Victory Point - Ed Darack [105]
“Hey, Lieutenant.” Crisp turned to Konnie as Grissom wrapped up Whalers’ very general overview. “How come you neva’ give no pep speeches?”
“Because, Crisp”—the lieutenant turned to the staff sergeant—“speeches are about as cool as a boner in sweatpants.” Crisp erupted into laughter. “You want a pep talk? How ’bout this: don’t puss out.” The two of them geared up for the convoy about to take them up the Kunar Valley to the opening of the Chowkay.
Fox-3’s Whalers journey began at 10:45 P.M. on the twelfth of August as the convoy of hulking, three-axle 7-Ton troop transports rumbled off the Asadabad-Jalalabad road at the village of Chowkay, on the shores of the Kunar River. “I hear we’re goin’ where Osama bin Laden himself used to run training camps,” Crisp overheard one of the platoon’s grunts remark as they dismounted and prepared to stage for their penetration into the secretive valley. “We’re goin’ after the guys who took down the SEALs.”
“Osama bin my ass,” the staff sergeant interjected. “You best be preservin’ all yo’ energy for yo’ feet—not fo’ runnin’ yo’ mouth,” Crisp boomed.
By eleven, Fox Company’s lead element, consisting of Fox-3 and attachments, Grissom, Pigeon, and Jimmy and the Rock, had loaded into a convoy of Whiskey Company’s highback and hardback Humvees at the V-cleft opening of the Chowkay to begin their insertion into the valley. Running blacked out along the narrow roadway notched into the sheer eastern wall of the chasm, the Marines let their eyes adjust to the pallid greenish light shed onto the landscape by the half-moon hanging in the sky above them. Forty-five minutes after Fox-3 pressed through the rocky gates of the Chowkay, Fox-1 and the Afghan National Army contingent arrived at the mouth of the valley and linked up with Middendorf and his Marines of the 81s section. As Fox-1 staged to move into the valley, Whiskey’s Humvees continued to push Grissom and Fox-3 farther north; as soon as the road narrowed to a point where the vehicles could move no farther, the grunts would jump out and continue on foot. Whalers’ success hinged on Fox-3 penetrating deep into the Chowkay at just the right time, to deny Shah’s force an escape route, necessitating constant movement deep into the heart of the treacherous mountain landscape.
At 2:00 A.M. on the thirteenth of August, Whiskey’s Humvees reached their limit, ten kilometers into the valley, at the village of Amrey. As the empty convoy headed down the steep terrain toward lower ground, the grunts set about the last of their preparations for the journey ahead, stuffing their packs with enough water and MREs to last a full three days, as well as checking their combat gear, and even basics like toothpaste and shoelaces. Amrey village lies at the convergence of two main arms of the Chowkay, one that strikes to the northwest, and one branch that heads to the northeast. The Fox Marines would move up the northeast valley—the upper Chowkay—along the Amrey Creek bed, toward the base of a mountain named Cheshane Tupay, a 9,528-foot-high peak about eight kilometers southwest of Sawtalo Sar. While their route would traverse roughly six kilometers of horizontal distance, those six kilometers would take the Fox-3 Marines from an elevation of just over 3,000 feet at Amrey, almost a vertical mile higher, to roughly 8,000 feet at the base of Cheshane Tupay, the latitude of Phase Line White, from which the Marines would then re-embark on their journey toward Objective-4—once approved by higher, of course.
Fox-3 wasted no time hurling their packs onto their shoulders and pushing off on their pump into the upper Chowkay. Their eyes attuned to the muted glow of the half-moon, the Marines dug into their task, moving single file up a narrow trail into the darkness. The pitch-black of the bottom of the steep valley virtually blinded them, while the walls looming above them