Kill Bin Laden: a Delta Force Commander's account of the hunt for the world's most wanted man (44 page)

Pope had recognized that potential liability a very long time ago. As a Delta team leader he enjoyed great liberty as to what skills he wanted his men to learn or to sustain during their training at home. He could take them on a long-range sniper-hunting trip where the daily kills were gutted, skinned, cleaned, and roasted over an open fire. Or maybe take in a fun-packed off-road driving school where brightly colored soupedup Humvees were delicately maneuvered over boulders the size of sports cars. They could opt for some fingernail-biting level-5 technical rock climbing at some ritzy venue or even go kayaking bare-chested in the hot summer temperatures of the Texas Panhandle. Anything to make the Delta operator more valuable in an unforeseen future mission was available.

With the world of possibilities at his feet, Pope chose close air support
training—fixed-wing CAS—and didn’t have to leave Fort Bragg to do it. For several weeks in a row, Pope and Kilo Team latched on to the Admiral, the air force combat controller attached to the reconnaissance troop, piled into ATVs, and headed for the local bomb-impact areas to sharpen up their skills. Needless to say, Pope wasn’t too popular for that, at least until they found themselves in a place called Tora Bora. The members of his team were fully versed in the finer points of terminal guidance operations. It’s not rocket science, but it might as well be. Pope himself, Lowblow, Jester, and Dugan were as valuable as any air force special tactics combat controller available. They knew it, and so did we, which is why Pope was told that he could make do without a GFAC.

Being able to have eyes up on the ridgelines, deep in al Qaeda’s lines, to see over and down into the next valley or across to the next ridgeline, was priceless. About a thousand meters to the east of Kilo Team, Jackal Team had found a position above the steep side of a long and twisting valley and enjoyed an awesome view for roughly a mile that pierced right through the middle of al Qaeda’s defensives.

With both Jackal and Kilo teams now in positions high up on two commanding ridgelines, the tide was turning.

The snipers determined their own locations to within ten meters by using their GPSs. Next, they used laser range finders to fix the location of the target they wanted to attack. This provided distance and direction, as well as a grid location. Before the data could be packaged inside a modified fire mission—or “solution”—and radioed to the pilots upstairs, the operators had to make one final, and very critical, calculation. The multimilliondollar aircraft above did not accept simple grid coordinates. So the data obtained with the laser rangers first had be converted to latitude and longitude coordinates, the same delicate frustration that Jester and Dugan had been dealing with for days up in OP25-A.

A handheld $150 Garmin GPS that accomplished that conversion process was one of the cheapest and most important tools on the battle-field. The aircrew punched in the coordinates and released the smart bomb, which followed its own internal GPS and impacted within a few meters of its intended location nine out of ten times.

Throughout the night, both Kilo and Jackal teams worked in tandem
to control bombing runs. Enemy fighters not bright enough to maintain a low silhouette were prime targets, as were the cave entrances into which other fighters scurried. Either way, the designated targets eventually disappeared in massive orange-and-red explosions.

The cease-fire had allowed al Qaeda to reposition a Russian-made .50-caliber DShK heavy machine gun on a prominent ridgeline just south of the new observation posts, and its presence stalled the muhj. After some rudimentary coordination in Russian with the muhj commander to pinpoint the gun, Hopper and Jackal Team worked up a fire mission.

Promising to advance to the next ridgeline if the DShK was not in the way, the muhj commander backed up with his men and watched the Jackals bring in several bombers and an F-18 fighter that demolished the enemy gun emplacement with thundering explosions.

With the successful infil of MSS Grinch, things slowed significantly for the boys up at OP25-A. All of a sudden Jester and Dugan found themselves out of a job and bored. They requested permission to return to the schoolhouse to prep for reinsertion somewhere else.

Instead, we told them to stay put until we were certain Grinch was solidly positioned, and to allow the second group, MSS Monkey, time to get established. We also weren’t comfortable with the unreliable radio communications as the boys moved deeper south, and Jester and Dugan provided a valuable radio-relay asset.

