Hunter Killer

by T. Mark McCurley

  I was the chief pilot for the 15th and 17th at Nellis. Until the squadrons got a certified weapons officer who graduated from the Air Force Weapons School, the job of fixing our tactics and procedures fell on my shoulders.

  We’d made some mistakes lately and it cost us. Several of our shots in Afghanistan had gone astray. One of the worst was when the 57th’s deputy group commander made a hard turn only seconds from impact. Fighter pilots often rolled aggressively after a shot. Their pods were designed to keep up, but not the Predator’s pod. The motion pulled the laser to the side and the missile detonated harmlessly fifty yards off target.

  These practice shots slightly slowed our transits, but nothing was worse than a crew missing a shot. We couldn’t afford to miss, and taking a few minutes from the JOC’s target time was fine if it was used to practice.

  We still had more than an hour to go before we got on target. I was preparing to make another practice run when Mongo came over the radio. He had left the squadron two weeks before to work as an LNO at the JOC.

  “Hey, Squirrel.”

  “Hey, Mongo,” I said. “Long time no see. How goes it?”

  “Lovin’ the cookies, man.”

  I smiled.

  We all stayed at the same hotel near the JOC compound. One of the perks was a large tray of cookies laid out in the hotel lobby each night. They went with a dinner buffet the hotel provided guests. A lot of guys gained weight on those trips.

  “What’cha got, man?” I asked.

  “A FOB”—forward operating base—“just got hit near you,” Mongo said. “They’re taking casualties. Got POO coords when you’re ready.”

  POO, or point of origin, was calculated after a mortar or rocket attack. Counterfire radars helped calculate POO sites based on the round’s ballistic arc. The radars didn’t add much to the defense of the bases, though. Usually, the one or two shots lobbed over the walls detonated before the base PA system even announced the attack. Soldiers joked that if you heard the “Giant Voice,” then you were safe.

  The Taliban loved mortars and rockets. A small team could terrorize a base daily, even hourly, with attacks. The mortar rounds and rockets didn’t have to kill American soldiers. Each attack stopped or slowed operations.

  The Taliban often fired rockets on a timer. Some timers were constructed from ice separating two metal plates. As the ice block melted in the summer heat, the plates came together and closed the circuit to fire the rocket. Mortars needed a team. Usually, three or four guys would set up the tube and lob a few rounds before retreating back to a village.

  Alan, my sensor operator, and I looked at each other. No one had ever called us for close air support. The attack must have been bad if we got the call.

  “What about our target?”

  Mongo was ready. He’d probably asked the same question.

  “Al says this is the priority.”

  If Al—one of the JOC directors—said it, we did it.

  The POO coordinates were directly underneath me. I put the plane into a turn while Alan trained the targeting pod on the coordinates. The ridge was one of a couple of fingers extending into the Afghan valley near Khost. The Army set up Forward Operating Base Salerno to monitor the major border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

  “Scan up the ridgeline,” I said.

  Alan had already shifted his cross hairs up the slope of the mountain.

  It took him about thirty seconds to reach the POO site. It looked like a flat rock that jutted out from the ridge like a shelf for a vase. To my surprise, the three-man Taliban mortar crew was still on the shelf. A bright flash erupted from the tube.

  “They just fired again,” Alan said.

  My jaw dropped. We rarely saw a crew shoot.

  “Mongo,” I said. “We’ve got eyes on a mortar crew.”

  “Copy,” he said.

  There were three fighters dressed in long shirts and baggy pants with scarves covering their heads. We could clearly see the black mortar tube and the plate set up on the shelf. After the last round, the mortar crew started packing up. One fighter shouldered the tube and the other grabbed the base plate. The third took the extra rounds. The trio of fighters headed east up a narrow goat path.

  “Hey, Mongo,” I said. “Crew’s on the move.”

  “Follow them.”

