The Final Mission of Extortion 17

by Ed Darack

  “I was Extortion Company’s representative at all the memorials,” said Kirk Kuykendall. “It was a really hard time after being through the trauma of the crash at LZ Honey Eater and then the downing of Extortion 17.” He attended funerals for all five killed, traveling to Fort Lewis, Washington, for Alex Bennett’s memorial and then to Arlington National Cemetery for his interment. “Because I was on crutches, I couldn’t be his escort at Arlington, so I was a ‘special escort,’ ” he said. Part of Kirk’s duty included opening and inspecting Alex’s casket to ensure that all contents, particularly his uniform, had remained in proper order. “That was my last act as a soldier. After that, I went to Fort Riley and received my discharge papers due to my injuries.”

  “Pat died doing what he absolutely loved,” said Joyce Peck, Pat Hamburger’s mother. “If he had a choice of how he would die, that would be it. He was proud to be an American, to be a soldier, and he was a great soldier. A great American.”

  Family, friends, and members of 7-158 AVN, Spencer Duncan’s Olathe, Kansas, Reserve unit, urged the door gunner’s parents to not watch or read news stories in the immediate wake of the shoot-down. “News sources got the facts wrong at first. They said that it was a 160th helicopter,” recalled his father, Dale Duncan. Hearing the news, his mother reached out to Spencer with a short Facebook message: “I know you’re OK.”

  Soon afterward, recalled Dale, they received the visit they hoped would never come. “I saw the uniformed soldiers, and I turned back, and I said, ‘Megan,’ and she just collapsed.” He opened the door for the visitors. “ ‘Are you the father of Spencer Duncan? The Secretary of Defense regrets to inform you…’ ”

  Dale’s recollections were a blur from that point onward. He and Megan surrounded themselves with supportive friends and family, awaiting the return of their son. Spencer came home on August 16 to a crowd of more than 10,000 people lining the route of his return, ultimately being transported for burial at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. “For the funeral, the principal of Spencer’s high school allowed the kids to go out to see the procession. As the hearse passed them by, there was complete silence,” Dale remembered. “Total, complete silence. I saw one of Spencer’s former teachers, tears streaming down his face.”

  Jan Anderson, mother of Navy SEAL Kevin Houston, remembered the phone ringing. When she answered the call, a man on the line explained that he was a friend of Kevin and that he and some others would like to meet with her in person. “Awesome, where are you?” she asked. “Do you need directions?”

  “Actually, we’re parked right outside your house.”

  Jan’s husband, Michael, glanced out the window. “You know why they’re here, right?” he asked Jan.

  “But I didn’t know,” she recalled. “Michael knew, and so he stepped back; he was behind me. I’ll never forget the sun bouncing off the medals and the brass of their uniforms as they came across the lawn. I opened the door, and it was like déjà vu. I’d dreamed this, I’d experienced this in my mind: the door was the same, the men were the same. I looked at them—the third one had tears streaming down his face. And I said, thanks for coming, but I really don’t feel like doing this today, and I closed the door.”

  She walked a few steps, then her legs collapsed. “My brain exploded. Little balls of electricity popping. Michael let them in, and they were kneeling with me, and I cried, ‘Not my Kevin. Kevin always comes home.’ ”

  In the weeks that followed the downing of Extortion 17, as families and friends grieved, the military initiated two detailed investigations into the incident. Through both—the Joint Combat Assessment Team (JCAT) report and the 1,180-page Colt Report, headed by Army Brigadier General Jeffrey Colt, a pilot and former aviation brigade commander—investigators learned many of the specifics of the downing, including the type of RPG round that the fighters had used, determined through detailed metallurgical analysis. Most important, the reports both concluded without a shadow of doubt that chance had downed Extortion 17.

  “What happened to your son was a damn lucky shot,” a SEAL officer told Joyce Peck, Pat’s mother. Matt Brady, 160th SOAR(A) pilot and commander, underlined this point: “Chance is still part of the battlefield. There’s no such thing as an RPG scanner.” American forces had had no prior knowledge of the fighters who emerged from their hide in Hasan Khel, and no means to determine their presence beforehand. By that point in the war in Afghanistan, enemy fighters certainly knew that the military could detect and track them through any number of mechanisms, even if they didn’t know precisely how, and thus they developed tactics and techniques that included keeping well hidden until they heard a helicopter approaching.

