Ben told Hutch that the gunship had locked on to the target to observe the pattern of life and had counted nine people at the site. Hutch told Ben to tell the aircrew the nine people were hostile, as the NDS prison was Taliban-controlled. Without the video receivers, Ben and Hutch couldn’t see what the aircrew was watching, and the crew hadn’t told them that the original GPS coordinates plotted to an empty field. They were unaware that the crew had identified the target by sight and had locked on the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital.
“Compound is currently under the control of TB [Taliban], so those nine PAX [people] are hostile,” Ben told the aircrew.
Aboard the gunship, the TV operator began to feel doubtful. Once they moved closer to the ground, he reentered the GPS grids into the navigation system. This time, the coordinates plotted to a different, hexagonal-shaped building in the same area that looked more like a prison.
“If you look in the TV’s screen, you can see this hardened structure that looks very large, could also be more like a county prison with cells,” he said to the rest of the crew. “So, I just want to verify that, before we started declaring people hostile, that we are 100 percent sure this is the correct compound.”
It was the NDS prison the commandos planned to raid that night.
“Copy,” the navigator responded.
The aircrew asked the ground troops for more information about the target they were supposed to be watching.
The Afghan commandos had given the Special Forces a description of the target: a compound with multiple buildings inside and an arch-shaped gate. Ben shared it with the aircrew. The description matched the Médecins Sans Frontières hospital, not the NDS prison. The AC-130 remained locked on the first target, even though it didn’t match the coordinates.
It was never clear why the Afghan commandos passed on that physical description, unless their second target for the night was the hospital. The Afghan commandos hated the hospital for treating the Taliban, and they had raided it in the summer while looking for a Taliban commander (who was not there). Perhaps they had planned to raid it again without telling their American partners, who would surely have objected.
A couple of hours into the shift, Hutch heard gunfire from the direction of the prison the Afghan commandos planned to raid that night. He asked Ben to call them to find out what was going on. The interpreter couldn’t reach their cell phones. Hutch worried they might be in trouble. After a few minutes, the interpreter said he had managed to get through; the Afghan commandos were under fire and had requested air support.
Hutch ordered the gunship to fire. Ben relayed the order to the gunship, telling them to soften the target. The crew found the language confusing.
“So he wants us to shoot?” the fire control officer said on the crew’s internal radio.
The crew asked Ben to clarify what he wanted them to do.
“GFC’s intent is to destroy targets of all opportunity that may impede partner forces’ success,” Ben responded over the radio.
The aircrew was still doubtful. The people inside the compound didn’t appear to be carrying weapons, which was one of the criteria used to determine whether an individual was an enemy combatant. But they hadn’t explained this to Ben, and they discussed the matter among themselves instead.
“You guys don’t see anyone carrying anything that you can tell?” the fire control officer asked, meaning a weapon.
“Not that we can tell,” the TV operator said.
They selected the weapons to use on the building and asked whether the GFC had cleared them to shoot people fleeing after the strike started. Ben cleared the crew to fire on both the building and anyone inside and gave Hutch’s initials for the strike.
The crew made one last round of checks with Ben to confirm that it was the T-shaped building they intended to hit, and that the gunship was clear to strike the structure and the people inside.
“Affirm,” Ben said.
The Lockheed AC-130 gunship opened fire at 2:08 a.m.
“Rounds away, rounds away,” the navigator said.
THE FIRST ROUNDS struck the emergency room at the Médecins Sans Frontières trauma hospital. The operating theatre shook and the windows rattled. Dr. Cua looked up from her operative report and exchanged glances with the assistant surgeon, who had finished suturing the patient’s wound. They laughed uneasily. It was probably just another clash in the city.
The second blast struck the building with terrifying force. Dr. Cua threw herself to the side of the room for cover with her assistant, still hoping it was a stray rocket. Fear consumed her entire body. Were they under attack? A third, even louder explosion shook the building. She leapt up with her assistant and fled down the hallway into the room at the other end, leaving her anesthetized patient on the operating table. The hospital had three operating theatres, all of which were in use at the time the strike started.
