Eagle Down

by Jessica Donati

  “A bull’s-eye,” Caleb joked. They were a tiny green dot in a sea of red. They all questioned whether the surrounding and palpably hostile Afghan soldiers could be trusted not to attack them in the middle of the night.

  Within days of their arrival, a second district, Musa Qala, veered toward collapse after the loss of Now Zad a month earlier, and a spotlight fell on Helmand. The team received word that Lieutenant Colonel Jason Johnston, the 3rd Group battalion commander, had been dispatched from Bagram Airfield to get a handle on the situation. He was due to meet with the Afghan army’s 215th Corps and the powerful police chief in Kandahar, General Abdul Raziq, whom he knew from previous deployments, to see what could be done. At Resolute Support headquarters in Kabul, officials suspected that the army and the Taliban were cutting deals and trading bases without a fight, allowing vehicles and vast stocks of weapons to fall into enemy hands.

  On the day of Col. Johnston’s arrival, Caleb was away with a teammate to meet the CIA at another base. Matthew volunteered to lead the convoy from the airfield back to Camp Antonik because he knew the routes through the Afghan army’s 215th Corps base well. Matthew’s replacement was arriving on the same flight as Col. Johnston, and he was looking forward to going home to his girlfriend, Rose Chapman. Her name suited her. She had rosy cheeks, straight blonde hair, and round blue eyes.

  Rose was annoyed about the delay. She was also in US Air Force Special Operations and scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in the coming weeks. Matthew’s sense of duty was interfering with what little time they had together. She was among the few women who flew U-28s, light, fixed-wing aircraft that were used to gather intelligence and that often flew in support of SOF missions. They required crews of two pilots and two system operators and had a wingspan of just over fifty feet. They flew faster than drones and could talk to ground troops without needing a satellite.

  Matthew had spent a long time chasing Rose, and they had been friends first. She had a long-distance boyfriend when they met but he insisted on getting her number, and they started to hang out. They were on opposite deployment schedules, but they spent time together between trips. He would crash at her apartment at the end of a night out, and she would make him sleep on the couch. Inevitably, some time later, she would hear a knock at her bedroom door.

  “Rose, can we cuddle?” he would ask. “I promise I won’t do anything!”

  “Go back to bed, Matthew!” she replied every time.

  Even after Rose broke up with her boyfriend, Matthew remained in the friend zone. Then they ended up on a deployment together in Africa, where they spent a ton of time with each other. At first, it was just the usual after-work griping about frustrations on the job. Then Rose started to notice a flutter in her stomach when she was around him. She was careful about dating, especially someone at work, but it felt different with Matthew. It was so easy. They got serious, and he soon met her brother and sister. Her younger brother instantly looked up to him as a role model.

  It was hard being apart, but they were used to it. They had big plans for the holidays. They would spend Christmas with his family in Kentucky, and New Year’s with her family at a rented cabin in Vermont. To celebrate his return, she had bought them tickets to see Taylor Swift. She had spent a fortune, but it would be worth it. He loved Taylor Swift, and they didn’t have long together. She worried about her upcoming deployment to Afghanistan, concerned that her squadron might deploy early and she’d be gone before Matthew got back.

  COL. JOHNSTON landed in Helmand on August 26, 2015, on a packed flight. Along with Matthew’s replacement, there was also a team to fix communication problems at the camp and a 3rd Group ODA that had a strike mission planned with an elite unit of Afghan commandos from Kabul. The newcomers took in their surroundings. The former British-run airfield in Helmand had once been the epicenter of the war in southern Afghanistan. The dozens of abandoned and crumbling buildings and parking lots were a ghostly reminder of the thousands of young US Marines that had passed through on their way to places like Sangin and Marjah during the surge, many never to return home. It was eerie. The heat and dust instantly clung to uniforms, and everyone started to sweat.