  I have no reason to question the JCAT report, whose key findings were the length—122 inches—of the rotor blade blown off Extortion 17 and the metallurgical examination of the round that destroyed it. Its investigators used a mass spectrometer (highly accurate) to determine these facts. However, while its conclusion is absolutely accurate, the Colt Report—likely due to time constraints—contained critical errors. These were revealed by a reexamination by military forensic experts (who are completely familiar with these events and who communicated their findings to me) of some source materials upon which this report’s authors drew. Key among the mistakes: in fact, Randell DeWitt and Greg Sievers killed all eight of the fighters moving toward the Team Darby strike force as they approached the Lefty Grove compound, but the Colt Report claims they did not kill all of them. In addition, the three “squirters” were not part of that original group of eight, as the Colt Report states, but rather came from another part of the Lefty Grove compound and then traveled to the tiny enclave of Zmuc Zukly.

  The Colt Report also claims that Randell DeWitt fired “suppressive fire,” but in fact he fired at the location where he saw the flash originate, not to suppress the enemy but to directly engage it—to kill the shooters. Furthermore, the Colt investigators never took Randell’s much closer visual call on the shooters’ point of origin into consideration, instead exclusively using testimony from members of Slasher 02 to make their determination. At the time of the fatal RPG shot, Randell’s Pitch Black 45 was 1.29 miles east of Extortion 17, flying a few hundred feet above the ground, while Slasher 02 was 2 miles to its south at an altitude of 7,000 feet, or 1.33 miles. Members of Slasher 02 observed the shot through NVGs and a FLIR scanner. Randell witnessed it through his NVGs. Due to a malfunction with Slasher 02’s scanner recording mechanism, however, no record exists of that visualization.

  Furthermore, because the Apache pilots of both Pitch Black 45 and 70 had their TADS/PNVS sensors locked on the IRF LZ, no record of the shot or the shoot-down exists from either platform. The world may never know the exact point of origin of the fatal RPG shot, but the activity on the “turret building” 90 meters southeast of Randell’s location is circumstantial evidence. That activity might not have had any relation to the downing. Just under 20 seconds elapsed from the moment the shooters fired on Extortion 17 until Randell’s initial burst of high-explosive rounds—more than enough time for an experienced fighter to shoot and then run to a predetermined hide.

  Media reports released days, weeks, months, and years after the incident teemed with glaring errors. For example, some called Bryan Nichols a National Guardsman, or called Extortion 17 an Air National Guard helicopter, or claimed that the Chinook is the largest and slowest helicopter in the military, when in fact the CH-47 ranks as the fastest helicopter used in the U.S. military and is much smaller than the CH-53.

  Reports also questioned the whereabouts of cockpit data and voice recorders. But as CW5 Pat Gates, chief instructor at HAATS and a Chinook pilot with more than 5,000 hours of flight time, explained, “CH-47D model Chinooks have engine performance data recorders, but that’s it. Those are part of the engines.” The CH-47D has neither a cockpit voice recorder nor a flight data recorder. To add a flight data recorder to an aircraft would require completely rewiring all systems to route control inputs and diagnostic i
nformation through the system, which would be prohibitively expensive.

  Still others questioned why a Vietnam-era helicopter was used for a modern-day mission. Extortion 17 began its life as a Boeing-Vertol CH-47C Chinook, serial number 69-17113, delivered to the Army in 1970. Boeing then converted 69-17113 to a D model, giving it the new serial number 84-24175 and delivering it on October 10, 1985. “They’re basically brand-new aircraft once the conversions are complete,” said Gates, “and with the Army’s rigorous maintenance regimens, they stay in perfect operational order for decades.” In fact, all D-model Chinooks began their existences as earlier-model aircraft.

