When I stumbled and fell while approaching them, they noticed a third figure behind us. One of the PJs fixed his laser on this new presence—producing bright glare off the IR-reflective American flag on the figure’s chest. It was T.O.’s Old Glory patch, glowing green in Checky’s NVGs, that saved us. The PJs knew in that instant that he was one of theirs. The state of alarm downshifted from red to orange, so to speak.
Checky rushed toward us, raising his forearm and stiff-arming us to keep us from blundering into the tail rotor. (Now that would have made for a hell of an ending to the Redwing story, though you can bet it never would’ve made the papers.) He grabbed T.O. by his harness, pulled him close, and above the whine of turboshaft engines yelled, “Where’s the package?”
The Ranger medic pointed at me. “Here’s your valuable cargo!”
Checky turned to me and asked, “Who’s your favorite superhero?”
Both PJs had memorized my ISOPREP form, the compilation of personal data that’s kept on file for all special operations personnel and is used to authenticate our identities.
My reply—Spider-Man—matched my ISOPREP form and ensured my passage to safety. Thanks, Spidey.
Checky brought Gulab and me to the side door of the helo. I saw that about a dozen crates of bottled water and MREs were in the compartment with us. (No vodka. Still, it was full-service rescue.) There was no room for twenty soldiers in a small HH-60, of course, so the Rangers and Green Berets were going to stay behind. The helo’s crew pushed those crates out the side door and hoped they could make do till a larger Chinook could come get them.
As we took off, I never shook loose the fear that we were all soon going to get hit by an RPG. But we had angels on our shoulder: a two-ship element of A-10 Warthogs in a holding pattern to our west, ready to light up the mountainside again should the enemy make a move, and an AC-130, playing quarterback from on high. All were listening for news that the pilot had been successful. Finally confirming that he had rescued us, Spanky broadcast, “Popcorn plus two,” indicating that the rescue bird was taking off—popping like corn—along with two additional passengers. Panic flared over the number of people Spanky took aboard. Some were expecting just me (“Popcorn plus one”) and feared that the extra passenger might have been a muj wearing a suicide vest. Finally it was straightened out—Gulab was legit—and the A-10 flight lead announced to everyone: “All players, this is Sandy One. Home run! Home run!”
Checky leaned over and asked me if I needed anything. He checked my vital signs. Then he let out a deep breath and looked at me closely for a moment. We both registered the intensity of the hours just passed. He grasped my hand and shook it. His eyes still fixed on mine, he said, “Welcome home, brother.”
A skeleton version of this story appeared in Lone Survivor, but I wanted to revisit it here because, when I was working on that book, I didn’t know the men who had saved me and didn’t understand what a close-run thing it had been for them to pull it off. Wrapped up in our busy lives since that night, we haven’t spent much time together. I can’t claim to know them as well as I do my teammates. But they have a story that deserves to be told. I consider them members of my extended family, a family of warfighters brought together by tragic circumstances. They belong proudly to the larger family of those who have served their country by putting themselves in harm’s way. This story is my small tribute to all who wear Air Force blue.
During the short flight to Asadabad, I held Gulab as though he were my own son. We were sitting on the deck of the helo right behind Spanky, with my head leaning against the skin of the aircraft. Gulab was seated between my legs with his arms wrapped around my calves. My left arm was wrapped around his head, my right hand on my rifle. I was overcome with gratitude and sorrow, and Gulab was scared nearly to death. During this, his first ride in a helicopter, the dynamic between us had switched 180 degrees. He had been my protector in his world. Now, in mine, I was his. He had been a tower of strength in my time of need. Now he cowered at my feet. I held him tight. I told him, “It will be okay. I promise.” That was when Checky turned to me and shouted above the engine noise, “We have to stop and drop off Gulab.”
What? I was shocked that the man who had saved me was to be taken from my company. The military had different plans for us.
