That part of the plan worked—up to a point. The old men from the village walked toward us. They were trying to draw us into an ambush, and we were going to let them. This was a calculated risk, and we were counting on our fellow Rangers still inside the compound to provide overwatch and take out any enemy—especially snipers—who might threaten us. We knew our guys were scanning everywhere, memorizing distances to likely targets, and making a mental map almost as fast as they could think.
Ryan and I hung back a few meters to provide covering fire while Major Dan, John, Stryker, and Zeke met with the elders. They started questioning the men and patting them down, looking for concealed weapons. Ryan and I had worked together long enough that I could read my own anticipation in his posture: muscles loose, a relaxed grip on his M4, and breathing deeply to control the rising adrenaline.
We automatically scanned the elders as they were questioned by Major Dan through our interpreter, Zeke, and frisked by John. I was glad our commanding officer was leading the questioning. He was the one with the most experience in-country and had lived through Operation Rock Avalanche, hunting down Taliban fighters in the Korengal Valley back in 2007. If there was anyone who wasn’t going to be bluffed by the enemy, it was him.
Unlike many countries where our military operates, and where there is one language that we can learn in order to communicate with the locals, there isn’t a single Afghan language. Instead, it’s a multilingual country, with Pashto and Dari the dominant languages, but with many people speaking different dialects, such as Uzbek, Turkmen, Balochi, and Pashayi.
All this is by way of saying that for the U.S. military in Afghanistan—and especially for the Rangers in our role as a direct-action force that goes deep in-country to root out the enemy in villages and hamlets—an Afghan interpreter is worth his weight in gold. And Zeke was one of the best. He was an Afghan citizen who was embedded with us because he couldn’t stomach what the Taliban was doing to his country. It was a life-changing decision, because once he had thrown in with us, he was a dead man walking if the Taliban caught him. It’s hard for us in the United States to understand how brave these Afghan interpreters are, and we need to do more for them after they dedicate their lives to supporting us.
Major Dan and the others were engrossed in their task of trying to ferret out useful information about the Taliban from these old men, so Ryan and I scanned them, looking for suicide vests, concealed weapons, radios, or even just a suspicious gesture—anything to tip us off about what their real intentions might be. I was hoping that one would give himself away, producing a weapon or, worse, a suicide vest. None of them did—their lucky day.
Ryan broke the uneasy silence.
“Guy on the left, by the JTAC?” he began in a questioning way, wanting my input on whether that elder was a threat.
“He’s okay,” I began. “I’m looking long,” I continued. Looking long means I’m in my sniper scope and my peripheral vision is reduced to zero.
“I’ve got the near sector,” Ryan replied, unnecessarily. I trusted the big man implicitly, and he focused his attention on the elders and our greeting party.
One of the main tasks of a Ranger sniper is to be a counter-sniper. I continued to look long and scan the almost-white adobe buildings, with their seemingly random portholes and windows, where the elders came from. I saw a colorful drape blowing in one window, which could be an amateur’s attempt at screening himself from view. I turned up the power of my scope, narrowing my view even more, until I could see into the room as if I were standing in it. There was nothing there, so I kept scanning.
“Anyone left in the village?” Ryan asked.
“Not that I can see,” I replied. “Bad spot for a sniper, too.”
“Maybe their sniper is as bad at his job as you are,” Ryan jabbed back. I didn’t look at him, but I could picture his wry grin and didn’t bother with a response.
I opened my nondominant eye and took a knee, refocusing on the village elders, who were now shifting anxiously and glancing at the surrounding cliffs and mountains.
“Something on the high ground,” I said to myself as much as to Ryan, as I shifted my scanning to the high ground.
“Where?” Ryan asked.
I nodded in the direction of where I had seen the elders looking over our shoulders.
“Look,” Ryan said.
I didn’t have to. He was pointing to the elders as one of them turned and began running away.
“Here we go,” Ryan said.
I let out a short exhale of agreement that emptied my lungs. It was about to hit the fan, and my training kicked in. I began to focus on the basics of what snipers do. I started monitoring my breathing: in, out, in, out, I kept thinking, fighting to stay calm.