  I checked FalconView, a new moving map program developed at Georgia Tech that tracked every friendly unit in Afghanistan. Even in this terrain, the Taliban fighters could make it to a safe haven in no time.

  “Mongo, these guys are making a run for it.”

  “Copy.”

  I maneuvered the plane to keep the Taliban soldiers in sight without flying directly over the top of them. I hoped they were deaf after firing several mortar rounds, because the mountain slopes had to be funneling our engine noise right to them. The radio in my headset crackled again.

  “Hey, Squirrel.”

  It was the mission commander at Nellis this time.

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’ve got Roulette and Pacman coming to you.”

  The 15th had two aircraft in the area.

  “How am I going to get their eyes on the target?”

  We couldn’t share video feeds with them, so it was going to be hard to coordinate. The MCC had a solution.

  “I’ve sent our standby crews out to commandeer the aircraft,” he said. “Comm has diverted the feeds.”

  The communication, or “comm,” techs could patch a connection to the 17th ops cell, allowing all our aircraft access to one another’s feeds.

  I watched the fighters walk down a footpath that ran along the base of a valley. The men were relaxed, unaware of our presence. The other two Predators arrived thirty minutes later. I gave them a quick talk-on to the target, using their video feeds to direct them. The trio of fighters was about to get away.

  Why did we have three aircraft trailing these guys? Why were we diverted from hunting the courier for this? This seemed like a mission for the 15th, and I wasn’t sure why we were no longer following Bin Laden’s suspected couriers.

  Mongo chimed in before I could ask.

  “All crews, spin up missiles.”

  I’d spun up my missiles when we first acquired the target. There was no reason for us to support the base otherwise. Mongo passed instructions for Roulette, flown by Skid and Pikachu, to strike first. Looking at FalconView, I saw they were flying at a lower altitude.

  They could shoot and then move to the side to make way for the next highest aircraft to shoot. As a practice, we don’t drop weapons through altitudes occupied by an aircraft on the improbable chance that we might accidentally hit one. The guys on top had to wait.

  Skid was our default weapons officer because of his F-16 background. He would have been our first “official” weapons officer had the Air Force allowed Predator pilots to attend the weapons school.

  Pikachu was a young, blond airman, barely five feet with heels. Her size and energy reminded everyone of the small, ball-shaped yellow Pokémon monster. The name stuck. She was now seven months pregnant, so this mission was one of her last before she went on maternity leave. Her belly was so distended that she could barely reach the controls, and I had to smile when I’d see her waddle around the squadron. There was really no other aircraft where she could still be at the controls, but I was glad she was on the controls today. She had a deft touch and a keen eye. We used to joke that if the fighters killing themselves in Afghanistan had any idea they were getting shwacked by a pregnant woman, they would fight smarter.

  I listened to Skid line up his shot. The valley walls were close in. The steep slopes made any shot from the side impossible. From the HUD, I watched Skid thread the missile into the valley. The Hellfire hit just behind the trio, knocking down the fighter carrying the mortar base plate.

  “Splash,” Sk
id called out on the intercom.

  The two surviving fighters dashed into a thicket of trees on either side of the trail. I watched the squirter to the south disappear in the foliage. On the side monitor, Skid’s feed showed his cross hairs following the man running to the north.

  “Follow the squirter to the south,” I told Alan.

  I turned the Predator and set her in a lazy orbit so we could watch the trees. For thirty minutes we circled. The trees were collected in clumps rather than as a forest. Finally, we saw him scamper out of the underbrush. Alan’s cross hairs tracked over to him, placing him at the center of my HUD. His partner came out at about the same time.

  “Squirters on the move,” Pikachu said in the intercom.

  “Follow them,” Mongo said.

  They met over the body of the third man. One fighter picked up the mortar plate and tube. The other picked up the fallen fighter in a half-assed fireman’s carry. They slowly walked east down their original path.

  “We’ve got a second group of pax,” someone said over the radio.

