A day of protecting Purgatory: Rocket attack on base sparks raids, talks

(Day 3 of a four-day Stars and Stripes series, "Afghanistan: Silent Warriors." Click here for the series index page, with links to the other stories.)

The attack started a chain of events including a late-night cordon search of a nearby village by troops from the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Battalion, or Triple Deuce, and a Special Forces team.

“There was an informant who says he knows who did it. Apparently [it was] the same man … who beat him during the Taliban rule,” said Maj. Brian Maijala, Firebase Purgatory’s mission commander. “He’s reluctant to help, afraid of the consequences.”

By early afternoon the next day, Green Berets were interviewing a second informant at the front gate. Fifty yards away, Sgt. Joe Morris, the camp interrogator, sat with a man soldiers spotted earlier signaling from atop a hillock overlooking Purgatory.

Later, Triple Deuce soldiers using intelligence from the first raid grabbed a suspect trying to board a bus a mile away, a guy they had nicknamed “Stumpy” for his limp, wanted because of his possible connections to the Taliban.

The Purgatory mission is manifold, but boils down to trying to pacify a former Taliban stronghold and blocking insurgents moving into the interior from Pakistan.

A Special Forces soldier, who goes only by the name of “Alex” because of his clandestine operation, pointed southwest toward Pakistan. Yes, the nearby town of Qalaat is relatively stable.

“But you cross those mountains, and the love ends,” he said.

When the love ends, it’s up to these soldiers to react, investigate and try to quash the next attempt. While every day is different in Purgatory, many just blend into another.

When Maijala headed into Qalaat he conveyed his displeasure to the local leadership. The Zabol provincial governor was in Kabul, but Maijala had a long meeting with Hajji Naquebullah, the deputy governor.

The 10th Mountain officer was blunt. If locals don’t rat out the attackers, “what I’ll do is tighten security, and maybe the [Provincial Reconstruction Team] doesn’t come back to do what they do,” building schools and public works projects, Maijala said.

At first, Naquebullah seemed indifferent. Then, he brightened. “We’ll work shoulder-to-shoulder to help each other,” he said through a translator.

The officer requested the deputy governor spread the word for villagers to stay off the mesa near the firebase or risk the consequences.

“We need to keep villagers safe, and I will keep my soldiers safe,” Maijala said.

Late that afternoon, a group of 10th Mountain Division infantry, anti-tank soldiers and scouts escorted a truckload of Afghanistan Defense Force commandos into the village of Khalaa, on the backside of the mesa. Soldiers under the command of 1st Lt. David Hawk, Purgatory’s maneuver force executive officer, encircled Khalaa’s mud-walled compounds.

Afghan soldiers swept in, rousting out village elders, searching the mosque for weapons. Outside, Hawk asked elders who fired the rocket, separating them during interrogations to compare stories.

“The story was, the Taliban showed up in the middle of the night and fired a rocket,” Hawk said in the fading light. “They got a description of them, but they didn’t see them,” he added, savoring the contradiction.

With soldiers pulling security below, Hawk, his driver, Sgt. Chris Tuccio, along with some scouts led by 1st Lt. Andrew Lembke, spent the night on the mesa. The next morning, after searching old Russian fighting positions on the east side, Hawk, Tuccio and the scouts checked the center of the mesa for where the rocket was fired.

At about 9:20 a.m., Tuccio crouched like a bird dog, his eyes focused 50 yards away.

“LT, there’s a rocket firing position!” A 107 mm Russian-made rocket slanted on rocks pointed roughly toward a militia compound south of Purgatory.

“I am the freakin’ man!” Tuccio shouted, hands raised triumphantly.

A battery-powered clock was set to just after 10. But the improvised timer had separated from the rocket.

Using timers provides an alibi, Tuccio said. “They can say, ‘I was in my village. Someone must have sneaked in and done it in the middle of the night.’ In reality, they’re walking up here in the middle of the day to set them, knowing it would go off 12 hours later.”

Finding the rocket only spun more theories.

Did the soldiers interrupt the attack or did the timer simply come off? Is this the work of Taliban, or bored locals with leftover Russian weapons?

A few nights later, someone fired another 107 mm rocket from the opposite direction.

The next investigation is inevitable.