by Dalton Fury
Besides leaving al Qaeda alone to rest and recuperate overnight, the muhj left behind the boys from MSS Grinch as well. We flat-out refused to leave the field. We weren’t going home until the battle was decided one way or another.
Keeping their positions didn’t bother the boys a bit, and besides, it was easier to hide smaller numbers.
It was not until the men of MSS Grinch proved they could survive inside al Qaeda’s sanctuary after nightfall that the muhj foot soldiers started to see the benefits.
MSS Grinch continued to push up the mountains and ever forward, forcing al Qaeda to retreat. As soon as snipers Pope and Lowblow reached a commanding position offering a view of the enemy’s fallback caves and bunkers, they slipped between small rock formations and began scanning the terrain through their Leopold binoculars for targets of opportunity.
While the snipers worked the high ground, the assaulters from Alpha and Bravo teams moved on the recently abandoned bunkers and caves, getting an education in the methods of al Qaeda. Outside the caves were stacks of cut firewood covered with waterproofing plastic to ward off the elements and camouflaged from the air with fir tree limbs and branches. Scattered about willy-nilly were RPG and mortar rounds and cans of ammunition. Discarded clothing and bloody bandages lay at the base of shrapnel-infested trees, and dirty wool socks dangled on broken limbs.
Inside, the caves still smoldered from warming fires, indicating a hasty retreat. Bottled water from Pakistan, abandoned modern backpacks, food, and cooking utensils sat on the dirt floors. Finally, to prevent having to venture out into the cold night air and expose themselves to the infrared camera of an overhead AC-130, discarded water bottles had been recycled nicely as urine containers.
Although the al Qaeda mortars had been relatively quiet since the night of December 10, when Dugan and Dallas worked their mojo, it was not until the afternoon of December 14 that we could confirm their word. Pope, Lowblow, and the four Brits, moving forward to create still another OP, saw firsthand the death and destruction dealt by the gunship.
The derelict 82mm mortar tube rested silently in the upturned rock and dirt. Next to the tube was an al Qaeda fighter’s decomposing corpse still sitting on—and partially lying under—a dead donkey. Surrounding them was a boatload of spent mortar round containers, crates, wrappings, and the remains of a couple of the donkey rider’s buddies. The entire area had been turned into mincemeat.
Like most of the team leaders in Delta, the man who led Kilo was a singular personality. I first met Pope in 1994 as a Ranger lieutenant visiting the Delta compound to rehearse for the eventually aborted invasion of Haiti. As a young assaulter in the squadron he was given the dubious task of escorting my platoon to the range and teach us the finer points of combat marksmanship so we could keep from shooting one another. During a live fire run in one of the buildings, one of my young privates made what I thought was a mental mistake in his technique.
I stepped forward, confident and feeling a sense of omniscience, and immediately brought up the infraction for everybody’s benefit. Pope had watched the team’s entire run through the shoot house. The problem, from his point of view, was not what the private did; it was my correction of the Ranger’s action. Pope stepped forward and calmly, professionally, and very deliberately explained why what I was telling the private was not necessarily the smart thing to do and then offered an alternate solution to the group. Wow! In just a few seconds, Pope made believers out of all of us and still allowed me to retain my dignity in front of my Rangers, including the young man that I had scolded. Of course, I felt about a foot tall. That young Ranger whom I had admonished in that long-ago incident was destined to be the future Kilo Team sniper with the code name of Lowblow.
Pope is the best organized individual on the planet and a master at time management. During a normal day back at Fort Bragg, Pope could accomplish more tasks in a day than most of us could in a month and still find time to shoot and work out. His teammates would arrive in the team room on Monday morning and find that he had repacked each man’s gear, shampooed the carpet, and generally cleaned the entire room. All the kit bags were retagged with not only the proper markings but with some Gucci-looking tags with fancy colors and lamination. Then he might hand out new name tags to the whole troop, embroidered with the individual’s jump qualifications and matching HALO wings in two different colors. It was like he possessed some stolen alien technology to control time.
On a more serious note, Pope also knows more about commando kit and fighting gear than any manufacturer in the industry. If you needed some special item or piece of equipment, but weren’t sure which one to get or who carried the top of the line, you talked to Pope. He could tell you the best product, be it a flashlight or wristwatch or cold-weather underwear, but he probably had one or two tucked away in his locker and would just give it to you, or promise to call some “people” who would get it for you at half price. It reminded me of how Richard Gere always kept a stash of new brass buckles and shiny black dress shoes in the rafters of his barracks in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman.
Just after sunup on December 14, Jester, Dugan, and the Green Berets closed out OP25-A for good. Before leaving, the boys had an idea to discuss with Dave, the seasoned leader of the Green Beret team. Instead of exfilling, only to be reinserted later, the Delta snipers reasoned that it might be smarter to simply ruck up and make their way on foot deeper into the mountains to take up a flanking position abreast of the advancing MSS Grinch.
As much as he might have wanted to oblige personally, Dave had orders not to get his team into a firefight, so he had no choice in the matter. To do what the Delta boys suggested would have been career suicide.
