The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers

by Nicholas Irving

  We also found ourselves in a bit of an anticlimactic situation as well. We’d all come into the deployment together, but for various reasons we wouldn’t be leaving at the same time. A few guys left to attend to family matters. Davis and Johnson, two key members of the assaulters, both were scheduled to be married and got permission to go home early. Brent had been in country for two weeks before us, so he was going to leave before us by that same time span. He was excited about leaving, but the curse kind of hung over his head, and he kept telling me that he wasn’t going to take the kinds of chances that he’d taken early on when we were first teamed.

  I didn’t spend nearly as much time with him as I had Pemberton, and we were so different temperamentally that we didn’t get that close as friends, but I had a lot of respect for him. I admired how dedicated he was, and even if his downtime goofiness and his obsession with the video game the World of Warcraft sometimes mystified me, he was an outstanding teammate and someone from whom I learned a great deal.

  I can’t say that I had compiled a list of things I wanted to do before leaving Afghanistan, but one operation did stand out as a break from the usual routine. I’d heard about and seen photographs of the northern part of Afghanistan, its eastern border with Pakistan. Being from the East Coast and doing nearly all my training in Georgia, I hadn’t seen real high-altitude areas and massive mountain ranges. I wouldn’t get that chance, but on Brent’s last mission with us, we did travel to a part of southern Afghanistan.

  I also got to work with Rice one last time. He was still really into his role, and I admired him for that. He never complained about doing any of the grunt work he did in support of us. He’d already more than proved that he was a courageous guy, and it was no wonder really. I first met him when I deployed to Iraq for my initial overseas deployment. He was a door kicker back then and remained one for another year. We served in the same assault team back in Battalion. Breaching a door and being one of the first in on an assault team was pretty damn stressful. We all faced the unknown from time to time, but these guys’ work role defined surprise, speed, and violence of action in a very real way.

  He was along with us when we flew deep into the southern portion of Helmand Province the last week of July 2009. Because of the difficult terrain, we had landed five kilometers from the objective. Good thing Rice was along. He carried one of our ladders and an extra box of ammo each for Brent and me. Instead of desert or arid fields, we walked through an area of rocky outcroppings, first making our way along a trail that was defined by a sheer rock wall on one side and a hundred-foot drop on the other. A creek ran at the bottom of that ravine, and it was hard to imagine how it had carved and polished that wall, and how many eons it must have taken for it to do so.

  With such a long walk ahead of us, I had the time to contemplate such things. I also did it to take my mind off the cold. It might sound funny to say that a temperature in the low seventies is cold, but considering that even during our nighttime operations we were moving around loaded with gear when it was ninety-five, the difference was substantial. I could feel the cool air rising up from the ravine and figured the water had to be very cold runoff from some mountains very far from where we were.

  I was also thinking that we were very exposed. If we got ambushed, we were in a terrible fighting position. Our backs would literally be up against a wall, and the sides of that ravine were nearly perpendicular to the trail. There was no way we’d be able to gain any kind of handhold or foothold to keep from plunging into that rocky creek below. The trail had a few blind curves and switchbacks, and a few times, my heart rate picked up when I thought about what was just around that bend. Doing all this at night also complicated matters. I thought of Pemberton and his fall, and I wanted no part of that scenario again.

  I was curious to see our objective in person. In the photos we’d viewed, it was by far the most substantial residence I’d seen there. It wasn’t that large, only one story, and it sat on a rectangular foundation of one thousand to fifteen hundred square feet. What impressed me about its construction was its roof. It had semicircular clay tiles like I’d seen some homes in California had. It had a finished look and attention to detail that you’d expect of houses in the West, but didn’t ever really see in Afghanistan where most of the houses had a do-it-yourself kind of vibe. I thought that it was the kind of place that I could see myself having as a getaway someday. We’d been operating in Kandahar for a while, and the smell and the cramped streets and the dirt and disarray were getting to me. Out there, the air reminded me of Georgia when we were out in the woods during our sniper school.

  The house was surrounded by cultivated fields—not the opium poppy fields we were used to seeing, but some kind of grain. Instead of weedy stalks and round bulbs, it looked like long grass. As we neared the objective, the rock outcropping dropped away, and a natural platform presented itself and curved down toward that small village and its single house. We hadn’t had to be as vigilant about keeping quiet as we normally did. The sound of rushing water below us and the infrequent sounds of rock falls masked our footfalls. With about three hundred yards to go, that changed. The various teams split off. Though that wall was no longer as tall as it had been, there was still a ledge we had to get up on. With only three feet of trail to work with, the ladders were at a steep angle. They were only twelve feet tall, but any slip meant that you would plunge backward, hit the trail, and bounce down into the ravine.

  We made it up onto a fairly flat rock ledge with a great view of the compound below us. The breachers were doing their thing. I could see them packing the C-4 on an outer section of the stone wall that encircled the house. Once they had an opening, they’d storm in, clear the courtyard, and then get to the house itself. In a way this was almost like storming a castle with a moat and all that. Brent and I were scanning the courtyard and came up with a count of forty subjects, all of them appearing to be asleep in that courtyard. Since they were all lying down and all covered in blankets and things, it was impossible to determine the makeup of the group’s gender and age.

