by Dalton Fury
Air strikes were lighting up the sky just a few terrain features away, and the boys weren’t sure if the guides were just frightened by the bombs or were setting them up for an ambush. Two more locals needing a lift jumped in the back of one of the pickups. One said, “Bush good!” and communicated further by making obscene screwing motions with his fingers and mumbling something about American women.
The convoy finally cleared the streambed and moved to higher ground, only to have a repeat performance by the Afghan guides. While the guides went at it again, Ironhead and Bryan unfolded their own maps to check their location.
Mysteriously, the recent hitchhiking Afghans had already disappeared, quite likely to pass the patrol’s presence on to the highest bidder.
Acouple of the boys sitting with Lieutenant Colonel Al decided that everything might not be going according to plan, but was pretty much as expected in this nutty land.
“Well, it’s about time. Let’s get them out,” said one.
The other operator pointed at Lieutenant Colonel Al and asked, “He’s okay, right?”
“Yeah, he’s okay,” the first said.
The operators reached into their assault vests and pulled out rubber clown noses, slid them into place on their faces, and honked them. One declared, “It’s now an official full-up three-ring fucking circus.”
They took off the noses and carefully stowed them away for use on future appropriate occasions.
One of the boys looked at Lieutenant Colonel Al and said, “Before you come back out here, I recommend you get one, too.”
After a three-hour drive to the base of the mountain followed by an exhausting two-hour climb, Ski and India Team reached OP25-B just prior to nightfall on December 13. The mules, on the other hand, showed little sign of fatigue. The team was anxious to get in on the bombing and looked forward to alternating with Jackal and Kilo teams of MSS Grinch a few thousand meters away to the east.
As the team dug out their equipment, they quickly noticed the Darth Vader thermal imager was busted. After a little delicate Delta ingenuity, detail work that would make a Swiss wristwatch artist take notice, the priceless piece of kit was back in business.
Unfortunately, the sharp advances made by MSS Grinch and the others had put MSS Monkey out of business before they even got started. Monkey would have to push farther south to get in the game.
Before they could get going again, though, we tasked them from the schoolhouse to take control of the airspace for preplanned bombing missions. MSS Monkey’s combat controller, Spike, took up where MSS Grinch had left off, and for the next six hours, Monkey would not let al Qaeda rest for more than a few minutes at a time. Bryan decided to remain in place at OP25-B for the rest of the night and move south early in the morning.
At the schoolhouse early on the afternoon of December 13, Skoot and his interceptors picked up the startling call that “Father” was “moving to a new tunnel with two Yemeni brothers.” And then we heard bin Laden himself break radio silence, and there was desperation in his voice. “The time is now,” he said. “Arm your women and children against the infidel!”
Calling out the kids to fight wasn’t going to be enough for bin Laden to retake the lead, because things were going our way.
After hours of massive and accurate bombing directed by Pope, Lowblow, and a talented Brit with Kilo Team, the Admiral with Jackal Team, and Spike with India Team, Usama bin Laden was on the radio again. Skoot threw open the flimsy door with authority, and entered our room quickly and smiling widely. His eyes were wide and wild as if he just hit a ninth-inning walk-off home run. He held the small black transistor radio up with his right hand and thrust it toward us. “Listen,” he whispered softly. “It’s him.”
His Arabic prose sounded beautiful, soothing, and peaceful. But the words were very portentous, and I paraphrase him here. “Our prayers have not been answered. Times are dire,” he said with an uncanny combination of surrender and despair. “We didn’t receive support from the apostate nations who call themselves our Muslim brothers. Things might have been different.”
His final words to his fighters that night revealed a tired and weary warrior, “I’m sorry for getting you involved in this battle, if you can no longer resist, you may surrender with my blessing.”
Before the nightly chat with General Ali on the thirteenth, two unexpected guests arrived at the schoolhouse: One was a representative from Pakistan, the other, Zaman’s brother. Both were there on behalf of the warlord and passed information that, in their opinion, bin Laden had already departed for Pakistan. Curious. Could Zaman have engineered the odd cease-fire earlier to allow bin Laden time to escape?
