by Brandon Webb
Smith wasn’t budging. “No, this is my call, and everyone wears armor.”
He was already making tactical decisions for us—and he’d just made a bad one. Chief Dye sided with me privately, but what could we do?
“Check,” I said, “got it.”
We started suiting up to go, everyone putting on all their battle armor. I quietly took out my armor plates and left them behind. Call it gross insubordination if you want, but this was fucking ridiculous, and I was damned if I was going to do it.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 6
It was about a three-hour insert by helicopter from Bagram Air Base to the Zhawar Kili complex. We were let off in the mountains well before dawn, about 4:00 A.M. We set up a quick perimeter, checked in with the marines (who had arrived a little ahead of us), made sure we were verified for where we were so our air support team would know we were friendlies and wouldn’t take us out, and set up our rendezvous points for extraction at the end of the day. Then we set off, patrolling our way in the direction of the cave complex.
A few kilometers in I looked over at Shawn, our breacher, who was carrying a hooligan (a big metal breaching tool) on his back along with a ton of explosives. Brad and Steve, our EOD techs, had all their explosive equipment, too. Casey, our AOIC, carried photographic and video equipment to document whatever we would find. These guys had to be miserable. We still had miles to go, and we were gaining altitude. I was so glad I didn’t have my armor plates.
About an hour in, we took a water break. I sat down on the ground next to Shawn. “How you doin’, brother?” I felt so bad for him.
“Dude,” he said, “right about now I would welcome stepping on a land mine.”
Soon we were back on our feet. Everyone else was already tired and sweating. I was set to go, feeling alert and nimble. Shawn’s focus was like a flashlight beam on the ground in front of him. By the time we got within proximity of the site everyone was completely worn out, even Cassidy. I saw Cassidy and Smith huddling up for a couple of minutes.
Then Cassidy came over to us. “All right, everybody,” he said, “we’re going to ditch our armor and stash it. We’ll cache it right here and pick it up again on our way out.” He quietly took me aside and said, “Okay, you were absolutely right. We fucked up. So go easy on me.”
“Forget it,” I said. Then I added, “But fuckin-A, I told you so.”
Everyone started shucking their plates. Cassidy looked over at me. “Hey, Webb. Aren’t you going to stash your plates?” I shook my head. “Nope. I didn’t wear any.” Cassidy looked at me for a moment with no expression, then grinned. “You son of a bitch.”
I wasn’t just trying to be a smart-ass. To my way of thinking, this was critical strategic thinking. Look at the kind of enemy we were up against: Here was a dude running around in the hills carrying nothing but a wool blanket, a wool hat, an AK-47, and maybe a little water and bullets. Not only did this guy have the advantage of knowing the terrain like the back of his hand, but he was also fast on his feet, running through the hills like a mountain goat—and here came a group of American soldiers trudging along, loaded up with God knows what. We needed to modify our equipment load to make us way more nimble if we wanted to have any hope of matching pace with the guys we were hunting.
On the way to our destination we passed a few villages that seemed deserted, nothing but empty buildings and a scattering of animals left behind. As far as we could tell, everyone was gone; no doubt they’d taken off once the aerial bombardment started the night before.
By the time we reached the cave complex, the sun was coming up. We started in at the base camp, taking a cave at a time. Our planes had pounded the hell out of the place. There had been quite a few people in these caves the night before, but there was nothing there now but bits and pieces of bodies, hardly anything even identifiable. It was a scene of pure carnage.
Inside the caves up on the ridge it was a whole other story. As we started penetrating into the mountainside, it quickly became clear that our bombing raid hadn’t done shit. This place was in mint condition. These caves were so deeply burrowed into the mountain that many of them were still completely intact. Hell, some went back a good half mile. Some of the tunnels were reinforced by steel beams and lined with brickwork, with plenty of evidence of Soviet craftsmanship left over from the eighties.
This place was damn near invincible.
We started in, using a procedure similar to the way we would clear a house. Four of us would go in to clear a cave, then come out and report, then move on to the next, and the next, making sure each cave was clear as we went. One cave was an ammo bunker; the next was a classroom, then living areas. It was an extensive network, with some of the tunnels interconnected, and it went on and on.
The caves were so deep that we couldn’t see very far into them. Our night vision was severely limited in effectiveness, because to use night vision you need at least a small bit of ambient light, and it was pitch black in the caves. We had an infrared floodlight function, but this proved to be not very useful. We ended up inching through the caves using the paltry beams of illumination thrown by the small lights mounted on our weapons and clearing around corners with our good old-fashioned SureFire white-lens flashlights.
Those first few hours going deep into those caves and tunnels were intense. We had no idea exactly what we’d find in there. We didn’t know if we would run into anyone, or if there was possibly an ambush lying in wait for us, or if the caves were booby-trapped. We had no idea where the hell we were going, or what—or whom—we might run into.
Fortunately we did not encounter a single person—but we were stunned at how much we found in the way of matériel. There were massive amounts of ordnance, ammo, and fuel, stacked floor to ceiling. They had stocked up on some big hardware, too, including tanks and other Soviet-era combat vehicles. These guys had prepared for quite the campaign.
