Hunter Killer

by T. Mark McCurley

  I ran into Lieutenant Colonel Stew Kowall in the hallway on the way out of the operations cell. The commander was a short man with a thin build and thinner hair. His close-cropped scalp gave him the look of Captain Picard from Star Trek. His bearing was a bit meeker, though. He was an intelligent man, but he rarely flew.

  Stew was a career officer. He’d flown one tour in the F-15C before transferring over to the “executive officer” track. He’d abandoned flying for staff work and the face time needed to make the higher ranks.

  I was surprised to see him, since he usually sequestered himself in his office or back at Nellis Air Force Base. The 17th was rotating back to Nellis in a few months. The wing commander wanted to regroup all the Predator units together. I could see the point when I considered the need for oversight of the entire program. But I rather enjoyed the autonomy of being separated from the leadership and driving to work every day in an isolated base.

  He looked at me as I greeted him, eyes narrowed as he worked out my identity.

  “Squirrel, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How do you like it so far?” he asked cryptically.

  “It’s okay,” I said evasively.

  I wasn’t about to complain to the boss. It wasn’t wise to complain at all.

  “Hmm,” he said with a grunt, and kept walking down the hall. “Well, welcome to the squadron.”

  I stepped aside to let him pass.

  “Oh, Squirrel,” Stew said. “I heard you wrote a 3-3. Is that correct?”

  He was referring to the tactics manual I had written back in training. My mind raced as I worked out how he had found out. I hadn’t told anyone in the squadron about it.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied. “I saw a need and filled it.”

  It felt like a lame pickup line or, worse, brownnosing. I regretted it as soon as I said it.

  “Hmm.” He nodded again as he started toward the ops cell. But then he paused to think a second and looked back at me.

  “You’re a mission commander now,” he said. “I need that kind of initiative.”

  With that, he turned and disappeared into the ops cell. I stood there stunned. Pilots didn’t become mission commanders after four days in the squadron and one sortie under their belts. Most took three to six months to be selected, and then only if their track record was good enough. How was I to run a mission if I wasn’t even certified to fly one?

  I suddenly had no appetite.

  After the initial surprise wore off, the encounter energized me to get back in the seat. A few hours later, I was back in the GCS watching the Predator lift slowly off the ground and climb into the night sky.

  All I could do was watch. The JOC wanted to keep an eye on their assets and required us to be in our seats before takeoff, even though we weren’t in control during the ascent. I watched the downlinked video feed as the launch crew raised the landing gear. I felt like a voyeur peeking through the curtain into another pilot’s cockpit. The Predator banked to the right and started a lazy circle around the airfield as it climbed. Airspace around the base was limited to a fifteen-nautical-mile circle. The host government was reluctant to give us too much leeway or else the local tribes might think we were hunting them.

  In the summer months, temperatures in the high desert soared. The air became so thin we were lucky to generate lift at a measly one hundred feet per minute on a hot day. The plane just didn’t have enough power. It took us twenty minutes of circling to climb to twenty thousand feet. Finally, the pilots downrange turned the Predator west and entered a narrow air traffic control corridor that led to the targets in northern Afghanistan. Once the Predator was established in the corridor, it was our turn to take over.

  “Watch for the warning,” Wang said.

  “Loss of LOS Uplink” flashed on my warning screen. It indicated that the crew had cut their line-of-sight (LOS) radio command of the airplane so we could take over. The Predator gave precedence to the line-of-sight transmitter. Once the link was severed, the Predator would maintain its course via autopilot until we established our link.

  I reached up and clicked the link button next to my HUD. The screen flickered and I pushed my stick over to the right a touch to verify that I had control. A couple of seconds later, the plane banked to the right.

  “Nice job,” Wang said. “Now you’ve got a while to wait.”

  It took several hours to reach the target. In the meantime, we decided to practice Hellfire runs. The sensor operator was a veteran of the squadron. It was my first time flying with him, and I didn’t catch his name. We didn’t talk much, since I was concentrating on Wang’s commands.

  He fired up the pod’s laser illuminator. It acted like an infrared flashlight. It would shine down like a finger from God pointing out a target.

  “Don’t shoot the base,” Wang said. “It freaks out the guard tower.”

  The sensor operator spun the ball around and started to search the valley for a target. Three dry wadis ran about ten miles southwest of the base. When Alexander the Great had passed through, the area was a lush, verdant valley. The wadis were major tributaries that combined into a larger river heading toward the distant Indian Ocean. Alexander had built a fort at the juncture to guard the strategic waterway. I could just make out the ruins on the monitor. Only a single square tower remained of the once impressive fort.

  The sensor operator put the cross hairs in the middle of the ruins. It was a perfect target because it was static and unoccupied.

  “Okay, call comes in from a foot patrol,” Wang said. “They’ve been hit by a sniper and are taking casualties. They report that incoming fire appears to be coming from the northeast corner of the fort.”

  The sensor operator shifted his cross hairs to the appropriate spot. A north arrow, superimposed on our HUD, showed him in which direction he needed to slew the pod.

