“Yeah, well,” I grumbled, “If I find that son-of-a-bitch, soft-bellied Lt. Colonel Nincompoop who told us there are no roadblocks to the embassy, there’s going to be blood on the Persian carpets—his.
Over the next three and a half hours, there were five more checkpoints like the first one.
“Abdul, what is . . . “ I’d start to ask, only to hear,
“Oh no problem, is only checking for . . . “
I was now in a continual state of white-hot rage. I determined that I was not going to torture Lieutenant ColonelNincompoop. I was going to fire all 5,000 rounds of 5.45 up his greasy ass in one big glorious burst.
What turned out to be the last roadblock came into view.
“And THIS one Abdul?” I asked, smoke slowly curling from my ears.
“Ah, checking driver’s license and car papers. I have neither. No problem.” Perhaps if we were lucky we could rat out the driver and get him sent to jail with us where I could pound his scrawny ass twice a day.
Strangely, we weren’t stopped at any of the checkpoints. Why? I don’t know. Maybe the guards just thought that gringos in a Mercedes, even if it was built in 1907, shouldn’t be screwed with. At any rate, to add insult to injury, old Abdul got lost in Islamabad, giving us an unwanted, impromptu tour of the city.
Finally, we made it to the embassy. Fortunately for all concerned, Lieutenant Colonel Nincompoop was not there so the expensive, delicately vegetable-dyed Persian rugs would not have to be cleaned of blood stains and I would not end up in jail.
Colonel Harold Mauger, Defense and Air Attaché, greeted us, calmed me down, counted the ammo, gave me a receipt and promised to forward a letter of appreciation. Old Doc Peters, ever the cool one, just looked on and smiled. He hadn’t blurted a single expletive the entire trip. A cooler dude than he, I know not. Whether he medicated himself into a stupor I will never know.
We delivered the ammo. SOF was paid $ 5,000 in the States for a gross profit of $1,500. As you might imagine, the $1,500 didn’t go very far in covering the expenses of the team’s trip. Was it worth it? You bet!
ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL AFGHAN TREASURE HUNT
Staffer Jim Coyne came up with an SOF scoop in 1981 with the discovery of Soviet “butterfly mines.” These small, unobtrusive, antipersonnel mines that looked like toys had maimed countless Afghan children as well as rebels. Indiscriminately air-dropped by Russian helicopters, such mines littered the countryside, preventing night movement and blocking supply routes.
Coyne was with a patrol of 14 Afghan National Liberation Front guerrillas. They had been walking toward an ambush area in bright daylight, through a broad, barren valley—observed by every Russian FAC and LRRP team within 40 miles.
“After steadily stepping up and over rocks for five miles, my legs had turned to jelly,” Coyne said. “We were going over an immense ridge. There was a road on top, which a Russian mechanized infantry unit had been using for three days. ‘Watch your feet,’ my guide said, as we continued to move up. We would stop at the faintest whisper of a foreign sound. In my mind I heard that ever-present rotor chop of helicopters that had permeated the air in Vietnam. It seemed odd that there were none here now. It made me uneasy.
“We had reached the crest of the ridge, and something of a road, when we stopped again. The man beside me said, ‘You’re in luck,’ and pointed off the road. Everywhere fragments of green plastic were strewn about.”
Russian choppers had dropped thousands of the small antipersonnel mines along the crest. In daylight they were not too hard to spot. At night they were deadly. Filled with an as-yet-unspecified liquid explosive, and armed with a cock spring impact trigger, they took their toll along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Russians were ruthless. In a place like Afghanistan, where medical treatment was virtually non-existent, blowing somebody’s foot off was better than killing them—it required at least two or three people to carry a casualty and, within a week, the wounded would probably die from gangrene anyway.
Coyne brought one of these mines back with him to the United States to undergo analysis.
Looking back, it is evident that today there are few, if any other publications that have been able to match SOF’s record of intelligence firsts. Having outfoxed the KGB and several times scooped the CIA, SOF has consistently beat other defense journals on both sides of the Atlantic in obtaining additional Russian military equipment. However, in all fairness, other defense publications did not task their reporters to actually go and look, find, retrieve and deliver this “go-to-jail” equipment to the U.S. government.
