It took a combined air-ground assault operation at Forward Operating Base Shank to tug this C-17 more than a mile after it had skidded off the runway during a bad-weather landing. Some 200 troops toiled together earlier this week to pull the 140-ton airlifter from the muck at the base, south of Kabul. It took about an hour to inch it to a base repair station, where the quarter-billion-dollar bird will be patched up and returned to service.