Victory Point (33 page)

“They’re egressing,” Grissom called out after scanning the ridges with his binoculars. “Konnie, keep the mortars raining down.”

“A-10s rollin’ in,” Pigeon interjected.

“Good. We need Dustoffs for the wounded. Get ’em in here. But work those A-10s for everything you can. Gun run after gun run on those fuckers running into the mountains,” commanded Grissom.

After Dorf’s mortar barrage, the enemy quit firing on Fox-3’s position, but a small group of Shah’s men, positioned just to the west of the mortar team on a small peak known to the grunts as Hill 2510 (for its altitude—in meters—on their maps) took a couple potshots at them. Returning fire immediately, the Marines around the mortars silenced the minuscule ambush. But then, as the Air Force A-10s raced toward the Chowkay, Shah’s main effort once again sprang forth, and began firing on Fox-3; not with the furor of the first ambush, but well coordinated and deadly, nonetheless.

“Middendorf, I need a mark for the A-10s.” Pigeon radioed the lieutenant with grids of Shah’s men’s current positions, asking not for high-explosive rounds, but for white phosphorus illumination mortars—to mark the extremists’ positions for the high-explosive rounds plugged into the A-10s’ seven-barrel high-speed rotary guns, soon to be available for close air support. With two mortar tubes now up and running, Middendorf and his Marines had the targets marked for Pigeon, who then passed a series of preliminary attack instructions to Grip-21 and Grip-11, the call signs for the two A-10s. But Grip-21’s inertial navigation guidance system went faulty, preventing the pilot from undertaking attack runs as he’d been accustomed to doing. Pigeon, who graduated at the top of his flight school class at Meridian, Mississippi, had, like all Marine combat aviators, close air support indelibly stamped into the DNA of his very being. He’d chosen the job as FAC—forward air controller—one of the most respected tours a Marine aviator can undertake—in order to be on the ground with those he’d trained for so many years to support. And now he was experiencing the ground side of things at their most intense. Ever concerned about a possible friendly-fire event, particularly with Grip-21’s guidance system out of commission, Pigeon made a handshake deal with the Air Force pilots—he would give a detailed “talk-on” to the A-10s of Fox-3’s position, then the FAC, once oriented, would talk the attack aircraft onto the enemy’s positions based on Fox-3’s location. But it took over twenty minutes before the A-10s positively identified Fox-3’s location, during which time Pigeon’s radio started to lose power and malfunction. But the determined FAC was able to get Grip-21 to launch a five-inch-diameter white phosphorus rocket onto ground in an area where he suspected Shah’s men had taken up positions; using that brightly burning mark, Pigeon talked the A-10s onto specific locations where they unleashed bursts of 30 mm rounds at a rate of one hundred per second. As Pigeon worked to fix his radio, the two Grip A-10s climbed in altitude and took up a holding pattern far to the west of the activity. But the Chowkay’s summer heat once again proved its potency, overheating Pigeon’s radio anew after he got it working, keeping the Grips from unleashing their cocked might for another set of runs.

“Venom-11,” Grip-21 began, “we’re being replaced by Boar-11 and Boar-21. They’ll be checking in soon. Good luck.” With mortars continuing to rain down on Shah’s fleeing men, all of the terrorist’s attacks, save for the occasional sniper shot, had ceased. But some of the most difficult work still lay ahead: Pigeon needed to coordinate not only the A-10 attacks against the fleeing enemy, but also the Dustoff Air Ambulance extraction of the wounded.

Soon after the drones of the Grips’ turbofans faded into the background of the Hindu Kush, the Boars sped into zone. Meanwhile, Pigeon’s radio operator had gotten the FAC’s communications up and running once again. Pigeon, who was accustomed to going into battle in the front seat of a Marine Corps F/A-18D Hornet, driving the supersonic aircraft with steel-cold nerves, carried that experience with him on his ground tour, under the press of combat. But it was one thing to be forced to watch fellow Marines thrown into the air by RPG blasts and to witness a mortar-shell burst just meters above his head, not to mention the continuous barrage of machine-gun rounds ripping throughout his position. Having to deal with his failing radio was quite another.

“Come on, Pigeon. Get that shit rollin’!” Konnie wailed. “Get some! Motherfuckers be turnin’ tail and runnin’! Clear some shit hot and shred those bastards! Dorf’s marks are on the ground!”

