by Dalton Fury
The Jackal Team did not agree. Murph and his two snipers were still up forward and pressing the attack, although they were critically low on water. Jester, Dugan, and two of the Brits cross-loaded up to roughly eighty pounds of supplies in each of their rucksacks and waited in the snowy cold for enough light to allow them to begin their emergency resupply mission over the treacherous trails.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Major Ironhead’s own resupply patrol to MSS Grinch had returned to the schoolhouse and Ironhead almost had to be forced to grab a few hours of sleep before doing an encore.
This time, we tweaked the organization of his team to eliminate having to rely on untrustworthy local Afghans such as the kind who had made off with much-needed supplies during the first climb.
The answer was to use four attached heavy breachers who had been held at the schoolhouse to provide our local security. Most were Special Forces demolition sergeants, experts in the use of explosives, oxygen, hydraulics, and making things go boom. These guys did not mind rolling up their sleeves for a tough job. They were all as heavily muscled as racehorses and were as ready to run as odds-on favorites at the Kentucky Derby.
Ironhead and the patrol used two pickup trucks to get as far as Mortar Hill, where they put the supplies on their backs, tucked their heads against the flailing show, and humped into the steep inclines, reaching MSS Grinch in just over five hours. They even brought along dry socks.
Even with such unbelievable exhibitions of endurance, our ability to maintain such a pace was unrealistic and dangerous. Had the enemy spotted any of the patrols, major drama would have unfolded, since serving as pack mules limited firepower and security during the movement. There was no easy solution, and after mulling it over with both Jim at MSS Grinch and Bryan at MSS Monkey, we adjusted our current dispositions in the mountains.
The changes would not only help resolve the logistics problems, but also keep up the hunt for bin Laden.
Regardless of the success of laying down an umbrella of bombs, and the advances the muhj had racked up over the last four days, we could not get bottlenecked on a single hilltop. Bin Laden’s location was still unknown, and we needed to be able to quickly join the fracas when the al Qaeda chief showed himself.
Moving to the new axis of advance, MSS Grinch crossed paths with a group of muhj taking some al Qaeda prisoners back to General Ali’s headquarters. Upon seeing the American commandos, the muhj became nervous, clearly not wanting the boys near their prisoners. A rumor had spread after the laughable surrender deal a few days earlier that the Americans would kill all prisoners in cold blood. In a war zone, that wasn’t necessarily a bad reputation to have.
The muhj tried to sneak the prisoners past, but our Alpha Team, along with the attached Special Ops Arab linguist, intercepted them. Their orders were to snap some photos, see if they recognized anyone, and take a look at how the muhj were treating the prisoners. Did they allow them to keep their weapons? Were they treating them as prisoners of war, or had the enemy simply paid off the Afghan muhj to escort an escape? Hell, the way things were going with the entire rumor, innuendo, and unanswered questions about the surrender deal, it wouldn’t have surprised any of us if bin Laden and his cane were strolling along with them.
As expected, the muhj took issue with the situation, which made the picture taking and questioning in Arabic all the more entertaining. Surprisingly, at least one of the al Qaeda prisoners had a fairly good command of English and didn’t mind flaunting it.
After being asked where bin Laden was located, another prisoner responded defiantly, “I could tell any Muslim brother where Sheik Usama is and they wouldn’t tell you.”
Every nervous muhj guard present during this exchange thought the next action would be an American commando putting a .45-caliber hard ball into the prisoner’s smart-ass mouth. But we are more civilized than our terrorist adversaries, a characteristic seen as a sign of weakness by al Qaeda’s ilk, and let them live. In a war zone with these people, such compassion isn’t such a good reputation to have.
General Ali declared victory over the al Qaeda forces at Tora Bora. He did not mention Usama bin Laden.
The general’s victory cry was at odds with the current realities of the battlefield, where the air strikes were continuing unabated. The boys called in a half-dozen “troops in the open” requests for fire from a couple of loitering B-52s. Close to forty-five bombs were dropped before noon.
By early afternoon, we decided to honor Ali’s request to cease bombing to allow his fighters greater freedom of movement. The general was confident that no caves existed beyond Hilltop 3212. He said he knew this for sure because he had helped build them in the mid-1980s.
Several villages reported strangers showing up, and the muhj visited them, one by one. At this point, there was little fight and little faith left in al Qaeda’s ranks.
There had been no confirmed sign of bin Laden in the last couple of days, no body to photograph, no DNA to collect. The press began reporting that the al Qaeda leader had escaped, and that led some critics to declare that the Battle of Tora Bora was a failure.
Our boss relayed the necessity that we paint a picture of victory, but without the body of our target, there were few options for convincing outsiders that the overall fight had been a success.
We could state the fact, verifiable by the press, that the al Qaeda mountain stronghold had been utterly destroyed. And we could also accurately point out that the enemy was on the run. The preferred choice was to fall back on the body count option of the Vietnam era.
Thus began the numbers game of meticulously soliciting figures from each subordinate commander of the rival warlords, from the CIA people who had explored particular caves and valleys, and cross-checking their tallies with our own daily notes and reports.
