Not a Good Day to Die (31 page)

THE
men of India Team and Mako 31 walked east together at a steady pace, following the Zawar Khwar creek. After three kilometers India Team turned north up a smaller creek bed. For this mission Speedy had cut his team down to the bare minimum of three men: himself and Bob from Delta plus Dan, the Gray Fox operator who had proved himself on the environmental recce. Neither Speedy nor Kris, the Juliet Team leader, had been keen on taking Hans or Nelson on this most vital of missions. The pair’s negative attitude counted against them when it came time for the team leaders to pick the warriors they would take into the mountains. “Hans and Nelson were naysayers the whole time,” a Delta operator said.

The weather—clear in Gardez—turned foul as they pushed into the mountains. The operators fought their way through rain, sleet, and intermittent snow flurries. It wasn’t comfortable, but the weather wrapped the trio in its shrouds, shielding them from the prying eyes of any lookouts in the mountains. Nevertheless, the three walked with their weapons at the ready. Speedy and Dan each carried an M4, but Bob had armed himself with his prized SR25 Stoner sniper rifle, which is modeled on the M16, but is designed for extraordinary accuracy and fires a 7.62mm round instead of the 5.56mm bullet fired by the M16 and M4. India faced a seven-kilometer hike to their observation post, but compared to the grueling trek they had endured during the environmental recce, this was an easy movement with just a few short climbs up rocky stream banks interrupting an otherwise gentle ascent, albeit in freezing temperatures carrying over 80 pounds of gear per man. But none of the three was relaxing, physically or mentally. As they trudged uphill, the smell of smoke drifted into their nostrils. Someone had lit a fire nearby. Dogs were barking off to their right in the distance. On a normal patrol the operators might have been tempted to investigate, but tonight making it to the observation post by daylight was all that counted.

After more than six hours of movement, they knew they were getting close. Because the site they had picked for their observation post was only two kilometers from the southern tip of the Whale, they were even more careful than usual about staying hidden, though it was still dark. Dropping their rucks, they crawled the final 200 meters to the position, which was behind some large rocks. Once they had clambered down, they realized they had chosen well: from their aerie they could observe the Fishhook, the southern end of the Whale, Hammer’s route into the Shahikot, and the southwestern corner of the valley.

At 5:22 a.m. Speedy called back to Gardez with a simple message: India Team was in.

MAKO
31’s operators were less experienced in this terrain than the two Delta teams, but they had been handed the toughest movement. The five-man team included three SEALs and an Air Force combat controller called Andy, but also, incongruously, a Navy explosive ordnance disposal expert. Once India Team had split to the north, Goody and his men faced a daunting eleven-kilometer walk over jagged 8,000-foot ridgelines to reach their observation post. Because the goal was to arrive in the valley unseen by the enemy, Goody’s men did not take the most direct or obvious route to the Finger. Instead, they took a roundabout approach, heading south for at least 1,000 meters before turning north again. Knee-deep snow, rocky terrain, and driving rain, snow, and sleet that slashed their faces made it heavy going. With Blaber’s exhortations fresh in his memory, Goody drove his men forward just as Speedy had done a few days earlier under similar conditions. “He did a great job, too,” Blaber said of Goody. “They had a really tough movement.” But despite their best efforts, as the night wore on, it became clear Mako 31 would not make it to their observation post before daylight. Exhausted, they stopped about a thousand meters southwest of their desired position. Their present location was just west of a 9,400-foot ridgeline that stretched north to become the Finger and blocked Mako 31’s view of Marzak and the landing zones designated for Paul LaCamera’s 1-87 Infantry. However, they enjoyed good sight lines down to the Fishhook and across to the Whale. At 5 a.m. the team called the AFO operations center at Gardez to report their location and their intention of staying put until the next night, when they would move forward to occupy the observation post.

