by Brandon Webb
Late that night, as we were enjoying ourselves, drinking, listening to the stereo, and laughing every time the Germans raised a toast to another futile Taliban mortar round, I heard a loud voice yell, “Turn that fucking music off!” I looked around and saw that someone’s head had popped up over the wall that separated our compound from the one next door.
Uh-oh.
At Kandahar there was a small camp where all the Air Force Combat Controllers hung out. We had Brad and Eric, our two CCTs, living with us, but there was a small contingent of CCTs who were piecemealed out to various other units. Among them were the two young Combat Controllers that Chief Dye had fired in Oman. Even though they were no longer with our platoon, they had still come over to Kandahar and were now living with the other Combat Controllers in this compound—which ironically enough, had ended up being moved right next door to us.
These two guys had not gotten over what happened in Oman. We would see them in passing around the base, and they were clearly copping an attitude and trash-talking our platoon. They had gone to their OIC, an air force major, and given him their story on what went down—who knows how they’d described it—and we could tell he wasn’t very happy with us. This major was a big, burly dude, 6'6", looked like he could rip your arms off with his bare hands. We’d heard he was very big in mixed martial arts (MMA) fighting.
The issue got to the point where Brad and Eric went over and talked with this major and gave him their perspective. “Listen,” they said, “we’ve worked closely with this platoon for quite a while now, and these are good guys. We know those two young Combat Controllers weren’t happy about what happened in Oman, but there are two sides to every story, and the truth is, those two young fellows have a lot to learn.” They came back and told us there shouldn’t be any more problems that they’d cleaned up the tension there.
Apparently, though, some tension still remained. The head glaring at us right now over that wall, spitting and fuming and going off on us, belonged to the air force major.
Dave, a SEAL who’d come to Kandahar to augment the DPV group (which I’ll get to shortly), started arguing with him. One of the Germans called out some comment, and the major shot back a profanity. The German chucked an empty wine bottle at him. It missed and smashed against the wall.
This thing was escalating fast, and our guys were turning into an angry mob—and then all at once the major was gone and everyone went back to his business. At first it seemed that the whole escalation had reversed itself and things had gotten under control. When I saw Dave stand up and start over toward the CCT compound, I realized what had actually happened. Dave had told the air force major to “come meet me in the alley,” and he was going out there now to settle the dispute man to man.
This was not good.
Osman got to his feet and said, “Let’s go,” and he and two other guys went back out there with Dave. A few minutes later, I followed.
Dave tore out of our compound and, in the pitch blackness, ran straight into a Humvee we had parked there. As Dave recovered from that, the major met up with him and sucker-punched him in the throat—and then looked up and saw the rest of us.
“Help,” he started screaming, “the SEALs are ambushing me!” and he turned and ran for the entrance to the CCT compound.
Osman is a street brawler. He grew up in a tough San Diego neighborhood and learned early on how to stand his ground. With Osman there’s no foreplay. He doesn’t do any trash-talking, chest-thumping, or pushing and shoving. If it’s on, it’s on: He just flips the switch and goes.
Some words were exchanged, but not many. Osman just laid this guy out. Punched him so hard that he broke his nose, knocked him out, and severed a vein. There was blood everywhere. The other air force guys who had joined the major stood there horrified, looking at their commanding officer, this major they all looked up to, this frightening guy with the big reputation as a mixed martial artist, lying on the ground bleeding all over the place. Osman looked at them all and spoke matter-of-factly. “Who’s next?”
None of them was next. They were terrified. Not only was Osman standing ready to take out anyone else who moved, but they were also now facing an angry mob of SEALs who looked like they wanted blood. A bunch of us had by now moved from the bonfire out to where this was all happening, and we were standing there ready to back our guys up if necessary.
One of the air force bunch ran to get army security, and the rest just stood there, afraid for their lives.
Suddenly this big German guy, Enne, started pushing through the crowd. “I’m a medic, I’m a medic!” he was shouting. “Let me through.” He crouched down with his head lamp over the air force major and started checking him out.
Wait a minute, I was thinking. Enne’s not a medic, is he?
Enne grabbed the major’s nose and started raking it back and forth. The major came to—and found himself lying on the ground with a big German guy tweaking his broken nose. He screamed in pain.
“Oh, yah,” Enne said with a completely straight face. “Diss iss definitely broken.” He looked over, smiled, and winked at us. I could not believe the audacity of this dude. After a minute Enne let up; the air force guys carried the major off to get him to the medics (the real ones), and we returned to our fading party.
A little later two army MPs came over to our compound to take Osman away. I met them at the gate. “Look, guys,” I said, “you aren’t taking anybody anywhere.” One of them opened his mouth to object—but I stopped him. “Let me explain something,” I said. “This is the last place you want to be right now. These guys have been drinking. They’re pissed off and they’re ready to rip someone’s head off. You don’t want to come in and try to take anyone out of here right now.”
I saw them wrestling with the situation, trying to figure out if they should back down or press their case.
“Look,” I said, “we’ll sort this thing out tomorrow afternoon with our chain of command, after everyone’s had a chance to get some rest.”
