Not a Good Day to Die (58 page)

7.

AT 3:45 a.m., as Razor 04 was landing beside the downed Razor 03, Gregory Trebon alerted the Task Force 11 quick reaction force. He didn’t fully understand what had happened in the Shahikot, but he wanted his quick reaction force ready to go. Responsibility for providing that force rotated between the three platoons of A Company, 1
^st
Ranger Battalion, which formed the core of Task Force Red. On the night of March 3-4, the QRF was 1
^st
Platoon, led by Captain Nathan Self.

Born and raised in Waco, Texas, Nate Self was an all-American kid who had realized his mother’s worst fears when he entered West Point as a cadet in 1994, seeking a challenge and a way to serve his country. Two weeks after graduating from the military academy in 1998 he married his high school sweetheart, whom he had known since elementary school. In October she had given birth to their first child, a son, but Self had only two months to get to know him before A Company deployed to Afghanistan. As with other echelons of command in the Ranger Regiment, platoon command was a second command for the officers who received it, making the lieutenants who became platoon leaders slightly older and more experienced than their counterparts in the rest of the Army, because they had already been platoon leaders elsewhere. Self was no exception. He was twenty-five and in December had been promoted to captain, a rank more often associated with company command. When Anaconda kicked off, Self had led 1
^st
Platoon for almost seventeen months. He knew the men, their strengths, and their weaknesses.

By the time Trebon gave the order to alert the quick reaction force (QRF), Self had anticipated the move and was well ahead of him. The captain had been sitting in the Blue TOC, where the Rangers had a corner to themselves, when he heard a message come across the radio saying a TF Brown helicopter had gone down. It was unclear whether the helicopter had crashed due to enemy fire or a mechanical failure, but in either case, Self knew it probably meant his men would be getting the call. Securing a downed helicopter was on the list of missions for the QRF. He hustled down to the two GP Mediums that housed his platoon and told his troops to get up. At first, few took him too seriously. He’d already woken them up once that night when another possible mission had popped up—reinforcing the safe house in Khowst after a rocket attack. That had blown over, but here the captain was again getting his troops out of bed in the middle of the night. There was a sense of the boy crying wolf. “Yeah, sir, we got it last time,” said Staff Sergeant Arin Canon half-jokingly. “No, get up,” Self said, his voice turning serious. “One of our aircraft is down.” That was all he needed to say. In a heartbeat the men were out of their sleeping bags, pulling uniforms and combat gear on, reaching for and checking weapons. The Rangers’ standard was to be at the airfield ready to fly within thirty minutes of being alerted. They had rehearsed this over and over again, working through each possible contingency—
What if there’s only one helicopter available? Will we need vehicles?
In each case every man was assigned a role and had it down pat.

Since arriving in Bagram in the last week of December, portions of the platoon had launched on several missions, but none of the men had seen combat. However, they had kept themselves on a razor’s edge of readiness by training at Al Qaida’s enormous Tarnak Farms facility near Kandahar. Using live ammunition they had rehearsed combat scenarios all the way up to platoon-level assaults in what Self described as “the best training I’ve ever seen in the Army.” He and his men particularly relished the opportunity to “push the envelope” regarding safety restrictions further than they might have been allowed in the United States. “Bad for Al Qaida, lucky for us,” noted Canon, the platoon’s weapons squad leader. One of Self’s squads plus a machine-gun team, a medic and his platoon sergeant were still down there, leaving him with a little over half the platoon in Bagram: two line squads, two two-man machine-gun teams, and himself. When Canon realized that this time they were really launching, he ran over to 2
^nd
Platoon’s tents and grabbed their medic, Sergeant Matt LaFrenz, to accompany them on the mission.

Self returned to the TOC. Word was coming in that someone had fallen out of a Chinook. On the Predator screen he could see Razor 04 on the ground beside Razor 03, although he didn’t know exactly what he was looking at, or where it was. The captain assumed that his mission would be to secure the downed helicopter. He was confused by the references he kept hearing to a guy falling out of a helicopter. “Sir, what are we doing? Where are we going?” he said to his battalion operations officer, Major Jim Mingus. With Tony Thomas in Kandahar, Mingus was TF Red’s senior officer in Bagram. Mingus told Self to go to the helicopters and then call the TOC for guidance.

