The Outpost An Untold Story Of American Valor Part 32

"The Taliban have taken that side," he said.

"Get your me and go and retake your side of the camp!" Lakis told him.

"You are not my commander!" the Afghan exclaimed, and he ran off.

Specialist Zach Koppes was alone at LRAS-1, the guard post where he'd had some bad luck back in June, resulting in his self-inflicted head wound. It turned out that had been a good day, comparatively speaking.

The rockets and RPGs just kept coming and coming in to the camp. Koppes recalled hearing about two pickup trucks full of ordnance that had been stolen recently, and he wondered whether this h.e.l.l being unleashed upon Keating might be connected to that. A sniper had begun targeting Koppes, his bullets. .h.i.tting the Kevlar tarp covering the back of the truck with deadly accuracy; if the American had stood up, they would have gone through his head. The tarp was tough, but the bullets were shredding it. f.u.c.k, Koppes thought to himself. This thing's not going to last.

Joshua Dannelley ran over with his Mk 48, as did Christopher Jones with MK19 grenades to give to Koppes and several belts of M240 machine-gun ammo for the fighting position right next to the Humvee.

"Keep down! Keep down!" Koppes yelled. "There's a sniper!" But soon it wasn't just a sniper anymore; RPGs began showering down near them, one hitting fifteen feet away.

"My knee! My knee!" yelled Jones, falling to the ground. Dannelley inspected him but couldn't find any external injuries.

Sergeant John Francis had been running ammo back and forth to guard posts for a while when he decided to check in back at the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds' barracks. An RPG exploded behind him, lifting him up off the ground and throwing him against a pole. Next thing he knew, he was on his back on the ground, and Specialist Mark Dulaney was on top of him, shaking him.

"You good? You good? You all right?"

Francis opened his eyes.

"Sergeant, you good?"

"I don't know, motherf.u.c.ker," Francis said. "You're the one looking at me. You tell me if I'm good!"

"Can you get up?" Dulaney asked.

Francis tried, but his left side throbbed with pain.

"You all right?" Dulaney asked again.

"I think I'm all right," Francis said. "I think I got some busted ribs." He would later find out that five of his ribs had been fractured.

"Should we go to the aid station?" Dulaney wondered.

"f.u.c.k, no," Francis said. "We gotta keep fighting till this s.h.i.+t's over."

Sergeant Breeding and his men did everything they could to get the radio back up, but it wouldn't work. They had no idea what was going on elsewhere in the camp; they were completely disconnected from the rest of the world.

"As long as we're in the bunker, we'll be okay," Breeding told Rodriguez and Barroga.

But the bunker was precisely where the insurgents continued to shoot machine-gun and sniper fire-for good measure adding multiple RPGs to their onslaught, too. Breeding and Rodriguez returned fire with their M4 carbines. They didn't think they had much of a chance of hitting their targets; they just wanted to throw down some lead to keep the bad guys from shooting at them.

Meanwhile, the men on the guard posts at Camp Keating were starting to run low on ammunition. The sheer volume of rounds they were putting out astounded Bundermann. And though some of the American bullets were finding their mark, the counterattack clearly wasn't having much of an effect.

The RPG that had blown Hill onto his back also blew out their generator, and the satellite phone line went dead; the enemy seemed to know exactly what to target. The mIRC system, thankfully, was still online. Forward Operating Base Bostick's ops center alerted Keating's that a pair of F-15 Strike Eagles, the two of them together codenamed Dude 25, were on their way, courtesy of Task Force Palehorse.

6:12 am BK DUDE 25 enroute No eta yet NEGATIVE, AH83 ARE BEING ALERTED TIME NOW ARE BEING ALERTED TIME NOW ITS A 40 MINUTE FLIGHT6:13 am whats the status of air6:14 am CLOSE AIR SUPPORT 5 minutes

Justin Gallegos, Brad Larson, and Stephan Mace were stuck at LRAS-2. "We're getting attacked from the village," Gallegos told Bundermann, referring to Urmul. "Do I have permission to fire back?"

"Absolutely," Bundermann said. "Light it up." At that point, everything was fair game.

6:14 am we are taking fire from inside urmul village6:18 am our mortars are still pinned down unable to fire6:20 am we need cas84 still taking heavy rpgs and machine gun fire6:21 am at both locations fritsche and keating taking heavy contact

All of twenty-three minutes had pa.s.sed since the attack began.

Ty Carter ran in to the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds' barracks and was greeted by a scene of chaos and shouting.

"Shut the f.u.c.k up!" Hill yelled. Everyone quieted down. "We need to find out who needs what."

"Everyone needs everything," Carter said, gasping for breath.

