Battle Ready: Memoir of a SEAL Warrior Medic (21 page)

“The last time I was out here, Chris and I saw a lot of shepherds in places we never thought they’d be. It’s hard to be sure,” Chief said.

“The fact that they’re running around on those ridges tells me those ain’t shepherds. It’s too much work to run animals over those mountains,” Tom added.

I watched as Vic digested the information. His career was built on analyzing intel and making tactical decisions, and this was right in his wheelhouse. I had grown close to Vic over our time together and knew he had already made a decision. I also knew he would throw it to us in case he missed something. Vic had too much respect for Chief and Tom not to.

“Let’s assume we’ve been spotted. We’ve got a couple of choices. Lay up today, hope for the best, and see what happens. Or we turn around and head home. In either case we stand a good chance of being attacked. Am I missing something?”

We stood quiet for a moment and contemplated the situation. No one wanted to go home empty-handed, but we weren’t about to put ourselves into a position that we might not be able to get out of.

“Are we sure we’ve been spotted?” I asked.

“No one knows for sure, Doc. No radio chatter so far,” Tom answered. No reports of radio or phone activity.
That’s a good thing,
I told myself.

“Based on the assumption we’ve either been spotted or will be come first light, we need to pull out of the area, but we can’t go out the same way we came. It’s too risky,” Chief said.

“I can send some of my men out for intel,” Ned suggested.

“It’s not worth it, Ned. We need to keep the team tight for now,” Vic said.

“Look, if we push out now we’ll still have some cover of darkness. The road here is going to split,” Chief said, pointing to a fork in the road on the map. “What you don’t see is, this road, the one we’re on now, is going to bifurcate and feeds into these hills and then back onto the main road.” The original maps for this part of Afghanistan were terribly out of date and poor quality, so we added roads and other features each time we went out. This real-time adaptation of our computer mapping programs gave us a fairly good understanding of what to expect.

“What does that mean?” Ned asked.

“I think what Chief is saying is, if we’ve been spotted by the enemy, we’ll be ambushed any way we go.” Tom paused to see if Ned was following him. “But if those guys on the mountain are uncaring nomads, we may be able to push on to the target and get eyes on before having to abort and head back toward base.”

“See, right here,” Vic said as he directed Ned’s attention to the map. “If we go this way it also puts us on the main road heading directly toward Shkin. Traveling during the day we can move much faster, and it should only take us half a day to get back.”

“We’re not far from the target. They won’t expect us to come in from the north, through the wadi. It’s pretty rocky there. Going deeper in might just be the safest route out,” Chief said as his finger moved along the route he described.

“What do you think, Tom?” Vic asked. “Turn around and head back, or pull out and move to the target?”

“You’re both right—more than likely we’re going to get hit either way, but if we go this way we can approach just below this ridgeline, then move down the saddle into the wadis below, which should provide some cover,” Muscle Tom said, pointing to the map and aerial photography. “We didn’t come this far to quit.”

Vic turned to Chief and asked, “Continue on, or turn and head home from here?”

Without missing a beat, Chief replied, “Are you kidding me? Push on. We may have to abort before we get there, but I agree with Tom. If the enemy has spotted us, we’re fucked any way we go. The best way to avoid an ambush is to avoid the roads and trails. This route gives us some protection and more time to assess the situation when we get there.” Vic then turned to me. “Doc?”

I just looked at him and said, “I got nothing.”

Vic replied, his face showing stress, “Come on, Doc. I don’t have bandwidth for any bullshit. You always have something to say.” He was under serious pressure and thought I was yanking his chain.

“What ya got, Doc?” Muscle Tom asked, knowing there was something more to my answer.

I looked at each of them as I explained. “Truth be told, I’m the medic on this mission, which means I go wherever you go, even if you’re going through the fires of hell on a Sunday morning.” Ned looked confused but kept quiet while we worked it out. “If I say turn and go home, you may question if I have the nerve to go out and get you should the shit hit the fan. If I say push forward, you might wonder if I’ve forgotten my role as a medic. All I can tell you is you don’t have to worry. If the rounds start flying I’ll be a shooter first and a medic second, but that doesn’t mean I have to choose one or the other. Where you go, I go.” Chief looked at me and knew exactly what I was trying to say. We’d had a lot of conversations about our families and personal beliefs. He knew about my calling to medicine and accepted me for who I was from the moment we met. “None of us know the right answer, and since I go where you go all I have to say is … how long until we pull out?”

