The Final Mission of Extortion 17

by Ed Darack

  While Spencer and others of Extortion Company also supported conventional operations and flew general logistical transport flights, their bread and butter during their deployment was supporting special operations such as the Ranger-led raid Extortion 17 insert on August 6. According to flight logs, Extortion Company flew more than 90 percent of the raids conducted by SOF in the region, and not out of necessity but out of trust. The experience and professionalism of Bryan Nichols, Dave Carter, Pat Hamburger, Spencer Duncan, Alex Bennett, and others of Extortion Company hand-selected by Buddy and Kirk inspired the full confidence of JSOC operators that the crews would safely deliver them to potentially deadly ground, night after night.

  Vital to the background and story of the men and the mission of Extortion 17 is an event that occurred in April 1980, decades before Spencer Duncan and the other crewmembers and pilots would await their next move in the August 5–6 period-of-darkness. On a dry lakebed in Dasht-e Kavir, the Great Salt Desert, near the geographic center of Iran, a U.S. special operations team at a staging area code-named Desert One planned to launch the second leg of Operation Eagle Claw, a complex scheme to rescue the hostages held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Disaster struck, however, when one of the RH-53D helicopters careened into a cargo aircraft laden with fuel. The resulting fire killed eight servicemen and prematurely ended the operation. Out of the ashes of the tragedy, however, rose a new component of the U.S. military, one that both dramatically changed how special operations missions are planned, trained for, and executed and had wide-ranging historical and operational ramifications for Extortion Company, particularly Extortion 17.

  In May 1980, in the immediate wake of the Desert One tragedy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the U.S. military’s cadre of senior leaders, who advise the president, secretary of defense, and other key decision makers—assembled a six-person commission. They were tasked with carefully reviewing Operation Eagle Claw and the elements of its planning, execution, and external circumstances that had led to its demise and then recommending means to avoid such failures in the future. Chaired by retired Navy Admiral James L. Holloway III, the Special Operations Review Group issued the so-called Holloway Report in August 1980. It would lead, in 1987, to the establishment of SOCOM, which would include JSOC, later supported by Extortion Company.

  As a result, U.S. special operations became more efficient, streamlined, and effective, with an ever-greater margin of safety. Lessons learned from both successes and failures over the years fostered an evolution that slowly linked special operations and conventional units operationally. SOF began to plan, train with, and utilize the resources of conventional forces, including Extortion 17, integrating them into their missions. The smooth insert of the Ranger-led assault force in the Tangi Valley by Extortion 17 was testament to this integration, and a far cry from the disaster at Desert One.

  The Special Operations Review Group’s report also prompted the establishment of one of the most secretive and vaunted military units in the country’s history. “The Holloway Commission determined that we needed a standing helicopter force to be able to support special operations such as Eagle Claw, and the Army immediately stepped forward and stood up Task Force 160,” explained Major Matt Brady, a former pilot and commander in the 160th SOAR(A), the unit into which Task Force 160 would evolve years after its inception. Operations and incidents involving 160th Chinooks in Afghanistan during OEF would be an important and highly relevant historical foundation for Extortion 17’s mission.

  The initial command of the 160th chose the abandoned Old Clarksville Base, on the north side of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, as the unit’s headquarters. Built in 1947 to be one of the nation’s most secure facilities, it once housed nuclear weapons in a matrix of underground bunkers and tunnels. Commanders of the new Task Force 160 selected pilots and crew from the renowned 101st Airborne Division, based at Campbell. “They brought in Little Birds, Black Hawks, and Chinooks, trained at night, and then hid the aircraft in the bunkers during the day to keep their presence secret from Soviet satellites,” Matt said of the unit’s earliest history.

  Initially attracted to the 160th after a dramatic nighttime demonstration in which one of the unit’s Chinooks inserted a team of Rangers at West Point with a shockingly fast landing and relaunch (like that performed by Extortion 17 in the Tangi Valley raid), Matt changed his military curriculum from infantry to aviation in order to fly special operations Chinooks. After graduating from West Point and completing his first deployment, where he had flown a conventional OH-58D Kiowa Warrior armed reconnaissance helicopter during the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, he joined the 160th.

