Victory Point - Ed Darack [131]
With the crew chief signaling that all patients had been secured, Henninger expertly lifted the Blackhawk into the sky. As the dust cleared, Eggers could see Roy smiling at him, waving, as if to say, “Have fun on your hike down. I’ll be eating ice cream at an air-conditioned hospital—thinkin’ about you!”
12
STAR WARS
While the Marines of Echo and Golf companies continued to squeeze Shah’s remaining forces into the upper recesses of the Narang, Shuryek, and Korangal valleys, Battalion Command sought to have Fox Company continue their march toward Objective-4 on the sixteenth. But with 19 August looming ever closer, Command realized that the Fox Marines wouldn’t have enough time to egress before the deadline if they moved farther north. So, as of the morning of the sixteenth, Fox-3 and Middendorf’s mortar team would stay put, and First Platoon and the Afghan National Army soldiers would travel back to Hill 2510. Then the call came ordering all of Fox-3 to begin their movement out of the Chowkay beginning on the morning of the seventeenth.
“Crisp,” Konnie said to the staff sergeant. “I told everyone yesterday to ‘shave away a new day’ . . . yet I see some guys with stubble.” The lieutenant was referencing his order that all the Marines in the platoon shave the day after the firefight. He’d learned about this from an instructor at Infantry Officers’ Course who believed that the simple act of shaving could dramatically change one’s outlook and boost his morale. “‘Get those bristly faces nice and smooth,’ I told them.”
“Some of these grunts, you know, Lieutenant, they had hairy arm-pits when they were like eleven years old. Shit grows fast, even up here,” Crisp responded. Both knew that, joking aside, the fresh supply of food, water, and ammo, not to mention some rest—and a clean shave—would go a long way toward lifting the spirits of the grunts.
“So we’re not goin’ any higher, huh?” Konnie asked Grissom, disappointed.
“As of now, no. We’re headed back. Task Force Devil figures that what took us sixteen hours to climb up will take forty-eight hours to get out of,” the captain explained.
“Sir, that’s funny to me,” Konnie began, wondering just how much of Shah’s force remained. “I wish we could stay up here for weeks, sir, at least until we get every last of Ahmad Shah’s little—now littler—army.”
“I’m with you, Lieutenant. Really, I think we should set up a combat outpost right up here, permanently man the place. That’s the only way to do it.”
“Or just take care of ’em all right now—I mean, I guess we have less than, what, twenty-four hours to do it?”
“Well, yeah. If they attack again.”
“Come and get some . . . bitches.” Konnie stretched out his arms and wagged his hands, then slowly spun around and gazed up at all aspects of the high valley, as if he knew that one of Shah’s men had him pegged within the reticle of a high-powered spotting scope.
As Fox-1 moved south that morning, the platoon’s interpreters picked up ICOM chatter indicating that some of Shah’s men had sighted them and were setting an ambush. As First Platoon surmounted Hill 2510, the radio traffic exploded in volume and intensity. Lieutenant Geise, preparing for a possible maelstrom similar to the one Fox-3 had endured, dispatched some Marines and Afghan soldiers to probe the area to the hill’s south and had the bulk of the platoon assume a strong defensive posture. Shots rang out—signaling a possible massive onslaught—but then the valley fell silent. The ANA had detected a small band of Shah’s men approaching them with AK-47s; the soldiers engaged—and the attackers turned tail and ran.
The activity throughout the Sawtalo Sar region following the attack on the fourteenth seemed to paint a picture of a fractured force—but as fractured as that picture may have been, it was brushed with strokes of ever-determined fighters. Back at Fox-3’s patrol base, Pigeon worked with two A-10s, trying to utilize their targeting systems to scan the area around their encampment. But the infamously fickle weather of the