by Dalton Fury
Pope is the best organized individual on the planet and a master at time management. During a normal day back at Fort Bragg, Pope could accomplish more tasks in a day than most of us could in a month and still find time to shoot and work out. His teammates would arrive in the team room on Monday morning and find that he had repacked each man’s gear, shampooed the carpet, and generally cleaned the entire room. All the kit bags were retagged with not only the proper markings but with some Gucci-looking tags with fancy colors and lamination. Then he might hand out new name tags to the whole troop, embroidered with the individual’s jump qualifications and matching HALO wings in two different colors. It was like he possessed some stolen alien technology to control time.
On a more serious note, Pope also knows more about commando kit and fighting gear than any manufacturer in the industry. If you needed some special item or piece of equipment, but weren’t sure which one to get or who carried the top of the line, you talked to Pope. He could tell you the best product, be it a flashlight or wristwatch or cold-weather underwear, but he probably had one or two tucked away in his locker and would just give it to you, or promise to call some “people” who would get it for you at half price. It reminded me of how Richard Gere always kept a stash of new brass buckles and shiny black dress shoes in the rafters of his barracks in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman.
Just after sunup on December 14, Jester, Dugan, and the Green Berets closed out OP25-A for good. Before leaving, the boys had an idea to discuss with Dave, the seasoned leader of the Green Beret team. Instead of exfilling, only to be reinserted later, the Delta snipers reasoned that it might be smarter to simply ruck up and make their way on foot deeper into the mountains to take up a flanking position abreast of the advancing MSS Grinch.
As much as he might have wanted to oblige personally, Dave had orders not to get his team into a firefight, so he had no choice in the matter. To do what the Delta boys suggested would have been career suicide.
Jester and Dugan repacked their rucks with water, chow, and fresh radio batteries, confident that their stay at the schoolhouse would likely be brief before they headed out to fight again. Unfortunately, all of our trucks were tied up inserting MSS Monkey, so the boys from OP25-A would have to rely upon the donkey express; they humped halfway back to the schoolhouse before finding some.
When they finally arrived, some were walking and some were riding. Having been so isolated, they had not yet learned how valuable their efforts had been.
After debriefing Jester and Dugan, the two snipers bagged out for a few hours inside the local stables, then volunteered to pull the radio watch that night. Bernie, Ironhead, and I were able to get the first sleep we had managed in the last several days.
On December 14, our troop received two new personnel. When I first laid eyes on them, I couldn’t help but think these were the two luckiest Delta operators in the unit. As I shook hands with them, they were all smiles. Both were in their midtwenties and recent OTC graduates. They sported excellent records and came with solid footing from growing up in the 75th Ranger Regiment and Special Forces.
Skeeter, a young Ranger from 1st Ranger Battalion, sported a shaved head and thick beard that would grow to be one of the most envied in the unit.
A year later in Afghanistan, word reached us that conventional wisdom had caught up to the unconventional ways of a special operations war zone and a rumor spread that would require us to shave our beards and cut our hair. Lieutenant Colonel Ashley remarked to Skeeter, “Don’t you dare cut off that work of art.” By then his beard had grown at least six inches, a length the Taliban would have been proud of, with a center streak of light gray running vertically down the middle, in between pepper-colored sides, similar to the beard of Mr. bin Laden himself.
The other operator, Bullets, just as new to us, was experienced in the craft. Already a Green Beret, his beard was a little lighter than Skeeter’s, and he arrived with short-cropped hair. Hopefully, both these young men’s careers inside Delta will last for decades.
After a quick in brief, Ironhead told them both they had less than an hour to configure their rucks for a minimum of several days and nights in the mountains. They stood there hanging on the squadron sergeant major’s every word, not worried in the slightest about the falling temperature or going into battle.
“Only take what you need,” Ironhead said. “Leave your Kevlar helmet and body armor in the hooch. You won’t need a sleeping bag or a lot of snivel gear. Grab an Afghan blanket from the stables to go along with your wool muhj hat and scarf to keep you warm.”
Skeeter joined MSS Grinch as an assaulter on the Bravo Team of Stormin’, while Bullets went up to be an assaulter with MSS Monkey’s Charlie Team. No use in having them just sit around the schoolhouse.
With the two original observation posts forced to shut down because of the advancing of Ali and Zaman’s forces backed by both America and British commandos, an opportunity presented itself to increase the relentless pursuit of bin Laden.
We now had twelve Green Berets out of a job, and several of General Ali’s subordinate commanders-converts to what Special Ops people could do-were begging for commandos to direct bombs along their particular axis of advance. We wanted to oblige, as this would give us better visibility and at the same time provide firm locations on each group of muhj. With the Green Berets from Cobra 25 now available, problem solved. Or so I thought.
The decision to not allow them to enter the mountains dumbfounded me and frustrated the quiet professionals from Cobra 25. The Green Berets were now out of the fight completely, and I had no option but to thank them for their efforts.
Not long after that exchange, the dreaded black Chinook arrived and whisked away the A Team commander. The eager young captain had been relieved of command. Before he left, I gave the distraught Special Forces officer the phone number to the Delta recruiter and shook his hand.
