Eagle Down

by Jessica Donati

  He was married and had two small children, and it was his first time in combat since they’d been born. His son had been a week old when he’d left. Dan saw himself dying in a godforsaken village in Helmand and imagined his young children growing up with no father, and perhaps no memory of him, and it scared him. As much as he tried to push the image out of his mind, it nagged at him, always lying on the periphery.

  He liked working with Andy. Andy was young but pragmatic and a natural problem solver. He listened to his men, and they worked together to fend off the demands of the SOJTF, which seemed intent on using them to firefight all over northern Helmand. Gen. Swindell, the commander, continued to push Special Forces to take advantage of the increased flexibility in the rules and undertake multiday operations. The team resisted, citing the risks of operating for an extended period in a remote location with limited backup. The struggle with air support in Sangin had made them distrustful and aware of the politics at play that could put them at risk.

  Soon enough, orders came down the chain to undertake another multiday mission in Sangin. The trigger was a dramatic Facebook post by the district’s deputy governor, who claimed that the district center was surrounded by insurgents and everyone was going to die without immediate backup. The team sent their ScanEagle drone over the district center to see what was going on. The drone feed from over the governor’s office showed a bored Afghan army soldier throwing rocks into his helmet to pass the time. There was no sign of a siege on the district center, or even an enemy attack. The team eventually tracked insurgents carrying weapons into a safe house and planned a mission to raid it with the commandos. At the site, the target turned out to be a medical clinic as well. One of the men swept up in the raid spoke fluent English and said he worked for an Italian aid group. It was possible. Emergency, an Italian NGO, operated a trauma hospital in Lashkar Gah and maintained a network of clinics and ambulance services in Helmand. Such were the blurred lines in Afghanistan.

  Andy and Dan fought off several more multiday missions, convincing the battalion that night missions would be just as effective and staying overday wasn’t worth the risk. Then, they received orders to go back to Marjah. There was intelligence that a high-value target might be in the area. Andy and Dan thought the information was bullshit, but their commanders were adamant. The team’s best hope, they both believed, was to temporarily disrupt the Taliban’s operations in that area and perhaps find a cache of bomb-making equipment to keep the generals happy.

  Dan called his wife, Brianne, who was staying with her parents in West Virginia, to let her know they’d be offline for a while. The other soldiers did the same. Mick called Alexandra. Declan was ten weeks old, and Alexandra’s spirits were high. In a sign of the progress she’d made overcoming her depression, Alexandra had done all the laundry in one day, which she rarely did in the best of times. She sent Mick photos of the neatly folded clothes as they were being put away and told him that she and Declan were ready for him to come home.

  Andy tried to line up all the available air assets for the mission as well as a quick reaction force (QRF), to give them their best hope of getting backup if things went wrong. Several guys were sent from other teams to assist. After waiting a few days for the weather to clear, they took off. The pilots hazed the team on the way in. One joked on Flightnet, the internal flight radio, that the mission seemed to have no clear objective or likely chance of success.

  “This is a nut roll,” another said.

  “Uhh, the ground force commander is plugged into our net,” one of the aircrew said, referring to Andy, who was listening, and they fell silent.

  They landed west of Marjah and headed east through a muddy network of canals, irrigation ditches, and farmland that made movement extremely difficult. They were knee-deep in bog, soggy and wet by the time they reached the strip where the Taliban cell was supposed to be located. Each home in the area was fortified with tall mud-brick walls, as was Afghan tradition, and coded on a grid. As usual, to cover more ground they split into three elements, two maneuver elements and one command element, each with about twenty-five Afghan commandos. Dan took the lead and cleared the first compound.

  After a couple of hours, the silvery moonlight disappeared, and heavy, low-hanging clouds settled over them. The clouds blocked out surveillance aircraft, and medevac went from red to black, meaning it was too dangerous to fly and there would be no air support. Andy paused the mission and told everyone to gather at the designated command-and-control center, which was labeled on the grid as Alpha-64. It was an ordinary Afghan home, with a couple of rooms, a surrounding yard, and tall mud-brick walls. The team chose it as their command center because the residents displayed a normal pattern of life and it was large enough to hold the whole force. Empty compounds could be booby-trapped. The team would wait there until the weather improved and the maneuver elements could push out and continue to search for the high-level target.

