“Bronze Star. Purple Heart. Meritorious Service Medal. All of them.” Casey listed those awards as if he was talking about a prison sentence. I knew what he was feeling. Kopp deserved them all, but we wished that he had been able to earn them some other way.
I wouldn’t learn this until after I got back, but Kopp committed another act of sacrifice and heroism. He was an organ donor and his heart went to a woman in Chicago, a fifty-seven-year-old woman who’s going to be able to live out her days peaceably and productively thanks to Benjamin Kopp. He put his life on the line, as did all of the guys from Company C and Third Battalion. I knew that he was a single guy, and I wondered how his mom and dad were handling the bad news. I wanted to give Jessica a call and maybe have her contact my mom and dad to see if they could let his mom and dad know that there were a bunch of guys who owed their son and them an enormous debt.
While Pemberton and I sat there quietly shaking our heads, Sergeant Casey walked off, his head down, the weight of Kopp’s death clearly on him. He stopped and said, over his shoulder, “If you guys need anything, let me know.”
We spent the next hour or so sitting in silence, thinking. None of the other guys came up to us, giving us space to grieve. We went to chow and ate mechanically because that’s what bodies do, mostly; they keep going on.
* * *
Not that Sergeant Casey could have ordered this up for us, but we got exactly what we needed to get our minds off Kopp. A few hours later, our pagers went off and we were in the briefing room. This appeared to be a basic operation, a capture or kill of a Taliban leader, a local who’d been providing intel. The only wrinkle was that our insertion point was going to be in the middle of a very large irrigation field. As a result of all the ditches, the pilots wouldn’t be able to land. When I heard that, I started to grin. That meant one thing: fast roping. I had only done it once since training—in combat in Iraq.
For a guy who had a fear of heights, you’d think fast roping out of a helicopter hovering forty or so feet above the ground would be terrifying. For some reason, I thought that fast roping was going be a piece of cake in comparison to what we’d been through. We’d spent so much time in irrigation fields since we’d arrived that it felt completely natural to be in one. Fast-rope descents are a classic case of in control verging on being out of control. Fractured or sprained limbs were a possibility, but I loved the feeling of being on that edge as I descended. At least that was what I tried to tell myself.
At the briefing, I laid out Pemberton’s and my positioning plan. There weren’t any buildings nearby where a high angle would be advantageous, so we decided that we were to sit off to one side of the target’s residence. From there we’d have a good view through a large gate. We’d have easy access to the structure’s main door and its windows. We should be able to have eyes on the target as well as our guys as they made their way into the small compound.
As we packed up, we broke out for the first time our pairs of heavy leather gloves. They were useless for anything but fast roping as far as I was concerned, but invaluable in helping you to hang on and to halt your ascent. With all my gear on, I weighed pretty close to two hundred pounds or more. I was used to carrying that much weight when on two feet, but you start moving somewhere around the 10.2 m/s2 that our friend, and sometime enemy, Mr. Gravity pulled us down at, and that extra weight really mattered. We would exit out of the back of the Chinook, not first but near the beginning of the group, and I wanted to make sure that Pemberton and I would be next to each other, leaving at the same time on one of the two ropes.
After the crew chiefs made sure the ropes were secure, we were in the air. Forty or so minutes later we got the one-minute signal. The entire ride in, my bravado regarding fast roping was being ripped to shreds by the wind passing by the Chinook. All that was left of my optimistic kite was a couple of very fragile sticks of balsa wood. All kinds of negative thoughts started running through my mind. I was sure I was going to biff it on the landing and get hurt. I had that bladder-buzzing, gut-knotted sensation that was once reserved for doing oral reports in school.
