On The Mop-Up Patrol

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The attack comes a little before 5 a.m. Sporadic machine-gun fire has been heard throughout the night, and in the early hours of the morning, a hilltop observation post tells the team of U.S. special forces that there is suspicious movement south of the perimeter. Then comes small-arms fire, followed by the whoomp of an incoming rocket-propelled grenade. Tracers show a stream of outgoing rounds in reply. Afghan soldiers fighting with the Americans send their own RPGs into the night. The local Afghan commander, a short, stern man called Ismael, says they were plundered from a store of Taliban weapons he has discovered. His men try to fire illumination rounds, but two of three pop straight up. "We're helping the enemy more than we're helping ourselves," a U.S. soldier says with a laugh. The special forces are hamstrung by a lack of information; radio batteries in the forward positions have drained. "Walk in a direct line to the hill and head up to the observation post and get me information on what's out there," the American commander orders an Afghan patrol. "And take these batteries."

A band of perhaps 10 al-Qaeda fighters is testing the position's defenses. After a huddle, the U.S. soldiers send a small Afghan patrol out to meet the intruders. Minutes later four special forces follow the locals to give guidance and backup. Another commando organizes 10 Afghan soldiers into a quick reaction force. The Afghans fight al-Qaeda's probing force about half a mile from the camp, but in the end the enemy melts away. "They can hide and come back anytime they want," says a special-forces soldier who gives his name only as "Oklahoma Chris."

As recently as March 12, Pentagon officials said the battle of Shah-i-Kot, the bloodiest skirmish in the five-month war, was winding down. But late last week, as TIME spent a day and a night with a team of U.S. special forces and their Afghan allies, it was very much alive. True, the U.S. force numbers are way down from the 1,000 or more who fought in the battle's first stage, and the bombing, though occasionally heavy, does not match the scale seen two weeks ago. But let there be no doubt: the enemy is still there, and he is resourceful. "Now it's hard-core guerrilla warfare," says a special-forces soldier. Shah-i-Kot seems made for this kind of fighting. After two weeks of battle, the mountainsides are scarred black; vehicles, barely recognizable, litter the trails. But on the rises and in the lees of this mountain redoubt, there is still movement. Columns of Afghan troops roll forward and then halt, fanning out soldiers as figures scarper away into the cover of the rocks ahead.

Those fighters sometimes seem to be the only things that move. In Shah-i-Kot you will rarely find a goat or a donkey or even a dog. Clusters of abandoned or destroyed mud-brick houses stand silent. Just a few weeks ago, these high-walled settlements were home to al-Qaeda fighters and their families. Now they look like a kind of Dresden transferred to a tiny, medieval world. In the village of Sarkhankhel, charred headstones are all that remain of many houses; crumbled walls carpet the ground. It's as though a finger of retribution reached from the sky and pointed to every house, one by one by one. But the bombs didn't take all who lived here. "We've searched many structures," says Oklahoma Chris, "and there is evidence of unhurried packing. Nothing was left behind."