by Dalton Fury
Our U.S. Air Force combat controller, Jeff, raised the AC-130 and directed it to clear the airspace and to go loiter a few miles away. As the plane faded from earshot, we once again settled back to dead silence.
Still, there was another bird stacked up there. A Predator drone circled 9,000 feet over our heads, out of hearing range, but with its infrared camera locked on the target buildings. The images flashed back to the JOC and gave the Delta commander and the entire task force staff seats almost as good as ours. On a large screen, they could easily make out twenty dark figures around the four structures.
Shrek made a final radio call. “Be advised, the guide thinks Mr. Ahmed will attempt to jump out a window and run for another home.” The guide’s timely reminder was no big deal, since that is always an obvious possibility. We stood and departed our last covered and concealed position, and moved up the hill to introduce ourselves to Gul Ahmed.
The home was typical of a middle-income Afghan farmer, and through our NVGs we saw chickens scooting calmly around the dirt yard, several goats that were frozen in confusion about the intruders, and a big donkey that stood dead still, as if it were trying to hide its presence.
We had chosen for this mission to employ mechanical breaching to gain entry; we would simply open an unlocked door or use a sledgehammer or ax, but refrain from using explosives. No need setting off a loud boom that would announce our presence to everyone in the area. The doors were expected to be of the standard, flimsy type and were likely only secured with a light chain. They were there mostly to keep prying neighbors out and animals in, and we breached them by a quick manipulation of the loose chain or a simple mule kick.
Charlie Team silently entered the front door of the main residence without anyone the wiser, but just inside the door stood a large water buffalo that knew these specters did not belong there. The big animal spooked and made a beeline for the front door, with the big horns nearly impaling a Delta operator.
After clearing that immediate room, the team flowed through the open doorway to the left. Inside was a large bed fashioned from tree trunks and rope, and the unmistakable outlines of two humans beneath a blanket. One of the boys kicked the bed and both figures quickly bolted upright, a confused man and a naked woman staring into the darkness. The man was our target, Gul Ahmed, and the boys easily subdued him, but his partner began screaming uncontrollably, and her keening wails started a chain reaction of shouting throughout the entire two-story log structure and then spilled to the other structures.
Within two minutes of the breaches, the sweet sound of victory squawked through my earpiece. “One-One, this is Charlie-One, PC [Precious Cargo] secure,” reported Grumpy, the Charlie Team leader.
I called back, “This is One-One, I understand PC secure, over.”
“Roger, we got him, building three, bottom floor secure. I need some assistance on the second floor.”
Grumpy was mature, quiet, and unassuming, a no-bullshit kind of guy who had been in Delta for seven years and had a general disdain for the chain of command. He told it like it was and didn’t pull any punches, not even for me. Normally unflappable, his calm request for “assistance” was his way of telling me to send another team to help him—now!
In fact, at the time, he was locked in a hand-to-hand struggle with a pissed-off, twenty-something Afghan male. Grumpy was not in much danger, but his opponent believed that he was fighting for his life. Grumpy somehow had held the guy at bay with one hand, protecting both his M-4 assault rifle and his M-1911 .45-caliber pistol from his opponent’s frantic grasping, and found a moment to squeeze the push-to-talk button on his radio. Nobody would have blamed Grumpy if he simply ended the fight with a single ball round to the man’s forehead. The rules of engagement clearly authorized lethal force in this situation, but the seasoned Delta sergeant knew this guy would be of no intelligence value dead. Besides, the loud report of a gunshot would attract unwanted visitors from around the neighborhood. So the wrestling match continued.
Two of Grumpy’s teammates charged up the outside wood and mud stairs toward their next breach point, moving fast toward their designated portion of the target area. They jumped over the two brawlers without breaking stride, confident that Grumpy, an expert in jujitsu, could handle one unruly Afghan who weighed maybe 150 pounds.
