Victory Point - Ed Darack [59]
But at that point, the battalion really only had a plan set to go and intel that indicated Shah’s likely position on the night of the twenty-sixth. Wood and Westerfield knew all too well how the innumerable variables governing mission execution changed—changed—and changed again and again. The first changes would come just as Westerfield’s SIGINT rolled in: Task Force Brown, while able to support the reconnaissance and surveillance team, the direct-action hard-hit team, and Golf Company’s outer cordon, now wouldn’t be able to also support Kinser’s inner cordon unit—the timing just wouldn’t work. BUT, the moon would be shedding just enough illumination on the twenty-sixth—a day earlier than Wood initially projected to be the earliest launch date for Red Wings—to utilize Task Force Sabre’s Chinooks. Kinser and his team would still qual for Army fastrope, but conventional Chinooks, known by their call signs as the “Big Windys” would insert them, not the MH-47s. But then, just as two Chinooks roared into Asadabad on 25 June, word came that Sabre’s birds were too “tasked out,” and couldn’t support the insert of the twenty Marines. Kinser couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Sir, do we convoy back to Blessing now?” Bradley asked the lieutenant.
“I’m trying to get a grasp of what the fuck is going on here. At our level, we only have limited visibility on the overall mission,” the lieutenant said, then pondered for a moment. “I bet we walk in. The Chinooks go back to Bagram, we wait for a night convoy to Blessing, and then we walk into the Korangal or Shuryek as part of a blocking position. Fuck, I don’t know.” And then, perfectly on cue for what Kinser jokingly began calling “a saga of combat governed by stream of consciousness,” Kinser’s company commander radioed him that an intel pop indicated fifty ACM fighters had just passed through the border and were headed toward a terrorist training camp about two and a half miles to the northeast of the village of Matin. “That’s across the Pech River, way up on the side of some pretty steep mountains,” Kinser said to Bradley, who stared at the lieutenant with a smirk.
“Fifty terrorists, huh, sir?” the squad leader said as he wiped a slick of sweat off his brow. “Thought you said they usually run in teams of around four to eight at a time, never more than twelve.”
“That’s right. Fifty . . . come on. That intel is bullshit. The ACM do this all the time; they talk to each other over their ICOMs, saying that fifty or one hundred fighters have just arrived, fresh with training and arms from Pakistan, and that they’re planning some big attack—knowing full well that we’re listening to ’em. It’s just their ghetto-ass version of psyops [psychological operations], trying to scare us. It raised my hair the first time I heard it, but I learned to pretty much dismiss that trash after a few weeks of hearing it.” Kinser shook his head. “Guess the Army SIGINT guys picked up on that chatter, and now we got no choice but to move on it. So we wait to hear if one of the CAATs [Combined Anti-Armor Team, a convoy of heavy-weapons-fitted Humvees and troop transport Humvees] will pick us up and insert us. Then we go on a hunt for an enemy that doesn’t even exist. Fuck.”
“Don’t worry, Lieutenant Kinser,” Bradley began, trying to hold back laughter. “At least we have each other,” he enunciated slowly, moving his head back and forth as he gazed skyward.
“Go fuck yourself.” Kinser couldn’t help but laugh with everyone else. “And gimme one of those cigarettes, dammit,” he barked.
Within an hour, Kinser learned that his team wouldn’t be inserted at the base of the mountain by convoy after all—but by the very Chinooks on which they’d planned to practice fastroping. “So they can’t support us for this op, but I guess the consolation prize is they insert us for a goat rope in the hills on their way home. Hey, at least we’re in the mountains and we have guns. Fuckin’ love this shit. Bradley, get everyone ready to load up.”
“Okay, Girl Scouts! We’re about to go on a helicopter