Jester and Dugan repacked their rucks with water, chow, and fresh radio batteries, confident that their stay at the schoolhouse would likely be brief before they headed out to fight again. Unfortunately, all of our trucks were tied up inserting MSS Monkey, so the boys from OP25-A would have to rely upon the donkey express; they humped halfway back to the schoolhouse before finding some.
When they finally arrived, some were walking and some were riding. Having been so isolated, they had not yet learned how valuable their efforts had been.
After debriefing Jester and Dugan, the two snipers bagged out for a few hours inside the local stables, then volunteered to pull the radio watch that night. Bernie, Ironhead, and I were able to get the first sleep we had managed in the last several days.
On December 14, our troop received two new personnel. When I first laid eyes on them, I couldn’t help but think these were the two luckiest Delta operators in the unit. As I shook hands with them, they were all smiles. Both were in their midtwenties and recent OTC graduates. They sported excellent records and came with solid footing from growing up in the 75th Ranger Regiment and Special Forces.
Skeeter, a young Ranger from 1st Ranger Battalion, sported a shaved head and thick beard that would grow to be one of the most envied in the unit.
A year later in Afghanistan, word reached us that conventional wisdom had caught up to the unconventional ways of a special operations war zone and a rumor spread that would require us to shave our beards and cut our hair. Lieutenant Colonel Ashley remarked to Skeeter, “Don’t you dare cut off that work of art.” By then his beard had grown at least six inches, a length the Taliban would have been proud of, with a center streak of light gray running vertically down the middle, in between pepper-colored sides, similar to the beard of Mr. bin Laden himself.
The other operator, Bullets, just as new to us, was experienced in the craft. Already a Green Beret, his beard was a little lighter than Skeeter’s, and he arrived with short-cropped hair. Hopefully, both these young men’s careers inside Delta will last for decades.
After a quick in brief, Ironhead told them both they had less than an hour to configure their rucks for a minimum of several days and nights in the mountains. They stood there hanging on the squadron sergeant major’s every word, not worried in the slighte
st about the falling temperature or going into battle.
“Only take what you need,” Ironhead said. “Leave your Kevlar helmet and body armor in the hooch. You won’t need a sleeping bag or a lot of snivel gear. Grab an Afghan blanket from the stables to go along with your wool muhj hat and scarf to keep you warm.”
Skeeter joined MSS Grinch as an assaulter on the Bravo Team of Stormin’, while Bullets went up to be an assaulter with MSS Monkey’s Charlie Team. No use in having them just sit around the schoolhouse.
With the two original observation posts forced to shut down because of the advancing of Ali and Zaman’s forces backed by both America and British commandos, an opportunity presented itself to increase the relentless pursuit of bin Laden.
We now had twelve Green Berets out of a job, and several of General Ali’s subordinate commanders—converts to what Special Ops people could do—were begging for commandos to direct bombs along their particular axis of advance. We wanted to oblige, as this would give us better visibility and at the same time provide firm locations on each group of muhj. With the Green Berets from Cobra 25 now available, problem solved. Or so I thought.
The decision to not allow them to enter the mountains dumbfounded me and frustrated the quiet professionals from Cobra 25. The Green Berets were now out of the fight completely, and I had no option but to thank them for their efforts.
Not long after that exchange, the dreaded black Chinook arrived and whisked away the A Team commander. The eager young captain had been relieved of command. Before he left, I gave the distraught Special Forces officer the phone number to the Delta recruiter and shook his hand.
I had assumed that, by now, the Task Force Dagger risk assessment matrix would have been subordinate to killing the Most Wanted Man in the world. Apparently, it was not.
As the bombs continued to rain down on bin Laden and his henchmen, George and I settled down with the general for the nightly fireside chat.
The nightly meetings with Ali served several purposes, but probably the most important benefit to the battle was what the private conferences did for Ali’s stature and reputation. He was winning the fight, and as al Qaeda was being ground into dog food in the mountains, the warlord was gaining an aura of superwarlord in the eyes of his men and the local Shura. Our regular face-to-face engagements served our needs as well, as they pressured him to do more than talk to the press and issue hollow promises. He had to match his words with deeds and make good on his deals.
Numerous topics needed attention, but tonight he led off with one that surprised me.
Ali was extremely frustrated both by his fighters’ inability to locate bin Laden, and by Zaman, who reportedly was continuing discussions with the enemy. Out of the blue, he made an announcement that raised our eyebrows. The general was advertising a one million dollar reward to anyone who could take him to bin Laden. A pretty shrewd business move, but not entirely unexpected. He was expecting to receive every penny of the $25,000,000 reward that the State Department had advertised, and could afford to be generous in posting a bounty that would guarantee that big payday.
We asked the general what made him think bin Laden had not slipped out of the mountains and escaped? Ali responded confidently that he had two sources that were adamant the al Qaeda leader was still around.
George asked the general if any of his men had actually seen bin Laden yet. Ali gave us that familiar shrug to give the impression his men were doing the best they could considering the conditions.
He countered with another interesting tidbit.
One of his associates reportedly had some sort of information that bin Laden’s interpreter was still in the mountains and that the interpreter’s father lived nearby. The general surmised that the father would certainly leave with his son, and that was even more proof for Ali that bin Laden had not yet fled.
We read it a different way. If bin Laden was still around, we needed to press the attack and not let up the offensive, not even for a moment.
15
A Strange Kind of War
Progress always involves risk. You can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.
—FREDERICK B. WILCOX, AUTHOR
We were almost out of supplies in the mountains by December 14, and the biggest needs were batteries and water. Water was needed to maintain a man’s strength for carrying heavy loads up and down the steep ridgelines and to prevent the onset of hypothermia or altitude sickness. The icy weather was about ten degrees with a steady wind, and an inch or two of snow falling each day. We could melt the snow for emergency drinking water, but the extreme temperatures sucked the life out of our radio batteries.
Coming out of the mountains while al Qaeda was bloodied, disorganized, and on the run was not an option. We didn’t even discuss it. In the last seventy hours, we had pushed several thousand meters into the middle of the enemy’s fabled mountain stronghold and were not about to give that territory back.
The dreadful weather also was playing havoc with some of the aircraft flying missions to blast the mountainous positions, and visibility would change by the hour. We had to replace the fire support of those planes during the bad weather with some organic all-weather assets as soon as possible. The Rangers back at Bagram owned just such weapons, and we put in several requests for some Ranger mortars. Request denied. The reasons elude me still, particularly since some of their officers told me that they were anxious to comply and get into the fight.
Resupply by helicopter was also out of the question. Besides the low visibility that was periodically choking the mountains, we had learned a lesson from the Afghan-Soviet War. The muhj knew how to patiently wait behind rock formations, inside shallow caves and dugouts, or behind thick tree formations for an attack helicopter to come darting over the ridgeline. When it appeared, they would kill it with an RPG or a shoulder-fired missile. If the muhj skills were good enough to shoot down several hundred of those fast helicopters during the Soviet jihad, it wouldn’t take much to pick off a slow Special Ops Dark Horse lumbering over some high ridgeline in search of a landing zone the size of a postage stamp.
Living off the land wasn’t in the cards either. We had captured dozens of caves stocked with firewood, potatoes, rice, RPGs, medical supplies, and thousands of containers of Chinese-made 7.62mm AK rifle ammunition. Almost everything but enough drinking water or batteries. But while al Qaeda had shrewdly overstocked their stores in anticipation that the Far Enemy would soon arrive to do battle, they also had protectively laced some of those caves with mines that silently awaited the first clumsy or curious attacker to enter. Picking up a tin of potatoes could be deadly.
The obvious question was how were our muhj partners resupplying themselves? The hard fact was they carried what they needed to fight on their backs as we did, but they just didn’t need as much to survive. Also, they could rely on some equine help along the way. The typical muhj fighter went up the mountain with his weapon, a bag of rice the size of a baseball, three to five thirty-round magazines, a couple of RPG rockets, and a single, thin blanket to stave off the cold. The muhj rarely required water, almost as if they were perpetually hydrated, and were much more acclimated to the high altitudes than we were. And there was no use carrying food for daytime use anyway, since during the holy month of Ramadan they were forbidden to eat or drink anything from dawn to dusk.
Unfortunately for the muhj, many of them just about froze to death each night. Beneath their snow-damp blankets, they typically wore only a single layer of thin cotton clothing. The lucky ones sported some type of waist-length garment. In contrast, beneath the blankets of the Americans and Brits were layers of twenty-first-century extreme-cold-weather gear. Even that could not stave off the cold.
But the muhj could get whatever they needed hauled up to them, and were usually off the mountain by nightfall. Teenage Afghans clocked in as porters to carry what they could while tending the valuable donkeys, and a well-balanced jackass humped about 150 pounds of foodstuffs and equipment.
When MSS Grinch had moved into the mountains days earlier, we had been unable to locate or bargain for donkeys. MSS Monkey had some, but even a donkey had its limits in this place. Once Grinch entered the radically steep terrain where they were now fighting, donkeys wouldn’t have helped at all.
We had another idea, and we once again went back to the Rangers. Few professional military organizations can match their physical ability and mental toughness, just the attributes required to deliver the vital supplies to MSS Grinch so the shooting could continue without letup. Two platoons of Rangers were sitting around back at Bagram, and we asked for one platoon to help. They could serve as a human logistics train from the last vehicle drop-off point in the foothills all the way up to MSS Grinch, which was located several klicks away and at an elevation several thousand meters higher. Rangers could do what helicopters and mules could not. Request denied. Again, I never learned the reasons for that refusal.
We did have one quick offer. Not surprisingly, our former commander, Gus Murdock, heard of our need for human pack animals and sent a note that he was more than willing to mule supplies up to the boys in the mountains. He doesn’t know how close Ironhead and I were to taking him up on the offer, and it would not have surprised us a bit if he had stepped off the next helo landing at the schoolhouse ready to hump a pack.
In the end, we would have to do the resupply ourselves, but we had committed almost every available body to the fight, and they were already up in the mountains. Only a half-dozen Delta guys were still around, sharing a multitude of duties from handling the radios, running security, getting ready to be inserted themselves and being the only reliable quickreaction force in the entire area.