After the two visitors departed, George asked General Ali about the progress they had made that day. The tired but enthusiastic general said his men had uncovered a large cave stocked with weapons, ammunition, uniforms, documents, and a large carpet. The general seemed to consider the carpet the most valuable item. George accused the general of allowing his men to halt the attack to loot caves for personal gain. Ali shrugged, almost as if he felt helpless to fix the problem. Or perhaps he just didn’t consider it a problem.
Ali placed blame on the journalists and the CIA. He said his men were hungry and poor, and since the media and George’s people were paying such a high premium for anything coming out of the mountains, his subordinate commanders were becoming businessmen.
The tenuous relationship between the boys in MSS Monkey and their local guides worsened at sunrise of the following day. Ski and Catfish had gone forward early in the morning darkness of December 14 to scout out another forward area for MSS Monkey, and after finding a spot that provided excellent angled views into the valleys, they radioed back to tell Bryan to bring up the rest of the team. When Bryan gave the order to saddle up, their muhj escorts again hit the panic button. OP25-B was far enough removed from the real fighting now that it was relatively safe. Moving forward meant entering the dreaded no-man’s land, territory owned by al Qaeda.
The escorts had been give strict orders by one of General Ali’s lieutenants not to let anything happen to the Americans. Unfortunately, they took this guidance too literally. Obviously, this was bullshit and unacceptable.
After failing to convince the muhj guides to relax and let the highly trained MSS Monkey folks move out to join Charlie and India teams, Bryan grabbed the radio and dialed up the schoolhouse.
On his end, the situation had to be handled with kid gloves but at the schoolhouse, Ironhead and I could be a little more aggressive with General Ali. Unfortunately, the good general could not be found in time to overturn the decision in the field.
Bryan ordered Ski and Catfish to return to OP25-B, and MSS Monkey’s combat controller, Spike, settled in where he was and resumed control of the airspace for preplanned targets for another six hours.
In the relatively finite black SOF world, assaulters and snipers are a dime a dozen. Yes, these men are trained in multiple deadly skill sets and the dark arts of counterterrorism. But if you asked what tool of the trade would be the very last thing they would leave behind, you might be surprised at the answer. You would likely hear that it is not a tool that makes one nervous when it isn’t there, but rather a capability that is not organic to a troop of Delta operators or Navy SEALs.
Just because you are the best of the best does not mean you are the best at everything. Any Delta operator can vouch for the capabilities of the air force combat controllers, and very rarely goes on a “hit” without the men who wear the scarlet berets.
Arguably they are the best-rounded and uniquely trained operators on the planet. The initial training “pipeline” for an air force special tactics squadron combat controller costs twice as much time and sweat as does the journey to become a Navy SEAL or Delta operator. Before their training is complete someone brainwashes these guys into thinking they can climb like Spiderman, swim like Tarzan, and fly like Superman-and then they have to prove they can do so if they plan to graduate. And that is
just to get to a place where they can do the job for which they are really trained, calling those deadly air strikes. The life of a combat controller is split between working with Delta and the SEALs, with a little moonlighting with the 75th Ranger Regiment now and again.
They carry the motto that would be hard to look another operator in the face and say-if it weren’t true. “First There.” In Tora Bora, we counted ourselves lucky to have the Admiral and Spike, and their capability.
Shortly after Jackal Team first started directing bombs on previously unseen al Qaeda caves and bunkers, bin Laden was picked up again on SIGINT. We plotted the location, which was only several hundred meters away from the snipers’ current strikes. Unfortunately, most SIGINT hits are not real time and are often not very accurate. But we again picked up bin Laden’s voice over a short-range radio the CIA had taken off a dead al Qaeda fighter.
