Three years before, Combat Outpost Keating had been established in part to help out the 1-32 Infantry, by stemming the flow of weapons from Pakistan to insurgents fighting 1-32 troops in the Pech Valley and other locations. Now the 1-32 Infantry was being called to return the favor, to save their brothers in arms at the same outpost.

As the troops prepared for this air a.s.sault, the sky filled with dark clouds bringing heavy rain, thunder, and lightning. The thunderstorm traveled through the Landay-Sin Valley, clinging to mountaintops and dumping water below. An MQ-1 Predator, an unmanned aerial vehicle used for reconnaissance by the U.S. Air Force and the CIA, was dispatched to Kamdesh to conduct surveillance of the battles at Keating and Fritsche, but the wind and weather iced its wings and caused it to veer into the side of a mountain. It quickly became obvious that the bad weather was going to severely inhibit the QRF's ability to fly into the valley.

Back at the aid station, Cordova kept transfusing Mace with A-positive blood. After Floyd's came Hobbs's, then Cordova's, Bundermann's, and Stone's. As he was in the process of draining the fifth and final bag from the kit, Cordova was informed that a medevac was en route. He put a blanket and an oxygen mask on Mace and strapped him down. The young specialist was going to pull through. He was talking, breathing. Amid the horror of the day, at least they could be confident of one small victory.

Outside the aid station, Hill was focused on the stories that hadn't ended well. "We have fallen heroes," he said. "I need volunteers." It didn't matter that they were still encircled by what seemed to be hundreds of attackers intent on adding to the body count; this was what American soldiers did for one another: they left no one behind.

Hill and Bundermann made a plan involving two teams that would bound toward LRAS-2 and then up to the mortar pit. They'd escort Breeding, Rodriguez, and Barroga back to the operations center, carrying Thomson with them, and then the unit would be consolidated. Hill knew that some of the troops huddling at the Cafe were probably comparatively well rested, having worked solely on communications since early in the morning; they might even be eager to help in the field. And so they were: among the volunteers were Specialist Damien Grissette, who was usually in charge of water purification, and radioman Kellan Kahn.

Romesha looked up to see Hill and his men running toward him in the shura building; he didn't think this was part of the retrieval plan, but there was no time to argue about it. Romesha and his team bounded to the general area where Gallegos, Hardt, and Martin had last been seen, near LRAS-2. Sergeant Armando Avalos and Hill provided cover fire.

Rasmussen went around the laundry trailer. Underneath it was Martin, dead. It looked as if he'd tried to patch up some of his leg wounds and then low-crawl away from the enemy. He must have been spotted, because he'd been shot twice in the back of his head, at extremely close range.

Avalos and Kahn grabbed Martin, hauled him out, and dragged his body about seventy yards toward the shura building. Grissette met them on the way. "I got him," he said. He couldn't believe it. Just a few hours before, he and Martin had been running ammo around the camp. Then Martin was missing. And now, the ugly reality. Grissette began dragging his friend's corpse to the shura building. He felt it was the least he could do. He needed to do it. Once he'd made it there, Grissette broke down. "Man," he said, crying, "not my boy!"

"Stay with me, now," Hill told him.

"I'm good," Grissette said, composing himself. "I'm good."

Rasmussen was standing near the latrines when suddenly a Nuristani came out of one of the stalls; he was on the verge of shooting the man when he realized it was Ron Jeremy, the interpreter who hours before had warned the Americans of the attack. Given all the adrenaline and rage he was feeling, Rasmussen was surprised he hadn't just shot him on sight.

"Is anyone else in there with you?" he yelled.

"No," said the Afghan. Rasmussen didn't believe him, so he went in to check as Ron Jeremy ran off awkwardly, his legs stiff from hours of hiding from the enemy in the latrines, his knees pulled up to his chest.