  “Okay,” I said. “We’ve got eyes on.”

  We spoke casually together in the cockpit. Wang played all the roles of the foot patrol, JOC, and JTAC.

  “What do I see?” I asked.

  “You see two figures, prone in the corner against the wall,” Wang said. “You see a bright flash.”

  “Hostile fire observed,” the sensor operator said.

  I asked the ground commander, and Wang confirmed for him. They were receiving incoming fire.

  “Copy,” I said.

  I turned to the sensor operator.

  “AGM-114 prelaunch checklist.”

  The AGM-114 prelaunch checklist was a cumbersome thirty-step process to activate and test the missile before firing it. The launch checklist that followed added another twenty steps. The whole process could take five minutes to complete for new pilots.

  The sensor operator and I worked our way through the checklist. It was a great distraction while waiting to reach our target but a real pain in the ass when lives were on the line.

  When I was ready to shoot, I told Wang.

  “Copy, call in with direction,” Wang said.

  He wanted us to inform him when we started our missile run and to tell him from which direction we were flying.

  I rolled in and pointed the nose at the target.

  “Wildfire is in from the northeast, one minute.”

  I had one minute until I fired the missile.

  “Wildfire, you are cleared to engage.”

  “Cleared to engage” allowed me only to practice firing a missile. I couldn’t employ any ordnance until a real controller cleared me “hot.” We were flying now with real missiles. For safety, every member of the crew ensured we did not accidentally launch a live weapon while practicing.

  “Copy, cleared to engage.”

  I watched my run-in line. The winds pushed from the west, making my aircraft drift left. I turned the aircraft about ten degrees to the right to crab into the wind.


  “Thirty seconds, laser on,” I said.

  The sensor operator hit his trigger and the “LTM Firing” message appeared on the screen. We used the illuminator, or Laser Target Marker, instead of the targeting laser to avoid accidentally injuring someone on the ground. This laser acted more like a flashlight and could not guide the weapon.

  “Lasing,” he said.

  “Lasing,” I said to Wang. “Thirty seconds.”

  “Copy,” Wang said.

  At twenty seconds, I adjusted my course again, ensured that I had the right switches set, and concentrated on the target. At ten seconds, I depressed the “Release to Consent” button. A “Ready to Fire Right Missile” showed on my HUD.

  “In three, two, one . . .”

  I simulated pulling the trigger. We never pulled the trigger on practice runs.

  “Rifle, twenty-five seconds.”

  I warned Wang, acting as the ground commander, to expect impact in less than thirty seconds.

  I monitored the GPS clock and counted down the time.

  “In five, four . . .”

  Wang called out “Splash” to indicate that the missile hit in our field of view. I nodded.

  “Cease laser, safe laser, master arm safe.”

  The sensor operator read back the orders and switched off the illuminator.

  “Nice job,” Wang said. “We’ve got the altitude; let’s head north.”

  It took us nearly four hours to reach our target area. I was back on station over the same mud hut. I set the Predator into orbit and circled the house, waiting for the courier to move or get on his phone. When he did, the analysts watching from the ops center and the JOC went to work. Analysts documented activities and saved screen shots of the target. All the value of the flight happened around us as we sat for eight hours in the seat, bored to tears.

  Things didn’t get interesting until a few months later.

  —

  It was a night mission and I’d just taken control of the Predator from the launch crew. Wang no longer flew with me. I was a mission commander with two hundred hours in the aircraft and I knew just enough to become comfortable with the aircraft and mission.

  Next to me sat Dani.

  We rarely flew as a two-person crew. Pilots and sensor operators swapped out frequently based on schedules and breaks. Unlike in movies like Top Gun, pilots and sensor operators weren’t partners who flew the same shift. We also didn’t play volleyball together in our off time. Flying the Predator was shift work. We lived at a hotel. I got up, drove over to the compound, shifted my mind-set from family man to combat pilot, flew my shift, went back to the hotel, and tried to shift back to a family man on the way home. Do that for weeks on end and flying the Predator was more like working in a factory. All of the sexiness of being a pilot was gone.

  As for the volleyball in blue jeans? That was never cool.

  I turned the Predator toward the coordinates in the secure chat room and started toward the target. Our mission was to find a new facilitator we’d seen referenced in intelligence reporting. We still had about thirty minutes before reaching the Jalalabad area where he lived.

  I liked Dani. She was a very experienced sensor operator, one of the senior members of the squadron. She typically gave check rides to the younger sensor operators and occasionally flew with the new pilots like me. During the long missions, we mostly argued about our football teams—my Steelers, her Bengals.

  Dani spun the camera around and started to scan the ground as we flew. Too often, the real action happened far from where we thought it would be. So we watched the ground go by and hoped to see anything of interest.

  By the time we arrived near the target area, the sun was making its slow, graceful debut. I could make out the streaks of warm light peeking between the tops of the mountains. I kept my eye on the instruments—highlighted in green on the HUD—but the image of the ground was slowly graying into an unrecognizable mass, with Rorschach blotches indicating hot spots.