Regardless of the spin, General Ali’s declaration of victory meant very little to us. True victory could never be claimed until there was some proof of bin Laden’s demise. A bunch of dead al Qaeda types was certainly a good thing, but the main mission had been to kill the mastermind and bring back proof. That didn’t happen.
Jester, Dugan, and the two Brits got an early start on their resupply hike. They had about one thousand meters to cover, moving uphill and over some treacherous terrain in weather that was deteriorating every day.
Like Scrawny before him, Dugan’s mountaineering expertise saved the day, and after three hard hours of climbing over slippery rocks they finally reached their teammates. It is amazing that none of them slipped over the edge and plummeted two thousand feet to the bottom of the valley.
After reaching the three snipers, the five Delta operators and two Brit commandos huddled close together in the freezing temperatures. There were seven of them, each with a thin local blanket, but there were only two sleeping bags. They took shelter from the knife-sharp wind inside an old al Qaeda trench and spent that whole horrible night rotating through security and restless sleep. None were considering getting out of there, but were just waiting for authority to start dropping bombs again. In their opinion, the lack of thunderous explosions, machine-gun chatter and radio transmissions was only a temporary condition.
The only thing breaking the eerie, ghostly silence was the keening wind.
On the other side of the battlefield, the four-man team of Brit commandos and one American combat controller that was accompanying Zaman’s fighters made their way to Ski and his India Team. By now, Zaman had surrounded the second highest peak in the area, just short of 10,000 feet, and shown on our maps as Hilltop 3212.
What was left of al Qaeda fighters was in a full retreat. And without any command and control to organize and direct them, it was every man for himself. None were sticking around the mountains in hopes of a lastditch defensive. When the weather cooperated, the desperate yet brave enemy fighters were easy targets in the daytime for our fighter jets and accurate bombers.
India Team took the opportunity to conduct some battle damage assessment of the caves and bunkers in th
eir area. The fissures that dominated the high ground had excellent overhead cover and concealment, and were topped with blue and clear plastic to keep out the rain. The Delta boys were impressed by the work of the men who had constructed the caves, but also saluted the attention to detail of the American factory workers who built the engines of war that destroyed them.
Heaps of sheared rock, mounds of turned soil, and mangled branches and tree trunks surrounded the emplacements, severe damage that attested to the accuracy and severity of heavy bombing. A destroyed ZPU-1 antiaircraft gun, previously well camouflaged, sat open and exposed and motionless behind some tattered trees. Empty ammo cans and belts of ammunition were strewn in all directions. Bloodied bandages, discarded cans of Quaker Oatmeal and food wrappings, split firewood, abandoned RPG rounds, and old potato masher grenades gave it the look of a junkyard. A few documents written in Arabic, the only thing of value to us, were collected and passed to the CIA.
While documenting the finds with a camera, Ski struck up a conversation with a muhj fighter. The Afghan told a dramatic yarn of a helicopter swooping in fast and low to land in a small village down in the Wazir Valley. Although the muhj’s memory was admittedly hazy, he told Ski the event happened about eight days earlier, and in his opinion the helicopter had belonged to Pakistan. Ski knew for sure that it had not been an American helicopter. Could it have picked up a special passenger and whisked him away? No way to prove any part of his story.
I sat down with General Ali and Adam Khan for our nightly chat and had a chance for some small talk while we waited for George to arrive with his latest CIA reports. I mentioned that since the general’s earlier declaration of victory, the U.S. government had begun debating a “definition of success” for Tora Bora.
“The Voice of America is saying this battle is over, and that you won, General,” I said, sipping a cup of hot tea. Obviously exhausted, but happy that the fighting was over except for some minor actions, Ali responded in a fatherly tone: “We might not have been up to the task, we might have needed more fighters, it might not have gone according to plan, or maybe this was all in God’s hands.”
Pausing to allow Adam Khan to translate, the general continued, “We have much work still to do. We haven’t found Sheikh Usama.”
“General, with all you just said, how could you claim victory?” I asked.
“To put a smile on your face. We have destroyed al Qaeda’s base of the last ten years. They are confused, tired, and hurting. The sheikh has no other place as good as this,” he answered with total sincerity, nodding toward the snow-sheathed peaks.
I changed the subject. “When we arrived, we were told that up to three thousand enemy fighters were in the mountains. Where did they go, and how many were killed?”
“My commanders will tell me how many died. It is difficult, though, as our culture is to care for the martyrs right away. Zaman buried many the other day. We found eighty in a valley yesterday from bombs,” he explained, then paused for a few seconds. “If al Qaeda was still strong, they would not have left their dead brothers behind.”
“Do you still have fifty enemy prisoners?”
“Yes. No. One had a grenade and he was shot.” He pulled the knifeedge of his hand across his throat.
George entered the room with one of Ali’s officers, Commander Zahir. Not a day over thirty-five, he was muscular and well groomed, had a receding dark hairline, and spoke English well. His father, Haji Qadir, had been a good friend of General Ali’s before Taliban cruel justice caught up with him. The general obviously respected his longtime friend’s son.
