Return to Part I
We landed in a tornado of dust and death. The Chinook touched down long enough to let my team out along with a squad of green berets and then sped away.
*****
After Joe and his team were picked up at the FOB the pilot stopped twice more. Once to pick up a squad of green beanies and a second time for supplies. Watching the guys from the 173rd throw in boxes and crates and who-knows-what else into the back of the helicopter was an example of orchestrated chaos. They moved in a mad rush throwing shit and dodging each other before leaving everything in a pile on the floor just past the ramp.
From there we flew unescorted into war, into a one-sided battle where we were losing, no, to a battle we had already lost. The enemy was falling back, already gone, but the damage was done. Nine guys lay dead, most others wounded, and the men in the helicopter were the cavalry, come to save the day.
The two teams filed off the helicopter smoothly taking security positions and the chinook blasted away sending a hot stinging wind laden with sand into them. Then, they waited.
They call it SLLS, pronounced sills, and that is exactly what they did.
STOP – LOOK – LISTEN – SMELL
You can’t hear anything on an army bird, except for the helicopter itself as it fights to stay aloft. Once you get off, it’s worse. You’re blind to the environment. Your senses are utterly fried.
Luckily, they were in a defensible position away from the X, and so they waited until their senses returned.
About 10 minutes later, a grizzled Captain now in charge of the clean up operation, approached Joe. Where do you need to be?, he said.
Joe was ready with an answer. While they performed SLLS, he had visually reconned the area.
Up there, he said, pointing to a hilltop. It lay between the smoking remains of where the battle had occurred and the route the enemy had taken to exfil the AO. We’ll be most effective up there, he said.
You got it, said the Captain, and the team of elite and stoic SPEC OPS soldiers moved out, Joe’s team following from within their ranks.
The Captain moved off in the opposite direction yelling into a radio.
Before long they walked through an open area where most of the action had gone down. Wires from TOW missiles littered the ground like metal spaghetti and the earth was scorched and black from impacts.
They aimed for the hilltop and walked past a HMMWV, or what was left of one. The back half was gone and the headlights of the vehicle pointed up towards the sky as it leaned back over the only remaining front axle.
No one spoke, and Joe avoided thinking too much about the carnage. Deal with it later, he thought. The only emotions any of them had were those that allowed them to fight and win. Fear wasn’t allowed. It was weeded out by anger, focus, and excitement.
The group passed through an old gate as they moved from the open area to a small path leading up towards the hilltop. As Joe maneuvered through the gate, careful not to let his M4 and other gear catch in the narrow space, he looked down and saw the glint of something shiny.
It was a cheap black watch, band broken on one side where the pin had come loose. It must have caught as the former owner fled the scene. It was bloody and as Joe looked closer, he saw more blood decorating the ground and leading up the path.