  The VIPs were led to the armored trucks, while the others, including the visiting ODA and their attached personnel, were directed to board the passenger bus. The precautions were taken to hedge against the risk of an insider attack. The Afghans might be their partners in the war, but trust between them was low. Once the convoy was ready, Matthew steered the bus off the airfield and headed back to Camp Antonik. It was a familiar route for him by this stage of the deployment. The armored trucks formed a line behind him. Around them, Afghan soldiers milled about in their green, dusty uniforms, some eyeing the large American convoy driving past. The Afghan army had not been issued desert camouflage uniforms, a mistake that someone up the chain in the US military had made a long time ago and that had never been rectified.

  Matthew’s replacement, Forrest Sibley, sat near the driver’s seat, and they caught up. They had met on previous deployments. Matthew led the convoy through two checkpoints and finally pulled the bus up at the gates to the Afghan commando base. The interpreter jumped out to talk to the soldiers guarding the gate and ask to be let through to Camp Antonik. There was always a moment of tension at checkpoints. The Afghans sometimes argued about access, and there would be a holdup while someone went to fetch someone more senior or made a call. At first, no one thought anything when the interpreter started to sprint toward another building without looking back. But suddenly, one of the Afghan commandos aimed his assault rifle at the bus, less than fifteen feet away, and opened fire, shooting straight through the window at the driver’s seat, where Matthew was sitting.

  “Insider attack! Insider attack!” Matthew yelled over the radio, frantically slamming the bus into reverse.

  It was too late. He slumped in the driver’s seat, blood trickling out from under his helmet. The bus was trapped. The gate ahead was still closed, and the rest of the convoy blocked the rear. The commando continued to spray a volley of bullets through the windows, toward the passengers sitting behind Matthew, who dived into the shattered glass that lay on the floor. The bus ricocheted with gunfire as the soldiers inside fired back, dropping the shooter to the ground.

  Several soldiers saw a second Afghan soldier move toward the weapon in the guard tower, and they shot him as well. Later, it wouldn’t be clear whether he had a role in the attack.

  Soldiers scrambled to help the wounded. Forrest had been shot too and was motionless in the seat behind Matthew. They yanked Matthew out of the driver’s seat, and someone else took the wheel as others tried to revive him and Forrest. By the time the convoy had started moving and pulled into the gates back at Camp Antonik, it was clear there was nothing to be done. They were both dead. At least four others were wounded at first count; two had been shot in the arms, one had been shot in the face, and a fourth was saved by the plates in his armored vest.

  CHRIS CLARY, a tall, gangly junior Bravo from Oklahoma, had just hung up from a call with his younger brother in America. He worked for a civilian aid group between deployments, and it was his third combat tour with Special Forces in Afghanistan. He emerged from his room to a camp in chaos. The interpreter had arrived on foot and told the gate guards what had happened. Later, they would find out he had helped plan the attack. The surgical team was scrambling to get the tent ready for the casualties, unsure how many would arrive and of the severity of their injuries. Chris quickly put on his body armor, grabbed his gun, and went to the gate to receive the convoy.

  As the convoy pulled into the camp, it still wasn’t clear how many of the Afghan commandos had been involved in the shooting, or whether it was the start of a bigger attack on the base. The attached infantry unit set up a security perimeter. Chris saw that the team sergeant who was supposed to be in command had frozen up. Once the casualties were taken to the surgical tent, the sergeant with the 3rd Group team, which had been on the bus, took
control instead. He had been through an insider attack before. He started a head count while the VIPs, including Col. Johnston, moved to the ops center. The request for a medical evacuation was corrected because the initial request, in the chaos, missed key details, including the fact that the wounded were all Americans.

  Chris tried to make himself useful. He checked on the guard towers and went to the surgical tent to let everyone know the exact time the medevac helicopters were scheduled to land, which would allow them to work on the patients until the last moment. The two surgeons worked on the soldier who had been shot in the face, while the Deltas, the medical sergeants, dressed the gunshot wounds that the two infantry soldiers had received to the arms. Chris decided to look for Matthew next, to see if he needed help preparing for the medevac. He couldn’t find him.