  We were maybe fifty meters from that wall, a typical distance for a direct action sniper, so I was feeling really comfortable with that wide-open view and easy shooting distance. Over the comms we got the word to take cover. That concrete and stone wall was approximately two feet thick, so it was going to take quite a blast to knock down a section of it. They were going to use a fairly large block of C-4 with water packets behind it to make a shape charge that could cut through nearly anything. We listened for the countdown and then heard the explosion. I waited for a few seconds before looking, and the dust was just beginning to clear. I switched to thermal imaging so I could detect the heat signatures of the people in the courtyard, and they were all still lying still.

  I’d seen this all before, but it still amazed me that people could sleep through that commotion. I counted three of our guys getting in past the wall and into the compound before any of the enemy began to stir. Then a few at a time got up and started to move to different parts of that enclosed area and then people started running around all over and it was like trying to keep track of which flake was which in a snow globe. Brent and I scanned all the targets, calling them out.

  “I’ve got John Wayne,” he said of the guy in boots.

  “Checkered scarf,” I added.

  We went through each of them, giving them names based on identifying characteristics. I was scanning from their hands to their faces, first to see who might have a weapon and then to check their facial expressions. Anyone who looked calm, given the circumstances, was someone to focus on and track, especially if their eyes were moving around a lot, surveying the space. We were transmitting all this over the comms, helping the assaulters bring everyone under control. After a few minutes, the compound had settled.

  I noticed movement at the far end of the enclosed area. He came from the direction of the house, tore around a corner, and was running fast and shouting. I couldn’t see any weapons on hi
m, but I wanted to send him a message. I cranked off a round in an open area in front of him, warning him to stop. He didn’t, so I fired off five more in quick succession. Finally he stopped, and as soon as he did, two of our guys brought him to the ground, and then once he’d calmed down, they led him off away from the rest. The guys compared him to the photo of the target we’d come after, and he wasn’t a match.

  A small team had broken off from the assault element and were searching the house. Brent and I continued our exchange of information about the detainees in the courtyard, still not convinced that none of them posed a threat. Finally, they got the guy they were looking for. This had been a capture mission. The target was related to a high-value target. We were to bring him in and let the intel guys work with him. We packed up and were forming up for the long walk back. We could see from the ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaisance) footage that we’d woken up quite a few people. We could see them making their way toward our location. It was impossible to see if they had weapons, but based on how much contact we’d been having throughout this deployment, we all wanted to get the hell out of there immediately.

  Though it was against protocol, Brent and I stood up against the rocky backdrop. We needed to be able to see a thousand meters out to make sure all was clear. We were exposing ourselves but there was no other way to secure that kill radius. We grabbed Sergeant Val and Bruno and exited in the same order as we’d come in. Ahead of us, a group of about twenty other Rangers were in the lead. I was on point for our small team, Brent behind me, the handler and dog behind him, with Rice on our tail. We took the same trail. We’d started the mission at 0300 and it was now coming up on 0700. The sun was balanced on the horizon and the pale gold light made it easier to see all the features of the land.

  Over the comms, we got word that ahead of us a few hundred meters, around the first right turn in the rock face, three men were approaching. They appeared to be unarmed. Platoon Sergeant Atkins made the call that we would push straight through them. Subdue them if we had to but keep moving out. The last three thousand meters of our exit would take us through an open field with a line of trees and other tall scrub vegetation to our right. We were concerned primarily about that stretch and our vulnerability to ambush.

  We were two hundred meters shy of that first turn when we heard the guys in the lead starting to shout. By the sound of it, our guys weren’t yelling at those men to get down, they were screaming in surprise and anger. Suddenly, a laser beam came flashing down the very middle of our formation. I heard a loud snap as well, and I knew we were in it. Our three lead guys started firing and their three returned it. Because of how we were positioned on that ledge, with a right-hand turn in front of us where the three bad guys had a firing position, we really needed left-hander shooters to get the most effective angle. We were firing, but we knew that we weren’t getting anywhere near on target. Their rounds were snapping over our heads and we were screwed. We couldn’t move right or left to improve our angle, and going forward would have been suicidal. We would have had to somehow advance over our own guys and in doing so risk opening ourselves up.

  I looked back. Bruno and Sergeant Val were down in the prone position. The dog was emitting a low, guttural growl. He was trained as an attack dog as well as a detection dog, and he knew the bad guys were over there. So did Brent. He looked like a sprinter preparing to get into the starting blocks. His gaze was directed beyond me, focusing on some point in the middle distance.

  Atkins was on the radio and he was clearly pissed off.

  “What the hell kind of intel was that?”

  We were all collected on this narrow ledge, like ducks in a row. One lucky shot could have taken out several of us. If the Taliban shooters put one round close to that wall, because of the aerodynamics in that little corridor we were in, it could hug that wall and follow its contours. We couldn’t press up against the wall for protection, so we had to hang out there. A few of our guys were hit. Their screams through the comms made me sick to my stomach. I could hear our M4s being discharged but still couldn’t see our guys out in front.

