by Dalton Fury
Even in the Balkans, a bar fight is usually soon followed by police sirens, handcuffs, and paddy wagons, which also usually means trouble for unfortunate innocent bystanders—like us. But another immediate concern was that if these guys didn’t respect the local police, they sure as heck wouldn’t think twice about offing us. If the cops are scared of this place, maybe we should be, too.
Any chance of identifying our target that night slid to nothing in a hurry, and it was time, in military terms, to exfil the site immediately. In other words, we had to get the hell out of there.
We made our way through the door and into the outside air, only to find that police flashers had filled the parking lot and a few cops had already reached their roughed-up partner, who had regained some consciousness. Other cops were trading heated words with the bouncers while several more officers had men pressed up against the squad cars and private autos parked in the lot. Jamie and I could not risk being swept up with the crowd. Our car was only about thirty feet away, but getting there was not going to be easy.
We walked to the end of the boat as calmly as possible, attempting to not draw attention. Then we jumped over to the steep and soggy embankment and managed to flank the parking lot and approach our vehicle at a crouch before slipping inside. One of the first things a Delta operator does when handed the keys of an operational civilian vehicle is disable the interior lights that shine when a door is opened. That routine procedure allowed us to enter the car without alerting the nearby cops.
I was happy to let Jamie drive. He was back in his element as he cranked the engine, looked at me, and smiled, then calmly reversed out of the parking lot. He hit the gas and left the party in our rearview mirror.
We were going just over the speed limit on a major two-lane highway toward the safety of our house when we came upon an unexpected Republic of Serbska police checkpoint near the zone of separation, or ZOS, a mile-wide curvy line drawn on the ground to separate Bosnian Christians from Bosnian Muslims.
It was too late to turn around, and we had no choice but to approach the checkpoint and hope for the best. Police officers signaled Jamie to stop, and he put on the brakes and rolled down the window. Just as three uniformed policemen approached, flanking the car, Jamie hit the gas and burned rubber out of there.
After a hundred meters, we saw the police flashers come on behind us and several squad cars begin to chase. Jamie immediately found a cutback road a few hundred meters after rounding a small bend. He killed the headlights and simultaneously stepped on the brake, pressed down the clutch, and snapped the steering wheel hard left. The front tires grabbed the asphalt while the rear wheels slid around in a 180-degree arc, a perfect high-speed evasive maneuver executed in complete darkness and without night vision goggles. It scared the shit out of me.
Jamie gassed it and the car sped back toward the oncoming police, but with no overt lighting on our vehicle, which made it momentarily invisible to them. Once again at the turn, Jamie went sharp right, onto hard dirt and eased up about thirty meters before stopping. A few seconds that seemed like a lifetime crawled by before the police cars with their flashing lights came along and drove right past us.
I could tell our young hell-for-leather driver from New Mexico had done this kind of thing before. We were both smiling. “Damn, Jamie, that was scary shit but some excellent driving,” I told him, trying to regulate my heartbeat and not advertise my inexperience.
“Yeah,” he replied, already thinking of any errors he might have to admit in a hot-wash debriefing. “I think I gave it too much brake and not enough torque on the wheel, but it worked.”
The moment emphasized for me the importance of the Delta selection process in choosing the right kind of guys for the Unit and giving them unique training and skills. Delta operators know how to work in small teams, miles and miles away from any friendly American military unit . . . even when a routine mission turns to crap.
* The history, importance, and uniqueness of Delta’s selection process is discussed in detail by both Colonel Beckwith in his book Delta Force and CSM(R) Eric Haney’s book Inside Delta Force.
3
Nine-Eleven
“Billy Fish,” says I to the Chief of Bashkai, “what’s the difficulty here?”
—THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING,
RUDYARD KIPLING
We awoke inside a large white and yellow striped circus tent on September 11, 2001, our Delta squadron having been deployed to a foreign country to sharpen our joint war-fighting skills. It would be another day of prepping our equipment for the upcoming mission, scrubbing vehicle and helicopter loads, reviewing contingency plans and scouting and studying intelligence reports and recent satellite photos.
A few discreet operators, trained in the delicate skill of close urban reconnaissance, were already in place near the target area. To help us refine the assault plan they would send back to us via small satellite radios digital photos of key breach points—roofs, doors, and windows. In different corners of the tent, the staff sergeants and sergeants first class were talking about the type of explosive charges needed for this door or that window.
That practice mission remains classified, but the real mission might certainly happen within the next few years. Typically, once these training exercises are complete, they are put “on the shelf,” filed away but ready to roll in an emergency. Should some terrorist organization or criminal gang execute their end of the action at that site, Delta would trigger a response that had already been planned down to the last detail.
Super D, our squadron operations officer who never let stress or a crisis overtly raise his heartbeat above normal, and I also were up early that day, hard at work in the guarded hideaway located at an obscure end of an old European military air base taxiway. We had to put our plan for the upcoming mission before the commander for his approval soon, and were finishing the briefing slides. Eyes fixed on the laptop screen and forefinger ready on the mouse to make any minor adjustments, Super D asked, “What do you think?”