Self headed to the airfield, only to encounter more problems. The QRF mission always involved three or four-man Air Force special tactics team, made up of pararescuemen, or PJs, trained in emergency medical skills and the swift rescue and evacuation of casualties, and combat controllers, whose job it was to conduct air traffic control and coordinate close air support. When his platoon had first been assigned the QRF mission, Self had been given a special tactics (STS) team to whom he had explained the nuts and bolts of how the platoon conducted its missions—simple but essential things like who would run to what position off the back of the helicopter, and what everybody’s radio call signs were. But tonight that team was on another mission. When Self got to the airfield a four-man special tactics team he didn’t know was waiting for him. This troubled Self and Canon. Neither man was comfortable going into what could be a combat situation with a team they’d never even met before, but Self ran through the platoon’s standard operating procedures as clearly as possible with the airmen.

Then another issue reared its head: there were two TF Brown Chinooks on the tarmac, but only one was rigged to accommodate his men. The other was going to carry a fuel blivet to the airstrip in Gardez. Self couldn’t understand why fuel was taking a higher priority than getting his men to the downed helicopter. He had about twenty-five men at the airfield, and he wanted to take as many Rangers as he was allowed. He called Mingus and told him about the four-man special tactics team. The platoon leader told the major that he couldn’t take all four, especially as the 160
^th
pilots were telling him that only one aircraft was available to carry his troops. If this were the case, Self would be restricted to taking only thirteen men. “There’s no way I’m taking four of these [special tactics] guys and only nine of my own,” Self told Mingus. Self would definitely be taking his enlisted tactical air controller, Staff Sergeant Kevin Vance. If all four special tactics men came along as well, it would leave room for only a seven-man Ranger squad. If Self took a two-man machine-gun team, that squad would be cut to five men. Mingus told him he could cut one of the special tactics guys. “Why don’t we just not take ’em at all?” Self replied. “We know the aircraft is stable, we’re not going to have cut anybody out of it, there’s no casualties there. What are they going for? I’d just rather take thirteen of my own, so we can fight.” Mingus told Self he needed to take the special tactics men in case his helicopter went down. They debated the issue back and forth, but Self wasn’t getting anywhere. He was left with a load of ten Rangers and a three-man STS team. Self did some quick thinking about who he should take. He decided on Staff Sergeant Ray DePouli’s squad (“because it was the best squad in the platoon,” he said), scaled down to six men, plus himself, Vance, and a two-man machine-gun team. The six-man squad consisted of DePouli as the squad leader, a three-man fire team consisting of a team leader, a SAW gunner, and a 203 gunner, and a two-man fire team with a team leader and a SAW gunner. Calling back to Mingus, Self explained how limited his options would be with such a small force on the ground. “You’re just going to secure a downed bird,” Mingus responded. What about the guy who fell out of the helo? Self asked. “We’re still working on it,” Mingus said, an indication of just how little situational awareness the Blue and Red staffs in Bagram had.

A captain from the TF Red staff approached Self on the tarmac. “You’ve got launch authority, you can go,” he told the platoon leader. “What’s our mission?” Self asked for the umpteenth time. “We’ve got to get you guys in the air and get you down in that vicinity, fly you to Gardez and put you on the ground,” the battle captain said. “When you get down to Gardez come up on tacsat and we’ll give you further instructions. We just need to get you prepositioned and get you moved, because it’s about an hour’s flight.” As he was speaking another two Chinooks—the original Razor 03 and Razor 04 that had just flown up from Gardez—landed on the runway about 200 meters away. A crew chief for one of the helicopters Self had thought he’d be flying on gestured at the Chinooks that had just flown in and told him those were the helicopters he’d be going in on now. Before he headed over to them, Self turned back to the other Ranger captain. “Get me another aircraft,” he implored. “You’ve got to get some more people down there.” Just then the special tactics team that usually worked with Self’s platoon turned up, back from their mission. Self filled them in on what was going on and told the team he’d just met that he’d be taking the airmen he already knew. Then he and the rest of his chalk ran over to the helicopters that had just landed. When he got to the helicopter he was supposed to be riding on, a special tactics team was already onboard. “Who’s the team leader,” Self asked. “I am,” replied Technigal Sergeant Keary Miller, 31. “You’re off,” Self told Miller. “I got my own guys.” Then he moved forward, plugged into the intercom and spoke with the crew as the Chinook taxied down the runway to fuel up. When he turned around, he saw Miller and his teammates were still there. The two special tactics teams had run into each other on the ramp and agreed that the team already on the aircraft should stay, because their gear—specialized equipment for pulling people from helicopter wreckage—was already loaded on the helicopter. Self wasn’t happy to be stuck with a team that he’d never even seen before that night. He’d have preferred to go in with the first team from the evening. At least he’d had fifteen minutes with them to explain how his platoon did things. But there was nothing to do now but make the best of it.

