Ambushed on Afghanistan’s ‘Red Mountain’

Ambushed on Afghanistan’s ‘Red Mountain’

The Independent News Alternative Real News

MARGAH, Afghanistan — The gunshot sounded like splitting wood. The American paratroopers, scattered across the hills of this rough border town in eastern Paktika province, dove for cover behind rocks, mud walls and irrigation ditches. A few seconds later, they trained their weapons on their attackers’ location.

The ensuing firefight — pitting the soldiers of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment plus their attached Afghan troops against a small band of Taliban fighters — was the climax to a suspense story told in reverse on April 8. The Americans’ 13-hour patrol began with a brief, intense gunfight then trailed off in mystery and ambiguity amid the unforgiving terrain and unfamiliar local culture in one of Afghanistan’s most strategic provinces.

It’s an exaggeration to say that Fox Company’s roughly 100 soldiers and their Afghan National Army (ANA) comrades are all alone in Margah. But not by much. Combat Outpost Margah — a football-field-size perimeter dotted with sandbags, plywood huts and earthen Hesco barriers — huddles under a hilltop observation post on a plain outside of town.

The base is resupplied by helicopter. The only vehicles that routinely leave the dirt-and-razor-wire walls are the tricked-out pickup trucks belonging to the co-located Afghan National Army unit. From COP Margah, small American patrols march into the countryside or drop in by helicopter, in a last-ditch effort by NATO to intercept insurgents sneaking across the border with Pakistan.

It’s dirty, difficult work in dangerous conditions. No Fox Company soldiers have died at COP Margah — but not for a lack of Taliban trying. One October assault on the base left the 92 Taliban dead and the overrun observation post in ruins. A two-day, helicopter-borne reconnaissance patrol the first week of April was targeted by rocket-firing insurgents.

Leading the April 8 patrols, 1st Lt. Sean McCune hadn’t meant to confront insurgents. He simply wanted to quietly gather information. Fox Company’s 2nd and 3rd Platoons would march — hopefully unseen — several miles over flower-speckled mountains, across rocky riverbeds and through the narrow mud corridors of a medieval Afghan village called Baqer Kheyl.

There, the Americans and their Afghan counterparts would interrogate Afghan men and boys and search their homes, hoping to zero in on the identities of the area’s insurgents.

But instead of resolving the mystery of Baqer Kheyl’s militants, Fox Company collided with the unknown insurgents just an hour after departing COP Margah, in the shadow of a place the Taliban called “Red Mountain.”

Cover of Darkness
McCune cursed himself. The stocky officer with the shaved head crouched among the poplars and underbrush with squad leader Sgt. Kevin Mahon. Young “trigger-pullers” of the 2nd Platoon were strung out before and behind them. With 3rd Platoon covering them, 2nd Platoon had crossed a wide, dry riverbed — a wadi — just in time.

No sooner had the Americans taken cover than a convoy of Afghan civilians riding in pickups and flatbeds trundled down the wadi past their position.

McCune did not kid himself that he and his troopers could remain hidden all day. But he had hoped to get close to Baqer Kheyl before giving away his location. Fox Company had left their outpost at 5 a.m., just as the horizon was shading from black to blue. “We should have left at four — [and] have some darkness to cover our movement,” McCune told Mahon.

It wasn’t clear whether the Afghans in the convoy had seen the soldiers. But someone had seen them. For 2nd Platoon was just emerging from the treeline when the first gunshot echoed off the surrounding hills. It had come from the wadi.

American machine-gunners leaped over piles of rocks and fumbled with their bulky weapons. One soldier dropped where he stood and ended up lying prone along a winding dirt path exposed to the wadi. McCune, Sgt. Clifford Edwards, Pvt. Bryan Schlund, radioman Pvt. Chris Munoz, a mortarman named Spec. J.K. Milam, an interpreter and this reporter huddled at the base of a hill, partially protected by some trees along the wadi’s edge.

AK-47s chattered. Rocket-propelled grenades whooshed. On one side of the wadi, 2nd Platoon opened fire with assault rifles and machine guns and 3rd Platoon on the other side. The soldier on the exposed pathway — an intelligence specialist who asked to remain anonymous — watched bullets kick up dirt divots mere feet away.

With a word from McCune, Milam flew into action. The thin, young soldier pulled a 60-millimeter tube from his backpack and slammed its baseplate into the earth. Digging in the packs of the soldiers around him, Milam found a high-explosive round. McCune called out the range and direction and Milam let the round slide into the tube.

He took aim, squeezed a trigger, and the tube coughed its lethal shape into a high arc over the trees. A few seconds later, there was a blast that drowned out the other sounds of combat.

Milam was reaching for his next round when Edwards yelled, “Cease fire!” A frantic 3rd Platoon soldier had radioed the sergeant to say the first mortar round had exploded just 30 feet from some Afghan National Army soldiers.

With Americans and their allies on both sides of the wadi and insurgents somewhere in between, Fox Company was in danger of destroying itself in the crossfire.

Air Cover
The flipside was that the insurgents were just about surrounded.

So with the Americans’ machine-gun fire walking onto their positions, the Taliban fighters broke contact … and disappeared among the boulders, trees and irrigation ditches.

Fearing a second attack, McCune ordered 2nd Platoon to climb the nearest high ground while 3rd Platoon continued covering it. Meanwhile, Edwards and Munoz worked their radios, begging for artillery and air support. Within minutes, the roar of jet engines announced the arrival of two F-15 Strike Eagle fighter-bombers. They orbited in a tight circle over 2nd Platoon’s heads, the shapes of bombs and missiles clearly visible under their wings.

Soon, the Strike Eagles had company. Two Apache helicopters, circling underneath the jet fighters, in the same direction. Artillery from a nearby base and mortars from COP Margah could not fire for risk of hitting the aircraft, but Edwards lined up a mortar barrage from the outpost, in the event the aerial armada got called away or grounded by bad weather.

Eying the assembled firepower, McCune felt the urge to blow something up. “I want to drop a GBU,” he said, referring to the Guided Bomb Units carried by the F-15s. “That would give me a chubby.”

It seemed he might get his chance. For even with the full weight of NATO’s air force stacked against them, the Taliban fighters were already preparing for their next attack.

Exactly how Fox Company knew this, they’d rather not discuss. Needless to say, once the fighting starts, everyone starts communicating. And the more anyone communicates, the more likely someone else is to overhear. Even when the Americans can’t see their assailants or even guess at their appearance, more often than not they can catch some of what their enemies are saying to each other.

As 2nd Platoon scaled the high ground — chest heaving, breaths wheezing, legs aching — one Talib told another that the Americans were near “Red Mountain.” Informed of this, Mahon peered around at the mountains, daubed yellow by clusters of spring flowers. “I don’t see no red mountain,” he drawled.

McCune scanned the hilltops and, for reasons he never explained, identified one as Red Mountain. He had COP Margah’s mortars zero in on it, just in case. Then he rallied his out-of-breath troops. “Let’s keep moving!”

Munoz, a 70-pound radio strapped to his back, probably spoke for the whole platoon when he told Mahon, “FYI, I hate my job.”

“FYI, we all hate our jobs,” Mahon shot back.

Source: Wired

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