Some of the additional technical intelligence coups SOF notched up over the subsequent years included the first two 30mm grenade rounds for the Russian automatic grenade launcher, dubbed the AGS-17, and the launch tube for the Russian counterpart of our LAW. An SOFteam member smuggled them into the United States. Smuggling small arms ammo was one thing, but 30mm grenade rounds were of a different caliber and probably meant a much stiffer jail sentence. When he delivered these to me in my hotel in Washington, D.C., I said, “You’re crazy! Jail time! Jail time! How did you get these through customs?”
Jack, an affable former college football player, who I had met when he was a Special Forces medic in Vietnam and who had been on more than one adventure with me, grinned, “Hell, there just was a long line so I got bullshitting with the customs guy about football and he just waved me through.” The gods were generous once again.
I immediately called my international arms dealer contact. “Tom, I’ve got some more goodies fresh in from Afghanistan. Anybody want to see them?” He replied, “I’ll make a couple of phone calls.” A couple of hours later Tom showed up with two suits from the Defense Intelligence Agency. I showed them the goods. I don’t know what they were thinking or maybe they weren’t thinking, but they couldn’t do anything about the ordnance, so arms dealer “Tom” called a Dutch dealer he was friendly with who happened to be in town and who bought the lot for $3,000. The U.S. government had to wait six months for the Dutch to forward a report on the ordnance because of those monkeys which must have been embarrasing.
Western intelligence was as curious about this automatic grenade launcher as they were about the AK-74 assault rifle. An SOF team helped them learn more. After a year of negotiations and the crossing of many palms with greenbacks, Jim Coyne and our small arms editor, Peter Kokalis, got ahold of an AGS-17 in the outlaw town of Darra in Pakistan’s Northern Frontier District. Kokalis test-fired it, disassembled it and came up with an evaluation of the weapon on video, which was given to the U.S. government and was eventually offered for sale through SOF for $39.95 a copy. That came only after a complete report had been clandestinely passed off to the defense attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. Also emerging from the exercise was the first report together with photos of Russia’s RPG-18, a direct copy of the U.S. Army’s light anti-tank weapon, or LAW. According to SOF’s Soviet specialist, David Isby, then on the masthead, the RPG-18 had been built by Russian scientists who had, as usual, resorted to reverse engineering to steal our state-of-the-art military equipment.
20
SOLDIER OF FORTUNE JIHAD:
WE ATTACK A RUSSIAN FORT
“The most exhilarating experience in the world is to be fired at
with no effect. “—Winston Churchill during the Boer War
“The most exhilarating experience in the world is to be fired at
with no effect; and to fire back. “—RKB, Afghanistan 1982
“Incoming,” I muttered to Coyne and a bunch of non-English speaking Afghans who were preparing to drop another round into their obsolete British-made 3-inch mortar. “I saw a flash in the fort.”
Nobody paid any attention. Coyne continued to swivel his video camera from the Russian fort under attack to the Afghan mortar crew and back. The Afghans simply milled around with their Boy Scout Jamboree attitude while fusing mortar rounds and observing the Russian fort.
I shook my head and hunker
ed down next to a large rock to keep at least one side of my body protected. A few seconds later, the whine of an incoming Russian round reminded me that I didn’t appreciate that sound now any more than I had in Vietnam; nor the results.
Crump! It hit 70 meters away. The Russians had their mortars registered on our ridgeline. Nobody seemed perturbed except me. The Afghans pointed at the plume of smoke where the round hit and laughed, adjusted their mortar and continued to mill. Coyne, a SOF roaming reporter, continued to swivel. It was certainly a different way to fight a war.
A few days earlier, Coyne and I, bored in Bangkok, had flown up to Pakistan to look for new items of Russian military equipment we could sell to the U.S. government. There we linked up with Hashmatullah (Hash-mat) Mojadedi, the 36-year-old brother of Sibghatullah Mojadedi, a principal leader of the Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen. Coyne had gone into Afghanistan with Hashmat in December 1980 and had brought out the first Russian PFM-I anti-personnel mine seen in the West.
