The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor

by Jake Tapper

  The commander of Task Force Centaur, a forty-one-year-old lieutenant colonel named William Metheny, disagreed, though he did suggest that Chief Warrant Officer Third Class Eric Totten and Chief Warrant Officer Second Class Christopher Donaldson, the command pilot and copilot, respectively, take along an extra pilot to sit in the jump seat, to help reduce their workload and enable them to focus their attention outside the aircraft. He also recommended that an additional crew member accompany them to spot through the center cargo door and shout directions. It wasn’t as if Chinooks had rearview mirrors, and backing the aircraft onto the improvised landing zones would be tough. The strip for Able Troop, for example—designated PZ (for “pickup zone”) Reds—was so small and so perilous that Gooding had nicknamed it Heart-Attack Ridge. Not only would the Chinook likely manage to land only one or two wheels there, but the general area was crowded with trees and other obstacles. Plus, they would be flying at night, wearing night-vision goggles.

  Totten considered Metheny’s advice and opted to bring along another crew member but not a third pilot. With that decision made, he and Donaldson went through the checklist and assessed the mission as posing a moderate risk. Totten was a seasoned pilot, Donaldson was on track to becoming a pilot in command himself, and the two worked well together. The planning, preparation, crew selection, and training for this mission were all good. It was true that the pilots were unfamiliar with the area, and these would be some of the tighter landing zones they’d seen, but they could handle them, Metheny thought.

  In the meantime, Fenty flew to Jalalabad Airfield to talk with Colonel Nicholson about where 3-71 Cav would go after all of its troops were back at the base at Naray. The next day, the lieutenant colonel, Timmons, Berkoff, and other officers huddled in a small brigade operations center to brief their commanders on the plans to extract their men from the Chowkay Valley. Online, Brigadier General James Terry, deputy commander of the 10th Mountain Division, participated from Bagram, as did the leadership of the aviation brigade.

  It was just a few hours before the Chinook and two accompanying Apaches were scheduled to take off, and Terry said that Operation Deep Strike looked like a high-risk mission to him. “Who’s going to be in charge of this?” he asked Fenty.

  “We’ve got Frank Brooks, the troop commander, on the ground out there,” Fenty said.

  “What are your concerns about the risks?” Terry asked.

  “Sir,” Fenty said, “I believe the real enemy out there will be the terrain.”

  Staff Sergeant Adam Sears, of Able Troop, had missed most of the action during Operation Mountain Lion, having caught a wicked stomach bug that—combined with the thin air atop the mountain—required him to be evacuated back to a temporary logistical base that Timmons had rented for this mission, an empty compound surrounded by twelve-foot walls, just south of the Chowkay Valley.

  On May 5, after recuperating for a few weeks, Sears was transported by a resupply chopper to the landing zone where Brooks and the Barbarians were set up. Moquin and a couple of others met him there and accompanied him back on a goat trail around the mountain ridge to PZ Reds, where Sergeant First Class Yagel directed him to prepare the pickup zone for the helicopter that would be arriving that night.

  The twenty-four-year-old Sears had been to air-assault school, so he had some expertise when it came to helicopters. He’d assumed that the bird coming to pick up the troops would be a Black Hawk—a less imposing craft with a smaller rotor-blade span—and was stunned to learn that command was in fact sending a Chinook. Apart from the size differences between the two choppers, Sears’s view was that Black Hawk pilots were generally combat pilots, whereas Chinook pilots—while undoubtedly nice enough guys—were more the kind of soldiers who did supply runs from one safe landing zone to another. This landing zone, by way of contrast, was covered with dry, sandy soil and sloped 45 degrees downward to the edge of a cliff. And as if that weren’t challenging enough, command also wanted to do this at night?

  “This is crazy,” he told Yagel.

  The Chinook’s larger rotor-blade span—two rotor systems, each with a sixty-foot diameter, compared to the Black Hawk’s one big rotor with a diameter of fifty-three feet eight inches—made Sears’s task that much more difficult: he would have to get rid of anything the blades might hit if a sudden gust of wind happened to come up. Just five feet from the area where the Chinook would hover stood a tree, a gnarled claw of wood about ten inches in diameter.