Adam Khan and a gentleman known to us as Bilal stood in the school yard listening to the unmistakable voice of the al Qaeda leader. Bilal, himself an Arab American and former marine, was considered the CIA’s foremost authority on identifying bin Laden’s Arabic prose and voice. He had appeared out of the darkness one day at the schoolhouse, but in fact, unbeknownst to any of us, Bilal had been in the mountains for the past few days with General Ali’s fighters. His personal assignment, and an incredibly dangerous one, had been to serve as somewhat of a liaison officer for the CIA to provide firsthand reporting of the attitude, performance, and genuine effort of Ali’s men in pursuing the terrorist mastermind.
On that day, the two CIA assets and former marines listened to what would prove to be the last intercepted transmission of bin Laden to his fighters. They picked up something odd about this particular transmission. Bin Laden was giving more of a sermon than issuing orders, and it was clear to them that the primary target was on the move and intending to leave the battlefield. They also thought the transmission might have been a recorded sermon that would give the impression that bin Laden was still in the middle of the fighting when he could have been on his way out.
The Admiral noticed something odd about one of the caves on which he directed bombs that day. Typically, a bomb at the base of the cave opening or on top of a bunker resulted in the flash of a momentary fireball, a storm of hot shrapnel and debris, and then a slow and billowing thick black, gray, and brown cloud. This one particular strike ignited large secondary explosions of something hidden inside the cave. It was also answered by futile attempts to engage the U.S. aircraft high above with multiple missile launches. Something valuable had been hidden in that cave.
Within an hour or so, Murph came up on the net with an exciting report. The muhj commander with the forward Jackal OP said his forces had captured bin Laden! Murph, who was out there at the scene, was skeptical, and the communication gap on his end prevented any detailed explanation as they were without a ’terp.
Back at the schoolhouse we grabbed Ali’s trusted aide Ghulbihar and brought him into our room. Murph gave his hand mike to the muhj commander and we gave ours to Ghulbihar, with instructions to ask the commander if he had captured bin Laden. After a few moments of back-and-forth discussion, Ghulbihar reported the commander had not in fact captured bin Laden but “they are very close to doing so.” Being close was not at all the same as having done it.
Still, with our boys positioned in the forward OPs, this was good news. At worst it suggested bin Laden had not fled the battlefield. Interestingly, during Jackal Team’s bombing missions we received another intercepted al Qaeda radio transmission which told the story very clearly. Under obvious duress, an unidentified al Qaeda commander passed a message to a fellow fighter: “We are surrounded by the American commandos from above.”
The reports were sobering because they reminded us that after hundreds of thousand of taxpayer dollars in bombs alone, after weeks of bombing this same ten-mile-by-ten-mile piece of an Afghan mountain range, somehow the resilient al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden was still alive.
As Jackal Team patiently worked its magic on the east ridgeline, the rest of MSS Grinch punched straight up the middle. Each day, with Pope, Lowblow, and four Brit commandos in the lead, the allied team linked up with the muhj forces and supported their advance by putting bomb after bomb on key terrain, suspected enemy locations, cave entrances, and al Qaeda foot soldiers.
These seemingly simple linkups were an adventure of their own as our expensive and secure radios weren’t compatible with the Dollar Store versions used by the muhj. Even if they had been, it would have made little difference, since the muhj didn’t speak English, nor was the word spread that they should be on the lookout for the Americans at any specific place.
In one incident in particular, a group of friendly muhj returning to the battlefield crested a hill within forty meters of Stormin’s Bravo Team and MSS Grinch. The local dress of the boys perplexed and alarmed the Afghans, and an anxious fighter shouldered his RPG and leveled it at the boys. Adam Khan quickly yelled out in Pashto to stop the confrontation, but the results could have been tragic. Once the linkups were completed, the muhj could now advance some three to nine hundred meters per day, burrowing deeper and deeper into the mountains.
