“Okay,” he said. “Let us know when things get right.”
“You got it.”
I expected the Task Force to bluster and go over my head to get that third CAP. But the team at Camp Lemonnier understood my situation and supported my efforts to keep flying.
Everything would be fine so long as nothing else broke.
—
I was at my desk in the ops cell when the odor of human feces and chemicals wafted into the tent. I didn’t smell much at first, until Aaron, the security forces chief, opened the door. He looked pale and nauseated. A moment later, the incoming air hit me like a slap in the face.
“Oh my God, what is that?” I said.
“The shit truck just dumped in the road,” he said.
Being so far from the main camp, the compound wasn’t serviced with either power or plumbing. The power problem we figured out by employing our own generators, even if it was giving me a cough that wouldn’t go away.
The plumbing was fixed by deploying a row of port-a-johns outside the fence. The wind blew the rather fragrant aroma across our tents.
A Djiboutian contract team had arrived to service our port-a-johns. They’d dutifully run the hoses from their tanker into the johns and started sucking. About midway through the process, the tanker had sprung a leak. Human waste dumped into the road outside our compound.
The effect was immediate.
I grabbed for a rag to cover my face. I’d take anything that could filter out that reek. Our senior sensor grabbed a bottle of air freshener she had bought at the Navy Exchange. She sprayed almost the entire contents of the can around the room. My eyes burned as the droplets hit my face.
It did no good.
“Oh my God, now it smells like shit and strawberries!” Aaron cried, leaving the ops tent.
I laughed through my rag. Security forces was one of my favorite sections in the squadron. I admired their dedication and professionalism. The guys worked hard, constantly standing guard over our aircraft and compound. They did it without question or request for special favors. The flight line gate was nothing more than a tent with no side panels. The guards, in full armor, stood alert with no air-conditioning in sweltering temperatures.
They never complained.
Air Force squadrons don’t incorporate operations and security forces into one unit. Making sure my security forces troops felt part of the squadron was important. Aaron had never dealt with pilots before except to guard our aircraft or issue traffic tickets. He didn’t know our culture. And the pilot world was apparently very different from that of the security forces. He didn’t think that his career field had quite the sense of humor aviators did.
Since he worked in the ops cell overseeing the whole section, he got up to speed fast on pilot culture. But it was our naming convention that intrigued him the most. He liked the idea of tactical call signs and the camaraderie they brought. The security forces called one another by last name only.
One day, he asked us to give him a name.
I wasn’t planning on doing a naming ceremony during my time in Djibouti. Most aviators deployed with a name from their home squadrons. That wasn’t to say they couldn’t be renamed following a strange incident in the field. After all, I considered renaming Ziggy “Punchline” or “Puncher” after he crashed Tail 126 through the fence.
But the ceremony was a chance to bring the squadron closer together and blow off a little steam. Operations were too intensive to take time at 11 Degrees North to celebrate properly. Instead, we decided to take a break at a coffee shop and conduct a modified naming ceremony for Aaron.
“So,” I said after a short speech. “We thought long and hard, so to speak, about names for you.”
Aaron looked on expectantly.
“We just couldn’t agree on a nickname, so we came up with DEVA.”
Aaron’s reaction was one of confusion. He wasn’t a prima donna as the name implied. He didn’t see the connection.
“We wanted something that captures your job and your personality.”
His expression became wary.
“We think DEVA fits.”
“What the hell does it mean?” he asked.
“Donut-Eating Vigilance Accessory.”
It was the best we could do. Security forces are part cops—they police Air Force bases back in the States—and part infantry because they protect the flight line both at home and overseas. It was the perfect way to accept the duality of the job. At first he was shocked until we told him what it meant; then he thought it was funny and embraced the identity.
—
Our spare aircraft finally arrived from Kandahar to replace the empty Tail 203 casket. This time, I watched as the maintenance team opened the case. It was Tail 249. Seeing that, I immediately notified maintenance that this would become our squadron aircraft.
Holloman, which provided the clear majority of our troops, was organized into the 49th Wing. It made sense to me that Tail 249 should represent our home unit.
Air Force squadrons around the world often assigned aircraft to individual aircraft commanders and crew chiefs. Our crew chiefs had their assigned aircraft, but our pilots did not. I decided Tail 249 would be the start of a new tradition. I chose to name her Kate and claim her as my aircraft. I let the guys pick which aircraft were considered “theirs.” It wasn’t more than a paper drill. But the younger guys had to appreciate receiving an honor normally reserved for senior guys in the unit.
Of course, Tail 249’s cameras failed on its first takeoff. It was too late to abort, so I was forced to take her airborne with no ability to see. We flew for a couple of hours waiting for the sun to rise. Only then could we use the small nose camera to land the aircraft.
I hoped her record would improve from there.
After a few problem-free days, Worm, the Navy helicopter pilot in charge of base operations, called to end the streak. So far, I’d been able to avoid him.
“This is Worm,” he said when I picked up the phone.
