Not a Good Day to Die

by Sean Naylor

  Juliet was the larger of the two. Its three men were led by Master Sergeant Kris K., a family man with golden blond hair and a boyish face from West Virginia. Kris was in his thirties and about five feet ten with a very athletic build. His work was characterized by precision and attention to detail. Second in command was Master Sergeant Bill R., an easygoing skydiver and technology wiz who could work miracles with computers. The team was rounded out by Sergeant First Class Dave H., the youngest of the five new arrivals who was also incredibly fit and another technology buff.

  India had only two operators, less than the bare minimum for a mission with such a thin margin for error. But the two men could not have been better suited for the task at hand. The thirty-six-year-old team leader was Master Sergeant Kevin W. Short and tautly muscled, he grew up in the backwoods of western Kentucky, learning how to handle a hunting rifle by his eighth birthday. In addition to his hunting prowess, Kevin possessed a natural talent for running far and fast. He had been a competitive triathlete, and after he left his colleagues for dust in his first five-mile run during Delta’s operator training course, he was nicknamed “Speedy.” Every operator is assigned a nickname when he joins Delta. The names usually refer to a physical characteristic or personality trait, and are not always flattering or even completely accurate. But Speedy’s was entirely appropriate. Speedy did everything—eating, driving, running—as if his life depended on being the first one to finish. His penchant for speed had actually forced him into the Army. When he was seventeen, police arrived on the scene during an illegal motorcycle race between Speedy and a friend. His buddy was arrested on the spot, but Speedy outran the law on his bike, only for the police to show up at his home soon after. The judge strongly suggested Speedy join the Army, and dropped all charges when Speedy did so. That was nineteen years ago. Western Kentucky’s loss had been the Army’s gain. Speedy had gone straight from high school into Special Forces as an “SF baby.” He joined Delta in 1991. After doing his time in an assault troop, his hunting ability made him a natural for a spot in one of the reconnaissance and surveillance troops.

  Speedy’s thirty-eight-year-old second in command was another master sergeant, Bob H., a stocky six-footer from Austin, Texas, who functioned as a “pack mule” on patrols, carrying other operators’ gear if they were having trouble keeping up. Bighearted and reliable, Bob’s reputation was of a guy who just wouldn’t quit. “If you’re in a bad situation, there’s nobody you’d rather have beside you,’ cause he’s gonna be there,” said another Delta NCO. Speedy and Bob were close friends and made a terrific recce team. Both were extraordinarily fit and avid outdoorsmen—expert trackers and game hunters. “If you needed two men to track a chipmunk in a 100,000-acre forest and kill it with one bullet, these are the two,” said Blaber later. “Although two operators was less than I would have said were needed for these missions, these two were living proof of why you never say ‘never’ with regards to rules or guiding principles governing tactics. Having Speedy and Bob on a team together was like having Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton together in the frontier days—as hunters and athletes, they had no peer, anywhere.”

  Juliet had the northern reconnaissance. Their goal was reach a position from which the tri-cities area and the Ewadzkhal Valley, five kilometers to the Shahikot’s east and the site of reported enemy activity, could be observed. The concept they developed was to drive southeast down the road that ran in front of the safe house and penetrate the Sate Kandow pass that led through the mountains to Khowst. The Americans knew all about the Sate Kandow from their homework. Throughout the 1980s mujahideen forces under Jalalluddin Haqqani held the pass, effectively blocking the main road from Gardez to Khowst. The Soviets only broke through once, in 1987, behind an artillery and air bombardment so powerful that the chemical residue from the explosives poisoned the mountain streams. Twenty-five years later the pass retained its reputation as a forbidding, treacherous gateway to eastern Paktia and Khowst. No U.S. or other allied troops had yet broached the Sate Kandow. According to the Afghans at the safe house, hundreds of old antitank mines lined the pass, so once between its sheer cliffs, the operators would leave the road and drive south via a trail to find a suitable site to drop off the recce team. In phase two of the mission Juliet team would either walk or ride on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to positions several kilometers northeast of the Shahikot.