Vic glanced at Chief and then Muscle Tom, who patted my shoulder. He then looked at me for two beats, shook his head, and smiled. “Damn, Doc.”

“You’re one strange bird, Doc,” Chief said quietly as Vic continued on.

“We’re going toward the target. We’ll be approaching from the northwest and navigate through the wadis. Once we get there we’ll reassess the situation. In the meantime I’ll inform Wil about the men on the ridge; hopefully he’ll be able to have a QRF standing by. Ned, I’ll need you, Chief, and Tom to brief the Afghan soldiers on the changes.”

“Got it,” Tom said as Chief started making a terrain model on the ground to brief the rest of the crew.

We gathered around Chief as he described what was about to take place. I kept watching Ali and the other terps to see if they understood. We counted on fast and accurate translations of orders should we come under fire. Any hesitation or mistranslation could turn a bad situation into almost certain death. Chief knew this all too well, so without hesitation he asked Vic to pull Ned from the lead vehicle and put him back with us. Chief and Tom covered the basics—convoy formation, communications, actions on ambush, specialty teams, and each vehicle’s sector of responsibility—before briefing our new route. Ned made sure he translated our plan to each vehicle commander to ensure they fully understood.

“We’re moving out in five. Maintain the distance with the vehicle in front of you but don’t fixate on it. Remember where we are. If you see something, don’t sit on it, report it back, and we’ll sort it out.”

We loaded up the nine vehicles and slowly exited the hide site as carefully as we entered. The first vehicle in the caravan carried four commandos and one terp. The second was all troops, and the third was Chief and me in our soft-sided Hummer with Ned and Ali. Our vehicle adaptations gave us decent protection against enemy rounds, but I certainly would have preferred an up-armored Humvee. Chief drove and served as navigator due to his familiarity with the route, and I rode shotgun as assistant driver and worked comms. Ned was behind me, and Ali, the terp, was behind Chief. Next in line were two trucks, each filled with commandos, then another Humvee carrying Vic, Muscle Tom, and their terp. Behind Vic were another four men and our mechanic, while two trucks of four trusted commandos with heavy machine guns brought up the rear. We broke camp and rolled toward the objective, eyes alert as the horizon began to glow deep purple and burned orange. We passed a few farms in the distance as we headed toward the ridgeline trail that would eventually lead us into the valley below.

Our movement took us much longer than any of us expected, and the sun began rising in the east. The light was definitely going to expose us, but it also allowed the convoy to navigate the mountain pass. The trails were steep and plagued with potholes and sharp turns. Navigating those treacherous obstacles with NVGs would be extremely difficult for us and suicidal for the commandos to follow. As we drove along, each bump reminded me I should have rearranged my gear for the trip. Jolt after jolt forced my smoke grenades deep into my side. I reached around and pulled two of the culprits out of my harness and placed them in a pouch I had fastened to the dash in an attempt to stop the continuous kidney punches to my left flank.

We stopped at the top of the ridgeline to scope the wadi below. The trail was dangerously narrow and forced the trucks to remain ten yards apart, which meant Vic and Tom were unable to jump forward for a look. Chief and I glassed the valley below with our weapon-mounted scopes.

“What do you think?” Chief asked.

“Looks like we’re going to have to widen our distance the rest of the way down.”

“I think you’re right,” Chief answered. Before he could finish his sentence Vic came over the radio. I continued to scan the hills while listening to Chief, Vic, and Tom discuss the situation. It was clear to me why everyone wanted to use that route. It wasn’t the type of road someone would use to set an ambush. The wadi twisted and turned multiple times, preventing a clean shot by anyone at the whole convoy. Unless the ambush was set up perfectly, it would give an opportunity to the attacker to be flanked by the men they wished to destroy. If we did get hit, at least the terrain would give us a fighting chance.

