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SUNDAY AFTERNOON At 2 p.m. two minivans and a pair of open-sided white Land Rovers mounted with machine guns pulled up outside the fortress gates. From the minivans jumped nine American special-operations men wearing wraparound sunglasses and baseball caps and carrying snub-nosed M-4 automatic rifles. The Land Rovers disgorged six British SAS soldiers armed with M-16s and dressed in jeans, sweaters, Afghan scarves and pakuls, the distinctive woolen hats of the Afghan mujahedin. The Americans and British quickly convened a conference with the Alliance leaders. "I want satcom [satellite communications] and JDAMS [guided munitions]," said the American commander. "Tell them there will be six or seven buildings in a line in the southwest half. If they can hit that, then that would kill a whole lot of these motherf______."
A bearded American in a Harley-Davidson cap and mirrored sunglasses raised Dave on the radio. "Shit...shit...O.K....Shit...O.K. Hold on, buddy, we're coming to get you," he said. Then, cutting the radio, he turned to his commander: "Mike is MIA. They've taken his gun and his ammo. We have another guy. He managed to kill two of them with his pistol, but he's holed up in the north side with no ammo." As a hurried discussion of tactics began, Harley-Davidson went back to his radio. Then he cut in: "Shit. Let's stop f___ing around and get in there." Pointing to the sky, he added, "Tell those guys to stop scratching their balls and fly."
Outside the fort, Alliance soldiers began pouring out of the northeast battlements, skidding over the walls and down the ramparts. The wounded were whisked away in commandeered taxis. A fire fight raged through the afternoon. Two American fighter planes began circling the area. Inside, TIME's translator, Nagidullah Quraishi, was ordered to the gatekeeper's roof and told to translate conversations between the Western soldiers and their Afghan allies. Alliance General Majid Rozi told the Americans and the British that a white single-story building inside the Taliban area needed to be hit, and the visitors proceeded to spot the target for the planes far above. "Thunder, Ranger," said the American radio operator, speaking to the airplanes above. "The coordinates are: north 3639984, east 06658945, elevation 1,299 ft." He turned to his comrades. "Four minutes."
"Three minutes."
"Two minutes."
"Thirty seconds."
"Fifteen seconds." From the sky, a great, arrow-shaped missile appeared, zeroing in on its target a hundred yards away and sounding like a car decelerating in high gear. The spotters lay flat. Alliance commanders and soldiers crouched against the door leading to the roof. The missile hit at 4:05 p.m. For a split second, as the concussive sound waves radiated outward, lungs emptied. Shrapnel whistled by. Then Alliance soldiers burst into applause. A U.S. soldier picked up a fallen piece of metal. "Souvenir," he said, grinning. Six more strikes followed before the British SAS commander re-established contact with Dave, still penned in with the TV crews. The SAS soldier told the Alliance commander that after two more strikes, his men should fire all their weapons. "Our guy is going to try to make a break for it," said the Briton. The conversation turned to Spann. "From what I understand, he was already gone before we got here," said an American.