Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (36 page)

Ali ceremoniously exited his SUV and approached us, illuminated by the headlights of our two vehicles crisscrossing each other. Ali ignored the jumpy Afghan guys in the front seat and approached Shag’s window, leaned inside and extended his right hand toward me, gave a victory smile, and said, “Commander Dalton!”

Then came a torrent of Pashto, and Shag and I had no idea what the general said, although it was obvious he was welcoming us and was happy about our arrival.

After only a minute or two of geniality, Ali was back in his SUV and once again was on the move, heading north, away from the fight. But he left us with the impression that he was merely looking for a place where he could turn his convoy around, so we could all move to the sound of the guns. That was not going to be the case. Not even close.

I didn’t want to believe what was really happening, but Shag pieced together enough of what our guides were saying to determine that Ali’s fighters were finished for the evening. They were all headed home to break their Ramadan fast.

The muhj force that we thought had bin Laden surrounded and trapped apparently had packed it in for the day and was hightailing it off
the mountain in full retreat. It didn’t matter.
We are pressing on and will figure it out when we get there
. We proceeded south, hoping that we were wrong and that Ali and his boys were turning around and coming right behind us. Wishful thinking.

For the next few hundred meters, we wormed through a giant traffic jam as if swimming against a riptide. Dozens of muhj fighters were crammed inside the beds of pickup trucks or perched on the sides, most of them wrapped in blankets. Some strained their necks to get a look at our newer pickup trucks with mounted M-249 squad automatic weapons or M-240G machine guns, and loaded with Delta commandos who were strangely heading toward the fighting after dark.

Hope was fading that one of the general’s vehicles would eventually zip in front of our convoy, take the lead, and guide us to where we needed to be so that, together, we could all assault bin Laden’s location. The harsh truth was that we would not be seeing General Ali again for the next fifteen hours.

Something good was happening back at the schoolhouse. Reinforcements were coming in, trained professionals who could be an instant quick-reaction force if we needed help.

We had scooped up every task force member except Bernie, who was left at the base to monitor the radio and brief our squadron commander, Colonel Ashley, who was bringing in the new force—seven more Deltas and a couple of dozen Royal Marine commandos.

Lieutenant Colonel Al and another CIA man marked the landing zone for the inbound helicopters. They dropped five infrared light sticks on the sandy ground in the shape of a Y, to direct the pilot of the lead MH-47 helicopter to approach from the north, fly directly over the schoolhouse, and land facing the mountains. Instead, the bird ended up with the tail facing an adjacent building, with its big rotor whipping up an instant sandstorm.

Once the ramp hit the ground, the troops exited the helicopter carrying their heavy rucksacks and immediately headed into the nearest, but wrong, structure. The second helicopter mirrored the lead of the first and
landed next to it and the rest of the troops hustled into the same building where their buddies had gone. A CIA operative hurried over to retrieve them.

The rotors of the two helicopters had created a blinding, massive brown ball of dust that roiled and churned over itself, darkening it to the point that only the static electricity of the rotor blades was visible. Within that dark and swirling cloud, one of the helicopters began to roll. . . directly toward the schoolhouse.

After moving roughly thirty yards, the helicopter’s front refuel probe smacked a three-foot-high stone wall and pierced it like a temperature gauge going into Mom’s roast. Colonel Al ran up the back ramp, grabbed the crew chief, and hauled him off to show him the damage.

“It was a brownout!” the crew chief calmly yelled over the engine noise, apparently not upset in the least. “Pilot must have taken his foot off the brake!”

By now the giant rotor blades were spinning violently, with the tips just a few feet above the roof of the schoolhouse in which Bernie was huddled. The helicopter had rolled itself into a mess. The pilot couldn’t back up, because any attempt to change the rotor blade pitch would have sheared off the roof of the schoolhouse and been catastrophic for both the aircraft and anyone inside or nearby.

So, he just gave the helicopter all the power it had and slowly lifted from the ground right there, the fuel probe simply forcing its way up through the loose stones of the fence. Fortunately, the United Nations had only built a single-story schoolhouse.

The British Royal Commandos were not too happy about having carried their heavy rucksacks into the wrong building, and that they were not welcomed by anyone. The CIA man rounded them up, when the helicopters were gone, and pointed them in the right direction. They ran across the yard to the schoolhouse and took a knee inside the yard.

One of the Brits remarked to Lieutenant Colonel Al, “Well, mate, that was quite the faf [
sic
], right?” Al didn’t need a translation. Apparently, the British slang term is synonymous with the American term “fubar” (fouled up beyond all recognition), and Al, who knew a potential disaster had narrowly been averted, was in total agreement.

Up the road, our convoy continued through the night, driving in
blackout mode, with headlights off on all but the lead vehicle to prevent al Qaeda from seeing that an entire convoy was approaching. In retrospect, I probably should have jumped into the driver’s seat, killed the lights and driven on by using my NVGs. But I didn’t know where we were going, and giving the NVGs to the driver would have been of little use, for I doubted any Afghan local’s ability to drive with only 10 percent illumination and no headlights. We just had to rough it out. Perhaps General Ali had radioed ahead for his remaining troops to pick us up.

The boys up in OP25-A spotted the headlights probing through the darkness and Dugan commented with his Georgia drawl, “Those guys are gonna get hit if they don’t turn off those white lights. There’s still a mortar tube out there.” Sure enough, a couple of rounds soon impacted near the rear of the convoy.