  Some also raised questions about the appropriateness of any aviation unit other than the 160th supporting SEAL operations. Those asking these questions simply revealed their ignorance of how the modern U.S. military functions in the highly evolved joint era. Like their predecessors, Extortion Company supported 90 to 95 percent of SOF raids launched out of FOB Shank.

  The most egregious media reportage transcended the merely ignorant and pushed into maliciousness. “Those conspiracy theories disgust me,” said Jan Anderson. This small number of theories, often politically motivated or at least tainted, suggested the absurd: that the Obama administration had had the SEALs intentionally targeted; that the Colt Report was a cover-up; that the fighters had been tipped off; or that “mysterious Afghan infiltrators” had boarded the Chinook and set off a suicide bomb or overtaken the controls of the aircraft. None held any credibility, serving only to wound the families, friends, and colleagues of those lost.

  The Colt Report correctly identified the sole cause of the downing: a lucky shot. It was a shot taken by an enemy fighter, one whom the Americans, charged by the magnitude of their loss, immediately began to hunt.

  In its role at the forefront of the war against international terror groups that target America and its interests and allies, JSOC employs a spectrum of tactics, techniques, and weapons to strike these elusive and committed enemies. JSOC’s arsenal includes some of the most tightly held secrets in the history of modern warfare, including techniques that can directly strike a target for a definitive mission finale as well as ones that are just as decisive but also pay long-term dividends in the form of security for the U.S. public and increased safety for U.S. forces in combat theaters.

  The enemy in Afghanistan sought revenge for U.S. and coalition operations through propaganda, especially videos of IED attacks and clips of interviews with those responsible for the mayhem. Such propaganda emboldened the enemy and attempted to strike at the morale of U.S. and coalition forces.

  Ayubi, Chupan, and their close associates and commander could not have known much about the nature of Extortion 17’s mission; its pilots, crew, and passengers; or their units. But within days of the shoot-down, they heard everything, along with the rest of the world. And while it might have seemed a great victory for them, even before Extortion 17’s wreckage faded to glowing embers in the early-morning hours of August 6, JSOC had begun work on a counterstrike guided by what is perhaps its most secretive technique.

  It is not a specific weapon or tactic, as a member of a U.S. intelligence unit familiar with JSOC activities described it. Instead this asset is a kind of “real-life mythology” in which anyone involved in deadly strikes against U.S. forces, particularly SOF and units in direct support, immediately becomes marked for death, or “cursed.” Those targeted included individuals such as Ayubi and Chupan and their commander, as well as people involved with propaganda boasting of such strikes. JSOC has hunted such individuals for years, if necessary. Once found, the targets are struck with precision and stealth to not only ensure they will never again pose a danger, but to make an example of them. The message is clear: “Think twice before planning an attack or squeezing the trigger of an RPG.”

  Chance sealed the fate of Extortion 17, but that lucky shot also marked the beginning of the end for Ayubi, Chupan, their associates, and their commander. “The CIA took the lead,” I was told by an anonymous individual familiar with the events that spun into motion almost immediately after Extortion 17 plummeted into the Green Zone. “Getting those responsible was the number-one priority for American forces in Afghanistan [and] for American forces worldwide.”

  While the first focus of attention was on securing the crash site and recovering remains, Army RC-12 Guardrail, Air Force MC-12 Liberty, and Air Force EC-130 Commando Solo intelligence-gathering aircraft detected, tracked, and then learned the shooters’ vague identities. The two bragged about bringing down Extortion 17 via two-way radio to other fighters in Hasan Khel, laughing and joking about the destruction and vowing to take down more American helicopters. Based on their conversations and the description of events by both shooters, intelligence analysts determined with certainty that Chupan had fired the deadly round, according to an intelligence report.