  The soldiers rounded up the frightened Afghan family living there, separated the men from the women, and ordered them to sit in a side room. It was a much criticized aspect of the long-running war: the use of local homes for shelter or targets in a raid. Both sides continued to do it, an inevitable consequence of fighting an insurgency. The main living area, little more than mud walls with sticks laid across the roof, was empty, save for a stove with a pot for boiling tea. Outside, the yard was ploughed into neat rows, and tiny green sprouts had started to poke out of the earth.

  At sunrise, they saw women and children empty out of the village. It was a bad sign. One of the new team guys asked to fly an American flag over the compound, and Dan allowed it. Someone snapped a photo of him climbing the wall with the flag, looking like an astronaut in military uniform on a mud-colored moon.

  Jordan Avery, one of the Bravos, began to work on constructing holes in the walls for them to fire through, while others filled sandbags and established defensive positions at the entrance. They set up the 60mm mortar system as well. Each team member had carried one or two rounds on the way in. As soon as the fog began to clear and air support came back, the team split, and the two maneuver elements resumed the clearing operation in the village.

  Jordan was back at the compound standing guard when gunfire broke out. It was hard to see where the shots were coming from, but he fired in the direction of the muzzle flashes and tracer rounds. The nearest building lay across an open field. Casey Gursley, an Echo, was next to him and spotted three men in what seemed to be a trench, about three hundred meters away. He fired at them. Behind him, someone screamed. He turned and saw Ski, the combat controller, on the ground clutching his thigh, with blood gushing out.

  More shots zinged into the compound. Jordan and Casey rushed to Ski’s side and helped fasten a tourniquet on his leg as quickly as possible. Ski was lucky: the bleeding stopped. Shrapnel from the round could travel up to the groin and pierce the femoral artery, which was fed through the iliac arteries that ran straight from the aorta, rendering a tourniquet useless.

  “This hurts a lot more than I thought it would,” Ski groaned.

  Jordan and Casey helped one of the medical sergeants drag him inside, and they quickly cut off his clothing to check for other injuries. The Delta injected Ski with a dose of ketamine to ease the pain. By the time Andy, who had been out leading two of the elements and moving south, rushed back, Ski was moaning incoherently as the ketamine kicked in. The tourniquet had stopped the bleeding, but the medic was worried about the amount of blood Ski had lost and recommended getting him evacuated as soon as possible to save his leg.

  Mick, who was at Ski’s side trying to calm him down, offered to go outside to direct the medevac helicopter.

  CHRIS FLANNERY, an Army Reserve pilot from Kentucky, ran the twenty-four-hour medevac operation for the south. He had been in the country for three months supporting the Green Berets that were operating in Helmand and Kandahar. He had evacuated Caleb from Sangin in December. His flight crew had trained to be wheels-up within six to
eight minutes of receiving a call, sometimes even less.

  Flannery was stationed at Camp Dwyer for the Marjah mission and happened to be on duty that morning when reports came in that US troops were under fire and someone had been shot. His crew was ready to go in minutes. It was difficult to make out the terrain through the low-hanging clouds, but eventually he spotted the compound that had been occupied by the US and Afghan soldiers.

  There were soldiers on all the walls, and Americans were firing an M240 belt-fed machine gun at a Taliban position outside the compound. Medevac helicopters always flew in pairs, and Flannery, who flew the lead Black Hawk into the firefight, approached the field flying low and fast, banking at intervals to avoid the gunfire. The soldiers waiting with Ski’s litter pressed against the building, feeling the volume of fire on the compound triple as the helicopter descended to about fifty feet from the ground.

