The skinny paratrooper from Arizona froze as he felt the ground depress beneath his booted foot. “Hey, I’m treading on something squishy,” he announced, a trace of alarm in his voice. His words had an instant effect on the 12 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne gathered around him.
“Don’t move!” they bellowed.
It was too late. In a moment of unwitting reflex, Sergeant Brandon Pilguy lifted his foot. Beneath it was a black PMN anti-personnel mine, its black cap just visible in the Afghan sands. Linked directly beneath the mine by a detonation cord dug into the soil, the Taliban had placed a 20lb Improvised Explosive Device (IED), made of homemade explosives laced with chunks of shrapnel. It did not explode.