We found some American-made Harris 117-Delta radios with what appeared to be internally embedded crypto, which completely freaked us out. These were highly proprietary, highly sensitive tools of the U.S. military. How the hell did these characters lay their hands on such things? Many years later, speaking with a gentleman who worked with the company who manufactured these radios, I learned that they were originally sold to the CIA, who in turn gave them to mujahideen forces to help them in their efforts against the Soviets. Geopolitics is a fickle business. We found a bunch of Stinger missiles, too, more fruit of Uncle Sam’s largesse; fortunately the batteries on Stingers are completely drained after a few years, so none of these suckers were operational.
We found classrooms with posters on the walls, sporting anti-American slogans. On one the artist had cobbled together a photo of bin Laden in the foreground with two planes crashing into the Twin Towers in the background. I stared at this freakish piece of propaganda nearly open-mouthed. This thing was created as an al Qaeda recruiting poster for the mission it illustrated. In other words, it had been put together before the event it was depicting had taken place. Standing there deep in the bowels of this godforsaken mountain on the other side of the world, staring at a picture of the attack on New York City that was composited and hung here before the attack itself actually occurred—it was one of the eeriest experiences I’ve ever had. I still have that poster.
It was hot, tedious, nerve-racking work. Within about four hours we had the whole place cleared. Fortunately, we hadn’t run into any resistance.
Now that we knew we were alone and had a general sense of the lay of the land, we went back through the whole place a second time, gathering up intel, collecting the smaller items that we could bring back with us, and planting demolition in areas we would later blow. Brad and Eric recorded the exact GPS coordinates at the entrances to each cave so our guys could follow up with more accurate air strikes, since the shotgun approach of the night before had missed so much. The FBI guys had DNA kits as part of their mission, which was to ID whatever bodies we might find. As we worked, Casey and some
of the others documented everything with video and tons of photographs.
Meanwhile, we were constantly reporting back to Harward, who was following the entire operation so closely it felt like he was looking over our shoulders the whole time. It was believed that some key Taliban or al Qaeda leader in the area had been killed recently, and Harward had a hard-on for the DNA evidence. We had found some extensive gravesites, but they were a few weeks old, and the forensic team didn’t think they would yield much of significance. Plus, we were on the clock. The complex had been more extensive and the total cache far larger than we anticipated. We had a date to keep with a crew of helos at our extraction point, so we were wasting no unnecessary minutes.
After gathering everything we could take with us, we got it all ready to blow. We blew up the radios and a ton of ordnance. The explosion created a huge fireball that nearly consumed half the mountain. The secondaries cooked off for probably four to six hours. It was January 6, but it sure looked like the Fourth of July.
Daylight was starting to fade, and we got the hell out of there. We picked up our stashed armor (all except me, since I didn’t have any) and started the long hump back to the perimeter for our rendezvous. We were still on a good schedule. The plan was for us to be extracted in the evening, under the cover of darkness. We finally reached our extract point and got on the radio to base. One CCT was talking to the inbound helo coming to get us; the other was talking to Harward at the TOC (tactical operations center). We were thirty minutes out from our scheduled exfil.
Nothing to do but sit and wait.
One of our EOD techs, Steve, started dumping his water. He’d been carrying extra bottles of water that they would use to shape blasting charges, and he figured now he wouldn’t be needing any of it. That seemed crazy to me. That was potable spring water! When you’re out in the field on any kind of recon, water is more precious than gold. He’d already dumped out several bottles when I saw what he was doing and stopped him.
“Dude!” I said. “What are you doing?”
“I’m tired of carrying around all this extra water,” he said. “I’m just shedding some weight.” For such a big guy, he sure did complain about the weight of the stuff we carried.
“Hey, dude,” I said, “give me the rest. I’ll take all that.” He had eight bottles of water left, and he gave me all of them. I drank four, then started filling up my CamelBak bottles with the remaining four.
Just then we heard the distant but unmistakable sound of the transport choppers, probably five to ten minutes away. They were coming to get us. At that moment Brad, our CCT, called out quietly to one of the FBI team, holding the radio set out to him, “Captain Harward wants a word.” Harward wanted to know if the FBI team had dug up the graves we’d found and conducted any forensics there. They hadn’t. Harward wanted them to go back and look for DNA evidence. One of the FBI team, who happened to be a former SEAL, spoke a few crisp words and handed the radio set back to Brad. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, “that grave is old. We’re not going to find anything new there.”
But Harward had latched on to this thing like a dog on a bone. The DNA business was a very big deal, especially from a public relations standpoint. If the forensic evidence revealed that we’d taken out any of the bigwig bad guys from the top of the al Qaeda food chain, that would be a significant victory to wire back home, and everyone from military top brass to Congress to the White House could get serious mileage out of it. It was more than the DNA, though. Out in those caves we had found a treasure trove of enemy resources that exceeded even the most optimistic expectations, and there seemed to be good indication that there was more out there for the finding. In for a penny, in for a pound: Now that we’d cracked open this prize, Harward wanted us to stay out there and see how much more we could dig up.
