by Dalton Fury
Even though Ironhead and Bryan negotiated to have the rooms cleaned of all the garbage and human waste, the place was still filthy when our boys moved in. It did not matter much, since we didn’t plan to spend too much time inside anyway.
Ironhead and Bryan also managed to designate two areas for helicopters to land, big enough to handle a large supply helicopter and to evacuate any wounded. Landing Zone Condor was just south of the schoolhouse, and the second LZ, Sparrow, was two thousand meters to the east.
We had left our staging base with a fairly solid plan, a course of action that would gain the necessary approvals from the various levels of brass. It was not binding, of course, and once we were able to get a good look at the playing field and the enemy formations, we could easily audible off of it. Now that the game had begun, I didn’t expect much pushback from our commander, or from any level above him, for that matter. Things had to remain flexible.
Indeed, the guys back at Bagram, Colonel Ashley and the rest of the staff, were working hard to collect and analyze every piece of intelligence they could get their hands on. Everything from sensitive CIA cables to fixedwing reconnaissance photos that identified “hot spot” signatures-telltale locations of inhabited caves with warming fires-from 30,000 feet, to signals intelligence (SIGINT) that might help find bin Laden’s location. They were what-ifing themselves to death to ensure our success on the battlefield. The Delta Intelligence and Fire Support officers, Brian and Will, worked up a targeting plan to buttress our coming push into the mountains.
Inside our spartan headquarters, we also were dissecting and analyzing what we had learned after the few looks we had gotten at al Qaeda’s front lines. We wanted to modify and refine our original battle plan so that it would best fit the reality on the ground.
Bryan worked on the initial reconnaissance plan, while Shag, our Pashto-speaking signals interceptor, was already set up in the room next door, picking up sporadic al Qaeda radio calls, friendly muhj radio traffic, and the transmissions from the international media over on Press Pool Ridge. Shag’s talents, and those of his signals teammates who would arrive shortly, gave us a discreet secret weapon that let us keep tabs on everybody in the game.
Bryan recommended that we marry up our reconnaissance guys with the two observation posts set up by the 5th Group Green Berets. Half of Cobra 25 was already in position, roughly a mile from al Qaeda’s front lines over on the eastern flank. The other team inserted that day was to relieve the joint CIA and JSOC team that had been in position since December 5. Augmenting those OPs would give us some eyes forward to help develop our attack plan. And once the attack began, we would have our own folks in overwatch positions, men who understood our task, purpose, and intent as we maneuvered on the battlefield. They would be invaluable.
Then we met with General Ali to go over progress, tactics, and battle plans in between sipping on hot tea, grabbing handfuls of nuts, and trying to remain comfortable sitting Indian style on the hard floor. I jotted down the key points in my small green notebook. What I could not get down on paper, I tried to commit to memory and would add it after a meeting.
Ali was adamant about picking the small groups of muhj fighters that would best augment our recon guys and assaulters. We had to be careful who we picked, for Ali claimed that while he had several thousand loyal fighters, not all were controlled by family members, and thus not deemed loyal. Others were under the command of friends, who might or might not be faithful when the going got tough, and still others were handled by longtime rivals and even enemies. Ali was very specific about the latter group, and insisted that we not marry up with those units.
The general offered up some fantastic descriptions in our discussions, no doubt to ensure that he remained the CIA’s chosen son and also to create an atmosphere and feeling that bin Laden could not be taken without his personal leadership, as well as his fighters.
Ali described a Balkanized organization among the jihadists, who were grouped by nationality and ethnic lines and separated tactically by mountain passes, valley floors, and ridgelines. Any man who makes a conscious decision to have more enemies than friends, as bin Laden certainly had, does not survive long without surrounding himself with people he can trust, and placing them wisely.