They kicked a dilapidated door to the right off its hinges. Grumpy was proud that his boys were acting like trained professionals. Sure, they cared about their team leader; they simply had assessed the situation and moved on to the next door, just what he had taught them to do.
All of the structures were clear and secure within five minutes without a shot being fired.
The incessant wailing and screaming of the twenty-five to thirty women and children in the small group of buildings woke up the neighbors. We didn’t expect so many women and kids. They outnumbered us. We collapsed our northern security team to help in calming and controlling them. From the south came the distinct rattle of an AK-47, but no shots landed near us.
From the north, two adult males slowly approached, apparently more out of curiosity about the screaming family members than with any idea that American commandos had caused the ruckus. One had a weapon slung over his shoulder, and with no northern security to intercept them, I leveled my M-4 at him and placed my infrared laser on his forehead. An instant decision was necessary: Armed? Yes. Displaying hostile intent? No. They live. I eased a bright green laser line a few inches above his head and squeezed off two suppressed rounds to get their attention. They had come far enough. Message received, the two men turned about and beat feet back the way they came.
In addition to Mr. Ahmed, four of his sons and brothers were found and secured. We had zero time for sorting out who was who, so they also would be taken with us and turned over to the Joint Interrogation Facility in Bagram. Even if some were completely innocent, they still had value, for their stories could be used to determine whether Ahmed was telling the truth or not during his own interrogation sessions. They could also be played one against the other or to corroborate each other’s stories.
Gadget relayed to the Delta commander. “Wrangler Zero-One, this is Rascal-One. One-One sends PC secure. No casualties. Request exfil in ten minutes. Leaving with PC plus four crows. Over.”
The JOC exploded in applause and high fives and smiles flowed around the tent. They all had worked many long hours to make this happen. But we were far from being mission complete—essentially with all friendly personnel safely back at our sleeping tents and the precious cargo turned over to competent authority.
As the troop sergeant major, Stormin’, prepped to get everyone out of Dodge, I moved down the ridge to our primary helicopter pickup zone with Jeff, the combat controller. The spot had been chosen from studying recent imagery and we knew it would be tight. Jeff stepped off the dimensions of the area until he reached the end of the terrace, where he was looking down a ten-foot drop to the next terrace. He shook his head, unhappy with what he saw. It was going to be extremely difficult to get the black MH-47 Chinook helicopter into such a tight spot, and he walked over and asked my opinion.
“Hey, brother, this is your ball game,” I replied. “Is it going to work or not? If you don’t think it is, we’ll move to the alternate. Trust your instincts.”
“Roger that,” Jeff coolly responded. “I’ll bring her in here.”
As we waited for the distinct thumping sound of double rotor blades, Stormin’ moved the teams down the hill, closer to the pickup zone, along with the five captives, who were barefooted and hooded, with their arms flex-tied behind their backs. A few were noncompliant, requiring the boys to use a few come-along techniques. A little well-placed pain goes a long way.
When they were seated on the ground, Crapshoot, our Alpha Team leader, approached Ahmed, grabbed a handful of the black cloth hood and raised it high enough to clear the eyes. Crapshoot leaned to within inches of the Afghan’s face and peered directly into his eyes.
“You are Usama
bin Laden!” Crapshoot barked in the face of the middle-aged Afghan.
Ahmed’s eyes went wide with astonishment and he protested, “No! No! No! Me Gul Ahmed!”
“Thank you. Just checking,” Crapshoot dropped the hood over the man’s face and grinned. Instant positive identification.
The big Chinook helicopter approached low toward the landing area with its big twin blades whoop-whooping in the night. The bird made a test pass to size up the tight space that we had designated for a landing. Jeff talked to the pilots, advising them to orient the ship’s nose to the valley floor and, from a hover, slowly descend roughly 150 feet to make a lip landing above the damp terrace. The maneuver required that the aircraft lower until the tail ramp kissed the ground and we would rush aboard as fast as possible.
