Victory Point - Ed Darack [134]
The lieutenant clawed his way to the top of an embankment to get eyes on the attackers’ positions. Rounds were pinging off rocks around him and punching into the dirt just feet in front of him; he could hear the distinctive fizzle of glowing tracer rounds’ burning pyro—and smell the combusting material’s stinging odor. The tracers converged on the camp from a semicircle of positions emplaced on the surrounding mountains, their streaks appearing like spokes on a wheel. Then the RPG storm began; from three different positions, over ten rocket-propelled grenades tore onto the old command post, the crude ballistic weapons seemingly in a competition with the raining mortars to completely obliterate the position. Had they not shifted locations just hours earlier, Grissom, Pigeon, Middendorf, and Konnie would undoubtedly have been killed. Completely pinned down, and with only the one magazine already in his M16’s well, Konnie could only unload thirty rounds into the machine-gun position, and that machine-gun position was a long way off, far outside the max-effective range of his M16.
Middendorf, blown awake by the mortar blast just meters from him, immediately linked up with Grissom and Pigeon, and put a call to Corporal Daniel Shelton, his on-site “fire direction center,” who would ensure that the targeting data the lieutenant passed to him got relayed accurately to the individual gun operators. Middendorf, however, relied on his PRR—Personal Role Radio—a standard two-way comm set used to communicate with others in close proximity—to speak with the gun team. But in the covered position that he, Grissom, and Pigeon had taken, Dorf couldn’t get the required line of sight with Shelton’s PRR. Having studied the terrain over the past day while he developed his fire-support plan—anticipating the most likely locations from which Shah’s force would attack—Middendorf already knew the exact spot he needed to hit. He just had to give Shelton a four-digit number, referencing an already-plotted grid, and within seconds, the very worst of the incoming fire would cease—violently cease. But he couldn’t establish comms with Shelton; so the tubes stood silent. As the seconds ticked away, the barrage grew even worse, with mortar rounds now “walking” onto the new command post’s position and RPGs crashing down throughout the grunts’ camp. As Pigeon worked furiously to get air on station, Dorf repeated in his head that the only way to avert certain disaster was to get mortar rounds downrange. “I’m leaving,” the lieutenant said as he slapped Grissom on his rear SAPI.
“Are you fucking crazy?” the captain shot back. Rounds peppered the dirt around their covered position; the Marines choked on a low-hanging fog of dust and vapor from detonated explosives and burned cordite. The RPGs and machine-gun fire kept coming—and coming, ever more accurate. The professionalism of the attackers struck Middendorf; he couldn’t believe they could hit their marks from such distances. He had to get his mortars on target. The lieutenant jumped over the small berm before him and sprinted up the terrain. “What the fuck, Middendorf? You’re gonna get yourself KILLED!” Grissom howled.
“You, too? You crazy, too, like Lieutenant Konstant?” Crisp shouted as he unleashed bursts from his M16. “You been drinkin’ out of the same—the same whateva-tha-fuck—water hole as Konstant!”
Married since 2002—and looking to have kids so that maybe one day he too could talk his son into joining the Marine Corps after graduating West Point—Middendorf thought of his wife and then said good-bye forever to her in his head as he tore a path toward Shelton under the press of copper-jacketed lead hurling through the Afghan night at supersonic speeds, shock waves slapping his eardrums with loud cracks! Eyes on, he thought, after seventy-five meters, eyes on the tubes, then dove flat onto the ground and pressed