Friday's Attack

08:03 AM Friday. A mortar missile sailed through the sky and detonated just about 100 meters from my position, and then another one. What the fuck? Luckily both landed in the ditch. At the same moment, machine guns started firing from several different positions in the mountains. We are under attack. Some other explosions were close, probably RPGs.

My guard commander had asked me just a half hour ago, “Sir! Is it gonna be a half day today?” “No, don’t think so, expect the Taliban is gonna ambush us,” I answered.

We went through exactly the same evacuation procedure as the previous attack, except this time the vehicles turned up for us without any request. I quickly took the clients to the vehicles and sent them to the police station, the nearest safe haven.

It was a serious firefight, more than an hour long. It was a miracle nobody was injured. Some vehicles were zipped by bullets.

The US military confirmed that we can’t get air support, for some reason I suppose, because they’re busy in Kandahar, or worse, they don’t give a shit about us. Also, no support from the Afghan National Army because it s Friday and they are all having a bloody day off, so we have to leave the area even after all the enemy are gone, because there is no evidence from the air to know if they are really gone or just waiting for another opportunity. So we had to withdraw all the clients and all the machinery for today.

While my 2IC took care of the clients I remained in the field to take care of the expensive construction machines left behind. The fucked up thing was that the Indian operators took the keys from the machinery so when the local drivers came to recover them it was a huge fuck up; they can’t start them.

By the time we realized that particular hiccup, all clients had gone back to the base because of the ongoing firefight.
I contacted my Gurkha on base and requested that he bring the keys. But all the operators had already disappeared into their hutches, so it was really difficult to find them. Several hours later my Gurkha 2IC finally got the keys to me.
In the end, my guards drove the machinery back from the work site, including my guard commander himself, who rode a roller back to the overnight parking.

On the way back I also found several dump trucks and a bitumen lorry. Most of the Indian operators quit and left their vehicles on the spot but out of my area of responsibility. As the very last team out I had to recover them but I didn’t have enough drivers, because they were busy driving the dump trucks and steamrollers, so I had to drive my own team leader vehicle back to base. But one of my bosses got to drive the bitumen lorry.