The Final Mission of Extortion 17

by Ed Darack

  While pilots not involved in the IRF infil remained unaware of the specifics of the incident, on-scene aircraft, including Pitch Black 45 and 70, coordinated their efforts and built their situational awareness within minutes. After firing the 70 rounds, Pitch Black 45 and 70 coordinated with Slasher 02 and maintained a tight orbit around the burning wreckage, ensuring that no enemy fighters could approach it, and they searched for the shooter(s). The Pitch Black attack helicopters flew an orbit just 500 meters from the burning wreckage, their pilots eying every detail within that perimeter, while Slasher, using its powerful bank of infrared floodlights, scanned the landscape beyond the 500-meter line.

  The two Apaches carefully searched all the buildings and compounds in Hasan Khel, including one with a peculiar tower on its northwest corner, identified by Slasher as the likely location from which the shot that downed Extortion 17 had originated. As they flew low, their sensor screens showed trees, fields, walls, explosions, flames, and burning wreckage scattered across the crash site. Hoping for signs of survivors, they zoomed in on areas only about 12 by 12 feet, but found no signs of life. Others, including Stryker 23, the Team Darby JTAC, attempted to raise individual Team Logar members on their radios, but nobody responded.

  Still conducting the raid at the Lefty Grove compound when the RPG hit Extortion 17, members of the Team Darby strike force prepared to release all detainees and move on foot the two and a half miles northwest to the wreckage site. Soon thereafter, Extortion 16 returned to FOB Shank.

  As plumes of smoke and fire continued to billow from the wreckage of Extortion 17 into the dark sky, the Task Force Darby strike force moved quickly—and at great risk, due to the high IED threat—over the Tangi’s roads to secure the crash site. Traversing the Green Zone would have been far safer, but the terrain would have slowed them down. “I can’t tell you how brave those guys were to basically just run down those roads, with all that IED threat, to get to Extortion 17,” recalled Randell, who along with the other Apache pilots provided overwatch for the strike force during their final 500-meter approach to the wreckage. Soon after the strike force arrived at the site, Task Force Knighthawk UH-60 helicopters delivered a Knighthawk Pathfinder search and recovery team. By dawn, as the recovery personnel worked furiously and diligently to transport the remains of personnel and machinery, the military prepared to reveal to the world the news of the greatest single-incident loss of life in the decade-long U.S. war in Afghanistan.

  “Extortion is down!” Randell Dewitt’s transmission echoed in Buddy Lee’s head. “Extortion is down!” So did Scott Quiros’s transmission: “Right now we’re currently at one Chinook down, how copy?” Neither man, however, identified which of the two Extortion Chinooks flying on the IRF infil mission that morning would not return to FOB Shank. Buddy wondered if he would ever speak to his good friend Bryan Nichols again, or if Bryan’s transmission in response to Quiros’s LZ report—“All right, good copy”—was the last time that he would heard him speak.

  “I was out on a mission when they put together that immediate reaction force, and I didn’t know how they organized it, if it was a one-ship or a two-ship insert,” Buddy explained, “and as much as I wanted to find out which aircraft it was, I stayed off the radio, for obvious reasons.” Those reasons were, of course, that the situation required as many open and uncluttered nets as possible for those who took part in the CSAR efforts. After completing their mission, Buddy and Extortion 14’s copilot, CW2 Justin Chadwick, parked their CH-47 but left it running. Normally, after mission completion, Buddy would have the crew “put the aircraft to bed”: power down all systems, make logbook entries, conduct postflight inspections, and note any maintenance issues so that the aircraft would stand ready for the next period-of-darkness. At that moment, however, the Extortion Company commander did not know if he would need to fly more troops into the Tangi, so he had his crew keep the CH-47 at 100 percent.

