The War In The Shadows
On Afghanistan's wild border, in search of a quicksilver enemy
KHOST, AFGHANISTAN--Camp Salerno's dark quiet was punctured by a whoosh and a boom, followed by a siren's shrill wail. Soldiers grabbed helmets, donned night-vision goggles, and scrambled for the bunkered command center. As the first of three explosions rent the night, the base's Super Cobra helicopter gunships lifted off in search of the attackers.
The attack was just one salvo in the escalating campaign to wipe out al Qaeda and the Taliban fighters who still make use of this dusty border province, their historic stronghold. The road from Kabul to Khost favors the guerrillas, as the Soviets learned to their peril when they failed to penetrate the 10,000-foot mountains that loom above. The Khost-Gardez pass, still the scene of ambushes, leads to Camp Salerno, the U.S. military's largest forward operating base near the Pakistani border. The three rockets fired by the unknown attackers landed between Salerno, home to 1,100 troops from Task Force 1-501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, from Fort Richardson, Alaska, and Chapman, the nearby Special Forces base named for a Special Forces soldier who was killed in the bloody Operation Anaconda battle here, just over two years ago.
The day after the rocket attacks, U.S. troops sallied forth from Camp Salerno to offer medical checkups and first aid to residents of nearby villages, who eventually led the soldiers to the craters where the rockets hit. The troops have been making inroads in the valley around Khost, once a hotbed of support for Osama bin Laden. But finding the attackers in the mountains is no easy matter. They prop crude artillery tubes in high mountain crevices and rig them with simple timers. By the time the devices detonate, the shooters are long gone.
The hunt for bin Laden here relies largely on three-to-five-day patrols by platoons to the high mountain border crossings. Second Platoon, Blackfoot Company set off on April 13, riding on welded metal benches in 2.5-ton trucks for the bone-jarring trip over rutted tracks and rock-strewn canyons called wadis. The soldiers dismount at a tiny village called Lakan to talk to the elders, but the streets are all empty. Leading the way down a narrow alley with high mud walls, the squad leader, Sgt. Ed Colon, whispers to his colleagues, "Black Hawk Down." The former Ranger was referring to the ambush in Somalia in 1993 that left 18American soldiers dead. Colon, on his third tour in Afghanistan, is a Puerto Rican native who hails from the Bronx. He has a handsome face and a broad smile, but it's his shaved head that attracts all the attention. In the alley, finally, some kids peep around a corner, and Colon's pal, Sgt. Chris Rigby, a medic who looks like Mel Gibson, screws up his face in a way that transcends all language, delighting the youngsters. By the time the patrol reaches the village marketplace, the elders emerge to invite platoon leader Sgt. Chris Corbett, a thin, 16-year veteran from Chattahoochee, Fla., to share tea on a rope bench dragged into the shade.
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