  Feeling a sense of dread, Chris approached the bus and peered in. Matthew was still inside and slumped on a row of seats where the other soldiers had tried to revive him. Broken glass and bloodstains were everywhere. A second American also lay in the wreckage. Chris was shocked. It was his third tour in Afghanistan with Special Forces, but he hadn’t lost a team member before. He felt a terrible sense of guilt as he prepared to drive the truck to the helicopter landing zone just outside the camp’s gate. Matthew and Forrest were zipped into body bags and loaded in.

  Two medevac Black Hawks finally landed to collect the dead and wounded soldiers for the short flight to Kandahar, where the regional US military hospital was located. For seriously wounded patients, the hospital was the first stop on the way to Walter Reed in Maryland. Meanwhile, at Camp Antonik, the soldiers were still working on the head count. Josh Wood, one of the communications sergeants, was missing. They discovered him asleep in his room with the door locked shut. He emerged looking confused. He was supposed to have driven the bus to the airfield, but Matthew had volunteered because he was more familiar with the routes. Because of that, Matthew was heading to Kandahar in a body bag. The story of what had just happened left Josh in a deep state of shock.

  Maj. Gabriel, the company commander, gathered everyone for a meeting. The attack could have been worse, he told them. The entire battalion staff had been out there. This was an opportunity to show resilience, and Col. Johnston wanted them to regroup quickly. The military usually had a knee-jerk reaction when an insider attack took place: they would order forces to pull back from training and issue another layer of force-protection measures as a response. The situation in Helmand couldn’t wait, he told them. Musa Qala district had just fallen to the Taliban. The priority remained to focus on the mission to support the Afghan commandos and prevent the loss of Helmand.

  Later that day, Maj. Gabriel and Col. Johnston went to meet senior staff at the Afghan army’s 7th Special Operations Kandak as planned, to make a point of showing that the attack would not hold them back. The battalion wanted to send a team out with the Afghan commandos to recapture Musa Qala. The team in Kandahar that was partnered with the Afghan commandos involved in the operation was itching to get out, but headquarters would not approve the mission and authorized airstrikes instead, using a loophole that allowed the United States to carry out strikes against the Taliban.

  The United States was supposed to have ended combat operations against the insurgency and shifted to training and advising that year, but there were exceptions that had never been made publicly clear. This was because US forces in Afghanistan operated under two separate missions: the NATO training mission known as Resolute Support (RS), and a unilateral US counterterrorism mission known as Operation Freedom’s Sentinel (OFS).

  Gen. Campbell, the top US commander, was in charge of both, and SOF could function under either mission. The advantage of operating under OFS rules was that it gave the United States more flexibility to strike. OFS was generally understood to be the mission against al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, but in practice it was used in critical situations against the Taliban. Events later in the year would reveal the blurry lines between the missions.

  OFS rules allowed the United States to carry out airstrikes to support Afghan forces that found themselves in grave danger. The Musa Qala strikes were thus approved under the OFS mission. Celebratory footage posted online by Taliban fighters from the center of Musa Qala was likely a motivating factor. That area had once been a focal point of the US military surge in Helmand. Over the next couple of days, Col. Johnston guided bombs into the village until the Taliban retreated, melting back into the countryside.

  Caleb was at Camp Dwyer, a Helmand base used by the CIA, during the insider attack. When he returned to Camp Antonik the following day, he found that the rest of the team was furious at the indifference of their leadership, who were pressing them to start planning joint operations with the Afghan commandos to keep Helmand from falling, as if nothing had happened. The team’s only interaction with the commandos so far had been to get shot by them at their gates. The team first wanted to revet each commando and collect signals intelligence to find out if any others had been involved in the attack. The fate of Musa Qala’s district center seemed secondary to many team members. The Kabul government had long lost any influence there, and in another year all US forces would be gone anyway.

