Not a Good Day to Die

by Sean Naylor

  When the scouts arrived back at Eve, Crombie pushed Alacaraz’s two-man sniper team to the perimeter to engage the enemy fighters behind the knoll. Scanning the hillock with a forty-five-power scope, Alcaraz spotted a person moving in a gully at its base. His sniper couldn’t identify the target, so Alcaraz took the rifle and lined the man up in his sights. He aimed just above the target’s left shoulder to compensate for the slight breeze and squeezed the trigger. “I hit him right in the gut,” Alcaraz said. The man doubled over, tottered a few steps, and fell to the ground. The other fighters came out to retrieve him, but they were moving too fast for Alcaraz to double his tally.

  LYING on their bellies behind rocks that hid them from all but the most prying of eyes, Speedy and Bob watched through their spotting scopes in mounting frustration. For half an hour they had been observing an Al Qaida mortar crew send round after round arcing toward the 10th Mountain troops in the Halfpipe from a spot on the southeastern tip of the Whale. From their vantage point 3,500 meters to the southwest, the AFO recon experts could clearly see the guerrillas’ position, which included a machine gun that was well positioned to shoot at anyone foolhardy enough to drive through the Fishhook. The two Delta operators hidden on the south side of that bottleneck had tried repeatedly to call in an air strike on the mortar team, to no avail. First they had attempted to get the Apaches to destroy the position, only for Jimmy, monitoring their efforts from his table in the Mountain headquarters at Bagram, to tell them the Apaches were tied up on other missions, and to use fixed-wing aircraft instead. But none of the fast-movers was answering their calls.

  Finally a B-52 with the call sign Stiletto came up on the net and agreed to attack the mortar. But as it was about to release its bombs, a female voice—presumably from the AWACS—aborted the strike, for reasons that no one on the ground could understand. India team got back on the radio. They asked why the strike was aborted and reported that the enemy mortar was still firing at U.S. troops. After a while an F-16 was vectored onto the target. But this time India was unable to talk to the jet directly, and watched as its bombs sailed harmlessly wide of the target. At 8:41 a.m., over ninety minutes after India had first called for fire on the mortar position, a pair of Apaches finally rolled in and destroyed it with a lethal combination of 30mm cannon fire and a salvo of rockets. Speedy and his men said this was the most impressive close air support strike they witnessed during the operation. “The aircraft was able to shoot the target from a short distance and was able to fire until the target was destroyed,” one written account of the air strike said. “This was something aircraft at 18,000 feet could not do.”

  But the entire episode was typical of the problems with which all three AFO teams had to grapple as they tried to convert their positional advantage into killing power. The core of the problem was that although AFO’s awareness of their surroundings in general and of the enemy’s disposition in particular was far superior to that of the TF Rakkasan troops on the valley floor, the Rakkasans enjoyed “priority of fires,” meaning if a Rakkasan element and an AFO team were each requesting an air strike, the aircraft would be vectored to answer the Rakkasans’ call first. This situation was compounded by the lack of timely information the AFO teams were getting about where all the U.S. infantry elements were on the battlefield. The AFO operators sometimes found themselves talking to the Task Force 11 fires officer over a thousand miles away in Masirah in their efforts to get an aircraft overhead to strike a target only a couple of thousand meters in front of them. The result of this confused and confusing situation was that 10th Mountain and 101st troops were filling the radio nets with calls for close air support, but were often only able to give the strike aircraft a vague description of where they thought the target might be. The AFO teams, meanwhile, could identify the mortar positions and machine guns firing at the infantry, but sometimes had to wait over an hour to arrange for an air strike on the target. All the while the enemy mortars continued to prosecute punishing attacks against the TF Rakkasan soldiers in the Shahikot. “Listening to the AFO teams ask for any aircraft to drop JDAMs on enemy mortar positions without execution for hours, while hearing hearing [Rakkasan] calls for medevac was very frustrating,” a special operator wrote.