When the Chinook decelerates, it feels like the engines are going to shake the bird apart. We stood up and I don’t know if my body’s shaking and its harmonics matched the Chinook’s, but I walked pretty steadily forward. Pemberton was alongside me as the first few guys stepped out. We fist-pounded and the next thing I knew I was off the ramp. It was nighttime, of course, but through the darkness I could see that this was no ordinary irrigation field. Those little ditches, the ones where I’d pressed my body down into the earth for fear that parts of me would be exposed, had been replaced by little canyons with dirt mounded up alongside them. It was like I was at the pyramids or something, wondering who the hell did this and how the hell these things got built. Another question came crashing in; what were these things for?
All that wondering had taken my mind off the job at hand—getting down that rope. I was so uncertain of what kind of surface we were landing on that I was holding on too tight and not maintaining my space discipline. I knew the guy above could come crashing down on top of me if I didn’t pick it up and soon. There was no way to be heard above the hurricane roar of wind the Chinook produced. I kept looking down at these deep trenches and the piles beside them, knowing that the rope only went down so far, and most likely not to the very bottom of those holes. I didn’t want to have to jump into one of them. I could see a couple of guys below, looking very antlike on those hills and holes.
Finally, I touched solid earth, or more or less solid ground. The clumps and loose earth gave way beneath my feet. Fortunately, Pemberton was right nearby. We each prepped our weapons and started to maneuver our way up to the top of one of the ditches. Thankfully, there was what seemed to be a continuous ridge we could walk on. Going up and down and up and down and in and out of those ditches would have exhausted us and consumed every second before daylight.
This was bizarre and I felt like we’d been dropped onto the surface of a different planet. I tried to remember the maps and whether the topographical details we’d looked at matched up to what we were now facing. Was I too preoccupied by the prospect of fast roping that I hadn’t paid close enough attention? Was Kopp’s death weighing too heavily on my mind?
Something told me I better check myself and not let my thoughts wander too much. We all made it through that first section. I kept my eyes on different features of the terrain, thinking that some of them would have been good hides for a sniper. With everyone safely down, the Chinook departed, and we had to cover four to five hundred meters to get to the objective within a tiny village. I realized that we were walking on a kind of ledge. To our right were some deep ditches, not at all like the shallow ones we’d normally encountered. They weren’t so deep that you’d kill yourself if you fell or get seriously hurt, but it would be a huge pain in the ass to have to climb back out of them. To our left was blackness, a kind of shadow that seemed to encompass an enormous area. It reminded me of an open doorway to a darkened room or the entrance to a cave.
The plan called for us to make our way to the low wall that surrounded the village and stack up against it. From there, we’d break off and do our thing. Two other snipers, Perkins and Jillian, had asked to join us, and they’d gotten the okay. They had been dropped off by another Chinook and taken up their position on the opposite side of the compound and across from the house our target was in. I had only walked maybe sixty or so meters of that ledge when something told me to take out my ear protection. I’d been fighting a battle with those little pieces of foam my entire career, but after that most recent engagement, we’d called a mutual cease-fire. I’d been able to get through that horrible day with them in, and with us firing so many rounds in such close quarters, I knew that my eardrums would have been a casualty for sure if it weren’t for their intervention. I pulled them out and stowed them in my pocket.
Because of the position we were going to take, Pemberton and I were at the back of the for
mation. I could hear the guys’ footsteps scraping and crackling on the loose gravel, but once I’d stopped walking, those sounds receded. Pemberton was pulling up the rear. I’d done a head count with him a couple of times before I’d stopped and he was there each time.
I’d just passed the boundary of that enormous shadow, and as I was standing there, I heard, very faint but very distinctly, the hard consonant sounds of my first name: ck—ck.
I wondered what the hell that could be. It was clearly a human-made sound. I looked back over my shoulder to ask Pemberton if he heard it and my heart dropped. Pemberton wasn’t there.
I had to walk myself through the situation. I was in front of Pemberton. Pemberton was behind me. It would have been impossible for him to pass me without me seeing him. I moved forward and tapped the shoulder of the guy in front of me, Atkins, the platoon sergeant.
“Stay here for a minute.”
“What’s up?”
“I’m going back a ways. I heard something. Pemberton’s not behind me.”
