Eagle Down

by Jessica Donati

  Hutch concluded that the intelligence on the Taliban numbers may have been accurate after all. He worried that the slightest mistake or miscalculation could end in disaster. In the back of his mind were scenes from the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993. American soldiers in the city had been overrun and killed by Somali militiamen, and some of their bodies had been dragged through the streets. His teams had been lucky so far, but their chances of survival decreased the longer they stayed there.

  He wanted to know how much risk the United States was prepared to take to save Kunduz. Would it be worse to lose the province or to lose thirty American soldiers and have their bodies dragged through the city?

  “This is like nothing I’ve even seen before,” Hutch told the battalion commander. “What’s our level of commitment here?”

  Col. Johnston trusted Hutch to make the right decision. He had plenty of battlefield experience, kept a level head, and was well placed to evaluate, from the ground, the best course of action. Gen. Campbell’s orders had been, simply, “Go save Kunduz.” There hadn’t been any further guidance from the top since the night the city had fallen. If Hutch decided it was too dangerous and the teams had to withdraw, then the Special Forces would find another way to save the city.

  “How far do you want to go?” Col. Johnston asked him.

  The Bagram team leader, Pat, who was listening in on the call, felt dismayed. The Special Forces battalion received its orders from the SOJTF, which in turn reported up to Resolute Support headquarters, under Gen. Campbell’s command. Someone in the chain of command should be able to give them clear guidance in the midst of a pitched battle, he thought. The Green Berets were risking their lives to hold the city, and it was unfair to put the decision on them.

  Hutch understood the battalion’s position. Col. Johnston had put him there to make difficult decisions, and this was the moment. How long they could survive was best assessed from the ground. He didn’t want to withdraw. Yet deciding to stay was a big responsibility to shoulder. There were nearly thirty Green Berets under his command, and they could all die if he made the wrong call. We might be able to punch back to the base, but if we stay here, we could all die, he thought. You’re going to have Black Hawk Down times two dragged through the streets. The narrative is that we’re not in combat, but there will be no denying it if that happens.

  Still, abandoning Kunduz could have a high price. A province falling was a major strategic loss. If the Taliban had a chance to dig in, a drawn-out battle to push them out could level the city. Many more people could die.

  “We’ll stay another twenty-four hours,” he finally responded.

  Footnote

  1 The US military has never commented on allegations that the Taliban took heavy weapons into the hospital or used the grounds as a command center. US military officers interviewed for this book say they have retained evidence that has not been made public. MSF has always denied that any weapons were brought into the hospital in violation of the policy that required visitors and patients to leave all weapons outside.

  CHAPTER 9

  “I’m Sorry, Mom”

  DR. CUA

  WHILE HUTCH WAS MAKING the life-or-death decision to stay in Kunduz and hold position for another twenty-four hours, Tina was packing again. It was fall break in Southern Pines, and the kids were filled with the kind of excitement and sense of endless possibility that comes with having a week off from school. She was getting ready to drive them all to New Jersey to see her mother and sisters and to go apple picking. Hutch hadn’t called in a few days, which was starting to nag at her. In the old days, he would go off the radar for a long time, but this time he had mostly been in Kabul, and he kept in regular contact. She finished loading the car and decided she couldn’t face an eight-hour drive with two kids in the back and uncertainty clawing away at her.

  She went to her computer and began searching for various combinations of “Afghanistan” and “Special Forces.” The search produced countless stories about the fall of Kunduz, the first major Afghan city to fall to the Taliban since 2001, where US Special Forces had been spotted on the ground. The news had leaked because residents had spotted the Green Berets at the police headquarters. The US military spokesman in Kabul denied any US role in the combat. But Tina felt worried.

  “Afghan Security Forces have full responsibility for their operations in Kunduz,” Colonel Brian Tribus said in a statement to media. “Resolute Support service members, to include Special Forces, are involved in Kunduz in an advise and assist capacity, as Resolute Support is a non-combat mission.”

  The statement suggested that American soldiers were far away from the fighting. Tina suspected that wasn’t true and wondered if Hutch was in trouble. Scouring the news for more information, she came across an AP photo. She froze. It showed two men in conversation at the police headquarters in Kunduz. One was Kunduz’s chief of police. The other was Hutch. The photo caught him midsentence, looking pale and tired.

  Okay, she thought, trying to reassure herself. At least he’s alive.

  She went to the car feeling uneasy. Get the kids, drive to her mother’s house, and wait to hear from him. You’ve done this before, she reminded herself.

  Tina had close relationships with her family and found it comforting to be with them. That night, Hutch called from a satellite phone. Usually his calls came through showing a Virginia number. This time a long line of digits appeared on the screen. He couldn’t speak for long, but he told her all was well. She felt relieved, but it wasn’t enough. She needed him to be in Kabul, back to their routine check-ins, so she didn’t have to worry.

  Later, Tina was in the kitchen making coffee when she heard a cry from the living room.

  “Oh my god, that’s my papa!” their youngest daughter exclaimed, standing in front of the TV.