Under the circumstances, it was a risky and difficult maneuver for any helicopter pilot and crew, and we wouldn’t have even considered asking anyone but our brothers from the 160th to attempt it.* The rotors would be spinning precariously close to one of Ahmed’s stone farm houses, and any blade strike would likely prevent our exfil and force the bird to limp back to Jalalabad. If it didn’t fall out of the sky first. In addition, two high wires drooped dangerously close, and the crew chief and door gunner had to ensure they could be cleared during the descent.
The MH-47 pilots did a super job, but the danger mounted by the second, and when the helicopter was actually lower than the high terrain on three sides, it is a wonder that it was not shot out of the sky as it held in a long hover. It would have been an easy shot into the cockpit for even a novice marksmen sitting on his back porch with a slingshot.
When the rear rotor blade actually came within inches of striking a rock wall, Jeff aborted the landing and narrowly diverted a catastrophe. The ship pulled up and out of the area to reposition and acquire the alternate pickup zone on the valley floor.
We breathed sighs of relief, probably never happier in our lives that a landing was called off. I keyed my radio mike to let Stormin’ know to shift the boys to the alternate pickup site, but he was way ahead of me and already had them moving.
There was no further need for stealth. If the earlier screaming by the women and children had not awakened everybody within a mile or so, the racket of the helicopter certainly had gotten their attention. Everybody knew we were there.
We took off for the alternate pickup zone, slipping and sliding down each terraced piece of terrain, happy to be going downhill and not up. Jeff still needed to look over the alternate site to be sure it was clear of all obstacles. Three terraces below the original site, the MH-47 slowly came over the ridgeline from above and behind us, and I winced as it slowly descended toward the alternate site. It seemed as big and slow as the Goodyear blimp above a Little League ball field. I couldn’t help but think that we were putting the aircraft and crew in great danger by asking them to come into pretty much a similar location twice. It was discussed during the planning, and although it was not smart tactics, in this case we didn’t have much choice. Our Trojan horse trucks would never have made it back on a return trip with five detainees through alert and insulted neighborhoods.
Then the MH-47 pilot noticed that one terrace seemed to be larger than the rest, and instead of going straight for the alternate site, which rested another two hundred meters below, in the middle of the valley floor, the pilot decided to try this new area.
The aircraft descended about one hundred meters, again with its tail to the ridgeline and made a textbook tail-wheel landing, beautiful flying that saved us at least twenty or so more minutes in the area.
As soon as the ramp touched down, four or five of the Alabama Green Berets piled out onto the grassy terrace and fanned out to secure the area. Following them were a couple dozen Afghan militiamen from the same group that had provided us with guides and drivers, and had taken care of the third tribal checkpoint on the way out. They would now secure this area after we left, and calm the excited masses. Afterward, they would talk to the locals and Ahmed’s wife and children to see what could be gleaned about his association with bin Laden and his participation in the battle of Tora Bora.
Should Mister Ahmed not be forthcoming, his wife’s testimony might help his amnesia, encouraging him not to be so coy. Maybe she would be worried about his safety and want him to cooperate, or perhaps proud of his notoriety and willing to tell us all about it.
As the boys crested a four-foot berm just beyond the landing zone, one of the detainees began to resist. Unfortunately for him, his escort was one of the Alpha Team boys known as Body Crab, who had been a longtime Army Ranger before coming over to Delta. The Body Crab stood about six two, had deltoids that looked like football shoulder pads, and although he had an awesome sense of humor, he was not in a playful mood. He executed a perfect face plant on the struggling detainee, which motivated the young man to stop struggling and come along nicely.
Within a minute or two, we were loaded and heading back to Jalalabad airfield where our squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jake Ashley, and squadron Sergeant Major Jim, a.k.a. the Grinch, awaited.