  The southern recce was India Team’s responsibility. The first phase would be to drive to Zermat, which appeared to be a logistics hub for the enemy in the Shahikot. No Americans had driven down the Zermat road since January 20, after the CIA and Dagger higher headquarters had told their men in Gardez to limit operations in that area. Reopening the road would open the back door to the Shahikot, Blaber told his men. The second phase would involve a second vehicle recce, dropping India Team off at a point from which they could continue toward their observation posts on foot. An alternate plan involved a helicopter insertion south of Pecawul Ghar, Celam Kac and Jakangir Kot, the site of a suspected Al Qaida exfiltration network and headquarters. Intel analysts assessed this area as the main avenue of escape from the valley. From their LZ, the team would then hike to their observation posts. (Blaber did not want either of his teams to actually enter the Shahikot. That would have carried too high a risk of compromise, not only for the teams, but for the entire operation.)

  The first phase of the northern recce was ready to go within a couple of days, but there were problems with the southern approach. The CIA was running local agents into Zermat and didn’t want Americans driving in that direction and arousing local suspicions. Bad weather south of the Shahikot also argued for a delay. So while India Team refined their plan, the rest of the AFO contingent focused their energies on Juliet’s mission. Glenn P., AFO’s intel wizard, gave Juliet a briefing paper on the situation in the area they were about to enter. Their route was controlled by militiamen loyal to local warlord Pacha Khan Zadran. Although loosely allied with him the Americans had identified Pacha Khan as a troublemaker and begun to marginalize him. Pacha Khan’s men had a checkpoint and billets along the Gardez-Khowst highway before it reached the Sate Kandow, and an observation post in the hills overlooking the road. There had been no report of enemy movement around the Sate Kandow since the end of December, when about 500 Al Qaida troops were supposedly in the area, as well as Taliban forces. The only reported enemy activity in the area was west and south of where Juliet hoped to emplace their observation posts. Those reports—of up to 100 Al Qaida fighters and sixteen tanks in the town of Menjawar to the west, and of “many Al Qaida” to the south in the Shahikot—were, of course, why the mission was being undertaken in the first place. The briefing included another unsettling detail: “According to mine maps, the infiltration road area is cleared of mines, meaning the area was mined in the past. Accuracy of the clearing is not known.”

  The reconnaissance mission began at 11 a.m. February 17. A Predator unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) appeared in the cloudy skies above the safe house and began following the route toward the Sate Kandow. The Predator beamed back live television pictures to Bagram where Jimmy watched closely, relaying what he saw to the operations center in the safe house. (There were two types of Predator flying over Afghanistan: an unarmed version controlled by the Air Force and a CIA-controlled version armed with a Hellfire missile.) AFO had arranged for the Predator to fly the entire route before the patrol left Gardez, so the team would be forewarned of any obstacles or potential threats. The Predator returned within an hour, having spotted nothing untoward. It took up position overhead as Juliet’s two Toyota Tacoma crew-cab trucks pulled out of the compound onto the main road, hung a right, and headed for the mountains.

  The Toyotas trundled through Pacha Khan’s checkpoints without incident. The tiny convoy drove into the small town of Dara and turned south along a dirt trail that led into the heart of the dark mountains. The operators kept their eyes peeled for danger, bouncing in their seats as the bone-jarring ride took them past
the snowline at 8,000 feet, higher and higher into the mountains. But there was no sign of Al Qaida, or any other human activity. The trail became a creek bed covered with deep snow. The truck engines labored as the drivers negotiated the increasingly rough and rocky terrain. The operators wanted to get far enough south to identify spots for future observation posts, but the route became impassable before that was possible. Juliet turned around and retraced their route back to Gardez. The Predator, which observed nothing alarming, monitored their progress until they reached the safe house.

  That first recce taught Juliet several lessons. Most important, the rough terrain meant the northern routes toward the Shahikot were not viable avenues of approach or escape. The AFO troops found it harder than expected to negotiate the rocky mountain trails. In addition, communication and coordination with the numerous intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft that supported the mission needed more planning. On the plus side, the team’s satellite radios with batwing antennae that could be attached to the roof or the bed of the truck worked well. For the first time the troops could talk securely over satellite from inside a moving vehicle. Overall, the operators were more than satisfied with the mission’s planning and execution.