As we sketched a sort of enemy pecking order, the lower and outer defense ring comprised Afghans, Algerians, Jordanians, Chechens, and Pakistanis. Bin Laden’s more trusted fighters, the Saudis, Yemenis, and Egyptians, occupied higher terrain and protected the queen bee. Hell, rumor even had it that Chinese advisors were on bin Laden’s team. The technique is similar in some ways to how the U.S. Army operates, just not as personal and much less politically sensitive.
One of the most telling bits of information Ali shared was about al Qaeda’s indirect fire and armored capability, mainly mortar tubes and tanks. Firmly entrenched in the towering defensive position, bin Laden’s people held superb observation posts. The well-camouflaged spots on the northern ridges offered long-range visibility of any activity in the foothills and valleys and were a tactician’s dream come true for any battle.
Those observation posts served as the eyes for the hidden mortar sections-which we estimated at two or three Soviet-made 82mm tubes-that were laid in on the reverse slope, out of sight of any opposing ground force. When the bombers overhead didn’t force the crews to retreat into nearby caves for safety, the positions doubled as even more early warning posts to guard against unwanted visitors.
For over a week, Ali’s mujahideen had made their approaches over well-known dirt roads, and the telltale clouds of dust telegraphed their every move. Since night fighting was not yet in Ali’s repertoire, al Qaeda could stop those daylight probes with mortar fire alone.
Ali said that of the twenty-seven men who had been lost since the fighting began, all but thirteen of them died by mortar fire. He claimed the enemy mortars were extremely accurate because they were “computerized.” For us, it was obvious that one of the first major steps had to be to stop those costly daylight attacks and remove the enemy mortars from the equation.
We were skeptical when Ali praised his fighters for locating three former Soviet tanks that were now used by bin Laden’s people. His men had come upon a series of caves just past the foothills and heard the rumbling of metal tank treads rolling over uneven rock beds. We knew how difficult it was just to walk over that terrain and considered that it was probably too difficult to maneuver with heavy armor. Ali insisted that several of the caves carved out during the Soviet jihad could easily hold several tanks. We just didn’t buy it. We were unaware that just a few days earlier, the combined CIA and JSOC team had photographed several armored vehicles from a distance before eliminating them with powerful smart bombs called JDAMs, joint direct attack munitions.
Within seventy-two hours of doubting Ali’s claim about the tanks, those same tanks moved from fiction to fact. Our own snipers spotted them even deeper and higher in the mountains. Hard to believe, but it was true. The tanks must have been part mountain goat.
The result of all the discussions, picture taking, and planning led to a pretty elementary conclusion. The Tora Bora Mountains were to our front, and bin Laden was reportedly garrisoned up there with as many as three thousand loyal fighters. The solution was to launch a full attack. I love the way these men think.
Some great mind once said that there are two kinds of original thinkers. There are those who, upon viewing disorder, try to create order. And the second group does just the reverse. It is made up of those who, on encountering order, try to create disorder. That’s us. Delta operators thrive on chaos like no other group of humans alive. It’s intoxicating. It’s intense. And it is extraordinarily addictive.
The fundamental Delta principle has long been “Surprise, Speed, and Violence of Action.” It applies to commando tactics. If during an assault you lose one element, the implied response is to increase it in the next. For example, if we lost surprise during a stealthy approach to a target before reaching th
e breach point, we would increase the pace from a deliberate move to a stepped-up jog or sprint. At the breach, if it became obvious to the team leader that whatever or whoever waited on the opposite side of the door or window was alert and expecting visitors, we escalated to an even more violent explosive entry.
Regardless of how Delta enters the crisis point, the expression “slow is smooth, smooth is fast” still applies when conducting close-quarter combat, or CQB. Watching Delta operators conduct “free flow” CQB on targets with unknown floor plans is one of the most awesome sights of controlled chaos one can imagine. The sequence is anything but choreographed, but the operators effortlessly sweep through a structure like red ants going through familiar, twisting corridors. Delta’s method and skill in CQB is unmatched by any other force in existence.
