Part 29 (2/2)

Cla.s.sic Kirk.

Melvin Porter briefed Stoney Portis for three days, and it became clear to the new commander that the men at Camp Keating desperately needed to figure out how to build up its defenses. He'd heard the whispers, of course, that the camp could be shut down at any moment, but until that happened, he would proceed as if he and his newly a.s.signed troops were going to be there until July 2010, when they would hand the outpost over to the next company. From eye level, the camp looked generally fortified. The HESCOs were in place, and there was double- and triple-strand concertina wire enveloping the camp. There certainly were some defensive positions that Portis wanted to improve-first off, he thought, there was too much dead s.p.a.ce near the camp's entry control point of the camp. He understood, however, that there were limits to how much could be done to make the men safe. ”COP Keating is practically worthless,” he wrote in his journal. ”It's in a bowl with high mountains all around us.” There were roughly fifty troops here just trying to exist; their only mission was survival.

Almost immediately, it was evident that Portis was going to be different from Porter. For example, he had a different reaction to the incoming AK-47 and RPG fire from the Putting Green. Hearing it come in, he stepped outside the operations center and looked up with his binoculars at the northwestern mountain.

”Sir, you might want to get behind some cover,” suggested ”Doc” Courville.

”Yeah,” Portis replied absentmindedly. He went back inside the operations center to get his radio. Lieutenant Carson Shrode was in there, on the radio with John Breeding in the mortar pit. ”Hey,” Portis told Shrode, ”you need to put five rounds of 'Willie Pete' ”-white phosphorous-”up there now.”

Portis walked down the hall, and Shrode ran after him. ”Did you just say you want Willie Pete at this grid?” Shrode asked.

”Yeah,” Portis said. ”And I want it f.u.c.king now.”

”You sure?” Shrode asked. Portis was. There were no civilians at the location from which the enemy was firing, so there was no reason to hesitate.

Shrode got back on his radio and told a still-skeptical Breeding, ”No, he's serious.” Portis glared at Shrode, p.i.s.sed that his instructions been questioned, let alone debated, in front of other soldiers. ”If Willie Pete works,” he said bluntly, ”use it.”

There was a new sheriff in town.

Portis's aunt and uncle had heard the troops lacked even basic equipment, so they sent him a care package that included some Leatherman Multi-Tools, a device containing a knife, pliers, wire cutters, a saw, a hammer, and on and on. Portis told his three platoon leaders each to select a soldier to receive one of the Multi-Tools-someone deserving of special, if informal, recognition.

Salentine picked Specialist Chris Griffin, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, from Kincheloe, in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Griffin was a warrior, Salentine thought, who fought and lived with a pa.s.sion that was second to none. That pa.s.sion sometimes pushed boundaries-he and Jon Hill almost came to blows once, for instance-but if Salentine could have had ten Griffins, he'd have counted himself lucky.

Specialist Christopher Griffin. (Photo courtesy of Kerri Griffin Causley) (Photo courtesy of Kerri Griffin Causley)

Griffin was quiet and kept to himself. He smoked a lot and spent hours reading; before deploying to Iraq, he'd read the entire Quran from cover to cover. He seemed overwhelmed by the gift of the Leatherman, as if it were much more than just a hundred-dollar tool, as if he'd never received a gift before. The new commander was surprised to hear, later on, that the twenty-four-year-old had taken the time in the middle of this war zone to write his captain's aunt and uncle a thank-you note for the modest gift.

Colonel George briefed General Scaparrotti and the Afghan minister of the interior on the latest developments in his area of operations, and then he renewed his push to close down Combat Outposts Keating and Lowell. Most of the reasons McChrystal had given him for delaying these moves were no longer operative, save for his stated desire not to ”get ahead of the president,” which also seemed moot. Scaparrotti approved the plan: the troops at Combat Outpost Keating could start packing up on October 4.

On his first official day in charge, September 20, Portis had three tubs of ice cream flown in for his new troops to enjoy after the change-of-command ceremony: cookies-and-cream, mint chocolate chip, and pralines-and-cream. Later that day, he joined Colonel George and Lieutenant Colonel Brown at a banquet held at the base for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr; also in attendance were members of the Afghan National Police, the leaders of the ANA company stationed at Keating, and some village elders. There was a lot of friendly chatter as the men sat around a picnic table together.

”How effective is Combat Outpost Keating?” George asked the ANA commander.

”We're very effective,” he said.

To Portis, this was an example of what U.S. forces referred to as ”Afghan math”-a certain disconnection from reality that Afghans tended to exhibit when asked to provide honest a.s.sessments.

”How effective will Combat Outpost Keating be after we leave?” George asked.

This time, there was no disconnect: the leader of the ANA laughed. ”When you leave, we'll leave,” he said.

George explained that the United States wasn't going to be in Kamdesh in perpetuity, which was why it was important, he said, that the locals be able to govern themselves and provide their own security. He didn't intend to signal an imminent departure, but the locals had been watching the troops s.h.i.+p out sling-loads of nonessential equipment from the outpost. The conversation suggested to many of the men at the table-Americans and Afghans alike-that there was a timetable, one that was obviously already under way.

At least one U.S. officer later recalled that he was stunned to hear George share this information; he felt sure it would be pa.s.sed on to the enemy. ”Anger, contempt, shock, disbelief-all emotions that ran though my mind in the following days,” the officer remembered. In his view, and the view of other members of Black Knight Troop, Colonel George had just told an untrustworthy group that the Americans were leaving soon.

In his room at Fort Hood in Texas, Rick Victorino-the intel a.n.a.lyst from 6-4 Cav-frowned. He had left COP Keating four months before, but he couldn't stop thinking about his time there, and he'd programmed a Google news alert to let him know whenever the word Nuristan Nuristan appeared in a media story. appeared in a media story.