“Damn,” I replied.
“There go the rest of them,” Ryan said, disgust in his voice.
Time slowed to a crawl and the adrenaline began seeping into our bloodstreams. We hung back for four, maybe five heartbeats. Then all hell broke loose.
The morning calm was shattered by the unmistakable sound of AK-47 rifles and PRK-670 light machine guns—typical Taliban weapons. Their cyclic clack, clack, clack ripped through the air, echoing off the cliffs and mountains.
Instinctively, our seven-man greeting party hit the dirt as enemy rounds exploded all around us. There was no cover where we were, and Ryan and I just hugged the ground and hoped dirt was the only thing the enemy hit. Major Dan and the rest of the team who had been questioning the village elders bounded past us, stopping just short of the wall of the compound. At the same time, Ryan and I were searching for targets, doing what we could to cover the greeting party’s retreat.
Immediately, the Rangers in our house behind us broke their silence, and we heard the comforting pop-pop-pop of M4 carbines. The M4 is a shorter and lighter variant of the M16A2 assault rifle and is one of the Ranger weapons of choice.
As part of our fighting doctrine, as soon as a Ranger element takes enemy fire, every man in the unit can fire back with his personal weapons. But for heavier weapons, our weapons squad leaders or gun team leaders have to make the call.
I could pick out the deliberate snap of the M110 sniper rifle as Mac and his sniper team picked targets from their hide site in the cupola on the second story of the house behind us. Major Dan and his greeting party had made it back inside the compound, and now Ryan and I were running back to the cover of the compound walls. I stole a glance at Mac’s position, jealous that he had the better vantage point. I saw a single round impact the wall behind me, and another sound pricked my ear.
Mac’s probably taking Taliban heads off, I thought.
I saw a single round impact the facing wall of Mac’s hide site and a singular sound pricked my ear the same instant. The sound was too pronounced to be an AK-47. I figured it had to be a heavy machine gun—the sound it made was the ka-chunk that a machine gun makes after it fires a single round and then malfunctions. That told me that Mac and his hide-site crew were under the guns of the enemy.
The enemy fire was a booming counterpoint to the whisper of Mac’s suppressed M110 sniper rifle. Mac and his sniper team were searching for the enemy who was ranging us, while the rest of the 1st and 2nd Platoon Rangers directed their fire at the enemy surrounding us on three sides. In no time, we could hear the Ranger gun team leaders yelling fire commands. We could picture the squad leaders shifting their teams to concealed gun ports they’d constructed the night before to concentrate their firepower. Soon we were beginning to return fire with the crew-served guns our weapons squad had brought to the fight.
Even in the heat of battle, we were able to assess and analyze. The Afghan Taliban are fierce fighters and worthy adversaries, and they have unmistakable fingerprints. With rare exceptions, they use AK-47 rifles, PRK-670 machine guns, and RPGs. The AK-47 has a distinctive pop, while the PRK-670 belt-fed machine gun has a characteristic grind that’s unlike any other weapon. If the RPG is fired from a long distance, you won’t hear the
whoosh it makes as it leaves the launcher, but you’ll see the distinctive smoke trail it leaves.
The good news is we knew what to listen for, but the bad news was we were getting lit up by the enemy over an arc of almost 180 degrees. We heard the pop of the AK-47s and the grind of the PRK-670s from the cliffs immediately to the east, from the large village to the southeast, and from the rock outcroppings and caves due south. This was a well-planned ambush by a clever and heavily armed adversary.
Inviting the Taliban to a gunfight in an operating area heavy with enemy forces that was usually the responsibility of a Marine battalion hadn’t seemed like a great idea back at KAF, and it sure as hell looked like a worse one now. Things were going to hell as our plan unraveled, and I knew our two platoons were now the hunted, not the hunters.