  While Justin and the four crewmembers remained in Extortion 14, Buddy sprinted to Knighthawk’s TOC, desperate to learn which Chinook had gone down, Extortion 16 or 17. He knew as soon as he opened the door. “The first person I saw was Jeremy. He was standing there stone-faced.” CW2 Jeremy Collins and CW4 Rick Arnold had piloted Extortion 16, having broken formation and orbited three miles north of the IRF LZ just minutes before the RPG sent Extortion 17 plummeting into the Green Zone. Buddy looked up to one of the large plasma-screen monitors in the TOC and saw the full names of Bryan, Dave, Alex, Pat, and Spencer, “all highlighted in bright red.” A kaleidoscopic array of emotions rushed through the mind of the Extortion Company commander. Relieved that Jeremy, Rick, and Extortion 16’s crewmembers Brandon Robinson, John Etuale, and John Brooks had made their Zulu call, symbolic of mission completion and a safe return, Buddy realized that there would be no Zulu for Extortion 17. “Those calls were so routine for us, and that’s what really drove it home—it was so routine that you think, ‘They made their Alpha call, so of course they’d make their Zulu call sometime after.’ ” The loss of Bryan, Dave, Alex, Pat, and Spencer struck Buddy as incomprehensible, impossible to fully grasp.

  Then he took a look at Extortion 17’s flight manifest and saw that they had carried passengers. “Who did they have onboard?” Buddy asked Jeremy. “All of the SEALs,” Jeremy responded.

  Hours later, the pilots of Pitch Black 45 and Pitch Black 70 returned to FOB Shank. The two aircraft had remained over Extortion 17 until they needed fuel, then swapped out with another AWT just long enough to return to the FARP, refuel, and fly back to the crash scene. The Apaches flew for 9 hours and 15 minutes straight, by far the longest mission for any of the pilots. When the four Pitch Black pilots returned to Shank, Buddy was there. “They were completely spent. Absolutely exhausted. Their eyes were bloodshot,” Buddy recalled. “I knew about Randell’s cousin, about what happened to him. I knew how seriously Randell took looking out for the troops he supported, whether they were infantry or other aircraft like ours.” Randell, Greg Sievers, Scott Quiros, and Greg Robinson would have continued to fly for the entire recovery operation had regulations allowed it. Other Apaches from throughout Regional Command–East flew to Shank and then to the Tangi to render assistance, and commanders mandated a continuous presence of an AH-64 AWT to guard the crash site out to 500 meters, with teams continuously rotating in and out during the entire recovery process.

  As word of the tragedy quickly spread among aviation units throughout Afghanistan, pilots of all types stepped forward to assist, most notably fellow Army aviators. That zeal to render aid nearly cost two Apache pilots their lives. A few hours past sunrise on August 6, an AH-64 lifted off from FOB Salerno, near the city of Khost, 65 miles southeast of FOB Shank. Bound to join the overwatch portion of the Extortion 17 recovery effort, the Apache’s pilots crashed on a ridge in the high Arma Mountains northwest of their base. After the AH-64 slid a few dozen feet down a mountain face, the two escaped and transmitted word of the accident. At Shank, a team of Army Pathfinders, soldiers trained to set up helicopter LZs and help retrieve downed aircraft and personnel, geared up to assist the pilots of the downed Apache, and Buddy and Travis Baty stepped forward to fly them out in an Extortion Chinook. As they prepared to lift into the sky, however, word arrived that forces closer to the Apache already had arrived at the crash scene and extracted the pilots.

  While virtually all members of the American military look forward to performing their jobs, some dread being called upon. Among them is a small group that maintained a permanent presence at FOB Shank: the Mortuary Affairs Unit. Roughly 16 hours after the downing of Extortion 17, around 9 p.m. on August 6, two 160th MH-47 SOAR Chinooks arrived at FOB Shank. In addition to the small Mortuary Affairs team, some non-DEVGRU SEALs, Navy doctors, First Lieutenant Anthony Morrison (an Extortion pilot and Dave’s commander in Colorado), and Buddy prepared to undertake the initial body identification process. This job was typically handled exclusively by Mortuary Affairs personnel, but due to the sheer magnitude of loss, oth
ers needed to assist. The crew carefully carried 39 litters, each holding a black bag, out of the MH-47s and into the Mortuary Affairs building. Because many tasked to assist the Mortuary Affairs people knew those on the helicopter, they could help speed the process along and get the bodies returned home. “They’d conduct DNA testing for positive identification once the remains arrived at Dover [Air Force Base, Delaware], but we needed to secure any personal items—jewelry, dog tags, et cetera,” Buddy said. “It was not a pleasant experience, but it had to be done.”

