Part 34 (1/2)

Realizing that the wire had been breached, Thomas didn't know what to do, so he ran to his hooch in the Headquarters Platoon barracks. He hid in his little area, behind the curtains and shelves constructed to afford some semblance of privacy. Soon he heard noise and then words in a foreign language: Taliban fighters were in the barracks.

Terrified, Thomas looked down at his leg and the oozing blood. As quietly as he could, he reached into his vest and pulled out the tourniquet stored in his cargo pocket. He attached it to his thigh and tried to stem the bleeding. He then eased himself into another small room where computers had been set up. He slid the chair from that room into Private First Cla.s.s Jordan Wong's hooch. It was pitch black. He aimed his rifle at the curtain; if insurgents pulled it back, he would shoot.

Not a soul in the world knew he was there. Cookie Thomas was positive he wasn't going to get any help. He would be killed by Taliban as he sat in the computer-room chair; he would die in Jordan Wong's hooch. This was how it would end.

CHAPTER 33

Taking This b.i.t.c.h Back

Forty-five minutes after taking off, shortly after 8:00 a.m., the medevac was still hovering over Forward Operating Base Bostick.

”It's still too hot!” the pilot shouted about the area surrounding Camp Keating. ”We're going down to refuel!” They landed, and Stoney Portis returned to the Bostick operations center, where the intelligence officer had just finished making a map of Camp Keating. The whole eastern side of the outpost had been colored red, as had much of the western side. The red indicated Taliban control.

”Can you swim?” Carter asked Larson.

Larson thought about the question. He was a really bad swimmer.

”Enough to survive,” he finally said.

”Good enough for me,” responded Carter. ”If this is as bad as we think it is, we should wait until dark, low-crawl to the river, and float down to Lowell.”

Larson was quiet; he'd been shot in the shoulder. They were surrounded and cut off, with no communications and little ammunition. Everyone friendly in sight was either wounded or dead, and they still had no idea how many Taliban fighters there were. Sure, he could swim.

Clint Romesha stood on the deck off the aid station, in a semiprotected s.p.a.ce known as the Cafe.

He'd had enough. He'd been trying to find out what was going on at LRAS-2 when he spotted three Afghans by the shura building. Two had AK-47s, the third an RPG. One was wearing camouflage, as the ANA troops often did. He turned to the Latvians, Lakis and Dabolins, who were standing just outside the operations center.

”You don't have ANA on that side of the camp,” Romesha confirmed.

”No,” said Lakis.

So that was the enemy.

This is a gimme shot, Romesha thought. I couldn't ask for a better shot. The insurgents walked by Stand-To Truck 2, where they casually put down their weapons. They had entered Camp Keating unfettered, without being met by an ounce of resistance. One began adjusting his bandanna. They seemed to think the camp had been conquered.

They were wrong. Romesha fired and popped the fighter with the bandanna through his neck; he fell like a sack of potatoes. The other two insurgents ran behind the Humvee. Lakis and Dabolins joined Romesha in his position and began firing, Lakis aiming his grenade launcher past the Humvee and dropping two grenades directly on the fighters.

Other invaders showed a similar confidence in their exploration of the outpost. When Gregory and Jones poked their heads up from their ditch, they saw two insurgents roughly twenty feet from them, just walking along nonchalantly as if the battle were over, as if they'd already won. One was wearing a gray overs.h.i.+rt, the other a golden-yellow one with a tan vest over it and a belt of RPK light machine-gun ammunition slung over his shoulder. He carried the RPK itself casually, as if it were a briefcase.

”They're f.u.c.king up there,” Gregory said. ”They're in the wire, they're near the showers.”

”We need to kill 'em, kill 'em, kill 'em!” exclaimed Jones.

Gregory and Jones fired, and both insurgents promptly fell to the ground dead. But other enemy fighters in the camp had seen it happen, and with grenades and sniper fire, they started targeting the two Americans. Gregory and Jones ducked back down again. Soon Daise and Dannelley came running over to them.

”It's not looking good, man,” Dannelley told them, standing outside the ditch.

”We're kinda pinned down here,” Jones said. ”There are snipers everywhere.”

”Kirk and Scusa have already gotten killed,” reported Dannelley. ”They're not letting up, and air support's not here.” Bullets were flying by to the left and right of his face, but he seemed blissfully unaware of them.

”Get the f.u.c.k down,” Jones said. ”You're getting shot at! You're going to get shot in the f.u.c.king face!”

An RPG hit yet another generator, creating a forebodingly dark plume of smoke. The four men took the opportunity to use the cloud as cover, and they ran back to the Red Platoon barracks.

Back inside the LRAS-2 Humvee, Carter looked out the window to see, across the river, about a hundred yards away, a three-man enemy RPG team standing next to the Afghan National Police building. He opened his window and fired six rounds at them with his M4 rifle. Then he fired at another insurgent. And another one, a fighter dressed in dark brown with a ponytail.

Mace crawled out from behind Stand-To Truck 1. Carter opened the window to talk to him. Shots were still coming at them. ”Mace, are you all right?” Carter asked.

Too dehydrated to cry, Mace wore his pain on his face. He didn't seem to have the energy to yell. ”Help me,” Mace said plaintively. ”Help me.”

”I can get to him, he's right there,” Carter told Larson.

”Tell him to stay where he is,” Larson said. ”He's got cover there.”

”Help me, please,” Mace pleaded.

”I will get to you as soon as I can,” Carter said. He was irate. When the horn on a nearby truck blared, he for some reason became convinced it was a distress call from a fellow solider. ”Can I go to the truck?” he asked Larson. ”There's someone calling for help in there. What if I get out and get underneath the Humvee just to see the truck?”

”Fine,” Larson agreed.

There were still bursts of intense machine-gun rounds every fifteen seconds or so, but the enemy, having apparently s.h.i.+fted his attention to other targets, seemed no longer to be specifically focused on them. Carter jumped out of the Humvee on his recon mission, only to see that its tires were flat from bullet rounds and there was no way for him, with all his gear on, to fit underneath. He hopped back in with Larson.

”The truck is ten feet away, can I go check for survivors?” he asked.

”Yeah,” Larson said. Rounds were still being fired at them, but the enemy was now concentrating more closely on other parts of the camp. Carter jumped out again and ran to the truck. There was no soldier inside, so he recovered some ammunition that was in there and brought it back to the Humvee. He wasn't sure where the sound of the horn had come from.

”Can I go to Mace?” asked Carter, back inside. He'd given Mace his word.

”What do you plan on doing when you get to him?” Larson asked.

”Give him first aid.”

”Where are you going to take him?” Larson asked.

They discussed the options and decided that the nearby concrete bridge-outside the camp-would provide the most cover.

”You plan on dragging him that far?” Larson wondered.

”f.u.c.k, no,” said Carter. ”I plan on carrying him.”