Victory Point - Ed Darack [121]
The Marines had thwarted what Ahmad Shah surely felt was his destiny for that day. They dashed his goals through skill, through perseverance, through sheer will—and though some classic USMC improvisation as well. The grunts relied not just on their instincts, but on the lessons the Marine Corps had ingrained into them. Armageddon had descended upon the grunts. They fought hard. They fought harder than anyone could imagine. And they won. Armageddon had been denied.
But to what extent had they won? Had Ahmad Shah survived? Would he continue in his campaign of terror? Was he mortally wounded? Or dead? And what of his die-hard adherents? How many of them had fallen to the Marines’ trigger pulls, to the mortar teams’ 81s, to the A-10s’ 30 mm guns and the Apaches’ rockets? Only time would tell. And that time would come soon.
11
ONE RIDGE DISTANT, A WORLD APART
I know the SEAD was a little rough. But the Dustoffs got everyone out—” Rob Scott was explaining to a senior member of Task Force Devil’s command, a very irate senior member, who cut the XO off mid-sentence. Shah’s force had come too close to downing another helicopter, and with Marines still operating deep in the Chowkay and other surrounding valleys, another Dustoff extraction might be necessary if the extremists attacked again. As he’d done through the entire operation, Major Scott continued to battle to keep the grunts of ⅔ fighting the enemy, and the critical date of 19 August, when CJTF-76 mandated that Whalers draw to a close, loomed larger with each passing hour. As much heat the XO took from the Devil staff, however, Devil took tenfold from CJTF-76, who, after the battle on the morning of the fourteenth, wanted to pull the Marines out entirely. And while tensions flared between Rob Scott and TF Devil, Rob knew that the task force had fought just as hard as he and other senior members of ⅔ to keep the Marines on track—the way they’d vowed upon arriving in Afghanistan—regardless of vexing Army-Marine Corps cultural differences.
With Shah’s force in tatters and on the run, with untold numbers of dead and wounded, Fox Company worked to hold security of the area after the Dustoffs lifted the injured to the safety of Bagram. “Konnie, find me an LZ large enough for Chinooks to come in and extract us,” Grissom instructed the lieutenant.
“Roger that, sir,” responded Konnie, who assumed from these words that CH-47s, if not already en route, would soon arrive. After he and some of the Fox-3 Marines found and then secured a plot of level ground large enough to accommodate two Chinooks, however, the bad news arrived.
“I don’t think they’re comin’ to get us,” Grissom informed him.
“Sir, I want to be very clear when I tell you that I think we need an extract,” the lieutenant replied, with a serious, almost solemn tone. “We’re red on ammo, water, medical supplies, and with five Marines and the Rock now gone, we have a serious force-strength issue.” Konnie explained Fox-3’s situation, the term red referencing near total depletion of supplies.
“Yeah, Konstant. I understand what’s goin’ on,” the captain replied, frustrated. “But from what I’m hearin’ on the net, we’re not gettin’ outta here—not by helicopter, at least. They just now almost lost another helicopter. They’re gonna do everything they can to avoid another shoot-down, meaning that when we leave this place, we leave it on foot.” Although Shah’s army, what was left of it, had scattered, solid intel on the enemy’s strength at that point, or about whether Shah was regrouping, had yet to roll in. With the area’s greatest threat diminished, and the clock loudly ticking toward the nineteenth, the grunts would continue to press onward with Whalers.
As their conversation continued, Konstant and Grissom each killed a Marlboro. “So then we consolidate—Middendorf and his mortars moving to our position?” Konnie asked.
“Everything’s evolving, every minute,” Grissom responded as he took a drag off his cigarette. “But that’s what I’d prefer at this point.”
“You know, sir,” Konnie told him, “we’re also red on cigarettes.