Victory Point - Ed Darack [132]
Enemy indicators abounded, however, on the ground surrounding Fox-3. Peering through a spotting scope, Konnie noted a bizarre sight that afternoon. “Looks like we got a donkey train—goin’ up that ridge to the east of us,” he said to a lance corporal who was lying next to him. “But no donkey-train tenders. Those guys are loaded down, and on donkey autopilot.” A line of the small, scrawny beasts, each about the size of a large German shepherd, weighed down with boxes slung over their backs with colorful rope, wandered up a trail on the shoulder of Cheshane Tupay. A few hours later, the “convoy” came galloping down, empty. ICOM traffic continued to increase through the sixteenth, but the most telling moments of enemy determination and presence came by foot. Two men, from the village of Jubagay, just to the east of the crest of Cheshane Tupay’s south ridge, strolled to the outskirts of camp early in the afternoon.
“They are asking that the Marines just leave,” Jimmy translated. “They say that there is no reason for you to be in the valley.”
“Well, we got six reasons recovering at Bagram,” Konnie immediately shot back. While Jubagay had been one of the villages to which Donnellan, Wood, and Rob Scott had wanted the Marines to venture during Whalers, the time limit wouldn’t allow it. Not knowing the true nature of the village—and who actually lived there—the Marines sent the duo back. But they were replaced by yet another villager claiming to be from Jubagay a few hours later; this time, the village elder.
“Sir,” Jimmy told Grissom, “the man wants to know who you are; where are you from.”
“Just tell him that we’re Marines from the United States. We’re here to get rid of any of those who want to bring back the Taliban,” the captain calmly answered, but he was suspicious of the man. The elder left, but long after his departure, Konnie and Grissom learned that he’d asked a number of other probing questions, very specific questions—and had gotten answers, not from any of the Marines, but from the interpreters.
“You told them what?!” Konnie exploded when he learned that the elder had inquired about the size of the force of Marines at the camp, how much food they had, how much ammunition, what types of supplies landed during the CDS drop, how the Marines had been positioned throughout the camp—and other important tactical details. “Well,” the lieutenant concluded, “we can be sure that they know where we are, and what our capabilities are.” The security breach emphasized the difficulty the Marines faced in Afghanistan. Their COIN campaign required that they work side by side with locals, in part to prove their intentions. But in a corner of the Hindu Kush as remote as the Chowkay, one where many of the locals had never even seen a Westerner, those locals could be easily co-opted by forces such as Shah’s—and used, as had happened that afternoon, as spies. Jubagay represented an extreme example, as the battalion had no record of any coalition forces ever having visited the place, as one of the most remote in all of Afghanistan.
“We need to move our camp around—not by much—but displace everyone. You can bet that by now, Shah knows exactly where our command post is located,” Konnie seethed. “He probably also knows the position of our machine guns and our perimeter defenses.” Grissom agreed. Konnie made plans to offset the various positions of the platoon’s elements, some by just a few tens of meters, others by a few hundred—Grissom’s only requirement being that the command post be situated such that a radio operator could aim an antenna to get SATCOM. Only the mortar team, which Middendorf and his Marines had emplaced and fire-capped within a small fortress of stout boulders, would stay put.
At dusk, cloaked by the darkness of