I Am Soldier of Fortune

by Brown, Robert, Spencer, Vann

  Granted, they had observation posts on prominent terrain features and ridgelines. However, their early warning system, which consisted of them yelling “Helicopters are coming,” down the line, was not reassuring. Even though Coyne pointed out, “You can see a chopper much farther away than you can hear it,” I still was not impressed. The Afghans had more confidence in their early warning system than I did.

  After a five-hour walk that covered at least 20 klicks, we arrived at our new attack position. The Mujahideen had borrowed an additional three-inch mortar from another group because they were dissatisfied with the previous one. Once again, the mortar position was located about 20 yards from the crest of the ridge on the reverse slope. At 1815 hours, once again to cheers of “Allah Akbar!” the Afghans started mortaring the fort. I dropped a round down the mortar tube as I still had a thing about the Russian support of the NVA during the Nam war.

  Much better luck was ours that night. The gunner, Boraki, bracketed the target with three rounds.

  INCOMING FIRE

  Incoming—once again. It was becoming interesting.

  Another enthusiastic “Allah Akbar!” was followed by a bright flash and we got a secondary. Soon another bright flash erupted from the main gun of a Soviet tank! The round landed about 100 meters from our mortar position, but only 10 meters from the heavy machine-gun position. Fortunately, a rock embankment protected the gunner, who did not interrupt his firing. The Soviets once again replied in kind.

  After 30 minutes we broke contact. We had run out of mortar ammunition even though we had fired only 11 rounds—the whole week’s allocation!

  The following morning, the Mujahideen received an intelligence report that one of our rounds had landed on a Soviet mortar pit, killing the gunner and setting off a secondary. Not bad results for a lousy 11 rounds.

  During the night, which we spent in another dry riverbed, and the following day, I pieced together a reasonable, or at least understandable, estimate of the situation. The Afghan resistance forces had the small Russian fort under siege and had surrounded it for 41 days. The concept of operations was simple and had been used since the beginning of recorded military history—starve them out.

  The Afghan resistance expected that when the Afghan puppet troops ran low on ammo and food, they would slit the throats of their Russian advisers and surrender. Two other Russian outposts in the same area had already suffered that fate in preceding months.

  The nightly standoff attacks’ primary purposes were to maintain pressure on the fort personnel and prod the Soviets into returning fire, thus continuing to deplete Russian ammo reserves. Since the Soviets had their guns registered on our ridgelines but still fired only a few rounds of counter-mortar fire, I gave the Afghans’ assumption a fair amount of credibility.

  The Afghans believed that no resupply by land was possible since all main approach avenues to the fort were under Afghan observation and their blocking forces would attack any relief columns. The Soviets would not risk using a chopper to resupply. However, it seemed to me that if the Russians wanted to relieve the fort they could, if they committed sufficient air assets. I thought that a couple of Mi-24 gunships could easily provide sufficient firepower to suppress any Afghan fire.

  On the other hand, perhaps the Soviets felt it was not worth the effort. It was hard for us who had served in the U.S. military to believe that the Soviets could so callously write off their advisers. But in light of the fact that several reports had circulated of Russians destroying damaged Mi-24s with crews trapped inside to preclude military secrets from being compromised, perhaps not.

  Ultimately the Mujahideen were unable to storm the fort because a 200-meter minefield surrounded it. They had insufficient artillery and no Bangalore torpedoes with which to breach the minefield. Nor were funds available to purchase enough sheep to attempt to run livestock through the mines, a technique of questionable effectiveness.

  Their starvation plan was not sophisticated, but it appeared to be working, and one has to make do with what is available, which obviously was not a hell of a lot. However, I certainly did not envy the trapped Russian advisers.

  At about 0900 hours, it was plinking time. A bunch of Afghan “good old country boys” showed off their marksmanship skills, which were not very impressive. A meeting followed, which in turn was closed with the inevitable prayer, and then we traversed the “square billiard balls” again to return to the Mujahideen FOB. However, the return trip was not without adventure. We had to cover approximately 30 klicks and the trip led through a minefield. An Mi-24 had sown PFM-I antipersonnel mines along the border, a few hundred-meters deep, intersecting the trail. It wasn’t difficult to spot the little brown foot poppers as the Mujahideen got a big kick out of pointing them out and picking them up to be photographed. I got a big kick out of not touching the damn things, instead following carefully the tracks of the Mujahideen and even then keeping my eyes peeled.