The air mission commander, Clay Hutmacher, was sitting in the jump seat just behind the two pilots. Although not actually flying the ship this night, he was in charge and could have aborted the pickup for a dozen reasons and none of us would have questioned the decision. Standing in the rear of the helicopter, I scribbled a note on my small light board and passed it to him. “Thanks for being the best pilots in the world tonight.” We were happy customers.
The trip back was much shorter than the trip out, and we were soon enjoying some hot chow the cooks had prepared, a much-appreciated and long-standing Delta tradition. For some strange reason, the food always seemed to taste a whole lot better when the missions were successful.
Ahmed was given a bottle of water, a Quran, and a new set of pajamas, then was introduced to his new home and personal interrogator.
Shrek, Ski, and Nuke, our appropriately named explosives ordinance disposal expert, had stayed at the site to update the Alabama Green Berets on what had taken place before they arrived and to interview Ahmed’s wife. But only a few minutes after our helicopter cleared the area, something else required their attention.
Several armed groups of locals were spotted moving toward the Ahmeds’ home, some of them testing the waters by firing their AK-47s at our guys. Mistake. Instead of wasting their own small-arms ammo, our boys remembered the AC-130 that was still on station overhead and called it in to do some work. In this case, bigger was better and the threat evaporated before it could gather momentum.
After a few hours sleep, we gathered for a full hot wash with representatives from every group of folks that had played some part in the mission. Among them were the intelligence analysts and staff operations wizards who did the lion’s share of work just to get us out the door. The helicopter pilots and crews from the 160th and representatives from the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, who owned the Alabama Green Berets, and CIA analysts and operatives in civilian clothes rounded out the guest list.
These hot washes are critical to Delta’s success and are always run by the senior noncommissioned officer involved in the mission. Officers usually sit in the back, but participate just the same.
Similar in many ways to the U.S. Army’s formal after-action review, hot washes are used to identify what went right, what went wrong, what needs to be sustained, and what needs fixing. However, it is quite unlike a standard after-action review, where a sacrosanct rule is that nobody should be individually identified for having done something wrong. In a Delta hot wash, if you messed up, you certainly hear about it, and although it’s nothing personal, thick skins are required, regardless of rank or service.
Once the overall review was complete, a few minutes were spent exchanging handshakes, slaps on the back, and a few laughs before all of the external folks depart the area. As soon as the room was cleared of anyone who was not part of Delta, a second, internal hot wash was conducted, best chara
cterized as a no-holds-barred commando confessional.
Every operator is expected to pony up to anything he did wrong during the mission. Whether it was poor judgment, a mental lapse, or a physical slip-up, you could bet it would be discussed. No infraction was too small, and any operator worth his salt would man up to not meeting the Delta standard. If he didn’t, you could bet someone would bring it up before the meeting adjourned. It always impressed me how a Delta team leader with six or seven years in the unit could tactfully tell a new troop commander—an officer—how screwed up he had been during an assault. Of course, some were more tactful than others, but it all had to be said. If you kept an open mind, you could really improve your performance. If you did not, then you weren’t long for the Unit.
The mission to capture Ahmed was the first successful capture mission for Delta since the start of combat operations in Afghanistan. Delta was responsible for killing scores of enemy Taliban and al Qaeda in places like Shah-i-Khot and Tora Bora, and on dozens of raids across the country, but this marked the first time the targeted personality in the mission statement was actually found on target and captured.
This statistic was indicative of the small number of al Qaeda terrorists or Taliban leaders on whom the intelligence community had actionable intelligence. This fact alone accounts for why we spent an awful lot of time looking for the special piece of information that would provide insight into the location of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, or Mullah Muhammad Omar.
When the raid was all over, I could not help but think that here we were in Tora Bora a year after our first violent attacks in these mountains, but instead of having bin Laden within reach, as we did back then, we were now grabbing any little person who might have spoken to him at some time. Gul Ahmed was just another piece in the puzzle. We would not be informed of what, if anything, he gave up, and we went back to work. But the intel on Usama bin Laden remained dry.
