MARCH 19, 2002, SHAR-I-KOT — Last week the US Department of Defense declared Operation Anaconda a smashing victory over Al Qaeda and the remnants of Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Hundreds of insurgents were reportedly killed, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that "there might be more operations like Anaconda, but we won’t be fighting the same people."

Anaconda was a success, by all official accounts, because hundreds of rabidly anti-American forces were killed, with only eight American losses. But that characterization is laced with a big problem: more American soldiers may have died than the Pentagon is prepared to admit.

It looks as though sometime between March 7 and 14, as many as four members of an Army Special Forces operational detachment were killed. They were not more than 20 kilometers from their base on the dirt track that serves as a road between the mud-brick hamlet of Shar-i-kot and the slightly larger village of Gardez. Only a twisted hunk of charred metal remains of what had been a brand-new Toyota Hi-Lux pick-up truck. There were no bodies. And while no one actually saw the incident, the wreckage scattered around the truck tells an interesting story.

A charred tin of Copenhagen chewing tobacco, an empty pack of American Marlboro cigarettes, American Special Forces unconventional-warfare manuals, and even a Garth Brooks CD all paint a portrait of the truck’s probable occupants at the time of the attack. Can there be any doubt that the ambushed group were Americans?

In a region described by a Special Forces noncommissioned officer as "hot and dusty during the day and cold and dusty at night," the soldiers might have been on their way to Gardez, looking to "paint" targets with lasers for air-force bombardment. It’s easy to picture: they weren’t quite at the target yet, so they popped in a Garth Brooks CD, packed in some chew, or were just about to light cigarettes, when a hidden Al Qaeda guerrilla popped out of a ditch by the right side of the road and opened fire with an AK-47. That would explain the bullet holes in the front of the Toyota. The driver either swerved left or was killed, which would explain why the pick-up ran off the road. And just as Garth Brooks began fading into the background, another Al Qaeda member fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the back of the pick-up. A pile of M-4 shell casings near the truck indicates that the Americans tried to fight back. Of course, there is no way of knowing how successful they were.

If the scattered medical equipment and medevac checklist are any indication, someone at least was seriously wounded. More likely, all three or four members of the team were killed.

But in the end we may never know what happened to that team of intrepid American Special Forces soldiers, because the war has been such a great success.