  “That needs to come down,” Sears said. But the only tools they had were two KA-BAR knives. For the next several hours, therefore, they all tried to chop down the tree with the knives—Yagel, Sears, Pilozzi, Moquin, Justin O’Donohoe, Specialist David Timmons, Jr.,21 Sergeant Dave Young, and a new guy, Staff Sergeant Richard Rodriguez. Without any water to drink, the men had trouble building up the energy to keep going. They would razz one another as each took a turn trying to make a dent in the seemingly indestructible timber. Eventually, under the scorching sun, the group surrendered to the futility of the task.

  Sears worked to make the zone as safe as possible in whatever other ways he could, setting up an infrared strobe light to indicate the landing area, close to the tire marks from where a Chinook had landed once before. He and Pilozzi added infrared chemical lights to flag hazards that the pilots should steer clear of. The lights would be visible only to the U.S. troops and pilots, all of whom would need to be wearing night-vision goggles.

  The troops readied the cargo, including an LRAS, for rapid loading. They also began cleaning up their mess: it was Army procedure to sanitize the sites of observation posts before troops left them. There were two reasons for this. First, if insurgents were to find evidence of U.S. troops’ presence in a certain area, they might booby-trap the location or set up preemptive ambushes around it in the hope that the Americans might return to the same spot (as they in fact often did). And second, leaving this pristine landscape littered with American garbage was apt, understandably, to annoy the locals. Yagel ordered that all the trash be ignited and destroyed in a burn pit on a ledge just under the cliff.

  For Sears, doubts remained. He radioed Brooks, who was at the Barbarians’ observation post across the valley: “This whole thing is a bad idea,” he said. Particularly idiotic, Sears thought, was the choice to send the large Chinook. The landing zone was too small for that bulky aircraft, and flying it at night in these jagged mountains, with their powerful winds, seemed an unnecessary risk. A Black Hawk, sure, but not a Chinook. It seemed like a decision made by someone who wasn’t on the ground, someone who hadn’t seen where the chopper would be flying.

  It was the same argument Brooks had been making to Fenty, especially because the pilots themselves had never flown in the area. But Fenty, after consulting with his commanders, radioed back to tell Brooks that the mission was a go. “Roger,” said Brooks. Brooks passed word on to Sears, and he rogered, too.

  At Bagram, Metheny once again urged Totten to take a third pilot in the jump seat, to help out.

  “No,” Totten said. “Lieutenant Colonel Fenty’s going to be sitting there.”

  Fenty had wanted to get closer to the mission, to the temporary base Timmons had set up, as opposed to being stuck in Jalalabad, but Timmons had told him the only way to make that happen was to put him in the jump seat of the Chinook. Fenty could then fly the first leg of the trip, stand by on board as the Chinook picked up as many troops and supplies as it could fit in its hold, and then get off with those men at the temporary base before the Chinook flew off on a second run to pick up more troops and gear at other landing zones. “Do it,” Fenty had said.

  Totten’s handpicked crew included flight engineer Staff Sergeant Christopher Howick, crew chief Sergeant Bryan Brewster, crew member/door gunner Sergeant Jeffery Wiekamp, and observer/door gunner Sergeant John Griffith.

  The Chinook itself seemed to be in good shape. Earlier that day, a separate crew had conducted a maintenance inspection on the bird, flown it for more than six
hours, and then conducted a second, postflight inspection. Everything had checked out. It had also just gone through its mandatory two-hundred-hour cycle service inspection. But in the crew’s haste to get it back in the air, numerous required forms and records had not been completed correctly, including many items on the maintenance test flight check and the aircraft power check.

  Totten was regarded as a strong pilot, though on a previous flight, during an April 11 troop insertion for Operation Mountain Lion, his aircraft had sustained major damage to its undercarriage. No postflight evaluation had been administered on that occasion, however, since Totten’s commander believed that it was just a simple matter of a rock’s having poked a hole in the chopper floor during a difficult night mission.

  Prior to departure, Totten, Donaldson, and the crew attended a go/no-go briefing. The enemy threat, flying conditions, and other matters were assessed. A weather warning was in effect—winds in the area where they would be flying were gusting anywhere from thirty-five to forty-four knots—but that would expire at 6:30 p.m. local time, just when Totten and his team were set to take off.

