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.”
I had images in my mind of some guy screaming something in Pashto and me stepping up and firing into that hole and hearing all those screams. I knew that was what Mike would want me to do, and I knew that if the situation was reversed that was what I’d want him to do. I had asked Mike about his pistol both because I wondered if he’d be able to defend himself or do what he needed to do to not get captured. I knew that I wouldn’t be trying to kill him, just firing those rounds down there to take out the bad guys. I knew he’d be good with however that turned out.
The beating sound of a Chinook’s rotors made me feel better, knowing that I wouldn’t have to be fully responsible for getting Pemberton out of there. That feeling didn’t last very long. In order to find us, they needed to shine their IR (infrared) floodlight to illuminate the area. I still had on my night vision, so I couldn’t see the large beams pooling on the ground. I was lying next to an enormous hole, much, much larger than I had imagined, and much deeper. I was two feet away from its edge, and I tried to crawl away from it. I put my rifle under my stomach and sprawled out once I felt the rotor wash pushing me. I dug my nails deep into the dirt and tried to dig my toes in as well, but I could feel myself sliding closer and closer to that hole.
I thought I was going to die. I thought that that wind was going to lift my 165-pound body up and deposit it down there near Pemberton. I figured the pilot couldn’t see me, and I was also worried about where that helicopter was going to set down. Earlier, we’d been told they couldn’t and now here was somebody about to give it a shot. As I looked over my shoulder from my position on my belly, the however-many-ton Chinook was about to land either on top of me or go crashing into that hole and on top of Pemberton. They hovered about twenty feet above me and then began inching closer and closer toward me.
I lay there wondering how this was all going to end, when I saw the black belly of that bird start to rise again. As soon as it was clear enough for me to stand, I scrambled to my feet and ran and slid down the slight embankment of the ditch. From that position, I could see something being lowered from the Chinook. A moment later, it receded back into the cargo area. A moment after that, the Chinook spun around and retreated.
“Irv. What the hell is going on?”
Pemberton’s desperation tore at me.
“They’re coming back. Don’t worry. They’ll be here again,” I told him, expressing my hope rather than anything I knew to be true.
I contacted our platoon leader, hoping he’d know what was going on.
“The rig wasn’t long enough,” he said. “They brought a forty-footer but said it wasn’t near long enough.”
I couldn’t believe my estimate had been so bad. How far down was Pemberton? Had he slid or had he fallen all the way to the bottom?
“We need you here. You’ve got to cover for us before we go in.”
“Roger that.”
Orders are orders, but I hated the thought of leaving Pemberton there. He seemed to have gotten worse. When I was talking to him, he’d allow a long time before responding, and more and more he was saying things that had nothing to do with what I’d asked him, talking about his car and making other random observations. I wasn’t sure how badly he was hurt, how the water was impacting his situation, and just how long it was going to take for the CSAR guys to finally get to him. I had to refocus though. As I gathered my gear and rekitted, I looked at the wristband I wore. I consulted the maps I kept there like a quarterback consulting his playlist.
Before I set out, I stood at the edge of the hole and shouted down, “Mike, I’ve got go, buddy. You’re good. They’re coming right back. They’ve got you.”
I didn’t want to wait for a response. I figured that if I got out of there, I could tell myself that I hadn’t heard him, that he was still awake and doing okay.
When I got to the rally point I had to answer a bunch of questions that I didn’t want to. Guys were wondering what had happened; some wanted to know what hole I was talking about, how only one guy out of all of us could have fallen in there, how lucky we were that it was only one of us, and more and more things that had nothing to do with what I was concerned about. I didn’t blame the guys, but I just wanted to get on with taking on this objective and get the hell out of there so I could see how Mike was doing.
We set up for an explosive breach to get the door open. I was in position and watching through my sights as they put the C-4 charge in place. My mind was on Mike, but I kept my eyes on the windows, making sure the rooms were clear. Before I knew it, the doors blew open, the flash bangs popped, and out of the smoke and noise two of the guys were leading out the target. As they were doing all that, I spotted a tall building that I knew I’d have to free-climb since Pemberton had the ladder. It gave me a vantage point to overlook almost the entire area, including Pemberton’s location.
With the guy in hand and the area clear, I made my way onto that roof. I looked back toward Pemberton’s position, hoping I could see the progress the CSAR guys were making. The helicopter was coming in and I listened to the live reports over the radios. I turned back away, listening to the action, while overwatching the area with my rifle and making sure to mission focus. A lot of people in the village had come out after all the commotion went down. I lit each of them up with my laser, got a distance on them. I sensed that none of them were hostiles, just a bunch of onlookers. I saw no weapons, no sign of an immediate threat. Being able to spot a potential hostile was an important part of our training. Evaluating a person’s demeanor, watching their eye movements, what they did with their hands and bodies, had all become second nature out there.
