Bamboo Battleground

by Don Bendell

  The senator smiled and said, “Very well, General. Thank you.”

  The briefing continued for some time and afterward the president invited the general and several others for lunch in the West Wing dining room, which is just down the hallway from the Oval Office and on the other side.

  Over some gourmet sandwiches, the president smiled at Jonathan Perry and said, “General, you just lied through your teeth to those people. How does that make you feel?”

  Perry chuckled, saying, “Like a politician, Mr. President.”

  Everybody in the room laughed and the chief executive simply said, “Touché.”

  Bobby called a halt to the patrol, and they moved slowly through the undergrowth down the side of the ridgeline they approached on. All wore night vision devices and could see the entire compound before them set up the same as before. Bobby pointed out various bunkers and buildings, assigning them to each man in the patrol. Each man would be accompanied by one Hmong or Montagnard, who would sneak in with them. Two guards had been assigned to each of the two towers, but in both towers the guards were lying fast asleep, and Bobby saw thankfully the rest of the security in the camp seemed lax to nonexistent.

  Green Berets, especially engineer/demolition specialists have used materials found in the field such as junkyard scrap, glass champagne bottle bottoms, and steel plates, and then molded the explosive to them in an attempt to increase the efficiency of the charges for specialized missions. Their training for years has been expedience: How can they make do with what is available? However, since the advent of munitions incorporating explosively formed penetrators as warheads, the Special Operations Forces have learned to build demolition charges using this technology. Oftentimes, through trial and error, they succeed in building EFP (explosively formed projectile, but also meaning explosively formed penetrator) demolition charges that will destroy the intended targets. These are actually the bastard stepchildren of the old army shape charges. The spec ops operator’s improvised demolition EFPs are rarely optimized nor do they have consistent and reliable performance because of the variability in materials and building techniques they employed.

  Besides fabricating the charges, the soldiers needed to improvise methods to attach the charges to a wide, wide variety of targets, often for extended periods of time, in virtually all types of environmental conditions. The attachment methods also required the operator’s direct presence at the target. It could be a bridge’s support columns, an electrical power substation, a dam, an enemy headquarters building, or munitions bunker, etc. Many of these missions did not permit a safe standoff distance from the target during emplacement of the demolition charges. This exposed the soldiers to detection and eradication by the enemy forces, especially in the commonplace spec ops direct-action missions of infiltration undetected, target destruction, and ex-filtration undetected. This is what Bobby and his men were facing. Unless one employed a timing device, usually an expedient one as simple as attaching a positive wire to a metal screw and negative wire to another, and then separating them by a variety of methods, such as one screw attached to the metal lid inside a jar of rice or beans with water poured in. The water causing the rice or beans to swell would make the lid with the screw and positive wire attached slowly rise toward the contact with the screw attached to the negative wire. Once the two touched, the circuit would be complete from the battery used, and the detonator would ignite. The opposite methodology could be achieved by having the lid with the positive contact drop down to the bottom of a container, a drum or can, while the water within slowly leaked out through a prepared hole at whatever rate of leakage desired. Even a lit cigarette stuck between the matches in a matchbook has been used as a timing device for an explosive by Special Forces operators. There are many more expedient means, but all of these are simply guesses on how long it will take for a detonation, and there is no control over the timing on the blast.

  To overcome these deficiencies, the US Army TACOM-ARDEC (Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command-Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center) developed the M303 Special Operations Forces Demolition Kit to provide the spec ops soldiers with state-of-the-art components and methods needed to accomplish their missions more safely, efficiently, and effectively while improving their survivability. The official line about the M303 states:

  The SOFDK allows soldiers to remotely acquire their targets at extended standoff distances using munitions that defeat targets using less explosives than conventional demolition operations. The SOFDK provides components and methods that greatly improve the soldiers’ fighting ability by lightening the soldiers’ load and reducing time-on-target.