Suddenly, that distinct sound I had heard earlier caught my attention again, and I realized that what I had thought was a malfunctioning machine gun was actually a single large-caliber rifle round. I tried to time the crack of the bullet in supersonic flight with the bang of the powder burned at the rifle to give me a sense of how far away the shooter was. But I couldn’t make out a bang. I had hoped that meant the enemy gun had malfunctioned, but sadly this wasn’t the case. Another round impacted the cupola, and I made out both the crack and the bang. An enemy sniper was targeting us.
I thought I knew where the enemy sniper was—in the group of buildings to our southeast. But before I could key my radio to warn Mac and his team, I saw a trail of soot snake and bob directly toward their hide site. It was an RPG, and it detonated, harmlessly, 15 feet from the wall. It was coming from the same area as the sniper—a typical Taliban tactic. I remember thinking, Shit, Mac is really screwed.
An enemy sniper, using his sniper scope, can make his partner with an RPG much more effective. We figured these guys weren’t precisely co-located—that would compromise the sniper’s hide site—but were within maybe 10 or 20 meters of each other, close enough that the sniper could yell to his RPG guy and tell him how to adjust his fire. It was a deadly combination. I knew that it wouldn’t take the enemy long to figure out that he only had to move a bit closer to us, and his next RPG shot would hit the cupola and Mac and Hank, and our machine gun team would die.
By now, there was no finesse, either by the enemy or by us. What was the staccato of individual rifles or carbines firing deliberately quickly turned into a Ranger Death Blossom as our M240 machine guns and M249 SAWs opened up on the enemy in full cyclic firing. (“Cyclic” means a machine gun fires as fast as it can be fed bullets, so your only limitation is mechanical). Our platoon leaders went from one firing position to the other, directing our fire either at the cliffs, the village, or the rock outcroppings.
Having two Ranger platoons go full out in perfectly choreographed precision with every weapon they had was something beautiful to hear. Even our 60-mm mortars added to the noise and the uproar. The mortars couldn’t be used to shoot the structures in the villages, where many of the enemy fighters were firing from, but they hammered the enemy’s cave bunkers as well as the open ground at the edge of the villages.
I scrambled back into the compound. I knew I could help confuse the enemy sniper by picking a different position than where Mac and his spotter, Hank, were firing from. I found a good spot at the southeast corner of the southern compound wall and set up shop. I didn’t have a spotter, but I knew Hank and his spotter had 16× optics, and they could radio positioning info to me. My usual spotter, Marc, was up in the hide site with Mac and Hank and couldn’t get to me—he’d be exposed to the enemy sniper if he did and would never make it.
Suddenly there was a huge explosion. My MBITR radio came alive. (This is the AN/PRC-148 Multiband Inter/Intra Team Radio, and it’s pronounced “embitter.”)
It was Mac. “Sierra, what the fuck was that?”
“Mac, Sierra, RPG,” I said breathlessly. “Your hide site is compromised. If they have another RPG, you guys are fucked.” I kept one eye on Mac’s hide site as I adjusted my firing position.
“Roger, I thought it was an RPG. What did it hit?”
Mac wasn’t getting it. “It didn’t hit anything,” I replied. “It just exploded. But we probably won’t be as lucky next time. If these guys advance just a few meters they’ve got you nailed.”
Before I could key my radio again and let Mac know that his position might be in the crosshairs of an enemy sniper, I heard three evenly timed sniper rounds tick into the front of the hide site like a metronome. Adobe dust poured from the holes in the building.
Good, I have a grouping, and none of those rounds killed anyone, I thought. Maybe I could locate the bastard who was trying to take us out.
“Go for the sniper!” Mac ordered. He knew that was the most immediate danger, and we both figured the enemy firing at us from a 180-degree arc were coordinating their efforts with their sniper, forcing us to keep our heads down while their sniper tried to take out Mac and Hank.
“Sierra, Mac, get eyes,” Mac ordered. Mac sounded calm, but we both knew that an RPG hitting so close meant that his hide site and everyone in it was the enemy’s primary target. A second RPG getting just a little bit closer meant they all died: three snipers and a machine gun team.
“Get eyes” is a sniper term for get to work. In this case, it meant get to a gun port and find a way to kill the enemy sniper. I shifted my position to the southeast corner of the compound and saw that our platoon leaders had moved two M240 heavy machine guns next to each other. Both were firing full cyclic, so I knew there must be something there.