The other surgeons and nurses joined them in the room across the hall, dragging the tables together to provide cover from shrapnel and debris. The explosions continued, filling the room with acrid smoke and the smell of disinfectant.
The first call to Guilhem Molinie, the Médecins Sans Frontières director in Kabul, came from his deputy, Heman Nagarathnam, in Kunduz, reporting that a rocket had landed in the hospital courtyard. A few minutes later, the deputy called back: it was an airstrike. Guilhem was horrified, realizing there had been a screwup. He could only imagine the destructive power of a US airstrike on a hospital full of wounded patients. He immediately dialed the civil affairs officer at Bagram Airfield, praying for a quick response. He felt sick to his stomach.
“The trauma center is under attack,” Guilhem told him. “You’re bombing the hospital!”
He hung up and scrambled to assemble a team. They started making calls to the US embassy, the Afghan government, and everyone else in the NATO coalition.
THE US CIVIL OFFICER that took his call at Bagram Airfield ran to the joint operations center and pulled the battle captain aside.
“I just got a call from Doctors Without Borders, and they’re saying that their hospital in Kunduz is being hit,” he whispered.
Col. Johnston was in the next row. He leapt up and asked the officer to repeat himself. It was 2:19 a.m. None of them were aware that an airstrike was under way. They immediately got on the radio and tried to make contact with Hutch.
Aboard the gunship, the crew reported over the radio that the building had caught fire and that around forty or fifty people were fleeing into the yard. Hutch cleared the gunship to shoot them as well. The crew selected the Gatling gun for the strafing run; it was perfect for mowing down individuals fleeing on foot.
Dr. Cua was back in the operating theatre after it had become hard to breathe in the hall. Flames licked at the windows and filled the room with smoke. Some of the nurses escaped through the windows, but she was afraid of getting shot outside. Even through her surgical mask, it was becoming hard to breathe. She watched her colleagues run into the yard and didn’t move. Was this an airstrike? Why?
A deafening blast shook the building, and the ceiling came crashing down, plunging her into darkness. She saw her patient’s heart monitor flatline. He was a Taliban fighter, about age twenty-eight. He had major wounds to his stomach and other organs, and this was the first follow-up surgery. It had been a success. She tried to get up, but she was trapped in a mesh of wires and cables that had collapsed on top of her.
Her assistant surgeon, who was still at her side, yanked her arm and pulled her free. They crouched against the wall in another room, listening to the hum of an aircraft overhead. The next blast brought more of the ceiling down on them. She felt something wet and sticky on her operating gown, which was covered in shards of glass. She checked herself for life-threatening wounds but found only a gash in her knee. She followed her colleague in the darkness, looking for a way to reach the safe room in the basement.
A slant in the ground appeared in front of them and both slid down, realizi
ng too late that it was actually a drainage well, about six feet deep. The smoke caused Dr. Cua’s eyes to stream with tears, and the fire engulfing the building made the walls hot. She felt a deep sense of regret.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she thought silently. She imagined her remains being delivered to her parents in an urn. Or worse still, what if her body was never found?
She felt a terrible sense of guilt for the heartache she was going to cause them. Her mother would feel betrayed because Dr. Cua had told her that going to Afghanistan was safe. Why had she come here? She tried to focus on the lives she had saved in Kunduz, but all she could think of was her parents.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated to herself, as her colleague prayed softly.
“Pray with me,” he told her. “Allah… la ilaha illa allah.”
The ground shook again.
At the joint operations center at Bagram Airfield, the officers had been unable to reach the team in Kunduz because communications were patchy. They were watching an NDS building they believed was that night’s target, but the Afghan intelligence agency had multiple locations in the city, and it would turn out to be the wrong NDS compound. One of them called the duty electronic warfare officer to ask for the grids of the target, explaining that Médecins Sans Frontières had just called to report an attack from a US aircraft. As the officers continued urgently trying to reach Hutch without success, they pulled back the video feed of the city. They could see a plume of smoke rising from the center of town and determined that it was likely the site of the airstrike. They pulled the grids from the video feed.