I had assumed that, by now, the Task Force Dagger risk assessment matrix would have been subordinate to killing the Most Wanted Man in the world. Apparently, it was not.
As the bombs continued to rain down on bin Laden and his henchmen, George and I settled down with the general for the nightly fireside chat.
The nightly meetings with Ali served several purposes, but probably the most important benefit to the battle was what the private conferences did for Ali’s stature and reputation. He was winning the fight, and as al Qaeda was being ground into dog food in the mountains, the warlord was gaining an aura of superwarlord in the eyes of his men and the local Shura. Our regular face-to-face engagements served our needs as well, as they pressured him to do more than talk to the press and issue hollow promises. He had to match his words with deeds and make good on his deals.
Numerous topics needed attention, but tonight he led off with one that surprised me.
Ali was extremely frustrated both by his fighters’ inability to locate bin Laden, and by Zaman, who reportedly was continuing discussions with the enemy. Out of the blue, he made an announcement that raised our eyebrows. The general was advertising a one million dollar reward to anyone who could take him to bin Laden. A pretty shrewd business move, but not entirely unexpected. He was expecting to receive every penny of the $25,000,000 reward that the State Department had advertised, and could afford to be generous in posting a bounty that would guarantee that big payday.
We asked the general what made him think bin Laden had not slipped out of the mountains and escaped? Ali responded confidently that he had two sources that were adamant the al Qaeda leader was still around.
George asked the general if any of his men had actually seen bin Laden yet. Ali gave us that familiar shrug to give the impression his men were doing the best they could considering the conditions.
He countered with another interesting tidbit.
One of his associates reportedly had some sort of information that bin Laden’s interpreter was still in the mountains and that the interpreter’s father lived nearby. The general sur
mised that the father would certainly leave with his son, and that was even more proof for Ali that bin Laden had not yet fled.
We read it a different way. If bin Laden was still around, we needed to press the attack and not let up the offensive, not even for a moment.
15 A Strange Kind of War
Progress always involves risk. You can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.
– FREDERICK B. WILCOX, AUTHOR
We were almost out of supplies in the mountains by December 14, and the biggest needs were batteries and water. Water was needed to maintain a man’s strength for carrying heavy loads up and down the steep ridgelines and to prevent the onset of hypothermia or altitude sickness. The icy weather was about ten degrees with a steady wind, and an inch or two of snow falling each day. We could melt the snow for emergency drinking water, but the extreme temperatures sucked the life out of our radio batteries.
Coming out of the mountains while al Qaeda was bloodied, disorganized, and on the run was not an option. We didn’t even discuss it. In the last seventy hours, we had pushed several thousand meters into the middle of the enemy’s fabled mountain stronghold and were not about to give that territory back.
The dreadful weather also was playing havoc with some of the aircraft flying missions to blast the mountainous positions, and visibility would change by the hour. We had to replace the fire support of those planes during the bad weather with some organic all-weather assets as soon as possible. The Rangers back at Bagram owned just such weapons, and we put in several requests for some Ranger mortars. Request denied. The reasons elude me still, particularly since some of their officers told me that they were anxious to comply and get into the fight.
Resupply by helicopter was also out of the question. Besides the low visibility that was periodically choking the mountains, we had learned a lesson from the Afghan-Soviet War. The muhj knew how to patiently wait behind rock formations, inside shallow caves and dugouts, or behind thick tree formations for an attack helicopter to come darting over the ridgeline. When it appeared, they would kill it with an RPG or a shoulder-fired missile. If the muhj skills were good enough to shoot down several hundred of those fast helicopters during the Soviet jihad, it wouldn’t take much to pick off a slow Special Ops Dark Horse lumbering over some high ridgeline in search of a landing zone the size of a postage stamp.
Living off the land wasn’t in the cards either. We had captured dozens of caves stocked with firewood, potatoes, rice, RPGs, medical supplies, and thousands of containers of Chinese-made 7.62mm AK rifle ammunition. Almost everything but enough drinking water or batteries. But while al Qaeda had shrewdly overstocked their stores in anticipation that the Far Enemy would soon arrive to do battle, they also had protectively laced some of those caves with mines that silently awaited the first clumsy or curious attacker to enter. Picking up a tin of potatoes could be deadly.
The obvious question was how were our muhj partners resupplying themselves? The hard fact was they carried what they needed to fight on their backs as we did, but they just didn’t need as much to survive. Also, they could rely on some equine help along the way. The typical muhj fighter went up the mountain with his weapon, a bag of rice the size of a baseball, three to five thirty-round magazines, a couple of RPG rockets, and a single, thin blanket to stave off the cold. The muhj rarely required water, almost as if they were perpetually hydrated, and were much more acclimated to the high altitudes than we were. And there was no use carrying food for daytime use anyway, since during the holy month of Ramadan they were forbidden to eat or drink anything from dawn to dusk.
Unfortunately for the muhj, many of them just about froze to death each night. Beneath their snow-damp blankets, they typically wore only a single layer of thin cotton clothing. The lucky ones sported some type of waist-length garment. In contrast, beneath the blankets of the Americans and Brits were layers of twenty-first-century extreme-cold-weather gear. Even that could not stave off the cold.
