Victory Point (16 page)

Camp Blessing, which had once been a school, then a medical clinic in the nineties before the Taliban commandeered the small group of buildings (which they used as a command center as well as for rape, torture, and execution of the locals), was taken over by U.S. special operations forces early in the war. Marines of 2/8 spent some time at the camp—named in honor of Jay Blessing, a Special Forces soldier killed by an IED strike near the base in 2002—as did some from 3/6, who fended off a number of direct attacks by insurgents, including one assault where militants overran one of the observation posts and nearly breached the camp’s main perimeter. But 3/6 had only spent a few months at Blessing, operating the firebase with Special Forces, as 2/8 had done. 3/3 would be the first battalion to occupy Blessing for their full deployment, operating it as a Marine-only camp. MacMannis and Scott looked to have a single commander run the base with a single platoon of Marines deployed there for the duration of ⅔’s tour, another recommendation of Cooling’s, who had cycled base commanders through “tours” of Blessing. Handing over command to Bartels was 3/3’s First Lieutenant Justin Belman, who, through his and his Marines’ outreach to the locals of the Nangalam area, laid the foundation for the personality-driven leadership successes of Kinser and Bartels—successes emblematic of the classic admixture of unconventional war-fighting styles historically recognized as unique to the United States Marine Corps.

Bartels wasted no time jumping into his role as commander of the base that jutted farther into the enemy than any other in Afghanistan, lying just a few miles from the frontier with Pakistan, smack on the prime insurgent corridor between Kunar and Nuristan. In total, 98 of ⅔’s Marines would live at Camp Blessing—Kinser’s platoon with attachments, and Marines attached directly to the firebase: heavy-weapons operators, light machine gunners, straight-leg 0311 infantrymen, cooks, Navy Corpsmen, and communications specialists. In addition to the 98 Marines, 114 ASF fighters, and 5 interpreters, or “terps,” lived at Blessing, and nearly 50 local workers came and went each day from Nangalam and surrounding villages. Studding Blessing’s concertina-razor-wire perimeter, a hodgepodge of captured Taliban and insurgent weapons systems, many of which dated back to the Soviet era, stood ready to be manned by ASF during attacks: DShK 12.7 mm heavy machine guns, ZPU-1 antiaircraft guns pointed at the surrounding ridges, recoilless rifles, RPG-7s, PK medium machine guns, 82mm mortar tubes, even 107 mm rocket launchers. Of course, the Marines defended the wire with their own tried-and-true armaments as well as more recent additions to the Marine Corps inventory: M2 .50-caliber machine guns, M240 light machine guns, SMAW and AT4 shoulder-launched rockets, MK19 40mm automatic grenade launchers, and even the Javeline shoulder-launched missile. Lobbing football-size rounds, the 120 mm mortar tubes (on loan from the Army) gave outside-the-wire Marines shockingly effective indirect fire support during their missions. Based at Blessing, Marine mortarmen could move the “120 tubes” by Humvee throughout the region, ensuring that any patrol was just a radio-transmitted call for fire away from lighting up an enemy position “out of nowhere” with blazing efficacy.

The morning after Bartels’s midnight arrival at Blessing (he came by way of convoy, operating blacked out to avoid IED strikes), the twenty-five-year-old lieutenant emerged from the concrete COC to a spring Hindu Kush morning. Climbing onto a rooftop lookout, he immediately thanked Rob Scott in his head. “This is it—
wow,
” he uttered to himself. Before him, cathedral-like peaks stretched into the powder-blue dome of sky above. Cradled by those peaks, verdant fields, meticulously terraced pastures, and the thrashing, ribbonlike Pech River drew his attention from the heights. Ringing the lowlands at their juncture with the towering Hindu Kush peaks, Nangalam’s homes rose out of football-field-size slabs of steep, glimmering stone. Framed by long arcs of exposed geologic strata, the boxy architecture looked to be chiseled from the domineering peaks on which the houses stood. Bartels saw the enclave as a hidden paradise,
from another time
—as so many other of the Marines had remarked—and was dumbfounded that such a place could know even the slightest hint of war, much less decades of such barbaric inhumanity.