  Tina dropped everything and rushed to where her daughter stood. Appearing on the screen was the photo of Hutch that she’d seen online before leaving North Carolina. The news story recounted how American forces, stationed inside Kunduz, had exchanged fire with the Taliban, contradicting the Obama administration’s claim that the US role in combat was over. The US military said the shots were fired in self-defense. Even Tina’s sister looked shocked. Tina took a deep breath and tried to get everyone to calm down, explaining that she had talked to Hutch, and everything was going to be all right.

  AS THE SUN ROSE in Kunduz on October 2, Josh, the senior Delta who had helped rescue the interpreter’s family in the city, realized he was starting to feel the effects of a lack of sleep. As the team’s medical sergeant, he had prepared for mass casualties and couldn’t believe they hadn’t lost anyone yet. Only adrenaline was keeping him going at this point. They had barely slept in the sixty hours since the city had fallen and the airfield had been attacked.

  His nerves were wearing thin, and team members were showing signs of stress. They snapped at each other over nothing. The sight of the Afghan police staying indoors, refusing to help them fight, made Josh angry. It was also his son’s sixth birthday. He picked up the satellite phone and placed the call. He only had a few minutes.

  “Happy birthday!” Josh said brightly. “What have you been doing today?”

  Josh’s son was used to long-distance calls from his parents. His mother was in Special Operations too. Part of the first year of his life had been spent with his grandparents because both parents had been deployed at the same time. The boy chatted away, and soon Josh had to interrupt him.

  “I’m sorry, son, I gotta go,” he said. “I’ll call you soon!”

  “Daddy, why can’t you talk to me?”

  “I’m sorry, I just gotta go.” Josh felt crushed.

  What if that was their last conversation? Josh thought back to the first time he’d met his son. He had just returned from a tough deployment to Kandahar’s Arghandab valley, where he’d lost friends. His son was ten months old and living with his grandparents. Overnight, Josh became a single dad. At first, his son cried anytime Josh c
ame near him. But by the time his wife got home from her deployment, Josh and his son were best buds. He figured that his responsibility as sole caretaker was the reason he’d escaped some of the post-traumatic stress that had stalked his friends after that deployment.

  A few weeks ago, his wife had called with a surprise. She was pregnant again, and this one was totally unplanned. They had two kids, ages three and six, had just sold all their baby stuff, and had moved into a new house. “So, thanks for that!” she said with a laugh.

  They had been excited about the new baby. Now it seemed uncertain whether he’d ever return home. The fight for Kunduz city had been insane. This was nothing like his previous deployments. Not even Kandahar’s Arghandab valley, where he’d spent time when he was with the infantry, matched up. They had faced an invisible enemy there and were picked off by roadside bombs and ambushes while on patrol. In Kunduz, the Taliban were bold.

  He couldn’t believe the Taliban’s determination in face of American airpower and after suffering a huge number of casualties. He was told that the US and Afghan teams had killed as many as 150 Taliban fighters since the night of the attack on the airfield. The early reports of one thousand Taliban fighters didn’t seem so far-fetched now. It was as if the insurgents recognized that the battle was a test of the US plan to withdraw from Afghanistan.

  Kunduz was quiet that morning. The Afghan police emerged from hiding indoors and joined the Afghan commandos on a mission to the bazaar to buy food. They returned an hour or so later, triumphant, with bags of rice and a Taliban flag they’d stolen from the red-and-white roundabout. The Afghans truly had no regard for their personal safety, Hutch thought. He realized there were some things about this country that he would never understand. Still, he gratefully accepted a plate of hot rice.

  After the meal, the Afghan police were pushed out into the streets, to secure checkpoints on the main road.

  THE QUIET DIDN’T LAST LONG. The police headquarters came under attack in the early afternoon from the northern and eastern walls. The Afghan police abandoned their posts and returned to the airfield, ceding control of the main road once again. Three Afghan commandos with the Ktah Khas were shot inside the compound. One of the Deltas took over triage and care.

  The Ktah Khas commander wanted to send an ambulance to collect the injured commandos immediately, but Hutch managed to talk him out of it since the attack on the compound was ongoing.

  “It’s too risky to drive in daylight,” he insisted. “Let’s wait until night. My guys can look after them.”

  Josh slipped out of the compound with his team and took up a position on the roof of a two-story building nearby to try to stop the shooting. He bounded into the street with a teammate in the direction of fire and pinpointed the group of Taliban that were responsible. The two were in a good position and hadn’t been spotted when they opened fire. US military drone footage showed that eighteen insurgents were killed.

  Soon after, rockets smacked into the walls from another direction. Pat, the Bagram team captain, was knocked several yards to the ground while climbing a guard tower.

  Hutch again called for air support. Within minutes, an F-16 arrived and dropped a five-hundred-pound precision-guided bomb. It struck the target at danger close range, posing a risk to friendly troops down below. The blast caused everyone’s insides to rattle, but it didn’t stop the rocket-propelled grenades. Hutch cleared the jet fighter for a second drop, which landed on the partially destroyed building, sending a storm of dust and debris into the air. The attack stopped.

  Hutch gathered the captains to discuss what to do. The teams wanted to stay; they worried that the Afghans, if left by themselves, might abandon the police headquarters.

