Call Sign Extortion 17 (3 page)

Chapter 3

Base Shank

logar province, eastern afghanistan

2115 zulu time; 1:45 a.m. local time

saturday, august 6, 2011

The United States Military typically operates according to what is known as “Zulu time.” This means that reports of military operations, worldwide, are given at whatever the current time is in Greenwich, England, at the moment the operation occurs. Therefore, the military, in the coordination and execution of its operations, is not a respecter of time zones. This practice can at first blush cause confusion to laypersons and civilians not familiar with military procedure, as there is a natural tendency to always think in local time. In addition, the practice of converting Zulu time to local time can often become more confusing in parts of the world where daylight savings time is sometimes in effect.

However, in order to best understand the events of the night of August 6, 2011, it is necessary to understand Zulu time and the relationship of Zulu or military time to the local times in the affected parts of the world.

Kabul, Afghanistan, the largest city in the area in question, is always four-­and-­a-half hours ahead of Zulu time. Therefore, noon Zulu time would be 1630 hours, or 4:30 in the afternoon local time in Afghanistan. Likewise, midnight Zulu time would translate to 0430 hours, or 4:30 in the morning local time in Afghanistan. On August 5, 2011, at 21:15 Zulu time it was already 1:45 the next morning at Base Shank in the Logar Province of Afghanistan. Extortions 16 and 17, the helicopters that earlier in the evening had dropped off two platoons of US Army Rangers in neighboring Wardak Province, had returned safely to base.

Bryan Nichols, Pat Hamburger, and the other Army National Guardsmen of Extortion 17 had gone to standby status, probably trying to grab some shut-­eye, in the event they were called out on another mission.

Not far away from the Air National Guard members, members of the US military's most famous and elite fighting force, the internationally acclaimed SEAL Team Six, the group that ninety days earlier had killed the world's most notorious terrorist Osama Bin Laden, maintained a state of readiness, just in case.

SOC (SEAL) Aaron Vaughn, a six-­foot-­four-­inch Tennessean with sandy-­colored hair and radiant blue eyes, and a seasoned combat veteran, was among the members of the SEAL team's “Gold Squad” deployed at Base Shank that night.

A former SEAL instructor, Aaron was among the bravest and most decorated of America's warriors. But no matter how focused he became or dangerous his mission was, Aaron Vaughn's heart was never far from home.

As SEAL Team Six maintained its readiness in the dark hours of the Afghan morning, it was 5:15 p.m. back home in Virginia Beach, where Kimberly Vaughn was caring for the couples' two small children, Reagan and Chamberlain.

Kimberly Lineberger and Aaron Vaughn met in Guam in 2005, where Aaron was deployed as part of a rapid-­action force to the Arabian Gulf region. He stood tall and handsome, a superhero, an American Navy SEAL.

Kimberly had been a Washington Redskins cheerleader on a mission to the South Pacific with the USO to entertain the troops about to deploy to the Middle East. Glamorous and beautiful, her instant chemistry with Aaron proved magnetic. Their story became the fairy-­tale meeting of which romance novels are written—an NFL cheerleader and an elite American warrior. The initial attraction on a faraway island grew into an abiding and nourishing love, cemented across time and distance by a mutual commitment to their Christian faith.

Aaron and Kimberly were married in May of 2008, and shortly after that, Kimberly gave birth to their son Reagan. They made their home in Virginia Beach, and made plans to build their dream house. Three weeks
before his final deployment to Afghanistan, Kimberly gave birth to their second child, a little girl named Chamberlain.

On the afternoon of August 5th, 2011, hours before the final flight of Extortion 17, as Kimberly drove along the interstates in Virginia Beach, with Reagan and Chamberlain strapped in their car seats, the cellphone rang. Aaron's voice came over the Bluetooth, and his family would hear him for the last time. For the final time, Aaron and Kimberly, separated worlds apart, on different continents across thousands of miles of ocean, would proclaim their love for one another.

At 2130 (9:30 p.m.) Zulu Time, or 0200 (2:00 a.m.) local time in Afghanistan, several hours after Aaron and Kimberly spoke by phone, all hell broke loose at Base Shank.

According to one version of the story, word came down that the two Army Ranger units were pinned down by the Taliban. These were the same units, apparently, that had been transported to the Tangi River Valley by the two Chinooks hours earlier the same evening.

