The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor Read online

  At 5:58 a.m., as the sun started to rise over the valley, the assault began. Five U.S. soldiers manned five guard stations, near the entrance of the camp and on four Humvees. Those spots were obvious targets for the enemy, as were the command center and the various barracks. Strategically, the Taliban fighters focused on the mortar pit, the location of the only guns at the outpost that could return fire with any effectiveness against their positions on the mountainside: one 60-millimeter and two 120-millimeter mortars, the big guns.

  “Allahu Akbar!” the insurgents cried, seemingly with the blast of every rocket and the crash of each mortar fired into the air: “God is great.”3

  After a short and intense assault, Taliban fighters began spilling down from the southern mountain, through the wire, past the mortar pit, and into the camp.

  “Mujahideen have entered the base!” rejoiced one such “holy warrior.”

  “The Christianity center is under attack!” another of the Taliban cried.

  “Long live the mujahideen!” yelled a third. “No helicopters are here yet! Let’s just hit them!”

  He was right about the aircraft. The Americans at the outpost had called for air support—they had little hope of surviving otherwise—but the Apache attack helicopters had not yet arrived, and they wouldn’t get there for more than another hour.

  The Americans fought. Over the past three years, U.S. troops had died on their way to construct the outpost; they had died clearing the path to establish the outpost; they had died patrolling the area that surrounded the outpost; they had died driving from the outpost; they had died commanding the outpost; and they had died pursuing the mission of the outpost. Now, as the enemy burst through into their camp, a small group of just over fifty American soldiers had no alternative but to do whatever they could to stay off that grim list. There was no more time for them to wonder why they were there. It was time to fight—and for some, it would be time to die.

  BOOK ONE

  “With Your Shield or on It”

  ROLL CALL

  Main Characters: Book One

  International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)4 2006–2007

  At Jalalabad Airfield, Nangarhar Province:

  Colonel John “Mick” Nicholson, Commander, 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (BCT), 10th Mountain Division

  Lieutenant Colonel Chris Cavoli, Commander, 1-32 Infantry Battalion, 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division

  At Forward Operating Base Naray, Kunar Province:

  Lieutenant Colonel Joe Fenty, Squadron Commander, 3-71 Cavalry Squadron (“3-71 Cav”), 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division

  Lieutenant Colonel Mike Howard, Squadron Commander, 3-71 Cav

  Command Sergeant Major Del Byers, 3-71 Cav Command Sergeant Major

  Major Richard Timmons, 3-71 Cav Executive Officer

  Captain Ross Berkoff, 3-71 Cav Intelligence Officer

  Captain Pete Stambersky, Delta Company Commander, assigned from the 710th Brigade Support Battalion

  Captain Dennis Sugrue, 3-71 Cav Headquarters Troop Commander

  Working throughout Kunar and Nuristan Provinces:

  Able Troop, 3-71 Cav, 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division

  Captain Matt Gooding, Troop Commander

  First Lieutenant Ben Keating, Troop Executive Officer

  First Sergeant Todd Yerger, First Sergeant

  First Lieutenant Vic Johnson, 1st Platoon Leader

  Sergeant Jeremy Larson, 1st Platoon Section Leader

  Sergeant First Class Milton Yagel, 2nd Platoon Sergeant

  Staff Sergeant Adam Sears, 2nd Platoon Senior Scout

  Specialist Shawn Passman, 2nd Platoon gunner for platoon sergeant

  Private First Class Brian M. Moquin, Jr., 2nd Platoon scout

  Private Second Class Nick Pilozzi, 2nd Platoon scout

  Specialist Moises Cerezo, medic attached to 2nd Platoon

  Staff Sergeant Matthew Netzel, Troop Headquarters Platoon Sergeant

  Sergeant Dennis Cline, M60 mortarman attached to Able Troop

  Barbarian Troop, 3-71 Cav, 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division

