Free Into the Fire: A Firsthand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle in the Afghan War by Bing West, Dakota Meyer Page A

to be a smart-ass, Meyer!”
    A few more rounds, still way high. I’m locked in parade rest.
    “Aye, Staff Sergeant.”
    He balanced the handset, considering whether to throw it at me. “Meyer, hurry up!”
    He had started calling in the artillery mission, and when I got to him he was asking me, “What do I say now?”
    “Left one hundred, drop two hundred,” I said.
    He repeated it on the radio.
    “What now?” he asked.
    “Fire for effect,” I said, “should be dead on.”
    “Okay, fire for effect,” he repeated over the radio.
    We settled behind some sandbags. Even before the shells landed, two of our Askars rushed up with their brand-new 203s, which are short, wide-barreled weapons that fire 40-millimeter grenades the size of a man’s fist. They plunked a few shells toward the shepherd and puffs of orange powder bloomed across the hillside. By mistake, the Askars were shooting training rounds, not explosive rounds.
    The shepherd scampered away. If he is still alive, he probably enlivens campfires in the Hindu Kush with his account of gas warfare. In old age, he will blame his ailments on a chemical weapon that was a mixture of talcum powder and red dye.
    The artillary rounds landed right on target. After the fire had ended, Staff Sgt. Kenefick looked at me and slapped me on the back.
    “I’m pretty good at that, aren’t I!” he said.
    We both burst out laughing. Somehow that stupid incident broke the tension between us. Over the next few days, we learned how to divide the tasks and work together.
    Dangam, a dusty border hamlet, had changed allegiances several times in the long war.The border meant nothing to the tribes. Smugglers, commuters, Taliban, local cops—everyone seemed to get along, like in the intergalactic bar in
Star Wars
. We couldn’t figure out much of what was going on. Dodd Ali, my closest Askar friend, said he and the other Askars were outsiders like us, so they had no idea who might be Taliban.
    I watched the town’s daily routines. The sub-governor calmly went to work inside the district compound below our outpost. The police chief puttered around in his truck, as though he didn’t have a care in the world. Night after night we saw the bobbing flashlightsgoing over the pass into Pakistan. We didn’t have a clue who was coming or going, or why.
    Our Askars insisted the Taliban were skirting around our outpost. They pointed at figures about seven hundred meters away, walking single-file, and shouted, “Dushmen! Dushmen!” Our rules of engagement required that any target display both hostile capability, like a rifle, and hostile intent, like aiming at us. I couldn’t plug someone for walking single-file. While we watched the district compound from one hilltop, insurgents were watching from other hilltops and chatting on their handheld radios. Our Askars said they used simple codes, like “the chickens [mortars] and horses [rockets] are in position.”
    At Lt. Johnson’s insistence, Dog Company had sent out a squad from Monti to stand guard with us on election day. Jeffords’ squad brought a badminton set from a care package from the States. We decided to set it up on the helo landing zone, the most exposed place on base, and have a tournament. We called it the No Taliban Badminton Tournament 2009, and we swatted the shuttlecock back and forth, hoping to lure a dushmen into shooting.
    Dodd Ali asked if he could shoot the shuttlecock out of the air with his squad automatic weapon, which shoots ten rounds a second. I said no; if he missed with the SAW, I’d be splattered all over the sandbags. I was “Meyetta” to Dodd Ali. He couldn’t believe I had ridden on the back of my cow, Tinker Bell. He was fun to talk to, open, friendly, and fearless. We would sit around talking and asking questions of each other like kids in middle school, learning as much as we could about each other. He proudly cleaned his SAW five times a day and absorbed every tip I gave him about shooting. He