  Becoming a Night Stalker, however, required Matt to submit to a lengthy application process, culminating in an intensive weeklong testing and evaluation regimen that he undertook in the fall of 2002, just before he deployed to Iraq. During his evaluation, his instructor had Matt “land” near the virtual summit of Afghanistan’s Takur Ghar using a flight simulator for an MH-47, a modified Chinook helicopter used by the 160th. The 10,365-foot-high mountain looms above the Shah-i-Kot Valley of Paktia Province, just under 50 air miles south-southeast of the Tangi Valley. Earlier that year, during Operation Anaconda in March 2002, the Night Stalkers had lost two MH-47s during engagements near the peak’s summit. The losses would be studied in detail and weigh heavily on the minds of U.S. helicopter pilots and crew, particularly Chinook pilots, door gunners, and FEs, for years to come.

  In the dark early morning of March 4, 2002, Night Stalker pilot CW4 Al Mack carefully guided his MH-47E, call sign Razor 03, toward the upper southwest ridge of Takur Ghar. In the hold of the Chinook, SEALs prepared to race down the ramp of the aircraft to storm and hold the summit. Just a few seconds before they landed, hidden fighters atop the mountain unleashed volleys of machine gun and RPG fire. An RPG round slammed into the side of the MH-47, shutting down the aircraft’s right engine. The Chinook lurched, and SEAL Neil Roberts plummeted out the rear of the helicopter but survived the impact. Despite loss of power and damaged control systems, Mack kept the Chinook in the air and even attempted to circle back to render aid to Roberts. The damage inflicted on the MH-47 and relentless enemy fire prevented him from returning, and the fighters killed Roberts. Mack guided Razor 03 more than three miles to a controlled hard landing.

  Three hours later, al-Qaeda militants shot another MH-47, Razor 01, out of the sky onto Takur Ghar’s slopes with heavy machine gun fire and RPGs, killing two U.S. airmen and four Night Stalkers between the shoot-down and the hours-long firefight that ensued. The loss marked the second bloodiest combat day in the 160th’s history after the battle of Mogadishu almost a decade earlier.

  As a result, Matt’s instructor had him land repeatedly on a simulated Takur Ghar, giving him tips on how to guide the Chinook onto the high-altitude LZ. Matt later learned the identity of his teacher—CW4 Al Mack. At the end of the week-long trial, Matt passed muster. After his Iraq tour, he would enter the world of the Night Stalkers and become part of history in an incident of remarkable relevance to Extortion Company, particularly those of Extortion 17.

  Matt returned to the United States at the end of May 2003 and soon joined Green Platoon at Old Clarksville Base, where he dove into his 160th education and training. In November 2004, after more than a year of intensive flying, tactical education, and evaluation, his superiors placed him, at that point a fully qualified MH-47D Chinook pilot, in command of Assault Platoon, Bravo Company, 3rd Battalion, based out of Hunter Army Airfield outside Savannah, Georgia. A few months later, in the spring of 2005, he arrived in Afghanistan for his first combat tour with the Night Stalkers.

  Matt flew as much as possible there, participating in all types of missions, from maintenance flights to those that brought the 160th its highest regard and celebrity in the military: covert insertion and extraction, or what the RH-53D pilots of Eagle Claw would have flown had they succeeded at Desert One.

  When the planners of Operation Red Wings, a complex mission
focused on an insurgent leader named Ahmad Shah, presented their plan to Bravo Company, Matt jumped at the opportunity to command the insert ship of the opening phase. Late on June 27, 2005, Matt and his crew preflighted Turbine 31, an MH-47D “Super D” Chinook, so called owing to its enhanced armament, at Bravo Company’s base on the remote northern extremity of Bagram Airfield. With an M134 minigun and an M240 machine gun on each side of the aircraft—four high-rate-of-fire weapons—the crew could overwhelm virtually any would-be ambusher in Afghanistan if identified.

  CW4 “E” sat in the left seat and CW3 “B” occupied the right (Matt requested that only the first letter of each pilot’s last name be used in this book, as each continues to fly for the 160th). Matt, wearing a “monkey harness” that he secured to the floor of the Chinook with a snap-linked line, stood behind the two pilots to command the aircraft’s assets. The Night Stalkers of Turbine 31 then loaded their passengers, four SEALs tasked to surveil a series of small buildings and positively identify the location of Ahmad Shah and his band of fighters. The SEALs were Lieutenant Michael Murphy, Sonar Technician Second Class Matthew Axelson, Gunner’s Mate Second Class Danny Dietz, and Hospital Corpsman First Class Marcus Luttrell. A standby quick-reaction force led by Navy Lieutenant Commander Erik Kristensen loaded into Turbine 32, an MH-47 parked beside Turbine 31. With all harnesses latched and cinched and all gear stowed, Matt made the call to begin the mission at 10:15 that night. The pilots spun up the ship’s engines, and CW3 “B” lifted the Super D into the air, with Turbine 32 just seconds behind the lead ship.