“Here’s what’s gonna happen,” Self told them. “He’s gonna be my RTO,” he said, motioning towards Vance. “Who’s the combat controller?” The special tactics guys pointed at Staff Sergeant Gabe Brown. “You’re gonna control fires,” Self told Brown. Self wanted Vance as his RTO because he knew Vance knew all the call signs and frequencies for talking to the Blue TOC. Brown, with less experience than Vance, would be responsible for calling in close air support if necessary.

Meanwhile Canon had gone to the TOC in the hope of arranging another aircraft. When he got there Mingus told him there was another helicopter waiting and to go get on it. He went back down to the airfield, collected his men and got on the Chinook, call sign Razor 02. On Self’s aircraft, Razor 01, the platoon leader was on the intercom with the crew as they prepared to take off. He had no idea that the other half of his force was coming along until he heard the Razor 02 crew on the radio say they had Rangers on board. It was a huge relief to Self. Now he had the people he needed: nineteen Rangers, an ETAC, and a three-man special tactics team.

Shortly after 5 a.m. the helicopters took off. There were twenty-one men on Razor 01: two pilots, the air mission commander, four crew chiefs, one medic from the 160
^th
, three special tactics men, one enlisted tactical air controller, and nine Rangers. Razor 02 carried sixteen men: two pilots, four crew chiefs, and ten Rangers. No one on either aircraft had more than the vaguest idea of what awaited them at the other end of their flight. Self and Canon each believed they were going to land at Gardez, get a more detailed briefing and then fly in to the valley to secure the downed helicopter. Seated toward the front of his helicopter, Self had the aircraft intercom plugged into one ear—allowing him to listen to the radio transmissions being sent and received by the pilots—and his MBITR plugged into his other ear, so he could talk to DePouli at the other end of the aircraft. The crew was tuned in to the TF 11 satellite frequency, known as Tiersat. Self recognized some of the call signs, but the only voice with which he was familiar belonged to Pete Blaber. The captain tried to piece together what was happening from the disjointed radio calls. When he heard a Mako call sign mentioned, Self inferred that somehow the SEALs had managed to secure whoever it was that had fallen out of the helicopter. Two and a half hours after Roberts had dropped into the snow on top of Takur Ghar, Self was still laboring under the misconception that the man who’d fallen out was probably some unfortunate private from the 101
^st
. However, one thing was clear from listening to the radio chatter: Everyone wanted to know when the QRF was going to arrive. Self hoped they would all show some patience.
We’ve got to stop in Gardez first and figure out what’s going on,
he thought.

On Razor 01 the three 160
^th
warrant officers in charge of the flight—the air mission commander, a chief warrant officer 5 called Don, the pilot-in-command, a chief warrant officer 4 named Chuck, and the pilot, a chief warrant officer 3 called Greg, thirty-seven, from Louisville, Kentucky—were on their third mission of the night and having the devil of a time figuring out what was supposed to be happening. They divided up the radio responsibilities among them, with each monitoring different nets. Sitting in the jump seat, Don was trying with great difficulty to talk with Bagram. There wasn’t much getting through directly from the Blue and Brown TOCs. Most of what the air mission commander heard was coming from a Navy EP-3 aircraft, which was relaying messages to the inbound Chinooks from Masirah and Bagram.