Romesha spotted Gallegos's body from a distance as he ran to the LRAS-2 Humvee. Nearby, an insurgent lay on the ground; Rasmussen and James Stanley put more bullets into him, just to be safe. Then Romesha radioed to the others to take Gallegos to the aid station-he might still be alive, he thought. A few men would be needed for the task, since Gallegos was a big guy.

Armando Avalos was the first one on the scene. Gallegos was facedown on a rock with his hand under his head, as if he were taking a nap and using his forearm as a pillow. His body was wedged into a ditch that was covered by rocks and weeds. At first, Avalos thought he was still alive, but when he shook him, his body was limp and vacant. Gallegos's head fell to the side; his eyes were still open. Avalos was so shocked by the sight that he was all but oblivious to the RPGs exploding near him and the machine-gun fire that had picked up ever since he put himself out in the open.

After a second, he snapped to and hunkered down under the rocks in the ditch, in which he now realized Gallegos's leg was stuck. He used the sergeant's body as a roof, a shield. Two minutes later, he picked his way out of the ditch and ran to the latrines.

"Gallegos is stuck," Avalos explained to Romesha. "We'll need to lift him up to get him out."

With Hill, Romesha, and Dulaney providing cover, Kahn, Avalos, and Grissette ran to Gallegos and under fire lifted him toward the sky to release his leg from the ditch. Then they dragged him toward the shura building. Hill had a gear cutter-a small, sage-colored tool containing a razor blade-that he and Romesha used to slice off Gallegos's gear and make him lighter to carry. Hill, Avalos, Grissette, and Kahn then placed their friend on a stretcher and bore him to the aid station. There, they put him in a body bag.

"Don't seal that body bag," Courville told Hill. "We need Cordova to p.r.o.nounce him dead."

"Why the f.u.c.k do we need a captain to p.r.o.nounce him dead?" Hill asked. "He's f.u.c.king dead."

He stormed off to go get Martin's body and bring it to the aid station as well.

It was 6:40 p.m. The situation report was grim: eleven Americans wounded, six killed.

Kevin Thomson.

Joshua Kirk.

Michael Scusa.

Chris Griffin.

Vernon Martin.

Justin Gallegos.

All gone.

And Joshua Hardt was missing. As was Larson, too, now.

Where had had Larson gone? Romesha wondered. He was supposed to link up with them in their bounding mission to LRAS-2, but after that plan fell apart, he vanished. A mystery. Larson gone? Romesha wondered. He was supposed to link up with them in their bounding mission to LRAS-2, but after that plan fell apart, he vanished. A mystery.

At Camp Keating, Larson had been mentoring Hardt, and in something of a manic sprint, he was now frantically running around the camp looking for his protege. Larson's body armor was weighing him down, so he took all his gear off. It wasn't necessarily the wisest move, but he didn't care-he thought speed was more important at this point than the added protection.

In talking with Romesha, he'd learned that Hardt's last transmission had been from one of the stand-to trucks. Larson tried to see the world as Hardt had seen it at that moment: If I were trying to get back to the shura building from that truck, what route would I take? he asked himself.

Larson figured that he and Hardt, thinking a lot alike, would've sought the same escape. He explored a number of paths, running and running, from the shura building to the showers to the giant rock and back around to the shura building. He knew he was being reckless, but he didn't care; he didn't want the Taliban to get his friend. But he was coming up empty.

CHAPTER 37

The Long Walk Down

By now, Romesha and his guys had secured both the entrance to the outpost and the northwest of the camp, while Hill and his group controlled the north, northeast, east, and south. They were spread thin, but they felt confident that they could hold down those pieces of land. The one sector they did not yet have control of was the southwestern corner of the camp, near the mortar pit. The s.p.a.ce was too open, and the incoming enemy fire too intense, for Romesha and Red Platoon to make it there. "You've done enough," Breeding told Romesha on the radio. "We'll see you later."

"What do you think the odds are that Hardt was taken off the COP by the enemy?" Bundermann asked Romesha, also on the radio.