  In Gardez and Bagram, Pete Blaber and Jimmy worked aggressively to unscrew the situation. With Blaber deep in discussions with Jimmy, Glenn P. monitored all the radio traffic from the valley in order to stay abreast of the friendly and enemy situation. Back at India’s observation post, while Speedy and Bob wrestled with the inadequate system for calling in close air support, Dan, the Gray Fox operator, was listening to enemy transmissions and relaying the most important info that he was able to translate to the others. A consistent theme running through Al Qaida’s radio chatter was the enemy fighters’ fear of the Apaches, whose presence over the battlefield they had not anticipated. Jason, Dan’s counterpart in Juliet, who spoke Arabic and Pashto, was also enjoying some success. He managed to intercept several enemy communications and identified the frequency Al Qaida was using to control its mortar fires.

  Juliet initially enjoyed more success than India, probably because the team had two satellite radios, enabling them to streamline their calls for fire, compared with India’s single PRC-117F. A few minutes before 9 a.m., Juliet team leader Kris and his men saw Al Qaida forces move into position on a plateau about 1,300 meters east of Serkhankhel and only 1,000 meters away from Chip Preysler’s 2-187 command post. From Juliet’s observation post less than a kilometer away in the eastern ridge, Dave H. watched through his scope as six enemy fighters armed with RPG-7s, AK-type assault rifles, and one PK machine gun with six boxes of ammunition occupied three fighting positions on the plateau. All six wore black turbans, greenish shirts, and black or brown blanket wraps. They also wore military webbing and carried duffel bags or small rucksacks. The leader was a short, stocky fighter with black hair and a medium-length beard who directed his men with hand and arm signals and, in a bizarre touch, carried a big silver flag with Arabic writing on it.

  Realizing the Al Qaida fighters were setting up to engage Preysler’s troops, Juliet called in a “bomb box” on the enemy positions. (A bomb box is a rectangular patch of terrain—expressed as width, length, direction, and elevation—given to a bomber crew, who then drop enough bombs to destroy all targets within the area.) The team contacted a B-52, and within minutes six JDAMs rained down, killing four of the fighters, including the commander. The two survivors, one of whom was mortally wounded, got to their feet and dragged the commander’s body down to some nearby low ground. The air strike alarmed the Rakkasan troops, who angrily voiced their concern until they were informed that it had saved them from being ambushed. Al Qaida fighters reoccupied the same position twice, and each time Juliet arranged a similarly devastating bombing run. In a testament to the enemy’s motivation, after each air strike, even the wounded would assist in carrying off the dead.

  As the day wore on, the AFO teams gradually overcame the systemic obstacles in the close air support process. The result was a series of air strikes that pulverized Al Qaida mortar positions, command and control buildings and troops in the open, but also highlighted the weaknesses of a plan that relied almost exclusively on air power for indirect fires. For every air strike called in by AFO that resulted in a destroyed enemy position, there was a bombing run that couldn’t be arranged before the target had moved, that missed the target completely, or, in some cases, that hit right where it was supposed to, but failed to kill the enemy. Typical of the last scenario was India’s experience of chasing three enemy fighters around the battlefield with JDAMs. The team called in a bomb strike on the guard tower they had noticed the previous evening on the southwestern edge of Babulkhel. The bombing destroyed the structure and killed two of the five guerrillas in the building. The three survivors ran from the ruins to a small building just south of Babulkhel. Again India called in an air strike, but this time the bomb missed by fifty meters and the trio escaped and hid in a roc
k crevice outside the village. Speedy and Bob kept their eyes on them and called in more JDAMs, but the enemy fighters had found a perfect hiding spot to protect them from the flying steel shards. Then, to the astonishment of Bob and Speedy, the three militants emerged from the gap in the rocks that had been their salvation, laid out their prayer mats, and kneeled to begin their prayers. That was all the invitation the AFO men needed. Another air strike was quickly arranged. When it struck, it killed two of the kneeling men. But the third, apparently unharmed, stood and raised his hands to the sky in a gesture of helplessness before walking off to the north.