  The next day the Americans got a big break when one of the CIA’s sources gave up fresh information on Al Qaida positions in the Shahikot area. Once again the way Spider and his men treated the information validated the pilot team concept. Instead of the usual CIA practice—even in war zones where U.S. troops were fighting—of sending a report up the Agency’s chain for editing and dissemination, which would have forced the AFO and Dagger troops working just yards away from their Agency colleagues to wait days before receiving the benefits of their wisdom, the CIA operatives gave the soldiers the raw report of their interview with the source immediately. As a result, the AFO men were able to order overhead imagery to confirm or deny the source’s report, and share the pictures with Spider’s men.

  Meanwhile the operators continued planning further recon missions. They were still running into problems over the CIA’s reluctance to sanction a road recce to Zermat, which in turn was delaying India’s environmental recce of the Shahikot’s mountainous southern approach. AFO considered several options, one of which was to land India by helicopter around the Zawar Ghar Mountains that ran southwest to northeast about twelve kilometers south of the Shahikot. In the meantime, Speedy and Bob decided to see if it was possible to ride ATVs down the Zermat road, leaving the road and outflanking each village to avoid being seen. They went about five kilometers before veering off ahead of the first village, only to discover that the ground was far too muddy. The transmission on Speedy’s ATV broke and Bob had to tow it back to Gardez. So much for that idea.

  Events were moving faster for Juliet. Blaber wanted them to penetrate deeper into the Sate Kandow than on the first mission, and to enter the Ewadzkhal Valley, which ran west from the Sate Kandow toward the Shahikot. To prepare for the mission, the team was introduced to Pacha Khan’s son, who was an old friend of Rasul and who led a group of Pacha Khan’s fighters manning a checkpoint on the Gardez-Khowst road between the safe house and the Sate Kandow. Pacha Khan’s son declared himself more than willing to escort the team into the pass, which intelligence reports indicated was controlled by his father. The team members doubted the reports’ accuracy, but nevertheless realized the value of a local guide who commanded some loyalty in the immediate area.

  Juliet’s reconnaissance patrol departed the safe house at 10 a.m. February 19. A Predator again led the way, but this time a manned spy aircraft—a Navy EP-3 Aries II with a twenty-four-person crew whose job was to intercept and analyze a wide range of signals, as well as to provide detailed moving footage of the ground from high altitude—was also on station overhead. AFO requested that the two aircraft check the entire route for potential ambush sites and gauge reactions in nearby towns to Juliet’s probing.

  This time Juliet took a more robust force into the Sate Kandow. Crammed into six pickups were all three Juliet members, plus Master Sergeant Bob H. from India, an Air Force combat controller called Jay, whose job was to call in air strikes if the team came under attack, two more AFO men from Gardez, and a dozen Afghan fighters. Also along for the ride was a signals intelligence soldier called Jason, who worked for one of the U.S. military’s most secret organizations. The unit was code-named Gray Fox, but it had also gone by a smattering of other bland code names, including the Intelligence Support Activity, the Army of Virginia (sometimes amended to the Army of Northern Virginia), and the U.S. Army Office of Military Support.

  Gray Fox was a strange animal. Formed in 1981, it specialized in gathering human and signals intelligence for the Pentagon under the most challenging of circumstances, often working with Delta’s aviation squadron to get behind enemy lines. It had about 200-250 operators, divided into squadrons. Many, but by no means all, of the operators were drawn from Special Forces, because of SF soldiers’ reputation for self-sufficiency and independence. During the war in Afghanistan, Gray Fox worked directly for CENTCOM, which attached Gray Fox personnel to AFO from the start of the conflict. Four of the six AFO teams in Afghanistan included a Gray Fox operator, which was how Jason now found himself sitting in a Toyota pickup truck with his secret equipment, concentrating intently as he scanned frequencies for any suspicious broadcasts from the mountains. Jason was a linguist, but his ability to track the frequencies of Al Qaida broadcasts was arguably more critical than his ability to translate them. Once he identified a frequency on which the enemy was broadcasting, it could be passed up the military intelligence chain of command so that spy planes and satellites with more sophisticated listening equipment could monitor it twenty-four hours a day, or help him triangulate the source of the broadcast. When a Gray Fox element joined a black special ops task force, it was known as Task Force Orange.