"I'm eighty percent sure his body is not on the COP," Romesha said.

Bundermann told others in the operations center to start distributing night-vision goggles and thermal sights. They needed to prepare for nightfall.

The members of the quick reaction force had only the sketchiest idea of where they were headed and what they would be facing when they got there. The intelligence officer at Forward Operating Base Bostick, Major Jack Kilbride, had pulled together a very detailed report to be pa.s.sed on to the QRF, but because the ad hoc force was a.s.sembled so hastily, the information didn't manage to filter down to them before they were picked up. They'd flown in from Kunar Province, two rifle platoons from the 1-32 Infantry, led by Lieutenants Jake Miraldi and Jake Kerr. The commander of the rescue effort for Combat Outpost Keating was Captain Justin Sax, whose troops had been in nearby Barg-e-Matal for most of the previous two months. Miraldi's platoon had been the initial force to retake Barg-e-Matal after it was overrun; once they'd cleared the area, they were counterattacked and very nearly pushed out of the village by the enemy.

That morning, at Combat Outpost Joyce in Kunar Province, Sax and the other officers had received what they considered to be a rather "skimpy" situational update-skimpy in the sense that it was apparent that no one in charge had any real idea of what was going on. Sax and Miraldi agreed that they could not even begin to plan a rescue based on the little information they had received.

By 9:30 a.m., Sax and Miraldi were at Forward Operating Base Bostick, meeting with Brown, Portis, and other members of the leadership of 3-61 Cav. They were told that the men at Camp Keating had been forced into three concrete buildings in the center of the outpost, much of the rest of which was on fire. Enemy positions were constantly being identified and reported, and as they were plotted on the map in the Bostick operations center, Miraldi was taken aback: they were everywhere. Miraldi knew this would be a tough mission-and for some, very likely a final one: from what he now knew, he was sure he and Sax would lose men.

The original plan had been to drop Portis, Salentine, Birchfield, and the QRF at the "link-up point" midway between Observation Post Fritsche and Combat Outpost Keating, nearest to the southern side of the camp, which would've been their fastest approach; but once it was confirmed that the proposed LZ had an active enemy presence, that seemed a foolhardy idea. An alternative would be to land the bird north of the outpost, near the Putting Green. They could clear that area, establish it as a firebase, move on to capture the Afghan National Police building, parts of Urmul, and the entry control point, and then, finally, retake the camp.

But when the Apache pilots came in, they poured cold water over that plan. The insurgents at the Putting Green and on the northern side of the river in general were just too strong, their forces too deadly; the Black Hawks taking the QRF troops to the area would be at significant risk of being shot down. Portis suggested that the Black Hawks instead fly as many of the QRF troops as possible to Observation Post Fritsche. Bad weather was coming in; soon their options might be limited to none. Sax told everyone that he was "going to fly in, get on the ground, a.s.sess the situation, talk to the guys on the ground, and we'll do a deliberate clearing on the way down to Keating, since we'll probably have contact." Portis, Salentine, and Birchfield would join him.

Because the Black Hawks had to fly there in a roundabout way to avoid the insurgents' powerful antiaircraft weapons, it took them forty-five minutes to get to the landing zone at Observation Post Fritsche. They flew so high they hit storm clouds and were drenched by a combination of snow and freezing rain-an ominous sign with terrible ramifications, as Sax well knew. s.h.i.t, this weather's coming in, he thought. We're not going to be able to get the next lift in. That would mean the QRF might have only thirty-five troops. They'd been told they'd need at least one more platoon's worth of guys, up to an additional forty soldiers, to go down the mountain. There went that idea.

They landed safely. The enemy fired a couple of mortar rounds at them, but they missed, and for the most part, the fighting at Observation Post Fritsche had died down.

The troops at the observation post all looked terrified.