  The Kit is a collection of inert metal and plastic parts and commercially available items that give the SOF soldiers a wide selection of warheads and attachment devices which he can tailor to defeat a specific mission target. The various warheads include three sizes of conical-shaped charges, four sizes of linear-shaped charges, and a new capability with two sizes of explosively formed penetrators with more sizes to follow. The warheads are provided in a set configuration that contains all materials, less explosives, needed to pack the warheads with explosive, set them up and attach them on or near the target. It also gives the user a new capability in the form of an inert kit containing the components to tailor-make various explosive charges and securely employ or attach these charges to targets, which is critical for mission success and user survivability.

  The centerpieces of the M303 Kit are the new EFP warheads that provide a standoff capability, previously not available to the SOF soldier, to defeat hard targets. All materials in the kit are inert and thus can be carried to the mission area using any available means of transport from military to commercial, air, sea or ground. In the last friendly area near the mission jump-off site, called the Isolation Facility, the user will study his target folder and select the proper warheads and hand pack the warheads with Composition C-4 moldable explosive. The warheads are then carried in the soldiers’ rucksacks to the target site. The EFP warheads are set up on standard camera tripods included in the kit and aimed with a built-in Omega sight or with one sight from the soldiers’ standard set of four interchangeable carbine sights. Use of these sights provides the maximum accuracy at the greatest standoff distances attainable for numerous types of targets and mission scenarios. The warheads are primed with standard blasting caps or detonation cord and when initiated, from the EFP or “Cannon Ball” that is explosively projected at high velocity to impact the target with devastating results. All warheads can be used in environments ranging from tropic to arctic under limited visibility conditions. The EFP warheads can even be used in total darkness, when using the soldiers’ standard visible laser or infrared (night vision goggle-compatible) laser sight. The EFP warheads are effective in defeating a wide variety of targets ranging from eight-inch-thick reinforced concrete block walls to three-inch-thick armor plate.

  The M303 was developed for and will be issued exclusively to the Army proponent within the Special Operations Command. Due to the strong user support from the Navy Seals for the EFP warheads and the medium and large linear-shaped charges these items will also be procured for Navy use.

  To carry it a step further, these men would emplace directional firing-shape charges with EFP warheads, and in some circumstances on tripods, around the al Qaeda training compound, and they would also emplace a digital video camera far enough away from the potential blast site that it could capture the images of the blast. It would be projected to a computer screen on a laptop with the patrol and simulcast to the spy sat overhead back to Langley and D.C. Bobby could watch in real time to insure that everything would be okay to set off the explosion.

  Fadl Ulaah was the al Qaeda camp commander. Like so many of the al Qaeda cadre, he had previously had homosexual relationships with both Usama bin Laden and his second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri and was personally trained by both, not only in the art of fellatio but in terrorist activities.

  He had jo
urneyed to Koh Samui in southernmost Thailand to meet with his boss Muhammad Yahyaa and was now returning, very weary from the travel. He had taken a train to Bangkok, a boring four-hour ride, and then vehicles, and between two northern Thai villages, even an elephant, and then more vehicles. Now, because he could not compromise his facility’s location, he had driven by all-terrain vehicle to a spot where the camp’s inhabitants hid their vehicles, five clicks away from the camp, and he was now approaching the camp on a hike through the jungled terrain accompanied by the squad sent out to meet him and escort him back to camp. The men, not wanting to step on banded kraits, bamboo vipers, or poisonous centipedes in the dark, would have preferred waiting until dawn to move, but the leader had night vision goggles and so did the squad leader, and Fadl was anxious to get back to his hooch. He did not like the jungle at all, and at his hooch he could at least have electricity and some of the comforts of home, as well as young trainees to prey on sexually.

  The men of the patrol with their southeast Asian counterparts slowly moved through the jungle growth like the spitting cobra, taking the route of least resistance under the giant elephant’s ear plants and around and through the tangle-foot and wait-a-minute vines.