  Prior to launch, Matt and his crew had reconnoitered possible LZs by studying high-resolution black-and-white photographs taken just days before from an RQ-1 Predator drone and by using Falcon View, mapping software that employs georeferenced satellite imagery for detailed route analysis. They identified three possible sites in a saddle between two heavily forested mountains, the 9,266-foot-high Gatigal Sar and 9,282-foot Sawtalo Sar: LZ Nez Perce and two alternates, LZs Thresher and Neka. Although the LZs were just over one mile from the village where intelligence revealed that Shah based his operations, flying tactically and hugging the terrain, as Al Mack had first instructed Matt to do during his simulated landing on Takur Ghar, would cloak the helicopter’s presence. Sawtalo Sar stood amid the three landing zones and the village and would block most, if not all, of the aircraft’s noise.

  Roughly 30 minutes after the two Chinooks departed Bagram, Turbine 32 broke away from Matt’s lead ship and flew toward FOB Wright, on the outskirts of the city of Asadabad, 20 miles from the target location. From there, Kristensen, the other SEALs of the quick reaction force, and the Night Stalkers of Turbine 32 would stand by to render aid if necessary. Turbine 31 continued alone, flying sometimes just 20 feet above the mountain ridges and peaks of the wild Hindu Kush of eastern Kunar Province. Fifteen minutes from their planned insert, an AC-130 gunship contacted Turbine 31 and gave the Night Stalkers an LZ update, reporting two people at LZ Neka who showed no hostile intent. Nez Perce, their primary LZ, was clear. However, with low fuel, the AC-130 had to “break station” and return to Bagram, meaning Matt and the other Night Stalkers would go in completely alone.

  Arriving at Nez Perce, CW3 “B” put Turbine 31 into a hover. Up to that point, the pilots had been flying off of their on-screen maps, showing their route overlaid on satellite imagery. While called LZs, the clearings were not wide or long enough to accommodate a Chinook, but they could accommodate fast-rope descent by the SEALs. Matt and the Night Stalkers of Turbine 31 planned to hover over the treetops surrounding one clearing and then deploy the 60-foot-long fast-rope as the aircraft remained safely stationary above the forest. When they looked outside, however, they realized that they needed to quickly form a hybrid plan, as they spotted stands of Himalayan deodar cedar soaring up to nearly 100 feet.

  “We had no idea how tall those trees were,” Matt recalled. “The imagery deceived us. They were much taller than we’d calculated.” CW3 “B” pulled thrust to bring the helicopter out of its hover and then edged Turbine 31 slowly north toward Sawtalo Sar. Matt, the pilots, and the crew scanned for a clearing they could descend into to deploy their fast-rope, as well as for any enemy in the area. A bit north of Nez Perce, they found a suitable place and dropped down. “I remember looking up at treetops kicking around from the rotor wash. Looking up at trees made our knuckles whiten a little,” Matt said. Turbine 31’s FE, “Brandon,” watched all four SEALs descend safely onto the ground. “We held our hover for a full three minutes as the four fast-roped onto the LZ,” Matt recalled. “Seemed like hours. It was the worst LZ I’ve ever been into. The whole time Brandon kept telling us, ‘Hold your right, hold your left, hold your forward, and hold your rear’—meaning don’t move even a foot in any direction. That’s how tight it was.”

  Brandon started retracting the fast-rope into the helicopter as soon as the last SEAL safely reached the ground. But it tangled on a tree stump. “There was no way to retract it, so he cut it,” Matt said. The 160th carefully briefs all passengers on this standard contingency measure to ensure the safety of aircraft, crew, and those on the ground—as well as on how to dispose of the rope—during pre-mission fast-rope qualifications.

  The crew then made their callouts, indicating, as the crew of Extortion 17 had in the Tangi Valley, that the helicopter was clear to ascend above the trees. CW3 “B” pulled thrust and Turbine 31 slowly rose above the trees. Once clear, the pilot nosed the aircraft forward and accelerated away from the SEALs. “Turbine 32, this is Turbine 31,” Matt transmitted to the waiting Night Stalkers at Asadabad. Then he said, “Budweiser,” indicating that they had successfully inserted the SEALs, and then “En route to J-Bad,” or Jalalabad Airfield.