As the gray dawn broke over the Shahikot Valley, Blaber and his men had reason to feel proud of what they had accomplished. Two of the three teams were already in position, with the third just a thousand meters away. They had moved from the safe house—whose location was undoubtedly known to all Taliban and Al Qaida leaders in the area—overland through harsh weather and harsher terrain into the heart of the enemy without being seen. Through a combination of meticulous preparation, tactical boldness, personal courage, and a professionalism honed by years of rigorous training, AFO had given the generals in Bagram an extraordinary advantage. There were now thirteen pairs of American eyes watching the Shahikot. How the generals used this gift would go a long way toward determining the course of the operation.

25.

THE satellite radio in the AFO operations center in Gardez crackled to life at 9:20 a.m. on February 28. On the line was Speedy, the first of the three team leaders to report in. He had had an interesting start to his morning. The site India had picked for their observation post could accommodate one person, but was too exposed for the entire team to spend days on end there. The hillside dropped away just behind (i.e., to the south of ) the observation post, so the operators moved their rucks and communications gear about twenty-five meters back to a small nook out of sight of the Fishhook and the Whale. Then Bob crept back down behind the rocks, while Speedy crawled to a ledge about 200 meters to the east. With the team separated, the early morning silence was broken by the unexpected—and definitely unwanted—tinkling of small bells.

Speedy froze then turned his head away from the valley to look behind him where the noise seemed to be coming from. Below him a couple of hundred meters to the north he saw an old Afghan man, unarmed and alone except for the small herd of goats he was tending. Speedy shrank back. The man hadn’t seen him yet. Grabbing his small handheld MBITR (pronounced “embitter” or “M-biter”) radio, he whispered the news to the others, then squeezed himself further into the crack between two rocks where he had been hiding and lay still. He was well hidden, not only by the rocks but also by the camouflage outfit he was wearing. Designed for hunters and snipers (Speedy and Bob were both), the gear was little more than netting overlaid with artificial leaves, hence its trade name: Leafywear. The two had chosen suits of grayish brown, the same color as the rocks in that part of Afghanistan, topped with soft tan “boonie” hats. Speedy and Bob were virtually impossible to spot as they crouched between the rocks. They hadn’t worn the gear on the way in, but whenever either of them moved forward from where they’d stashed their rucks, they put on the Leafywear, which was less bulky than the traditional “gillie suits” worn by snipers. To Speedy, wearing Leafywear was second nature. He wore the same sort of outfit hunting wild turkeys in his native Kentucky.

The other two operators were hidden by rocks, and Speedy was confident he hadn’t been seen, but he was still very concerned. The goatherds in these parts had probably been grazing their livestock on the same land for years, and would notice if something seemed out of place, he figured. His mind raced through his options if the goatherd stumbled upon him. He couldn’t think of many. There was no way he would shoot an unarmed civilian, and if they took the man prisoner, his family would probably come looking for him within twenty-four hours. Speedy’s only course of action would be to let the man go and immediately call back to Gardez with the news his team had been compromised. That would probably mean immediate extraction or an order to sneak back out of the valley. It could jeopardize the entire operation. Very fortunately, the wizened Afghan led his goats away. Speedy breathed again and turned his attention back to the valley.

OVER
the next several hours the AFO teams gathered the first empirical evidence of a large-scale enemy presence in the Shahikot. Using Schmidt-Cassegrain spotting scopes, each team methodically scanned as much of the landscape as its members could see from their perch. (The scopes allowed an operator to follow a man and know he was carrying a Kalashnikov rifle from six or seven kilometers away.) The clouds lifted for the first part of the morning, giving India a clear view of the Fishhook, the village of Surki just outside the valley entrance, and the route planned for Hammer’s approach along Whale’s western base. There were no signs of mines, and Surki and the Fishhook appeared deserted, save for a white Jeep CJ5 circa 1980 a few hundred meters northwest of the village.

Juliet, meanwhile, spotted movement on the Whale—the first confirmed activity on the huge humpback mountain or in the valley. Kris moved his team a short distance to a position that afforded better views of the valley and the Whale.