Now Harward had Cassidy on the radio. I could see from the set of LT’s face that he wasn’t thrilled at what he was hearing. I saw him nod, say a word or two, and sign off. The sound of the helicopters briefly hovered, then slowly started to diminish. With our extraction just minutes away, Harward had turned them around. Word came down: We weren’t being extracted after all.
We were out there, on our own, for at least another day or two.
Steve looked at me in horror as I smacked my lips, having just polished off the last water bottle. He was devastated. What could I say? Hey, that’s why you don’t pour out your water, ever. You just never know what’s going to happen.
So here we were, out in the middle of nowhere, deep in enemy territory, on our own for the night—and the temperature had already dropped to around freezing. You burn up a lot of calories humping around all day. These were not good conditions. We needed a plan.
Cassidy, Chief Dye, myself, and a few of the other senior guys huddled together to figure out what we were going to do for the night. Commander Smith, apparently still in the shit-getting-into frame of mind, said, “Well, I guess we’ll just go into the hills and lay up in the bushes.”
Chief Dye and I looked at each other in disbelief. We hadn’t brought much in the way of extra warm clothes because we hadn’t planned to be out overnight, and it was quite hot during the day. In fact, we’d been murderously hot while working the caves. But the clothing that felt suffocating during the afternoon now offered little protection against the frigid high-altitude desert nighttime. When you’re pushing up above the snow line, it gets cold as hell.
Even if we had thought to bring it, we didn’t have the cold-weather gear back at camp that we wanted to have anyway. Back when our platoon had first landed in Afghanistan we had put in a big cold-weather-gear request list. Evidently one shipment was sent, but it got lost somewhere on the way. Whether they’d sent a replacement, nobody knew. We kept hearing, “It’s coming … it’s coming next week,” but nothing showed up. For the moment, we were all going with what whatever we each had with us, along with the promise that we’d have better stuff as soon as possible.
On our own, most of us had bought ourselves some pretty decent gear. The SEAL teams are among the best-equipped fighting forces anywhere in the military. We had smart wool-blended socks, good boots from REI, good North Face jackets, that sort of thing. I had a $300 pair of Italian leather mountain boots, and I’d brought along a neoprene shell and wool cap. It wasn’t much, but at least it was something.
The marines, however, had it much worse. These poor bastards didn’t have shit for cold-weather gear, just standard-issue crappy desert boots and cheap white socks. True to their spartan culture, these guys were not going to complain at all, but they were in for a world of hurt with the subfreezing temperatures coming our way. And Commander Smith wanted us to lay up in the bushes?
I spoke up. “Hey, that’s a bad idea. These poor marines are already freezing, and it’s only going to get colder. We’re sure to have some cold casualties if we do that.”
Smith shook his head and said, “We gotta do what we gotta do. We’re just going to have to suck it up.”
Suck it up. This was his brilliant tactical plan? The man was definitely getting in our shit now. It was one thing for us to suck it up, but we had twenty marines we were responsible for, too. They would absolutely suck it up if that’s what they were told to do—but that wasn’t going to prevent our having some cold casualties on our hands.
Chief Dye was having none of it. One of the villages we’d seen during the day lay up at the top of the valley at the end of a ridge, and I knew he had that place in mind as a strategic fallback position. It was on high ground, you could see the entire valley from there, and it was well protected as a fighting position.
Chief Dye turned to Smith and said, “All due respect, sir, your plan sucks. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to take Brandon and a couple other guys, do a recon, clear and occupy that village so we have a place to stay where we can start a goddam fire, get warm, and set up a perimeter for the night.”
“No,” said Smith, “we’re not doing that.”
“Ye
s,” said Chief Dye. “We are.”
Now Lieutenant Cassidy spoke up. “Got it,” he said. He nodded, and that was the end of that.
My respect for Cassidy was already high, but it had just gone up a notch. He was our officer in charge, but he also knew he wasn’t the most tactically experienced guy there. Like a good leader, he was the first to defer to the person with more experience, which in this case was Chief Dye.
You’ll find officers who think, I’m the highest-ranking officer, I should have the best ideas, but that’s not necessarily so. Being an effective leader doesn’t mean you have to be the smartest guy in the room or always have the best idea.
Years after returning from Afghanistan I was introduced by my friend John Tishler to Dr. J. Robert Beyster, the nuclear physicist who founded SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation), a billion-dollar, Fortune 500 employee-owned defense contractor. In the course of a project I was working on in the private sector, Dr. Beyster took me out to lunch. Later we spent some time in his office, where I noticed a sign on his wall:
NONE OF US IS AS SMART AS ALL OF US.
J. Robert Beyster is one serious genius, and one reason he’s gotten to where he is is that he understands this core leadership truth: No matter how smart you are, you’d be stupid not to listen to the experts around you. Cassidy understood that, too. Smith, not so much.
Five of us took off and started moving quietly up the hillside: Chief Dye, Patrick, Heath, Osman, and I. It took us about an hour to get up there. When we got close to the village, it was pretty clear that the place had been completely deserted. Probably whoever had been there left as soon as those bombs started falling the night before. Still, caution dictated that we assume nothing. We snuck around behind and approached from the rear.