  Captain Frank Brooks, Troop Commander

  First Lieutenant Erik Jorgensen, Troop Fire Support Officer

  First Lieutenant Aaron Pearsall, 2nd Platoon Leader

  Cherokee Company, 3-71 Cav, 3rd BCT, 10th Mountain Division

  Captain Aaron Swain, Troop Commander

  Captain Michael Schmidt, Troop Commander

  Staff Sergeant Chris “Cricket” Cunningham, sniper and kill team leader

  Staff Sergeant Jared Monti, fire-support and targeting NCO attached to Cherokee Company

  Sergeant Patrick Lybert, recon team leader

  Private First Class Brian Bradbury, fire-support specialist attached to Cherokee Company

  On the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mehtar Lam, Laghman Province:

  Lieutenant Colonel Tony Feagin, team head

  Trainers of the Afghan National Army (ANA) Troops at Camp Kamdesh, Nuristan Province:

  Master Sergeant Terry Best

  Sergeant Buddy Hughie

  On the Home Front:

  Kristen Fenty, wife of Lieutenant Colonel Joe Fenty

  Gretchen Timmons, wife of Major Richard Timmons

  Ken and Beth Keating, parents of Lieutenant Ben Keating

  Heather McDougal, girlfriend of Lieutenant Ben Keating

  CHAPTER 1

  Every Man an Alexander

  The bad dreams began long before the troops of 3rd Squadron, 71st Cavalry Regiment, or “3-71 Cav,” pushed north in March 2006. The troops blamed the nightmares on the Mefloquine, the pills they were required to take each “Malaria Monday” to guard against that disease. Some Army doctors argued that the pills should stop being distributed, convinced they could cause far worse side effects than just restless nights, including depression, paranoia, hallucinations, and even mental breakdowns. Of course, such symptoms could be tough to detect in a place where depression and paranoia might just be the most appropriate reactions to the surrounding reality.

  On March 12, 2006, hours before the first leg of the convoy pulled out and began its nearly four-hundred-mile trek north from Forward Operating Base Salerno, in southeastern Afghanistan, insurgents had already made their presence known. Enemy fighters detonated an improvised explosive device, or IED, in Kunar Province—where First Lieutenant Ben Keating and his men were heading—as another U.S. convoy drove through. The explosion destroyed a Humvee and killed four Army Reservists from an Engineer Battalion out of Asheville, North Carolina.5

  But Kunar was hardly the only danger zone. Before Keating and the other men from 3-71 Cav could even get there, they would have to stop in Kabul, where, on that very day, two insurgents wearing explosive vests killed four civilians and severely wounded two more, one a young girl. (They missed their target, an Afghan politician who ran a government reconciliation commission.) On the same day, other insurgents attacked a convoy of Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers on the Kabul–Kandahar Highway. Nobody was killed in that attack, but not for the Taliban’s lack of trying.

  To help his men deal with these kinds of horror stories and with the fear they all felt about moving to an area widely reputed to be untamed and deadly, Keating tried to keep the mood light as the medium-sized convoy—eight Humvees and two trailers—headed toward possible danger. He joked that this, the lead Humvee, with a Mark 19 grenade launcher in its turret, was only the second brand-new vehicle he’d ever owned. As Able Troop6 pushed north, the lieutenant held the microphone of his MICH ranger headset up to the speaker of his CD player and provided his men with a soundtrack:

  She was a fast machine

  She kept her motor clean

  She was the best damn woman that I ever seen…

  “You Shook Me All Night Long,” from AC/DC’s album Back in Black, was the sort of head-banging anthem that flicked a switch in the minds of young men and set them on a course toward conquest. Keating, at twenty-seven, may have looked the part of
an Army stud, but what few knew about him was that he was deeply devout, disapproving if not sanctimonious on the subject of the hedonistic pursuits of the young. The drinking and carousing he’d witnessed as a student at the University of New Hampshire had disgusted him, and shortly after 9/11 he’d delivered a guest sermon at his parents’ church, in a small town in Maine, in which he’d lambasted the vacuous immorality of his college peers. He’d mellowed since then, but he had remained chaste and was convinced he walked the path of righteousness.