  Together, the thirteen men of India, Juliet, and Mako 31 (with the assistance of the jets and Apaches overhead) were almost certainly responsible for killing more enemy fighters during daylight hours on March 2 than the rest of the U.S. forces in the Shahikot put together. It is impossible to assess the exact number of enemy killed by the air strikes called in by the AFO operators, but a conservative estimate based on the recorded observations of the teams would put the number at several dozen. By identifying a series of Al Qaida mortar and machine-gun positions and command posts so that the jets and Apaches could destroy them, AFO kept the enemy from bringing even more fire to bear on the embattled TF Rakkasan troops in the Shahikot. It is not much of a stretch to state that some of the U.S. infantrymen—who knows how many?—owed their lives to Pete Blaber’s men.

  By occupying positions high above the valley floor, the AFO teams had given themselves a near-perfect situational awareness that the Rakkasans could not hope to achieve from either the valley floor or their blocking positions. The special operators also enjoyed a territorial advantage that made up for their lack of numbers. “I was comfortable so long as I held the high ground that I could hold off a hundred of them,” one of the men on the teams said. Their achievements represented a total validation of Blaber’s decision to push the envelope with his chain of command in order to contribute what AFO alone could provide to Operation Anaconda. His belief in “Patton’s three principles of war”—audacity, audacity and audacity—and his trust in the ability of his well-trained, superbly motivated men to make the right calls had been proven right.

  By early afternoon three distinct views of how the operation was going were emerging among U.S. commanders. The views of the Special Forces officers associated with Task Force Hammer, which had failed to deliver on the promises made by Mulholland and Rosengard, were unremittingly negative. Their force was in retreat, having been beaten back by an enemy arrayed in more depth than they had been led to expect. The chain of command in Task Forces Rakkasan and Mountain was similarly downcast. Almost half the force they had air-assaulted into the valley was pinned down and had taken heavy casualties. Like Task Force Hammer, they had been shocked at the enemy’s strength and resilience. Nothing was going as planned. Hammer’s ongoing withdrawal had allowed the enemy to focus almost his entire attention on the Rakkasan forces in the valley. Already senior officers were discussing a complete withdrawal from the Shahikot. Only at the AFO command post in Gardez, where Blaber had the most complete picture of the battlefield, courtesy of the reports from his three teams, and fully understood the damage being inflicted on the enemy, was the mood confident and upbeat.

  WHEN Lou Bello, the Mountain fires planner, walked into the TOC not long after LaCamera’s troops had landed, it was clear something big was going wrong. The headquarters tent was more crowded than usual, and there was a distinct tension in the air. “Ashen-faced” officers clustered around the screen showing feeds from the Predator while Hagenbeck and Harrell talked earnestly on the radio and telephone.

  Already the plan had gone wildly off course. The strength of the opposition that confronted Zia surprised Hagenbeck, who had expected Anaconda to proceed along the same lines as earlier battles in Afghanistan, with little actual combat in the early stages. Hagenbeck thought Zia would be able to proceed into the Shahikot’s villages and conduct “negotiations” over the enemy’s surrender. “There might be a few shots fired” during the “negotiations,” he said, but otherwise he thought TF Rakkasan would be able to land relatively unhindered along the eastern side of the valley to establish the blocking positions.

  Task Force Hammer’s failure to gain entrance to the valley presented Hagenbeck with his first critical decision of the day: whether or not to proceed with the supporting effort—the air assault—when his main effort had been stymied. Believing that Task Force Hammer would get back into the fight quickly, he decided to press on with the air assault. Zia’s attack meant there was little chance of achieving any tactical surprise by delaying the rest of the operation. “To think we could come back and do this twenty-four or forty-eight hours later was just not realistic,” he said.