The word from Forward Operating Base Bostick was, indeed, that the next flight wouldn't be coming in for some time, given the rough weather. Sax preferred to wait until all the men from 1-32 Infantry arrived, but Portis didn't want to hesitate another second before heading down the hill. They were receiving reports that some soldiers from Black Knight Troop were still getting hit, and others were looking for bodies. "We have enough guys," Portis insisted. "We need to get down there."

"Come on, come on, come on," Birchfield echoed, "let's go, let's go, let's go."

Portis and Sax finally agreed that if the rest of Sax's men didn't get there by 2:00 p.m., they would move out without them. It was just before noon.

"I need the best scout to lead us down," Sax told Portis. "Who's conducted this mission before?" Portis recommended Salentine and Birchfield. Portis also made sure that Stickney, the head mortarman at Observation Post Fritsche, had enough ammo to support the QRF, and Bellamy worked on grid coordinates with the team as well, just in case they ended up needing mortars during their hike down.

"We're not going to take any trails down," Birchfield said. "They've been watching us." He was certain that every known path was either b.o.o.by-trapped or ready for an ambush. "We'll be breaking bush," he said, meaning they would be blazing their own trail.

At 2:00 p.m., with no additional troops having arrived, they set off. The hike would take at least four hours, and the decline was so steep that Sax told his men to empty their packs of everything other than ammo and water.

Miraldi briefed the platoon. Birchfield would guide them down from Observation Post Fritsche to an outcropping of rocks, from which they would follow some defunct power lines to the top of the Switchbacks. They would clear the Switchbacks, establish fire support and overwatch, and move in to Camp Keating. They would almost surely be ambushed along the way, Miraldi acknowledged; what the QRF lacked in numbers, it would have to make up for with its speed and ability to ma.s.s and coalesce as a single, brute force.

The instant they left the wire of Observation Post Fritsche, enemy machine-gun fire began blasting them. Miraldi's troops returned fire while air support was called in. An A-10 Warthog zoomed in on the enemy in a strafing run, and then the QRF continued down the hill. The men slowly made their way through the mountain's rough terrain. Above them, they could see nearly every kind of aircraft that they knew existed. Sometimes the A-10 Warthogs and F-15 fighter jets flew so close that they knocked the soldiers off their feet.

By 4:00 p.m., the QRF had reached the rocky outcropping, which afforded a good strategic view of the valley. While the men rested, Portis and Salentine relayed grids to the Air Force radio operators,87 who coordinated with the pilots to drop bombs at targets on the mountains below them and across the valley. The QRF troops would spot groups of anywhere from twenty-five to fifty fighters trying to reconvene to attack the camp again, and they'd radio the guys in the sky. who coordinated with the pilots to drop bombs at targets on the mountains below them and across the valley. The QRF troops would spot groups of anywhere from twenty-five to fifty fighters trying to reconvene to attack the camp again, and they'd radio the guys in the sky.

"Two above the Switchbacks, one above the Diving Board."

BOOM, dead.

After half an hour, they moved on. In places, the ground was slick and challenging to negotiate. At one point, Specialist Kyle Barnes, a twenty-year-old soldier from 1-32 Infantry, slipped. Barnes hated this journey. The footing was slick, the descent was steep, and the M240B machine gun slung around his neck didn't make it any easier. As Barnes picked himself up, he pivoted on his right foot and-from the bizarre angle he'd fallen into-saw, right off the trail, a dead insurgent. Five feet to the corpse's left was another enemy fighter crouched down with a walkie talkie in his hand, wearing a white hat and looking away from the trail. His head was moving.

He was alive.

Barnes whispered to the person behind him. He thought it was Miraldi, but it turned out to be Specialist Paul Labrake, the radio operator for Miraldi's platoon.

"Sir, there's a dude in the woods," Barnes said. Worried that his machine gun would cause a dangerous ricochet that could hurt his fellow troops, Barnes drew his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol from his thigh holster.

"What?" asked Labrake.

"There's a f.u.c.king dude in the woods," Barnes said.