I turned back to Pemberton. He’d been extracted, wrapped in heat blankets, but the report wasn’t good. He was in shock, hypothermia had him, and they’d do other evaluations, but for right now they just needed to get him warm. They estimated that he’d fallen some seventy-five to eighty feet. They were sending a diver down to retrieve any sensitive items—his weapon, his laser, and a few other items. Later the diver would say that he’d gone down an additional forty feet below the water and still hadn’t contacted the bottom. At that point, he had to stop his search. No one had any idea how far down that hole went.
As I was on that roof, I heard the muffled sound of a suppressed shot. Perkins and his sniper element had fired on a secondary objective a few hundred meters from our position. Perkins observed a man coming out of his house with an AK-47, and he was headed in the direction of a secondary assault force. He had to take the guy out and he did. I scrambled off the roof and over to that position. Everything was secure, so I headed back toward Pemberton.
The Chinook was hovering about a hundred meters offset from the hole. The ramp was lowered and was balanced on top of that ledge we’d been walking across. The helicopter was angled nose up and the ramp was at about a thirty-degree angle. I knew what the plan was, but I couldn’t believe that these air force guys were going to do it. They had Pemberton on a stretcher, and they were running along at a pretty good pace. Instead of taking that balance beam, they were moving up and down through those ditches and mounds. They were running up and down that roller coaster, one of them in his wet suit and mask. I was impressed. I knew that those CSAR guys had a serious adrenaline overload happening. They didn’t get to have boots on the ground that often. They got to the Chinook and up the ramp they went with Pemberton, handing him off to the crew chiefs and medics who were waiti
ng. A few moments later, they were in the air.
The whole unit was back together near the hole, and of course, the conversation was all about what had happened and how. I knew that Pemberton was going to be okay. He was in great hands and every report said that his vital signs were strong.
We decided that the hole was pretty damn dangerous and we didn’t want to have to deal again with anything like what we’d just gone through. The consensus was that it needed to be blown up. I had no idea how they were going to do it, but I knew what my role had to be. I positioned myself about two hundred meters from the hole and scanned the area, ready to take out anybody who approached. With all the noise we were about to make, I knew that those curious folks were going to get even more curious. I hoped the explosion would discourage them from coming to check things out.
We decided that if we all contributed our hand grenades and tossed them in, that would take care of the hole. Ten guys stood in a semicircle with their grenades. They pulled the pins and dropped the grenades in. Six seconds later a muffled explosive sound came up out of the hole, and some smoke drifted up after that.
“That was stupid.”
“What the hell.”
“There ain’t enough grenades in the province.”
We didn’t know what was at the bottom of that pit. For all we knew it could have been paved or there was concrete down there. Our grenades could have just made the hole deeper, and if there was a system of tunnels, then the whole area could have collapsed like a giant sinkhole. I knew that I didn’t want to be near it with those explosions going off.
Eventually, we got some mortar rounds and an AC-130 dropped a high-explosive 105 howitzer round in there. With all those mortar rounds going off, we figured we’d have to see something happen. Nothing. A guy tossed in a thermobaric grenade. Nothing. Thermobarics are really devastating, and I’ve seen a whole house brought down by one of them. A bunch of fine dirt started falling like snow. Smoke trailed out of that chimneylike hole. I was keeping my distance. No way I was going near there. What if my fear of heights kicked in? Vertigo? Anything.
Finally after all the smoke cleared, everyone agreed that nothing was going to put a dent in that hole, let alone cover it up. Still, we were like guys everywhere. We couldn’t believe that something that simple could be defeating our best efforts and our equipment. A few more howitzer rounds got dropped, but the Pemberton hole would not be defeated.
At that point, after the last of those howitzer rounds had cleared, the Chinooks came back in to extract us. When we got back to the airfield, I saw a few of the CSAR guys sitting around on a pickup truck. They waved me over, and I sat on the tailgate.
“How the hell is that guy still alive?” one of them asked.
“I have no idea. What do you mean?”
“I went down in there,” another of them said. “There’s no way he scraped the sides of that hole. He fell straight down into that thing. I was eighty feet down. I saw him and he was conscious. He was doing little flutter kicks and other stuff to stay afloat. How long was he down there?”
I shrugged and said, “I don’t know exactly, a couple of hours.”
“Freakin’ amazing.”
“What was weird,” one of Pemberton’s rescuers said, “was that there was an old ladder down there. A wood ladder floating around. He said he hit that. That was what fractured his tibia.”
“That’s all that happened?” I asked. “A busted bone in his leg?”
“He hit his head on a rock. His helmet stayed on though. Good thing. He said other stuff kept falling on him.”
We all laughed.
“He said it was ten feet. Fifteen feet.”
“And you’re a sniper? Can’t judge distance without a scope?”
“Not without depth perception and night visit. “I said, and we all laughed.
I had to admit it all seemed ridiculous. Pemberton and I had walked away without a scratch from a twenty-four-hour firefight and had escaped from a deadly sniper, and now he was seriously injured walking on an operation that, otherwise, went off without a hitch.