We hadn’t planned on a tour of the combat zone when we arrived in Pakistan this trip. But then Hashmat said: “I’m going to Afghanistan on a resupply mission and to make an estimate of the situation. It will be only a few days. Do you want to come?”
Coyne and I looked at one another, pondering. Hashmat, noting our indecision, smiled and added, “We have a Russian fort surrounded and under siege. We are attacking every day.”
Coyne and I continued to look at each other. “Attack a Russian fort? Hell, yes.” Coyne, who had 12 years’ experience as a TV cameraman before joining SOF, brought a video camera with him. Perhaps we could get some combat footage. Back at the Khyber International Hotel in Peshawar we started our pre-mission planning during dinner.
I was concerned about being arrested by Pakistani authorities as we tried to cross the border. Coyne had been arrested twice during his previous trips and it does screw up one’s schedule. Hashmat, I felt, was being a bit cavalier in his dismissal of my insistence that we should dismount when we approached Pakistani border checkpoints and infiltrate around them on foot.
“No, no, just buy some Afghan clothes and, Brown, you dye your moustache and hair black. You’ll look like a Pathan,” he replied, naming the famous warrior tribe near the Khyber Pass, completely disregarding my paste-white skin and blue eyes.
The moustache would be no problem, but the hair, what hair? I finally settled on dyeing just the hair around the temples since my turban would cover the rest of my thinning pate. There was nothing either one of us could do about the blue eyes.
After a day’s delay due to vehicular problems, at 0600 hours we jumped in the back of a Jeep pickup, the bed of which was covered by a canvas. Clad in our new clothes, we snuggled up to the back of the cab and four Freedom Fighters crowded in after us with their Chinese Type-56 AK-47s.
For the next eight hours, we bounced over some of the awful goat-track roads and through five checkpoints. Coyne and I feigned sleep, pulling our turbans down over our faces when the Pakistani guards casually inspected the interior of the truck.
With the last heart-stopping checkpoint behind us, we cut from the main road onto a track. For another hour the truck lurched through featureless dark wilderness. No road was perceptible in the headlights. We stopped. Glittering against the silent black of night, stars clustered to form a domed ceiling above us, horizon-to-horizon. We were 1,000 meters from Afghanistan.
A large Bedford truck was parked to our right, a black silhouette in the night. A faintly lit, one-room mud hut was barely visible. We were greeted by shadowy figures in hushed, respectful tones. As Hashmat and the others settled in for a long night of discussion, Coyne and I laid out our bedding. We slept on reed cots, covered with warm, bright Afghan quilts protecting against the chilly night air of the border.
The sunlight woke me at 0530 hours. Twenty or more Mujahideen were already off-loading the Bedford, decorated with elaborate designs and paintings. The truck sat heavily on its springs, weighted with arms and munitions.
Coyne and I watched sleepily as the truck was unloaded. Ammunition, weapons and supplies destined for other Mujahideen guerrillas on the offensive inside Afghanistan were moved with deliberate slowness, hand-to-hand, from the truck to the ground. The driver watched and waited nervously, anxious to leave. The pile of munitions grew.
We found that the weapons consisted of ten recently manufactured Enfield rifles purchased in Darra. The care package also included a 7.62mm SGMB Goryunov light machine gun, still covered with cosmoline in its packing crate, with 1,000 Chinese-manufactured incendiary/tracer rounds; cases of antitank mines with fuses; four or five dozen three-inch mortar rounds, circa 1957; 20 cases of .303 British ammo; and the piece de resistance, two cases of linked incendiary ammo for aircraft. The label on the latter stated that it was manufactured in 1942 and was “not to be fired through synchronized machine guns after 1944”! I never figured out where that came from.
With this, they were taking on the Russian Army? More shocking revelations were awaiting us. We left the next day at 0900 hours with Hashmat and 14 of his security troops, armed with Enfields and Chinese Type-56 AKs. A camel had been loaded with a portion of the supplies and dispatched the preceding day.
The hours passed as walking turned into trudging—up ravines and dry river beds covered with square billiard balls. By the end of our tour, we were convinced that when God, in all his ultimate wisdom, created the earth, he had taken all his surplus square 2x2-, 3x3-, and 4x4-inch rocks and scattered them liberally over Afghanistan.