Boar-21 jumped on the net, “coaching” Pigeon: “Venom, slow it down, buddy. We know you’re in a shit sandwich. Take a second and key the mike
before
you talk. We’re here to help you, but if we can’t understand what you want to communicate, we can’t do anything but fly around way, way above all the action. Talk us on. Get us into the thick of it.”

Pigeon sat back and laughed at the irony of his situation. He remembered his time in the cockpit of a Hornet during OIF-I, supporting an FAC near Al Asad, in Iraq’s Al Anbar province.
That guy was in a panic,
he thought. Pigeon had told the FAC in Al Asad to slow it down, just as the Boar pilots directed him—but he wasn’t in a panic that day in the Hindu Kush, far from it, in fact. His radio was teetering on the edge of frying itself, sending out chopped transmissions. He finally got it working yet again.

“Konnie.” Pigeon looked toward the lieutenant. “Listen; these guys can’t attack unless they have a confirmed target. I’ve been too busy working this radio and coordinating the air side of things to get eyes on to confirm anything. Their rules, you know. You got a confirmed target?”

“Abso-fuckin’-lutely I got targets,” Konnie piped up. “All along that ridge to the east.” He peered through binoculars and passed positive identification of the fighters to Pigeon, noting their positions relative to Dorf’s illum marks. “The bad guys are fleeing. Smoke-check their asses. Every last one of ’em!”

Pigeon nodded, “Gotcha. Roger. Will do,” the FAC said, then he and Dorf expertly deconflicted the mortar fire, having Middendorf shut down the mortar barrage to ensure that the A-10s wouldn’t collide with a high-explosive mortar round meant for one of Ahmad Shah’s men. Seconds later, after passing to the A-10 pilot a “nine-line brief”—a standardized set of instructions guiding a pilot onto a ground target—Pigeon uttered the words that Konnie had been waiting so desperately to hear: “Boar-21, you’re
cleared-hot
for a thirty mike-mike gun run.”

“Roger.” Boar-21’s voice echoed from the radio. The Marines gazed skyward as the A-10 approached the target ridgeline, made a tight bank turn, then dove into an attack run. Cheers rang out as the target lit up like a massive, high-speed Fourth of July sparkler as the 30 mm rounds detonated in coruscating explosions upon impact. Then the Warthog banked hard, expending flares—standard operating procedure to cloak its path from potential incoming ground-to-air heat-seeking missiles—and pulled into the cobalt sky above. Heartbeats later, the sound of the furious salvo echoed throughout Fox-3’s position, a deliciously guttural
brrrrrrrrr!
of loosed high-explosive rounds, punctuated by the whine of the aircraft’s twin turbofan engines. Three more cleared-hot gun runs, and Pigeon sent the Boars back to base.

“Thanks for a great job,” Pigeon calmly announced.

“No problem. Anytime, Venom,” one of the pilots replied.

With that job completed, Pigeon’s most difficult task of the day began. The Army UH-60 Air Ambulance Dustoff medevac birds approached, accompanied by Army Shock AH-64 Apache gunships. Einarson and Wilson were hurting, and Pigeon knew it.
Get ’em out of here, back to Bagram, where they’ll have the best medical care in the world,
the FAC thought. As Middendorf’s mortar barrage and Pigeon’s A-10 attacks were going down, Crisp had led Marines carrying the wounded to a designated helicopter landing zone, a high point to the west of their position. There they waited . . . and waited. One of the Marines who helped haul the wounded up the hill, Lance Corporal Mark Perna—one of Wilson’s closest friends—watched as Wilson passed out on morphine, and waited for the extract, wondering if his friend would ever see the light of day again.

“Okay. They’re close. Approaching our position,” Pigeon stated.

“Got a message from battalion,” Grissom interrupted. “CJTF-76 is demanding a SEAD package before they’ll let
any
Dustoff inbound.”

“What!” Konnie shouted. “Let’s get those birds on the ground, get the Marines back to Bagram! What the fuck good is a suppression package going to do now? Those guys are in retreat!” Pigeon agreed, knowing that with AH-64 escort—more than capable of not just prepping an LZ, but engaging specific-point targets—starting up a SEAD would just waste precious mortar rounds.

“Check in the box,” Grissom replied. “Anything with a helicopter needs to be done to the letter of the rules after the Chinook shootdown, every box needs to be checked. Let’s just do what we gotta do to get these guys out.”