  For this operation, Bobby, Bo, and each of the Delta Force members carried a SOPMOD (Special Operations Peculiar Modification) kit on the M4A1 carbine, with thirty-round magazines and automatic firing that would fire rapid-fire auto in three-round bursts. The modification kits for each man’s weapon was suited to their particular taste but included all or part of the following modifications to the M4, which is a CAR-15 carbine with an A-203 grenade launcher mounted underneath the barrel: Knight’s Armament Company (KAC) Rail Interface System (RIS) forearm, KAC’s vertical fore grip, KAC’s backup iron sight (BUIS), Trijicon’s model TA01NSN 4x32-millimeter Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight (ACOG), improved combat sling, which allows for secure cross body/patrol carry, Insight Technology’s AN/PEQ-2 Infrared Target Pointer/Illuminator/Aiming Laser (ITPIAL), Insight Technology’s Visible Light Illuminator (VLI), Trijicon’s ACOG Model RX01M4A1 reflex sight, KAC’s quick-detach sound suppressor (QDSS), KAC’s quick-attach M203 grenade launcher mount, quick-attach sight for use with the M203 with a nine-inch barrel, and Insight Technology’s AN/PEQ- 5 visible laser.

  For a personal sidearm, like Bobby and Bo, several carried a Glock model 17 9 millimeter, and the rest carried customized army Colt .45 1911s. One of the men, Trinity, having served in the Pacific Rim under the First Special Forces Group out of Fort Lewis, Washington, did not want to carry the M4 because of bullets not penetrating the thick jungle foliage, but instead carried a Mini-14 with a space-age polymer plastic stock and firing the standard 7.62 Remington copper-jacketed, soft-nosed, hollow-point ammunition. He had his next-door neighbor, a Special Forces 18Bravo or weapons sergeant, convert his rifle to full automatic, and he just had to remember to fire in bursts and keep his barrel and receiver cooled down. Two of the men carried the spec ops popular SR-25.

  The men in the group easily emplaced each of the special munitions, and knew that they would also get secondary explosions when the two ammunition bunkers and the fuel storage blew. With as much stealth as they used to climb into the compound perimeter area undetected, they now egressed without incident and met at the rendezvous point at the eastern end of the valley.

  Following Bobby, who walked point, they made their way up the jungle-choked ridgeline. They set up a quick perimeter and set up the laptop. They could also see the explosions from the ridgeline. Dawn was just now lifting up the corners of the horizon and sending little shards of light onto the countryside.

  Just as they were ready to detonate, Bobby got a call and the UAV high overhead reported a squad-sized unit closing in on them. Bobby requested and was able to see on the computer screen IR images of the patrol from the FLIR apparati in the nose of the UAV. He left Bo and half the patrol, U.S. and foreign, on the ridgeline and scurried down the ridge to the valley floor to set up a hasty ambush, as he did not want to allow them the opportunity to get to the compound, spot the explosive devices, and sound the alert.

  He set up a quick L-shaped ambush and had told the patrol above to blow the camp when he sprang the ambush. In the L-shaped ambush, which was a very common hasty ambush tactic, the patrol would be allowed to walk into the killing zone of the main ambush line, and the second line would lay down withering fire all along the front of the patrol, without exposing themselves to the overlapping fire of the main line of the ambush along the trail.

  The ambush came into sight, and Bobby had already told them to wait for his fire. He could tell by his demeanor and body language that Fadl Ulaah was a Mideasterner and a leader of some sort. He whispered to the man next to him that he wanted the man alive. This was passed on, and Bobby held his own holographic sights with the illuminated red center dot right on the man’s right hip. He made a mental note to hit the man on a front quartering angle so he might shatter the hip and anchor him, but not hit the femoral artery running down the inside of the leg through the groin area. This man might give them intelligence on the operations of Muhammad Yahyaa and al Qaeda Pacific Rim operations.