As the rest of the team continued to chatter, I told Ali to have our commandos readjust any gear that might have shifted. Rough, rocky trails have a way of rearranging everything, and that can cause problems. Before we left the hide, every piece of equipment and ammunition resupply fit tightly together like a weekend suitcase that would barely close. This made it easy to find everything we needed in a critical situation. After several hours on the goat path, everything loosened up and was sliding around. Exactly what we didn’t need. Not only would it be difficult to find critical gear if the shit hit the fan, the heavy weight shifting back and forth as a vehicle negotiated a slope would wreak havoc on a driver.

With the assessment done, we climbed back into the vehicle, and I handed Chief his helmet. He’d taken it off earlier when the sun rose and he no longer needed to use his NVGs.

“I’m not wearing that,” he said, pointing to the roof with a grin. The ballistic blanketing we added for extra protection had taken up what little headroom he had, so when he wore his helmet he would have to drive with a bend in his neck.

“You sure you don’t want to reconsider?” I jokingly asked.

“I think I know what I want, Shorty,” he said with a wink. Ned laughed in the back as we started bouncing down the slope again. I didn’t want to argue, so I followed his example and rigged for comfort by moving my med pack from the floorboard and resting it next to his helmet, making a great armrest between the two of us.

When we finally hit bottom it was all business. No one said a word as we listened for radio traffic from the lead vehicle. Everyone kept a close watch on the hillsides. The caravan crawled slowly over a rough path cut through the jagged foothills. Each turn presented a new set of terrain features that we’d quickly scan for movement. Chief ’s dark eyes primarily concentrated on the lead vehicles and the rocky hills ahead of them while I monitored the terrain from the ten and two o’clock positions. Ned focused on the mountainside to the west, and Ali watched the hills to our east.

The sun was now shining brightly over the hills to our east, raising the tension in the truck. Two hours before, I was wearing NVGs, and now I needed sunglasses to keep focus. The constantly changing conditions gave me an eerie feeling that I’m sure the others felt, too.

We bumped along the winding path at a snail’s pace, each vehicle roughly three to four car lengths from the next. The wadi was a relatively flat, rocky area with sporadic patches of sand. It was cut between a big mountain to our right and several large rock formations on the left. These joined together to form an intermittent ridge roughly twenty to thirty feet high and hundreds of yards long. At the base of the mountain to the right, outcroppings of rock formed alcoves along the mountain wall, giving the wadi a snakelike shape. This caused the ravine floor to vary from fifty to one hundred feet wide as it weaved back and forth around the massive rocks.

The first two vehicles crept ahead as Chief wrestled our truck through a deep pocket of sand. Ned and the terp watched from the back as Chief and I silently communicated our observations to one another. Chief sensed something strange about the hills to his left, and through the corner of my eye I saw him sweeping his head back and forth, scanning them carefully. In the sideview mirror, I saw nothing; the vehicles directly behind us hadn’t made it past the elongated turn we had just exited. Our vehicle crunched over a group of rocks that came together to form a ramplike structure, which lifted the front left corner of the truck into the air. Chief gripped the steering wheel and was preparing to drive down the rock ramp when I noticed his head snap toward the hills to his left.

“Movement?” I asked, but his response said it all.

“Contact left, contact left!” he yelled out in a controlled voice. Before any of us could react, an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) blast echoed through the canyon walls. The vehicle had been raised at a 45-degree angle, and I didn’t see how close the round had been. All I knew was that the enemy was dangerously close, by the near-simultaneous sound of the rocket launch and the burst of the projectile. The shock wave from the blast forced the vehicle to buck up like a rearing horse, and shrapnel crashed into the undercarriage. I knew then the time we spent lining the floor with the ballistic blanketing had paid off.

A second later, the vehicle slammed to the ground with a force that threw us around like rag dolls. At some point during that ten-second sequence, I hit my head on something in the truck, although I couldn’t tell you exactly what. Adrenaline kicked in, and I shook off the pain while Chief grappled with the steering wheel and gunned it. Ned and I struggled to hold on to our weapons while Ali ducked in the backseat, screaming frantically in Pashtu.