The liaison officer called Guilhem to check the numbers. The grids matched those of the hospital. He returned to the operations center a few minutes later.
“You’re hitting the trauma center!” he said.
DR. CUA WATCHED her colleague scramble up the burning walls of the well and climb out. He motioned at her to follow and disappeared. She wasn’t strong enough to climb out and kept slipping back down. Tears of frustration and anger stung her eyes. Calm down, she told herself, feeling the walls for a foothold. Her hand touched steel. It was burning hot, but she grabbed it anyway, kicked her feet, and hoisted herself into the yard. She saw her assistant waiting under a cluster of roses. He gave her a massive grin.
“Get down!!” he yelled as she ran toward him and threw herself into the grass.
Another Afghan man appeared in the yard as they crawled away from the main hospital. Dr. Cua froze with fear. Was it the Taliban?
“Follow me, there’s a safe place here,” he said, and led them to a building that was untouched by the strike.
In Kabul, Guilhem made another appeal to the civil affairs officer.
“Please make sure the airstrikes stop. We sustained heavy casualties,” he texted.
“I will do my best. Praying for you all,” the officer responded.
CHAPTER 10
They’re Calling It a War Crime
HUTCH
HUTCH CALLED the battalion as requested.
“We are getting reports that a Doctors Without Borders hospital just got hit,” Col. Johnston told him.
“No way,” he said. “That’s not possible.”
He disconnected the call and stopped to process the message. He replayed the past hour in his mind and didn’t see how it could have happened. But the gunship was still circling overhead, reloading its guns to start shooting again. He told Ben to tell the aircraft to keep monitoring the target but to hold fire. He didn’t tell Ben why. He didn’t want to freak him out. It was the last thing any of the guys needed to hear. He heard another round go off and turned to Ben.
“They need to stop shooting, period,” he said.
This time he explained why. The color drained from Ben’s face. It turned out the AC-130 had been clearing a round from one of its guns and had fired into an empty field. Ben seemed to be in shock. Hutch continued to review the night’s events. He knew of one hospital in the city, the provincial hospital, and it was a mile and a half in the other direction. There had to be some sort of confusion.
The gunship stopped shooting at 2:38 a.m., after it had fired 211 rounds.
At Kunduz police headquarters, Hutch pushed the incident out of his mind and turned his attention to the resupply mission involving the helicopter. When the Afghan commandos returned, he asked about the strike. The patrol leader said they’d never called for air support and had captured the NDS prison without a problem.
“Hey, so what did we hit?” Hutch asked.
“We think you hit a hospital,” the patrol leader said.
Hutch didn’t mention the reports of the strike on the Médecins Sans Frontières facility to anyone else. As hardened as some of the guys were, the possibility that they might have destroyed a hospital full of patients would deliver a terrible blow to morale, adding to the stress of the ongoing battle. He tried to suppress the thought and told himself there had been a mistake.
DR. NASIM, who had managed to reach the safe room, peered out and scoured the yard for people to rescue. He heard screams and saw a figure emerge from the wreckage in the darkness. It was the ER nurse, Zabihullah. He appeared to have been shot by the aircraft and was missing a hand and an eye; blood gushed from a wound that had partially severed an arm. Dr. Nasim hauled him to safety, where they could apply tourniquets to stop the bleeding, and continued the search for survivors.
Dr. Cua cowered in the dark for a long time after the firing stopped. Her phone was buried in the operating theatre. What if everyone else had already been rescued? What happened if the Taliban came next and found a foreigner here among the Afghans? As the sun rose, she heard someone calling her name. It was the hospital logistics coordinator, Benoit. She gratefully scrambled after him to an office building, where the other expats were alive and treating the wounded in a meeting room.