“Looks great. Let’s get past this briefing and get out there and execute this thing,” I answered.
“Yeah, good enough,” Super D said. “I’ll get the boss over here and run through it and make any changes so we can brief the general this afternoon.”
Bart, the squadron operations sergeant, walked in from another tent about fifty meters away to relay some information from our squadron sergeant major. Then he casually commented, “Hey, a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center in New York.”
We looked up at Bart, curious. “No shit?” said Super D.
I added, “No shit?”
Bart was a muscular, strong guy, a master at jujitsu and a championcaliber boxer, but he also was friendly and had a unique sense of humor. Was he joking? “Can you believe that shit? They think it was a small private plane. Geez, there you are checking out the new secretary near the watercooler and a plane comes crashing through the boss’s window.”
That day, September 11, 2001, may have started like any other, but within an hour of first call, the events taking place in America, several time zones away, would change our lives forever. They would change the lives of almost everyone in America.
Bart walked away across the grass infield, back to the other tent. Super D and I jaw-jacked a little. We gave little real thought to the airplane crash in New York, subconsciously chalking it up to mechanical failure or perhaps a heart attack overcoming the pilot above bustling lower Manhattan. We remembered that the World Trade Center had been the target of Islamic terrorists back in 1993, but no one was considering that terrorists might also be behind this new situation. Anyway, we were deep in our own business.
A few minutes later, Bart was back, moving much quicker this time, his eyebrows raised and a look of disbelief on his face. “Hey, get this. Another plane just crashed into the other Trade Center building. Now they think it’s terrorists!”
Super D and I were dumbfounded, afraid to believe it was true. We knew how ha
rd it would be for a terrorist to crash just one plane into a skyscraper, but two different planes hitting the side-by-side Twin Towers within fifteen minutes of each other was more than astonishing. What pilot would ever freely fly into a building if he knew the action would likely kill hundreds of people more than just his passengers? We tried to put ourselves in the mental state of the pilot, wanting to believe that, even with a gun to our heads, we certainly would let the bullet rip through our skulls before knowingly killing more innocent people.
I remarked, “If it’s terrorists, I wouldn’t doubt it if they cancel this training exercise immediately.”
Super D nodded agreed. “Yeah, kind of makes what we’re doing here a lot less important than it was a few minutes ago. Let’s get over to the head shed and see if they have the news on.”
The Tactical Operations Center, or TOC, was wall to wall that morning with concerned soldiers, staff officers, commanders, Rangers, army helicopter pilots, air force officers, and a few Delta operators. All eyes were glued to the CNN reports as we tried to make heads or tails out of what was happening back in our country, thousands of miles away.
Everybody thought not only of their own family’s safety, but also the families of the reportedly tens of thousands of people who were believed to have been killed after both Trade Towers collapsed, on live television. As the death toll grew, we were back inside our circus tent, and intelligence analysts were posting hourly pen-and-ink updates. What we were reading was beyond belief:
American F-15 fighter jet deliberately downs American Airlines flight 1089 over the Atlantic Ocean.
American F-16 shadowing United Airlines flight 283, believed heading toward Washington D.C., not responding, lethal force authorized if plane reaches U.S. airspace.
F-15 downs Delta Airlines flight 766 over northwest Virginia. U.S. Capitol and White House struck by jumbo jets. Both on fire.
The enormity of what we read jerked us into action. Retrieving our weapons from the metal storage containers, we upgraded our perimeter security. One thing was for certain: We weren’t going to be surprise victims of a terrorist truck bomb or a rocket attack without returning the violence in spades.
The father of one of our mates worked in the Pentagon and was there during the attacks. Sergeant First Class Brandon Floyd called his mother to make sure his dad was okay, but she had not heard from him either. We were all worried for Brandon and tried to keep his spirits up, silently praying and hoping his dad was at a coffee shop downtown or still stuck in traffic—anywhere but at his desk that morning. As darkness fell, another call home turned up good news. Thankfully, the former army colonel was okay, but was knee-deep in the twisted steel and burning rubble at the Pentagon, helping the injured and recovering the dead.
By the morning of September 12, twenty-four hours after the attacks, the makeshift scoreboard in the tent tallied thirteen jets hijacked, with four deliberately engaged and blown out of the sky by American fighter pilots over American soil or waters. The other nine successfully struck targets in New York and Washington, D.C. What in the world was happening? How could this be? Who could coordinate such a complex operation like this? Is this war?
It was the second day, September 13, before we learned the actual toll from that horrible day of infamy. An uncanny phenomenon of the crisis business dictates that a first report is always suspect. Miscommunication, manifested in multiple reports by various news agencies of the same event, the jammed telephone lines and cell towers bulging from maximum usage, and the fact we were on the other side of the world had contributed to the fantastic and inaccurate reports.