In the weeks between their arrival at Blessing and that of the battalion’s main element in June, Kinser and Bartels would fall into their respective, synergistic roles, having learned within a few days of working with each other what Rob Scott already knew—that the two standout lieutenants each brought unique capabilities to this vital and challenging crevice of the war, capabilities that would engender a whirlwind of effort by the Marines under their commands, aiding the fight in ways that few could have predicted. The duo realized that they’d feed off each other during their first patrol together, just a few days after Matt’s arrival at the firebase. Bound for the home of a former high-ranking mujahideen commander, Haji Arref, they headed up the Waigal Valley, a sinewy corridor that connects the Kunar with Nuristan. As Kinser remained stone-faced, Bartels drew a wide grin upon reaching their destination—and their Marines stared bug-eyed at the sight before them: a massive, ornate private compound deep in the recesses of the Kunar. Haji Arref invited the patrol inside his walled complex, complete with a mosque and living quarters for his personal bodyguards, then ordered one of his goats slaughtered for a feast. Through an interpreter, the jovial Bartels began discussing the Soviet war with Arref as Kinser chuckled to himself at the sight of a dummy bomb leaning up against a wall in the former commander’s rear courtyard, wondering how he’d gotten his hands on Soviet practice munitions. The lieutenant tapped his knuckles on the skin of the ten-foot-long decoy, but didn’t hear the hollow
bong
he’d expected. “Kinser!” Matt blared, laughing his ass off. “That’s a thousand-pound bomb the Soviets dropped on his compound here in the eighties—that never exploded!” Kinser laughed, then took a step back. “He kept it as a war memento, it’s one of his prized possessions. His kids played hide-and-seek behind it growing up!”

“That’s fucking hilarious,” Kinser barked. “Shit, what a great story. Guess he’s pretty confident in the shoddy quality control of Soviet bomb fuses.”

After the dinner—of local bread, okra, rice, and what Kinser decided was undercooked goat—Arref brought out two olive-drab belts. “From da killed Russians!” the lieutenants’ interpreter, Rafi, chortled. “Ha ha ha!” Arref lifted up his shirt to reveal he was wearing his so that its buckle, a Russian star, was turned upside down, pointing to the ground. “Commander Arref says to wear this star Russian reversed, you’ll make many friends here.” Bartels threaded it on—star pointed down—and pledged to his host that he’d never be without it for the remainder of ⅔’s deployment, just one of many gestures the gregarious and charming midwesterner would make to connect the locals with the Marines. Those connections would grow so strong that some villagers literally cried at the end of the Blessing Marines’ stint in Nangalam.

Kinser was right. The goat meat
was
undercooked, but he didn’t let the resulting dysentery slow him down. In the weeks before ⅔’s main element arrived, the lieutenant ventured throughout the Korangal, the Matin, and the Pech. He learned names and faces, hammered down basic language skills, immersed himself in culture and tradition, and got to know the ASF members—whom he worked with to hone their weapons-handling and tactical skills—as close friends. By the mid-June arrival of the battalion’s main element, Kinser had become a virtual expert in the greater Pech region, particularly the Korangal Valley, as well as honing his skills in the use of the various Soviet-style weapons the Afghans used for Blessing’s perimeter defense and on operations. The tireless lieutenant knew that the more time he spent in the high reaches of the area, the better. He just wanted to be outside the wire with his Marines and the ASF. On the other side of the world from tiny Jonesville, Virginia, Kinser felt more in his element than he’d ever felt before.

“Seiffert, we need a name for this op,” Tom Wood quipped at his assistant-in-training, First Lieutenant Lance Seiffert, at the JAF COC soon after the lieutenant arrived in-country. “3/3 was doin’ mostly basketball names—Texas basketball names, but their last was going to be
Stars,
a Texas hockey team. MacMannis wants to continue with hockey teams, but from throughout the rest of the States.”

“Right, sir. I’ll make up a list.” The diligent Seiffert jumped on the Internet and came up with a list of ten, from the New York Rangers to the Colorado Avalanche.

“Can’t do New York, Seiffert, those are the Rangers. We’re Marines; that’ll confuse people—they’ll think it’s an Army Ranger op. Scratch that one.”

“How ’bout number four, sir, Detroit?” Seiffert asked.

“Yeah . . . yeah, sounds good. I’ll run it by MacMannis, but let’s go with it. I like it.
Red Wings
.”

By 20 June, Wood had
Red Wings
mapped out in detail, a detail that would accommodate the rules to which CJSOTF-A mandated such vehement adherence. As well, the OpsO drafted an official goal for the mission: “Disrupt anticoalition militia activity in the Korangal/Shuryek/ Pech region to further stabilize the area for the forthcoming 18 September 2005 national parliamentary elections.” However, since the majority of the ACM (anticoalition militia) attacks at that point had been orchestrated and undertaken by Shah and his men (intel had directly attributed eleven attacks to Shah by that point, including IED strikes, mortar and rocket attacks, and small-arms ambushes), “Commander Ismael” and his terrorist cadre were the clear targets.