  We could see another group of fighters on the path. The squirters stopped as they approached. The new fighters shouldered the mortar tube and base plate. The squirters carried their dead comrade.

  “Skid,” Mongo chimed in. “Continue pursuit. Cleared to engage second group.”

  The JOC let their fangs out tonight, I thought. Our pursuit was highly unusual. I stayed silent, letting Skid coordinate his strike on the intercom net. I was top cover while he finished the fight. Over the radio, I heard the “Rifle” call and listened to Skid count down to impact.

  “Three, two, one . . .”

  The Hellfire landed in the middle of the fighters. A white-hot plume blotted out the HUD video. As the explosion dissipated, I saw several survivors dart in different directions like roaches caught in a light. Two more fighters went down.

  All three Predators began to circle again, tracking different groups of squirters. Like before, the fighters hid in the brush for at least half an hour before picking up their wounded and continuing to hurry down the trail.

  “Targets have stopped at a shack,” someone said.

  “Copy,” Mongo acknowledged.

  I could see on my HUD the small shack nestled in an elbow of rocks. The single door and window cast a pale finger of light across the path. Several fighters carrying rifles emerged from the door. They seemed agitated, their hands moving as fast as their mouths. I saw one point up in the air like they were talking about the strikes.

  The fighters in the shack had undoubtedly heard the Hellfire shots. The echoes would have rolled like thunder up the valley. I wondered if they were angry that the fighters had stopped at the shack, but it didn’t really matter. Being armed, they were now legitimate targets.

  The Taliban had shown great resourcefulness in figuring out our rules of engagement. They stayed close to women and children and tried to move with civilians when possible. Some wore women’s clothing to avoid detection. They knew we’d honor the rules of civility and used them against us to maintain the advantage.

  But I could clearly see the fighters from the shack holding AK-47s. One of the men got in a HiLux truck and drove it back to where Skid had fired the second Hellfire missile.

  “Follow the truck,” Mongo said.

  Roulette, flown by Skid, was out of Hellfire missiles. The Predator carried only two. Pacman, the other Predator, was up next. I still orbited above. I’d be the last to shoot because I was flying higher than both Skid and Pacman.

  In my HUD, I watched the fighters load the dead into the back of the truck. They were most likely taking them to get buried. Islam required burial before the sunrise of the day after death. There wasn’t enough room for all the fighters in the truck, so several ran behind it.

  “Pacman, you are cleared in,” Mongo said. “Primary target is the truck.”

  The truck inched along the path, jostling in the dried ruts of the track. The path finally widened into a road barely the width of the truck itself.

  “Pacman copies,” I heard over the radio.

  On the FalconView display, Roulette maneuvered higher into the mountains to clear the line of fire. Pacman then rolled in to set up the shot. The first Hellfire landed in front of the truck. The blast sent chunks of rocks and debris into the engine and tipped the truck onto its side.

  A pair of fighters stumbled from the wreckage as the second missile landed.

  It hit the fighters running behind the truck. They had fallen far enough behind that they were no longer in our field of view. It was unlikely that they had even seen the result of the first shot before they were hit.

  Alan kept the cross hairs on the damaged truck. Bodies—likely some that were dead before the strike—littered the scene. We had no idea how many fighters were in the cab. As we tried to get a clearer picture, Skid came over the radio.

  “Roulette is bingo.”

  An aircraft was “bingo” when it had enough fuel to fly home and land with only one approach. Additional approaches might result in a flameout.

  “Copy, Roulette,” Mongo said. “You are cleared off target.”

  Pacman and I were left to finish the fight. Only my Predator had weapons remaining, a single Hellfire. An MQ-9 Reaper was in route. It was bigger than the Predator and had a larger payload. Unlike the Predator, the Reaper carried four Hellfire missiles and two GBU-12 laser-guided bombs.

  “Pacman, stay on the truck,” Mongo said. “Wildfire, stay on the walkers.”