I slid into the gun port next to one of the machine gunners, paralleled his barrel with mine, and looked down my sniper scope. I could see the impact of the machine gunner’s rounds. He was firing at targets of opportunity, in this case an enemy adjacent to the enemy sniper’s position, in the vicinity of where the RPG had been fired from. They were chewing up dirt and kicking up a small whirlwind of dust. All of this was within 25 to 50 meters of the sniper’s position. I started a search pattern and tried to find a target. Nothing.
Meanwhile, Mac’s team continued to answer with their suppressed sniper fire, near silent and withering, trying to take out the enemy before the next RPG connected. From the timing and direction of the sniper’s rounds and the RPG shots, we were now sure the sniper and the enemy who had the RPG were located in the same general area and were coordinating their fire. It was the worst-case scenario for us.
I called Mac. “I think I have the sniper’s location!” Locating this guy was 90 percent of the solution. Once we found him, we knew we could take him out. We were damn good at that.
“I’ve got him too!” Mac replied. We were trying to be calm and let our training click in. Sniping and taking out an enemy isn’t like close-quarters fighting, where you let your adrenaline take over. I’ve always thought of sniping as like being in the eye of a hurricane—everything around me is blowing apart, but I have to stay calm enough to do the math and convey what only our telescopic sights can detect.
Mac and I kept scanning and memorizing what we saw. The sniper’s primary location was exactly where we thought it would be. We kept looking. We found his secondary location, and then his tertiary one. We were thinking in the first person: Where would I hide? Where would I run to? When would I pop my head up?
This sniper was one clever and elusive dude. I knew he was good because I couldn’t see him. He was in a hide site like Mac’s, only it was better, because his building was surrounded by other buildings. He was built back into a room, screened from view, no doubt sitting comfortably, waiting to take out the first one of us who showed himself. Not too many Afghan Taliban are experienced enough to shoot at us from the back of one room screened by another room. This guy was screened two or three times and probably had a curtain of some sort with just a tiny path for his bullet.
Mac and I began piecing together and analyzing our enemy. You might think that the last thing Rangers involved in a firefight would do is analyze any
thing, but we do. That’s how you win and, frankly, how you stay alive. We agreed this guy definitely wasn’t a local—he was too good. And that made us flash back to 2010 and Operation Strong Eagle, when Mac and I were called on to counter-sniper a Chechen. We didn’t kill that guy, but he didn’t kill us. When you hunt a man who can shoot you from a mile away and you live, that’s a win.
It’s an old military saying that knowing your enemy is the key to victory. That goes double—maybe triple—for snipers. There weren’t that many Chechen snipers supporting the Taliban, and with as long a war as we were fighting, we could identify individual Chechen snipers by how they operated. An inexperienced sniper—which probably accounted for all the Afghan snipers we faced—will try new things, switching tactics multiple times during a fighting season. But these Chechen snipers—most of whom had been honing their skills since the First Chechen War with Russia in 1994—each had a way of operating that identified him as accurately as fingerprints or a retinal scan. Every time we faced one of these Chechen snipers and avoided getting killed or injured, it gave us more info we could use the next time we faced him.
We quickly realized that this sniper was good enough that he’d make damn sure we never saw him or any sign of him. So he was likely a Chechen, just like the one we had taken on during Strong Eagle. And he was smart.
“Chechen?” asked Mac. But it was less question than statement.
“Damn right,” I replied.
“See any muzzle flash, ever?”
“Nope.”
“You think it’s a seven-six-two?” Mac asked, referring to an old but reliable Russian-made 7.62 × 54R round, similar to our .30 caliber, a popular American cartridge often used by U.S. Special Operations forces.
“No question,” I replied. Even in the heat of battle we could make out the distinctive thud of that 7.62 round, a dead giveaway that it came from a Russian surplus rifle. That meant we were dealing with a foreign fighter, most likely a Chechen.
When the Killer Man Comes Page 3