They could see the logic of that. They backed down and left.
Harward flew back down early the next day from Bagram, and man, was he livid. He reamed our platoon out, no holds barred. It was not pretty. Fortunately for us, when the medics operated on the major’s nose that night they could see that he’d been drinking, which meant that everyone involved was culpable and not just us. Technically speaking, nobody was supposed to be drinking on the base. Harward had known we were having parties here and there but had turned a blind eye to that. Until now. Now he had an enlisted man who had struck an officer, and his ass was on the line.
Within eight hours Osman and Dave had their bags packed and were on a flight out of there.
I have to admit, it was the right move on Harward’s part. Taking Osman and Dave off the base defused the situation. Now the army couldn’t come put Osman in the brig, and the two of them wouldn’t be around for the air force guys to run into. He had quickly put a lid on the whole thing.
Later that day the air force major came over and apologized to us all, shaking hands with each one of us in turn. He told us that he’d been drinking and he had instigated the trouble. I thought this was a stand-up thing for him to do. At that point the tension had finally gone out of the whole conflict—but the long-term repercussions of the event were still to come.
After this deployment Cassidy put us in for some major awards. Several of us, including myself, were lined up for a Bronze Star with Valor. Because of the incident with the air force major, Captain Harward knocked all our awards down a notch, and I ended up getting the Navy/Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Valor. If you read the language of the award (“heroic achievement … in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service”), you can tell that it was originally written up for a Bronze Star and then demoted to a Commendation Medal after the fact.
I suppose Harward did what he had to do. As I said, the guy was an animal, without a trace of sentimentality. Regardless, I was prou
d to have been nominated for the Bronze Star with Valor.
* * *
Our last op in Afghanistan was a mounted direct action mission we would be conducting jointly with the Danish Special Operations forces. We would be taking a convoy about three hours out to an area outside Kandahar City to a village where we knew the people were harboring an HVT. We were going to go take down the whole village in the dead of night.
We also had a DPV (desert patrol vehicle) crew with us. This team (which had included the now-departed Dave) had been flown in to join us while we were out in the mountains of Khost on our nine-day Zhawar Kili mission. I’d also seen these things back when we were first in desert training at Seal Team Three.
Designed by Chenowth, the race car company, the DPV is essentially a dune buggy powered by a souped-up VW engine. In addition to the driver, the thing holds a navigator riding shotgun and a gunner in the back. These babies were designed for open desert, the kind of terrain you see in Kuwait or Iraq. (During Desert Storm, the first U.S. forces to enter Kuwait City were SEALs on DPVs.) They can go up and down all sorts of wild terrain. One of their best features is that you can fit one in the back of an H-53; the helo lands and that little monster comes zipping out of there, fully loaded and ready for action. We’d had a DPV platoon at Team Three and had fun bombing around Coronado on the beach, Rmmm, rmmm, rmmmm! They only assigned guys with field experience to the DPV program, though, so we would mostly see the older dudes, some of them combat injured, driving around in these hot vehicles. We called the program Fat Guys in Fast Cars.
Now, I’m no mechanic, but I know that altitude affects performance, and those engines were definitely not designed for the higher altitudes we were seeing in northern Afghanistan. You lose a lot of power at 9,000 feet. Besides, we liked using indigenous vehicles; they worked well with the local terrain, and they could blend in. The DPVs looked like freaking souped-up Baja 1000 racing rigs, and they were definitely going to stand out. From my perspective, these vehicles weren’t very useful up north in the Hindu Kush.
For this mission, though, they would be perfect. The DPV crew would be going with us to set a perimeter with their heavy firepower. Once on location we would enter the compound, clear it, and get our high-value target out of there.
I had all the GPS coordinates and worked out our route, planning the whole insertion/extraction sequence. It was a solid mission and sure looked good on paper. Now all we had to do was execute. I was point man for this op, so I felt an added sense of responsibility for everything going smoothly.
We rolled out of there in the dead of night. For the next two and a half hours the trip was silent and uneventful. Serving as navigator, I called the directions at every turn; it wasn’t that complicated. We drove in a fairly tight formation, slightly staggered but close enough to keep visual contact. We had two vehicles, the Danish had their two vehicles, and then we had the four DPVs behind us, all loaded for bear.
As we approached our turnoff from the main highway, I radioed the other vehicles to let them know what to expect. “Delta 1,” I said, “five out,” meaning we were five minutes away from our turnoff.
One of the DPV crew radioed back, “Roger, solid copy.
I repeated my call. “Negative, four out.” We were now almost on top of the turnoff.
They went silent. Then, “We show different.”
“Negative,” I replied. “We’re turning in two.”
I don’t know if the reset point on their GPS was off, or they’d entered their coordinates wrong, or what, but somehow their data were all screwed up and they were way off.
Navigation is more than a matter of looking at a little dot on a GPS or following a map. You have to look at the sky, at the sun and moon and stars, at the landscape and features on the horizon, at everything available to you; it all helps paint the picture you need. I’d looked at the satellite imagery ahead of time so I’d know what the roads and terrain would be like. I’d been navigating my whole life. I knew for a certainty that this was the goddam turnoff.