But the muhj could get whatever they needed hauled up to them, and were usually off the mountain by nightfall. Teenage Afghans clocked in as porters to carry what they could while tending the valuable donkeys, and a well-balanced jackass humped about 150 pounds of foodstuffs and equipment.
When MSS Grinch had moved into the mountains days earlier, we had been unable to locate or bargain for donkeys. MSS Monkey had some, but even a donkey had its limits in this place. Once Grinch entered the radically steep terrain where they were now fighting, donkeys wouldn’t have helped at all.
We had another idea, and we once again went back to the Rangers. Few professional military organizations can match their physical ability and mental toughness, just the attributes required to deliver the vital supplies to MSS Grinch so the shooting could continue without letup. Two platoons of Rangers were sitting around back at Bagram, and we asked for one platoon to help. They could serve as a human logistics train from the last vehicle drop-off point in the foothills all the way up to MSS Grinch, which was located several klicks away and at an elevation several thousand meters higher. Rangers could do what helicopters and mules could not. Request denied. Again, I never learned the reasons for that refusal.
We did have one quick offer. Not surprisingly, our former commander, Gus Murdock, heard of our need for human pack animals and sent a note that he was more than willing to mule supplies up to the boys in the mountains. He doesn’t know how close Ironhead and I were to taking him up on the offer, and it would not have surprised us a bit if he had stepped off the next helo landing at the schoolhouse ready to hump a pack.
In the end, we would have to do the resupply ourselves, but we had committed almost every available body to the fight, and they were already up in the mountains. Only a half-dozen Delta guys were still around, sharing a multitude of duties from handling the radios, running security, getting ready to be inserted themselves and being the only reliable quickreaction force in the entire area.
Sergeant Major Ironhead volunteered without hesitation to lead and manage this vitally important patrol behind al Qaeda’s lines. He was tired of sitting around the schoolhouse anyway, while his men were out on the high ground giving al Qaeda the business. The best-qualified Delta operator in the compound was more than willing to carry the supplies necessary to keep the fight going.
His first patrol included himself, the ever-dependable Adam Khan, and a half-dozen local Afghans who had to be paid well for the job, because most of them were still too afraid to move into the mountains and chance a fight with al Qaeda. When the group off-loaded the pickup trucks at Mortar Hill, each was loaded with water, MREs, and precious batteries. Ironhead carried his pistol and M-4 assault rifle, a few 5.56mm magazines, the clothes on his back, and that was about it. Every other ounce of energy would go to the supplies.
It took them five hours to climb the rugged four kilometers up to MSS Grinch. The boys weren’t at all surprised to see that it was Ironhead who led the patrol in. Somewhere along the way, about half of the Afghan porters had fallen out, probably by design. That meant that about half of the planned resupply didn’t make it, but MSS Grinch was at least now good to go for another day or two.
Ironhead knew he would have to make the trip at least one more time. Since the sergeant major had refused to bring along much in the way of personal comfort items, the boys in Grinch shared some pieces of snivel gear.
He also wanted to get a feel for the condition of the overall force and checked on the muhj scattered in the area. As they were moving higher and deeper into frigid mountains, and with the temperature steadily dropping, the muhj on the front lines were literally starving and freezing. Ironhead and Adam Khan spent the night on the icy mountain with the muhj and their fellow commandos, and the sergeant major couldn’t help but wonder how they were going to be able to sustain this logistics effort a mile or so behind al Qaeda’s frontline fortifications.
Back at the schoolhouse, Skoot entertained us with radio reports being whispered by several of the A
fghan muhj, about a giant American whom they watched carry “much stuff” up the ridgeline, with seemingly no concern about al Qaeda. The muhj let us know, with great respect, that the hired Afghan porters who were used to such altitudes had to struggle to keep pace with Sergeant Major Ironhead.
As the sun broke over the mountains on December 15, MSS Monkey was heading to their next location. After reaching the same spot that Ski and Catfish had scoped out the previous day, Bryan pushed Ski’s India Team forward even more to find a new vantage point from which they could see enemy targets that needed some attention from our bombers.
Within seconds of reaching their new observation post, Ski saw a man in black clothing only three hundred meters to his front. The al Qaeda fighter was moving cautiously and deliberately, crouching over so as to present a small silhouette and hide his presence. As Ski prepared a fire mission, the dark-clad fighter moved into a bunker made from tree trunks, rocks, and foliage. A second later, a 100mm high explosive round fired from a T-55 tank slammed a direct hit into the bunker entrance, leveling the hidden emplacement and certainly killing anyone inside. The problem was that Ski had been unaware that the big tank was nearby.
They saw numerous caves on the ridges, but all appeared abandoned. India Team did notice significant movement on two smaller hilltops and assumed they were enemy fighters, so he began working up a fire mission on them. On a sudden hunch, he grabbed a nearby muhj commander and pointed to the mysterious people. Were they al Qaeda? According to the commander, they were not. Just some of Haji Zaman’s fighters scouring Hilltop 2685, looking for booty.