I walked back along that edge, fighting a rising panic. I went maybe thirty meters or so, in the middle of that black shadow that was now to my right. The ledge was maybe four feet wide, but for some reason, I stepped slightly into the shadow. The shadow wasn’t a shadow at all, but an enormous hole, approximately forty feet in diameter. I looked down and my heart dropped into that blackness. It wasn’t just my fear of heights but the certainty that Pemberton was down there. Who knew how far down, but he wasn’t visible. It was so dark in there, seemingly like what I’d read and seen about black holes in outer space. To put it mildly, I was freaked out. It really was like the earth had swallowed up Pemberton and now it was sitting there with its mouth wide open mocking me, saying, “Look. I don’t have him.”
“Mike,” I whispered hoarsely. It was as if the hole chewed up those vibrations. It was a weird sensation to realize my voice was not carrying very far at all. I seldom used Pemberton’s first name, and it registered with me that I had.
I tried his comms, but got no response.
I couldn’t contain myself anymore, and, breaking every bit of mission protocol, I shouted at the top of my lungs, “M-i-i-i-i-k-k-e!”
I was so freaked out I would have laughed when I heard his voice rising up out of that pit of blackness, coming to me as calm as could be, “Hey, what’s up, man. Yeah, I’m down here. I need you to come get me.”
I could feel relief washing over me, cooling my armpits. I had no idea what could have happened to him, but knowing that he could talk to me made me feel so much better.
“Okay. I’m going to dekit and take my body armor off. I’ll be lightweight and I’m going to jump down there and get you out. You still got your ladder?”
“Yeah, man. I still got it. It’s on my back.”
“I’ll get down there and I’ll help you set up the ladder and we’ll climb out. How far down are you?”
“Ten feet. Maybe fifteen. It’s hard to tell.”
Only now, as I recount this exchange, do I realize how I was assuming that because he could talk to me that he was fine. He didn’t sound like he was in pain, he didn’t say anything about whether he was hurting at all. I had one thought in my mind—get him out of there and continue on our way to the objective.
With our capture-or-kill mission in mind, I got in contact with Sergeant Casey, and again, I should have thought more before speaking.
“We’ve got a man down.”
“Say again!”
“We’ve got a man down.”
“I didn’t hear any weapons fire.”
“No. No. Negative. We have a man down in a hole.”
“Roger that. Get him out.”
I turned to another team member Trambley and said, “Just to be safe, let’s get that fast rope we came in on. We can drop it down there in case the ladder won’t reach.”
Thinking quickly, Trambley looked at me and said, “Wait a second.” He took out a chemical light, cracked it, and dropped it down the hole. We stood there watching as that little glow dropped and then disappeared completely.
“Oh my God,” I said.
“Holy shit.” Trambley’s eyes were wide and his mouth hung open.
My heart was outracing my thoughts. I knew I needed to remain calm, but my buddy was down there somewhere, who knew how far, and I had no idea how we were going to get him back up here.
To confirm what I’d just witnessed, I picked up a small pebble and dropped it down, hoping that I could at least hear it hit, and then after I heard nothing for what seemed a long time, finally Pemberton said, “I felt something.”
“You’re not ten or fifteen feet down, dude. I don’t know how deep this thing is, but we dropped a chem light. Couldn’t see it.”
“I thought up was in front of me.” Pemberton’s voice was faint but I could tell he was now getting a bit upset. Not knowing how far down he was I thought that literally not knowing which way was up had to be freaky.
“I don’t think up is where you think it is. Look around a bit.”
“Okay. I see it. A little pinprick of light. That’s got to be it.”
Still trying to remain calm, I said, even though I was thinking the exact opposite, “That’s good.”
“I’m in cold water. My leg hurts. It’s killing, actually.”
A few seconds later, I could hear him screaming; the reality of it all must have hit him. “It’s freakin’ cold as hell down here.”
I wanted to keep his mind off things so I said, “You must not be anywhere near hell if it’s cold.”