I turned to Cassidy and said, “Chris, this is our turnoff.”
This was one of those moments that leadership is all about. Cassidy had me in the front seat telling him we had to turn left, and a whole convoy of DPVs insisting that we had to keep going for another 10 miles. The decision had to be made that instant. We had to turn or go straight—and at least one of those two choices meant completely blowing the mission.
Cassidy didn’t hesitate. “Take the turn,” he told the driver, and to me he just said, “I trust you.”
We turned. For whatever reason, the DPVs decided to keep going and chase down their phantom coordinates. We were now just a few minutes from the compound. We and the Danes were going in there to take down this whole village—without the DPVs and our secured perimeter.
We reached the target, came to a halt, and silently slid out of our vehicles, formed up, fanned out, and launched into a sequence we had rehearsed hundreds of time, a classic room-to-room assault-and-clear operation. The big picture would be coordinated by Cassidy, who would also be in constant contact with the Danish assault element, giving and receiving updates, but in the individual assault element, everyone functions as a leader as the thing moves and shifts second to second. You have to be able to flow seamlessly through a building. It’s incredibly fluid, and has to be.
As we entered the first building Chief Dye stayed behind us, serving as hall boss and fanning us out with hand signals—two guys this way, two guys that way. If we hit a locked door we might just smash it open if it was flimsy enough, or else blow it with a breacher charge. Whatever it took, we’d blow through and flow through, pushing our way through the house.
Two of us kicked open the door to the first room and tossed in a flashbang—crash!—waking two guys out of a dead sleep. They lurched up, blinded and deafened, and made an attempt to grab for the guns they’d had lying next to them as they slept, but they were too late. We were on them and they were zip-tied, hoods over their heads, before they could complete a thought. “All clear! Coming out!” I shouted, and we were down the hall to the next room.
We poured through the entire compound like the unbridled currents of a tsunami flooding through a coastal city’s streets and sweeping away everything in its path. Anyone put up even a moment’s resistance and pop! they got a muzzle strike in the chest. Took the wind right out of them. In movies you’ll see assault teams making strikes to the face, but that’s Hollywood. Muzzle-strike someone in the face in real life and chances are you just killed him—and that wasn’t our aim here. We were here to take these guys alive. They had intel we wanted, intel that could help us snuff out their pals’ next operation before it happened.
These were bad, bad dudes, surrounded by tons of weapons and mountains of ammo. Everyone in that compound was as armed and dangerous as armed and dangerous gets. We took well over a hundred guns, grenades, RPGs, you name it. If we’d had any hitches, if they’d had a chance to use any of their arsenal, it could’ve gone very badly for us. But there were no hitches. Our team coiled through those buildings striking with the speed of a 100-foot-long rattlesnake.
The Danish did an excellent job, too. As with the Germans, it was obvious from the start that these guys were first class, in both conditioning and tactical training. Going into the raid, we never worried for an instant about whether or not they would hold up their end. They did.
The DPV convoy arrived about halfway through the raid and belatedly set up their perimeter. They were embarrassed, but we didn’t give them too hard a time. Having to pull off the raid without our planned secure perimeter could have completely thrown us off. But it didn’t, not for a moment.
This is something unique about Special Ops forces: We’re trained to make decisions on the fly. In a sense, we are all trained to function as leaders in the field when necessity dictates. In a conventional unit, all too often when something screws up the whole mission grinds to a halt. In Special O
ps we’re trained to adjust immediately, to say, “Okay, the thing screwed up, got it—so let’s get on with it,” and then make whatever executive decisions we have to without hesitation. That’s what happened in 2011 in the raid that took Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. The team that went in suddenly lost one of their choppers, which could have been a catastrophic mishap—but it wasn’t. They adjusted immediately, blew up the downed copter, completed the mission successfully, and got everyone out of there without losing a single member of the team.
We took more than twenty prisoners that night. They didn’t know what had hit them until it was over. We got our HVT, too. If you were following the news at the time, it was a name you’d have recognized. We commandeered a few of their vehicles, threw these guys in back, and headed back to process them into the EPW camp at Kandahar. General Mad Dog wouldn’t have been happy, but this was our job.
Not a shot was fired. It was our last op in Afghanistan, and with the exception of the temporary DPV defection it was flawless from start to finish.
* * *
A few days before we left Afghanistan, an event occurred that cast a pall over all our victories and triumphs. At the very end of March, some DEVGRU guys from Red Team, the group that would years later be credited with killing Osama bin Laden, went out to Tarnak Farms to do some training. This was exactly the same area we had trained in back when we were still newly arrived in Kandahar.
Back in December, after that episode when we had parked our Humvee on top of a series of live land mines and Brad and Steve had to defuse the entire mess while we stood and waited, we had gone back and given a full report. “Nobody should be going out there,” we said. “The area is definitely not clear. It was cleared previously by EOD, but it has obviously been visited since then. There’s a good chance someone is watching it right now and planting more mines.”