  At sunrise and sunset, some infrared cameras struggled to maintain a passable image as the ground warmed or cooled to match the ambient temperature. Dani adjusted the camera to compensate and the countryside beneath us came back into view. Within minutes the rocks were once again projected in sharp relief on my HUD. The trees swayed a bit as the morning’s breeze flowed down the mountain.

  I watched our pink line on the tracker map above the HUD as we skimmed the Afghanistan-Pakistan border near Tora Bora, a cave complex south of the Khyber Pass. Three years before, American special operations forces had almost captured Osama bin Laden there. Officials said the complex was his headquarters and after the battle he escaped to Pakistan. A ridgeline that paralleled the international boundary on our chart filled the monitor.

  “I’ve got a fire,” Dani said.

  I could see the flames and hot spots on the screen. The fire was like a white-hot finger snaking down the length of the ridgeline. The camera was in IR mode, making anything with a heat signature glow against the cold gray background.

  “Reporting the fire,” I said, typing in the chat room.

  Dani swung the camera across the ridgeline and spotted two caves. The mouths of the caves were well concealed from aircraft, but the fire was illuminating the entrances.

  “I don’t see any pax,” Dani said as she zoomed in closer to the caves. “Pax” was our term for people.

  Then we saw the camp. It was three or four pup tents. A small campfire simmered between the tents, a makeshift rack and pot suspended above. Next to the road, a small cart was abandoned in a rut. Dani kept the camera on the camp for several minutes before it disappeared behind another mountain. Dani flicked the camera about, pleased that she once again had a good picture to work with, when we saw movement.

  “Hey, what’s that?” I said.

  Dani trained cross hairs where I pointed on the HUD screen. The trees were still. I held my breath. Had I seen anything? Was it a trick of my imagination? Did they hear us and hide?

  A moment later, four spots emerged from behind the clump of trees.

  “Zoom in.”

  Dani didn’t need to hear my command. A great sensor operator, she anticipated my command. She had already centered the cross hairs on the walkers and started the zoom. The mirror inside the ball flexed and twisted as it adjusted, making the picture flash, invert, invert again back to normal, and then settle on a wide, rocky escarpment.

  The four figures were making their way up the jagged slope. It looked like three of the men were guarding the fourth. The fourth man was much taller than the others, wearing dark brown robes with white sleeves and headdress. He used a long walking stick to help him climb. The others were dressed in black and carrying AK-47s. They walked at a respectful distance from the taller man. Two of the guards flanked the taller man and the third walked in front of him. None got within five yards of the man.

  “Dani?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “Is that who I think it is?”

  “Who?” Dani squinted at the screen.

  She stared at the video as if straining to see more detail.

  “UBL,” I said.

  There is no universal standard for translating Arabic to English. The FBI spelled Osama bin Laden’s name “Usama bin Laden,” shortening it to UBL. We just adopted that acronym.

  Dani shot me a sideways glance.

  “I can’t tell.”

  “You know that video that came out a couple months ago,” I said. “The one with him climbing down boulders with his bodyguard.”

  “Yeah,” she said warily.

  “I think this is the area that was filmed.”

  I pointed at the screen.

  “Look, the area is full of those kinds of boulders. Besides, who else has a bodyguard in this region?”

  In my mind, the taller man looked l
ike Bin Laden. He carried himself with the same arrogance. My heart raced. The man had the mannerisms, the physical description, and even the suspected target area. For a second, I wondered if I had the world’s most wanted man in my sights.

  “Hey, LNO?”

  Our intercom was connected directly to the JOC. One of our pilots sat at a desk near the analysts and acted as an LNO. He could answer questions and relay information from the JOC in our language.

  “Go ahead.”

  It was Tony, a former C-130 driver from Texas.

  “Can you get the analysts online? I think we got number one in sight.”

  There was silence on the intercom for a moment. I could tell Tony was trying to process what he’d heard. It sounded strange to say it.

  “Uh, okay,” Tony said. “Hold on.”

  A few seconds later, Tony told me to stay on the walkers. Al, the JOC director, wanted us to forget our previous mission for the moment. This told me they took the finding seriously. I knew the analysts back at the JOC were glued to the monitors trying to figure out if we had Bin Laden. I put the Predator in orbit near the walkers, and Dani set the camera to track them as they continued to walk up and over the slope.

  The wait lasted a long time. I’d expected to hear something pretty quickly. At the very least, we knew the guys in question had guns and were likely fighters.

  We were getting impatient.

  “Tony, any news?”

  “Not much,” he said a moment later. “Al’s on the phone with upstairs. Been there since you called.”

  Upstairs was the chain of command. Al was seeking permission to do something. He couldn’t make autonomous decisions for a target like this, if it was Bin Laden. A potential missile strike required a lot of coordination. I looked at the clock imprinted in my HUD. We’d already tracked the men for more than twenty minutes as they walked calmly along the ridge.

  “So what’s your read, Tony?”

  I had no idea what was going on in the JOC. I wanted to get a feel for the mood.