  Joe Fenty tried to call Kristen twice before the mission, which was out of character for him. She had long ago reconciled herself to an important rule that governed the behavior of many military spouses: a husband or wife was far likelier to get back alive and in one piece if he or she focused entirely on the task at hand. When Fenty finally got through to her, the questions he asked were, for him, unusual.

  “What does Lauren look like?” he asked.

  “She has red hair,” Kristen said.

  At that point, Lauren let out a wail.

  Fenty chuckled. “Is that her?” he asked. “She has some lungs on her.” Fenty told his wife that he was going on a mission that would be dangerous. It was quite unlike him to do that. He never wanted to alarm her.

  At 6:38 p.m., the Chinook, accompanied by two Apaches, took off from Bagram, headed for Jalalabad, where Totten and his crew refueled and picked up Fenty. At 7:36 p.m., the three aircraft set out for PZ Reds to extract the men of Able Troop. The Chinook flew slower than planned: Totten was supposed to keep the bird going at 110 knots, but for some reason he flew at seventy to ninety knots instead. Totten did not answer radio calls asking him why that was. On entering the Kunar River Valley, the first Apache hit several pockets of moderate turbulence.

  “I’m glad I don’t have to land in the LZ”—the landing zone—one of the Apache pilots said. The pilots in the first Apache discussed the wind speed and direction and the turbulence. It might not be a bad idea to call the mission off if conditions got much worse, they agreed. Once the three birds were above PZ Reds, the first Apache flew up and to the southwest to watch over the operation. The other flew low and to the east. “I’m getting my butt kicked up here,” said the main pilot at the higher elevation.

  Sears, on the ground, made radio contact with Totten, in the Chinook. He told the pilot to land west to east, aiming at the large chemical lights. At 10:02 p.m., the Chinook instead approached PZ Reds from the south. “That part of the LZ’s no good for landing,” Sears said. Totten didn’t respond. The bird landed briefly, but it started to slide, and Totten, clearly aware he couldn’t hold it there on the ledge, pulled it up. Sears thought to himself, This is going to be a clusterfuck. The pilot does not seem to be in full control of the Chinook.

  At 10:06, Totten managed a two-wheel landing by backing the Chinook in from the east. As Sears had ordered, three of the troops—O’Donohoe, Moquin, and Timmons—sprinted onto the bird with cargo. Others started running the rest of the gear to them: the LRAS system, six or seven duffel bags, ammunition, weapons. They were all wearing their night-vision goggles. It was dark inside the chopper, except for the light coming from the cabin.

  One of the Chinook crewmen got off the back ramp of the bird. Sears was surprised to see that he wasn’t wearing his night-vision goggles. What the fuck? Sears thought. How could he see the infrared chemical-light markings on the trees and rocks and other hazards on the pickup zone without his goggles on?

  Just then, sparks started flying out of the burn pit, perhaps reignited by the air currents from the spinning rotors. The glowing cinders looked a bit like tracer fire. On the radio, Sears tried to explain that it was just ash—nothing to get excited about, he said, though he himself sounded excited. The men in the choppers couldn’t understand him and thought he sounded highly agitated.

  Seconds later, the Chinook rolled forward off the landing zone.

  “I’m having trouble keeping it on the LZ,” Totten said.

  Sears’s voice got higher and even more agitated-sounding. What the fuck was this guy doing? he wondered.

  Nick Pilozzi was now inside the bird, having just dropped off a bag filled with a hundred pounds’ worth of LRAS batteries. He felt the helicopter lurch forward, and suddenly it was ten feet off the ground. Pilozzi dove out the back of the aircraft, smashing his face when he hit the ground.

  Totten yelled excitedly, “Is everyone all right?” He told Sears over the radio, “Just get your rucks and get on.”

  “We can’t do that with our remaining gear,” Sears replied, annoyed. It was becoming increasingly difficult for the chopper pilots to understand what he was telling them in his fast-talking Indiana twang. “Do it west to east!” he instructed Totten again. The Chinook took off, with Moquin, O’Donohoe, and Timmons still aboard.