  “Copy,” we said in unison. We were Wildfire.

  Alan shifted the cross hairs back to the group hit by the second missile. We circled the area, adjusting our camera to monitor the road and clearing. Three bodies were strewn around the crater, contorted in death. The bodies were already cooling in the mountain air, making them difficult to see with the infrared camera. Nearby, two bodies lay side by side off to the edge of the road. Our cross hairs froze on the pair.

  “When was the last time you saw two dead bodies lie straight like that?” Alan said.

  “And side by side?” I said. “Mongo, Squirrel.”

  “Go ahead,” the MCC said.

  “I think I got two targets playing dead,” I said. “Center screen.”

  Mongo was silent as he studied our feed. The analysts probably did too.

  “Stay on them for now.”

  Pacman cut in before I could respond.

  “Truck’s on the move.”

  A couple of fighters with the truck were well enough to tip it back upright. The Hellfire hadn’t done enough damage to disable it. The truck raced down the widening road faster than before, ignoring the jarring ruts. I tracked their progress on the side monitor while we remained fixed on the two playing dead.

  I had to give it to our “dead bodies.” They were disciplined. They held their position for a long time, waiting. I was sure they couldn’t hear us after the concussion of the missile. Most likely, their ears had been blown out. I looked at my fuel gauge. We still had hours on station. I was willing to wait them out.

  “Wildfire, could you please scan up the road?” Mongo said a few minutes later. “Confirm there are no other survivors there.”

  “Mongo,” I said. “What about these two?”

  “They have been assessed as KIA.”

  “Mongo, all indications are that they are playing dead,” I said. “Let me take care of this and move on to the next target.”

  Mongo passed the request to Al.

  “Negative,” he said finally. “Move up to the truck hit.”

  “Copy,” I said.

  They were right in a way. These guys didn’t appear to be armed. But I didn’t want them to think they had outsmarted me by playing dead.

  Alan moved the cross hairs up to where the truck had been. We scanned the crater around and followed the skid mar
ks to where the truck had tipped over. There were no signs of any fighters or movement.

  “Nothing here,” I reported.

  “Okay,” Mongo replied. “Go back to the first strike and check on it.”

  Something told me they didn’t really believe the two Taliban were KIA either. Alan shifted the targeting pod back to the elbow in the road. The three Taliban remained lying as before.

  The two hot spots on the side were gone.

  I was livid.

  “I knew it,” I said to Alan. “We had those guys.”

  We scanned the nearby tree line and searched the area for several hundred meters, but I knew in my gut they were gone.

  Lucky bastards.

  I checked Pacman’s feed on the monitor. The truck pulled into a small village and stopped at a large compound. High walls separated the multifloor house from the other much poorer one-story huts. From the HUD, it looked like a cheesy Hollywood action flick where an insanely wealthy villain controlled a small town. The truck pulled right inside the compound. Fighters filtered through the gate behind the vehicle. All were armed. A lone figure walked out and climbed into the bed of the truck. We could see him gesturing. It looked like a pep talk.

  The men around him lifted their weapons in the air. Some fired skyward.

  “Reaper’s in the target area,” Mongo said.

  There was no chance I was going to shoot now. The Reaper was more accurate.

  “Squirrel,” Mongo said. “I need you to orbit to the south. Be prepared to conduct BDA post-strike.”

  “Copy,” I said.

  We kept our cross hairs centered on the scene as we orbited nearby. From the top of the screen, we saw the GBU-12 bomb whistle into the compound. It landed in the bed of the truck.

  It took a few seconds for the camera to adjust after the fireball died. When we finally got a clear picture, the truck was gone, replaced by a massive crater. Bodies and debris scattered in a pattern radiating outward like a compass rose. One of the compound’s walls fell backward. The house itself seemed relatively unscathed.

  We watched for a few minutes. Nothing stirred. Mongo finally ended the mission.