“What do you guys do up here?” The woman’s glance took in our binoculars, maps, and arsenal of weapons piled in the corner.
“Give you all three or four minutes’ early warning before the human wave assault,” Jim answered blithely.
She blinked but didn’t smile.
“So why all the doctors?” I tried to deflect more questions by asking one of my own.
A man with the carefully gloved hands of a surgeon explained that the nearest trauma facility was in Oman, about four hours away by C-130. With a growing American presence in Afghanistan and correspondingly more casualties, higher command had decided to set up a tented operating room in Rhino’s courtyard.
“We can perform three simultaneous lifesaving surgeries,” he said.
Jim and I nodded gravely, unsure whether this was meant as reassurance or merely information.
The doctors took a last look from the tower and retreated down the stairs. The surgeon, looking over his shoulder, said, “We hear you’re leaving soon. Good luck up north. We’ll be here if you need us.”
That one was definitely meant as reassurance.
Heading north was news to Jim and me, so we called Staff Sergeant Marine to take our place in the tower and went to visit Captain Whitmer at company headquarters. As we walked across the sand toward the olive-drab tent hidden in the dunes, a figure approached us with an unusual collar insignia glinting in the sun. It didn’t look like a bar or an oak leaf.
It was a star. General Mattis had arrived to take command of Task Force 58.
“Good afternoon, sir.” Our greeting tried to make up in vigor what it lacked in salutes, since Marines in the field never salute officers for fear of attracting enemy sniper fire. That seemed unlikely here, but it was policy nonetheless. I certainly didn’t want to be reamed out by the general for a life-threatening show of respect.
“Good afternoon, young warriors.” General Mattis stopped to speak with us. Of slender build and wearing glasses, he carried his pistol in a leather shoulder holster. Without preamble or small talk, he praised our mission in Afghanistan. “You need to know how much you’ve already accomplished by being here. You prove that the United States has the balls to put troops on the ground in Afghanistan. You’ve emboldened the Northern Alliance to renew its pressure on the Taliban and al Qaeda in Kandahar. You’ve reassured Americans at a time when they sorely need it.”
He shook our hands in the way that generals do, grasping us each behind the elbow for emphasis. Part of me wanted to be unimpressed, but Jim and I both walked a little taller toward the headquarters tent.
The next afternoon, we climbed the stairs to the task force COC and pushed through the plastic sheet doorway into the warmth and light of the crowded room. The effect was all cheer and goodwill after the cold emptiness of the desert outside. The doctors were right: we were heading north the next day. The plan was mostly set, and platoon commanders were brought in only for the final confirmation brief.
Computer stations filled the back corner, and track lighting overhead bathed laminated maps taped together across the longest wall. Rifles were stacked by the door like umbrellas. Forty infantry officers, helicopter pilots, SEALs, Australian Special Air Service operators, and CIA liaisons crowded around in a whatever-keeps-you-warm assortment of fleece jackets and skullcaps. Most sat on piles of carpets, which outnumbered chairs by two or three to one.
Captain Eric Dill, commander of the recon platoon, held his face six inches from the map, tracing a line with his finger. Dill shaved his head bald and had a reputation for frankness and good analysis. I joined him.
He greeted me with “One vehicle per minute at night.”
“What?”
“Surveillance assets report an average of one vehicle each minute on this stretch of road between sunset and sunrise.” He pointed to a black line snaking west from Kandahar toward the town of Lashkar Gah.
“Who are they?”
Dill arched an eyebrow. “How many Afghan farmers have you seen tooling around in Toyota pickup trucks?”
I hadn’t seen any Afghan farmers. I hadn’t seen any Afghans at all. But I knew that the Saudis had sold the Taliban several hundred Toyota pickup trucks. They weren’t quite as identifiable as a tank with a Taliban flag painted on the side, but they were close.
The square-headed MEU operations officer called the room to order. We minimized note taking in secret briefs, so I rolled my watch cap above my ears to hear better.
Australians worked in the Helmand River valley to our west. Joint Special Operations Task Force South, made up of SEALs and Special Forces, operated along the Pakistani border to our east. Opposition leader Hamid Karzai continued to pressure Kandahar from the north, and another opposition commander, Gul Agha Shirzai, was moving aggressively toward the city from the eastern town of Spin Boldak. His fighters had captured a bridge only seven kilometers from Kandahar International Airport the previous afternoon. The Taliban and al Qaeda were reported to have nineteen thousand supporters in Kandahar.
An intelligence analyst wearing jeans and a flannel jacket pushed his glasses back on his nose and stepped to the center of the room. But for the pistol on his hip, he could have been in front of a college class. He predicted that Kandahar would collapse within a week, certainly by mid-December. The Taliban were expected to defect and run for home, some to Pakistan, some to Iran, and many to the hills around Kandahar. Al Qaeda, by contrast, would be more ruthless. Many fighters would prefer death to surrender.
“We’ll give it to ’em,” the operations officer said, then continued briefing the plan. Within an hour, a force of recon Marines would depart Rhino to drive north nearly one hundred miles. By the following morning, they were expected to identify a landing zone and a site for a patrol base near the highway between Kandahar and Lashkar Gah. LAR and CAAT, the light-armored reconnaissance company and combined anti-armor teams, would join them that afternoon. Their LAVs and Humvees would provide the bulk of the force’s punch. My platoon and a rifle platoon would follow via helicopter late that night or early the next morning. Together, we would be known as Task Force Sledgehammer. Our mission was to interdict traffic on the highway to prevent the Taliban and al Qaeda from escaping the Northern Alliance onslaught against Kandahar. Despite the task force’s name, we would be the anvil to Hamid Karzai’s hammer.
Locking eyes with me and the other young commanders in the room, the operations officer finished with a recap of the “Five Bullets” that every Marine in our platoons had to know: mission statement, challenge and password, rules of engagement, lost Marine plan, and escape and recovery plan. It amounted to knowing what we were doing, how not to get killed by our own people, how to ensure that we were killing only bad guys, and what to do in case we got lost.
The brief ended, and the men in the room disappeared into the dark to make their final preparations for the day to come. Eric and I stood by the compound gate. As I pulled gloves from my pocket, I asked him, “What do you think — good aggressiveness or a bridge too far?”
Eric reflexively tugged on the magazine of the M4 rifle slung across his chest. “We’re way outnumbered, that’s for sure. But with all our airpower, it shouldn’t be a problem. I think we have to kick somebody’s ass once, and then word gets out.”