  Then it happened! We heard an explosion in the vicinity of the point man, about 40 meters ahead and around the bend. We moved up quickly and found the man on the ground with a hole in his right thigh.

  You can explode a PFM-I by throwing a rock at it. You can also explode it by stamping on it, hitting it with a hammer or butting it with your head. The Mujahideen liked to blow them in situ by throwing rocks at them. In this case, the rock was blown back into the “pitcher’s” right thigh. The injured Mujahideen was kidded by his compatriots, patched up and packed out on a horse.

  We trekked back to the FOB and returned the next day to Peshawar. We decided that it wasn’t a bad week’s work. We had illegally crossed into Afghanistan; traveled over 60 klicks; personally participated in two attacks on a Russian fort; survived a few rounds of incoming from Russian 12.7mm heavy machine guns, AK-47s and a 82mm mortar; successfully negotiated a Russian minefield; and cemented a close relationship with some of the toughest fighting men in the world. We had whetted our appetites for adventure and expressed our support for the Freedom Fighters’ cause.

  As we left, we promised, “We shall return, Ivan.”

  SOLDIER OF FORTUNE JIHAD

  In 1988, I invited former Rhodesian Scout Deputy Commander Mike Williams, former French Foreign legionnaire Paul Fanshaw, and Hunter Penn, a 10ist Airborne Vietnam vet and rodeo roper, to go to Afghanistan with me. The plan was to go blow up a Russian fort and shoot down a MiG or Hind Mi-24 gunship with a Stinger.

  Williams, a tough as mails, medium-height, suave, smooth-talking, broad-shouldered, wavy-haired ladies’ man, later said, “I have done a lot of stupid things, including volunteering for Special Forces, commanding a battalion of North Korean and Chinese deserters in the mountains of North Korea, serving as deputy commander of Grey’s Scouts in Rhodesia, marrying three American women and lending my daughter a thousand dollars. But . . . the first prize in dumb was letting Robert K. Brown talk me into paying my own way to Afghanistan to ‘assist’ the Russian withdrawal.”

  We were to ship all equipment through a third party in Peshawar, Pakistan, over to our Area of Operations, where we would retrieve it and sneak across the Pakistani border to join the ranks of the Mujahideen fighting the Russians.

  Our little band of adventurers linked up at Dulles Airport in D.C., where we boarded a British Airways flight to London. Hunter, who had been in Afghanistan just a while earlier, told us that communication between him and his Afghan friends was virtually non-existent—he didn’t speak Pushto, and they didn’t speak much English.

  We, who spoke only English and some French, were soon to find out what a serious problem that could be. We flew to London, and after dick-ing around old Blighty for a day, we boarded a second British Airways flight, this one bound for Islamabad with an intermediate refueling stop near Dubai.

  We soon found out that Pakistani security measures were draconian. Troops armed with MP-5 submachine guns surrounded the aircraft and gun jeeps cruised the outer perimeter of the airfield. The country was on high alert. Khomeini Revolutionary
Guard suiciders had infiltrated the country with orders to kill any American, or any Westerner for that matter, they could find.

  General Zia, Pakistan’s president, had issued a warning to the Ayatollah that Pakistani security forces would eliminate on the spot any Revolutionary Guards found in Pakistan.

  The Pakistani troops, particularly members of airborne units, were impressively professional. Signs were everywhere identifying various military installations, and their types of uniforms and saluting evidenced the influence of previous British Army training.

  The ride from the airport to the Holiday Inn had us longing for the notorious, madmen New York cab drivers. The driver did everything but look at the road, spending half the time twisting his head over his shoulder to tell us about his cousin in New York and the remaining half-racing other cabs to traffic lights.