Much has been written about this battle being fought solely with proxy Afghan fighters supported by American bombers, the implication being that American soldiers remained safely in the background, out of harm’s way. The facts are different. The muhj we were tasked with supporting flat-out refused to stay in the mountains overnight. After a day of fighting, they licked their wounds, counted their booty, slung their Kalashnikovs, and left the field.
This low tide of performance was repeated for the first three nights in the mountains. Our boys watched in amazement as the muhj left the field, each time relinquishing hard-earned terrain to al Qaeda forces. Ramadan certainly played a role, but to us Westerners, trained to keep the momentum and reinforce success, this standard tribal-warfare dick dance was annoying.
Besides leaving al Qaeda alone to rest and recuperate overnight, the muhj left behind the boys from MSS Grinch as well. We flat-out refused to leave the field. We weren’t going home until the battle was decided one way or another.
Keeping their positions didn’t bother the boys a bit, and besides, it was easier to hide smaller numbers.
It was not until the men of MSS Grinch proved they could survive inside al Qaeda’s sanctuary after nightfall that the muhj foot soldiers started to see the benefits.
MSS Grinch continued to push up the mountains and ever forward, forcing al Qaeda to retreat. As soon as snipers Pope and Lowblow reached a commanding position offering a view of the enemy’s fallback caves and bunkers, they slipped between small rock formations and began scanning the terrain through their Leopold binoculars for targets of opportunity.
While the snipers worked the high ground, the assaulters from Alpha and Bravo teams moved on the recently abandoned bunkers and caves, getting an education in the methods of al Qaeda. Outside the caves were stacks of cut firewood covered with waterproofing plastic to ward off the elements and camouflaged from the air with fir tree limbs and branches. Scattered about willy-nilly were RPG and mortar rounds and cans of ammunition. Discarded clothing and bloody bandages lay at the base of shrapnel-infested trees, and dirty wool socks dangled on broken limbs.
Inside, the caves still smoldered from warming fires, indicating a hasty retreat. Bottled water from Pakistan, abandoned modern backpacks, food, and cooking utensils sat on the dirt floors. Finally, to prevent having to venture out into the cold night air and expose themselves to the infrared camera of an overhead AC-130, discarded water bottles had been recycled nicely as urine containers.
Although the al Qaeda mortars had been relatively quiet since the night of December 10, when Dugan and Dallas worked their mojo, it was not until the afternoon of December 14 that we could confirm their word. Pope, Lowblow, and the four Brits, moving forward to create still another OP, saw firsthand the death and destruction dealt by the gunship.
The derelict 82mm mortar tube rested silently in the upturned rock and dirt. Next to the tube was an al Qaeda fighter’s decomposing corpse still sitting on-and partially lying under-a dead donkey. Surrounding them was a boatload of spent mortar round containers, crates, wrappings, and the remains of a couple of the donkey rider’s buddies. The entire area had been turned into mincemeat.
Like most of the team leaders in Delta, the man who led Kilo was a singular personality. I first met Pope in 1994 as a Ranger lieutenant visiting the Delta compound to rehearse for the eventually aborted invasion of Haiti. As a young assaulter in the squadron he was given the dubious task of escorting my platoon to the range and teach us the finer points of combat marksmanship so we could keep from shooting one another. During a live fire run in one of the buildings, one of my young privates made what I thought was a mental mistake in his technique.
I stepped forward, confident and feeling a sense of omniscience, and immediately brought up the infraction for everybody’s benefit. Pope had watched the team’s entire run through the shoot house. The problem, from his point of view, was not what the private did; it was my correction of the Ranger’s action. Pope stepped forward and calmly, professionally, and very deliberately explained why what I was telling the private was not necessarily the smart thing to do and then offered an alternate solution to the group. Wow! In just a few seconds, Pope made believers out of all of us and still allowed me to retain my dignity in front of my Rangers, including the young man that I had scolded. Of course, I felt about a foot tall. That young Ranger whom I had admonished in that long-ago incident was destined to be the future Kilo Team sniper with the code name of Lowblow.