I kept expecting Mi-24 helicopter gunships to come roaring out of the sea-blue sky bringing death and destruction to SOF and friends. The Afghans seemed unconcerned—talking, bunched up and, once again, milling around. Either they knew something we didn’t or they simply didn’t care.
Inside Afghanistan, at about 1630 hours, we met a lookout who escorted us to our forward attack position—a ridge that had a single three-inch British Mark 5 mortar positioned in defilade about 30 meters short of the crest. One hundred meters to the right of the mortar, a Soviet DShK Degtyarev Model 38/46 12.7mm HMG poked its ugly snout toward the Russian fort.
“What the hell kind of a war are they fighting?” I muttered to myself. I could barely see the outline of the fort through my field glasses! It must have been 3,500 meters away. I was particularly confused since an inter-vening ridgeline was 1,500 meters closer. I later found out that they had fired from this ridge the night before, but had moved back one ridge because of the VIPs (us) who were going to be observing the attack. I shook my head, puzzled about the Afghan military mind or what I perceived to be the lack thereof.
“Allah Akbar!” shouted the 30 Afghans as the mortar crew plunked a round down the tube. WHAM! The first round arced toward Ivan. The mortar crew raced to the ridge, then hunkered down to wait for the round to hit.
We waited and waited and waited.
Boroki, the leader and mortarman, mumbled to himself. I suspected bad ammo. Even though no aiming stakes were in evidence, they couldn’t be that far off. Another round—nothing. Then another and, again, nothing. The mortar crew was disgusted; they stared at the useless ammo and cursed among themselves.
At the first mortar round from our group, another group of Afghans had opened fire on the Russians with the DShK 12.7mm. We heard its rhythmic “doom-doom” from the other side of the fort.
We had been told before the attack that the Russians would return fire with the DShK 12.7mm HMG first. In the gathering darkness the muzzle flash from the DShK was distinct. Unlike the mortar, the “Dashika” was a direct-fire weapon and not much could be done to hide the flash. The Russians followed up with a few mortar rounds of their own.
I shook my head. The attack had lasted an hour with no results. But happily, still no Mi-24s appeared in the sky even though we were no more than 30 minutes by chopper from the Soviet airbase at Khost.
As dusk fell—and there were still no Mi-24s—we moved down to a safe-house located in the bottom
of a narrow ravine four or five klicks from our firing position. The safe-house, which didn’t seem very safe to me, was simply a framework of branches covered by dried reeds. Inside, a fire pit dug into the ground fiercely burned the cardboard mortar round containers and provided the means to cook freshly slaughtered lamb. As the light from the flames cast shadows on the walls of this primitive dwelling, we imagined ourselves tripping back through time—to any time period during the last 2,500 years. The shadowed, gaunt, craggy faces of the turbaned Afghans could have been part of the forces that resisted Alexander the Great’s invading army in 327 B.C., or the conquering Mongol armies of Genghis Khan in the 12th century, or Tamerlane in the 14th century, or the British incursions of the 19th. Only the wristwatches and burning mortar round containers indicated that we were in the 20th century.
Hashmat asked us, as honored guests, to sleep inside. However, looking at the terrain as I caught up on my note taking, using the base plate of the three-inch mortar as a backrest, I figured that if the Mi-24s took a run through this valley, they would observe the base plate that was propped up against the hootch’s doorway and waste it. Coyne and I opted to sleep in the open, 50 meters from the hootch, giving us a bit of a chance if Ivan decided to snoop the following morning. The only disturbance during the night came from a scraggly Afghan rooster tethered about three feet from my head. He obviously had his sense of time upset by jet lag, mistaking 0300 hours for dawn instead of 0530 hours. His crowing disturbed what was, at best, an unsettled sleep. I was satisfied that the rooster was suitably chastised a few hours later—we ate him for lunch.
We broke camp and moved out toward our next attack position about 1400 hours the following day. As we moved across the 400-yard-wide valley floor in a gaggle, I continually searched for cover and concealment. In vain, it turned out, since there wasn’t any. Apparently, the Afghans simply didn’t worry about enemy choppers.
I Am Soldier of Fortune Page 25