“Yes,” I answered tonelessly.
I didn’t offer him much courtesy at this point. He hated the Air Force. Since our first meeting over the gate, he had called to complain that our cookout sunshade erected to protect the grilling team from the sun had been up too long. The cookout was still in progress when he called. He also liked to ride by the compound to catch my maintainers with too much ordnance on the ramp or doing something else wrong. If anything was amiss, he’d cuss out the maintenance lieutenant.
It was Jon who complained to me.
I had confronted Worm about the harassment. He lounged behind his desk, refusing to stand in the presence of a superior rank.
“I know this is supposed to be a purple base, but it really will only be a Navy base while I’m here,” he told me.
A purple base meant a joint base where all the services were equal. I was frustrated with him. He couldn’t manage to do his job when I requested anything, but he had more than enough time to harass my troops. When I picked up the phone, I was ready to hear him complain about another perceived infraction. Instead, he was setting us up to fail.
“Admiral Mullen wants to visit your compound,” Worm said.
Admiral Michael Mullen was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time. He was visiting the base but wasn’t slated to visit my squadron. His change of plans couldn’t have come at a worse time. We weren’t ready to host anyone, let alone the big boss.
“When?”
“He’s on the way there now.”
The smugness in Worm’s voice told me he knew I had always been on the agenda. Or at least he’d known about it for some time and waited until it was too late to prepare. I looked at the schedule on the whiteboard. My last two aircraft were already airborne. All that were left were my five cannibalized birds. One stood engineless in our sun shelter, running tests. It
still couldn’t adapt to the latest General Atomics software. The software load didn’t mix well with our older aircraft, and nothing we did would make it work. It didn’t matter much. The prop was broken anyway and none were left in supply.
The other aircraft were spread apart in our two hangars and on the metal AM-2 matting. We’d pulled the wings off one. The satellite and avionics panels were removed from all four, clearly showing the gaping holes where black boxes and critical instruments once had been. My squadron looked like a boneyard, not an operational unit.
Less than an hour later, a white Mazda minibus raced down the main taxiway. Two black SUVs followed close behind. The vehicles stopped at the end of our ramp and three men approached our guard shack.
Rear Admiral Brian Losey, the commander of US forces in the Horn of Africa, and Ambassador James Swan were escorting Mullen. I waved to the two security forces airmen standing guard to let the men inside our ramp. The rest of Mullen’s entourage milled around near the van.
The visit was a standard meet and greet with the squadron. Mullen walked around my sections and passed command coins to every outstretched hand. I walked next to him. As we talked, I issued all the platitudes I had been trained to give.
Everything was wonderful. The base support was flawless. We had no complaints.
It was all garbage. He knew it and I knew it.
Mullen finally stopped at the sunshade and saw the rear end of our broken aircraft with its prop removed. He didn’t look happy.
I felt claustrophobic even though we stood outside on the ramp. Mullen was inscrutable as I briefed him about our successes, leaving out any mention of the supply problems.
An old adage in the military was to never make a four-star general your action officer. That meant you didn’t bypass the chain of command and air your dirty laundry to the big guys. They were the type to call other generals to get things fixed. After a call like that, things would roll back downhill to you. No general likes to be embarrassed by a colleague’s call pointing out issues in his units.
I couldn’t read Mullen. He had no expression to indicate how my briefing went. Finally, he stopped in front of my crew chiefs.
“What is your biggest challenge?” he asked.
Jim, one of my best crew chiefs, was on shift. He was a sharp kid. Young and energetic, he often performed miracles on the battered aircraft. But he didn’t talk to a lot of flag officers, let alone the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He looked at me as if the question was mine to answer.
I started.
“Sir, the—”
Mullen cut me off.
“Not you,” he said sharply. “I want to hear from him.”
He nodded toward the crew chief.
Jim looked at me. I nodded, dreading what would come next.
“Supply, sir.”
He said it with a big, happy smile. He couldn’t help it. He always smiled. Mullen’s eyes returned to me, boring into my chest.
“Explain.”
“Sir, we are at the end of a long and immature supply chain,” I said. “It takes longer to get shipments here than Afghanistan. We’ve only just begun identifying issues and determin—”
Mullen’s eyes bored into mine.
“I don’t buy it,” he said. “I worked logistics and I don’t believe that.”
He stopped short of calling me a liar. He offered me that grace in front of my troops. My heart sank. I had an ethical dilemma on my hands. Did I offer another platitude or did I explain the real problem? I decided to tell the whole truth.
“Sir,” I said. “I’m down to my last two aircraft, both of which are airborne, because we can’t get parts.”
He eyed me.
“You’ve been reporting a ninety-four percent FMC rate,” Mullen said.
FMC meant fully mission capable. The five carcasses around me said that number wasn’t valid.
“Is there a disconnect?” Mullen said.
“No, sir,” I said. “Normally, we do report that. But we happen to be at the end of a perfect storm where the supply chain has not caught up with us. What you see here has happened in the past couple days. It’s not normal.”