I kept thinking about that helmet and asked what happened to it. No one knew but they said that based on how it looked, it wasn’t going to do anybody any good anymore. The conversation went on with these air force guys echoing what we’d all been saying. This was the most bizarre thing we’d seen. None of us could figure out what the purpose of that hole was. The diver guessed that it went down for another sixty to eighty feet. All I could think of was a missile silo or something, but even that made no sense at all. Thank goodness it wasn’t a dry hole.
I wanted to see Pemberton, so one of the drivers took me over to a hospital in Kandahar to see him. When I walked into his room, Mike was sitting up, propped up by pillows. He had a huge grin on his face.
“I’m so sorry, man,” he said.
“What? Are you kidding me?”
“I missed out. I wasn’t there to back you up.”
“Forget about that. You just survived a HALO jump into the center of the earth. You’re a superhero. Holeman or something.”
“It was freaking scary, Irv.”
He described what it was like, telling me how as he was falling, he twisted in the air and lost his rifle, but he un-holstered his pistol on the way down.
“Are you kidding me? You told me you were only down there ten or fifteen feet.”
“Didn’t matter. I thought I’d stepped through a doorway. All you guys ahead of me had disappeared in the dark and I figured you’d gone through a doorway. I thought maybe I’d tripped and I was going into the middle of a courtyard, and I’d need my weapon. Guys were coming after me.”
“You were tripping all right.” I wasn’t sure how much of this was what Pemberton really remembered, the effects of his knock on the head, or if it was the drugs they’d given him for the pain.
“You mean you had the presence of mind, as you were falling,” I continued, “to take out your weapon and aim?”
“Yes.”
“Did you not feel or hear the wind whistling past your ears?”
“I didn’t feel any wind. None at all. I didn’t feel anything as I was falling. I was weightless.”
“What happened when you hit?”
“Felt nothing at all. I was like a sack of shit. I must have been all loose.” He paused for a second. “I don’t remember much, but I think that my leg hit first.” He screwed his face up in pain.
“You okay?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. Everything just seems so strange right now.”
“The water?”
“Yeah, I think maybe that snapped me out of it. I don’t remember hitting my head, but they told me about my helmet. Maybe I was out. I remember trying to stay afloat, kicking every once in a while.”
Everything had worked out perfectly for him. The cold water had numbed him so that his leg pain wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t move it. He remembered holding on to that ladder with one hand, the pistol in the other, and using his arm to tread water a bit.
“The worst thing was how dark it was. I couldn’t see a thing. That freaked me out. Until that PJ came down to get me I felt so alone.”
“You couldn’t hear me?”
“I could. But there was this weird echo. I knew it was you and I understood some of what you were saying.”
I thought about how lucky we both were that I’d taken out my hearing protection. Normally, I waited until I’d reached the objective before doing that.
As I was sitting there considering that, Sergeant Casey came in. He had this superserious look on his face, and was walking with hands behind him. He stopped at the edge of the bed, on the opposite side of where I was standing.
“Michael Pemberton.” He produced a sheet of folded paper from behind him and set it down on Pemberton’s lap.
All was quiet while Mike unfolded it. A second later Pemberton started laughing. He set it down again, and I could see a Navy SEAL trident on the top of the paper, li
ke it was official letterhead. It offered the congratulations of the entire SEAL team community, and he was awarded his fake SEAL trident and HALO wings. He’d just had the free fall and swim of his life, so it all seemed appropriate.
“Yeah. I’m just glad I was in the navy.” Mike had done six years of service with them before joining us.
I added that to my list of—call it what you want—coincidence, providence, whatever, that surrounded this man down situation.
A couple of days later, Pemberton was released from the hospital. I went to get him and he was in a wheelchair.
“Can you believe it? A frickin’ rolling cage. Like a circus animal on parade.”
I thought maybe he was kidding, but he wasn’t smiling.
“This sucks. I want to stay here with you guys, Irv.”
“I know. Don’t worry about it. I’d rather see you go home. We’ve only got a month left.”
I didn’t have to add anything more about how short time was stress time.
“Besides, you’d gotten a whole lot of kills. I’m the Reaper, remember.” By that point, his kill count was fourteen. He was damn good with that Win Mag.
We talked for a while longer, both of us knowing the complicated truth that we both wanted him to go and wanted him to stay, just like I wanted out of there and wanted to stick around. I also told him that as soon as he got back to the States I was going to be in touch. Finally I added, “But seriously, if you don’t want to go, I’ll take your place.”
He laughed and then reached over and pulled me into a hug.
“I’ll see you when you’re back,” he told me.
We received status updates on each of his flights when he e-mailed us while waiting for the next one to take off. Every time I responded by asking him if he’d gone down in any holes.
He kept telling me to be safe, and I think that now that he was out of the bubble, no longer under the influence of our collective disassociation with the very real possibilities we faced, I could sense that he was upset. That was especially true once he finally got back to Benning.
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