  After lunch, Williams and I paid a visit to the U.S. Embassy, where we spoke with several officials who clued us in to trouble-spots within the country. The streets of Islamabad were like something out of the Arabian Nights. When in Rome, do as the Romans do, I decided, so I informed the team that we would wear Mujahideen-type clothing. We rounded up their wide-waisted trousers held up by a cloth cord at the waist and a shin-length shirt and turban. We had no clue at the time that we would end up wearing the drab outfits for ten days straight without a bath.

  We had negotiated with the commander of the particular Mujahideen group we were to join that we were to go to Quetta, Pakistan (today a headquarters for the Taliban), where we would link up with our group and cross over into Afghanistan.

  General Ramatullah Safi, a boisterous, hulking, high-ranking officer with the Mujahideen, who had a very loud and authoritative presence, met us on our arrival in Islamabad and helped us get settled. In perfect English with a British accent he explained, in detail, the situation in-country regarding Soviet forces and the tactical dispositions of the Mujahideen. When we were ready to leave for Quetta, he drove us to the airport to assist in our departure.

  As was customary, we dragged along some Al Mar knives to “souvenir” to our hosts. Pakistani security went ballistic. We had to show our passports, open all luggage, swear we weren’t agents of the KGB, and bow three times toward Mecca before they’d let us on the plane.

  We chilled out when the guards wrote our passport numbers in ink on the heels of their palms. Although it might be a long time down the road, they would have to wash their hands eventually, or the numbers would all be smudged by their heavy sweat.

  Finally, we were off to Quetta, in a rickety airplane that soon was filled with thick clouds of body odor and hot air since the air conditioning was on its way out. It finally fired up when we go to cruising altitude. The captain’s voice shattered the thick air. “This is captain speaking. We shall arrive at Quetta at 1530 hours, Inshallah [God willing].”

  “Inshallah,” my ass.

  Quetta was a teeming border town that served as a conduit into Afghanistan through which Mujahideen and reporters traveled back and forth. An Iranian consulate in Quetta allegedly provided a base for a unit of the Ayatollah’s Revolutionary Guards, whose mission it was to kidnap, or kill, any Americans found in the city. However, thanks to a contact in Washington, we had a list of the license plates of the Guards’ autos.

  After circling Quetta’s airport for what seemed like forever, we touched down. We were met by a large contingent of blue-uniformed security guards marching out to the hardstand. They covered sectors of fire with MP-5s. A jeep with a pedestal-mounted MG-42 slowly circled the inner perimeter. This was our introduction to some of the toughest security measures we had ever encountered. It made the Israelis seem like gentle lambs. We were body searched and, rather than take our shoes off as we have to do in the United States these days, we were forced to put each foot on top of a small bench so that the security guard could check the soles and heels of our footwear for a fake compartment.

  The local Mujahideen commander, Mohammed Tahir Khan, who was short, wiry and in his late 30s, met us. Fluent in English, he had been educated at a military academy in India, a reminder that Pakistan had been ruled by the British Empire. Khan was a mover and shaker, having lobbied “Free Afghan” supporters in Europe and the United States. He had moved his family to California.

  We loaded into two Toyotas and headed to the local Mujahideen local command post in Quetta’s ancient bazaar. It was a typical souk, like in Turkey or other Middle Eastern countries. Shops carrying various products were jammed side by side, and slabs of raw beef and chickens hanging by their heads gave the air a stench of death while providing sustenance to clouds of flies. The mobs scurried back and forth, dodging donkey carts, bicycles, motor scooters and rickety trucks. Cars weaved through the crowds.

  The locals were staring at the gringos. We saw the first of many large, red hammer-and-sickle signs screaming: “U.S. OUT AFGHANISTAN.” Pakistani Communist Party flags hung everywhere, which unsettled us.

  We turned off the main road and entered a narrow side street that had trash strewn everywhere. It was swarming with flies and hungry, mangy dogs searching for food. Tahir stopped the truck and motioned to some turbaned Mujahideen mulling around. They opened a large, iron gate leading to a courtyard in front of a two-story house. The guards, armed with well-kept Kalashnikovs, carried our bags as we walked across the courtyard and into the house. Tahir told us to sit on the carpeted floor in a large room that served as a conference center. Tea was served. Tahir sipped his tea as he spoke in Pashto to one of the many Mujahideen who’d just arrived.