When we landed at A-bad and the door opened, Checky took Gulab and they stepped out of the helicopter. Gulab hesitated and tried to make his way back toward me, but the door was slid shut in his face. I never was able to say good-bye to him. I yelled at Checky through the door, “Take good care of him.” He shouted back, “I will. Like my own family.”
At the time, Checky didn’t know much more than I did about the Afghan people. He certainly didn’t know Gulab. I think he considered him dangerous. Leaving the flight line, the PJ grabbed him by the upper arm, took control of him, and directed him toward the ops center. Passing through the gate in the nearly pitch-dark night, Checky tripped on some rocks. Feeling Gulab pull away from him, he became alarmed. Was the strange Afghan making a move? As Checky lost his balance, the Afghan reached down, grabbed his hand, and pulled him back to his feet. It turned out all Gulab wanted to do was save him from a hard fall. It’s exactly what the rescue team had just done for me.
The emotions of the rescue’s endgame were overwhelming for everyone involved, but as is so often the case, there was no time to sit back and reflect on what had happened. With hardly a pause, everyone piled back on board the helicopter for a short flight to Jalalabad air base. When they landed, Spanky’s helo had just five minutes of fuel left. I was transloaded to an MC-130 for the flight back to Bagram, where the odyssey of Operation Redwing had begun more than a week earlier.
When they strapped me down, the docs went to work. I remember how calming it was to hear a woman’s voice asking me if I was in a lot of pain. After I nodded my head, she said, “I will fix that, sweetie.” It reminded me of how my mother would take care of me when I was sick. I never learned her name or had a chance to thank her, but if she reads this, I hope this belated thank-you will do.
Another doc leaned over and told me how proud he was of me. He took off his cap and placed it on my head. It had an American flag on the front of it. He said, “You did our country proud.” I still have the hat. Every so often I’ll take it out and put it on to remind me that no matter how bad things get, if you keep getting up and moving forward, you can accomplish anything.
The reunion with my squadron from SEAL Team 10 was happy and heartbreaking at the same time. I tried to joke around with them a little—“The Army guys came and saved me; where were y’all at, man?” I was out of it, and hardly had any idea what to say, but that didn’t go over well. The air was still heavy with the fact that three of our brothers were still on that mountain.
After some time with my teammates, I spent a couple of days in the hospital, was debriefed, and was given over to a medical trauma team with orders to fly out to Germany.
Spanky Peterson’s experience following the mission was revealing. At Jalalabad, he went to the ops center and called Tucson. Penny was relieved to learn he was safe. Though he wasn’t able to give her details of what he’d been part of, she intuited that it had been dangerous, exhausting, and big. She knew she couldn’t ask him for details, so she went straight to the bottom line of it all.
She asked her husband, “Did you just do what you’ve been training for ten years to do?”
At this, Spanky got emotional. Choking back tears, he said that yes, he had done exactly that, but he couldn’t say much more about it not only for reasons of security but also because some guys nearby were waiting to make a call, and he didn’t want them to see him cry.
The idea that Penny hit on—that our professional military men and women train for years without knowing whether they will ever have to actually carry out their missions to the fullest extent of their abilities—is the very heart of what service is all about. Heroes aren’t designated in advance. Everyone must always be ready t
o execute.
In my experience, it’s always our greatest heroes who claim they never did anything beyond what any of their buddies would have done in the same situation. Our training and our culture breed that response into us all, no matter what war we were part of. You train yourself to a standard and thereby make yourself interchangeable with others who share the same standard. And that gives everyone an equal claim to the pride that goes with having served your country.
19
That Others May Live
In the air ops center at Bagram, which occupies the first deck of the old Soviet tower, there was muted celebration over cigars and near beer. In the suite of plywood huts known as the Hog Drivers’ Pen—quarters for the junior A-10 pilots—the pilots watched eight-millimeter footage of Wookie turning his plane on its right wingtip and landing his targeting laser bull’s-eye on the landing zone. But their celebration didn’t last long. Operation Redwing wasn’t over for anyone until all of us were found.