  ROSE WAS ASLEEP in her apartment in Florida, thousands of miles away. The sun had barely started to rise. It was the height of summer, and by midday the heat would be uncomfortable. But it was cool now, and the ringing of her phone had woken her up. It was five thirty a.m. She groggily reached for the device. She was supposed to deploy in the next few days, and maybe someone needed help. She slid her finger across the green answer key on the screen, and the phone lit up. A man’s voice came on the line.

  “Captain Chapman?” he said.

  It was her commander. Had she done something? She struggled to clear her head.

  “Do you still live at your apartment?” he said.

  “Yes,” Rose said.

  She thought it was an odd question. The squadron was packing for the deployment, but she wasn’t due to leave for a few days. Was she in trouble?

  “I’m here with a few men at your door. We’re going to knock,” he said.

  She practically fell out of bed, grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a shirt, and struggled to the door. She still didn’t understand. Was this about the deployment? Then why was the captain at her front door at dawn? She half ran to open it. Her commanding officer was in his service dress blues, a row of badges pinned to his chest. The chaplain stood to one side. At the other was a man she didn’t recognize. He was also dressed in official uniform and in the red beret worn by US Air Force combat controllers. As soon as she saw the red beret, she knew something had happened to Matthew. She tried to steady herself. He was probably just hurt, she told herself.

  “Are you Rose?” the man in the beret said.

  She nodded.

  “I’m really sorry to have to tell you this, but Matthew was killed last night,” he said.

  Rose stared. For a few moments, the world seemed to crumble away as each word slowly sank in. Her stomach fell. Her heart stopped. It wasn’t possible. She swayed unsteadily.

  “No,” she began. She was unable to continue.

  She heard her breath loud and heaving, as though it belonged to someone else. She felt tears stream down her face. Her officer swooped in and caught her, enveloping her in a huge, bear-like hug.

  “I’m so sorry,” he repeated.

  She felt a tidal wave of sorrow and collapsed into his arms, crying, until a faint light interrupted the fog in her mind. She had to pull herself together and find out what happened. If she could only focus on the next five minutes, she wouldn’t have to think about the rest. About the fact that Matthew was gone forever, and nothing would bring him back.

  The officers started to explain what would take place next. The military had a protocol for everything, and she tried to concentrate on their words. Matthew was on his way back, on the same flight as another soldier who had been killed in the attack. She could tra
vel to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to meet him, as long as Matthew’s parents gave their approval. Girlfriends did not have the same rights as wives, even though Matthew had added her to his notification papers. She would have to wait for his parents to sign off before heading there. They hadn’t met her, unless you counted waving to each other on FaceTime. They were supposed to meet at Christmas.

  The notification team, made up of the officer, the squadron leader, and the chaplain, wouldn’t leave her alone until someone else had arrived to keep her company. She had to be careful about whom to call, because the military had been unable to contact Matthew’s sister. She called one of her best friends, who lived nearby. For the first time, she tried to get the words out.

  “Dan,” she stuttered, “Ma-Ma-Matthew… died.”

  She broke down crying again. Dan showed up right away. The notification team left, and Dan helped her call a few more close friends. They arrived at Rose’s apartment, sat her in a chair, poured her a large glass of wine, and packed her bag. It was a time-tested routine to cope with loss: stick together, distract, support. At any moment, they expected a call telling her that she was cleared to travel to Dover to meet Matthew’s body the next morning. The friend that had introduced Rose to Matthew persuaded her to go to lunch while they waited.

  Rose was staring vacantly at the table when her mobile rang. It was Matthew’s parents.

  “Of course we want you to be there,” they told her.

  Within hours she was on a plane with two members of Matthew’s squadron. They landed around two a.m. and drove to the Fisher House for families of the fallen, about an hour away. Matthew’s family was up waiting for her. His mom, dad, and sister enveloped her in hugs. They wanted to know all about her, and they sat her down to talk until they ran out of energy and went to bed.