  About two hours into the fight, Hagenbeck spoke for the first time with Wiercinski, whose location on the Finger afforded him a ringside seat from which to observe the action on the valley. The Rakkasan commander also had good communications with Preysler and LaCamera as they fought their pieces of the battle. Hagenbeck was coming to the realization that Marzak was a nest of enemy fighters, rather than a village full of civilians, as much of the intelligence had claimed. He asked Wiercinski whether he saw any signs of civilians there. Wiercinski replied in the negative. Hagenbeck was getting similar reports from the AFO teams via Jimmy, who, he said, “was like a shadow, always whispering in my ear, telling me what was going on.” Convinced there were no women or children in the village, the two-star general decided to use the Air Force and Navy jets to “level” Marzak.

  Hagenbeck then faced a decision about where and when to insert the second lift of six Chinooks carrying the remainder of Wiercinski’s force into the valley. The 250-plus soldiers spent the day sitting on the tarmac by their helicopters waiting for the word to launch. As the Mountain commander considered various courses of action and different flight routes to get the lift into the valley, some of his staff officers, trying to get ahead of the game, indicated that a “go” was imminent. As a result, some of the chalks climbed aboard their Chinooks three times, thinking they were about to go into combat. Each time they they were ordered back off the helicopters, their frustration mounted. Finally Hagenbeck decided to delay the second wave indefinitely, in the belief that the LZs were too hot and that LaCamera and the other commanders had the situation well in hand. “I didn’t want a shoot-down, and we were pretty well stabilized by early afternoon,” Hagenbeck said.

  But as frantic reports of troops in heavy contact along the length of the eastern ridge poured in to Bagram, it appeared to observers in the Mountain headquarters that Hagenbeck was on the verge of pulling everyone out of the Shahikot and “recocking,” i.e., trying again. Hagenbeck acknowledged that was an option he seriously considered. Perhaps anticipating an official order to that effect from Hagenbeck, his subordinates directed all the Rakkasan forces in the Shahikot to prepare for extraction that night.

  By early afternoon TF Rakkasan radios were crackling to life throughout the Shahikot with orders from Bagram to pull out of the valley. The details changed as the afternoon wore on, but the essence of them was that helicopters would land after dark near the Halfpipe to evacuate LaCamera’s troops who were pinned down there. All others, including Crombie’s element, were to march north to LZ 15 at the top of the valley and prepare for extraction. This meant a tough movement of up to six kilometers through difficult, possibly enemy-held terrain at night. Up and down the eastern ridge, exhausted TF Rakkasan soldiers who had fought hard to gain their blocking positions now prepared to abandon them. When he heard the order come over the radio at Blocking Position Betty, Mark Nielsen was shocked at what such a directive implied about the enemy strength. There must be thousands of ’em here, he thought.

  But then, after listening in to a radio conversation in which Hagenbeck and Wiercinski appeared to reach a decision to pull their forces out, at 3:27 p.m., Pete Blaber made the most important radio call of Operation Anaconda. Speaking to Jimmy, who sat just a few fe
et from Hagenbeck and the other generals, Blaber said that pulling out would be a huge mistake. The three AFO teams held much of the key terrain in the valley. The enemy was being decimated by the air strikes they were calling in. Regardless of the actions taken by Wiercinski and Hagenbeck, Blaber said the AFO teams would stay in position at least until the next day. This was “the battlefield opportunity of a lifetime,” he told Jimmy, and he intended to keep on killing the enemy until there was no more killing to be done.

  Jimmy walked over and recounted the conversation to Hagenbeck. After hearing him out, the Mountain commander gathered his three most senior advisers—Harrell, Jones, and Joe Smith, his chief of staff—and pulled them outside to discuss the situation. They considered three options: pulling everyone out, holding what they had, or doing something else. Hagenbeck’s assessment, he said, was “we were being extraordinarily successful, except in one place,” an almost exact rendition of the sitrep Blaber had delivered via Jimmy minutes earlier. The outcome of the huddle was a decision to “reinforce success” by putting the next lift into the northern end of the valley, with the intention of having the troops then fight their way south, while extracting the troops pinned down in the Halfpipe and on Rak TAC Ridge after dark.