  ONCE again the drive to the pass went smoothly. This time, instead of turning off at Dara, the convoy continued. Juliet’s group became the first Americans to penetrate the feared Sate Kandow. The road was a series of hairpin bends once it entered the pass, the shoulders of which towered 1,200 feet overhead. It was perfect ambush country, but the villagers who waved from the side of the road appeared friendly. Once inside the Sate Kandow, the convoy linked up with another group of Pacha Khan Zadran’s fighters, who guided the Americans to two places of particular interest.

  The first was a small valley running north-northeast from the midpoint of the Sate Kandow. Pacha Khan’s men said an enemy force of about 700 men had passed through this valley about four weeks previously, bound for the Shahikot through the Ewadzkhal Valley. Between ten and twenty “Taliban” had remained until about ten days ago, they added. That a significant force had come through was clear. The valley was covered in footprints and littered with syringes, empty tuna cans, and coupons issued by al-Wafa (a Saudi “humanitarian” agency long suspected of financing Islamist terrorists).

  The convoy continued for five kilometers to the small town of Obastay, which lay about a kilometer to the southwest of the highway down a smaller road. Local militiamen told the Americans that “bad guys” had a base and an observation post near there, close to Al Kowt, where the Americans knew of some underground Al Qaida facilities. Pacha Khan’s men were clearly worried about what their new American allies were getting them into, and refused to go down the side road that led to the observation post. With the Predator low on fuel because the patrol had taken longer than expected, the operators were preparing to return to Gardez when word came that they might already have overstayed their welcome in the Sate Kandow. The Predator had picked up suspicious activity at the western end of the Ewadzkhal Valley, about thirteen kilometers west of Obastay. About twenty men had arrived in seven vehicles, dismounted, and set up a checkpoint about 700 meters from the reported location of another suspected underground facility. The AFO operators questioned Pacha Khan’s men about the report. The militiamen said the activity had nothing to do wi
th them, and whoever it was could not be friendly.

  That conclusion was reinforced by an intercept Jason made at 10:47 a.m., the best assessment of which was that someone in the Sate Kandow was warning fighters in the Shahikot of the AFO convoy, hence the blocking force’s appearance in the Ewadzkhal Valley. (Intriguingly, the intercepted broadcast was transmitted on the same frequency bin Laden had reportedly used in Tora Bora, leading the AFO troops to believe there was a good chance a senior Al Qaida leader was near the Shahikot.) With their access to UAVs, spy planes, and satellites, the AFO troops had a high-tech edge over their foes in the reconnaissance arena, but these events proved they did not enjoy a monopoly in the spying game. They, too, were being watched.

  The AFO operators judged the patrol a success. The news of the 700 enemy fighters headed for the Shahikot buttressed earlier intelligence reports and illustrated that the “bad guys” were using the Ewadzkhal Valley as a route to and from the Shahikot. The Americans now also knew that the Al Qaida forces had a reasonably effective security network screening their operations in the Shahikot.

  ON February 20, Blaber finally moved to launch his recce missions to the south and west of the Shahikot. With Anaconda’s D-Day set for February 28 and bad weather approaching, the window of opportunity for India’s environmental recon was closing. Blaber’s only option was to infiltrate the team by helicopter. But to avoid compromising the mission, the team would have to insert far to the south of the Shahikot. AFO’s plan was to insert India (Speedy and Bob plus Hans, a SEAL Team 6 operator from the Northern AFO element) south of Zawar Ghar. The trio would scale Zawar Ghar, then hike north to establish an observation post from which they could monitor several areas of reported enemy activity, including the villages in the Shahikot, and to assess the potential of the area south of the Shahikot for future AFO missions. The day was spent in a frenzy of planning and coordination as AFO lined up several intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft as well as Navy F-14s and F-18s and at least one AC-130 Spectre gunship to provide on-call close air support if necessary. (The AC-130 was armed with a stabilized 105mm howitzer, as well as 40mm and 25mm cannon, and could deliver devastatingly accurate fire from thousands of feet above the ground.) The team took off in a 160th Chinook shortly after nightfall and, in order to avoid arousing suspicion, followed the route used by all helicopters to resupply the Khowst safe house. But again the men of India Team were to be frustrated. An impenetrable layer of cloud covered both their primary and alternate landing zones. At 7:31 p.m. the clouds parted for a long moment, allowing the EP-3E shadowing the mission to scan the countryside and report nothing unusual. But that was all the luck India was to have that evening. The mission was canceled. The team flew back to Gardez.