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By Root 1355 0

ride into the mountains in Afghanistan. How ’bout that? Check your weapons—condition one!”With a snap-click of a charging handle, each grunt checked that his weapon was condition 1: magazine inserted into the weapon’s well (or rounds in the feed trays of squad automatic weapons and M240s), round in the chamber, bolt forward, weapon on safe—ready to fire with a flick of a thumb on the fire selector. Drenched in sweat, the grunts hauled their gear up the loading ramp of the big Chinooks, the torrid blasts of jet exhaust knocking the wind out of some as they passed by the sides of the burly aircraft. Inside, the thwack-thwack-thwack of the chunky rotors spinning at idle added an almost soothing effect to the banshee whine of the engines and gearbox. Strapped down to the red webbing of the benches running the length of the “bird,” the grunts heard the engines spin up as the rear ramp rose off the ground a few feet, allowing the ramp gunner to drop his M240 light machine gun into its mount, then arm it with a hasty ker-CHUNK heave on the bolt. The side gunners armed their 240s as well, locking 7.62 mm rounds into place, and as two Task Force Sabre AH-64 Apache gunship escorts screamed past their flanks, the Big Windy pilots coaxed the two beasts into the air, as smoothly as a couple of helium balloons rising in a gentle morning breeze. As the helicopter’s rotors dug into the summer sky, lifting the Marines above the dusty landscape, cool puffs of air swirled through the side gun hatches. The Marines lifted the fronts of their helmets, getting a few spates of relief—Kinser measured the temperature inside the Chinook with a small thermometer attached to his flak jacket: 121 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was barely noon.

The grunts strained their necks to catch a glimpse out the rear of the Chinook. The door gunner, his restraint strap perfectly measured (and double-checked), sat with his legs dangled off the edge of the ramp, scanning side to side, looking for tracer rounds arcing up toward the craft from the ground. The Apaches, swinging back and forth relative to the straight flight line of the Chinook, kept even closer watch for ground threats through their targeting optics. Between the two ribbons of exhaust, the Marines could trace the path of the turquoise Kunar River as it struck west toward Nangarhar province, then once over the confluence of the Pech and the Kunar, the aircraft banked west, into the steep-walled Pech Valley. Kinser, forever in love with the ground “side of the show,” felt mildly envious of military aviators, getting to see the complex landscape from an eagle’s perspective, day in and day out. At an altitude well below the highest ridges and summits of the mountains framing the narrow Pech, the side and ramp gunners now craned their necks upward as well as side to side, as with each thwack of the helicopter’s blades, they drew farther into territory roamed by the enemy, an enemy often intimately familiar with all those ridges and peaks under which the Chinooks streaked.

Their target sighted—a single mud-brick-and-stone building on the side of a grassy slope—the pilots spun the craft around, dropped each Chinook’s loading ramp as the rear gunners detached their 240s, and the aviators gently connected the edges of the ramps with the steep slope. “MOVE—FUCKIN’ GIRL SCOUTS! Get out and hold perimeter!” Bradley roared over the stentorian scream of the jet engines. The grunts bolted onto the steep ground, spellbound at the expertise of the Army aviators—the rearmost aspect of the aft rotors spun just feet above the slope, the Chinooks’ landing gear dangling in the air; only the helicopters’ ramps made contact with the ground. Overhead, the Apaches carved tight arcs through the sky, the pilots always keeping their eyes on the ground below, ready to unleash their crafts’ 30 mm canons and 2.75-inch Hydra rockets on any threat that popped up.

“Damn, that’s fuckin’ amazing,” Burgos muttered to himself at the sight of the Chinooks “backed into” the mountain, the rotor wash blowing small tornadoes in the long, flowing,