  At 10:09, Totten tried to stick a landing for the third time from south to north. As he lowered the aircraft, the Chinook’s tail swung to the left, and the rear rotor hit that gnarled tree that the men from 3-71 Cav had worked so hard—but to such little effect—to cut down.

  The back blade exploded and came off the chopper. The soldiers at PZ Reds started diving for cover as thousands of pieces of shrapnel sprayed all around them. Sears grabbed Young and dove off the cliff onto a ledge a few feet down. The Chinook’s engines started spooling up, building up power, vibrating. Tree-branch parts flew. Totten throttled the engine, and as he did, the exhaust turned from a dull ochre to a hellish crimson. The turbine jet engines on the back of the bird grew red-hot. The Chinook pitched forward and up, its nose rising.

  “Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” cried Pilozzi. “What the fuck do we do?”

  The Chinook started falling down the cliff. It hit the ground about 150 feet down and exploded, and then it kept on rolling, clearing all the trees in its path. It finally stopped 150 feet farther down and ignited into a huge fireball.

  “Holy shit,” said the pilot of one of the Apaches. “The Chinook is down.”

  At PZ Reds, the troops started yelling into the valley below:

  “If you can hear us, we’re coming to get you!”

  There were secondary explosions as the fire found ammunition and fuel in the belly of the bird.

  Sears, Pilozzi, and others from 3-71 Cav began sliding down into the valley. The fire was throwing off so much light that their night-vision goggles were rendered useless.

  They could smell flesh burning.

  At the Jalalabad operations center, Berkoff had been monitoring mIRC chat, the military’s version of Instant Messenger, transmitted over secured networks. In a special Operation Mountain Lion chat room, the words suddenly popped up: “Chinook Down PZ Reds.”

  The message came from the logistics base Timmons had set up at the mouth of the Chowkay. At first Berkoff thought it meant that Fenty’s chopper had landed safely on PZ Reds. But then he saw a second message: “Chinook Down, Chinook Down. Near PZ Reds.” A third one made it clearer still what had happened to the helicopter: “Crashed near PZ Reds.”

  Berkoff got up and rushed out toward the joint operations center in an adjacent room. Before he even entered, from the hallway, he heard Brooks’s familiar, high-pitched southern Virginia drawl, delivering garbled status reports over the radio.

  “Give us a BDA”—a battle-damage assessment—“of the crash site,” Major Timmons asked Brooks.

  “It’s bad,” ca
me the reply. “There’s no way we can even get near the wreckage. It’s just too hot down there.”

  Other staff officers started weighing in: Did Brooks want a pair of rescue jumpers to look for survivors? Could he use a C-130 plane with a giant spotlight to help in the search? There were other offers made, too, to fight the enemy, since back at Jalalabad they thought the chopper might have been shot down, though Brooks and those who’d been there knew that wasn’t the case.

  Byers grabbed a radio transmitter. “Hey, Barbarian-Six,” he said, using Brooks’s radio call sign, “I need you to tell me, no shit here, could anybody have survived?”

  Everyone paused.

  “No,” Brooks said. “There’s no way anyone could have survived.”

  The whole room, filled with some thirty staff officers, fell silent. Everyone knew that Brooks was probably right. No one made eye contact with anyone else. Many officers looked down at the floor.

  A few minutes later, Timmons and Berkoff went out into the hallway to get some air and compose themselves.

  The brigade chaplain approached them, extending his arms and offering condolences. Berkoff wasn’t ready to believe they were all gone. He ran outside to a dark corner of the airfield, dropped to his knees, and wept.

  Berkoff thought about one of his last conversations with Fenty. Two days before, he had seen him at Jalalabad, just returning from the field. Fenty had looked spent; his hair was long, he reeked, and a gray film covered his uniform—the result of four straight weeks’ worth of perspiration and Afghan dust. Regardless, upon seeing Berkoff, Fenty had immediately wanted to know about the Jewish chaplain he had arranged to bring to Jalalabad for Passover. “Ross, did you ever see that rabbi that I sent here for seder?” he asked. Even with everything that must have been going on in his head—the mission, his month-old baby girl, the killing of some ANA soldiers a few days earlier in an IED attack on a 3-71 Cav convoy—Fenty never missed a chance to inquire about one of his soldiers.