  The process proved not only gruesome but dangerous, as the group discovered unexploded grenades and other live ordnance, requiring them to evacuate the building and call explosive ordnance disposal technicians. After roughly four hours of initial identification, the military flew the bodies to Bagram. Despite the degree of burning on the corpses, later autopsies would show that all had died of blunt-force trauma. None displayed any signs of smoke inhalation, revealing that they had passed in the first tenths of a second after the RPG strike.

  One Pathfinder who had helped recover the bodies of those inside Extortion 17 approached Buddy a few hours later, showing the company commander spent 7.62mm casings found near the crash site. “Your boys went down fighting,” he told Buddy, pointing to divots on the casings’ primers, indicating that they had been shot rather than “cooking off” in the heat of the burning wreckage—proof that Alex, manning the right-door gun, had returned fire against the two insurgents. While at the crash site, the Pathfinders had worked furiously, removing all remains of the pilots, crew, and passengers, as well as key parts of the helicopter for subsequent investigations. Although a flash flood swept away some of the Chinook, by that time they had removed everything required for future inquiries.

  On the evening of August 8, 2011, at Bagram Airfield, the American military held a ramp ceremony to pay respects to the fallen before returning them to the United States. These ceremonies, always somber, are final tributes before fellow service members walk caskets of remains up the loading ramp of the C-17 transport aircraft waiting to repatriate them. Members of Extortion Company, including Buddy, were pallbearers in the service for those lost on Extortion 17 and three other Americans who had recently been killed in the area: Army Ranger Sergeant Alessandro Plutino (killed on August 8 by small-arms fire) and Marine Sergeants Joshua Robinson and Adan Gonzales (both killed on August 7 in an ambush). The C-17 is capacious, but the caskets were so numerous that two of the big airplanes were needed to hold them all, even loaded side by side. Thousands of people attended the service, with members of all coalition partner countries listening to eulogies that culminated with a moving tribute by Lieutenant General Joe Votel, the commanding general of JSOC. Pallbearers then loaded the flag-draped metal caskets onto the two aircraft.

  The next morning, Task Force Knighthawk conducted its own service at FOB Shank for the five fallen aviators of Extortion Company. Many outside of Extortion Company and Task Force Knighthawk attended, including members of JSOC. The service at Shank culminated with a flyover of an Apache, a Black Hawk, and a Chinook, the latter flown by Extortion Company pilots CW2 Dave Anderson and CW2 Herbert Addison, who broke the CH-47D away in a missing man formation.

  Memorial service at FOB Shank for those killed on Extortion 17 in August 2011. Left to right: Captain Justin “Buddy” Lee, Extortion Company commander (head bowed), CW3 Travis Baty, and Specialist Taylor Banks (face in hand). Credit 32

  After the ceremony, Buddy and Extortion Company pilots Travis Baty and Jeremy Collins undertook the task of packing Bryan’s belongings. Bryan, who had moved into Kirk Kuykendall’s room after the LZ Honey Eater downing, had become close friends with Buddy, in part because their rooms were so close. By the time Buddy entered Bryan’s room to pack his belongings, he had been awake for nearly four days straight. “It was so difficult going into Bryan’s room knowing he’d been in there just a few days earlier. Packing up Bryan’s belongings is when it hit me that he really was dead. That’s when I finally broke down and cried,” he said. The packing process complete, he stumbled to his room and collapsed on his bed, finally sleeping.

  Back home, family and friends learned of the news, at first vaguely and then in disheartening specifics. “I remember opening an email from Justin [Buddy], and it was just one line: ‘I’m OK. Something bad has happened, but I’m OK,’ ” recalled Christy Lee, Buddy’s wife. She could not sleep for the remainder of the night, and she checked and rechecked news sites. “But nothing was showing up.” Then a photo of a Chinook helicopter appeared as part of the main story on a news site: a report of a crash in Afghanistan with multiple casualties. Christy belonged to a Family Readiness Group, and one of her responsibilities included contacting five specific people to alert them that a tragedy had befallen the unit. She did not know, however, who had died, just that the unit had suffered a loss. “One of the contacts on my list was Mary Nichols.”

  Close-up of memorial to the pilots and crew members of Extortion 17. Credit 33

  Flyover by an Extortion CH-47D Chinook (left) and a Pitch Black AH-64D Apache during the memorial service at FOB Shank for those killed on Extortion 17 in August 2011.