I decided to press my luck.
“The system of using commercial air to transport our supplies doesn’t work out here,” I said. “The pallets are frequently lost in transit. When they’re not, they are stuck in the customs hangar across the flight line.”
The ambassador looked at his feet.
“Simply put, sir,” I continued, “I’ve gone as far as I can without something breaking free.”
I paused and waited for Mullen’s reaction. He studied me for a second and then turned to the ambassador.
“Can you look into that?”
“I can,” the ambassador said. He wouldn’t look at me.
A few days later, General Norton Allan Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, received an email about my supply problem. I knew because Mullen copied me on the email. By the end of the month, my maintainers had parts and we could get the Task Force the sorties they wanted.
We finally had enough Predators to hunt.
CHAPTER 18
East Africa Air Pirates
The twenty-foot fishing boat cut across the dark water.
The prow spit out white foam as it skipped along the three-foot swells. I could hear the high-pitched whine of the motor in my head as I watched it race at flank speed in the monitor.
The Predator watched from high above. Being faster, the pilot made lazy circles around the boat at a safe distance. The vessel’s speed and the blackness of the night made it doubtful that the Somali crew could detect the Predator with its running lights off.
Inside the boat was a bomb maker. He floated between Yemen and Somalia as he worked with different nefarious groups. He wasn’t a true believer, just a gun for hire. He went where the money was, and at that time jobs in the Horn of Africa were paying well. Al Shabaab was a jihadist group that would later become affiliated with al Qaeda as it shifted its operations from Ethiopia to Somalia. The bomb maker was headed south to join up with them.
The conditions were almost ideal as the boat raced toward Yemen. The night sky was clear and the wind was calm. The moon, only a sliver, offered little illumination. The boat continued on a beeline for Berbera. The coastal town was a hotbed for piracy in the Gulf of Aden. There, the target would be able to melt into the background and disappear. Pirates weren’t necessarily his allies. They preferred the money he’d pay them for safe passage.
Over the horizon, the USS New Orleans waited. They too could see the Predator’s feed on their monitors. Onboard, a SEAL team prepared to launch and snatch the bomber. The plan was for the target to simply disappear. The Task Force didn’t enlighten me on why they wanted to roll him up. They didn’t need to. They fed me, like all the other cogs in the machine, only the information I needed to perform my piece of the mission. My job was to get a Predator airborne so the Task Force could keep eyes on the target.
I was in the JOC operations center watching a Predator track the boat. This was one of our first big missions for the special operations task force based in Djibouti and I wanted to be there. My pilots had launched the Predator hours ago, and now pilots in Cannon Air Force Base were flying the mission. I knew how they felt, but I felt ownership over the aircraft. I wanted to be there while it performed the mission.
For an hour, the fishing boat didn’t change course. We could see the crew moving around. The heat from their bodies was bright against the cooler boat and ocean. They were relaxed. The crew flying Bong—the Predator’s call sign—connected to the secure net.
“Ten minutes.”
In the operations center, a little icon on the map showed the SEAL team’s location. They were in two rigid inflatable boats (RIBs) just over the horizon. The RIBs carrying the operators split apart and came a
t the boat from both sides like a pair of pincers. With a soft bump, the three boats collided. I watched one operator near the gunwale reach out to steady the craft. One team headed for the helm, the other belowdecks. Within moments the operators emerged with several bodies bound with zip ties.
“All clear,” the net crackled. “We got a jackpot.”
The bomb maker had been captured.
The crewmen were positioned on their knees, hands folded over their heads, in the stern. The Predator watched for a bit longer as the SEALs wrapped up business. As the RIBs drove off toward the USS New Orleans, the Predator’s camera shifted to the open ocean as it circled back to base.
I walked out of the operations center that night thinking there was so much more we could do with this aircraft. We had never had the opportunity to explore operations at sea in Iraq or Afghanistan. So far, most of our operations were against land targets. We had urban warfare and even remote mountainous tracking down cold. Yet no one had thought we could use the aircraft against maritime targets.
Pirates weren’t the only problems. Smugglers used the waterways to avoid detection. We could track the rivers. Could we track on the open ocean? This war hunting al Qaeda as it spread back to the Arabian Peninsula and Africa would be the new proving ground. It was an opportunity for us to further expand our catalog of missions.
After the mission, it was up to my squadron to bring the Predator home. It was the least exciting part of the mission, but also the most nerve-racking. Not only did we have to land the temperamental aircraft, but also we had to do it at a commercial airport.
—
A few weeks after the bomb maker disappeared, I was flying Gordon home after a long mission tracking part of al-Awlaki’s cell.
We orbited over the Gulf of Tadjoura, about twenty miles north of the airport. It was off the beaten path of other aircraft in the area and allowed us to swap control from the pilots at Cannon to my squadron in Djibouti. I had just taken control of the Predator when the air traffic controller at the airport came over the net.
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