On September 22, journalists at Bagram were informed that General McChrystal had given commanders the order to begin pulling their troops from remote bases-which would reportedly include Combat Outposts Keating and Lowell. The news immediately made its way to Victorino.

s.h.i.+t, they're going to be attacked, Victorino thought to himself; they're going to be overrun. He was sure that the information would be quickly rebroadcast by the Taliban to insurgents in the Kamdesh area.

The next day at work, he talked about this development with Mazzocchi and Meshkin. They all agreed: things were about to get rough for the men of Black Knight Troop, 3-61 Cav.

Portis received orders to prepare for a closure of Camp Keating; their last flight out would be on October 10. Just like that. They would have two weeks to tear the camp down. Portis called his team: ”Here's the mission,” he told them. ”We're leaving Combat Outpost Keating.”

They all rolled their eyes as if to say, The new guy doesn't understand how it works. They'd been told again and again that Camp Keating was going to be closed down, and nothing ever happened. But Portis impressed upon them that this time, it was real, and so they stayed up all night, planning the move down to the last detail. They decided they would need forty-five sorties, or trips, on Chinooks.

Portis was excited but nervous. His nerves began to fray on Monday, September 28, when he received intelligence that fighters from the Taliban and HIG had held a shura in Upper Kamdesh to try ”to resolve the conflict between the two groups in order to attack the COP.” A Taliban leader from the Waygal Valley had come to the shura to meet with HIG leaders. Two local officers with the Afghan National Police had also been present.

Portis sought out the recently hired Afghan National Police chief, Shamsullah (whose predecessor had quit), and told him what he had heard. Shamsullah said that the officers had gone without his knowledge, and he promised to talk to them about it. He wouldn't give Portis any details about the meeting, but he did confide that he'd heard from the locals that the outpost was closing. The level of detail the police chief had at his fingertips was stunning: at one point, he said he knew that Black Knight Troop was packing up nonessential gear ”and that... we would run non-stop birds all night to backhaul and close Keating and Fritsche starting in ten days (09OCT) for a duration of several days,” Portis emailed Brown later that day.

The captain was incredulous. How could Shamsullah know such specifics? Portis had not been particularly pleased when the brigade leaders.h.i.+p suggested to the shura elders and the leaders of the ANA and Afghan police that Black Knight troops were headed for the exits, but at least that information had been vague. This was something else, and it worried him. Locally, the only ones aware of the plans were Portis's lieutenants and the officers at Forward Operating Base Bostick; the operations centers at both posts were under lock and key. But planning about the closure of Camp Keating had gone all the way up the U.S. chain of command to Kabul; somewhere along the line, someone had said too much to the wrong person.

”Do you think the Taliban and HIG have the same information?” Portis asked Shamsullah.

”Everyone knows this,” said the chief.

”Do you think we're going to be attacked?” Portis asked.

”Yes,” said Shamsullah. ”Tomorrow.”

Portis wasn't quite sure how to process this; false warnings of an imminent attack, he knew, were common. He told the police chief that there wasn't an approved plan yet for closing the camp. ”We could be told to leave soon, or we could be told to leave after the winter,” he fibbed. ”I'll keep you informed as best I can, but currently our intentions are to winterize and fly out equipment that needs repairs.”

The captain walked away from this discussion filled with anger and unease. Obviously, the Americans couldn't leave a base that they were sharing with the ANA without letting the Afghan commander know they were leaving. But Shamsullah knew an unnerving amount of information about the Americans' plans. Portis wondered if the police chief-who hailed from Mandigal, a hotbed of the local insurgency-might not be playing both sides, having his own survival foremost in his mind. Portis was planning on heading up to Observation Post Fritsche on Thursday, October 1, to check on some equipment-everything would need to be accounted for during withdrawal-and while there, he would meet with the Kamdesh shura to find out whatever he could about this report of a TalibanHIG detente.

In his email to Brown, Portis wrote that he was ”concerned” that local Afghans and members of the Afghan National Police were sharing information about the evacuation of the local outposts, now being called Operation Mountain Descent. Portis's advisory came at the same time as a report that ”Bad” Abdul Rahman was preparing to take Barg-e-Matal back now that 1-32 Infantry troops had withdrawn. It was not uncommon to hear that local Taliban and HIG leaders were meeting, so Portis's news didn't cause anyone to hit the panic b.u.t.ton. Since June, the squadron had also gotten numerous tips that more than a hundred fighters were about to attack one base or another, including COP Keating and FOB Bostick. Brown didn't know how seriously to take what Portis had heard. He needed more proof that this threat was real before he could do anything; without more concrete information, he couldn't credibly call in choppers to bring reinforcements. There was also the issue of the moon, which right now was at too bright a point in its illumination cycle to afford the helicopters the darkness they needed to be safe. And anyway, 3-61 Cav would be leaving the Kamdesh Village area within a couple of weeks.

Portis briefed all of his officers and senior noncommissioned officers on what he'd learned, emphasizing the importance of operational security-meaning, keeping their mouths shut. ”I don't know how the f.u.c.k Shamsullah knows this, but he knows this,” he said.

The troops who were primarily tasked with gathering information about potential threats to the outpost were intelligence collector Sergeant Robert Gilberto,79 intelligence a.n.a.lyst Sergeant Ryan Schulz, and, to a lesser extent, fire-support officer Lieutenant Cason Shrode. intelligence a.n.a.lyst Sergeant Ryan Schulz, and, to a lesser extent, fire-support officer Lieutenant Cason Shrode.

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