  Mick, trying to guide in the aircraft with smoke grenades, was frustrated to learn that the crew hadn’t dialed in their radio frequency, so they couldn’t communicate directly. Flannery circled the building and made an approach. He could see the gunfire and that the courtyard was small, but this was a scenario he had prepared for in training. And he had managed to do it in Sangin. His flight medic saw fire from the left, so Flannery tried to land the aircraft right where he spotted smoke rising from the muddy ground.

  Mick noticed that the helicopter was landing in the wrong direction, but he hoped for the best. The soldiers waiting with Ski turned their backs to the helicopter to avoid the blast of dust. Flannery landed the aircraft inside the compound and then felt it sink deep into the mud and shake ominously. For a moment, he wondered if they’d been hit. One of the soldiers gestured at him to hit the gas, but he knew it was too late and performed an emergency shutdown. The helicopter might fly with rotor damage, but there was no way it would make it out of the firefight in that condition.

  Jordan felt giant clods of mud hit the back of his head. He turned around and his heart dropped. The helicopter had sunk about a foot into the ground, causing the rotor to tilt to the right, smack into the thick mud wall surrounding the compound. The helicopter was their only way to get Ski out, and that thing wasn’t going to fly again. He realized grimly that their situation was about to get a lot worse. They were going to be stuck babysitting the helicopter until the recovery crew came in, and a downed Black Hawk would invite attacks from all over the district.

  The second medevac helicopter made an approach and attempted to land in an adjacent field to the north, while Mick tried again to mark the position with a smoke grenade. He had to expose himself to the intensifying gunfire each time he bounded into the landing zone. It was no use: the damaged Black Hawk seemed to have drawn the entire town into a swarm around the compound. The second aircraft, hit repeatedly by gunfire, swerved once again and lifted away. The teams watched it disappear on the horizon. It turned out the pilot had been shot in the leg, and her helicopter had been hit twelve or thirteen times.

  The compound was taking mortar fire, and tracer rounds landed at the soldiers’ feet as gunfire intensified around them. The medic and crew on board the aircraft went inside to tend to Ski, freeing up the team to defend the compound. Flannery felt crushed and responsible for the situation. He apologized to the flight crew and asked the Special Forces team how they could be helpful. Casey and his teammates took the extra ammunition the aircrew had brought. The Afghan commandos were given positions along the walls.

  Andy took several guys, including Jordan and a small group of Afghan commandos, to the north to get eyes on the building that was firing at them and to direct the Apaches that had arrived to provide air support. They got pinned down by gunfire after several bounds. They crouched for cover behind a dirt berm that stood a couple of feet high, trying to be as small as possible. Red-hot tracer rounds used to help shooters aim their sights burned out in the mud in front of them. Andy tried to get the Apaches to fire on two buildings farther north, but the pilots refused.

  “Look, I’m the GFC,” Andy told the crew in the Apaches. “I’m telling you, we’re taking fire and we need you to fire on these buildings, now.”

  As the GFC, he could order the Apaches to provide close air support to aid US troops under fire. But after the Kunduz hospital strike, concerns about civilian casualties were especially high. The crew responded that they weren’t allowed to fire at buildings if they couldn’t see a hostile target. The Apaches circled, unable to spot anyone to shoot, and fired into the empty fields instead. Andy continued to argue with the pilots, but they refused to fire.

  When it became clear the pilots wouldn’t shoot, Jordan tried to mark the building with a flare while the team’s Fox, who had been a mortar man in the infantry, attempted to hit the target with 60mm mortars, but it didn’t work and eventually Andy decided to turn back.

  The team was told there would be no more medevacs until they could secure a landing zone. It turned out that a third medevac helicopter had been forced to pull away after a round hit the gunner’s window frame and sent an explosion of shrapnel into his face. It was devastating news. One of the mortars had already landed inside the compound and struck the downed Black Hawk. If the insurgents managed to hit the main building or blow through one of its walls, they could be overrun.

