Victory Point - Ed Darack [124]
“Hey, man. How you doin’?” Konnie asked Middendorf upon his arrival.
“I’m doin’ a lot better than you guys. I’m glad you’re still alive. So what happened?” Dorf asked back.
“I think we killed a lot of bad guys,” Konnie told him. “Is that bad?”
“I don’t think its bad,” Middendorf replied. “I think it’s great. How’d you not get your ass shot off?”
“I’m good at a lot of things, Ben,” Konnie said, “but I’m best at bein’ lucky, I guess.”
The Chowkay wasn’t the only corner of ⅔’s area of operation during Whalers to witness bullets flying and sweat-drenched toil. Golf Company Marines continued to push northwest in the Narang Valley, and Kinser’s Echo-1 had penetrated deep into the Shuryek, moving up its eastern wall to Golayshal, the southernmost village in the valley, lying at the same latitude as the summit of Sawtalo Sar. The Jump CP, with senior leaders of the area’s Afghan National Army in trace, moved along Sawtalo Sar’s spine, then dropped into the Korangal, meeting with villagers during shura meetings. Donnellan, who sought to have the ANA capable of undertaking security in the critical valley as soon as possible, worked to establish amicable relations between the Afghan Army brass and the village elders. Through an interpreter, Donnellan learned that the inhabitants of Korangal village—throughout the valley, for that matter—had wanted a heightened presence of Afghan government personnel, be they police or ANA soldiers. But those villagers who spoke up—about a dozen of them in the past year—had been killed by anticoalition militia types such as Shah.
“How many times have you been to the Korangal?” an elder asked Colonel Nasir, the highest-ranking officer in the Afghan National Army traveling with the Jump CP.
“Never,” Nasir replied, after a long pause.
“Why?” the elder asked as he sipped chai tea.
“Because . . .” Nasir paused again. “Because I’m afraid of the Korangal .” This attitude was one the Marines would work to completely reverse.
Also moving through the Korangal and along Sawtalo Sar during Whalers, Keith Eggers and two other members of Team Ronin, Corporal Joe Roy—Eggers’s twenty-one-year-old spotter—and twenty-one-year-old Navy Hospital Corpsman Third Class Jamie “Doc” Pigman, had been tasked with providing forward observation and bounding overwatch of Echo-3, who would be pushing south into the Korangal Valley. Long before sunrise on the twelfth of August, after a previous night’s meeting with Echo-3’s platoon commander, Nick Guyton, Ronin started up the steep Bakaro Ghar, a spine of gray, shattered rock connecting the opening of the Korangal Valley with the north ridge of Sawtalo Sar. Climbing along loose talus, around teetering boulders, and up small cliffs—avoiding trails to maintain concealment from any unfriendly eyes—the trio gained the north ridge by midmorning, as Echo-3 made strong headway into the Korangal below them. Then Keith received a call from Echo Company’s commander, Captain John McShane, who stated that fresh intel had revealed a sizable force of foreign fighters massed in Salar Ban, just on the other side of Sawtalo Sar’s north ridge from Ronin’s position.
“Want us to check it out?” Keith asked. McShane felt uneasy; the report stated that upward of eighty fighters had gathered in the village. “We’ll be going right by an ideal overwatch spot anyway; we might as well,” the sergeant continued. Furthermore, in addition to Echo-3, Echo Company’s Second Platoon had been working their way into the Korangal. As well, the Marines of Camp Blessing had forward-deployed two 120 mm mortar tubes at the mouth of the Korangal, capable of providing instant indirect fire support, and Doghouse’s 105s stood at the ready at Asadabad, able to range