Our guides became nervous, whispering, “Al Qaeda, al Qaeda.” When our driver came to a stop, I expected to see some muhj force that could guide us to within striking distance of bin Laden’s “surrounded” cave. Short of leading us to such a point, perhaps they would navigate us through the front lines and get us halfway there, or join us to make sure that we didn’t shoot the wrong folks.

There were no friendly muhj waiting, and our hired guides frantically pointed toward the dark peaks and warned us al Qaeda was only fifty meters down the road. They were nervous wrecks and had gone as far as they planned to. Beyond this point, they would not budge.

Jim sorted things out up and down the convoy, and the boys took up security positions. I walked up the road to see if I could make out any sign of friendly or enemy activity. Nothing! I radioed Ironhead, who was bringing up the rear of the convoy, to ask about Ali’s column.

Ironhead said that there was nothing behind us but pitch-black darkness all the way back down the road we had just traveled. No sign of the general or his muhj army in back, and no linkup party in front. Not good.

We tried to radio the schoolhouse for updates on bin Laden’s grid location, but again the jagged landscape played havoc with the transmissions. We could not talk to the schoolhouse, only half a dozen miles away, but the radio frequencies somehow bounced all the way back to our task force headquarters at the ISB, clear across the Arabian Ocean.

Much closer, we were also able to talk to Jester, Dugan, and India
Team up in OP25-A. They filled us in on the status of Hopper, the Admiral, and Adam Khan. Then machine-gun and small-arms fire interrupted what had been until then a confusing but peaceful night for us.

With the Admiral on the run, the bombing and air cover had come to a halt because there was no combat controller to direct the planes. OP25-A could not take control until the condition of the evading Jackal could be determined, or risk hitting them.

So al Qaeda and the muhj took advantage of the absence of airpower. They occupied the tops of the ridgelines directly to our front and rear and opened fire. Caught in the middle, we all took cover behind rocks and vehicles as bright green and red zipped through the night sky. Several rockets screamed overhead.

The only thing preventing us from being engaged in the firefight was the low elevation of the road we were on. Unless al Qaeda maneuvered forward, we were safe, and we doubted that they would leave their prepared defense positions to take their chances in the open. Our biggest concern was that the enemy mortars would attempt to engage us with indirect fire, but we believed that we were too close to the enemy’s own front line for the mortars to fire without hitting their own men.

Out of nowhere, a muhj fighter appeared from the darkness and told the guides that all of Ali’s forces had withdrawn, and then he also continued on down the road. Our guides were in a panic, for they were responsible for the vehicle in which we rode and couldn’t abandon it. But if it had not been for the string of vehicles blocking the road behind them, I’m sure they would have turned around and floored the gas pedal.

It was like a bucket of cold water over our heads to realize that there was no friendly muhj force coming forward, not General Ali, not even a lowly private. We were now the first string, and behind al Qaeda lines. Delta never minds being behind enemy lines, since we do a lot of that sort of thing, but the whole mission was unraveling.

Ironhead, Jim, Bryan, and I gathered at the fourth vehicle to sort out our next move. After the mass exodus we had seen on the road, it was pretty obvious that bin Laden was no longer surrounded, and perhaps never actually was. We had received no update on the grid position for more than an hour. Usama bin Laden, who had seemed so close, was now fading like a ghost.

Jim pulled our current location off his GPS and made a quick map check under a red-lens flashlight. We were roughly 2,500 meters in straightline distance from the last sighting spot given to us by George before we left the schoolhouse. Out here, though, it was impossible to walk anywhere in a straight line.

The friendly situation was as uncertain as the enemy situation, not an abnormal condition for anyone who has ever suited up to stand in harm’s way in the fog of war. Our guts told us that General Ali was finished for the night, but we did not want to stumble upon some muhj outpost we didn’t know about that wouldn’t be expecting us.

We still had no word from Hopper, the Admiral, and Adam Khan. Neither had the boys at OP25-A, nor those back at the schoolhouse.

We could not change any of those adverse developments, but we could certainly try to reach our missing men. They were still alive, still evading, and needed help. Finally, we managed to establish some basic radio contact with them, but the rugged country kept the transmissions spotty and intermittent.

It was time for a decision. Ironhead looked at me and said, “Your call, sir, but whatever we do, I don’t think we should leave here until we have our boys back.” Jim and Bryan withheld their comments, for this was a decision only the commander could make.

I certainly wasn’t going to leave without our guys, but I had to factor in that we still just might be within striking distance of bin Laden, the objective of our mission. The overall order had been to “kill bin Laden, and bring back proof,” and the idea of giving up this chance of taking the top terrorist off the board was abhorrent to me.

I let the whole mess churn in my brain for a few seconds. It was my call because that’s the kind of complicated decision a commander must face on a battlefield. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

I looked at all three of my veteran sergeants and said, “Okay, we’ll have another shot at bin Laden. I absolutely agree with you all. We need to concentrate on recovering our boys first. If things change between now and then, we’ll go for bin Laden, too. If not, we’ll return to the schoolhouse and prep for insertion of the teams.”

Jim and Bryan replied, “Roger that,” and went to ready the force to locate our evading teammates.

We couldn’t reach Ashley back at the schoolhouse to fill him in, but I was again able, through the bouncing radio signal, to contact the Delta deputy commander back at the ISB. After explaining the situation with as much brevity as possible, he agreed with the decision.

I was not surprised to hear no second-guessing or armchair quarterbacking from the colonel. They had been monitoring the activities of the evening and had been only cautiously optimistic about the possibility of finding bin Laden anyway. But they also believed that other opportunities would come later, because we were so sure that he was trapped in Tora Bora.

It was both the hardest call I ever had to make and the easiest.