  Dan took a team out with some of the commandos to try clearing a neighboring compound that was being used to shoot at them. They headed south through an empty canal. Dan could hear bullets zing over their heads. After several bounds, they were pinned down again. Jordan fired back at the muzzle flashes coming from narrow holes carved into the walls of a building about a hundred meters away, to cover for Andy, who was on the radio with the officer monitoring the battle from the tactical operations center at Bagram Airfield. He was still trying to get the two Apaches that were on station to provide air support.

  “Tell those pilots to listen to us,” Andy told the battle captain on the radio, remembering Dan’s advice to broadcast calm, even though it felt like they were running out of options. “We need air support now!”

  The battle captain was resolute. The rules of engagement allowed the GFC to call for air support. They couldn’t fire on the buildings surrounding the compound unless the pilots could physically see the shooters, because there could be civilians inside. The guidance from Gen. Swindell was to clear civilians from a hundred-meter radius around the target. He denied the request on the spot.

  “Fight the fight,” he told Andy. “Fight the fight.”

  Andy couldn’t believe it. They’d agreed to the multiday mission in Marjah against their better judgment, and now the army was going to leave them hanging without air support? He felt a huge burden of responsibility toward all the men he’d brought on the mission. Fight the fight? What was that supposed to mean? Fuck them.

  He ran across the yard to find Dan. They huddled with the guys that had returned from the field to discuss what to do next. The flight crew medic continued to work on Ski, who had been in a tourniquet for more than two hours. He had given him a blood transfusion, but Ski still didn’t have a radial pulse, a sign that his blood pressure remained dangerously low. The crew also patched up some of the wounded commandos. The team felt they had to do something or else they would be left sitting there waiting to get hit by mortars and die. There was clearly no help coming from the battalion.

  They decided to keep trying to secure a landing zone to get Ski and the flight crew out, to give them more flexibility to maneuver. Andy suggested trying south again. Dan didn’t think it was worth another attempt and proposed going east this time. They settled on a plan to move east, clear two buildings to give them supporting fire from different positions, and create a triangle that would allow a helicopter to land in the middle. They all knew it could be bad, but they were out of options to save their friend and teammate.

  Jordan had already fired half the magazines he’d brought with him. As a Bravo, he knew that the tempo of the gunfight was not sustainable. Everyone carri
ed a double basic—about fourteen or more magazines—and at that rate, they would burn through the lot of them in hours. He shared a cigarette with Casey, thinking it could be his last.

  “Man, we’re going to get lit up out there,” Jordan said, breaking the silence.

  “We have to do it,” Mick said without hesitation. “We have to do it for Ski.”

  Dan led the team out of the compound, taking Jordan, Mick, Casey, and others, including Kevin, the bomb disposal technician. They slipped into an irrigation canal that ran south and moved forward in bounds, running for meters at a time and then dropping down. The canal was filled with water. They kept their heads low to avoid the gunfire that came at the compound from all directions. They were almost waist-deep in muddy water, and it was cold. Jordan thought it was the last thing he should be worrying about.

  Jordan was sure that he’d die every time he got up to run. They moved in single file along the ditch; one teammate ran while the others provided covering fire. RPGs and mortars landed on either side of them. He could see the bullets tearing leaves off the trees behind them. On the fifth or sixth bound, he got up and ran again, feeling the bullets crack and whiz around him. When he completed the bound, he dropped onto the ground and turned to provide covering fire for Mick, who was behind him. He didn’t appear. Jordan knew immediately what had happened.

  “FUCK!” he screamed, and ran back to where Mick was floating facedown in the canal.

  Jordan reached him and pulled his head up out of the water. Mick had a bullet entry wound under his helmet and was completely unresponsive.

  “Get the fuck down!” Dan shouted.

  Jordan yanked Mick over his lap and held his head, but his friend seemed to be dead. He was the first KIA—killed in action—of the day, and Jordan wondered how many more there would be before they got out. He saw another teammate firing over the berm next to him. Each time Casey poked his rifle over the edge, the ground exploded all around them. The Taliban had accurately dialed in their position, and the soldiers were spread out in the canal about a hundred meters away from Alpha-64, a long distance to cover in a water-logged ditch under fire.