The junior warlord was a fast learner, as well as being a dependable commander for Ali. When he had discovered that the CIA provided cash, arms, and equipment based upon the number of fighters a commander had, the shrewd Zahir had claimed he had 27,000 men of his own. It was an outrageous figure.
Zahir reported capturing several dozen enemy prisoners who had refused to drop their weapons until they were certain they would be captured only by fellow Muslims because they feared the American commandos, particularly at night.
Under George’s questioning, the young commander said that his men had killed about fifty al Qaeda fighters, but many others had died in the sustained bombing. He said it was hard to tell exactly how many, since so many of the bodies were headless, missing limbs, and lying in pieces here and there.
Zahir unfolded a dirty piece of paper and read twenty-two names of presumably captured al Qaeda fighters. A second CIA guy in the room, alerted to two of the names, scribbled them in his little notebook. Two others, according to Zahir, also seemed to be important because the others showed them reverence. One of them, Zahir believed, could possibly be one of bin Laden’s sons.
We all woke up at that statement and George offered the assistance of the CIA in identifying the prisoners, including providing pictures of the most important al Qaeda personnel and their siblings. If the guy in question was related to bin Laden, he would be on the CIA list.
Zahir smiled and casually raised his left hand to indicate that he had it all under control, but he dodged back to the overall body count. “I will have a religious cleric ask them how many al Qaeda were in the mountains, how many were killed, and how many have fled.”
“What makes you think they will respond to him?” George wanted to know.
“I have a special interrogator who will cry with them for their cause. We will wine and dine them, with high security, to get them to call for their brothers in the mountains to put their weapons down.”
How could we possibly understand that thinking? These prisoners had been trying to kill us, and now were going to be pampered. “Cry with them for their cause?” Right.
Ali, Zahir, and another elder Afghan then simply closed the book on that subject and the possible identification of a young bin Laden, and dove into an intense three-way discussion about the al Qaeda loot being pulled from the caves. It was critical to divvy up the goods fairly. Somewhere in the middle of the ten-minute discussion, Ali looked up at us and apologized for the interruption, but he was adamant that this issue be solved immediately. It was custom.
By December 18, there was little left for us to do in the mountains. General Ali assured us that his men were busy searching for al Qaeda fighters who might be hiding in the valley villages. Whether or not that was true was debatable, for it seemed every muhj fighter was busy looting the caves for anything of value that might fetch a buck or two.
Journalists learned from the muhj passing by Press Pool Ridge that some Americans were still in the mountains and some set out to try and find a commando or two. Good story, better pictures.
The India and Kilo teams, along with several teams of Brits, were still in their forward positions, watching the cave-clearing escapades and awaiting orders to pack it up. They saw scores of Afghans traversing the ridgelines and valleys that had been the war zone, heading for their homes.
Realistically, we could have pulled every operator out of the mountains the night before, but we were directed to remain in place to demonstrate American resolve. With two inches of snow on the ground and the temperature going nowhere but down, the grim snipers must have been a bizarre sight to victorious muhj. Didn’t these Western commandos know the battle was done?
At midmorning, we directed Jackal team’s forward OP to climb down the mountain through the latest layers of fresh snow and ice and link up with MSS Grinch. The weather made it impossible to retrace the dangerous route they had taken coming in, so Murph and Jester decided to head east and then back to the safety of the north. That would take them over territory that previously was occupied by al Qaeda and had not yet been traversed by Americans. The team shouldered their rucks and headed into the unknown.
After a thousand meters, they left the high ridge and went down into the valley heading north, stumbling across the bouldered valley floor. Two long-haired and unshaven Westerners approached from the opposite direction, one carrying a large camera. Journalists!
Murph, the last man, couldn’t resist. “How y’all doin’?” he replied, with a bit of sarcasm.
The two journalists came to a complete standstill, looks of shock on their faces. The boys continued moving away, turned another corner, hightailed it up a sloping spur, and hid behind a rock formation. The journalists were running up the valley not far behind, trying to catch the Americans and Brits and snap a few prized pictures, but unknowingly passed right underneath the Jackal Team. One moment the commandos had been right beside them, and the next moment they had vanished. The journalists continued on down the trail, and the team decided to take a break and brew up some tea on a portable butane stove. After enduring days of stress, the unexpected encounter with the journalists had brought a moment of humor.
Jim had also sent two assaulters to guide the snipers back to the base camp. The same two journalists now spotted these Delta boys and started chasing them, but the assaulters took off. In doing so, one of their sleeping bags snaked out of its carrier and was flapping behind him like a flag by the time they came into view of the snipers. It was too much. The American snipers and Brit commandos broke out in tension-melting laughter.
After sharing the pot of tea, they all descended farther into the valley and headed in the direction of the MSS Grinch base camp. For about thirty minutes, things seemed to be normal, then someone popped up from behind a large group of jagged rocks about a hundred meters away and the sun-bright lights of a camera flashed on.