We use the phrase “according to one version of the story,” because the national and international press reported, in the days following the shoot-­down, that the SEALs had been deployed to rescue the Rangers, who were supposedly “pinned down” by enemy Taliban forces. Later, the military seemed to back away from the “Rangers were being rescued” story, and reported that the SEALs were being deployed to capture the well-­known terrorist Qari Tahir.

In what will later be described by a US Navy SEAL as one of the fastest and chaotic “spin ups” to a mission that he has ever seen, seventeen members of SEAL Team Six—the informal name given to the Navy's elite Special Forces Developmental Group (DEVGRU) based out of Virginia Beach—sprang into action. The SEALs gathered their weapons and rushed to the airstrip, where the two old Chinook helicopters, the same choppers that had transported the Rangers to the edge of the battle zone, were waiting, with engines running.

In recounting the chaotic minutes leading up to the launch, certain facts are clear, while other factors remain unclear. Perhaps the ambiguity surrounding this launch is a simple consequence of the fog of war. Perhaps the unanswered questions will linger for other reasons.

Chapter 4

SEALs Called to Action

Unfortunately, the only thing that was clear about the launch of Extortion 17 was the identity of the American servicemen being scrambled.

The SEAL team was at the core of this mission, which was at first portrayed as a “rescue” mission for the Army Rangers.

Lieutenant Commander Jonas Kelsall, SEAL Commander

The SEALs were under the command of thirty-­three-­year-­old Lieutenant Commander Jonas Kelsall, of Shreveport, Louisiana. Commander Kelsall was the only naval officer on board the flight, and was the senior commissioned officer aboard the aircraft. Kelsall was one of the original members of SEAL Team Seven, which was formed in San Diego, before being transferred to SEAL Team Six in Virginia in 2008. A rising star in the special warfare community, he had already been awarded the Legion of Merit and two Bronze Stars for combat valor. He had been married to Victoria for three years, whom he met while a student at the University of Texas. The couple had no children.

Master Chief Lou Langlais, Second-­in-­Command

Kelsall's next-­in-­command was forty-­four-­year-­old Master Chief Lou Langlais, of Los Angeles. Langlais, a Canadian-­born rock climber and twenty-­five-­year Navy veteran, was married with two young sons. This was his last deployment to Afghanistan. After this deployment, he planned to return to the United States as a SEAL team instructor, and then retire and spend time with his wife and boys. Master Chief Langlais was one of the Navy's most experienced SEALs and one of its most valuable members.

The team under Kelsall and Langlais was an experienced fighting unit full of combat veterans. Eleven of the seventeen SEAL team members were chief petty officers or above. To get an idea of the experience of these men, in the Navy it takes an average of about fourteen years to reach the rank of Chief. Next to Langlais, the highest-­ranking of the chiefs was Senior Chief Petty Officer Thomas Ratzlaff.

Senior Chief Petty Officer Thomas Ratzlaff

Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Thomas A. Ratzlaff, sometimes called “Tom,” and more often referred by those closest to him simply as “Rat,” was a thirty-­four-­year-­old family man who had wanted to be a Navy SEAL ever since he was a young boy.

In the prime of his life, Tom Ratzlaff was living his dream, as a husband, as a father, and as a warrior. With a list of combat ribbons and medals across his chest that would make most warriors envious, Ratzlaff had already earned four Bronze Stars—with the Combat “V” device for valor—and had served in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Tom and his wife had two sons back home, and they were expecting their third child after Tom completed his tour in Afghanistan.

Time
magazine reporter Eric Blehm wrote about Ratzlaff as both a family man and a man of faith in his article “The Navy SEALS' Dying Words,” published on August 6, 2012, the one-­year anniversary of Extortion 17:

 

Tom shared that whenever he boarded a helicopter for a mission, he said the Lord's Prayer silently, once he got seated, and then prayed for protection. “I don't ask for protection myself because that's in his hands. I ask him to look after my wife and kids. Then I ask him to protect all my buddies and forgive them of all their sins and me of my sins. Then I move straight into thinking about what I'm about to do—the target, the map study, making sure I know which way's north so I can call out things correctly on the target.”

