(CNN) -- It was madness. At Jalalabad Airfield, in eastern Afghanistan in the summer of 2006, a young intelligence analyst named Jacob Whittaker tried with great difficulty to understand exactly what he was hearing. The 10th Mountain Division of the United States Army wanted to do what? Whittaker had to choose his words carefully. He was just a low-ranking "specialist" with the Idaho National Guard, a very low man on a very tall totem pole. A round-faced 26-year-old, Whittaker had simple tastes — Boise State football, comic books — and a reputation for mulishness belied by his innocent appearance. Whittaker stared at his superior officer, 2nd Lt. Ryan Lockner, who was running this briefing for him and Sgt. Aaron Ives. Lockner headed intelligence for Task Force Talon, the Army's aviation component at Jalalabad Airfield, in Nangarhar Province, adjacent to the Pakistan border. Military leaders considered this area, officially designated Regional Command East, the most dangerous part of an increasingly dangerous country.
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CNN's Jake Tapper tells the story of Compound Outpost Keating in his book
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Afghanistan's Compound Outpost Keating was brutally attacked in 2009
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The attack pitted 53 U.S. soldiers against 400 Taliban fighters
"They're going to build another outpost," Lockner told @placeholder and Ives back at Jalalabad Airfield.