"Shoot him!"

Barnes unloaded a magazine in the insurgent's chest. The expression on the his face seemed to indicate to Barnes that he was taking his death almost in stride, like a warrior.

Eight troops had already pa.s.sed the two insurgents without seeing them, and they were shocked when they heard the sudden drilling sound of Barnes's automatic pistol firing. Miraldi, a few yards behind them, was confused. As the platoon took cover behind him, Miraldi shouted, "Barnes, what are you doing?"

"There's guys in the woods!" Barnes screamed in his thick South Boston accent.

"No s.h.i.t, Barnes!" said Miraldi. "Where? How many?"

Barnes started shooting again as Miraldi ran down to him. The two insurgents were both now definitively dead. Miraldi sent two of his men to inspect the area the insurgents had been huddling in, where they found an RPG launcher with about five rounds, two AK-47 a.s.sault rifles, chest racks with magazines, some pineapple grenades, a radio, and a bag of flatbread. Barnes had killed one of the insurgents with his Beretta. The other had been mortally wounded long before that moment, much of his right leg having been stripped of flesh. The QRF troops took all of the insurgents' gear and returned to their hike. To Salentine, the dead insurgents didn't look Afghan or even Pakistani.

Labrake noted that enemy radio traffic suggested the insurgents were retreating. He'd also made contact with 3-61 Cav troops in the operations center below. They'd recovered six of their dead but were still missing one man.

Portis heard Cordova announce over the radio, "Anybody else got A-positive blood, I need to know! Come to the aid station if you do." It was uplifting just to hear his voice, Portis thought, though the message itself was depressing. Out there, there was only one thing you needed extra blood for.

An eerie calm seemed to have settled over the valley as the QRF trudged through debris left by the 120-millimeter mortars, trees shattered by bombs and shrapnel, and fields reduced by the Willie Pete to smoldering ash. Soon they arrived above the Switchbacks.

"We need to skirt the outside of this field," Birchfield said. "We get ambushed here a lot."

It was a strange, otherworldly experience, as if they were descending into a Goya sketch. As they arrived at the midpoint of the Switchbacks at around 6:30 p.m., Portis started noticing many more dead Taliban bodies. He realized he'd been counting enemy dead on his way down the hill. There were more to count now. He told himself that when he got to a hundred, he would stop.

They proceeded down the remainder of the mountain, the smoke and fire from Camp Keating's burning buildings so heavy now that they couldn't see much of the land in front of them. Miraldi and Salentine took one of the rifle squads down the hill to the outpost while Sax, Portis, and the remainder of the 1-32 Infantry company conducted overwatch from the Switchbacks.

The rest of the QRF-the late arrivals to Observation Post Fritsche, delivered at long last-were on their way down and had been able to proceed more quickly because the initial QRF force had already secured the way. They were being guided by Specialist Victor De La Cruz, who had fought valiantly at Observation Post Fritsche earlier that day using TOW88 missiles, repeatedly exposing himself, and had a left leg full of shrapnel to show for it. missiles, repeatedly exposing himself, and had a left leg full of shrapnel to show for it.

Salentine and Miraldi entered the wire. The insurgents in Urmul were still firing at the outpost, which was also engulfed in flames. Salentine and Miraldi and their men cleared every building on the western side of the COP, from the mortar pit to the center of the camp. The QRF members were greeted by wounded troops whose arms and legs were covered with gashes and blood. The battered men looked at once haunted and relieved.

Miraldi called back to Sax on the radio. "Looks like we're okay here," he said.

Portis had hit his one-hundred mark and stopped counting insurgent corpses; he and Sax led the other troops from the Switchbacks down to Keating. Men from 1-32 Infantry joined with the two Latvian trainers to secure the eastern side of the camp. Only two buildings were not on fire; In one of them, the aid station, Miraldi saw a soldier transfusing his blood into Mace. In the otherwhat had been the Red Platoon barracks but was now the new operations center-Miraldi introduced himself to First Sergeant Burton.

