, and continuous confirmation from JSTARS orbiting just over the Indian Ocean, a major engagement was about to occur. We believed we had the upper hand. Then again, this was Afghanistan. We were up against a hardened force of suicidal fighters who knew the terrain better than we did.
Within minutes, electronic messages were sent to the aviation units from the desk officers in the Operations Center directing a flight of three CH-47s and two AH-64 Apaches to be prepared to securely pick up the two reinforced companies of infantry that would, hopefully, move approximately 60 miles in less than eight hours to catch the Taliban by surprise before they could infect another village. They would be picked up close to dawn, in rugged mountain terrain. The CH-47 pilots had learned, adapted, and become skilled at swinging the massive twin-rotor medium-lift helicopters around in that environment. In many ways, the CH-47 was proving to be a better combat helicopter in the mountains than the single-rotor UH-60 Black Hawk because of the inherently superior lift of two rotors.
At midnight, the company commanders and platoon leaders of the 10th Mountain Strike Brigade would be huddling in the frigid mountain air, receiving and discussing their new instructions. In small, temporary command posts, they would sit under a bluff, or in a small mud hut that they had found and occupied, using red lights and detailed maps to conduct hasty planning, and assessing the best approaches into Deh Chopan. The weather, the known and expected Taliban strength, the timeline, the number of MREs each man had to sustain himself during the assault, and, most important, which squads would conduct the assault/occupation and which would be designated to perform the “shaping attack” to cut off and block the Taliban from retreating back to Pakistan—all these were factors. They had to prevent reinforcement or resupply by the hundreds of motorcycle
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