From Spokane, Was.h.i.+ngton, Carter had joined the Marines out of high school, but he'd been busted down to a lower rank for fighting. He'd then quit and spent five years as a civilian working aimlessly at a series of odd jobs. He hated that, felt like one in a herd of cattle. He wanted to fight for his fellow soldiers, not earn a paycheck without a sense of honor or direction. He reenlisted in the military in January 2008, opting this time for the Army, figuring the Marines probably wouldn't take him back.

In civilian life, Carter had felt like something of an oddball and an outcast, but in the Army, he felt alive, with purpose. And on this day, he relished his role as the soldier trying to help his fellow troops.

Hill loaded up Specialists Michael Scusa and Jeremy Frunk with more ammunition to take to Gallegos at LRAS-2. "Okay, get the f.u.c.k out of here," he told them. Harder stood by the door; he would join them. He opened the door as Scusa, Frunk, and Private First Cla.s.s Daniel Rogers lined up to run.

"Are you ready?" Scusa asked Frunk. Echoes of incoming gunfire filled the barracks.

"Let's go!" Frunk said.

They exited the barracks in earnest.

Hill watched them proudly. Men of valor. No questioning, no protest. He'd given them the order, and they'd run out into the fire.

In the hills of the Northface, a sniper was waiting. One of his bullets. .h.i.t Scusa in the right side of his neck, lacerating two major blood vessels and the right jugular vein. It also penetrated a larger artery and cut across his spinal cord before exiting out his lower back.

Scusa's head rocked back, and he went limp.

Frunk tried to grab the loop on the back of Scusa's armored vest in order to drag him to the aid station. As he bent down, the sniper opened up with a dozen more rounds. A bullet went through the side of Frunk's vest, slamming into his back; panicked, the soldier hit the ground and low-crawled back to the barracks, where the next troops were getting ready to run out and resupply those on guard.

"Don't go out! Don't go out! Scusa's. .h.i.t!" Frunk yelled. The other men lifted him up and brought him back to Hill. He was shaking and scared.

"You okay?" Hill asked.

"Sergeant Hill, I think I've been shot," Frunk said. He'd never been shot before, so he thought his wound was worse than it was. He took off his vest and s.h.i.+rt.

"It's just a graze," Hill told him. "You're okay. Is Scusa wounded?"

Frunk hung his head, shaking it no.

"Where was he hit?" Hill asked.

"I think he got shot in the face," Frunk said.

Sergeant Francis tried to slowly open the door to the barracks to see where Scusa was, but the sniper fired rounds right at him. He shut the door, paused, then opened it again and ran out to Scusa.

Blood was pouring from the specialist's neck. Francis attempted to find the exit wound with his hand, wiping the blood away and feeling for holes. Soon figuring out that the round had gone into Scusa's neck, he probed the area, trying to stop the bleeding, trying to find the jugular. He finally found it and was working to pinch it closed when the sniper shot at him and hit the M203 grenade launcher attached to the M4 carbine that was slung around his arm. The weapon snapped, and the clip fell off.

Good Christ, that was close, Francis thought. "Harder!" he yelled. "I need cover! Harder! I need cover!"

Inside, Hill quickly a.s.signed troops to cover the doors. The other men ransacked their barracks looking for smoke grenades. Hill found some and threw them to Eric Harder, near one of the doors. Harder poked his head outside; he had two grenades in the pouch of his vest. He lobbed one to Francis and held on to one for himself. After waiting but a moment, both men pulled the pins and threw their grenades, building enough billowing smoke to form a wall. Harder rushed out of the barracks, ran through the haze, and helped Francis drag Scusa to the aid station. The smoke did not deter the sniper, who simply fired through it, hitting a nearby Humvee. The bullet fragmented, hitting Francis's arms and legs, but he and Harder kept going.

This is not good, this is not good, this is not good, the men thought. And it was about to get worse, because insurgents were now bounding down the southern wall toward the outpost.

Doc Cordova looked around the aid station and saw mayhem and devastation and blood everywhere. He and Courville were still working on Kirk, and yet another wounded ANA troop had staggered in, bringing the total number of Afghan WIAs to six. One had an eye hanging out of its socket, and another a serious abdominal wound-so bad that his guts were literally spilling out of him. The other four had gunshot and shrapnel wounds. Specialist Chris Chappell, peppered with shrapnel, had also briefly stopped in at the aid station; after Cordova treated him with oral antibiotics and pain relievers, he'd headed right back out to the fight.

Into this h.e.l.l now came Harder and Francis, carrying Scusa. He was completely pale; he had no heartbeat, no pulse. Cordova checked his eyes and wasn't able to provoke any neurological response. Cordova had known the specialist for two years, having first met him in Iraq, and he knew what a sweetheart he was. He also knew that Scusa and Floyd were close, and he wondered how the new medic, today dealing with his first serious casualties, would handle his friend's death.