Mako 31 had yet to make it to their designated observation post, but they managed to sneak into a position from which they could observe a good road that led south from Marzak and then turned east into a valley. The road was lined with white rocks, a local sign that indicated it was clear of mines. The movement on the Whale that Juliet had seen was the only activity any of the teams spotted during the morning. But their ears told them Blaber’s hunch had been right. Dan and Jason, the Gray Fox operators with India and Juliet respectively, set up their monitoring equipment. Soon each was picking up cell phone or radio traffic from the immediate area. And at 12:10 p.m., Mako 31 heard gunfire coming from the direction of Marzak. It didn’t sound like somebody hunting. It sounded more like marsksmanship training.

Then, from their new observation post in a narrow valley about 3,500 meters northeast of Serkhankhel, the Juliet operators watched an unnerving episode unfold before them. To their east they spotted five men walking in single file toward them from the direction of a cave complex the operators knew about from examining the overhead imagery. Bin Laden had supposedly stayed at the cave in December. Three of the five were armed with AKs. The other two had RPGs. Their facial features were those of local Afghans. All wore turbans and earth-tone clothing. To the Juliet operators’ great concern, they appeared to be following the tracks left in the snow by the ATVs. There were a lot of tracks muddled in the snow, but if the enemy fighters found the ATVs, Juliet would be in big trouble. Kris used his MBITR radio to warn Bill and Dave, who were sleeping in the tent. They took up defensive positions, but the embankment at first prevented them seeing the enemy troops.

Step by step the turbaned warriors inched toward the hidden ATVs. Juliet Team watched and waited as the quintet stood and scratched their turbans, talking among each other and looking at the strange tracks in the snow with bemused expressions. Infrared dots danced around their torsos as the operators took aim and curled their index fingers around their triggers. Kris whispered to his men to hold their fire until the last possible moment, while he juggled the possibilities in his mind. The five fighters might be the lead element of a larger force, and if Juliet shot them the operators would be on the run, on foot. Killing them would also compromise the mission. But if Juliet didn’t kill them, they might raise the alarm and return with more enemy fighters. Or they might be confused and just let the tire tracks pass unexplained. But the AK-toting militiamen were getting closer and closer to the ATVs. Kris was on the verge of giving the order to open fire when they paused, talked to one another for a few moments, and then turned around and walked away. One man turned back toward the ATVs. “It was bothering him, the tire tracks,” an operator said later. “But he’s looking at tire tracks at 10,000 feet on the east side of the valley, with the north being impassable due to terrain and minefields, and the south—you’ve still got the long axis of the valley [to traverse], so how could there be these tire tracks up here, and who could’ve ridden the thing that made it up here? He was probably wondering, what sort of spaceship was able to get up here?” Again, Kris got ready to fire at the confused fighter. Then, “at what would have been his last moment,” as a military report of the incident put it, the inquisitive Taliban fighter appeared to reconsider before turning around and rejoining the group.

In a turn of amazing good fortune, a blizzard suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Gale-force winds whipped snow into the small knot of guerrillas. As if of one mind, the Afghan fighters apparently decided that in this case discretion was the better part of valor and continued west toward the shelter of the village. Thinking the five enemy troops might be back with reinforcements, the operators broke down the tent and hauled the gear up to the observation post. They set a trip wire with a grenade by the ATVs to give them early warning. The snow fell for the next two hours, smothering the area. After it stopped, Kris looked around and realized this would be their final observation post. He had planned on possibly pushing further south to establish the team on Takur Ghar. But if the team were to move now, the snow would provide what an operator called “a cookie-crumb trail” for the enemy to follow. Of equal import, they now had superb overwatch of the valley and the Whale, and the blanket of snow would give them an accurate indicator of any enemy movement in the area.

(Juliet sent a data message reporting their close call back to Gardez via satellite. Blaber read it and immediately forwarded it to Hagenbeck, Harrell, and TF 11’s Masirah headquarters. Displaying his renowned flair for the dramatic, he introduced Kris’s report with three words—” We’re in business”—a line taken from the moment in the movie
Saving Private Ryan
when U.S. troops pinned down on Omaha Beach use a Bangalore torpedo to make a breakthrough.)