We absorbed an enormous amount of information by studying the muhj style of warfare during the first couple of days.
Afghans are afternoon fighters by nature, and their methods are straight out of Barbarian Tactics 101. Sometime after midday prayers, they would muster with AK-47 rifles, PKM machine guns and RPGs as far forward in the foothills as they safely could. After clustering around, seemingly as if nobody knew who was in charge on that particular day, they would plough straight uphill, firing wildly. It was a good show that apparently was played out to convince the watching reporters that General Ali’s forces were on the offensive. But it was also grossly ineffective.
This was centuries-old tribal warfare, more symbolic than savage, more duty than deadly, more for spoils than scalps. It was not intended for anyone to really get hurt. The skirmishes would last a few hours, then the fighters would do some looting and call it a day and retreat back down the ridgelines, giving back to al Qaeda any of the day’s hard-earned terrain.
This style of fighting was nothing new to these people. Since the days of the Prophet Muhammad’s assault on Mecca in 622 A.D., fighters have halted to loot captured enemy stores and sift through overrun fighting positions, cave dwellings, and linear dugouts. War booty and cave treasures provided the same financial incentive to fight al Qaeda in Tora Bora that Saladin provided to his Muslim soldiers many centuries ago. Booty or martyrdom, one or the other, is a promise from Allah. The cost of living in eastern Afghanistan was probably less than a dollar a day, so a little looting could go a long way.
We wanted Ali to switch gears, throw bin Laden some curveballs, and add a few night games to a schedule of day games only. But he wanted us to just sit tight in relative safety while his muhj did the fighting. Let him worry about locating bin Laden. The general wanted more bombs, but no American casualties, and he would let us know when it was safe to come out and play. Not unexpectedly, some American commanders in the upper echelons shared Ali’s concern about American casualties and preached the same wait-and-see attitude. More than once, I heard them say, “Let things develop.” It was vexing.
Ali’s desire was to maximize the bombing to save as many of his troops’ lives as possible, and Colonel Ashley had a similar wariness. Ashley’s caution was meant to stave off our natural impetuousness and was hard to dispute, for he still carried with him his experiences in the deadly streets of Mogadishu in 1993.
Ashley’s point was well taken, but it made us wonder how America would react to hearing a commander state, “Let them [the Afghans] finish the job. This is about using surrogate forces; it’s their war.”
As much as I respected both of their positions, I also disagreed with them, and so did my men. We did not like hearing such statements while the rubble was being cleaned up from the attack on the World Trade Center.
Ali’s track record so far was analogous to throwing firecrackers into a fishing hole. Sure, you get a few dead fish to float to the top, but if you want the kingfish, you had better be prepared to do some serious trolling in dangerous and deeper waters.
Fortunately, our CIA partners also were in no mood to sit around, and George consistently hounded Ali to attack. Our immediate deployment into the mountains could motivate, or even shame, Ali’s fighters into action, and the idea slowly gained traction.
What Ali really needed, even if he didn’t know or even desire it yet, was example. Combining the best of modern Marine Corps recruiting mottos, what was needed here was “A Few Good Men” to enter the mountains and prove that “Superior Minds Have Always Overwhelmed Superior Force.”
We American commandos had to prove to the general that we could operate inside the mountains, surrounded by al Qaeda day and night, and not stamp our time cards at the end of the day. We certainly planned to give Ali his wish by throwing more fireballs into bin Laden’s mountain castle: lethal fireballs in the form of bombs from the bellies of B-52 and B-1 bombers, bombs that came complete with nasty attitudes and pinpoint accuracy to collapse the hidden cave openings that protected the elusive terrorists. But we also needed to see where the projectiles landed in relation to the pockets of enemy and the well-camouflaged cave entrances.
And we were growing very impatient. We wanted to do it soon! As the Greek writer Euripides stated back in 425 B.C., the God of War hates those who hesitate.