Chief Petty Officer Robert J. Reeves, USN

One of the experienced chiefs serving under Kelsall and Langlais was thirty-­two-­year-­old Robert Reeves. Like Commander Kelsall, Chief Petty Officer Reeves was from Shreveport, Louisiana. Lieutenant Commander Kelsall and Chief Reeves had been best friends from childhood. They went to school together, and at Caddo Magnet High School in Shreveport, they were just “Jonas and Rob.”

Jonas Kelsall had been described in high school as a “jokester” and a “prankster.” With an athletic physique and mischievous grin, Jonas was a kid who always had girls hanging around his locker.

Rob, meanwhile, had been a star athlete in high school, excelling on the school's lacrosse and soccer teams, where Jonas, also an outstanding athlete, was his teammate. Rob had a kind side to him. Once Rob surprised his high school English teacher by giving her a book signed by her favorite author. As a young man, he was both driven and thoughtful.

From the time they were boys, Jonas and Rob were inseparable. The two best friends joined the Navy together, and made a pact to become SEALs together. When Jonas was picked up for the prestigious SEAL officer program, their paths diverged, but only for a short time. And while his best friend acclimated to the officer ranks, Rob Reeves forged his own heroic mark within the SEAL community, having been deployed to war zones more than a dozen times, and winning an impressive four Bronze Stars for combat.

Between the two of them, they came into this final mission as the pride of Caddo Magnet High School, with a Legion of Merit and six Bronze Stars for combat valor between them. Few modern high schools in America can boast such collective heroism as did Caddo Magnet.

Now they were both Navy SEALs, together on a mission, placed by fate in the very same elite fighting unit, at the very same moment in history on a continent thousands of miles from their childhood home. This was a coincidence that only fate could have dictated.

Jonas Kelsall had once said, “If I die on a mission, I'll die happy, because I'm doing something for my country.”

Before the sun would rise, Jonas would die for his country, and he and Rob would die together. They would be close in life, and even closer in death.

In addition to Kelsall, Langlais, Reeves, and Vaughn, there were thirteen other SEALS on the mission, bringing the number to seventeen members of SEAL Team Six who boarded the choppers for Wardak Province.

The seventeen SEALs were supported by five other US Navy members, including a cryptologist, a master-­at-­arms, two explosive ordnance experts, and an information systems specialist. Also scrambled were three US Air Force servicemen, working in support of the SEAL team, along with five members of the National Guard aircrew. Two of the three Air Force crewmen were Special Operations rescue operators, whose job would be to rescue and bring home any Americans downed in combat. The third was a Special Operations combat controller.

Thirty Americans scrambled into action aboard that old chopper in the dark, early hours of that fateful Afghan morning—that much is clear. But what happened after that, even at the very beginning of the flight, before the shoot-­down, is murky at best. Questions have arisen that call into question the actions of the military and which to date the proper authorities have failed to credibly address.

Question 1: Why Not Board Two Choppers?

Remember, two old helicopters were sitting on the tarmac. Both Extortion 16 and Extortion 17 had flown in the earlier mission that evening to deliver the Rangers to the edge of the battle zone. Both were operational. Both were going to fly in support of this mission. But rather than splitting the SEAL team into two groups and flying them to the battle site on two helicopters, all the SEALs were ordered onto one chopper, Extortion 17, making the whole team vulnerable in case of a single disaster. Extortion 16 will take off and fly with Extortion 17, but Extortion 16 will serve as an aerial decoy.

Four-­star retired Navy admiral James “Ace” Lyons, the former commander of the United States Pacific Fleet, commented on this issue at a
press conference on May 9, 2013, in Washington. Regarding the decision to cram the SEALs onto one helicopter, Admiral Lyons stated:

“Why and who decided to put twenty-­five elite SEAL Team Six warriors in a single helicopter? That was my first question to myself when I heard about this tragedy. Sending them on a mission that was compromised? As you all know, we had to vet all our Special Operations plans, basically with all the Afghans. We might as well have turned them over to the Taliban.”

Indeed, Admiral Lyons is correct in that the Afghans were informed in advance of this mission, and, in fact, every mission that the SEALs and Rangers have flown in Afghanistan. Obviously this raises a huge concern about mission integrity and avoiding compromising the safety of US forces, a topic discussed with greater detail later.