  When Mary got the call, “I was in New York, vacationing with my mother,” she remembered. (Mary had received a similar call six weeks earlier, after the Honey Eater downing, in which Bryan had sustained only minor injuries.) She and her mother had already seen a news report about the Chinook crash, but it stated that the helicopter had carried SEALs, which had eased her anxiety. Bryan had never told her about Extortion Company supporting SOF missions, just as Dave and others on Extortion 17 hadn’t told their friends and family members. “So I figured it didn’t involve Bryan, but of course it still unnerved me.”

  After a serviceperson’s death, the military goes to great lengths to inform the next of kin in person. Sometimes, however, confusion clouds the process. “A member of Bryan’s command down in Texas kept contacting me, asking me where we were,” Mary recalled. “I couldn’t figure out what was going on, but I think my mother picked up on it.” The two decided to press on with vacation plans to visit Niagara Falls. But later that night, at dinner, Mary’s phone rang again just as she had taken her first bite. Answering, she heard Bryan’s brother, Monte. “He was crying. He told me the news that Bryan had been killed, that he was one of the pilots.” Mary and her mother immediately returned to their hotel.

  On August 9, 2011, Mary attended the arrival ceremony, attended by President Barack Obama, for the 30 Americans at Dover Air Force Base. “I don’t remember much from Dover. I went there with a small group. There were family and friends of all those killed there,” she said. “There were so many bodies, it took what seemed like forever to offload the caskets. I was in a haze. There were different memorials over the course of three days.”

  Ten days later, family and friends held a funeral for Bryan in his hometown, Hays, Kansas, where his mother and father, Cyndi and Doug, had raised him and where Laura Carter had met Dave Carter. Family and friends held a wake the night before at Bryan’s parents’ house, with attendees arriving from throughout the United States. So many people lined the sides of roads during Bryan’s funeral procession the next day that Mary remembers a sea of American flags. “Not everyone was part of the procession, but everyone appreciated it. One of the cars carried the country band Little Texas, and they later wrote a song about the funeral procession and Bryan, ‘Slow Ride Home.’ ”

  “I remember checking the news that Saturday morning,” said Laura Carter, who paid close attention to the report of a helicopter downing in Afghanistan and shortly thereafter was relieved by an Associated Press report stating that it was a Black Hawk. That report was later updated, however, to state that a Chinook had gone down. “That made me kind of nervous, so I emailed my Family Readiness Group contact, asking her for any information about the incident. But I didn’t get a response.” As time passed, Laura grew more nervous. A neighbor and good friend arrived to keep her company, and
the two watched news reports together. “And then my doorbell rang, and I saw the shadows of a group of people. I didn’t want to answer the door. I hesitated. I knew our lives would never be the same…ever again,” Laura said. “And I opened it, and there they were.”

  Watching a movie with his friend KJ, whose father worked in Dave Carter’s unit as an FE, Kyle Carter received a text message from his mother, asking him to return home. “That whole morning, I’d heard somebody on the phone at KJ’s house asking if they’d heard from my dad, and that was eerie,” he recalled. KJ asked why he was leaving. “I told him that I thought it was something to do with my dad. I got home and saw all these cars in the driveway, and I knew something was wrong.” Laura told her son the news. “And I just broke down.”

  “I was working at a sandwich shop,” recalled Kaitlen Carter, “and my mom called on the delivery line and said that I had to come home. Something happened. And I’m like my dad: I like to work and didn’t want to take any time off.” Laura, however, pressed her daughter, which made Kaitlen nervous. She thought about her father on her drive home, how he was a hero in many ways to many people, and then she recalled the bad feeling she’d had before he departed for Afghanistan, the premonition she and her mother had shared. She also thought about her brother, Kyle, wondering if he might have gotten into an accident. Pulling up to her house, she did not see her brother’s car, and she worried about him. “I walked inside and asked my mom, ‘Is Kyle OK?’ And she said that he’s fine, that he’s on his way home. And then—I don’t remember her exact words, but something on the lines of ‘Your dad was flying and they got hit with an RPG, and nobody survived.’ ” Kyle returned shortly thereafter. “After that, everything blurred together. The entire next year just blurred by.”