  Hutch updated Col. Johnston with their decision. The battalion agreed to organize a helicopter drop of supplies that night, including ammunition, batteries, and fuel. The combat controllers were down to one radio, to preserve the last of their batteries. The teams started a rest plan; some were running on practically no sleep since the morning the city had fallen, four days earlier.

  DR. CUA had taken to sleeping on a bench in the dressing room after four days of back-to-back surgeries. She had barely enough energy to change out of her scrubs before collapsing in an exhausted heap around midnight. She was one of three surgeons left at the hospital, and the Afghan staff woke her up to deal with complicated cases. The hospital received over a hundred patients a day, and it was impossible to keep up. On several frightening occasions, she’d been interrupted in the operating theatre to be told that Médecins Sans Frontières was evacuating all eight of the expatriate staff. Both times the departure had been called off and she’d been able to continue surgery. She never knew whether or not to feel relieved. She had barely slept in days and felt guilty for the worry her family back in the Philippines must be experiencing. But she was less scared than she had been. She had grown numb to the sound of gunfire. And so far, the warring sides had respected the impartiality of the hospital.

  Rumors were spreading among patients and staff that American forces were in the city and leading a major operation to take it back. Some of the patients with the opposition, including a couple that were apparently senior members of the insurgency, had been discharged against medical advice. In the evening of October 2, there was an unusual lull. Staff were able to step outside to get some fresh air without worrying about being hit by a stray bullet. When Dr. Cua finally went outside and breathed in, the city felt changed. It was colored by the horror of the past few days.

  Dr. Nasim, who knew that fighting never stopped for long, took the opportunity to rally the hospital employees. He promised to pay salaries as soon as security improved. They were working day and night without a break and without pay. He addressed the cleaners and caretakers and told them how much the group valued their help.

  “Do you know what is the result of your work?” he said. No one replied. “It’s not a clean floor. It’s not opening the gates. You’re saving lives. Do you think the surgeon can operate without you here? You are a critical part of the team, and your work is saving lives.”

  The doctors decided to take advantage of the quiet moment to schedule follow-up surgeries that had been postponed as nonurgent.

  Dr. Cua felt a bit brighter. She had just finished an operation and was writing up the report while her assistant sutured the patient’s skin and cracked jokes. It was after two a.m., and several more surgeries were planned for the night.

  HUTCH WOKE UP around twelve a.m. on October 3. He had two operations to manage that night: the helicopter drop of supplies and an Afghan commando raid to be led by the Ktah Khas that might require US air support. As the ground force commander (GFC), he was in charge of all ground troops and had the authority to direct the aircraft to fire if lives were in danger. Ben Vontz, an Echo, one of the communications sergeants, was on duty and responsible for keeping in touch with the AC-130.

  Ben was certified to work as a combat controller and at twenty-five was one of the youngest Green Berets on the mission. He was in contact with the AC-130 gunship that was circling overhead and ready to support the Afghan operation. The commandos had provided the GPS coordinates for two different targets they planned to raid that night. Ben had the coordinates written down on a luminescent board. The first target was a Taliban-controlled NDS prison. He was unaware that the gunship was having trouble finding it because of a series of problems aboard the aircraft that caused the GPS coordinates to plot to an empty field.

  It was one of those nights where nothing seemed to go as planned. The AC-130 had departed from Bagram Airfield more than an hour early to respond to a report of US soldiers under fire and had run into a catalog of problems. Because of the early departure, the gunship’s aircrew hadn’t received a mission brief or any of the information packages they usually received. Nor had there been time to load the CONOP and the no-strike list into the system. An officer back at Bagram tried to send the packages by email, including the no-strike list, but the me
ssages never arrived because the gunship’s communication platform was malfunctioning. The crew repeatedly tried to troubleshoot the system without success.

  Then, disaster almost struck: a Soviet-era surface-to-air missile narrowly missed the gunship. They were unaware the Taliban even had those weapons in their arsenal. It was the first one fired in the country in years, and it forced the aircrew to rethink operating procedures. They decided to divert course and fly higher than usual for security. This made their navigation system less accurate.

  The TV operator, who was on his third mission over the city since it had fallen, scanned the ground to look for the first target the Afghan commandos were supposed to hit; he spotted a T-shaped building about three hundred meters away from the empty field located by the GPS system. They couldn’t see any markings on the roof.

  “Unless the grids are off, this is the only large complex in the area,” he told the crew.

  The crew discussed the matter. They had made contact with the ground troops below, but communication channels were slow. Ground troops usually carried video receivers that could be used to watch the gunship’s video feed on a screen, but in this case the ground troops had run out of batteries. They had to make do with voice reports, which were a lot less reliable when the troops couldn’t see their screens. In the end, the aircrew decided that the T-shaped building had to be the target, even though it didn’t match the GPS coordinates provided.

  “TV, I’m just going to update that off you, since that’s most likely what it is, so if you can just track there,” the fire control officer said, and updated the system with the new coordinates.

  But the building they had identified wasn’t the NDS prison. It was the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital.