Victory Point
Page 15
Later that day, a local farmer noticed that the furrows in his fields, normally inundated with slowly flowing irrigation water, had gone dry—something had clogged a main feeder channel. Walking his land, the local noticed an odd bundle of items blocking one of his main canals. Up close, he found what he recognized to be gear from Marines he’d seen in the area. He gathered the gear—a SAW, a belt of 5.56 mm rounds for the weapon, a flak jacket, and a Kevlar helmet. The helmet had a name tape: JOYCE. The villager immediately brought the items to Blessing, dimming the Marines’ hope for the lance corporal’s survival. Days later, Joyce’s body was found twenty miles downstream. The Marines at Camp Blessing held a memorial; with no requisite trumpet available at the small firebase, one of the Marines used his harmonica to play taps. The moment was somber and wrenchingly emotional, but one that left the incredible Marines with ever-greater resolve for their still-long road ahead. Joyce would forever occupy a place in their hearts.
“So the intel hits died off again?” Tom Wood looked at Westerfield like he wanted to punch the intel officer in the face.
“Didn’t die off, Tommy. Just changed. Relax. He’s gonna be there on the night of the twenty-seventh and stay there for at least two days. Structure 11, it’s an IED factory and weapons-cache location. With those SOF guys heloing in—basically announcing their presence—we don’t want the recon team lingering around any longer than they have to. They gotta insert on the twenty-seventh, not tonight. That’d be a day too soon, especially in that area.” Wood sat down and dropped his face into his hands.
“And we still figure that he’s got between six and twelve guys with him?” the OpsO asked.
“At the very, very most, he’s got twenty fighters, and some other nonfighters he pays for support. Realistically, though, from the latest hard intel, we know he has between six and twelve. But those six to twelve are well-trained foreign fighters with experience,” Westerfield responded.
“Okay. They helo-insert on the twenty-seventh. Brown’s been doin’ decoy drops all week, so let’s hope that Shah or any of his lookouts figures its just another unlit helicopter buzzing around the villages up there.” Westerfield stared back at Tom blank-faced, just as uneasy as the OpsO about NAVSOF’s planning decisions for phase one, as well as what both felt to be a tenuous at best command structure that was inviting disaster. Even if disaster were to strike, however, the Marines had their component of Red Wings’ quick reaction force (QRF) in place, prepared to speed to the rescue of NAVSOF personnel during the first two phases of the op. The QRF would consist of twenty-four Marines from Golf Company, led by Captain Pete Capuzzi, who would form the main effort of phase three of the mission with their job of outer cordon.
With the Marines of the QRF fastrope qualled and ready to act with lightning speed, Red Wings stood ready to launch on the night of 27 June 2005. Just hours prior to the scheduled insert of the reconnaissance team, Kristensen and other members of NAVSOF met with ⅔’s commanders at the JAF COC and “rock-drilled” phase two and the segue into phase three. Confidence swelled at the meeting—the SEALs impressed with the Marines and the grunts confident in NAVSOF’s fighting prowess—as they hashed out the final air support, indirect fires assets, deconfliction, and QRF details. By 6 P.M. at Jalalabad Airfield, as the scorching sun sank toward the dusty plains to the west, Red Wings seemed destined to become yet another success in joint operations in the area, despite the hardened stance on USSOCOM doctrine at the CJTF-76 and CJSOTF-A levels.
Just after sunset, as the orange glow of dusk began to succumb to night’s grip, pilots readied two MH-47Ds of the 160th at a remote hangar at Bagram for another mission into the darkness. The modified Chinooks were some of the most impressive of Aviation’s creations, and their crews looked after every maintenance and operational detail with an eye for perfection—the “birds” were masterpieces, and the maintainers sought to keep them in prime condition, despite innumerable combat flights. The two ships ready, the pilots “spun up” the large craft and lifted into the night, one a decoy bird and the other carrying seven NAVSOF personnel, including the four members of the recon team: Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy of SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, who would lead the team; Petty Officer Second Class Danny P. Dietz from SDVT-2 (based in Virginia Beach, Virginia); Petty Officer Second Class Matthew G. Axelson from SDVT-1; and Navy Hospital Corpsman Second Class Marcus Luttrell, of SDVT-1. Landing at JAF to refuel, three of the NAVSOF passengers jumped out to aid in liaising, while Kristensen and Wood climbed aboard. Ever concerned about the small team’s success and safety, Wood made certain to pass to both Kristensen and then directly to Murphy six ten-digit grid reference points (a ten-digit grid reference point indicates a location on the ground to a resolution of one square meter) for calls for fire from Doghouse, who had those six coordinates preset into their mission package. If all went according to the detailed plan, in just over twenty-four hours, the direct-action team of Red Wings—composed primarily of members of SEAL Team 10—would envelop Shah and his operations, and that restive nook of the Hindu Kush would take yet another leap forward in stability. The powerful jet turbines roared to launch power under the control of the seasoned aviators, the big rotors dug into the night air, and the sounds of the “invisible” craft melted into silence. Red Wings had taken flight.
6
AMBUSH
With the waning glow of dusk a faded memory and the moon still hours from cresting the high, serrated complex of mountains to their east, the aviators piloting the two MH-47s guided their Chinooks through the darkest of Hindu Kush nights. Bound for Sawtalo Sar, they sped ghostlike over the village-dotted expanses of the lower Kunar Valley, then pressed ever higher above the vicious peaks surrounding the target zone. Viewing the world around them from behind the eerie green glow of their NVGs’ reticules, the Army special operations aviators drove the powerful, heavily armed helicopters deep into the heart of the very worst of the enemy’s lair. Intimate with the terrain from previous nights’ decoy drops, the pilots once again hovered their craft over insert zones surrounding the village of Chichal and the summit region of Sawtalo Sar before the lead ship peeled off, arcing to the south of the mountain’s uppermost triangular bulk. As the decoy bird roamed near more populated areas above the upper Korangal, the Chinook carrying the recon team slowed as it approached a point about a third of a mile south-southwest of, and three hundred feet in elevation lower than, the peak’s true summit, the “saddle” between Sawtalo Sar and Gatigal Sar. With the clak-clak-clak of the craft’s twin rotors resonating in muffled ka-klatter-ka-klatter-ka-klatter echoes off the walls of the Korangal and Shuryek valleys, the SOAR(A) aviators eased the muscular bird into a perfect hover about thirty-five feet above a patch of lightly treed ground as the MH-47’s crew chief lowered the Chinook’s rear ramp and deployed a single three-inch-thick fastrope. The four members of the recon team, laden with a broad array of gear from food and water to weapons, donned their lightweight Pro-Tec helmets and calmly stood in anticipation of their phase of the mission, then approached the very rear of the craft. Both “torquing” with stacked clenched hands and pinching the line with their boots’ inner soles, the SDVT SEALs slid into the abyss of the night’s dimensionless pitch darkness and connected with the ground just seconds later, fanning out away from the MH-47’s rotor wash as soon as their boots hit the deck. Feeling the fastrope go limp once the last of the team reached firm ground, the crew chief—trained for and accustomed to direct-action raids where he’d jettison the fastrope as soon as a team hit the ground—instinctively detached the line; the olive-drab fastrope snaked to the earth with a dull whump as the crew chief alerted the pilots that all four had successfully inserted. As the Chinook’s turbofans’ screams and its rotors’ clak clak claks melted into the silence of the staid night with the MH- 47’s quick departure, Murphy, Dietz, Axelson, and Luttrell moved toward OP-1. But the four didn’t know about the dropped fastrope—this wasn’t a direct-action hard-hit raid,
but a covert insert, necessitating as small a footprint as possible. And for the SDVT recon team on the ground that night, that meant no footprint whatsoever, given that they were operating on Sawtalo Sar, literally in the den of some of the most viciously determined extremist fighters in the world. Relatively unfamiliar with each respective unit’s comprehensive standard operating procedures, neither the SOAR(A) planners nor those of NAVSOF discussed the post-insert fate of the rope during mission planning. The SEALs assumed the SOAR(A) crew would retract the fastrope, as this was a covert insert; but the TF-Brown aviators assumed that the SEALs would cache the line, as they felt—based both on their doctrine and experience—that lingering over enemy territory, even for a few extra seconds to reel in a fastrope, invited disaster. It allowed time for an enemy to put rounds into the large craft, and the attached fastrope presented a snagging danger (on trees or buildings) as the bird moved to exfil. The result of a seemingly small communications oversight during the planning phases of Red Wings, the rope just might prove the undoing of the entire operation . . .
Just over a mile away from their destination, the SEALs wasted no time putting the insert point well to their rear. The four moved quickly and with utmost stealth, despite portaging a full suite of gear: desertcamo “SOPMOD” M4 carbines each fitted with a flash/sound suppressor, an M203 40 mm grenade launcher, a visible wavelength laser pointer (producing a red dot on a target), an ACOG sight, and a PEQ-2A infrared floodlight/IR laser pointer (to be used with their night-vision goggles). Of course, they carried dozens of 5.56 mm thirty-round magazines and 40 mm high-explosive grenade rounds for their M4s and 203 launchers, as well as hand-lobbed fragmentation grenades should they make contact with Shah and his force. They also carried the MBITR, the Iridium satellite phone, infrared strobes to mark the insert point for the following night’s direct-action raid, red and white pen flares, a GPS unit, laser rangefinders, Steiner binoculars, a large Leupold long-range spotting scope, a tripod on which to mount the scope, a digital camera, and a Panasonic “Toughbook” laptop on which they could process digital images of possible target individuals then interface with the MBITR to pass the photographs to the COC for positive identification via secure satellite transmission. The team also carried a “Phraselator,” a wallet-size device loaded with prerecorded Pashto phrase files selectable in English on a menu screen, with the ability, through a speech recognition algorithm, to also translate phrases from English to Pashto by speaking into an attached microphone. As well, the team carried a 7.62 mm semiautomatic sniper rifle, similar to one Eggers had tested (designated an MK11 by the Marine Corps), to use for acquired targets of opportunity during phase two of the op. Should the unthinkable happen, and Shah’s force overrun the small team, they carried incendiary grenades, which would render their valuable and sensitive gear useless in a white-hot conflagration as they egressed from harm’s way.
The team maneuvered through the complex terrain of Sawtalo Sar’s upper ramparts through the dark night. With dense carpets of low-lying ferns, steep rock outcroppings, fields of dead upright and fallen trees, and large deodar cedars reaching into the thin air at over nine thousand feet, upper Sawtalo Sar presents confusingly treacherous navigational challenges during the height of midday, much less during the depths of a moonless night. Further complicating operational difficulties, this time of year sees the influx of moisture from the Indian monsoon, fueling volatile, unpredictable thunderheads that lash the slopes of the peak like angry clenched fists, leaving the mountain’s reddish-brown soil and sharp chunks of shale dangerously slick, even to daytime-traveling locals who know Sawtalo Sar and its trails, trees, outcrops, and villages like their own backyard. By midnight, however, with no sun to infuse convective energy for thunderheads to thrive, these storms typically disintegrate, revealing effervescent fields of stars, the brilliant view occasionally dashed by roving threads of dissipating clouds, the seasonal moisture then lying in wait for the pounding sun’s energy to once again engender the powerful, capricious, and operationally vexing storms. The recon team traversed some of the earth’s most unforgiving land that night, a forbidding yet uniquely beautiful labyrinth on which extremists could create a storm of fury for the Americans.
“They dropped the rope! I can’t believe it! They dropped the fucking fastrope!” Lieutenant Rob Long overheard one of the Navy SEAL operational liaison officers exclaim hours after the insert at his post at the Jalalabad Airfield Combat Operations Center. Long, who, like Wood, viewed the decision to helo-insert what he thought to be an insufficiently manned team for phase one with skepticism, felt his heart drop at the news—news immediately conveyed to the recon team once the MH-47s returned to base and Kristensen learned of the rope’s jettison. This is their backyard, Long thought, referencing the locals whom Shah was known through intel to pay to keep tabs on Sawtalo Sar’s many facets. Long knew that even tightly coiled, the fastrope would occupy a volume similar to that of a good-size moving box, something like three large suitcases stacked one atop another. Where are they going to hide it? Long wondered as he observed the commotion of the COC ramp into a near uproar. He imagined his own backyard, wondering how an outsider would conceal such a large package without him noticing. They couldn’t. Period. And villagers throughout the Kunar lived far more intimately with their mountainous environment than the lieutenant did with his backyard. But with all the gear the SEALs already had with them, they couldn’t pack that “anaconda” of a piece of gear as well. Besides, Long thought, they must be far downrange of the fastrope. Would they break out of their concealed hide at OP-1 and risk being seen on their route to or from caching the rope?
But the dropped fastrope could very possibly reveal itself to be a complete nonissue, Long realized. Regardless of the number of decoy drops in days past, Shah certainly would push out patrols to see what a dark night’s clattering helicopters left in their wake each following day, as well as to get the word out to all the locals either paid by him or scared of him to look for signs of the presence of American forces. Where are they and what are they looking for? Long imagined Shah’s thoughts. With his rigorous training as both a ground intel officer and a sniper platoon commander, the lieutenant viewed the first two phases of Red Wings as “duct-taped together—at best” from a command and control perspective, and completely haphazard from an on-the-ground operational standpoint. Long kept wondering how the four would dispose of the dropped fastrope—go back and try to conceal it as a full team, just leave it and hope it wouldn’t be discovered, or have two SEALs remain at OP-1 while the other two dealt with the problem, breaking an already undersize team in half. Or call for an extract, which he thought to be the best option, based primarily on the loud helo insert, which he regarded as a huge neon sign proclaiming AMERICAN FORCES ARE HERE. But like Wood, Rob Scott, and even MacMannis, Long had no say. This phase of Red Wings was completely controlled by USSOCOM rules—and nobody in that chain of command, Long knew, would want any input from a young Marine Corps lieutenant.
Then, late in the morning of the twenty-eighth, the inevitable transmission Long had feared crackled over the radio in a barely audible voice: “We’ve been soft-compromised.” The exhausted Long’s ears pricked up; his heart pounding, he rose from his chair and lunged to the corner of the JAF COC occupied by the Navy SEAL Red Wings liaison officers. “Goat herder,” Long thought he heard at the tail end of the weak, thready transmission. Herder or herders? Didn’t matter. Had they seen the fastrope, or found it buried—then searched for the team? Or just spotted the four by chance? Or were they Shah’s operatives, locals earning a little extra money as yet another set of the terrorist’s eyes? Didn’t matter. Mission’s blown. Get the FUCK outta there! Long screamed in his head at the news of the “soft” compromise, a term referencing a unit’s discovery by apparently noncombatant locals. Had this been Team Ronin, Keith and his team would have photographed the locals, asked them a few questions, then sent them on their way—then called the COC to discuss options; but given the curre
nt circumstances now, there would have been only one choice: extract, extract immediately. Call for extract, he barked in his head at what he wanted done with the recon team. Do it. Do it NOW! Too many of the mission’s variables looked to be going south in too short a time. Long, Wood, and then Rob Scott and Pigeon—all out of the command and control loop at this stage—wished to just reach out to any air available and get them back to base. They immediately contacted Capuzzi, who stood ready with the quick reaction force at the Jalalabad Provincial Reconstruction Team base, and told the captain that the order to launch the QRF might likely be imminent.
“I don’t feel good about this, not at all,” Tom Wood uttered under his breath.
Then, after what seemed to Long like just a few minutes from the soft-compromise call, icy chills ran down his spine as the next of the recon team’s transmissions echoed through the room: “CONTACT! We’re hard-compromised!” No longer simply discovered by unarmed locals, machine-gun, RPG, AK-47, and possibly 82 mm mortar rounds tore downrange from members of Shah’s cell, who focused on killing all four of the SEALs, howling “Alla-u Akhbar! [God is the Greatest!] Alla-u Akhbar! Alla-u-Akhbar!” repeatedly between trigger pulls. A call from the team crackled through the COC again, but their PRC-148’s five watts just couldn’t kick a sufficient signal from Sawtalo Sar to Jalalabad to carry an audible voice. The transmission melted into splintered pops and squeals of static noise, indecipherable to Long and everybody else in the room. Do a call for fire from Doghouse! Long mentally screamed as every muscle in his body flexed. Do it now! Get rounds impacting on the ACM! Long practically shouted aloud as the liaison SEALs crowded around their comm gear. They shot message after message to the recon team. “Your transmission’s breaking up. It’s breaking up! Can’t READ YOU!” they yelled.