It didn’t matter, though. Whether it had been thirteen or only four hijacked jets, to a man we wanted to pull those target folders off the shelf, kit up, lock and load, and hop a plane to wherever we might execute some quick and pure revenge for this unparalleled attack on our homeland. Whether we were at war seemed largely irrelevant.
Even years later, it is hard to imagine any Americans not having the fireball images or the dual collapsing of the Trade Towers ineradicably engraved in their minds. Over and over again, for days on end, television ensured that caustic morning would be remembered as vividly as the jumpy black-and-white footage of the Hindenburg disaster or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
The attack had taken one hour and twenty-four minutes from the first strike on the North Tower to the crash of an airliner in a Pennsylvania field. Nowhere near the time it takes Mom to prepare a typical Thanksgiving meal, and less time than it takes to trim the hooves and shoe a couple of stubborn horses.
Although what had actually happened inside America remained cloudy to us, one thing was absolutely clear. It was time for America to stand up and be counted. Somebody would pay; Americans would accept nothing less than old-fashioned vigilante justice on this one.
The feeling we had at the time is indescribable as I sit here now with my pen, so many years after the event. But in that awful moment of national uncertainty and irrefutable vulnerability, one thing was a given: This was a good time to be in Delta—and we knew it.
4
Molon Labe
Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
— THE DEVIL ’S DICTIONARY, AMBROSE BIERCE
It would have been an understatement before the Twin Towers fell to say that senior American government and military officials were hesitant to send Delta to far-off places to resolve sensitive problems. “Too risky,” they said. “Not your mission,” they said. “It’s a police action and does not require your unit’s unique skills.”
Delta operators are well known inside the Special Ops community as being excellent decision makers in action, but first you have to get to the target. The decision to deploy the Unit seemed to be controlled by folks who were echelons above the Almighty himself, and the political will prior to 9/11 to do anything more than peacekeeping efforts simply was not there.*
Strategically, the recommendation to deploy American troops, particularly Delta Force, is made by a very small crowd in Washington, with the final decision being made by the president. If the commander in chief’s key advisors consistently tell him Delta’s services are not required or necessary, then Delta stays home. These key advisors take their cues from various general officers located both inside and outside of the Washington Beltway.
One former Special Operations commander likened the Clinton administration’s hesitancy to use Delta to never putting a Super Bowl—caliber team into the game. The former operator added that our nation’s leaders were risk averse, with former secretary of state Madeleine Albright being the most aggressive.
Delta apparently was only to be used for fine carpentry work. That did not change until nearly three thousand innocent citizens died on 9/11.
Back in Europe, before the World Trade Center dust had time to settle, we could feel the hands of fate reaching down and tearing the shackles of timidity loose from our nation’s decision makers. The aversion to risk displayed up our chain of command, particularly since the Mogadishu misadventure eight years earlier, was a character flaw that the American people would no longer accept. This new challenge was so much bigger, so much more important.
President George W. Bush’s aggressive response to 9/11 seemed like a relief to us, but it did not mean we were finally in the game.
Unfortunately, Bush’s offensive mind-set didn’t trickle down through the ranks of the military’s general officers with the speed one might expect. Even though President Bill Clinton left office in January, 2001, our nation was still hamstrung in September by the same timid senior military officers he had confirmed.
Over the next year in Afghanistan, my men and I were continuously shocked to see the national security apparatus still sluggishly displaying the same reluctance to take risks that existed before 9/11.
The operational kid gloves did not come off until the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
Delta operators had stopped shaving after 9/11, knowi
ng that sooner or later, we likely would be working among men with long beards. Our squadron returned home and was bustling with anticipation and activity, but one of our sister squadrons was already on standby and well into the planning phase. It would lead the Unit, and the nation, into Afghanistan to begin to right the colossal wrong.
Waiting for our number to be called was tough. For those serving in an elite military unit, the idea of being left behind when a fight looms is utterly devastating. We clung to the belief, however, that our country was on the verge of a total war with terrorists, so if our sister squadron was served the main course in Afghanistan, then we would be happy with the global leftovers.
We spent our days developing new or reviewing the shelved courses of action for numerous unique and politically sensitive target sets. In fact, while our senior military commanders on Capitol Hill were desperately searching for answers and appropriate response methods, Delta already had a playbook for this very eventuality. Over the years, Delta intelligence analysts had amassed a priceless encyclopedia of who’s who in terrorism, and it was filled with information about what makes them tick, and was updated daily according to the twist and turns of their evil minds.
Only a month after the attack, down at MacDill Air Force Base, Florida, the home of SOCOM, talented covert operatives, intelligence officials, and Special Forces commanders gathered to author the nation’s way ahead to destroy terrorists and their infrastructure around the world.* The men and women in Florida were also to figure out what could be done to kick off the campaign of vengeance and to give the president viable and realistic options.
Among this galaxy of professional and experienced commandos was our Delta squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jake Ashley. A tall and lean man, Ashley had a vocabulary the equal of an Ivy League law professor’s, and I often thought he would be more comfortable as a congressman than as a commando.
