Within seconds, every man in the lead squad takes a bullet. A dozen Taliban fighters with rockets and belt-fed machine guns are shooting from behind cover at a distance of fifteen or twenty feet First Platoon is essentially inside a shooting gallery. At first, the sheer volume of firepower directed at Brennan’s squad negates any conceivable tactical response. At the bottom of the hill, Second Platoon hears an enormous firefight erupt, but they too just hold their fire and hope it turns out well. The Apache pilots watch this unfold below them but are powerless to help because the combatants are too close together. “Everything kind of slowed down and I did everything I thought I could do, nothing more and nothing less.”
“Out of nothing?-?out of taking your next step?-?just rows of tracers, RPGs, everything happening out of nowhere with no real idea of how it just … happened?-?but it happened,” Giunta told me. Giunta is from Iowa and joined the Army after hearing a radio commercial while working at a Subway sandwich shop in his hometown. He’s followed by a SAW gunner named Eckrode and then Staff Sergeant Erick Gallardo and then Specialist Sal Giunta, bravo team leader. Walking point is Sergeant Josh Brennan, an alpha team leader. military, this is known as an “L-shaped ambush.” Correctly done, a handful of men can wipe out an entire platoon. Parallel to the trail are ten more fighters with belt-fed machine guns and RPGs. Unknown to Winn and his men, three enemy fighters are arrayed across the crest of the ridge below them, waiting with AK-47s. The moon is so bright that they’re not even using night vision gear. The terrain falls off steeply on both sides into holly forests and shale scree.
The soldiers walk single file along the crest of the spur spaced ten or fifteen yards apart.
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