  He squeezed off his shot and saw it hit the hip, exiting the right buttocks, and the man went down immediately. The rest of the ambush went off without a hitch, and the gray, dark, misty morning erupted into loud booming explosions to their side and rear, and stabbing flames of fire erupted from their deadly weapons. Copper-jacketed harbingers of death spun forth in a cacophony of hate, a symphony of horror. One of the al Qaeda patrol tried to raise a Chicom-made 7.62-millimeter light machine gun. Then Big Mose aimed at his center mass an fired an HE round from his M203 grenade launcher. The round caught the man perfectly in the center of his chest, and went off, and his torso and machine gun simply exploded. Bobby heard secondary explosions going off from the compound and grinned.

  As directed by Bobby, everybody opened on automatic, then switched to semiautomatic and aimed at targets of opportunity. The firing ended, and Bobby jumped up and led the others forward and arrived at the moaning body of Fadl Ulaah.

  He yelled, “Big Mose!”

  And the big man hollered back, “Got him, sir. Go ahead.”

  Bobby approached the moaning man and was soon angry at himself for his carelessness. He pulled Flex-Cufs out of his cargo pocket and grabbed the wounded man’s wrist. From underneath, as Bobby pulled on his left wrist to cuff him, a khanjar, a long, curved-blade Arabic dagger, suddenly appeared in a sweeping arc in his right hand that cut across Bobby’s bicep and immediately drenched his arm in blood.

  Bobby heard a gun cocking to his right rear and said, “Don’t shoot. He’s mine.”

  The killer swept back across the other way, ripping a large slash through the front of Bobby’s uniform, but wearing Kevlar, Bobby ignored it and grabbed the man’s right arm after it passed by, slowed by the scalpel-sharp blade dragging across the Kevlar.

  Fadl Ulaah grinned at Bobby, who held the man’s arm steady in a viselike grip, and the al Qaeda leader said, “Ha, this blade cut off the head of the last infidel who came here.”

  Bobby clenched his teeth, and his right foot came up and the outside blade of his foot came down viciously on the back of Fadl Ulaah’s kneecap on his right leg, and his left hand punched the man with a straight left, as he was dropping, screaming in pain. Because Fadl Ulaah’s mouth was open while he screamed, the punch fractured the right side of his jaw and cracked his cheekbone as well.

  Bobby cuffed the unconscious man’s wrists, and Trinity appeared and pulled him away, immediately cutting away Bobby’s sleeve with a razor-sharp Cutco.

  Bobby started to protest, but Big Mose was already cutting away Fadl Ulaah’s clothes and he pointed at Trinity, saying, “He is in charge right now, Major. SF medic.”

  Bobby smiled. He knew better than to argue right now. Special Forces medics, 18Deltas, go through the most intense 322-day paramedic-type training course one could go through.

 
The U.S. Army JFK Special Warfare Center says this about 18Delta training:

  Company D, 4th Bn, is responsible for all medical training at the USAJFKSWCS. The Special Forces Medical Sergeants Course consists of the 24-week Special Operations Combat Medic (SOCM) Course and an additional 22-week training cycle that completes the 18Ds medical training.

  The 24-week Special Operations Combat Medic (SOCM) course is also taught to enlisted Army personnel from the Ranger Regiment, Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) and Special Operations Support Battalion (SOSB). USN SEALs and USN personnel supporting USMC Recon units as well as Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) ParaRescue personnel also attend the SOCM course.

  Although 19 of the 24 weeks of SOCM training is focused on anatomy and physiology and paramedic training, the remaining five weeks cover such military unique subjects as sickcall medicine environmental medicine. A four-day field training exercise in a simulated combat environment culminates the SOCM course. During the SOCM course students receive American Heart Association certification in Basic and Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) as well as certification by the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians at the EMT-Basic and Paramedic levels. Upon graduation a SOCM is capable of providing basic primary care for his Special Operations team for up to seven days and is capable of sustaining a combat casualty for up to 72 hours after injury as required.

  Special Operations Combat Medic students receive clinical training in both emergency pre-hospital and hospital settings. This training is conducted during a four-week deployment to one of two major metropolitan areas: New York City or Tampa, Fl.