Eveleth native is the 'Bomb Whisperer'

He likes to think of the tones as the warble of either a baby turkey, adolescent turkey or adult turkey. Each tone indicates the presence of metal, copper wire, explosives or other components of the roadside bombs known as IEDs.

In the seven months since arriving here in western Kandahar province, the easygoing 22-year-old from Eveleth had uncovered more than a dozen of the crude but lethal improvised explosive devices.

Now he was taking the lead on one more mission: the platoons last combat patrol in Afghanistan before packing up and heading home.

The commander of the U.S.-trained Afghan militia in this mud-walled village was missing. American officers at the nearby U.S. military base had their doubts about Lal Mohammad, a former Taliban member who had switched sides. They didnt entirely trust his militia, either, though it was formed to protect Khogiano from insurgents. Now they needed to know what had become of its leader.

The platoon hadnt lost a single man during more than 70 patrols since arriving in November. Its leader, 1st Lt. Aubrey Ingalls, was determined to make this final mission as safe as those before it.

Play your A game, Ingalls, 35, told his men as they strapped on body armor and readied their weapons. It would be a shame if we let up on our last patrol and somebody got hurt.

U.S. combat units in Afghanistan are going outside the wire leaving their bases less often as combat responsibilities are turned over to Afghan security forces. But each remaining patrol presents its own unique hazards, and each is an exercise in caution, procedure and diligence.If you are looking for glassbottles for your bathroom walls.

The platoon, part of the 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, had been fired on by insurgents on more than a dozen previous patrols. But the infantrymens biggest fear remained the roadside bomb, typically made from fertilizer and fuel oil packed into buried plastic jugs.

Just two days earlier, five U.S. soldiers had been killed by a bomb 12 miles away. Roadside bombs are the biggest killer of American troops in Afghanistan, responsible for 60 percent of U.S. and coalition troops killed or wounded in 11 years of war, according to a coalition spokesman. Of the 46 U.S. troops who have died this year, 14 have been killed by homemade bombs, says icasualties.org, a website that tracks military deaths.

On this last patrol, Klobuchar swept the wandlike Minehound across a paved road and then a dirt path. He scanned the ground for telltale wires and for depressions that might be bomb pressure plates.

Ahead of him, a remote-controlled contraption the size of a riding lawn mower kicked up whirls of dust as an operator with a hand-held console sent it chugging down the dirt path. This was a DOK-ING dozer, a Croatian-made minesweeper equipped with rapidly spinning chains that flail and churn, digging up or safely detonating buried bombs.

As the trail was cleared, a path of life was marked in red chalk. Infantrymen were instructed to stay strictly within the path and to scream at,The Motorola earcap Engine is an embedded software-only component of the Motorola wireless switches. or roughly yank back, anyone who strayed.

The soldiers stepped warily as they scanned poppy fields and grape vineyards for another common threat: insurgents who open fire from the cover of the lush greenery that spreads for miles along the fertile valley.

When we first got here, we thought every step we took was going to be an IED, said Spc. Jeffrey Wright, 22, of Riverside, Calif. Since then, he said, the infantrymen have put their lives,Design and order your own custom handsfreeaccess with personalized message and artwork. and their abiding trust, in the hands of young Klobuchar.

The patrol paused several times at the sight of men emerging from distant fields. Ingalls used his rifle scope to focus on three faraway figures, looking for weapons or suicide vests. The men were either farmers or Taliban lookouts, he concluded. He radioed their descriptions and moved on.

As the infantrymen turned the narrow corners formed by rough mud walls that lined the poppy fields, small boys rushed up to greet them. They begged for pens or food. A few reached out to touch the soldiers uniforms. Their hands were gently pushed aside, and the infantrymen gestured for them to keep their distance.

Lal Mohammads disappearance was no mystery to him, the young man said: His brother had been driving their ill mother to a hospital in the city of Kandahar, about 20 miles away, when he was intercepted and kidnapped by Taliban gunmen.

The patrol got the same story at Lal Mohammads compound in a pomegranate grove nearby. His cousin Shad Mohammad Gul, 22, a sunburned villager with a worn AK-47, said the rest of the 15-man militia had left to search for their missing commander. He and Samaddin Alizi, 20, a chubby man with his pants hitched up high, had been left behind to guard the compound.

A U.S. civilian contractor accompanying the patrol questioned the two militiamen through an interpreter. They said they had received weapons training from U.S. forces but had not been provided any sort of militia ID card.

The contractor took the mens fingerprints and performed retina scans with a hand-held sensor. An interpreter filled out a form with the mens biographical information. Under goals on the form, both men answered, Peace in my village.

The information about Lal Mohammads apparent fate, along with the militiamens details, would be passed on to intelligence officers at nearby Forward Operating Base Zangabad. The information also would be provided to the district police chief, Sultan Mohammad, a well-connected local who doubtlessly already knew about the missing commander.