  “Snipers! Get up there and kill those motherf---ers right now!” I’d never heard Atkins lose his calm tone before in the three years I’d worked with him. Brent was on it, moving in a dead sprint to the front of our formation, yelling, “Let’s go! Let’s go!”

  I joined him, and both of us had to scramble over the backs of our guys who were all in a prone position on the path. Just as we got to the front, the handler released the dog. I watched as he tore up that path, stepping on guys, weaving in and out, until he was right alongside us, just at the point where the wall made a jog to the right. I heard the handler yell out a command and that dog just came to a halt, its back legs coming up off the ground. It sat there barking. The three Taliban shooters had stopped firing, so I peered around the corner. They were just finishing reloading, and as soon they were, they began firing again.

  Our guys who’d been engaged in a nearly face-to-face three-on-three firefight with them had somehow gotten out of it unscathed. A black kameez lay on the path, and all three of them were firing into it, round after round. The adrenaline rush of it all had them so hyped they were nearly out of control. The black fabric was flapping around and I figured they’d put so many rounds into him, there wasn’t much of a body left. I thought it was strange that the dog, after the handler gave him the attack command, sprinted right past that pile on the ground. Brent and I led the assault team forward and twenty-five meters in front of us was a dirt mound. We climbed it and got a good view of the terrain. A narrow opening in the rock, about the size of a garage door, led into an open field. The dog had gone through that opening, crashed through some brush, and was pursuing two men. Brent and I got scopes on them and one of the men was naked.

  The black kameez was his. Why he had discarded it we had no idea, except that maybe he could run faster without his legs being restricted by it. We didn’t have time to ask why our guys had opened up on it thinking a body was in there.

  Atkins had called in for an AC-130, asking for 105 mm howitzer shells to be dropped on all the targets we’d been engaging. The pilots confirmed three targets. They’d gotten out of our easy firing range and Brent and I just shook our heads, letting the other guys know that we wouldn’t be able to get a good calculation on them at that distance and at the speed they were going. The pilots confirmed again their three targets.

  “Three?” I asked Brent.

  “I’ve only got two. You?”

  “Two.”

  Then it hit us, the dog was still in pursuit.

  Before we could say anything, I heard Atkins say, “Acknowledge. You’re clear to engage.”

  My heart was in my throat. Sergeant Val had joined us at the edge of that opening, that gap in the rocks, and his expression said it all. He’d heard the order and he knew that his dog was done for. He kept licking his lips and his eyes were darting all around, and I knew he wanted to do something, we all did, but there was nothing we could do at that point. We could hear the bombs whistling down and the handler yelled, “You’re going to kill him! What the fuck!”

  I was feeling this complicated mixture of emotions and responses. I was in awe of the fact that we could call in an attack like that. An AC-130 gunship, flying thousands of feet in the air at hundreds of miles an hour, could pinpoint those small targets and drop bombs on them. On the other end of the spectrum, we had a dog whose trainer had enhanced his natural courage and loyalty. They were meeting in that place, and I hated the idea of that dog losing his life, we all did.

  I couldn’t believe what I saw in the next minute. The dog, Bruno, was still running all out after these shooters. Instead of taking a straight line, though, it was as if he could hear the direction the bombs were coming in from and calculated where they’d impact. He was weaving while these small explosions were kicking up dirt all around him.

  When Bruno heard Sergeant Val call his name and give him the recall command, h
e put on the brakes, turned around, and made his way back toward us. When he was within fifty meters or so, he got another hand signal as a command and low-crawled the rest of the way before he jumped into his handler’s arms. I’d never seen anything so cool in my time as a Ranger.

  I could hear Atkins on the comms telling us to push up. The shooters had taken a position inside the trees and resumed firing at us. I had a few moments of doubt about my willingness and ability to go charging into the spray of gunfire. I kept flashing back to that incident with the Chechen and seeing all the casualties we’d taken and buddies getting killed. Human nature and instinct has to be overcome. Your first reaction isn’t to go running into a wall of lead like that.

  Brent didn’t give it a thought. Even though he was on his last operation on his last deployment of his entire army career, he stood up immediately and ran forward. I watched him for a few seconds, figuring he was going to go down in an instant, but he kept going. I joined him. Behind me, the rest of the unit was filtering out from behind that rock and into the gap, making a hard right turn and forming up in a straight line, presenting ourselves to the enemy as a larger force than we were.

  Something didn’t feel right to me. We were advancing pretty easily. I started thinking about some of the old war movies I’d seen while also reviewing what was taking place. Three guys had taken us on, a unit of forty well-armed men. One of the guys was unaccounted for, but two of them were ahead of us in a fairly well protected area of heavy vegetation and trees. Normally, the Taliban we’d encountered wouldn’t flee. They’d stay there and put up a fight. Something wasn’t adding up.

  “Eyes open. Eyes open,” Sergeant Atkins ordered.