  Neither Keating nor any of the other men of 3-71 Cav had much of an idea of what their mission would entail, or for that matter even where they were going, in anything but the vaguest sense. While prepping for the trip north from Forward Operating Base Salerno, they’d heard the whispers, the military gossip:

  “Oh, you’re going up north,” soldiers would say. “It’s bad up there.”

  Now off they went, 3-71 Cav, in four different convoys, with additional supplies to be ferried via helicopter. For Able Troop’s journey, Keating—his Humvee in the lead—rode shotgun in the truck commander seat as his driver, Private Second Class Nick Pilozzi, steered the vehicle over both paved highways and gritty gravel roads. Sergeant Darian Decker, their gunner, sat on a strap in the turret, holding his Mark 19 grenade launcher. Sergeant Vernon Tiller, Able Troop’s chief mechanic, was in back.

  A few Humvees behind them, in the command-and-control truck, sat Captain Matt Gooding, the leader of Able Troop. Gooding had planned every part of this trip, coordinating logistics and making sure the convoy would have enough fuel. En route, he would keep the mortarmen on the ground apprised of the convoy’s position at all times and alert the pilots of the choppers and planes above whenever ground fire support was out of range.

  Keating—the executive officer, or second in command, of Able Troop—took note as the convoy steered through the pass on the road between Khost and Gardez. As he wrote to his parents, the “weather wasn’t great—rain in the foothills turned into snow in the mountains. The soil in most of Afghanistan is a heavy clay, rock-hard when dry, but slick as ice after rain or snow. The road has no guardrails or boulders to clearly define its edge, which falls off several hundred feet to the valley floor.” The sight of a truck speeding by would make everyone’s heart skip a beat. As they rolled through the pass, the temperature changed from a freezing chill to almost 90 degrees within a half hour. The bizarre weather change was just one of the road trip’s surprises, in a journey full of nothing but—especially considering that before their deployment to Afghanistan two months earlier, in January, many 3-71 Cav troops had never been outside of the continental United States.

  Keating made sure to take pictures all along the way to show to his beloved parents, his older sister, Jessica, and his new girlfriend, Heather McDougal. Although he had spent three years after high school working at her father’s apple orchard, picking Macintoshes and Honey Crisps while trying to figure out what to do with his life, Keating hadn’t actually known Heather all that well back then. She was just fourteen when they first met, almost a decade ago now, and they’d lost touch after he left the job at the orchard. But the previous fall, Keating and McDougal—now a college junior—had struck up a conversation online, and at Christmas they’d met up again at his parents’ church in Maine. They were both surprised by how strong their feelings were for each other. They exchanged intense emails and instant messages whenever they could. It was an unusual way to fall in love, but it was their only option at the moment.

  Ever a creature of the modern Army, Keating would later turn his snapshots into a PowerPoint presentation that he sent to McDougal and his family, titled “ROAD TRIP.” One page read:

  Wrote Keating to his family: “The route traversed two high mountain passes of elevations above 2,000 meters ASL [above sea level] and followed the K[u]nar River on a treacherous road from the city of Jalalabad to the camp at Naray.” (Photo courtesy of the Keating family)

  As they traveled, Keating and his men, wary of insurgents who might be hiding out among the locals, stopped to set up temporary defensive perimeters that would allow civilians to pass them. Herds of camels ran alongside the convoy where the road flattened out and the danger of slipping off an edge declined. When they reached a rocky plain, further evidence of civilization emerged.

  “If you’ve ever wondered what a people do when they’ve lived in a place with nothing but rocks and sand for five thousand years,” Keating wrote to his friends and family, “wonder no more. Walls, they build walls. There are rock walls everywhere, without rhyme or reason.”

  Afghan males, mostly boys and elders, would come to the edge of the road, smiling—even laughing—as if they were all in on some joke that the recent arrivals had yet to get. They wore hats, tunics, and loose-fitting trousers, which the U.S. troops referred to as “man-jams.”