At 6:30 a.m., Scusa became the first person Cordova had ever p.r.o.nounced dead. The young man was put in a body bag and carried back to Courville's room.

Back at Forward Operating Base Bostick, Stoney Portis, Ben Salentine, and Kirk Birchfield were crawling out of their skin. These leaders of Black Knight Troop desperately wanted to be of some help, any help, to their brothers back at Camp Keating. But there wasn't anything they could do except sit in the operations center at Naray. The surveillance aircraft hadn't yet made it to the Kamdesh Valley, so they couldn't see anything; they could only read Wong's and Schulz's messages and listen to Bundermann on the radio.

Salentine and Birchfield were conscience-stricken about not being alongside the men they had trained with for just such an event. Portis was new to Black Knight Troop, but as its absent commander, he, too, condemned himself. What leader in his right mind leaves his soldiers? he thought. Logic. at this point, had no case to make.

It felt as if they had to wait forever until they were able to catch a ride, yet the attack wasn't yet an hour old when Portis, Salentine, and Birchfield grabbed backpacks full of ammunition and grenades and got on the first medevac along with Specialist Tim Kugler, a scout from Red Platoon, and two Air Force radio operators. The bird went up, circled over Forward Operating Base Bostick, and then flew up and down the Landay-Sin Valley, killing time, not heading directly for the outpost. Portis finally grew impatient and-because the helicopter's rotors were so loud-began writing notes to the pilot, asking what was keeping them from leaving the area. The pilot wrote back that he was waiting to be told there was somewhere for him to land safely near the besieged outpost; right then, the battle zone was still too hot.

Inside the bird, a cold calm came over the men. They knew what their purpose was. Portis thought, I'm not going to come back from this mission. This is it. This is how I'm going to die. He had written his beloved wife, Alison, a farewell letter and given it to his brother to present to her should he not return. She would be taken care of. Portis got choked up for a second, and then he made his peace with what awaited him in the valley. This was what he had signed up for. He turned his attention to what they would do when they landed. Putting pen to paper, he drew a diagram and began planning with his men how they would exit the helicopter, run for cover, and then join the fight to save Combat Outpost Keating.

Outside the Red Platoon barracks, Clinton Romesha yanked Corporal Justin Gregory's Mk 48 machine gun out of his hands. "Grab more ammo and follow me," he told him.

"I'm moving a machine gun into position to cover you," Romesha radioed Gallegos, who was still stuck at LRAS-2. "As soon as I can cover you, if you can, I need you to displace back to Red Platoon barracks."

"I don't know if you can lay down enough fire," Gallegos said. "But if you can, roger." Inside the Humvee, it seemed as if they were being submerged in an ocean of bullets and grenades: Gallegos, Mace, and Larson could only hope the car's plating would hold up against the relentless battering. And however determined and skilled and ruthless a soldier Romesha might be, that he alone could provide enough cover fire with one lightweight machine gun seemed unlikely.

Romesha and Gregory scurried over to the generator by the mosque. There, Romesha set the machine gun atop the generator, and Gregory began linking up its ammunition. "I'm setting the machine-gun fire whenever you're ready to move," Romesha radioed to Gallegos.

"Roger," Gallegos responded.

Romesha looked around at the myriad targets up at the Putting Green and throughout the Switchbacks. There were so many to choose from. He picked one enemy position and sent a twenty-to-thirty-round burst toward it. Then he moved to another. Then another. He quickly ran through the two-hundred-round belt.

While Gregory was loading another belt into the gun, Gallegos radioed. "We're not able to move," he said. "We're not able to move." The incoming fire was just too intense, coming from too many different locations.

Romesha had started firing the second belt when, from the blind side to his right, to the north of the camp, an insurgent burst through the entry control point and fired an RPG toward him and Gregory, hitting the generator instead. Romesha, sprayed with shrapnel, momentarily lost his bearings and fell on Gregory. The moment over, he got up and looked at him. "You all right?" he asked.

"Yes," Gregory said.

"Go back to the barracks, I'll cover you," Romesha instructed. He covered the other's mad dash and then began firing into the hills again.

Gallegos came on the radio again. "You're not being effective, it's not working," he told Romesha. "We'll just hang tight here."

Romesha exhaled, fired his last burst of ammo, and ran back down the hill. He found Gregory in a trench near a HEs...o...b..rrier, on the southern side of the camp near the Switchbacks. "Wait here, I'm going to get more guys," Romesha told him, handing him back his machine gun. He ran back to the Red Platoon barracks, where he told Christopher Jones and Specialist Josh Dannelley to go help Gregory. Rasmussen looked at Romesha.

"Ro, dude," he said. "You're f.u.c.king hit. You're f.u.c.king hit."

Romesha looked down. His right forearm was a b.l.o.o.d.y mess.