Although little known to the general public, Dustoffs, a blanket term for Army medevac Air Ambulance units, rank as some of the most selfless, capable aviators in the entire United States military. Flying completely unarmed—only their bright Red Cross symbol distinguishing them from standard UH-60 Blackhawks—the Dustoffs (a name coined in Vietnam because of the dusty rotor wash of the aircraft at landing zones, and today an acronym for Dedicated Unhesitating Selfless Service to our Fighting Forces), the Dustoffs have earned a reputation of flying not only into hot landing zones, but
any
landing zone, regardless of threat level.

“Okay,” Grissom said after conferring with Middendorf. “Let’s get this SEAD under way.” The captain laughed. But while fast inbound, the two Dustoff UH-60s, commanded by Army Chief Warrant Officer Jim Gisclair, and accompanied by two Shock AH-64 Apaches, didn’t have direct communications with Pigeon. And with the mortar barrage running for the suppression package, Middendorf needed to know just when the birds would arrive so he could work with Pigeon to deconflict the lobbed mortars with the inbound Dustoffs.

“Sir, I think you should know that four Army helicopters just entered the Chowkay Valley,” came the nervous message from a Whiskey Company Marine at a vehicle checkpoint at the opening of the Chowkay to Rob Scott.

“What! They’re there already! The SEAD is under way!” Without deconflicting the mortars with the Dustoffs, a friendly-fire disaster was imminent. Rob immediately got on the hook with Grissom, who passed the information to Pigeon, who contacted Middendorf. Middendorf, although not formally trained as a fire support team leader, had taken on the job for the mission, drawing on skills he’d learned at Infantry Officers’ Course as well as from technical publications he’d read dealing with the complex art. With direct comms finally established with the Dustoffs, Middendorf arranged for a “lateral offset” deconfliction, allowing the 81s’ barrage to continue as the birds slipped by to the west of the mortars’ trajectories; as well, the 105s at Asadabad, under the watch of Matt Tracy, had been able to range to a ridge to the north of the Chowkay and suppress any enemy activity there.

“Dustoffs are here,” Pigeon stated. “They’re ready to extract the wounded.” The FAC grabbed his radio and sprinted to the top of the hill where the Dustoffs would land.

“Okay. Let’s get these Marines the fuck out of here,” Grissom declared as he folded his arms. “Okay. SEAD complete, bring the Dustoffs in.”

Minutes later, the escort gunships arrived. AH-64 Apaches, driven by Shock Army aviators who wanted nothing more than to smoke bad guys and help the Dustoffs get the wounded out, roared overhead, energizing the grunts’ spirits with their menacing head-on profiles and the growling drone of their engines.
Heavily armed, rotary-wing CAS—delicious,
Konnie thought to himself. The unarmed Blackhawk Dustoffs orbited in the safe distance.

Pigeon, talking the Apaches onto their position, then built the situational awareness of the Shock aviators to the greater battlefield. Although forged from different air-ground combat doctrine (the Army considers helicopter gunships to be “maneuver” platforms, used to attack ground targets without ground control, a mission called “close-combat attack”), Pigeon and the Shock aviators seemed to read one another’s minds. His hair practically standing on end at the sight of the raw skill and professionalism of the Apache aviators as they coursed up the valley, Pigeon knew that the tide of the morning battle had decisively shifted to the side of the Marines. The FAC passed his plan to the Shock aviators: scan the ridgelines first for enemy, engage them if found, then the FAC would bring the Dustoffs in to land.

“We’re taking small-arms fire,” the lead Apache coolly informed Pigeon as the craft passed over one of Cheshane Tupay’s ridges to the east of Fox-3. Pigeon radioed a quick six-line brief, a set of instructions, similar to a nine-line, first developed by the 160th SOAR(A) aviators for autonomous aerial fire missions.

“Cleared to engage.” Pigeon gave the call for the Shocks to attack the targets. The two Apaches lit up the ridgeline with their 30 mm guns and 2.75-inch Hydra rockets. They made a second pass—and then a third. The grunts of Fox-3 stood in awe as the Shock pilots maneuvered their aircraft in ways the Marines didn’t even think possible—at one time one of the Apaches hung vertical, facing directly onto a ridge, while firing, then rotated ninety degrees, then another ninety on another axis, as the pilots continued the attack. One of the most amazing displays of combat aviation he’d ever seen, the performance of the Shock aviators that morning caused Pigeon to wonder if he should have flown helicopters instead of Hornets.