On July 4, 2005, the sixteen men who died on Turbine 33 were recovered from the mountain. The Night Stalkers went in and did the honors, treating that duty as a matter of pride and redemption. As a pair of MH-47 Chinooks prepared to land, Zero and Sluf, joined by an AC-130, flew cover, lighting up the mountainsides, keeping trouble at bay. When the shooting stopped, all was quiet in the alpine forest.
When the two helos brought the men home to Bagram, Zero thought “the aircraft seemed to bow a little that evening in deference to their masters, who had come home on their shields.” The entire complement of the base turned out along the flight line and its access road to witness the ramp ceremony. They stood stiffly at attention as the remains were carried home. Chaplains read scripture, and the pallbearers took the caskets one by one from the Chinooks. It was a dignified procession of heroes. And they deserved nothing less.
Now all the focus was on recovering Mikey, Danny, and Axe. The most solemn part of the Air Force CSAR team’s mission remained: bringing home my three teammates, missing on Sawtalo Sar.
Details from my debriefing had enabled our teams to locate Mikey and Danny. A team of Rangers secured the area. Since the Night Stalkers were standing down for one night to remember their fallen, it was up to the HH-60s to pick them up. Zero was Sandy 1, with a young pilot, Fudd, on his wing. Skinny flew the lead helo with Checky and Josh as his PJs. The thunderstorms stood off that night, allowing them to fly in without hindrance. As Sandy 1, Zero played quarterback and delivered the instructions that specified how each pilot was to do his job.
“All players, stand by for a fifteen line.” The mission script.
“Line one: Poison one-five has LZ control.” That was the call sign of a JTAC on the ground.
“Line two: Two-by-KIA.” The two fallen SEALs were their objectives. Zero regretted immediately he didn’t use their real names. He realized he should have said, “Michael P. Murphy and Daniel P. Dietz, coming home.”
“Line three: Location, current as of oh-four July at fourteen hundred hours Zulu, updated at nineteen-ten, Papa Alpha seven niner seven five eight, six one two zero three.” The site of their incredible last stand.
“Line four: Condition—deceased.” Zero had to pause and regain his composure after that one.
“Line five: Infrared strobe.” That was how the LZ would be located. Rangers were on the ground, marking it for the helos.
“Line six: Authentication complete. Threats in the area include RPGs, small arms. LZ is secure at this time.” The Warthogs and the gunship were going to light it up anyway.
“Line seven: Elevation is eight-three-niner-two feet. LZ is a ravine. Initial Point is Papa Alpha eight three three, six eight one. Jolly ingress down the valley, call ten and three nautical miles, egress is reverse routing to Asadabad. Covering ordnance is one-oh-five and forty-millimeter from Shooter, thirty-millimeter from Boar, and fifty-cal on Jolly. Shooter has the LZ, Boar is diversionary strikes and escort, recovery is hoist.”
So went the script, the dialogue terse and efficient, covering everything the aviators on the mission needed to know without attempting to explain what could never be fully explained.
Having finished the sequence, Zero asked, “Any questions?” With silence as his answer, he hit the mike again and said, “All players, time stamp twenty-one fifty-two, execute, execute, execute.” And with this the mountain began to explode.
Over the steep terrain, the trailing helo entered a hover and two JSOC PJs fast-roped to the ground and guided the hoist from the HH-60 down to the ground. They collected Mikey and Danny’s last earthly remains and placed them into a litter. Zero and Fudd circled out of their gun runs and flew cover overhead. Zero turned on his running lights and flew as low as possible, to distract any enemy warriors looking to make trouble for the recovery. Then Mikey and Danny were lifted heavenward with a winch—reverent thoughts foremost in everyone’s mind—taken aboard the helo with dignity, and flown back to Bagram for their own ramp ceremony.
At that point, only one task remained for the CSAR team: find Axe.