Some of them had assumed she was dead. She scrubbed her hands and helped dress the wounds of a number of children that had been staying at the hospital with their parents. She recognized Zabihullah, who was lying on a table and missing a hand. The ER had been damaged the worst. Dr. Nasim came back carrying one of the ER doctors, Dr. Aminullah Bajawri, whom he’d found in a kitchen.
Dr. Bajawri had escaped the ER after the first rounds hit, but he was shot by the aircraft in the yard. He had managed to call his brother, who had located him and tried to stop his bleeding. Both of his legs had been partly severed, and he was pale. Dr. Cua and a colleague set to work to stop the loss of blood, performing the surgery without anesthesia. All they had was morphine. He died in their hands. He was thirty-two and had dreamed of being a neurosurgeon, a virtually nonexistent specialization in the war-ravaged country. Detached and deep in shock, she mechanically moved on to the next patient. Dr. Nasim tried to reassure the staff.
“Now isn’t the time to cry,” he kept repeating. “Let’s be strong and save those we can save. We can cry later.”
They lost the pharmacist next. He would have survived in the pharmacy, but he ran for cover in the main building, where he was fatally wounded. Dr. Nasim felt responsible; the pharmacist was supposed to have taken the week off, but he’d come back one night earlier than scheduled because the team was under pressure.
The hospital smoldered in the first morning light. An initial head count indicated that fourteen Médecins Sans Frontières staff members had died in the strike, but the number was set to rise as remains were identified.1 Personnel from the Afghan Red Crescent were shuttling the wounded to the provincial hospital. Two Afghan army trucks arrived at the compound; the occupants were looking for Taliban survivors.
Their commander recognized Dr. Nasim and jumped out. They came from the same town in Takhar.
“Dr. Nasim, what are you doing here?” he asked.
“I’ve been stuck here for twenty days,” Dr. Nasim said.
The commander wanted him to ride in the truck for safety, but Dr. Nasim refused to touch the Afghan army vehicle. One of the Médecins Sans Frontières Land
Cruisers had survived the bombing. He told the commander they had eight expats to evacuate, and if he wanted to be helpful, he could escort them to the airport instead. The commander agreed.
Dr. Cua climbed aboard, feeling like a zombie. In her mind, she replayed the surgery she’d performed on Dr. Bajawri, who had died on the kitchen table. She thought about her earlier patient, who had burned to death in the operating room. All this time, she had worried about Taliban. It was the Americans she should have feared. She seethed with anger at all of them for prolonging the stupid war, and for causing so much unnecessary bloodshed and suffering.
THE CITY WAS QUIET THAT DAY. The Green Berets and coalition personnel relocated to the governor’s compound, which contained the residence, headquarters, and a soccer field that made a much better helicopter landing zone. They stayed another night. Apart from the occasional burst of gunfire, there were no further efforts to breach the walls of the compound. The following day, a rocket sailed over the walls and narrowly missed a group of guys in the yard. No one was hurt. At night, everyone swapped out. A fresh team, ODA 3134, and the other half of ODA 3135 took their places at the compound. There were still pockets of insurgents in the city, and it would take days for some degree of normality to return.
The Afghan police and soldiers who were guarding checkpoints on the main highway to Kunduz Airfield cheered as the American convoy drove past. The Green Berets felt like heroes in a movie. They had saved a city from ruin against the odds, which gave them a deep sense of connection to the population. Hutch was elated. It was what he’d secretly dreamed of since childhood, participating in a battle for survival with a small band of brothers. It was what every Green Beret signed up for, but few had a chance to do.
It had been a bloody battle for the Taliban. US drone footage and team reports showed that at least 350 insurgents had been killed in the battle. The Afghan government would receive a boost for appearing to have regained control on its own. Hutch felt a rush of pride for the men serving with him. Some of the soldiers had never been in combat before, and each had performed bravely. Every emotion he’d suppressed during the four-day battle hit him at once. They had made history. His men were high with the feeling of being alive. They weren’t prepared for the news.
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