  “It is better you go with me now,” he told us after a few minutes.

  First we had to slip into our new costumes for this gig. We were soon to find that the baggy outfits and turbans served as perfect camouflage in the environment. One of the Mujahideen showed us how to wrap a turban around our heads and secure the baggy-waisted Afghan trousers with a cloth cord attached to a plastic hook which threaded through a loop sewn around the waistband.

  Dressed in our new garb, transformed into apparent locals, we were ready to roll. Tahir said, “We will have to pass through Pakistani checkpoints, so cover your faces and look at the floor when I tell you.”

  Pakistani guards at checkpoints had the option of throwing you in a filthy jail or accepting a bribe to let you pass. Tahir, the designated driver, put Fanshaw, Penn and the Mujahideen guards, carrying AKs, in the rear of the enclosed Toyota pickup; Williams and I rode in the front with Tahir.

  We swerved through the chaos of pedestrians, bicyclists, donkeys and cars, passing through successively smaller villages onto roads that were traveled by a series of large Bedford trucks like those used by the Rhodesian Army.

  Tahir stopped in front of a small shop and signaled the “pull the bottom half of our turbans across our faces” warning. He got out of the truck and walked inside the dimly lit shop. The lanky Fanshaw and Penn, all cramped up after being jammed in among the Mujahideen the whole time, had no chance to ease the cramps in their calves. They’d ridden that way from Quetta and began grumbling about getting out to stretch lest they get blood clots.

  We tried to sneak peeks at the surroundings and passers-by through our turban-covered faces. We coyly looked at them from the corners of our eyes, while looking down at the floor.

  Tahir returned, offering us a handful of small oranges and a large melon.

  “Can Fanshaw and Penn get out and stretch their legs?” I asked Tahir, worried that the loose cannon Fanshaw might just dart out and start running.

  “Not good. There is problem, many spies here for Russians,” Tahir said, as he walked to the rear of the truck and handed the remainder of the fruit to Fanshaw, Penn and the Mujahideen, who grabbed it and started chewing away, spitting seeds into the dirt.

  We drove over the dusty, narrow, rocky roads that for hours allowed only one car to pass at a time. In the distance we could see that shadows of much higher ridges were faintly visible in the weak, silver moonlight. We spotted two figures toting AKs, s
tanding by a side road that branched off to the right. They recognized Tahir as he slowed to pull alongside them and waved us on.

  “Our people. They guard this road.” He shifted gears and accelerated. “Important no Pakistanis come this way.”

  We drove over the mountainous trails that were carved right on the edge of the cliffs for another nerve-wracking two hours. After what seemed like forever, we stopped at a wooden crossbar marking the entrance to a camp containing tents and mud houses. Large stacks of ammo crates were dimly visible. Two Mujahideen sentries raised the barrier and we drove through, turned right, and stopped in front of a small building.

  “Please get out . . . come in!” Tahir motioned to the Mujahideen standing near the truck to bring our bags and follow him. Inside, he stopped and removed his shoes before entering. We did the same, placing our boots in a row near the doorway.

  By now jittery, the always-on-alert Williams felt edgy, figuring out how he would grab his shoes and run for the nearest hole in case of a Chinese fire drill. Once again, we sat on the carpet with pillows behind us in the dimly lit room next to Tahir, who spoke in a near whisper with three bearded Mujahideen squatting just inside the doorway.

  We sunk into the plush pillows, seeing the large group of shadowy young male strangers and old bearded men with their AKs and ammo hung around their shoulders, as we fought the urge to fade. They stared, barely paying attention to what Tahir and the three commanders were saying.

  A Mujahideen boy carrying a tray of tea, bread, cakes and fruit made his way through the curious crowd. We inhaled the sugar-loaded brew and gorged ourselves to the last crumb.

  Tahir told me, “You will sleep here tonight and tomorrow we will go see our people. Your beds are ready.”

  We followed one of the guards outside to get our boots and gear and followed him around the side of the building on a trail that led up a steep hill. I never wanted to see another hill again. They had laid out four thick blankets on pallets side by side against the mud walls of a small hut.