  Matt, the Night Stalkers of Turbine 31 and 32, and Kristensen and his SEALs monitored the four-man surveillance and reconnaissance team’s progress from Jalalabad “right up to the edge of darkness.” Then the pilots and aircrew sped back to Bagram, where they “buttoned up” the aircraft in a hangar out of sight of all but the maintainers who prepped the Super Ds for the next stage of the operation.

  “Sir, those guys are in trouble.” CW3 “M,” one of Bravo’s pilots, shook Matt awake in the early afternoon of the 28th, about 12 hours after Turbine 31 had offloaded the surveillance team. Matt sprinted to the tactical operations center (TOC) to learn as much as possible about the situation as other Night Stalkers prepared the aviation aspect of a two-ship quick reaction force (QRF) flight. “I hadn’t seen sunlight in weeks,” Matt recalled. “We never fly during the day—darkness is the centerpiece of our effectiveness and survivability. But circumstances called for it.”

  One hundred miles to their east, on the slopes of Sawtalo Sar, Ahmad Shah and his men were ruthlessly pounding the SEALs with barrages of RPGs and machine gun fire. Within minutes, Matt locked himself into Turbine 33, idling next to Turbine 34, the other QRF Chinook. Matt’s lead ship carried a total of eight Night Stalkers and eight SEALs, including Kristensen, the QRF commander. As the pilots prepared to lift the Chinooks into the air, a ninth Night Stalker ran up the ramp of Turbine 33.

  “What are you…?” Matt asked, confused when he saw it was Stephen Reich, his commander, in his flight suit and helmet.

  “I’m taking this one,” Reich responded.

  Matt, in disbelief, argued with his commander and reminded him that one of the positions in which he had placed Matt was QRF commander.

  “There’s no time for debate,” Reich responded, “and besides, I’m a major and you’re a captain, and that makes me always right. Your job until further notice from this point on is to monitor everything from the TOC and support what needs to be supported.”

  Matt walked down the rear ramp of Turbine 33 in anger. The two MH-47s lifted off the concrete of Bagram Airfield under darkening skies as he ran to the TOC. Matt would never see Stephen Reich or any of the other eight Night Stalkers again.

  CW3 Corey Goodnature and CW4 Chris Scherkenbach, the pilot
s of Turbine 33, slowed the Chinook as they approached LZ Thresher, coming to a hover and preparing to insert the QRF. Unseen by any of the aircrew or passengers, one of Shah’s men emerged from behind a boulder, shouldered an RPG launcher, and fired. By sheer chance, the unguided round screamed into the rear of the Chinook and impacted on the aft ceiling of the passenger compartment. The explosion sent a stream of molten copper into a complex assembly of spinning gears and shafts, which ripped itself apart within a quarter-second. Turbine 33’s tail lurched earthward and the ship plummeted into the mountainside, erupting in a fireball that mushroomed hundreds of feet into the air and sent shockwaves rumbling through the region’s valleys. That moment marked the greatest single-incident loss of life to date for the 160th, for the Navy SEALs, and for U.S. forces in the Afghan war, tragically and permanently changing lives of their families, friends, and fellow warfighters.

  Matt was stunned after Turbine 34 made the radio call to pass on word of the shoot-down. “What do we do, sir?” a voice asked him. But Matt was mute. “Sir?”

  “One of my sergeants kicked me out of my stupor,” Matt recalled. “Him coming to me to ask our course of action reminded me that with Reich gone, I was in charge of the company at that point. So many things went through my mind that I’d forgotten that I now had to lead.”

  Matt assembled all the remaining Night Stalkers in a tent at their compound. “We have to go back up there,” he told them. At that point, U.S. forces did not know the fates of the reconnaissance and surveillance team or those on Turbine 33. “But we held out hope for survivors, and that drove us.”

  When darkness fell, Matt led a flight of all five of Bravo company’s remaining MH-47s to Sawtalo Sar. But as they closed on the peak, they entered dense clouds enveloping the mountain. “All we could see other than this green cocoon of cloud through our NVGs was the heat from the engines of helicopters around us,” Matt recalled. “And soon the cloud got so dense we couldn’t see even that.” Flying completely blind at that point, Matt ordered all aircraft to climb, disperse, and return to Bagram. The following night, Night Stalkers of Bravo Company successfully inserted SOF troops onto the shoot-down site, and they started the process of bringing the dead home.