There still has been no satisfactory answer to the question of why all the SEALs were crammed onto one chopper when a second was available.

Chronology for August 6, 2011: Day of Shoot-­Down

The official United States military investigation of the shoot down of Extortion was conducted in Afghanistan by a team headed by Army Brigadier General Jeffrey Colt, who had been an Army helicopter pilot. Brigadier General Colt had a team of officers and experts working at his disposal, with a goal of producing a report explaining the reasons for the shoot down.

More background on this report, referred to by the author as the “Colt report,” will be presented in later chapters of this book, with a full background on the Colt Report beginning at Chapter Six, below.

For the time being, however, it is important to understand that the chronology of the shoot-down has been assembled from documentary evidence taken directly from the Colt Report.

At 0200 a.m. local time in Afghanistan, per “Enclosure H” of the Colt Report, the Tactical Operations Center directed Extortion 17 to move to the staging area at Base Shank to pick up twenty-­five Special Operations personnel, including the US Navy SEALs. The SEALs are part of what is called an “Immediate Reaction Force.” They are a contingency unit,
designed to back up the US Army Rangers already on the ground, if the Rangers find themselves in need of help.

Seconds before Extortion 17 was directed to pick up the SEALs, a decision was made to increase the number of personnel in the Immediate Reaction Force from seventeen to twenty-five.

Five minutes later, at 0205 a.m., despite the fact that two helicopters were available for the mission, all twenty-five Special Operations American personnel were ordered onto a single helicopter, cramming the chopper to its maximum capacity, and endangering all souls aboard in the event of a shoot-­down. The old chopper was about to be ordered to fly over an area heavily armed with Taliban, with RPGs and rockets capable of attacking allied helicopters, over a valley in which three Coalition helicopters had been attacked in the last ninety days.

Based upon the order to board a single chopper, the SEALs, under Lieutenant Commander Kelsall, rushed to the tarmac where both choppers awaited. Operational prudence and safety considerations dictated that the SEAL team be split, with Kelsall taking twelve team members on one chopper and Langlais taking the rest on the other. Remember that five of the thirty Americans were flight crew members. The other twenty-­five were the SEAL team and its support crew.

But that's not the way it happened. Instead, every member of the American SEAL team, and every Navy and Air Force enlisted man, piled onto one of the choppers, Extortion 17. So all the risk was concentrated in one chopper at takeoff. But the strange decision to concentrate the entire SEAL team onto Extortion 17 was the first in a string of oddities that would plague the mission from start to finish.

By 0209 a.m., the SEAL team was on the chopper. Pilot Bryan Nichols reported that the Immediate Reaction Force was composed not of thirty-­two, but of thirty-­three members, nearly doubling the originally planned contingency of seventeen. Extortion 17 was now fully loaded, in fact almost overloaded, sitting on the tarmac at REDCON level 1, awaiting the order to take off.

Extortion 16, the other Chinook chopper that would fly this mission, and that earlier in the evening had infiltrated US Army Rangers into far less dangerous airspace alongside Extortion 17, was also ready for takeoff.

But Extortion 16, this time, is only manned by its aircrew. No SEALs are aboard. No Rangers are aboard. No ground forces are aboard. Aside from its aircrew, Extortion 16 is empty.

At 0222 a.m., local time, Extortion 17 lifted off for the last time, carrying the thirty Americans aboard to their eternal destiny.

From the time they lifted off, until they time they were shot down at 0239 a.m., seventeen minutes later, their flight was marred by inexplicable delays, losses in communication, and very odd movements by the helicopter.

At one point, a near panic set in at flight control, as controllers, planners, and officers fretted over why Extortion 17 appeared to be stalled in the air, seemingly hanging there as a sitting duck, as if making itself a target.

At one point, back at flight control, there was self-­assured speculation that perhaps the chopper was hovering in the air, and some controllers speculated that perhaps the SEAL team was rappelling down to the ground.

But the SEALs were not rappelling to the ground. Instead, per reports coming out of flight control, the chopper was stalled in the air. What was going on inside that helicopter?

Yes, it was being piloted by a relatively inexperienced young National Guard pilot, CW2 Bryan Nichols. But his co-­pilot, CW4 David Carter, was far more experienced.