In the very best case he was badly wounded and still missing. In the SEAL community we never presume one of ours is dead until we actually find his body. These pilots work that way, too. The Air Force Sandy pilots who flew day after day searching for our last missing teammate impressed me with their dedication. In the old Soviet control tower at Bagram, Zero looked east, toward the objective area. He was thankful to see the thunderstorms breaking. He said quietly, “We’re coming, Axe. Let us know you’re out there, brother, and we’ll bring you home.”
Zero was one of three pilots rotating in the role of Sandy 1 during the operations to find me and the bodies of my teammates. From Los Angeles, he served with the Seventy-Fourth Fighter Squadron, based at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia, a unit whose lineage goes back to World War II’s Flying Tigers—the First American Volunteer Group—which tormented the Japanese from bases all over China. His A-10 was painted with the same characteristic shark’s mouth that graced General Claire Chennault’s Curtiss P-40 Warhawks back in the day. The aircraft of the Seventy-Fourth, Seventy-Fifth, and Seventy-Sixth Fighter Squadrons are the only ones authorized by the Air Force to wear that distinctive mark today.
A 1996 graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, Zero had been scared to death of fast amusement-park rides when he was a kid, but in training he found himself hooked on low-altitude flight. It gave him a rush to fly just a few yards above the treetops, with a map spread out just below his field of vision. Throttle pushed to the firewall, he looked back and forth between his map and the world blurring by below, tracking his progress by visual reference. He made his career in A-10 Warthogs, and while serving in Korea asked his squadron weapons officer to help him earn a Sandy upgrade—a coveted certification as a combat search and rescue pilot.
With Axe unaccounted for, the A-10 pilots knew they had some long nights of work ahead of them. SEALs never quit, and that’s the Sandy pilots’ creed as well.
“Do you think it’s possible that this guy is still alive out there?” Zero’s wingman, Clap, asked.
“We have to assume he’s still alive,” Zero replied. “Because if we were to assume anything else, we’d go with less than a full effort. And if we’re wrong in that respect, we will have failed a man who’s out there with everything on the line.” But after the first day, all their radios brought them was the static of empty airwaves. Then one night, flying over the mountainscape, monitoring the emergency frequency, Sluf and his wingman, Butters, registered the sound of microphone clicks on their radio.
Sluf keyed his mike and said, “Evader, if you can hear me, click your radio twice.” Two clicks came in reply.
Somebody’s out there listening to me, he thought.
Sluf instructed his wingman to separate from him, fly north, and listen again from another position in order to triangulate the signal with his direction-finding equipment. Doing so enabled the pilots to place the source of the signal south and east of the Turbine
33 crash site. They had a man, but was he their man?
You’d think a guy could just make voice contact and speak over the radio. But for an evader on the ground, sometimes it’s impossible to talk. The enemy may be near enough to hear you. More likely, if he’s smart enough, he can intercept your transmissions and use direction-finding techniques to locate his quarry. For this reason, evaders will often simply click their transmit key to communicate with the CSAR team. Sometimes they’re too badly hurt to do anything else. That night, receiving no further responses, Sluf and Butters were unable to authenticate the source and were forced to return to base.
Zero flew the next day. Shortly after he arrived on station, he, too, began receiving mike clicks on the guard frequency. To authenticate the sender and determine whether it was Axe, he went into his call-and-exchange mode, knowing all the while that he might well be hearing an enemy with a stolen radio looking to set up a trap.
Authenticating a lone evader on the ground may be the most intellectually demanding part of CSAR work. The game of call-and-response the pilot plays is a matter of life and death, requiring the utmost in professionalism and care. Taliban fighters were known to take the emergency radios from those they killed and play games with the rescue pilots, sometimes trying to lure them into a trap. This was known as spoofing. A pilot had to distinguish the signals of a real evader from spoofing attempts by the enemy.
“Evader, we copy your signal. If you can hear my voice, I want you to give me the number of mike clicks equal to the second-to-last digit of your Social Security number.” That piece of data was included on Axe’s ISOPREP form, which Zero had right there in his cockpit. He desperately wanted to hear the correct number of clicks, but heard only silence. He repeated the call.
Service: A Navy SEAL at War Page 23
