objective for the combined Afghan and American forces is the northern town of Mazari-Sharif and the fortress of Qala-i-Janghi, held by the Taliban army. If the Northern Alliance can capture these targets, it will be able to bring under its control all of northern Afghanistan and then proceed to capture the country’s capital, Kabul, farther south. A great deal of fighting and bombing, however, are necessary before this objective can be attained.

Nelson and five of his men set off behind General Dostum and his forces, leaving Cal Spencer, Pat Essex, Charles Jones, Scott Black, Ben Milo, and Fred Falls behind to coordinate logistics and await an air drop of medical supplies and blankets for Dostum’s men. The immediate objective for Dostum and Nelson is the town of Dehi. En route, they pass settlements that have been decimated by the Taliban. At Dehi, Dostum’s men load supplies onto their horses and pack mules and move on toward Chapchal, crossing the cold Darya Suf River. Sam Diller can already feel blood running down his legs from his saddle sores as the contingent begins climbing a six-thousand-foot mountain.

Catching up with Dostum, Nelson and his men are welcomed to the general’s mountain headquarters, which consists of three caves whose walls are covered with horse dung and feel like fur. That night, Dostum asks Nelson to bomb a Taliban encampment some miles away. Although Nelson believes it is too distant for an accurate sighting, he agrees to order the bombs if Dostum can prove the Taliban are really there. To his amazement, Dostum picks up a walkie-talkie and talks with the enemy, thus reassuring Nelson. When the first bombing attack from an American B-52 is far off target, Nelson argues that he has to get closer to the encampment so he can convey accurate coordinates to the bomber. Although he is averse to putting Nelson or his men in dangerous proximity to the enemy, Dostum reluctantly agrees, and the bombing then begins to wipe out the Taliban position.

Meanwhile, Dostum positions his men on horseback to charge the Taliban trenches and bunkers. Stanton, who writes as if he were there himself, gives a vivid description of the battle, in which the horsemen ride through blazing gunfire to reach the Taliban soldiers and overcome them. Nelson now realizes that, if the Americans can coordinate air support with Dostum’s fierce horsemen, they can win. He also knows that he must split the team up again and send Sam Diller north to call in bombs to destroy the Taliban’s tanks and other mechanized forces before those forces can reinforce the ground soldiers.

Sam Diller’s odyssey is one of the highlights of Stanton’s book. With only two other Americans, thirty Alliance soldiers, and a meager supply of equipment and food, he does what is expected and significantly helps Nelson and others subdue the enemy. The key to his efforts, Stanton says, is stealth and speed. Moving deep into Taliban territory, the group situates itself high above the Taliban’s flank and calls in air strikes. Not until they rendezvous weeks later at Mazar do Nelson and Diller, nearly dead from hunger and fatigue, see each other again.

On October 25, the day after the first battle, Dostum and Nelson start riding from Cobaki to the battlefield across the Darya Suf River. Dostum has lined up several hundred horsemen and foot soldiers to face the Taliban, who have tanks and heavy weapons to oppose them. Nelson knows he must destroy these mechanized forces with air strikes, He does so as the battle moves ahead, and once again the combined forces are successful. This time, their success requires the heroics of General Dostum, who charges ahead of his men when they are momentarily stymied to engage the remnants of the Taliban fighters.

Back at K2, Dean Nosorog (referred to throughout simply as “Dean” by Stanton) is becoming increasingly impatient to get into the fray. He finally does, landing by helicopter with his team near Ak Kupruk to assist General Atta in retaking the village and attacking Shulgareh along with Dostum’s forces and Nelson’s team. Once Shulgareh falls, Dostum maintains, Mazar will fall and so will Afghanistan’s six northern provinces. On the helicopter with Dean are Lieutenant Colonel Bowers and Major Mark Mitchell and his team, who are ferried to Dostum’s base camp. Bowers becomes Dostum’s liaison, taking over from Nelson and bringing with him needed supplies and an additional willingness to fight, much to Dostum’s gratification.

The battles continue moving northward toward Mazar. Although Dostum and Atta are perennial rivals for power, the two warlords coordinate their forces effectively, encouraged and supported by the Americans. At one point, on November 5, Milo, Essex, and an Air Force soldier named Winehouse are almost overrun by the Taliban, but they survive. After Shulgareh falls, the next objective is the Tanghi Gap, the gateway to Mazar-i-Sharif, which also falls. By November 10, Dostum’s forces, along with the Special Forces teams, enter Mazar and prepare to lay siege to the Taliban fortress of Qala-i-Janghi.

During all this time, the soldiers keep their communications with family and others to a minimum. Rare phone calls to wives simply reassure them that their husbands are safe, but that is all the men can say. For security reasons, the press also is kept in the dark. Special Forces like to keep their reputation as “the quiet professionals” intact, though perforce their stories eventually come out. Stanton vividly details the hardships the men endured; although his book includes a few photographs of the soldiers and the Afghan terrain, the illustrations are almost superfluous.

The fight to take the fortress of Qala-i-Janghi is the most furious battle Stanton describes. It brings his book full circle to the point at which it began. Although Dostum is able to obtain the surrender of six hundred Taliban fighters, Islamic law prevents men from intimately touching one another. Thus, searches are perfunctory, and the prisoners secrete within their robes pistols, grenades, and other weapons. Moreover, they are flimsily bound with cloth turbans. The prisoners are thus able to break free at an opportune moment, and they begin to attack their captors. In the ensuing fight, many Taliban and their Afghan captors are killed or wounded, along with Mike Spann, the first American operative to die in Afghanistan. The riot is finally subdued, and among the Taliban survivors is John Walker Lindh, who is later sent back to the United States to await trial as a traitor.

In an epilogue to his book, Stanton says: By entering Afghanistan with a small force, and by aligning themselves with groups that once had been battling each other and pointing them in one direction at the Taliban, U.S. forces found robust support among Afghans. They proved the usefulness of understanding and heeding the “wants and needs” of an enemy, and the local population that may support it. Awareness is the soldier’s number one tool in his kit, beside his M-4 rifle. To win wars against enemies like the Taliban, which are often stateless in their affiliation, you adapt.

Commenting on the success of this mission, Major General Geoffrey Lambert says it was “about as perfect an execution of guerilla force as could be studied,” but he adds: “It may never be repeated.” Stanton responds: “His words would prove prescient,” as the errors made in Iraq soon afterward would show. Stanton cites, for example, the mistaken decision by Ambassador Paul Bremer to “fire” the Iraqi national army and disband it, thus sending 500,000 young Iraqis home with their weapons and a fierce determination to exact revenge. Instead of assimilating and working with the former enemy army, the U.S. occupation drove it underground, “where it mutated into a potent insurgency.”

Stanton’s book is extremely well documented with a lengthy bibliography that includes government documents, electronic media, newspaper accounts, a hundred interviews, and many other references.