"Let me dress that," Rasmussen said, pulling Romesha's pressure dressing from his pocket and then wrapping his friend's forearm tightly with the specialized bandage.

"Where are they?" Jones asked Gregory when he reached him.

"Everywhere!" Gregory said. "Get the f.u.c.k down here in the ditch with me!"

As the private jumped in, an RPG blew up the COP Keating mosque. Snipers' bullets, machine-gun fire, hand grenades, RPGs-the insurgents were unloading everything they had. "You need to stay down," Gregory told Jones. "Snipers are targeting us."

"We need to cover people running ammo," said Jones.

As rounds. .h.i.t right next to their heads, Gregory became convinced that he was going to die, but instead of panic, he felt a sort of peace fall over him like a blanket. He noticed how green the gra.s.s was, how blue the sky. He could no longer hear the gunfire and explosions, he no longer noticed the people shooting. He was comfortable with the idea of dying.

At the guard post at LRAS-2, Brad Larson had kept firing his .50-caliber until a well-aimed RPG detonated nearby and hit the gun off the stovepipe so he couldn't shoot it anymore. The weapon now lay half in the turret and half out. Larson tried to get it to work, but it just wouldn't function. Helpless to shoot back, he crawled down into the Humvee, where Gallegos and Mace were sitting and trying to fire their rifles out the windows. The snipers were moving closer to the camp, and anytime either of the men opened one of the Humvee's bulletproof windows, he'd get shot at. The incoming was so ferocious, in fact, that when they stuck their guns out to fire, bullets. .h.i.t and bounced off the barrels. Since it wasn't particularly easy to aim out the Humvee's windows anyway, they finally just rolled them up.

The snipers' bullets kept pinging off the winds.h.i.+eld; if it and the windows hadn't been bulletproof, the Americans surely would have been dead by now. Still, every so often, someone had to stick his neck out, literally, to see what was going on. When Larson did so, a bullet from a PKM machine gun hit him in his Kevlar helmet. He ducked down from his turret and hopped into the driver's seat. Gallegos was next to him. Mace sat in the back.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Carter arrived, He was surprised to see that they were all inside the Humvee, with no one in the turret manning the .50-caliber. The COP was under heavy attack, and this was a primary defensive position, but this post wasn't returning fire.

"I got your two-forty ammo," Carter said.

"Either get in or get the h.e.l.l out of here," Gallegos barked.

Carter climbed in behind him, next to Mace, who was doubled over in pain. He was wounded-he'd taken some shrapnel somewhere along the line-but when Gallegos asked him what was wrong and whether he was okay, Mace said only that he was fine.

"Do you have any M-four rounds?" Larson asked the new arrival. Carter did; he had one magazine left inside his M4 carbine rifle.

Abruptly, the door next to him swung open; it was Vernon Martin. "I heard you guys need ammo?" he asked.

"Get in or get the h.e.l.l out of here," Gallegos barked again.

Martin paused, so Carter seized him and pulled him into the Humvee. "Get the f.u.c.k in here," he said. They found a place for Martin to sit on the gunner's platform.

The bullets and RPGs now increased even more in intensity. An RPG exploded three feet from the turret, causing panic and confusion among the Humvee's occupants. Carter was knocked unconscious; when he came to, a second later, his head ached, and his eyes were out of focus. Holy s.h.i.+t, he thought as he regained consciousness. Where am I? He began checking himself for holes and found what he'd hoped he wouldn't-as did Larson, who was engaged in a similar investigation. Martin was the worst off of them, having taken a great deal of shrapnel all over his legs and hips, where soldiers typically have no protection from body armor. And now that he had returned to the moment, he felt it: "Motherf.u.c.ker!" Martin yelled. "It burns! Holy s.h.i.+t, that f.u.c.king hurts!"

The men got their bearings, shook off their wounds as best they could, and started talking about what to do next; they knew there would be much worse in store for them if they didn't put their heads together and figure out a way out. It was now clear that the insurgents had armor-piercing capabilities. The RPG had knocked the .50-caliber off its mount entirely, jamming the gun and exploding the primers for the rounds, rendering them useless. It was only a matter of time before the enemy onslaught got through and killed all five of them. They needed to get out of the Humvee. But the rounds were coming in so furiously now that a step outside meant certain death. What could they do?

They didn't have much time. The troops and translators at Observation Post Mace who monitored enemy radio frequencies shared some alarming news over the mIRC system: the attackers were now actively talking about breaching the wire.

Staff Sergeant Kenny Daise ran into the shura building and slipped on Kirk's blood.

Daise picked himself up. He didn't have time to be revolted or saddened. He looked through all of the gear that had been left behind, then grabbed Kirk's M203 grenade launcher and his M4 rounds. The enemy had kept on pounding the shura building with RPGs, and it was so dusty now that none of the soldiers with Daise could see much of anything. He told them to fall back.