  Despite risks and threats, many citizens throughout Afghanistan cooperated with the Afghan government and U.S. and coalition forces in their attempts to defeat the insurgency. Cooperation typically took the form of a cell phone call telling of a meeting or other suspicious activities, most of which occurred at night. To counter this, the Taliban and other groups simply shut down wireless communication networks in many areas by threatening to bomb cell phone repeater towers. In the Tangi Valley and surrounding areas in 2011, cell phone networks shut down between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m. Just under six hours after squeezing the trigger of his RPG launcher, Chupan handed U.S. intelligence analysts the raw data necessary to clarify their vague picture of him. He called a number well known to those analysts, that of “Universal Soldier,” the Haqqani Network–backed leader based in the Chak Valley and a former associate of Green Lantern, whom SEALs had killed in a raid. Those same SEALs had been supported by Extortion Company’s Buddy Lee and Dave Carter the night prior to the raid.

  Those analysts then gave Chupan a new name: Objective Ginosa. A small town in southern Italy near the Gulf of Taranto, Ginosa’s most notable landmark is the Norman Castle of Ginosa. Built in 1080, it overlooks the town and appears eerily similar to the turret identified by Slasher 02 as the location from which Chupan shot Extortion 17 out of the sky.

  Once they had snared Objective Ginosa digitally, the intel analysts continued to track him physically. Contrary to media reports published days later that stated he had headed toward Pakistan to hide, Ginosa actually traveled in the opposite direction, to the west, farther into Afghanistan and into the Chak Valley, the heart of Universal Soldier’s turf. There, Universal Soldier, who promised to reward the RPG shooter with money, planned to record a propaganda video featuring Ginosa bragging about the destruction he had wrought and then taunt the Americans to leave the area. Ginosa planned to shoot down more helicopters in similar ambushes, emboldened by the media attention lavished on the Extortion 17 tragedy. In addition to his new name, Ginosa also gained a new designation: a Task Force 3-10-approved JPEL-1 High Value Individual (HVI). This ranked him among the most wanted terrorists in the world—at that point, the most wanted, particularly by Task Force Knighthawk Apache pilots and members of JSOC units such as the 24th Special Tactics Squadron and DEVGRU SEALs.

  “We showed up for work the night of the eighth, just like any other night,” recalled Knighthawk Apache pilot John Edgemon. All the local DEVGRU SEALs, however, had perished. With only the Rangers to form a core of a strike force, not enough personnel remained at Shank to form both a main and an IRF. “We had no operation to support.” That is, they didn’t have a ground force raid to support. Captain Steve Lancianese, one of Task Force Knighthawk’s aviation mission planners, had been working around the clock with JSOC personnel and intelligence officers to formulate an operation that would have Apaches act not only as support but also as primary role players in the overall mission. A 2006 West Point graduate and Apache pilot and commander with more than 1,300 hours in the AH-64, Lancianese finalized the Apaches’ portion of the operation just a few hours before John and other AH-64 pilots arrived to
be briefed for the night.

  Chak and Tangi valleys. Credit 34

  As families and friends throughout the United States grieved, an Army RC-12 Guardrail followed a four-door car along the Chak Road, deep in the sinuous Chak Valley, 15 miles west of the Tangi. Earlier, JSOC commanders had approved the capture-or-kill strike package that Lancianese helped develop for Objective Ginosa. Planners just needed to ensure that they could execute the operation with zero chance of collateral damage and 100 percent confidence of PID. Ginosa granted commanders both of those criteria late on the night of August 8 by keeping his cell phone powered—unusable but still traceable—and driving into a sparsely populated area.

  “When they told us that they were tracking the RPG shooter, we were instantly fired up,” said John. “Most missions weren’t personal. This one was very personal.” While JSOC, the CIA, and other agencies took the lead in planning and coordinating the strike, conventional forces, notably Knighthawk’s Apache pilots, would perform the strike itself. They would include three of the four AH-64 pilots present during Extortion 17’s final moments less than three days prior: Randell DeWitt, Scott Quiros, and Greg Sievers, with John Edgemon making four. The operation would be one that John would forever remember, intimately and vividly.

  At 11 p.m. on August 8, the Army RC-12 Guardrail, call sign Draco 44, reconfirmed positive identification of Ginosa, who was traveling west along the Chak Road toward the villages of Behrana and Mir Ahmadkhil with Ayubi and four other militants associated with Universal Soldier. JSOC and Knighthawk commanders, including Lancianese, then approved Operation Ginosa.