In addition, the muhj commander who was with them at the OP had become a great source of information about what was happening at the front with Ali’s other fighters. That information would have otherwise been unavailable to us, and we used it to corroborate General Ali’s situation reports during the nightly fireside chats.

After directing their final bombs of the battle for a while, the hardworking
boys in OP25-A reluctantly released control of the airspace to their mates in MSS Grinch, several miles away. The JDAMs and MK-82 bombs rained down.

As had become customary, al Qaeda radio intercepts provided immediate feedback. More good news for our side. Requests for the “red truck to move wounded,” frantic calls from a fighter to his commander relaying “cave too hot, can’t reach others,” and discussions of surrendering were all heard by Skoot and his signals interceptors at the schoolhouse.

Even with this indisputable insight about the terrible state of the enemy, the Afghan muhj were not changing their ways. We were still unable to impress upon them the importance of remaining on the battlefield and not giving up hard-earned terrain by retreating back down the mountain each evening. As per standard procedure, the muhj had marshaled about midmorning at the base of the mountains, slowly moved up the rocky trails in an uneven zigzag pattern, ripped a few dozen 7.62mm rounds each through their AK-47s, and launched a rocket or two toward al Qaeda, then promptly called it quits for the day.

The example we had set was hard to argue with, and a pleased General Ali was becoming a believer. His spirit was returning following Zaman’s shady antics with the phony al Qaeda surrender and with the slaughter that our boys were pouring onto the enemy. Ali was succumbing to the pressure from George and the rest of us and would soon tell his fighters to prepare to stay in the mountains with the American commandos and take the initiative away from bin Laden.

With the boys of MSS Grinch needling through al Qaeda’s weakened lines generally from the northeast, it was time to put our second group of operators—MSS Monkey—into the fight from the other side of the battlefield.

With Bryan in command, they were to link with the Green Berets at OP25-B, get a quick situation update, and then push south higher into the mountains. They would provide observation farther along the Wazir Valley, which marked the western edge of the battlefield.

The straight-line map distance from the schoolhouse to the linkup point was a mere ten kilometers, about six miles, but the uneven and brutal terrain the pickups had to follow turned it into a three-hour trip. Lieutenant Colonel Al furnished a local guide to navigate the trip, and also paid for donkeys to be waiting at the rendezvous so MSS Monkey could use the pack animals to ascend after the pickups had to stop.

Ironhead took on the job of getting Bryan and his mates safely to the linkup, then bringing the vehicles and the exfilling Green Berets back to the schoolhouse. As the squadron sergeant major, Ironhead could have gone anywhere he wanted to. He could have been with one of the two flanking OPs, or he could have jumped in with MSS Grinch or Monkey. But it wasn’t his style to get in the way when the boys had work to do, and he chose to stay back at the schoolhouse, likely to keep me from doing something stupid. I took that as a compliment and was more than thankful for his adult supervision. However, as the hours turned to days and the temperature dropped, I could see the sergeant major becoming restless.

One of the junior CIA officers, Drew, desperately wanted to be involved in the action, and the young operative cautiously asked George, “Can I be in charge of the movement, so I can get my spurs?” George honored the request. Drew was to be in charge of the Afghan guides and handle the interface to get the Delta boys safely to the linkup.

Having Drew in charge on the trip did not bother Ironhead or Bryan a bit, as long as the mission got done. Besides, the two seasoned Delta operators enjoyed having him along to deal with the locals, because neither of the Afghan guides spoke or understood a word of English.

Four hours into the trip, they found themselves stopped inside a gated compound, unsure of where they were. Nasty terrain and cutback trails, when coupled with pathetically sorry directions, had led MSS Monkey
to a standstill. If that was not bad enough, the two Afghan guides disappeared.

A couple of Monkey boys who spoke some elementary Russian managed to talk with some newly arrived Afghans who had picked up some rudimentary Russian while interned in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp in the 1980s.

Bryan was a little irritated, and made his way over to Drew, “Okay, where are we?”

Looking at the screen to his handheld GPS, Drew nervously responded, “Here.”