  The gear worn by Keating and his men was more sophisticated: combat uniforms, pixelated grayish camouflage “go-to-work” suits; bulletproof vests; mesh vests with pouches and compartments for canteens, grenades, and ammunition; military combat helmets; and kneepads. This all amounted to no less than fifty pounds per man, and that was before adding a rifle, a supply of water, or an assault pack, not to mention the things they carried, the letters and photographs, the chewing tobacco, the cigarettes, the talismans.

  The drivers slowly steered their Humvees and trucks as the flat, barren landscape gave way to densely forested mountains. With the exceptions of the enemy weapons and the cheap Toyota Hiluxes clanking along the roads, this part of Afghanistan did not look to Ben Keating to have changed much since the war with the USSR in the 1980s, or even since the British were felled there almost a century before. Not that his own passport matched his scholarship: aside from a weekend trip to Montreal for a hockey tournament at around the age of ten and a family trip to the United Kingdom when he was twenty, Ben Keating hadn’t been outside the United States until this deployment.

  In December 2005, Keating had visited a Portland, Maine, bookstore and bought a Christmas present for his father. Sean Naylor’s Not a Good Day to Die detailed Operation Anaconda, the bloody campaign undertaken by the United States in March 2002 to flush out an Al Qaeda stronghold in southeastern Afghanistan. In an inscription in the front of the book, Keating wrote that the contents would give his dad, Ken, “a pretty clear picture of what the enemy threat looks like.”

  He continued:

  I want to thank you for all that you’ve taught me. I have excelled thus far in my short career because of what I learned from you on all those afternoons in the woodlots and fields of southern Maine. Even for me, a “Big-Picture Guy,” the idea of dying for one’s country is a little too abstract. I have no desire to meet my end in Afghanistan, but it’s a commitment to family (that I learned from you) which compelled me to join and serve.

  Your dedication as a faithful father and pastor taught me to extend my definition of family to my men. I assure you that my men are the answers to the questions you so often ask. I have felt called to this job and blessed by the challenges. I am continually rewarded when I see eighteen-year-old boys bear up under pressure and carry themselves with the newfound pride of men. They fully understand that they are the face of America in the world.

  For the men in my command, I have worked very hard to make that your face. Because it is the one that has always represented respect, integrity and love for me. Thank you for all you have given me. I am confident that it will see me through this next challenge as faithfully as all those in the past.

  With love and continued admiration,

  Ben

  Ben Keating was destined for greatness, of this he was sure. After finishing ROTC at the University of New Hampshire, where he was president of the Young Republicans, he had joined the military because he expected someday to be a U.S. senator from Maine, charged with voting on whether or not to send American troops into harm’s way, and he didn’t think it would be right to ask those future troops to fight if he had never do
ne so himself.

  Assigned to something of a ragtag platoon at the Army post at Fort Drum, New York, home of the 10th Mountain Division, Lieutenant Keating had thrown himself into his job, putting overweight soldiers on diets, counseling service members who were having marital problems, and mediating disputes with landlords for those of his troops who didn’t live on base. He loved leading his men, and he wasn’t particularly happy about being taken away from them when he was promoted to be the executive officer, or “XO,” of Able Troop, responsible for administration, logistics, and millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. Platoons consist of anywhere from sixteen to forty soldiers, and Keating missed his joes; he preferred mentoring them to serving in what was often an administrative job, even if the paper-pushing was done on the front lines.

  As 3-71 Cav’s resident warrior-poet, Ben Keating seized any opportunity he could to lecture, and he spent part of the convoy’s northward journey teaching the troops about the history of this land they were in and the foreign forces that had invaded it over the centuries. He’d brought along a number of books to Afghanistan that he’d read for college history classes. He was thrilled to be in the country where Alexander the Great had taken an arrow to the leg and almost died, but he was concerned, too, by the stories of how challenging this place had been for both Alexander and Genghis Khan—to say nothing of the USSR, which had withdrawn ignominiously in 1989 after nearly a decade of bloody battle with fierce Afghan warriors, having suffered an estimated fifteen thousand casualties.