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Within 20 min., the casualties and walking wounded were loaded into seven jeeps and minibuses, which sped off to the U.S. base. Nine men were airlifted out. Nik Mohammed, 24, an Alliance soldier on the northeast tower at the time of the strike, said he helped pull three uniformed soldiers he believed to be Americans from the rubble of the collapsed wall and claimed that two of them were dead. On Tuesday the Pentagon said that there had been no military deaths but that five U.S. service members had been seriously injured and had been evacuated to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Four British soldiers were also reported wounded over the previous 22 hours, one seriously, though British officials--who never comment on the SAS--will not confirm that they were wounded at Qala-i-Jangi. On the Alliance side, there were said to be as many as 30 dead and 50 injured.
At 4:50 p.m. a small group of special-operations soldiers returned. Dave was with them. He climbed up the northeast tower to confer with Alliance General Rozi. "You don't want to leave here tonight," an American soldier told TIME, checking his night-vision goggles. "There's going to be quite a show." The soldier used a reporter's satellite phone to call his wife and tell her he might be on the TV news that night--"Tape it all day, will you? O.K. Love you, babe." At midnight an American AC-130 gunship began lazily circling Qala-i-Jangi. It flew five times over the same spot, spraying the southern end of the fort with a golden stream of fire. Later a massive ball of flame lifted up from the fort, kicking off a fireworks display as mortar rounds and ammunition belts fired off into the night sky. Explosions sounded through the night; the blast blew open doors 10 miles away.
TUESDAY By the next morning the surviving Taliban troops were beginning to flag; Rozi estimated that there were only about 50 survivors from the original 600 or so in the fort and that they had no water or ammunition left. Their only food was horsemeat from Dostum's cavalry. A fighter who had escaped during the night was caught by local residents and hanged from a tree. Alliance forces were so confident of victory that at one frontline position, three shared a powerful joint of hashish. Others tucked into peanut butter and jelly from the American food drops. At 10 a.m. a group of 17 special-operations and SAS men returned to the gatekeeper's house. Harley-Davidson was there, along with Dave, who was wearing a black shalwar kameez (the traditional Afghan pants and long shirt) and carrying an AK-47. After talking to Rozi, Dave told his men, "We're going to close in on these guys pretty hard. The one thing the general said to watch out for is a mortar still operating in there."
At 10:50 a.m. U.S. and British troops positioned themselves along the parapets to the east of the Taliban compound. "Did you see the show last night?" one asked TIME, grinning. "We watched for two hours. Really something." Around 100 Alliance soldiers scaled the southwest tower and lay down along the walls, firing on the Taliban below. Others manned the western tower. Before long, wounded and dead Alliance soldiers were being ferried through the gates. A U.S. soldier ran back to greet an SAS comrade who had felt the full force of Monday's air strike. "How's your hearing today?" he bellowed. Pause. "I said, 'How's your hearing?'"