After the ten-hour drive from Bagram, through Kabul, and then east to Jalalabad, the boys finally linked up with Manny on the outskirts of the city. A short time later, Jim rested the boys safely in a large two-story safe house in Jalalabad that had been provided by the good General Ali.
The snipers led the way, with an hour’s head start, to break up the convoy. When their lead truck blew a tire just on the other side of the volatile town of Sorubi, the convoy pulled over to wait for it to be repaired, a move that left the rearmost vehicles still in the heart of the town. Within a few heartbeats, hundreds of locals, many armed with AK-47s, spilled out of the shops and market area. It looked like a giant ant hill had been stepped on.
Some school-age children curiously reached under the tarps covering the equipment in the truck bed, and one daring young thief reached through an open window and grabbed a Garmin GPS off the dashboard, then dashed into the crowd. Delta sniper Dugan dismounted from the backseat with only his concealed Glock pistol for protection, and began playing with the children to draw their minds away from messing with the truck.
A bunch of armed locals started rocking the Land Rover of the British SBS commandos because they refused to get out. As Dugan tried to keep the crowd back, a rock came flying out of nowhere and smacked him in the back of the head. Dugan was now seething with rage. He jumped back in the truck and told the driver to just gas it and get them out of there before things got a whole lot worse.
Now they were at the safe house after the long jaw-jarring drive, and the boys spent some time doing minor maintenance on the trucks before getting a welcome hour of rack. Four tall walls surrounded the house for protection, but just in case some uninvited guests decided to make an appearance, Jim put the boys on the second floor and left the muhj guides down on the ground floor.
We were anxious to get the snipers and assaulters down to the schoolhouse so we could get some things rolling. One thing was for certain: come morning, the boys would be in no mood to sit around the schoolyard with coloring books and marbles. They would be arriving hungry and chomping at the bit.
And unlike Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate, Delta planned to show no quarter, no mercy, and no compassion for al Qaeda.
General Ali had some visitors waiting that afternoon, the council of elders-the Shura-from the surrounding area. We noticed them as soon as they stepped out of their vehicles, and we made it a point to get out of sight. They were a lively bunch, roughly a dozen older men with long gray beards and dark skin with deep wrinkles from the decades of unrelenting sun. All were dressed in pseudo-formal attire-large, bright yellow turbans with matching shawls. There had been a rumor of American soldiers coming to Tora Bora to help the general fight al Qaeda, and they were concerned about them and reminded Ali that this was not the true Muslim way.
The general assured them that he had a handle on things.
Americans were not welcome as long as he was in command. That was not quite the same as saying we weren’t already there. But convinced of his sincerity, likely with a wink and a nod, the village elders pledged their support to Ali in eliminating bin Laden.
With everyone having done what was required in the strange political dance, the elders promised to activate their version of the neighborhood watch program for any sign of bin Laden. Then they left.
George, Adam Khan, and I met with Ali for a final time, inside his sleeping quarters, as the day came to an end. Boots off at the door and teacups in the middle of the rug.
The major topic of interest to the general was the status of the BLU-82 drop that had been postponed several times and was now expected early the next morning. I assumed the changing of the drop times had been the harebrained idea of someone far removed from the battlefield realities. It was likely some staff officer just doing his job by trying to provide his best operational advice to his commander. But the big bomb had kept us all waiting.
George brought Ali up to date, with Adam Khan meticulously translating and Ali nodding in the affirmative. Ali said that he planned to exploit the bomb drop, as soon as it was safe to do so, by attacking with about two hundred fighters. A reserve of another two hundred fighters would be held nearby to provide him some flexibility.
His tanks would roll out in full force as well, and one would move farther up the foothills to throw some direct fire straight down the valley. Several mortars to the east would also support the attack. Ever the gracious host, Ali insisted we be his guests for this special trip to the front lines, so as to observe his fighters’ skill. It all sounded good, but terrifically unrealistic.