Lieutenant Shrode was sitting at the door on the north side of the barracks with Bundermann, coordinating air support on the radio, when he spotted Miraldi-which was a bit weird, since the two of them had been pals in college, playing football together at West Point. Miraldi had been a fullback and Shrode a middle linebacker, so with one on offense and the other on defense, they'd had some epic battles in practices on the gridiron, a number of which had ended with both of their heads ringing. They hadn't seen each other since graduation. Shrode stood, and they shook hands.

"How're you doing, Cason?" Miraldi asked.

"Way better now that you guys are here," Shrode said.

Sax, in charge of security for the camp, had his men fill sandbags and establish fighting positions. Birchfield checked the maintenance shed, the stand-to trucks, and other areas; Taliban bodies riddled with bullet holes were scattered throughout the camp. He met up with Romesha at the shura building and a.s.signed troops to guard specific positions, clear various buildings, and inspect the outer perimeter.

Birchfield and some of the men from 1-32 Infantry were on their way down the hill when they saw something of note-or someone, rather. They radioed Bundermann: amid the strewn corpses of enemy fighters littering the southern side of the camp, they could see the body of a U.S. soldier. Hill and Francis went to the spot as directed-near the maintenance shed, close to Stand-To Truck 1, at the edge of the camp.

It was Hardt.

Rigor mortis had begun to set in. He had three entrance gunshot wounds on the left side of his head; his skull had suffered multiple fractures. Gunpowder residue indicated that he had been shot in the head at close range. He also had gunshot wounds to the left side of his chest, his left leg, and his left arm. Hill got a stretcher, and he and Francis carried Hardt's body to the aid station.

Hill found Bundermann.

"We're all accounted for now," he said. It was just after 8:00 p.m.

Hill and Francis sat down with Birchfield and told him who had been killed. There were seven: Kevin Thomson, Joshua Kirk, Michael Scusa, Chris Griffin, Vernon Martin, Justin Gallegos, and Joshua Hardt. Stephan Mace was banged up pretty good, but Doc Cordova had expressed optimism about his chances so long as they got him on a bird as soon as possible.

Birchfield thought about Scusa. The last time he'd seen him, the specialist was talking about his son. Indeed, it was always the same thing with Scusa: Connor did this, Connor did that, Connor is walking, Connor is eating solid food. He was a very proud father, as well as a hardworking soldier. And now he would never see his boy again. Birchfield started crying. Then he stopped, realizing this was not the time for it. Those men were gone, and that was tragic-and he would mourn them, later-but right then he had a job to do, and that was to keep everyone else alive.

Romesha and Larson were sitting in the shura building smoking Camel Lights and drinking Dr. Peppers that Larson had grabbed from the Red Platoon barracks. The spicy fizz was like mother's milk to the two men, who were in awe that they had lived to see the end of the day.

Everything had started to slow down. The aircraft were in the midst of releasing the last of the sixteen tons' worth of bombs they would drop on the enemy that day. Troops weren't yet standing out in the open, but the enemy fire wasn't nearly as intense as it had been.

Soldiers from the 1-32 had volunteered to clear the landing zone so the medevac could-finally-land, but 3-61 Cav wouldn't have it. Soon Salentine, Romesha, Larson, Damien Grissette, Ryan Schulz, and Stephen Cady were heading across the bridge to the landing zone.

Larson threw a frag grenade into the Afghan National Police shack there, but he missed the door by four inches and hit the doorjamb instead; the grenade bounced right back to his feet. The men quickly jumped behind the rocks as it exploded. No one had the inclination to laugh.

The men got back up, and Larson and Cady cleared the shack as they were supposed to-with their M4 rifles. No one was in there. The men then pulled security on the landing one until the medevac came in for Mace-a helicopter that also was bringing in Lieutenant Colonel Brown.