The op would consist of five phases:

1.
Shaping:
A NAVSOF reconnaissance and surveillance team observes the NAIs, guiding the direct-action team of phase two to specific, prenumbered structure(s).

2.
Action on the Objective:
A Navy SEAL direct-action team inserts by fastrope from TF-Brown’s MH-47s onto the target(s) positively identified by the reconnaissance and surveillance team. Just minutes after the direct-action team inserts, the MH-47s return, inserting Kinser and a group of nineteen of his hand-selected Marines to form an inner cordon. The direct-action team, having linked up with their recon unit, kills or captures Shah and any of his men as Kinser’s team closely guards the objective. NAVSOF personnel then exfil on the craft that just inserted Kinser and his Marines. Simultaneously, members of Echo Company’s First Platoon form a blocking position at the opening of the Korangal Valley and Echo’s Third Platoon moves into the Shuryek Valley, each pushing southward, “up” their respective valleys, to interdict any of Shah’s cell that may have slipped away undetected. Once the NAVSOF teams lift off the ground, the Marines assume the command, or “supported” status, of the operation.

3.
Outer Cordon:
After the direct-action hit, Golf Company, reinforced with a platoon of Afghan National Army soldiers, inserts by helicopter at Korangal Village, establishes security, then moves by foot up the northwest shoulder of Sawtalo Sar into the village of Chichal, and links up with Kinser and his Marines, sweeping for insurgents and terrorists and searching for weapons caches along the way.

4.
Security and Stabilization:
In the days following the first three phases of the operation, Golf and Echo Company Marines maintain security of the region, conduct a MEDCAP, and find out the needs of the locals—improved roads, schools, wells, mosques, etc., and pass that information to provincial reconstruction teams.

5.
Exfiltration (exfil):
Depending on enemy activity, the Marines stay for as little as one week or as long as three or more weeks, then walk out to the Pech Valley Road, where convoys of Humvees will return them to Camp Blessing or Camp Wright at Asadabad, then continue to push regular patrols out of Camp Blessing to reinforce ties the Marines made with the locals during
Red Wings
.

Wood also developed a comprehensive indirect fires plan—able to be used throughout all phases of
Red Wings
: based in part on “Doghouse 10,” two 105 mm howitzers of the Army’s Task Force “Gun Devil,” located at Camp Wright at Asadabad. The guns, utilizing RAP rounds (rocket-assisted projectile rounds) could reach just far enough to accurately hit targets on the summit of Sawtalo Sar and the upper Korangal Valley. Wood, born and raised thinking, living, dreaming, and acting MAGTF and the synergy of combined arms, detailed a number of specific locations throughout each NAI for a call for fire to aid friendly forces—be those forces the initial reconnaissance and surveillance team, the SEAL direct-action team, Kinser and his Marines, the Golf Company outer cordon element, or either of the blocking positions—so that any of those friendlies could direct the psychologically and physically overwhelming high-explosive rounds onto any number of predetermined targets should the fight go in the wrong direction.

The OpsO would also carefully integrate close air support into the
Red Wings
plan, ensuring that both fixed- and rotary-wing CAS assets would be available to ground forces, should they need them. Wood tapped Casmer “Pigeon” Ratkowiak, ⅔’s air officer, to outline the specifics of the air side of
Red Wings,
although unlike the combined-arms assault they practiced back in Twentynine Palms, close air support would be included as an on-call asset only, like the howitzers of Doghouse. The reserved and complex Ratkowiak, a Marine F/A-18D Hornet aviator with nine hundred hours in the cockpit who was also trained as a forward air controller, would ensure that Army AH-64s would be ready as rotary-wing attack assets, that Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II “Warthogs” would be able to provide fixed-wing CAS, that Air Force C-130s would be ready to parachute-drop CDS (containerized delivery system) packs for resupply of food, water, ammo, and other vital matériel, and that Task Force Sabre’s transport and air ambulance Chinooks and Blackhawks were prepped for their roles as well. Pigeon was also ready to both advise and to deconflict with conventional aviation assets any SOF air platforms, such as the TF-Brown’s MH-47s and the devastating Air Force Special Operations AC-130 gunships.