“Bite me.”
Sounds of him thrashing around, splashing water, and his moans reached us. I looked at Trambley and both of us shrugged our shoulders.
“Do you have your weapon?” I asked, just trying to keep Pemberton talking.
“No. Dropped it. Can’t find it in the water.”
“Are you swimming?”
“Yeah. Treading water. I’m afloat.”
“Do you have your body armor on?” I was trying to think if it would help him float or weigh him down.
He must have read my mind. “It’s keeping me warm. It’s helping me float.”
I thought that he was delusional. I figured all that added weight would have the opposite effect.
“Do you have any weapons?”
“My pistol. Probably doesn’t work. Why?”
I was worried that he might have a concussion or might lose consciousness so that’s why I was peppering him with questions. I didn’t want to irritate him, but I could tell that that was what I was doing.
I looked around. Trambley had taken off to retrieve the rope. I had no idea how heavy those things were, but it was inches thick. I saw him outlined against the night sky as he crested one of those deep ditches and then dropped down again, disappearing from sight. He was putting in an enormous effort. I kept covering him, worried that someone was going to take a crack at him. I kept up a conversation with Mike while keeping an eye on Trambley. He’d begun to slow, and I was torn. I didn’t want to leave Pemberton, fearing that if he passed out in that water he could drown. I didn’t know what hypothermia could do to someone or what its symptoms were, and it was hard to believe that somebody in the middle of Afghanistan in July could be freezing. Sure, it was cold at night, and all, but how the hell could all of this weird stuff be going on?
I knew that Trambley was busting his ass, and I wanted to help him, but then I noticed that he was now making no real progress at all.
“Drop it. Just get back here,” I said to him. Even if he got the rope over to us, I didn’t know how much it was going to help. Was either of us capable of going down there and helping Pemberton back out?
Trambley came back gassed and upset with himself and the situation. Still, he said, “I can’t do it. The frickin’ thing’s too heavy. I need help or we’ve got to get some other guys here…” His voice trailed off.
The other elements of the platoon were conducting the operation, keepi
ng radio silence as best they could. I agreed with Trambley. We needed somebody else to help us out. Trambley took off, not wanting to use the comms to just call in some support. He kept in contact with me, but only when he got to the rally point did he advise the others of what was really going on with our man being down.
I didn’t hear what I wanted. “No go, Irv. We’re about to hit the objective.”
“Roger that.”
I knew we needed to do something, so I contacted Casey. “Sergeant, Pemberton’s down there quite a ways. I’d have to say forty to fifty feet.”
“We’ll get CSAR out here then.”
I’d seen a Discovery Channel special once about the Combat Search and Rescue units. I never thought I’d see them in person. Mostly, the air force used them to get downed pilots back. I wondered if anybody anywhere in the military had any kind of experience rescuing a guy from a hole in the ground. This was the kind of thing a miner might have to do.
I knew that the only thing I needed to do at that point was stick close to Pemberton as best I could. I hunkered down, lying on my side straddling the edge of the concrete and the hole.
“Irv? I’m hearing lots of stuff down here.”
I thought of the fighting tunnels I’d read so much about as a kid. What if during all those years of fighting with the Soviets the Afghan fighters had done the same thing? It seemed plausible. Why would there be a forty- to fifty-foot-deep hole in the middle of this field outside a village?
I knew it could sound bad, but I said to Mike, “If I hear you screaming and anybody else is down there with you, I’m going to pump all twenty rounds down there.”
Nobody wanted to be held captive. We knew what the Taliban and the insurgents in Iraq did to American prisoners, regular military or contract workers. Like IEDs and other aspects of this fighting, we didn’t talk about them much, but we all understood one another.
“Okay, man. That’s cool. I’m really scared right now. I’m freaking out.”
“No worries, dude, I’m here. I’ve got you covered.”
The Reaper: Autobiography of One of the Deadliest Special Ops Snipers Page 15